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The War in Ukraine Has Refocused Attention on Geopolitical Energy Risks (foreignaffairs.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the world appears to be at an inflection point. Foreign Affairs: Business leaders have declared the acceleration of deglobalization and sounded the alarm about a new period of stagflation. Academics have decried the return of conquest and hailed the renewal of transatlantic ties. And countries are rethinking almost every aspect of their foreign policies, including trade, defense spending, and military alliances. These dramatic shifts have overshadowed another profound transformation in the global energy system. For the last two decades, the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions has gradually reshaped the global energy order. Now, as a result of the war in Ukraine, energy security has returned to the fore, joining climate change as a top concern for policymakers. Together, these dual priorities are poised to reshape national energy planning, energy trade flows, and the broader global economy. Countries will increasingly look inward, prioritizing domestic energy production and regional cooperation even as they seek to transition to net-zero carbon emissions. If countries retreat into strategic energy blocs, a multidecade trend toward more energy interconnectedness risks giving way to an age of energy fragmentation.

But in addition to economic nationalism and deglobalization, 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. After four decades during which they generally sought to curb their activity in energy markets, Western governments are now recognizing the need to play a more expansive role in everything from building (and retiring) fossil fuel infrastructure to influencing where private companies buy and sell energy to limiting emissions through carbon pricing, subsidies, mandates, and standards. This shift is bound to invite comparisons to the 1970s, when excessive government intervention in energy markets exacerbated repeated energy crises. The dawning era of government intervention won't be a bad thing, however, if managed correctly. Appropriately limited and tailored to address specific market failures, it can forestall the worst effects of climate change, mitigate many energy security risks, and help manage the biggest geopolitical challenges of the coming energy transition. The current energy crisis has refocused the world's attention on geopolitical energy risks, forcing a reckoning between tomorrow's climate ambitions and today's energy needs and offering a preview of the tumultuous era ahead. How governments respond to these challenges, brought into sharp relief by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, will shape the new energy order for decades to come.
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The War in Ukraine Has Refocused Attention on Geopolitical Energy Risks More

The War in Ukraine Has Refocused Attention on Geopolitical Energy Risks

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  • Because countries will be pulling energy from sources that are more expensive. Globalization means that the good could be sourced from the most inexpensive location, now that globalization is being cut back everything will be more expensive. Although this isn't a bad thing, I think we throw away way to many things and its about time we had some price pressure.

    • now that globalization is being cut back everything will be more expensive. Although this isn't a bad thing, I think we throw away way to many things and its about time we had some price pressure.

      And yet, I'm still stuck in traffic with tons of gas guzzling SUVs. By the time you raised gas prices to where the middle class finally decided to give up their ginormous vehicles, you'd have already collapsed society because none of the teachers/janitors/retail/fast food workers could afford to drive to work.

      But hey, if you want to buy a Tesla and then wonder why there's no one flipping your burger or stocking the shelves, that looks like the direction we're headed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        huh... it is almost like there is a known and widly implemented (outside the US) solution to this kind of problem that can compensate for individuals not being able to adjust that quickly... trying to recall the name of it.. oh yeah, public transportation! though given how we have laid out our population at this point, we could be past the point of no return on that.

        • trying to recall the name of it.. oh yeah, public transportation!

          You mean like poor people use?

          • trying to recall the name of it.. oh yeah, public transportation!

            You mean like poor people use?

            Maybe that's a fair assessment for rural and/or smaller cities, but not in big cities with robust public transportation (buses, subways, taxis), like New York City, etc... All classes of people use those there.

            • Maybe that's a fair assessment for rural and/or smaller cities, but not in big cities with robust public transportation (buses, subways, taxis), like New York City, etc... All classes of people use those there.

              I'm sure it is subject to the same economic laws as other businesses. If you make it nicer you will attract more upscale clientele, at the risk of excluding those who are less fortunate. OTOH I'll bet the cost of parking in New York certainly brings all the demographics not driving closer together.

              • OTOH I'll bet the cost of parking in New York certainly brings all the demographics not driving closer together.

                I had a friend who moved to NYC *way back* and lived in Manhattan. I think he ended up parking his car just outside the city for a while until he decided to sell it. Keeping it was more expensive than renting one for the few times he needed it -- almost always outside the city.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbengt ( 874751 )

            You mean like poor people use?

            Hey, I'm not poor, and I've mostly used public transportation my whole career. You do not want to drive downtown if you can help it.

