Energy

A interview conducted by The Fletcher School Forum with Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

The article outlines the role of national narratives in driving both Russia and China’s energy foreign policy and goes on to argue that the Sino-Russian gas breakthrough in 2014 was due to the peculiar way in which domestic factors paired with international circumstances to produce the outcome at that particular moment.

The authors describe a process for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere in an industrial plant. The design captures ∼1 Mt-CO2/year in a continuous process using an aqueous KOH sorbent coupled to a calcium caustic recovery loop. They describe the design rationale, summarize performance of the major unit operations, and provide a capital cost breakdown developed with an independent consulting engineering firm. They report results from a pilot plant that provides data on performance of the major unit operations.

The small open economies of the Gulf and Southeast Asia are pioneers in the establishment of

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). The SWFs of countries like Qatar and Singapore are among the

world’s largest in terms of total asset size relative to Gross Domestic Product. This article looks

at the different compulsions behind the setting up of SWFs by small open economies.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have traditionally been created to recycle excess reserves from natural resource or non‐commodity revenues. However, in recent years funds are being established under conditions of capital scarcity with objectives to contribute domestic economic development, often through the buildout of national infrastructure programs. Such trends in new fund creation represent a fundamental shift in the sovereign wealth fund paradigm and raise serious questions about how these entities are to be capitalized and also the implications of capitalization models on their sustainability. This study examines the recent evolution of SWF models focused on economic development. Its analytic focus is drawn, in particular, to countries that are neither endowed with oil wealth, nor otherwise enjoy export surpluses to be used to capitalize a development‐oriented SWF. While this study is relevant to and expands the scope of the broad literature on SWFs, its specific contribution is as a focused analysis of how SWF funding sources impact achieving long‐term financial and socio‐economic development objectives.

Although Russia can no longer exercise hegemonic power or demand exclusive rights of engagement, it is still the preponderant regional player in Central Asia.

Sovereign wealth funds – large state-owned investment funds – are key players in international finance, but little is known about their underlying political drivers. Why do some states with surpluses choose to create sovereign wealth funds, while others advocate private finance institutions instead? This article speaks directly to this question by investigating the variation in sovereign wealth fund choices across nations with excess reserves. 

This paper provides an overview of the debate surrounding the Nabucco pipeline’s cancellation. Conventional wisdom holds that Nabucco failed for political reasons, but the real cause of its failure was the emergence of two more economically viable pipeline plans.