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The Washington, DC office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a think tank close to Germany’s Green party, recently concluded a series of short papers on Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) which aims to explain what is going on with Germany’s energy policy, and why. As the question what the world could learn from Germany’s experiment, if anything, is a major concern of my blog posts, it is worthwhile reviewing the articles individually.

The first installation of the series, Angst or Arithmetic?, by Paul Hockenos, a Berlin-based American writer and author of a well-received book on Joschka Fischer and the German green movement, is looking to put the German energy transition into perspective. The author is making the case that Germans are neither irrationally afraid of nuclear energy nor is the nuclear phase-out driven by “postwar angst”. Quite to the contrary, the author claims, Germany finds itself in the midst of other European nations such as Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, all of which are phasing out nuclear as well. What does make Germany’s energy transition unique in the author’s eyes, however, is the fact that the country is aiming to phase-out nuclear while maintaining its status as an industrial heavyweight and meeting ambitious decarbonization goals.

To make his point, Hockenos skillfully lays out the development of the anti-nuclear protest movement in Germany, starting with demonstrations in the early 1970s in Wyhl, where conservative farmers were joined by conservationists and left-wing environmentalists to force a powerful utility company to cancel plans for a nuclear power station. This headline-making success catapulted the movement to national prominence and consequently helped to form its national footprint. Decisive then, in Hockenos’ eyes, was the fact that experts, some from Germany’s nuclear industry, like Klaus Traube, joined the movement to create a fact-based approach which was, if you want, political education based on liberal enlightenment ideas. These experts published widely read bestsellers and also formed think tanks, such as Öko-Institut, or Institute for Applied Ecology, which still exists today. Finally, Chernobyl, which almost created mass hysteria, with closed playgrounds, destroyed produce, and kids and pregnant women ordered to stay inside, made the risks of nuclear energy obvious to everyone. The author concludes that the nuclear phase-out is not “the reaction of a spooked people to Fukushima” but that it “has arguably been part of Berlin’s energy agenda since the early 1990s.”

While the historical facts are correct, it strikes me that the initial question is only superficially answered, if at all. Hockenos is certainly right when he claims that the German anti-nuclear movement was well entrenched in Berlin’s political class, if not hegemonic, before the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Just think of the first Atomausstieg (nuclear phase-out), which the Schröder-Fischer government (“red-green” coalition) negotiated with the nuclear power utilities in 2000 and which became law in 2002. But he fails to address the question, why this was the case. Here are three factors which I believe need to be taken into consideration:

Firstly, Germany’s anti-nuclear movement is, to a large extent, a not-in-my-backyard coalition which prima facie is interested in (a certain understanding of) the good life, here and now, but does not necessarily act politically responsibly. Hockenos provides great insights in the local roots of the movement and its broad coalitions, from Wyhl to Gorleben (which was long planned to be the permanent repository site for nuclear waste), but fails to analyze this critically. I would argue that a small group of anti-nuclear protesters, mostly academically educated activists from urban areas with experience in previous protests (using tactics they learned from the American civil rights movement), used the protective instincts of conservative local groups and skillfully turned this into a movement. The nuclear power plant was not supposed to be built here. This legacy still resonates when, today, local “green” groups protest against desperately needed grid extensions to transport wind power from the North to the South because they literally do not what the pylons in their backyard. Politically, this is obviously not very satisfying, because it does not provide a solution to the problem but only criticism. (Arguably, the national leadership of Germany’s Green party is aware of this now and addresses this critically and responsibly.)

