Waging War on Climate Change: Mapping Energy Policies to Their Strategic, Tactical, and Operational Levels

The emergence of climate change and energy security as increasingly important issues has amplified the need for energy policies that manage these issues. While policy-makers adopt energy policies that address climate change and energy security, these policies often include broad strategy statements and may not include specific implementation plans. Accordingly, effectiveness of these energy policies is also evaluated at the strategic level, which may not appropriately evaluate the policies beyond how the policy met its strategic goal(s). This paper assesses the feasibility of mapping energy policies to their strategic, tactical, and operational (STO) levels through two case studies. The first case study assesses the European Union (EU) 2020 energy and climate policy known as EU 20-20-20 as well as the United States’ Executive Orders 13514 and 13423 that mandate energy and greenhouse gas reductions for federal buildings. Results of this paper illuminate potential advantages and limitations of using STO as an energy policy assessment tool and the mapping effort described in this paper suggests that strategic, tactical and operational levels should be addressed explicitly in future energy policies.