Geopolitics will play a vital role in the future of Energy Transition and climate change

Last updated on December 1st, 2020 at 08:18 am

Energy Transition and climate change: In writer Daniel Yergin’s most recent book, ‘The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations’, he talks about the geopolitical significance of oil inflation and the important role geopolitics will play in the future of energy transition in the world. He also highlights how countries around the globe contend for solutions for environmental change and explain how America benefitted from the energy revolution and oil market. 

Daniel Yergin has won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his book The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money, and Power and he is an energy expert and economic historian. 

His new book release throws light on the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermaths on the economy. Especially over energy needs, climate change, and adapt to new power relationships in a complicated new future of Energy Transition. 

The book describes the astounding change in the energy position of the United States amid a controversial presidential election, to the international strain between China (as the common denominator) and many nations, to the emergence of electric vehicles, and the developing global future towards renewable energy transition. 

Yergin states as nations cross conflicting geopolitical paths in another era of power competition. The outbreak of pandemic has additionally opened a completely new era for world oil, something that Yergin calls the time of the “Enormous Three”— the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. 

When the Covid brought the shutdown of economies, what Yergin depicts as the “financial dark age,” it caused an unusual breakdown in demand for crude oil. That is the point at which the United States, presently the world’s biggest oil producer, made the unprecedented stride of brokering a deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia to rebalance the economy. 

The pandemic also highlighted a big issue: will the covid-19 change speed or obstruct the much-discussed “Energy Transition” from petroleum products to inexhaustible; Yergin suggests a level of caution against desires for a hurried transformation. 

The global health emergency has emphasized the role of plastic that is produced from oil and natural gas and its use in hospitals, shortage of N-95 masks, or PPE kits.

The sudden surge in domestic goods during the 2010s both helped the economy and opened up new international ventures for nations.

However, what it means to be an energy superpower is changing, because of three linked international changes. To begin with, fears about the shortage of fossil fuel paved the way to value its abundance. Not least on account of what has been accomplished in America, the energy business currently realizes that it will be facing a lack of demand and not supply, which will deeply impact the production of oil, gas, and coal. 

The decreasing number in demand for fossil fuels will bend the overall balances of power away from producers and towards the consumers in a society where there is much more requirements for renewable energy.

The coronavirus pandemic has produced a dramatic review of a world in which demand and supply of many commodities changed. All major powers have no choice but to acknowledge the geopolitical downside of depending on imports.

Politicians in Europe, America, and Australia have shown concern about Chinese control of minerals, important not only for energy but defense as well.

The Middle East is still the major source for 33% of the world’s oil and gas and faces concerns over how long oil will be utilized and when its demand will decline, as it happened during the outbreak of coronavirus.

Climate change is a major issue worldwide and Europe is trying a new development plan that can redesign the EU into an advanced economy. 

The European Green Deal is a new plan for reshaping the EU’s economy. It will help improve climate change and propose to transform the EU from a high-to a low-carbon discharge economy. 

Yergin in his new book points out that the next few years will probably observe the world’s energy supplies coming from a blended system of competition among energy decisions. He additionally stresses that tech development will be the basic factor for the future of energy transition in the world.