Secondly, the German perception of nuclear energy can only be understood in the context of the cold war and the fear of nuclear annihilation. This fear proliferated in Germany from the 1970s onwards and culminated in the Friedensdemonstration, or peace demonstration, in Bonn, the old governmental seat of West Germany, in 1982. Roughly half a million citizens protested NATOs “double-track decision” and, more broadly, American nuclear weapons on German soil. While the history of the so called Friedensbewegung, or peace movement, is complex, it is fair to say that is built on 1950s protest against German rearmament, 1960s radicalism and criticism of the Vietnam war, as well as specifically German ideas of a “third way” between Russian communism and American capitalism which have a long intellectual genealogy in Germany and which gained momentum in the 1970s. The German anti-nuclear movement is intimately linked to the peace movement, and managed to link the public’s fear of nuclear annihilation with questions about the civil use of nuclear energy. So when German’s think nuclear, they think death. I am not so sure that this is rational, even while I may have the same thoughts, as I am a (German) child of my time.

Finally, Hockenos fails to address the German Technikskepsis, or skepticism of technology, which is deeply rooted in the country’s political culture and crucial to understand the German debate on nuclear energy. While Germany has a globally renowned engineering expertise, there is also a long intellectual history of fearing the (unintended) consequences of widespread use of technologies. Note that the German term Technik only inaccurately translates into the English word technology. Technik it is much closer to the Greek τεχνικός (technikós) which includes human systems, and is distinct from the German Technologie, a distinction that is absent in the English language. Technikskepsis, again, is a complex matter, and while this blog-post cannot adequately spell out its genealogy, it is worth noting that it has roots in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy from where it spread to political ideas on the left with Herbert Marcuse, a student of Heidegger who later joined the legendary Institute for Social Research. It’s most influential rendition is arguably Hans Jonas’ The Imperative of Responsibility (Das Prinzip Verantwortung, German 1979, English 1984) which lays out an ethical principle for the age of technology: “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.” And this imperative, of course, is precisely what the critics claim nuclear energy cannot meet. If, and how, these ideas are compatible with a sustainable energy transition in Germany is a different question which I will address in another blog post.

For now it suffices to conclude that Hockenos short analysis is a great start of what should be a much bigger project: to bare the roots of the German anti-nuclear movement and the Energiewende.

In a recent interview with the German business webpage manager magazine online, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born bodybuilder, actor and former governor of California, sharply criticized U.S. energy policy, or, as he put it more pointedly, the lack thereof. Schwarzenegger, a champion of renewable energy during his tenure as governor, says he admires Germany’s determination to switch to (a mostly) renewable energy production in a single generation, while he despises what he sees as a lack of strategy and coordination of energy policy in the U.S.

Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of German energy policy is pretty light on facts. He doesn’t bother to discuss the Energiewende’s issues, which committed readers of this blog may be familiar with. But he is not alone in criticizing the lack of vision and coordination in U.S. energy policy. In fact, both business leaders and environmentalists are united in their criticism of current policies.

Tellingly, Schwarzenegger doesn’t offer any pragmatic proposals. He doesn’t map out which fixes would help the U.S. to become more like Germany in energy terms. He suggests that the German energy transition is better policy altogether because it is a daring plan. While enthusiasm for planning in the realm politics has yielded mixed results in the past, there is an underlying question here which deserves some scrutiny: Is Germany’s approach to energy policy more effective and more politically and economically sustainable (i.e. smarter and cheaper) than Obama’s “all of the above” strategy? I.e., is the Energiewende, which could be dubbed “either/or” in policy terms as it plans to first phase out nuclear and then fossil fuels altogether, better suited to tackle climate change and cheaper than Obama’s approach? Note that this question is asking for actual effects rather than lofty rhetoric and long-term planning objectives.

The question couldn’t be timelier, as with last week’s nominations for the relevant cabinet positions, the outlines of Obama’s second term energy policy became clear. It is marked by three goals: (1) Provide affordable energy for a growing economy and a recovering middle class while (2) reducing the United States dependency on energy imports from unfriendly and/or undemocratic nations and (3) pragmatically tackling climate change. While Germany’s Energiewende may tackle the latter more explicitly, and may render Germany more energy independent in the far future, it is certainly failing on the first goal and moreover relying on Russian imports for about a third of its natural gas.