            • I was (partially) kidding. I know people who get by fine using only public transit. Hard to believe driving could ever be so awful that I would not prefer it, but to each their own.

          • You know that millionaires ride the subway in New York, right?

            • You know that millionaires ride the subway in New York, right?

              Yes, not just NY but in many countries we have created places so densely populated that cars are impractical even for rich people to regularly drive. Glad I don't live in any of them. Makes me think of anthills.

      • By the time you raised gas prices to where the middle class finally decided to give up their ginormous vehicles, ...

        Also ignoring the fact that "giving up their ginormous vehicles" is easier said than done. It assumes they can sell that vehicle (and don't owe more on it than it will sell for) or can afford to simply buy another -- smaller, more efficient -- vehicle and drive that instead, etc ...

    • and not a whole lot else. Every country needs it's own renewables and they know it. Adjacent countries can share if they're on good terms, but most will always find that too risky to depend on for anything else but a back up. We're a long way off from a world without borders.

      Vladdy Boy's little "Special Military Operation" just upped the time table on renewables by probably 20 years though. I bet the Middle East is pissed. Sure, it's going to devastate Russia's economy but it's not gonna do Saudi Arabia

      • The middle east doesn't care they make money either way and they make more money right now, they'd rather have oil pigs at 150 or above per barrel in Russia accomplished that for them without them having to do anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Not every country. The EU members can rely on each other. Even the UK, which had a tantrum and left, still exports and imports power to the EU (just on less favourable terms than before).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      . . . Although this isn't a bad thing . . .

      I think the nationalism driving this de-globalization is a very bad thing. Although I would love to see global companies getting reigned in, this growing nationalism and trade isolationism seen from Russia, Europe, America, etc., is bad for the economy and dangerous to the world. That said, I think that nationalistic countries who believe conquest of other nations is acceptable should be isolated - and defeated.

      • Good luck with that, because we're probably going to go through the same thing with China and Taiwan again in a few years. And decoupling our economy from China is going to be rough. But it's not only the US that wants it China wants it's economy coupled so it can go to war and they've already started on that process.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          Perhaps, but China gets 80% of its energy from the middle east and that has to be sent by ocean. It also has to import food and fertilizer. So just about any country with a decent navy can send China back to the 1600s just by blocking 1 straight south of SE Asia. China on the other hand can't project naval power more than 100 miles from its coast (the straight in question is much much farther away). So perhaps you are right, but the same set of sanctions on China does far more damage to China than they

    • Re:Here's What the Previous Focus Looked Like (Score:4, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @03:24PM (#62601150) Journal

      The look on the faces of the German politicians in that clip is hilarious. I'll bet they're feeling silly now.

    • You can go a bit further: Ronald Reagan warned them in 1982. [nytimes.com]

      "The project is the planned 3,700-mile pipeline that will carry Soviet natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe -a Soviet order for as much as $15 billion worth of heavy machinery and largediameter steel pipe that the Europeans hope will ease their unemployment woes but that the Reagan Administration has sharply criticized. . . . The Reagan Administration has opposed the pipeline project, contending that it would make Europe dangerously dependent on Soviet energy supplies and that it would provide the Kremlin with muchneeded hard currency that could be spent on extra weaponry. . . . European governments, however, say that American fears about European dependence on Soviet gas supplies are ill-founded and exaggerated."

      • The sad part is in today’s political spectrum Reagan would be called a leftist.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )

          The sad part is in today’s political spectrum Reagan would be called a leftist.

          That's a bit extreme isn't it? He was dedicated to deregulation, gave 0 cares about the environment, and ignored pretty much every minority interest including AIDS. Both parties are far more extreme than they were back then. But when I talk to people directly (in person) I rarely find their personal politics more extreme. I think social media has given the false impression that the voters are more extreme than they are and politicians (who love Twitter) respond to that. The news media responded by beco

          • It's because the parties have grown smaller (fewer people), and most American voters aren't in either party. The ones who remain in the parties have more extreme views.

            But, to get to the general election, you have to pass through the party primary.

          • Like my signature calls out, Reagan got rid of open carry in California and in 1984 he gave a speech on television saying he wanted amnesty for people who were in the country illegally. Imagine a republican with those views today.

  • mr burns says build more nukes!

  • The Road to Serfdom (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tokolosh ( 1256448 )

    We are already serfs to the IRS and government-granted cartels - healthcare, education, finance, housing. May as well add energy.

