The UN, Energy and the Sustainable Development Goals

This chapter analyses first the very humble presence of energy in the United Nations (UN) during the organization’s first seven decades. Norm development and institutionalization of energy are described along four themes: energy for the nations, energy for development, energy for the environment and energy for human well-being. For each theme, the chapter describes the major issues of consensus and contention, the major actors and the development of the theme over time. The analysis of the leaps forward that energy has made on the UN’s agenda in the first decade of the twenty-first century is the focus of the second half of the chapter, with a particular focus on the emergence and evolution of a dedicated Sustainable Development Goal on energy. While there was widespread support for such an energy goal, agreeing on the contours and details of the content was a difficult challenge. Many elements and specific words were kept out of the text and yet it became the most explicit global norm on the kind of energy production and consumption that has been adopted. Some final reflections discuss the link between legitimacy and power—in terms of changing perceptions of what role global governance would be legitimate to have for energy.