But let’s have a look at the U.S.: Obama nominated Ernest Moniz, MIT physicist, as energy secretary, and Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, where she is currently working as assistant administrator. At MIT, Moniz currently runs the school’s energy initiative, a position in which he oversaw research on pretty much any energy source known to mankind. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he wrote an influential article in Foreign Affairs, defending nuclear power on environmental grounds: Nuclear power plants don’t emit any CO₂ which is why we need them to tackle climate change. McCarthy may be less outspoken, but her job at the EPA may require precisely that. Coral Davenport reported in the National Journal, that Obama remains quiet about Climate Change for strategic reasons, but his administration is determined to tackle the problem nonetheless: not through legislation, which is currently unthinkable in Washington due to Republican denial of climate science and their determination to kill any relevant bill, but through the regulatory authority of the EPA, and in consultation with industry and other business leaders. She writes:

“Inside Washington, in a warren of back rooms at EPA, dozens of environmental officials are working to craft landmark climate-change regulations that they hope will curb industrial pollution—and withstand a tsunami of legal and political attacks. To help them do it, they’re inviting in heads of the industries and businesses that will soon be forced to implement the rules. Business leaders, although they’re not happy about the coming regulations, are jumping on the opportunity to communicate their concerns and perhaps help shape the rules they’ll have to live by. And the Obama administration hopes that the dialogue will help defuse some of the opposition to come.”

If we accept that Obama will tackle climate change through enhanced regulation by the EPA, two major differences between the U.S. approach and the German approach remain: Nuclear power, obviously, but more importantly shale gas. While Moniz’ nomination was sharply criticized by environmentalists because of his favorable position on fracking (even if DoE does not have jurisdiction over that issue, as some acknowledge), Germany is effectively rendering fracking in the country impossible and is instead using lignite to back-up the intermittent renewable energy production. This negatively affects Germany’s over-all CO₂-emissions, because gas burns cleaner than lignite. While the U.S. is reducing its carbon footprint by switching from coal to gas, Germany is struggling to do the same even though it invests heavily in renewable energy.

This means, however, that despite the lofty rhetoric around Germany’s Energiewende – and Mr. Schwarzenegger’s endorsement, the de facto effects of these policies are not that convincing. The U.S. “all-of-the-above” energy policy may be better policy – if it includes serious attempts to tackle climate change. And it may be politically and economically more viable.

In the last decade, the Brazilian economy enjoyed its largest growth in 70 years. More than 20 million jobs have been created since 2001 – an increase of 68% — due to business investments and increased production across several industries.

This recent growth was driven in part by the discovery of the pre-salt layer off the coast of Brazil. It is currently being explored by Petrobras, the world’s 5th biggest energy company, through partnerships with other national and international companies. Currently, the pre-salt layer (including Campos Basin and Santos Basin) has a total production yield of 230 thousand barrels per day, which represents almost 12% of the state owned company`s total production (1.94 million barrels per day).  In 2016, the pre-salt fields are expected to represent 31% of the country’s total production.

Exploration of Brazil’s pre-salt has also highlighted a lack of skilled labor in Brazil, which is needed to meet the demands of the energy industry. Obviously, the shortage of skilled labor is a global issue, not a Brazilian one, but there are some policies in this country that make everything a little harder. One of them is the local content law.

The local content law establishes that Brazilian people and services have hiring priority, but this varies according to each segment. The minimum percentage depends on a number of factors since the law is so complex. There are projects in which at least 50% of the individuals/companies hired need to be Brazilian, and other areas where demand is 70%. In the energy industry, this percentage is 65% and is one of biggest obstacles that hinder its development.

In the country, the oil and gas industry is expected to double its production by 2020, but the professionals who graduate every year are still very few and won’t meet the demand.