    • We are already serfs to the IRS and government-granted cartels - healthcare, education, finance, housing. May as well add energy.

      You already were, and you were sold into it by Ronald Reagan during the Cold War. Sorry you didn't realize that beforehand, maybe because you grew up under their heel.

      We were told, "Those solar panels and conservation are for commies. Let Capitalism do it's thing and there won't be shortages. You won't see bread, or fuel, lines in the West if you just trust the business leaders. Globalization is great. Vertical integration is great. No regulation is great. Don't you worry your little heads American cons

      • Please explain how all the things you desire were prevented by the oil companies and other capitalists? Because the way I see it, they needed the enabling power provided by the government.

        Please describe the times you stood in line for bread or gas.

        • Where exactly were you in 1973?

          • Waiting in line for gas. Because President Nixon (R) had implemented price controls. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis#Price_controls_and_rationing)

            So you would like some more government intervention? More power to congress and the president?

            "Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it." -- P. J. O'Rourke

            • I'd like to see more power in some ways. We keep being told corporations are people by conservatives. Fine. Corporations are people. I want a local DA to be able to file a court case for murder (as in literally: the people vs RJ Reynolds) against the corporation, in short format, where the corporation can be executed. Management ousted, contracts voided, and broken into teeny tiny little bits.

              Also if a corporation tries to cover something up, like say a faulty product, the "corporate veil" is instantly r
        • You're either young for very, very, very foolish. We had been funding research various projects for both wind and solar energy manufacturing. That's on top of leading the way in implementation of, what is called today, "green power" by putting things like solar panels on the White House. We were THE world leaders in both types of energy research AND implementation.

          Then the oil / coal execs made sure Ronnie Raygun, and their pet legislators killed the programs. Ronnie tore off the solar panels and told DA

          • EVERY failure you mention is an outcome of government intervention, that is, non-capitalism. EVERY large corporation that monopolizes the markets is made possible by government intervention. Give me a counter-example.

            But in your mind, the solution is yet more government intervention, and you expect a different result? And people complain that the youth of today are worse off than the boomers?

            This correspondence is concluded.

    • Yeah how horrible the government - which is obstinately an organization of, by, and for the people - work to provide things that benefit the people... like health care, education, finance (regulation), housing and energy.

      The unmitigated gall of these politicians! How dare they try to make life better for everyone and everyone's expense!
      =Smidge=

  • The problem is that, instead of saying "let's never have war, and let's make sure there are no crazy leaders", the world is saying "let's become even more isolationist and tribalist assholes." Tribalism and nationalism is the cause of most war and conflict. As long as we don't see any value in other humans, we will have evil or war. The nation-state is the problem, tribalist attitudes are the problem. Nationalism is, at best, meta-stable for a short period. Nationalism always needs pariahs and enemies, imag

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )
      How edgelord of you. War is caused by competition for resources, not nation-states. BTW, we don't think you are smart, we think you are naive and likely to get us all killed. This is why we don't listen to you. Not because we don't understand you. We understand you far more than you realize. Historians can list examples of people like you having influence or getting in power. It has always ended badly. Hell, a big chunk of Nazi propaganda about WWI was based upon someone like you. Some of those lie

    • Nationalism is good for convincing little people to go to war, but it's not the reason decision makers go to war.

  • The problem is this, according to my own anecdotal and heavily salted surveys/research .. median human character is actually quite deeply flawed and selfish:

    5% of people only care about themselves and don't care what happens to anyone else including their own family.
    15% of people only care about people who are their family and don't care what happens to anyone else
    70% of people only care about people who are their family and people they can relate to due to common origin, and don't care what happens to anyo

  • If you want an interesting watch, look at the Nova episode "Why ships crash". It touches on the fragility of the world's economy and the just-in-time manufacturing process. One container ship and the pilot crew's screw-up (sorry, I don't believe the captain had anything to do with it) and you see that it doesn't take much to break things. What's worse, IMHO, is that economies function quite well as long as there isn't artificial distortion in the market. When certain forces stick their nose into the flo

  • I look at global gas prices.

    https://www.globalpetrolprices... [globalpetrolprices.com]

    I don't want this to be a Trump VS Biden debate, but it would be sort of dishonest to not bring them up.

    The cheapest 20 or so countries on that list are also some of the biggest producers of oil in the world. I think Iran has double the output the US does. Malaysia mostly exports to Asian markets.

