Dear colleagues,

Please find below a call for papers, for a total of four panels on “Energy Transitions and the Future of Fossil Fuels”. We are looking forward to submissions on the IPE and geopolitics of energy transitions and climate change policies.

Hope to see you all in Hamburg this summer,

Andreas

Energy Transitions and the Future of Fossil Fuels

Abstract

Current transitions in global energy markets profoundly affect a wide range of social, political and economic affairs that shape international politics and economics. Indeed, the question of an impending energy transition away from fossil fuels towards a low-carbon economy is fundamental to understanding many high-profile developments and challenges in contemporary world politics. This Section will examine issues relating to energy transitions from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives across four thematic Panels. For instance, questions of energy security are high on the agenda across the world, ranging from the issues regarding the sources of European natural gas supplies to the future of Chinese oil imports. The UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement renew pressures on governments, corporations and societies to actively promote a low-carbon transition. Concerns about fossil fuels becoming ‘stranded assets’ spur energy companies to adapt to an increasing uncertainty about demand for their products, and they force oil and gas producing countries in developing regions to consider the socio-economic impact of permanently lost export revenues. Taken together these interrelated issues provide a comprehensive picture of the high stakes and complex challenges involved in effecting the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Panel 1) The International Political Economy of Energy Transitions
Panel Chair: Stefan Andreasson, Queen’s University Belfast

This Panel elaborates on the Section theme of energy transitions and the current state of scholarly debate on this issue by seeking to investigate key political and economic drivers of current attempts to achieve a transition away from fossil fuels towards a low-carbon economy. It examines how various approaches to International Political Economy account for the difficulty in understanding the role played by different types of actors in shaping such a transition, depending on whether emphasis is placed on governments, corporations or civil society in driving or impeding transition. Key factors to be considered include the framing and promotion of competing, and at times complementary, energy transition narratives by governments, energy companies and civil society respectively in adapting to a changing energy environment, which in turn highlights the incentives and impediments that shape the strategies and actions of different sets of actors. Papers will address these issues from perspective of theories of IPE, broadly defined.

Panel 2) The Geopolitics of Energy Security
Panel Chair: Dr Adnan Vatansever, King’s College London

This Panel examines how energy security has evolved from a concept concerned, at the level of international politics, with questions of how to ensure secure supplies of oil and gas, to also include evolving questions about what types of fuels states, corporations and individuals can expect to be reliant on over the longer term as the global mix of energy supplies is being transformed. This transformation relates to concerns about the impact of fossil fuels on climate change, the emergence of unconventional sources of energy, the response of major suppliers to shifts in the energy/climate landscape, and the more traditional issues of how political and economic relations between suppliers and consumers affect energy security. Papers will address these issues either from a global perspective or by means of more focused case studies including, among others, topics such as the US shale revolution, the EU’s efforts to ensure its energy security, shifts in Russia’s energy policies, and the future of Chinese energy demand.

Panel 3) The Impact of the Paris Agreement
Panel Chair: Professor Andreas Goldthau, Royal Holloway, University of London

This Panel investigates the aftermath and potential consequences of the 2015 Paris Agreement on mitigating climate change. It considers the environmental, economic and political viability and sustainability of the commitments to which the Agreement’s signatories have agreed, and what the consequences of a successful implementation of the Agreement would mean for both exporters and consumers of energy. In particular it aims to understand how the Agreement will affect the shift away from fossil fuels towards renewable sources of energy and how vested interests, depending on their perceived interests, will attempt to promote the status quo and established fossil fuel lock-ins or push for a comprehensive transition towards a low-carbon economy. Papers can address these issues by focussing on various aspects of inter-state relations, state-business relations and the role of civil society in attempting to transform global climate governance and make the Agreement a viable strategy for a successful energy transition.

Panel 4) The International Political Economy of Stranded Assets
Panel Chair: Professor Tina Hunter, University of Aberdeen

The impact of global environmental politics (GEP) and emerging international organisation of a global anti-climate change movement (GACCM) have brought a new dimension of uncertainty to the future of the oil and gas sector. Drawing on the business-politics conundrum this Panel will look at the phenomenon of ‘stranded assets’ by examining divergence in strategic approaches and policy choices among key industry players in the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Asia-Pacific to address the phenomenon. ‘Stranded assets’ are unable to recover their investment cost as intended, thereby producing a loss of value for investors as well as the states exercising sovereign rights over such resources. Facilitated by the divestment movement, the business and politics of stranded assets raise a host of ethical and moral challenges which are and should be taken seriously as a new domain of political economy enquiry.

Panel Chair: Dr Stefan Andreasson, Queen’s University Belfast
Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, and a Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Risk and Inequality, Queen’s University Belfast.

Panel Co-Chair: Dr Slawomir Raszewski, King’s College London
Senior Research Associate in the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security; and Senior Lecturer in Oil and Gas Management, School of Business and Law, UEL.

Professor Andreas Goldthau

Chair in International Relations

Director, Center of International Public Policy

Royal Holloway University of London

Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, United Kingdom

E: [log in to unmask] | T: @goldthau | P: +44 (0) 1784 414133

My research: https://goo.gl/VQyRo1

Latest publication: Handbook of International Political Economy of Energy and Natural Resources. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham. 2018 (co-edited with Caroline Kuzemko and Michael Keating).