I feel uneasily that I'm here under false pretences. I'm not an economist at all, much less an energy economist. I'm not even sure what you mean by energy economics, or indeed by energy. I started out as a nuclear physicist, and I still think of energy as a physicist does. For me, energy is the fundamental unifying principle of science. Energy is how the universe works. But that's not what politicians and journalists mean by the word 'energy', in English at least. Politicians and journalists say 'energy' when they really mean fuel - oil or coal or natural gas - or even electricity. Fuels are not all the same. They are not interchangeable. You can't substitute one for another - not without changing the technology to use it. Electricity is not even a fuel; it's a process in technology. To me, using the word 'energy' with all these different meanings, smearing them all together, is confusing and misleading. I think we are managing energy wrong. As a result we are getting ourselves into deep trouble, with fuel security, with climate, and with global equity and stability.
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