Chapter 73
Energy Ethics
Energy is a key factor in economic development and human well-being, and energy provision therefore has many ethical dimensions. Furthermore, energy consumption has many indirect impacts on the environment.
The ethical dimensions of energy consumption include various elements. Energy generally supports economic growth, and is a key production factor that enhances the productivity of labor, machinery and land. At the same time, energy is a key element in the well-being of individuals and households; it provides lighting, comfort, entertainment services, cooling, warming, and reduces manual work. Energy consumption also has inter-generational impacts when exhaustible resources are used.
The ethical dimensions of energy also include various environmental impacts and risks. They can be intra-generational impacts where pollution externalities influence other people’s utility function, and/or can be inter-generational impacts exemplified by global warming that emerges from atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations with up to a hundred-year lifetime.
Considerations about energy ethics related to these dimensions depend on the equity paradigm applied. Some of the paradigms that have been applied to the assessment of energy ethics are:
Utilitarian-based approaches to equity that focus on the consequences of energy consumption on well-being. This approach is the backbone of welfare economics including the use of cost–benefit analysis and various ...
Get A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
