Are We Moving to a New Geopolitical and

New Energy Order?

Energy – 10 Big Ideas
1. Worshippers of the Sun all energy comes from the sun (almost)
2. Foiled Again Bernoulli Principle, the push and pull of the wind
3. A Most Gregarious Personality carbon and the many incarnations of the hydrocarbon molecule
4. Temperature Rising control of combustion, pyrolysis, distillation and fractional distillation, radiators, stone boiling
5. Napoleon’s March markets, demand and supply
6. Geography and History Matter water, biomass, hydrocarbons.
7. Institutions Matter Even More Geography and History Matter subsidiarity and separation
8. We Are Being Followed climate change and carbon flow charts
9. Necessity IS the Mother of Invention Silk Road, Newcomen Engine, Manhattan Project, security; Breakthrough technologies are
essential to resolving the climate change dilemma.

10. The Energy Trilemma or quadrilemma

© Adonis Yatchew 2
The Challenges Facing Humanity
1. Climate change
2. Rise of autocracy, erosion of democracy and
human rights
3. Nuclear proliferation, saber rattling
4. Poverty
5. Pandemics

© Adonis Yatchew
Energy cannot be understood without knowledge
of history, institutions, politics and geopolitics.

Are we heading towards a new political world order and therefore a

new energy world order?
Is energy security on a collision course with climate change?

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Lessons From History
• Autocracies, one-party states, dictatorships can sustain themselves
for lengthy periods
• Soviet Union – 1918 to 1991
• Chinese Communist Party – 1949 to present (and power is being further
concentrated, surveillance state)
• North Korea – oppression and poverty since early 1950s

• Recovery of freedoms can be extremely costly

• WWII deaths are estimated to be 40-50 million

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Lessons From History
Constraining power, checks and balances

• freedom of speech and an independent media

• separation of religion and the state
• separation of powers (executive, legislative, judicial)
• widely distributed private property
• principle of subsidiarity (provincial jurisdictions, ‘states rights’, )

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Lessons From History
• To understand long-term geopolitical forces and risks it is insufficient
to look at the current state of affairs

• It is essential to understand the institutional structures that are in

place, whether they can enable abuse and whether they can be
undermined.

• Presentism

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Democracy in Retreat, Autocracy on the Rise
• Autocracy Inc. – Anne Applebaum
• autocracies are aligning to oppose democracies
• Xi Jinping has further concentrated power
• Iran repression of women and dissenters

• Democracies at risk
• Hungary, Victor Orban
• Turkey, Erdogan
• India, Modi and the rise of Hindutva
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Concentration of Power in Non-democracies
Russia under Putin

“Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated

in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security
forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment,
and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable
opposition factions, the Kremlin is able to manipulate elections
and suppress genuine dissent. Rampant corruption facilitates
shifting links among state officials and organized crime groups.”
[Link]
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Concentration of Power in Non-democracies
China under Xi Jinping

“China’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent

years. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to tighten control
over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the
media, online speech, religious practice, universities, businesses, and civil
society associations, and it has undermined an earlier series of modest rule-of-
law reforms. The CCP leader and state president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated
personal power to a degree not seen in China for decades. Human rights
activists and lawyers continue to speak out, though at great personal cost.”
[Link]

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“China's great famine: 40 years later”
Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor of Energy, BMJ 1999
• Forty years ago China was in the middle of the world's largest famine:
between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961 some 30 million
Chinese starved to death and about the same number of births were
lost or postponed.

• The famine had overwhelmingly ideological causes, rating alongside the

two world wars as a prime example of what Richard Rhodes labelled
public manmade death, perhaps the most overlooked cause of 20th
century mortality.
• Followed by the Cultural Revolution

• What institutional changes has China experienced in the last half

century that would prevent such calamities?
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Autocracy Inc. – Anne Applebaum
• Applebaum examines how modern autocracies have adapted their methods of
repression. Unlike their 20th-century predecessors, contemporary autocrats often avoid
overt violence, such as mass killings, to maintain a facade of legitimacy. Instead, they
employ more subtle instruments of repression, including surveillance, propaganda, and
legal manipulation, to suppress dissent and control populations.
• Applebaum argues that these regimes have become adept at using technology and
economic influence to undermine democratic institutions both domestically and
internationally. By creating networks of mutual support among autocratic states, they
bolster each other's efforts to stifle opposition without resorting to the overt brutality
characteristic of earlier dictatorships.
• This shift reflects a strategic adaptation: by minimizing visible violence, autocrats can
reduce international condemnation and potential unrest among their citizens, all while
maintaining tight control through less conspicuous means. Applebaum's analysis
highlights the importance of recognizing these evolving tactics to effectively support
democratic resilience and human rights worldwide.

