Availability of energy is a key pillar of civilization. It allows any human individual to extend its reach via the power of draft animals or via the use of machinery. Societies in the past and present have strived to secure their growth via increasing their available energy. With the discovery of fossil fuels and the technology to utilize them efficiently, the age of industrialization was characterized. Energy has a wide range of applications that are central for a functioning economy. Comfortable room temperatures via heating or cooling are essential for good living conditions and even more so for a productive working environment – just as artificial light is. Transport relies on energy, to enable interaction of people for productive exchange, or to extend markets and to allow cheap mass production of goods of all kinds. Energy is embedded in many materials, from bricks and concrete to steel or aluminum, essential for the buildings we live in and the vehicles that enable our mobility. Even modern telecommunication instruments, having the potential to reduce some of our travel burden, need reliable supply of energy. The central position of energy in societies and economies also exposes their vulnerability. Limitations to energy availability led to price shocks and global economic crises in the past, the latest of which, as a consequence of the Russian war in the Ukraine, hit much of Europe in 2022. Such price shocks inevitably focus public attentions towards alternatives, alternatives of an energy system that requires less foreign and distant unreliable providers of energy, or that at least increases the choice among different providers. At the same time, challenges of climate change raise awareness of the global impacts of using fossil fuels. Increased temperatures have become evident in the 21st century, demonstrating the need of an energy transition also to reduce and avoid further release of greenhouse gases, first of all of carbon dioxide. In many contexts the term "decarbonization" is commonly used to comprehensively describe the pathway out of anthropogenic climate impacts, yet even a more precise "defossilization", i.e. moving out of fossil energy, still would not cover all relevant aspects (e.g. that of unsustainable use of biomass or that of non-CO2 greenhouse gases). Viktor J. Bruckman Present energy use, emissions, energy poverty; Keywan Riahi Energy Transition Pathways; Helmut Haberl and Karlheinz Erb Energy savings and rebounds; Ilona M. Otto Decent living standards; Simone Gingrich
Civil society initiatives; Hanns Moshammer Energy needs, social potentials and barriers to change – with a focus also on possible input from health-related civil society initiatives; L. Y. Pao Potentials and limitations of regenerative power: Hydro, wind, and solar; Renewable energy potentials: Biomass/bioenergy; Robert Jandl Renewable energy potentials: Woody biomass; Georg Brasseur Energy storage, energy carriers, and means to store and to carry energy; Wilfried Winiwarter and Peter Palensky Opportunities of digitalization; Karl W. Steininger, Wolf D. Grossmann and Celine L. Sauer Co-benefits and trade-offs of building intercontinental energy trade networks.