Some companies have already taken notice of this problem and have been investing in trainee and internship programs, partnering with universities and offering international opportunities for its employees, as well as great pay. These are moves that aim to attract what little manpower is available today, since these professionals are also being sought by other industries such as mining and infrastructure, both very heated markets in Brazil.

This lack of manpower in Brazil means the country is at risk of serious stagnation in productivity levels. Currently, only 7 percent of Brazilian workers hold a university degree. Other economies that are less developed than Brazil have a higher proportion of workers with university degrees. This is true in countries like Chile (24%), Russia (23%), Kazakhstan (18%) and South Africa (9%).

To solve this issue, some ideas have been proposed by industry experts: relaxation of work permit requirements for foreigners while still valuing domestic labor,  ensuring that foreigners who come to Brazil help train the local workforce; providing training for current workers; and more government investments in technical education and training courses for those who are interested in the opportunities generated by this period of growth in the country’s energy sector.

Hopefully the Brazilian government will address the situation shortly – it has already started public hearings about the relaxation of work permits – avoiding a collapse of the infrastructure sector and allowing companies investing in Brazil to continue growing and creating more jobs.

Petrobras Mexilhão jacket launched to the sea in Brazil - photo credit Petrobras News Agency

Yesterday’s Energy and Climate Change Committee report on consumer engagement with energy markets made for interesting reading. From a PR perspective the section on media reporting on energy costs was particularly compelling. The rising cost of energy and impact of ‘green’ policy has been one of the hot topics of 2012 – capturing the attention of the trades, broadsheets and the tabloids alike. And for a sector that’s traditionally not the topic of pub chat, this is the year that the country got talking. With squeezed wallets and fluctuating weather conditions, combined with the challenge of global warming and carbon reduction, the public is taking notice.

Depending on your newspaper of choice you will likely read very different views on how serious our energy challenge is – both in terms of dwindling resources, and environmentally sustainable sources. Yesterday’s report states that “It is likely that consumers get a lot of their information about energy issues from the media.” So with increased, and often emotive, attention now focused on energy it becomes even more important to know where our media stand on the issues, and crucially – how accurate their reporting is.

The Energy and Climate Change Committee is troubled by concerns raised over media reporting on energy matters. The report points to several witnesses who have suggested that media reporting of the cost to consumers of DECC’s environmental and social policies may be misleading. The Carbon Brief says that a series of newspaper articles have overstated the current impact of green policies on energy bills, either through error or selective research. Scottish Renewables suggested that the media preferred to rely on figures that fitted with their editorial line on energy and climate issues – relying on “unverifiable leaked reports or skewed research by think-tanks and individual consultants”. RWE npower said of media reporting, “Very often, it is a case of ‘not letting the facts get in the way of a good story’”.

The Committee wrote to the print media requesting responses to the evidence it has received on media reporting of these issues. Whilst only 6 of the 17 publications replied, the answers are telling. The Sunday Times decided its coverage has been “very balanced”, focused on the science, while The Financial Times put responsibility with the reporter. The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph responded that the costs of green energy were “hotly disputed” but that they reported “all sides of the debate”. The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday acknowledged that “mistakes are occasionally made” – hmm…

One national newspaper responded that they were “uneasy that a Committee of the House of Commons appears to be asking a newspaper to justify its reporting on a particular issue based on vague, partisan criticisms from lobby groups with an interest in the issue”. That same paper failed to print a letter from the Committee’s Chair highlighting factual inaccuracies about an article on the effect that investment in renewables would have on consumers’ bills. No coincidence then that such disdain comes from the paper with perhaps the most supportive line on fossil fuels, with anti-rhetoric towards wind energy? I’ll leave it you to work out the paper in question…

Of course, in the fast paced world of journalism mistakes from time-to-time are inevitable. But the Government must do everything in its power to make facts and figures on the cost of going green transparent. It is all too easy for the media to hide behind confusing and conflicting data so they may follow an editorial line that misguides an already bewildered public. Renewable technologies and environmentally sustainable practices are a necessity not a choice for our long-term energy future. Isn’t it better that now the public’s attention is caught they get a full, accurate and honest picture?