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Energy as a Central Strategic Objective
• Japan and Pearl Harbour
• Nazi Germany and the oilfields of the Caucasus
• Post WW2, the Cold War and Middle East oil
• 21st century and rare earths
• Russia and natural gas supplies to Europe
• Russia tries to destroy as much energy infrastructure in
Ukraine as possible
• EU has declared this a ‘war crime’
• China – rare earths, supply chains

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The New Energy Order How Governments Will Transform Energy Markets
JASON BORDOFF AND MEGHAN L. O'SULLIVAN Foreign Affairs
July/August 2022

“ … the coming energy order will be defined by something that few analysts have
fully appreciated: government intervention in the energy sector on a scale not seen
in recent memory.”

“Three market failures in particular reveal the need for a bigger role for
government in the effort to achieve the dual goals of enhanced energy security and
a timely transition to net-zero carbon emissions. First, the private sector lacks
sufficient incentives to build the infrastructure and other assets that most countries
need to ensure their energy security. Second, market forces alone cannot
encourage the building of the infrastructure required for a more orderly energy
transition—infrastructure that by definition may be obsolete before private
companies have achieved a full return on investment. And third, private firms and
individuals lack strong enough incentives to curb emissions whose costs society
bears…. The first of these failures has been painfully illustrated by Europe’s
vulnerability to the disruption of Russian energy exports. ”

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The New Energy Order How Governments Will Transform Energy Markets
JASON BORDOFF AND MEGHAN L. O'SULLIVAN Foreign Affairs
July/August 2022

“Governments may also need to intervene in energy markets beyond those

for oil and gas. The critical minerals needed for a successful energy
transition, such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt, are likely to be in short supply
as electric vehicles become more prevalent and as solar, wind, batteries, and
other forms of low- and zero-carbon infrastructure proliferate.”

“The good news is that in the long term, many of the government actions
needed to reduce emissions—in particular by reducing demand for oil and
gas—will also boost energy security. That is in part because energy security
comes not just from producing more oil but from using less of it. Fifteen
years ago, the United States imported two-thirds of the oil it consumed; in
2021, it exported more oil than it imported.”

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The New Energy Order How Governments Will Transform
Energy Markets JASON BORDOFF AND MEGHAN L.
O'SULLIVAN Foreign Affairs July/August 2022

“Europe has called the Russian war in Ukraine its 9/11. The terrorist attacks of that
day brought about a new security order that dominated the international
landscape for 20 years and is still a dominant feature of world affairs. One legacy of
the Ukraine war will be a new energy order, originating in Europe but radiating to
the farthest reaches of the global economy. It will be defined by the dual
imperatives of energy security and climate action. Pursuing them at the same
time, without allowing one to compromise the other, will require harnessing the
power of markets. But it will also require a much more expansive role for
government to leverage, shape, and steer those markets, correcting the failures
thrown into sharp relief by today’s crisis. Without government intervention,
tailored and restrained but nonetheless increased, the world will suffer a
breakdown in energy security or the worst effects of climate change—or both.”

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• “If you can’t write clearly, you can’t think clearly.”
• Anonymous

• “A capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.”

• Apocryphally, Lenin.

• “An open mind is the sign of an empty mind.”

• Samuelson, maybe others.

• “What’s past is prologue”

• Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I

• “Are there two sides to every story?”

• What were/are Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, Mao’s, Kim Jong-un, side of the story?” What is Putin’s side of the story?
• Beware of ‘whataboutism’, false equivalence

• History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

• Karl Marx

• Compare theories to theories, realities to realties …

TRAVEL, SEE THE WORLD, LEARN ABOUT DIFFERENT CULTURES,
READ THAT WHICH CHALLENGES YOUR VIEWS!