EPRG member discusses the future of energy in Europe at King’s College

During an event organized by King’s College London on 10 February 2011, EPRG member Andreas Goldthau participated in a panel titled Energy in Europe 2050: Facts, Trends and Scenarios. The event took place at the university’s European Center for Resource and Energy Security.

Goldthau discussed the impact of changing energy paradigms. He argued that public policies to secure energy supplies strongly depend on dominant policy agendas. If viewed as a public good, energy becomes subject to state center policies, an example of which are government-owned companies of the 1970s. In a market paradigm, which took over in the 1980s, the state is regarded as a problem rather than the solution. Nowadays, an interventionist stance seems to be on the rise again, bringing the state back in, notably in mercantilist approaches to securing supplies.

On the panel, Andreas was joined by Andrew Bartlett (global head of oil and gas project finance at Standard Chartered), Karl Rose (senior fellow at the World Energy Council) and David Wells (vice president of Global LNG Supply of Shell).