Managing Regional Energy Vulnerabilities in East Asia

Book excerpt: This book examines East Asia’s inter-state collaborative energy projects to address energy vulnerability. It focuses on projects that have demonstrated effectiveness in addressing vulnerabilities faced by the ten states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Japan, and South Korea in Northeast Asia. Including case studies on uncertainties in external sources of oil and gas supply, maritime piracy, continuation of energy poverty, and geographical barriers to cross-border electricity interconnection, expert contributors highlight how collaborative energy projects have been more successful than the traditional state rivalry in energy-related issues. The book develops the framework of energy vulnerability, avoiding usual securitization approaches, instead examining non-traditional security conceptualizations in studying energy policies to examine how issue-specific cooperation efforts between states arise and develop. Using East Asia as a starting point, contributors introduce a framework that advances the study of international energy cooperation. Managing Regional Energy Vulnerabilities in East Asia will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, sociology, development studies, and international political economy particularly the political economy of East Asia, energy and development studies, regional and global governance of energy and the environmental economics.