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The intersection of climate protection policies and energy security

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Abstract

Since the end of the 1990s, international energy experts have stressed the increasing strategic importance of energy supply security as part and within the ‘energy triangle’ with its three major objectives: economic competitiveness, environmental/climate sustainability and energy supply security. In the view of many energy security experts, the biggest challenge is seen in maintaining the balance between the three objectives instead of favouring one at the expense of the other two. The following analysis addresses this ‘puzzle’ of the energy triangle and compares the interrelated energy security-climate change mitigation nexus between the USA and the EU: how both sides manage the contradictions and, more specifically, how do the two transatlantic partners attempt to achieve the needed balance within the energy triangle and its three objectives?

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Notes

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Correspondence to Frank Umbach.

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Frank Umbach is an Associate Director at the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security, King’s College, London; Senior Associate at the Centre for European Security Strategies, Munich and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security, King’s College, London; Senior Associate at the Centre for European Security Strategies, Munich and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the US Atlantic Council, Washington, DC. He is an expert on energy supply security and foreign relation issues in Russia, the Caspian Sea region, East Asia, NATO and the EU He has published several books, including Globale Energiesicherheit. Strategische Herausforderungen für die europäische und deutsche Außenpolitik (2003) and numerous articles in international scientific journals.

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Umbach, F. The intersection of climate protection policies and energy security. J Transatl Stud 10, 374–387 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2012.734672

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