Reports & Papers

For a century, the geopolitics of energy has been synonymous with the
geopolitics of oil and gas. However, geopolitics and the global energy economy
are both changing. The international order predominant since the
end of World War II faces mounting challenges. At the same time, renewable
energy is growing rapidly. Nevertheless, the geopolitics of renewable
energy has received relatively little attention, especially when considering
the far-reaching consequences of a global shift to renewable energy.

The paper starts with a discussion of seven renewable energy scenarios
for the coming decades: the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2016, the EIA’s
International Energy Outlook 2016, IRENA’s REmap 2016, Bloomberg’s
New Energy Outlook 2016, BP’s Energy Outlook 2016, Exxon-Mobil’s Outlook
for Energy 2016 and the joint IEA and IRENA G20 de-carbonization
scenario.

On 24 and 25 November 2016 experts from politics and academia, including FDP Executive director Cathryn Clüver, discussed the impact of Brexit on several policy areas in a series of workshops at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. All events took place under Chatham House rules.

Drawing on the Caspian Studies Program's ongoing research, my colleague Emily Van Buskirk and I prepared a case on U.S. policy on Caspian energy development and exports for a Kennedy School course I teach with Ambassador Robert Blackwill. Using the case, our sixty students examined central questions including: What is the most effective way to promote the development of Caspian energy resources? What is the proper role of government in large-scale capital projects? Where does the Caspian Basin rank in the hierarchy of U.S. national interests?

Thanks to the collapse of European communism, it is possible to envisage a new community embracing most of the states of the Northern Hemisphere. Voters in most of the former Soviet bloc countries have affirmed their commitment to democracy in repeated elections. Because of these elections, especially those in Russia, it is possible to think realistically of creating a Commonwealth of Democracies from Vancouver to Vladivostok to Tokyo.

Ambassador Richard Morningstar, a former special advisor to President Clinton on Caspian energy issues who is currently a lecturer at Harvard?s Kennedy School of Government, gave an address at the Kennedy School on May 8, 2003, entitled ?From Pipe Dream to Pipeline: The Realization of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline.?