    Trumps great play way to remove as many barriers and fees to drilling as he could. Tar oil sands, fracking, pipelines. Either lessening, or outright eliminating most environmental fees added to Federal land drilling. For a time, we had so much oil we were completely independent. Saudi's were begging us to buy their oil. All markets opened up to us since our supply of domestic oil was so great, we didn't need foreign oil.

    Biden went the other direction. Biden stopped drilling on Federal lands.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]

    He also increased fees for fracking and general drilling fees on Federal lands.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/11/26... [npr.org]

    It's a very simple concept, one that Biden fans have been saying for months about rising gas prices. "It's supply and demand" but there's another concept to take in here. When costs of production go up, those costs must be passed onto consumers. Another good one, when the cost of production is higher than the cost you can sell it for, you're better off not producing, or in the least, scaling back production to only profitable facilities. We're seeing all of these business rules come into effect.

    One last thing, remember the link at the top I provided for global gas prices? The Biden administrations embargo's have eliminated much of our cheap oil supply. Those top 20 lowest price producers are not friendly with Biden like they were with Trump, and will continue to be unfriendly until Biden turns it around.

    One last point I'd like to make, and that's for the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) As the name implies, it's for strategic uses. The DoD consumes about 10% of all our oil in the US for everything from ships to planes. Even Nuclear powered ships need some lubrication here and there. Emptying that has had no effect on gas prices, and makes us sitting ducks if we get into a major conflict.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 )

      Yes, you are wrong.

      The issue for gas prices is downstream (maybe midstream) and not upstream. More oil supply does not solve the refinery and distribution issues. A little over two years ago we had negative oil prices. That is what screws up the upstream side-- you can't invest when the price projections are all over the place.

      The solution to the refinery issue is ultimately to reduce our needs for petroleum products; anything short of that is a stopgap. Refineries are a mess to live near, and building

      • Wait, aren't you saying that the problem is a bottleneck in refining capacity, but that the solution somehow isn't more refining capacity?

        • Significantly more refining capacity isn't going to be provided; it is not economically justifiable. Minor tweaks here and there might happen to add 1% might happen, but forecasts are for a drop in demand over the next 20 years. You do not add capacity in those circumstances.

          If you want lower transportation fuel costs you need to push for more EVs and higher fuel efficiency. The cost per galllon is unlikely to fall significantly.

    • > I look at global gas prices.
      > https://www.globalpetrolprices... [globalpetrolprices.com]

      That site is also good for putting into perspective some of the whinging over gas prices in the US where, even with inflation and the war, we enjoy some of the cheapest gasoline in the Western world. Hooray for subsidizing the industry's externalities, eh?

      But we'd all benefit from taking a chill pill and getting some of that perspective. I still get a brief surge of irrational anger at the pump. But a couple of months ago, I actually

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      For a time, we had so much oil we were completely independent. Saudi's were begging us to buy their oil. All markets opened up to us since our supply of domestic oil was so great, we didn't need foreign oil

      . We have been a net exporter in 2020 and 2021. We exported 2% more than we imported in 2021. [eia.gov] In the same year, we consumed 6% more oil products than we produced, and we imported more than twice as much crude oil as we exported. We have never been in a position where we didn't import foreign oil.

      Biden

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Pushing gas prices down by increasing supply is just shifting the cost onto future generations. The more you do it, the more climate change is going to cost them.

      The focus should be on reducing dependence on oil products.

  • then we're not solving any energy problems. Our energy needs are only going to increase and burning fossil fuels is not a sustainable long term solution.

    • Nuclear isn't going to solve the oil problem unless you build nuclear cars. (Or electric cars and power them on anything other than oil).

  • dumber than Trump. Golly, that must be embarrassing - particularly when they cannot get ALL the evidence erased.

    Here's video [youtube.com] of Trump warning about this very issue in the fall of 2018... and if you have the patience and stomach to wade through the full video you can see the German delegation laugh at the warning. I planned to link to stills and a shorter clip to spare the tender souls who cannot tolerate the man with gold plated toilets, but these more-merciful bits have been suppressed by Twitter, which h

    • Well, some are bureaucrats paid by taxpayers, and they are nearly unfireable. Others are paid media commentators, and they won't be fired because they aren't paid to be right, they're paid to be partisan shills who just regurgitate what their paymasters want people to think is right. Some are tenured pseudo-academics, and they're as hard to fire as bureaucrats.

      But even if there weren't formal or informal roadblocks to firing them, I doubt they would be. How often are the weather forecasts wrong?

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