This volume examines energy security in a privatized, liberalized, and increasingly global energy market, in which the concept of sustainability has developed together with a higher awareness of environmental issues, but where the potential for supply disruptions, price fluctuation, and threats to infrastructure safety must also be considered.

The present energy economy, with its heavy dependence on fossil fuels is not sustainable over the medium to long term for many interconnected reasons. Climate change is now recognized as posing a serious threat. Energy and resource decisions involving the carbon fuels therefore play a large role in this threat. Fossil fuel reserves may also be running short, and many of the major reserves are in politically unstable parts of the world.
Yet citizens in nations with rapidly developing economies aspire to the benefits of the modern energy economy. China and India alone have 2.4 billion...