Common Goals – Different Approaches?

Project context

The common dependency on energy, shared by societies around the world, entails policy challenges of global nature and scope. From dealing with the negative externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, managing the resurgence of resource nationalism, and adapting to dwindling low-cost reserves of fossil fuels in the context of massively rising demand driven by major emerging economies such as China and India, energy poses challenges that transcend national borders, involve both the public and private sectors and cannot be meaningfully addressed at national or regional levels. In short: Energy interdependence calls for global energy governance.

While the global dimension of energy challenges is unambiguous, the international community generally, and the transatlantic alliance in particular, has so far failed to supply the effective governance mechanisms that would form the basis of an effective multilateralism. Most of the existing institutions of energy governance have been crafted by the transatlantic alliance after the end of the Second World War, and thus in many ways reflect the economic and political realities of the Cold War era. There can be no doubt that this existing and largely fragmented system is in need of serious reform. And it is also clear that the transatlantic partners will have to play a decisive role in that process. However, the transatlantic alliance is confronted with a number of crucial challenges in that context:

First, while the EU and the US promote broadly congruent goals and objectives in the context of global energy policy, there remain conspicuous exceptions where the transatlantic partners do not pull their end of the rope. The issue of climate change is one example. Transatlantic unity, while no longer a sufficient precondition for effective global solutions to emerge, is nonetheless of absolute necessity.

Second, even in those cases where Americans and Europeans share the same goals and objectives, perspectives on energy security – not to mention the strategies that each side pursues to accomplish goals – often differ.  In some cases these two approaches can be mutually supportive. In others, they may result in counterproductive transatlantic conflicts.

Third, joint transatlantic action is no longer sufficient to organize effective global energy governance. Even in case Europeans and Americans agree not just on goals but also on strategies to achieve such goals, their common weight, while still considerable, won’t be enough to result in lasting policy solutions. New powers, especially the major emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC countries), need to be brought into the mix.

Project objectives

The goal of this two-year research and dialogue program was to foster constructive and forward-looking transatlantic dialogue building on three key interlinked issues in global energy governance:

1. Governance of global carbon emissions (post-Copenhagen strategy)
2. Managing the resurgence of resource nationalism
3. Governing the global market for oil in the context of rising demand and dwindling low-cost reserves

In doing so, it built on the insights and networks that were developed as part of the currently ongoing research program on “global energy governance” organized by the Global Public Policy Institute (with support by a European Commission grant). That research program has helped to build the conceptual basis for further research and policy development on global energy governance. The main research results are encapsulated in the edited volume Global Energy Governance: The New Rules of the Game (Washington, DC: Brookings Press). In particular, that research has emphasized the important roles that markets and institutions play in structuring outcomes in global energy relations. The research organized under this project built on the key analytical insights of that program. In addition, that program has built an extensive transatlantic network of energy practitioners, policymakers and researchers that this project can build on.

The Transatlantic Energy Governance Dialogues – a series of high-level conferences bringing together researchers, policymakers and practitioners from the global energy realm – were a centerpiece of the program, and were complemented by a range of policy-oriented research groups focusing on key issues in global energy governance. By forging a strong research community amongst experts from different regions, the project aimed to produce concrete recommendations for EU and US policymakers. Thus, it provided an important nucleus for pushing transatlantic policy debates on global energy challenges forward in a decisive way.

For more information on this project, please Wade Hoxtell.