Much of the focus on yesterday’s IEA World Energy Outlook was on the US’ increasing access to oil and gas reserves derived from fracking. At the FT, Guy Chazan and Ed Crooks focused on how the shale ‘revolution’ will redraw our energy landscape but noted that regulation threatens the sector’s growth. Fiona Harvey at the Guardian warned that the US becoming the world’s biggest oil producer by 2017 could lead to huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Commenting in the Independent, Michael McCarthy suggested that while the findings of this year’s IEA World Energy Outlook may look exciting to economists, they are “distinctly depressing” to anyone concerned about climate change.

Whilst all very interesting, these findings and commentary weren’t hugely surprising. This has been a year where shale and fracking have dominated the energy agenda, alongside carbon reduction targets and energy interdependence. But one theme I thought striking in the IEA’s 2012 report that we haven’t heard much on was water and the challenges brought by the energy industry’s increasing thirst.

Today, the energy sector accounts for 15% of the world’s total water use. The IEA predicts that power generation and biofuels output underpin an 85% increase in the amount of water consumed through to 2035. This growth comes in an increasingly water-constrained future.

The report indicated that water use could become increasingly challenging for unconventional gas development and power generation in parts of China and the US, India’s water‐intensive coal‐fired plants, Canadian oil sands production and maintaining reservoir pressures to support oil output in Iraq.

Water is used for resource extraction (oil, gas, coal, biomass etc.), energy conversion (refining and processing), transportation and power generation. In a review of the associated literature the Belfer Center notes that water, like energy, is a commodity but with very different characteristics. Water is almost always local where energy tends to be more of a global sector.

Constraints on water availability are becoming a crucial consideration affecting the reliability of existing operations within the energy sector, which the IEA warns will introduce additional costs. In the power sector for example, technological developments have enabled advanced cooling systems to operate with less water, but this benefit comes at additional cost and reduced plant efficiency.

The water industry itself is energy-intensive, consuming electricity for desalination, pumping, and treatment of wastewater. So the question of energy and water’s relationship comes full circle.

With all this in mind, perhaps we should be looking at water’s impact on future energy supply a little more closely.

In the last week of August, the biannual Offshore Northern Seas conference took place in Stavanger, Norway. This year’s record attendance is testament to the boom in the North Sea market and the optimism of recent years’ major discoveries, but the boom also brings about challenges.

By Ola Bosterud and Henrik Arnestad Salthe

This year, almost 60,000 guests visited the trade show and conference at ONS – almost 10,000 more than in 2010. The visitors came from 109 different nations, and a total of 1,264 companies participated in the exhibition.

The atmosphere at this year’s ONS was extremely different compared with two years ago: gone are the somberness and talks about the oil and gas industry as a sunset industry. The recession depression has been replaced with eager chitchat about new discoveries and new business opportunities. The good mood is also penetrating the rest of Norwegian society, making Norway the odd one out in a world where recession and fossil fuel skepticism reigns. Even though a very large part of the Norwegian public is positive about the industry, there is still a strong anti-petroleum sentiment in parts of the public, especially on the far left of the political spectrum.

"Ocean Vanguard" - one of the drilling rigs that have been working on the Johan Sverdrup discovery. (Photo: HARALD PETTERSEN / STATOIL)

Massive discoveries
The reason for the change in mood is obviously the new discoveries made on the Norwegian Continental Shelf over the last couple of years. This includes the amazing Johan Sverdrup field, which was found in the most mature parts of the North Sea through applying new exploration models in pre-drilled areas. The field is expected to hold between 1,700 and 3,300 million barrels of oil, but the discovery is still being delineated and appraised to find out more about the total resources in place. Statistics Norway now predict record high investment levels in the Norwegian oil and gas industry over the next year, and their predictions for 2013, NOK 204 billion, are now the highest predictions ever, since Statistics Norway started predicting investment levels in 1985.

