Energy

For journalism, the 21st century is an era where public trust drops yearly, and reporters face competition to reach a growing Internet audience. Adding these challenges to a beat as controversial and global as climate and energy policy creates a job that seems near impossible.

The New York Times’ Energy and Environment Correspondent Coral Davenport confronts these challenges head-on by covering environmental policy in a way that goes beyond the conventional boundaries of Washington-based reporting to the larger, all-encompassing impact of climate change issues on a human and dollars-and-sense scale.

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

In 2012, when many energy experts argued that oil production had peaked, Leonardo Maugeri published “Oil: The Next Revolution,” which forecast a glut of oil and collapsing prices in the next several years. His prediction proved prescient. Now, as analysts look past today’s oil-market drama to a near future of robust liquefied natural gas exports, Maugeri is again challenging conventional wisdom. The long-hoped-for and hyped-up gas market, he concludes, will disappoint.

“Falling Short: A Reality Check for Global LNG Exports” details the new findings by Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now an associate with the Geopolitics of Energy project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” Dr. Abbas Al-Mejren, Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative and Professor of Economics at Kuwait University, discusses economic development plans in Kuwait and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, including poverty alleviation and rationalizing subsidies.

In a Harvard Kennedy School IDEASpHERE session titled "Challenges to US Global Leadership," Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, David Gergen, David Ignatius, and Meghan O’Sullivan discussed challenges as well as opportunities facing the United States. Burns moderated the session.

Challenges include the rise of China and the future of the U.S.-China relationship, the crises taking place around the world, and the reputation of the U.S. worldwide. An unexpected opportunity is the increase in available energy sources in the United States.

A study just released by Belfer Center researcher Leonardo Maugeri finds that the shale oil revolution taking place in the United States could result in the tripling of shale oil output to five million barrels a day by 2017, likely making the U.S. the top oil producer in the world in just a few years. The study by Maugeri, a Roy Family Fellow working with the Belfer Center's Geopolitics of Energy project, looked at whether the surge in shale oil production is just a temporary bubble or an event capable of significantly altering the U.S.—and possibly global—energy outlook.

In a speech for the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative, Prince Turki al Faisal laid out Saudi Arabia’s two–pronged security strategy as the Gulf kingdom contends with the fallout from the 2011 Arab uprisings and fast-changing global energy trends. Prince Turki, who directed the Saudi intelligence service for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the United Kingdom and Ireland, and then to the United States, said Saudi foreign policy doctrine is based on two themes: external security and energy security.

The full text as prepared for delivery is attached (pdf).

This seminar considered how oil shaped grand strategy in Great Britain and Germany between 1918 and 1941. The history of oil in the twentieth century is a chapter in the story of European decline, for the emergence of oil accelerated the decline of Britain and Germany as great powers capable of independently exerting their economic and military power.

On Monday April 9, the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) hosted a screening and discussion of Hefner’s latest project, a documentary titled “The Grand Energy Transition: Natural Gas – The Bridge To Our Sustainable Future.” Excerpts from the film were shown at the Kennedy School to an audience including Belfer Center Director Graham Allison and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye.

(See link below for audio podcast of the event)

This seven-minute video captures the essence of the Acting in Time on Energy Policy conference and highlights recommendations given by participants during each of the six panels.