Energy policy

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Energy policy is concerned with reasonable governmental and public responses to issues and problems associated with energy production, distribution and use. All national governments, as well as various sub-national and local governments face a variety of complex and challenging issues in this area.

For more information, see: Energy policy and global warming.

Effective energy policy, at national and international levels, addresses minimizing the economic, geopolitical and environmental problems of energy use, while enhancing the benefits of providing adequate energy to all. It is unrealistic that such policies can be implemented completely and quickly, but work progresses on various aspects:

• Efficient use of energy from all sources
• Renewable energy
• Locally produced or efficiently transmitted sustainable energy
• Reduction of environmentally harmful byproducts of energy generation
• Improvements in the transmission of electrical or thermal energy, and of the transportation of stored energy
• Reduction of fossil fuel importation

There are also a number of important political dimensions to this topic, including:

• The problem of regulating energy producers
• Community impacts of
• The politics of oil spills
• The politics of mining accidents and disasters