Energy

"India's woes should strike a warning for modern nations to invest in themselves and in the networks and infrastructure that unite their citizens. It's important to be a competent nation....It means that the lights go on, trains run on time, and a capital city — whether it is New Delhi or Washington, which suffered its own debilitating blackout last month — continues to function."

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

"...[R]ising regional powers such as Turkey and Brazil can fulfill the role of active partners and help bridge the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the two sides; Iran and 5+1. These actors' perspectives on issues such as international peace and security, comprehensive global disarmament and nuclear monopolies have many supporters in the international community, especially among the Non-Aligned Movement's members, who are fed up with duplicity and self-aggrandizing policies of some of the great powers."

"Politically, a tax shift can help neutralize the glaring political liability of all climate programs: that they raise everyone's energy costs. Just as important, a tax-based climate program can provide stronger and more stable incentives than the Senate's cap-and-trade approach to get businesses and households to transition to low-carbon technologies and fuels. The critical aspect of using a tax shift to address climate change is that it applies a known price to carbon, so companies can figure out how much they might earn by developing climate-friendly fuels and technologies, and other businesses — along with the rest of us — can calculate how much could be saved by adopting them."

SOME IN the West have recently begun referring to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the "Genocide Olympics" because of China's continued business ties with Sudan and its reluctance to intervene decisively in the Darfur conflict....

Power to People is the story of electricity privatization, expanding global markets, and the transformation of an industry. It is also proof of the electrifying combination of innovation and good citizenship.

Iran has not acted as a dragon breathing ideological fire across the region, but rather as a traditional entrepreneur and reliable trader.

Council on Foreign Relations publication on the U.S.-Turkey relationship

Despite this extensive activity in the energy sphere, it seems, however, that Ankara's energy policy has been undertaken without a strategic plan and with little integration of energy issues into Turkey's overall foreign and security policies.