Even though everything is looking bright, history has taught us that the oil industry is a volatile industry. The slogan for this year’s ONS conference was Energy Paradoxes, and there are several paradoxes on the Norwegian Continental Shelf that the Norwegian industry needs to handle and that the international energy industry often finds puzzling:

• The public is very much pro-environment, and Norway has several strong E-NGO’s. At the same time, society is totally dependent of income from the oil sector
• Major discoveries have been made, but the industry still wants to open controversial areas to gain new acreage, to prevent the expected production drop after 2020
• The tax level for the oil industry is massive, but special tax breaks have fuelled a massive growth in the industry, resulting in tripling the number of E&P companies since 2000, from around 15 companies to close to 50 companies now prequalified for holding licenses.
• The Norwegian Continental Shelf is seen as mature, but major discoveries are still being made, and there are still large frontier areas that have not been thoroughly explored.
• Norway has steered clear of most of the Curse of Hydrocarbons, even though the population is small and hydrocarbons is a major driver in the economy.
• Norway has one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, financed by income from the oil and gas industry. At the same time, the sovereign wealth fund’s investments in industrial players and oil companies have been controversial.

Trust is key
The industry is full of paradoxes, and the list could go on and on. What is true about all these paradoxes is that they need to be handled in the right way to win out both in the local and global competition for resources. In our view, the right way to do that is to be transparent about these paradoxes: about the challenges they present, as well as their opportunities. The oil and gas industry is dependent on the trust of their stakeholders. The only way to attain this is to earn that trust through being transparent and open, and communicating based on the facts.

About the authors:

Ola Bøsterud heads the energy and industrials practice in Gambit H+K in Norway. He has a long track record as Head of communications in various oil and gas related companies like  Petroleum Geo-Services, oil service company Aibel,  and Total Norge .

Henrik Arnestad Salthe is part of the energy practice group in Gambit H+K Norway, and works at the comapny’s Stavanger office. Before joining Gambit Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Henrik worked for several years as an oil and gas editor for various trade magazines and websites in Norway.

Later this month I will be cycling the length of the UK, a distance of nearly 1,000 miles from Lands End in Cornwall to John O Groats in Scotland. En route I’m looking forward to seeing parts of the country that I have never visited before and to re-discovering places that I have travelled through before, but at a slower pace . . . a much slower pace!

As I considered what to blog about this week it struck me that the route will also take me past some of the great sources of power – hydro in Scotland, some of the larger wind farms in the South West, Wales, Scotland and the Midlands, the nuclear power station at Hinkley and some of the large coal and gas plants. I haven’t mapped this out against my route, but I’m sure there will be many energy vistas to enjoy along the way.

Now of course I’m an energy geek and I find this stuff interesting, or even beautiful, to look at, but it made me wonder how many people actually participate in energy tourism and what, if anything you can visit. I suppose the ultimate energy tourists map is this one put together by Deloitte. For those looking for something a bit more organised though, I thought I would save you the time and provide some links to the top energy tourist destinations in the UK!!

1. Whitelee Wind Farm - Just outside Glasgow this wind farm has it’s own visitor centre and visitors can tour around one of the largest onshore wind farms in Europe. There are also nature tours, cycling and the various visiting attractions as well as the opportunity for younger visitors to make their own turbines in craft workshops.

2. Electric Mountain - Not a new ride at Thorpe Park, but a visitor centre for a hydro electric power station in Snowdonia, Wales. More specifically the Dinorwig Power Station, which incorporates a guided tour of the massive turbine hall for any visitor that pays the entrance fee, is of appropriate age and wearing the right head gear and foot wear.

3. Eon Visitors Site - Eon have not one, but seven sites that people – mostly students by the look of it – can visit. Sites including the Ironbridge Coal Power Station in Telford and the Scroby Sands Wind Farm Visitor Centre in Great Yarmouth.

