Webinar:RethinkingEnergyGeopolitics

‘Energy geopolitics’ has a beleaguered history. Emerging in the wake of the 1970s oil crises as a handmaiden to Western power politics, it has traditionally fixated on the role of fossil fuels in inter-state rivalry. Today, in the context of climate change, the global energy system transformation, and ratcheting US-China competition, energy geopolitics commands our attention once again.

In this free public webinar, we discussed how to critically rethink energy geopolitics for the present moment – its aims, methods, and themes. We asked questions such as:

• How do dispersed, global networks for the production of solar PVs, or lithium-ion batteries, condition today’s geopolitics?
• Who is energy security for, and what would it mean to look at the problem from the ‘demand side’ instead of the ‘supply side’?
• What does geopolitics help to tell us about the macroscopic nature of the global energy system’s unfolding transformation – its contingencies, dynamics, and conflicts?

Watch the webinar here:

Speakers

• Chair: Caroline Kuzemko, UKERC | University of Warwick
• Louis Fletcher, UKERC | University of Warwick
• Gavin Bridge, UKERC | Durham University
• Marie Claire Brisbois, Energy Demand Research Centre | University of Sussex

Related UKERC publications

• UK Gas Security: Managing Energy Security Challenges and Transition Risks
• Industrial Strategy and the Low Carbon Supply Chain Challenge
• Rethinking Energy Geopolitics: Towards a Geopolitical Economy of Global Energy Transformation
• Global energy scenarios: A geopolitical reality check
• Towards the lithium-ion battery production network: Thinking beyond mineral supply chains

Related UKERC research and projects

• UK Energy in a Global Context (research theme)
• Geopolitical economy of energy system transformation (project)