In the early 1970’s The Limits To Growth, a report of the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind produced a set of conclusions that were stunning to the International Political Economy community.  It was ultimately published in 30 languages and sold over 30 million copies.  According to the study, the world would ultimately run out of many key resources, including fossil fuels.  The worry that shortages would rule the day as we neared the end of the 20th Century became a bad joke.  The period of the 1980’s and 1990’s was devoted to showing that the Malthusian type of thinking was misinformed and that we actually had a glut of oil and gas which would see the price of such commodities enjoy a significant decline.  To a great many, this seemed to be coming true, but just as the century was coming to an end the prices seemed to sore and the questions of what the future would bring seemed to haunt us all over again.

When one thinks of energy, security and cooperation within the next 30 year time frame, it is most likely equal parts of outdated assumptions and entirely new and diffuse ideas and concepts.  Where we are in 2001 with regards to energy policy is caught in a frightening and unpredictable transition point -- we have just begun to move beyond the tired concepts of the last century yet we do not have a firm grasp on a new set of variables which will inevitably alter our current energy and security policies for the future. 

            As we peer into this foggy energy future, we do know that, barring the imminent discovery of a low-cost “super technology” that will dramatically reduce our enormous appetite for fossil fuels, the availability and hence the security of a sufficient supply of fossil fuels will be an imperative for developed economies and certainly essential for developing economies, such as China and India.  In order to satiate this growing appetite for fossil fuel, several trends appear to be relevant to the discussion of sustaining a substantial energy supply and ensuring its security for the next 30 years.  These trends should be contemplated as foreign policy practitioners wrestle with the geopolitics of the 21^st century where the pursuit of energy and ensuring its secure delivery become more  closely entwined.

              Today’s energy industry is now more driven by technology, efficiency gains, environmental imperatives and competition than previously.  New forms of integration and strategic alliances are emerging.  Privatization and deregulation trends in energy have accelerated this process.  The overall trend towards consolidation with increasingly larger corporations holding larger known reserves and national enterprises assigned the responsibility for managing national assets has become paramount. 

The new regime of market forces has begun to render obsolete the supply management techniques that oil producers used so effectively in the past.  The ability to see oil prices on a screen and trade oil and its products 24 hours per day have introduced global price transparency, such that short term price swings even out over time, while reductions in operating costs since the stock market crash of 1986 have already changed the relationship between oil suppliers and consumers.  This new paradigm means that transportation costs and foreign supply diversification are becoming more important.  The issues are becoming more and more those of energy security, not the absolute availability of fossil fuels.  Hence, the key concern for policy makers in nation-state decision-making is not predicting the specific movements of the future fossil fuels market, but grasping the importance, and the potential disruptive impact, of those markets on national and international interests, be they of an economic, political or even a security nature. 

            There are a number of important changes taking place, in particular, the rise of natural gas as the fuel of choice for power generation and the development of renewable energy as an important additional source of supply.  Yet, far from being relegated to the sidelines, the role of crude oil continues to be one of the most interesting and critical stories for our future. It is not simply supply which dominates our discussions but the issue of energy distribution costs which are now beginning to emerge as critical to future energy security over the next 30 years.  We intend to delineate the trends in energy needs, its supply, and the political economies of this process over the next few pages.  

The class will be run like a seminar.  You will be divided into groups and assigned the responsibility to lead discussion each week. Each group will have three seminars for which they are to prepare power point presentations. In addition, there will be two reports you will have to turn in.  One is a group report (power point) and one is an individual paper report.  You may pick between the topics listed in the syllabus for your topics.  Your group discussions (seminar discussions and final report) must be prepared with 8 - 12 power point slides for use in discussion.  Your written report will be 8 -10 pages in the same format as this syllabus (10pt, single spaced)

Grades will be divided as follows:

                        4 Group presentations                80

                         1  paper                                    20

  Readings:

  Kenneth S. Deffeyes;  HUBBERT’S PEAK

   Michael T. Klare;        RESOURCE WAR

  Linc Bloomfield;          GLOBAL MARKETS & NATIONAL INTERESTS

 

Assignments due Midnight the day before the deadline.  Turn in electronically, please

 

Attendance:  Mandatory; ten point deduction for each absence.

 

Research topics

Each group pick three and I will try to get you your highest priority

Each individual pick a topic different than the topic of your group

 

1. How does rapid population growth affect the quality of energy life for the developing countries?

2. How will the economic development of the 4 largest underdeveloped nations effect the energy supply for the world?

3. What is the energy demand going to look like in 2030 or so?

4. How is the world going to respond to energy shortages in the 2030 time frame?

5. What transformations will societies that are heavy users of fossil fuels have to undergo in order to meet future energy needs?

6. Can a sustainable economy be organized and what changes in behavior (and values) are necessary to accomplish this?

7. How can the fossil energy needs of the major user nations be satisfied in the 2030 time frame?

8. Will OPEC survive to the year 2030? 

9. In the race to access and employ fossil fuels most efficiently what are the roles of countries and companies likely to be in 2030?

10. What do you see as the evolution of energy utilization, globally by 2030?

11. What is America's energy strategy likely to look like by 2030?

12. What is the role of international organizations in the energy developments going to be like by 2030?