OK I admit this will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but hopefully there are a few young visitors that will be inspired by these vital installations, and I will try to take some pictures during my journey to capture some of them along the way.

By the way if you are interested in sponsoring the journey – we are raising money for the Royal National Institute of Blind People and the fund raising page is at http://www.justgiving.com/ChrisPratt-LEJOG

We are witnessing an energy revolution, Walter Russell Mead, professor at Bard College and editor-at-large of The American Interest, recently proclaimed in a series of blog posts (parts one, two, three, and four); a revolution “much bigger, and more consequential than the Arab Spring;” a revolution, moreover, that will result in “a powerful boost to American power.” Mead sees a “new age of abundance for fossil fuels” in the making which proves peak-oil theories wrong and renders chatter about American decline irrelevant. Due to now extractable resources in tar sands oil in Canada and shale oil & gas in the U.S. the “center of gravity of the global energy picture is shifting from the Middle East to … North America.” This energy revolution will consequentially bring about a new American century.

That, in a nutshell, is Mead’s bold thesis at which I will have a closer look in this first installment of my e-Ideas series. And just to state the obvious: the series is going to evolve around discourses, books, and studies, i.e. the impact of energy trends and innovations on society and politics adn vice versa, rather than technological innovations of which I would only have very limited understanding.

Mead’s energy revolution is driven by unconventional oil and gas resources that recently have become technically and economically extractable and/or have been discovered. These resources make Canada and the U.S. “each richer in oil than Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia combined.” Israel and China also have such resources and will profit accordingly.

According to Mead this new fossil fuel reality has four major consequences:

1. New Geopolitical Fundamentals
The energy revolution will substantially shift the fundamentals of geopolitics by creating “winners and losers”; namely the U.S., Canada, Israel, and China as winners, and Russia, the Middle East, and petro states such as Venezuela as losers. The economically most advanced countries of the West will become less dependent on energy imports from autocratic regimes and unstable regions such as the Middle East, Mead argues, and can shift political attention and military resources to other areas. Shale oil will also make China more independent from imports and therefore less aggressive in its drive to secure energy resources overseas. Russia, on the other hand, will lose leverage because Europe will have alternative sources of supply. The Middle East will lose its prominence on the world stage, because its resources are not as relevant any more.

2. A New American Century
This geopolitical shift will stabilize the liberal global order, stimulate global economic growth, and allow the potential rivalry between the U.S. and China to become ever more cooperative. Because energy was critical to the first American century, Mead continues, and since the energy abundance that propelled the U.S. to global leadership is back, a new American century is in the making. A less Middle East-centric foreign policy will allow the U.S. to become more of the benevolent hegemon it has been after World War II, securing the liberal capitalist global order, rather than fighting wars in the sands Iraq.

3. The Reincarnation of the American Dream
The new fossil fuel resources in the U.S. will dramatically alter the domestic situation as well, Mead claims. For the first time in decades, new well-paying blue-collar jobs are created, a second coming of the American Dream. Demand for skilled labor will change the immigration debate. Manufacturing may return to the U.S. because cheap energy will be a major competitive advantage. A new geography of power will alter politics: A shift to the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri river system and the Midwest, where most of the new resources are located, will strengthen a pragmatic moderately conservative ideology and weaken liberals and ultraconservatives. And more of American prosperity will actually remain in the U.S., because less energy imports will significantly cut the trade deficit.

4. A Cleaner Planet
Somewhat counter-intuitive, Mead claims that the new abundance of fossil fuels will also help protect the climate and strengthen environmentalism. In his final, and most polemic, blog post he argues that cheap shale gas will accelerate the switch from coal to gas, resulting in less carbon emissions. The newly accumulated wealth will help fund more environmental initiatives. And until these resources are dried up later in the twenty-first century, the wind and solar industries can mature, become more competitive and more reliable. This will all help the transition to a cleaner, low-carbon economy.

