A Liberal Actor in a Realist World assesses the changing nature of the global political economy of energy and the European Union's response, and the external dimension of the regulatory state. The book concludes that the EU's soft power has a hard edge, which is derived primarily from its regulatory power.

The Global Energy Challenge provides a comprehensive overview of today’s three most topical energy challenges, or the “energy trilemma”: climate change, energy poverty and energy security. The book addresses the rise of energy geopolitics and the related concerns surrounding “energy weapons” and the “race for resources.”

Gazprom, Russian's prime state owned gas producer, is facing severe pressure stemming from international gas market dynamics, EU regulation and the Ukraine crisis. Slowing gas demand coupled with shifting pricing models and a persisting transit issue pose significant challenges for Gazprom's business going forward.

The global oil market is in upheaval. Prices plunged more than 50 percent between mid-2014 and mid-2015, leaving them hovering around $60 per barrel. Consumers, producers, and governments, all having grown accustomed to $100 oil, were taken by surprise. After all, just prior to their collapse, oil prices had held remarkably steady for three years, their most stable period since the end of the Bretton Woods era in the early 1970s.

International security debates surrounding the European Union (EU) energy supply challenge commonly invoke the need for more EU hard power – e.g. getting tough on Russia or engaging directly with other exporters. This article investigates whether what might be labeled ‘soft power with a hard edge’ instead amounts to a consistent policy strategy for the EU. The central argument is that the EU has turned a weakness into strength, and developed a set of tools that sharpen the way soft power is exercised in the energy sector. The article explores how soft power affects companies that ‘come and play’ on the EU market: the rules of the Single European Market (SEM) and how they affect external firms. It also assesses the long reach of the SEM: both the gravitational ‘pull’ the SEM exerts in the ‘near aboard’, and the EU's ‘push’ to facilitate the development of midstream infrastructure and upstream investment. The conclusion is that the EU regulatory state is emerging as an international energy actor in its own right. It limits the ways states like Russia can use state firms in the geopolitical game; and it exports its model into the near abroad, thus stabilizing energy supply and transit routes.

This AEI report strives to shed light on these uncertainties with the aim of providing realistic scenarios for the global energy outlook to 2030. Goldthau's chapter finds that Russia will remain one of the world’s top energy producers and exporters, but its energy future will hinge on several factors outside of Moscow’s control, including Western energy sanctions and European regulations. Should Europe shift away from dependence on Russian energy, the Kremlin will feel more pressure to court China.

Die Bürokraten haben Putin in die Knie gezwungen, nicht die Diplomaten

Der Kreml hat South Stream gestoppt, eines der wichtigsten Gas-Infrastrukturprojekte und Kernpunkt der russischen Pipeline-Diplomatie. Dies ist ein Erfolg europäischer Energie-Außenpolitik, und dieser ist in Brüssel zu verorten. Nun ist klar: Europas Antwort auf Russlands Energie-Geopolitik liegt in der Binnenmarktregulierung.

This article investigates the European Commission's external energy policy through the lens of the regulatory state. It argues that because of the nature of its institutions, policy tools and resources, the Commission remains a liberal actor even as the world leaves the benign pro-market environment of the 1990s and becomes more mercantilist – or ‘realist’.

The crisis in Ukraine is the most severe security challenge in Europe after the Cold War. Energy has featured prominently in public debates surrounding the conflict. Yet, energy-market realities hinder some of the political preferences that currently feature prominently in the hallways of European capital cities. European policy makers should therefore push for separating energy from hard security issues in this conflict.

The story of Bulgarian shale gas exemplifies the difficulty for the unconventional gas industry to take a hold in Europe. This paper investigates the reasons for Bulgaria banning shale gas by disentangling the various domestic causes at work.