For a country already uneasy about energy security, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which caused a nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, turned pre-existing Japanese concern about the availability of energy into outright anxiety. The subsequent closure of many nuclear reactors meant Japan needed to replace lost power quickly and so had no choice but to secure additional fossil fuels, undermining Japanese diversification policy and increasing global and regional competition for energy. This switch has been at a cost to the already weak Japanese economy whilst the increase in fossil fuel consumption has caused a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. In this book Vlado Vivoda examines the drastically changed environment following the disaster in order to analyse Japan’s energy security challenges and evaluate Tokyo’s energy policy options. Looking at how the disaster exacerbated Japan’s existing energy security challenges, Vivoda considers the best policy options for Japan to enhance national energy security in the future, exploring the main impediments to change and how they might be overcome.

Bringing together renewable energy and energy security, this book covers both the politics and political economy of renewables and energy security and analyzes renewable technologies in diverse and highly topical countries: Japan, China and Northern Europe.

Bringing together renewable energy and energy security, this book covers both the politics and political economy of renewables and energy security and analyzes renewable technologies in diverse and highly topical countries: Japan, China and Northern Europe.

Is the quest for true energy security a fool’s errand? In recent years, the efforts of nations to promote energy security have been hotly debated. Fuels Paradise examines how five major developed democracies—Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States—have sought to enhance their energy security since the oil shocks of the 1970s and in response to the more diverse set of challenges of the early twenty-first century. Drawing on a vast range of primary and secondary sources, John S. Duffield explains the actions taken—and not taken—by these countries to address their energy security concerns. Throughout the book, Duffield argues that state strength and policy legacies are essential for understanding national responses to energy insecurity. In addition to identifying feasible energy policies and the constraints faced by policy makers, he evaluates the prospects for international cooperation to promote energy security and considers the implications of recent advances in the production and distribution of energy, particularly the fracking revolution. An ambitious cross-national and longitudinal study grounded in promising theories of national behavior, Fuels Paradise will contribute substantially to broader debates about the determinants of state action and public policy.

Many states appear to have strong sentiment on energy security and energy transit vulnerability. Some analysts see the rapidly increasing demand for energy and competition for energy resources leading to nationalistic energy policies. Others argue that global trends with efficient energy markets and growing options on renewables suggest more relaxed energy outlooks. This book focuses on Asia, where global demand for energy is now concentrated in the aspiring and rising powers of the region: China, India, Japan and South Korea, and also recognises the importance of Russia as a growing energy supplier. Contributions by experts in the field provide detailed and parallel case studies. Shedding light on the ongoing debate in the literature regarding energy outlooks of major Asian states, they analyse whether energy policies are expected to evolve along market oriented cooperative lines or more competitive and even destructive mercantile, nationalist lines. The book argues that states are not unitary actors even in the key energy security arena and there are competing and contrasting viewpoints in Asian states on energy security. It suggests that domestic debates structure thinking on energy security, making energy policy more contingent than assumed by purely market or geopolitical logics. Providing a strong contribution to comparative energy security studies, the book fills an important gap in the literature on energy and national security and offers a basis for conducting further inter-state, interactive analysis. It will be of interest to researchers on Asian Studies, energy politics and international relations.

"Book Abstract and Keywords: The study of Japanese politics has flourished over the past several decades. This Handbook provides a state-of-the-field overview for students and researchers of Japanese. The volume also serves to introduce Japanese politics to readers less familiar with Japan. In addition, the volume has a theme of "evaluating Japan's democracy." Taken as a whole, the volume provides a positive evaluation of the state of Japan's democracy. The volume is divided into two parts, roughly corresponding to domestic Japanese politics and Japan's international politics. Within the domestic politics part, there are four distinct sections: "Domestic Political Actors and Institutions," covering the Japanese Constitution, electoral systems, prime minister, Diet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and local government; "Political Parties and Coalitions," covering the Liberal Democratic Party, coalition government, Kōmeitō, and the political opposition; "Policymaking and the Public," covering the policymaking process, public opinion, civil society, and populism; and, "Political Economy and Social Policy," covering industrial, energy, social welfare, agricultural, monetary, and immigration policies, as well as social inequality. In the international relations part, there are four sections: "International Relations Frameworks," covering grand strategy, international organizations, and international status; "International Political Economy," covering trade, finance, foreign direct investment, the environment, economic regionalism, and the linkage between security and economics; "International Security," covering remilitarization, global and regional security multilateralism, nuclear nonproliferation, naval power, space security, and cybersecurity; and, "Foreign Relations" covering Japan's relations with the United States, China, South Korea, ASEAN, India, the European Union, and Russia. Keywords: international relations, comparative politics, democracy, international order, alliances, space security, elections, Liberal Democratic Party, multilateralism, remilitarization, international organizations, populism, civil society, coalitions, political parties, trade, finance monetary policy, foreign direct investment, cybersecurity"--

"In many ways, everything we once knew about energy resources and technologies has been impacted by: the longstanding scientific consensus on climate change and related support for renewable energy; the affordability of extraction of unconventional fuels; increasing demand for energy resources by middle- and low-income nations; new regional and global stakeholders; fossil fuel discoveries and emerging renewable technologies; awareness of (trans)local politics; and rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the need for energy justice. Research on these and related topics now appears frequently in social science academic journals-in broad-based journals, such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and Review of International Political Economy, as well as those focused specifically on energy (e.g., Energy Research & Social Science and Energy Policy), the environment (Global Environmental Politics), natural resources (Resources Policy), and extractive industries (Extractive Industries and Society). The Oxford Handbook of Energy Politics synthesizes and aggregates this substantively diverse literature to provide insights into, and a foundation for teaching and research on, critical energy issues primarily in the areas of international relations and comparative politics. Its primary goals are to further develop the energy politics scholarship and community, and generate sophisticated new work that will benefit a variety of scholars working on energy issues"--

Drawing on cutting-edge research from leading scholars, this book investigates state preferences for regime creation and assesses state capacity for executing these preferences in Northeast Asia’s energy domain, defined as the geographical area comprising the following countries: Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea. It examines questions pertaining to how states perceive the need and necessity for establishing a regime when it comes to the issue of energy and how much commitment they make to the effort in Northeast Asia. The book analyses the factors that shape each country’s fundamental energy interests in the region, how these interests impact their attitudes toward engaging the region on energy security and the way they carry out their regional engagement. Based on countries’ interests in promoting institutionalized regional energy cooperation and their capacity for forging that cooperation, the collection assesses each state’s role in contributing to an energy regime in Northeast Asia. It then concludes with a critique on the decade-plus quest for energy security cooperation in Northeast Asia and suggests ways forward for facilitating regional energy security cooperation. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of environmental policy, energy policy, security studies, Asian studies and international relations.