EPRG 0731

William Nuttall, Devon Manz

A New Energy Security Paradigm for the Twenty-First Century

EPRG 0731 Non-Technical Summary | PDF

Also published in:

Abstract: This paper considers three timescales facing energy policy makers: the timescale of technological innovation, the timescale of fossil fuel resource depletion and the timescale of harmful climate change. The paper posits a future of rapid climate change in which technological innovation struggles to match the demands placed upon it. In this scenario resource depletion recedes as a driver of energy policy. The paper considers a possible accompanying evolution in foreign and military policy over such a period. A future is described in which naval power is redeployed within a generation away from today’s mission of supporting unfettered free trade through international choke points to a role of interdiction and control by which the leading industrial powers, and their allies in the developing world, seek to prevent high carbon dioxide emissions from a few recalcitrant sovereign states. Historical parallels are drawn with the similarly rapid paced end to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the early Nineteenth Century.

Keywords: Energy Security, Climate Change, Decarbonisation, Energy Alliance

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.