Mead’s argument is conclusive and well thought through, even if his polemic against green energy seems widely overstated. He somewhat underestimates, however, the political risks that come with the production of unconventional oil &  gas. Hydraulic fracturing increasingly becomes a major concern not only for environmentalists in the U.S., while in Europe this extraction technology is stigmatizing as dirty and risky. The same is true for Canadian oil sands. Consequentially, American pundits such as Thomas Friedman, the NY Times columnist, are much more skeptical of a golden age of gas in the U.S. While its economic and geopolitical benefits are obvious in the short term, Friedman states in an opinion piece, the shale gas boom may delay renewable energy production. “That would be reckless,” he writes because in light of recent droughts in the U.S., climate change becomes ever more apparent, and dangerous. A warning, Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, already voiced earlier this year, reacting to the EU’s labeling of natural gas as “green energy”.

But Friedman pushes further and specifically targets unconventional gas. “Extracting it can be very dirty,” he writes, essentially demanding a life cycle analysis of all energy sources. While he concludes with proposing a carbon tax, which in his eyes will level the playing field for renewables and also allow raising more taxes to tackle the U.S. federal budget deficit, his article that has been duly refuted from conservative side, shows that unconventional gas is highly politicized.

Politics may thus derail Mead’s energy revolution, if not managed professionally. A good start would be sound energy policies. As The Economist recently noted, neither presidential candidate appears to have, however, “the vision now required in energy policy.”

Following the roaring success of my Jubilee inspired fact-based blog (well I learnt a few facts at least..!), this afternoon I felt inspired to forage for some energy based facts about the topic du jour; the Olympics.

Apart from EDF’s rather cool real-time energy usage graphs, and a collection of blogs on the Games’ sustainability credentials (here’s a rather good one that will be wishing they had Chris on tap for witty blog titles!), this actually proved harder than I anticipated. You probably already know that London’s Olympic Park houses the world’s first recyclable stadium, and you may have seen Timeout’s infographic of facts, but did you know that all athletes competed in the nude at the ancient Olympics? Thought not. Entertaining to know, but not exactly relevant to the E+I blog content! Here are a few other (kind of energy related) facts you might not have come across:

• In the ancient Olympic Games, the Olympic flame was ignited by the sun and then kept burning until the close of the Games. The flame fist appeared in the modern Olympics in 1928 in Amsterdam, with the Olympic Torch relay starting in 1936. According to this blog, the entire Olympic Torch relay in 2012 consumed the equivalent of 4,966 kilowatts, which is the same as a 40KW bulb burning for 124,158 hours, or just over 14 years.

• 200 kilometres of electrical cables – enough to stretch from London to Nottingham – were laid in two six kilometre tunnels built under the park, allowing 52 overhead pylons to be removed.

• 265km of utilities networks were installed across Olympic Park.

• The Olympic Park’s wind turbine will produce enough power for 1,000 homes.

• Over 4,000 trees, 74,000 plants, 60,000 bulbs and 350,000 wetlands plants were planted in the Olympic Park – the largest planting project ever undertaken in the UK.

• 20% of the Olympic site’s energy is from renewable sources.

• Michael Phelp’s energy consumption was said to comprise of 12,000 calories a day to get him to the Gold in 2008’s Beijing Olympics. Typically, the strength/power sports athletes (like weight lifting and shot put) eat the most, intaking between 2,800 and 6,000 calories a day, whilst gymnasts and divers need a mere 2-2,500. In ancient Greece apparently the athletes mostly ate cheese.

• At the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, silver medals were awarded to the winners and bronze to those coming in second. This isn’t an energy fact, but it is an industrial fact and therefore still highly relevant to E+I!

• Great Britain is the only nation to have won at least one gold medal at every Summer Games. Not an energy or industrial fact but I’m feeling patriotic. Please can we have one this year too?!