½ûÂþÌìÌà IDEAS aims to examine the ongoing impact of this energy transition through a series of events, unpacking key features of this emerging industry.
The de-carbonisation of industrial economies is moving apace; new sources of energy are propelling the adoption of green technologies as well as reconfiguring global supply and production but are also reshaping the centres of global power in unexpected ways.
The de-carbonisation of industrial economies is moving apace and bringing with it a silent transition, a phenomenon ‘hiding in plain sight’, in the foundational structures of the international political economy. New sources of energy are not only propelling the adoption of green technologies as well as reconfiguring global supply and production chains but are in the process of reshaping the centres of global power in unexpected ways.
For instance, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are expanding membership to include Saudi Arabia and Iran (with Indonesia and Turkey waiting in the wings), making it the globe’s premier ‘energy giant’ in both carbon-based and, with China’s dominant position in R&D and production, green power. Rapidly melting Arctic ice is opening up trade routes that threaten to render existing commercial patterns – and trade entrepots of the past – less relevant while BRICS efforts to ‘de-dollarize’ trade seek to reduce the role of the US currency in that process. Concurrently, the unwinding of the Western led rules-based order, accelerated by Russia-China partnership in Ukraine and the South China Sea and – ironically, given Washington’s advocacy of that order – erratic US foreign policy in the Middle East, is causing the Global South to reposition itself away from dependency on Western democracies to one viewing authoritarian states as sources of technological innovation, infrastructure capacity and global leadership in an unstable world. Taken together, all of these suggest that a fundamental shift is underway, one that pairs the material strengths of the emerging energy giants to the desire for a revisionist world order by challenging Western presumptions of global leadership.
½ûÂþÌìÌà IDEAS proposes to examine the ongoing impact of the energy transition through a series of events aimed at unpacking key features of this emerging world in the making and the role that the energy transition has in that process.
Meet the Chair and Speakers
Professor Sophia Kalantzakos is Global Distinguished Professor in Environmental Studies and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research centers on the geopolitics of critical minerals, the transition to a net zero future, and the fourth industrial revolution. Her work examines how resource competition in an era of fraught geopolitics has tilted the balance toward securitized assessments of global interdependence. Moreover, she examines China’s global aspirations manifested through the Belt and Road Initiative and ecological civilization, Europe’s reckoning with a seismic push against both its normative and economic power, and the US’s re-evaluation of its leadership role in the global order. Kalantzakos’ publications include , editor (Cham, Switzerland: Springer 2023), (Oxford University Press, 2018; rev.2021) and (Routledge, 2017). Kalantzakos is the Founding Head of eARThumanities and the research initiatives at NYUAD. She was a Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center at LMU, a Fung Fellow at Princeton, and RIHST fellow at Caltech and the Huntington. Kalantzakos’ new project addresses the geopolitics of food security in the Anthropocene.
Dr Philip Andrews-Speed is a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies’ China Energy Programme. He has more than 40 years’ experience in the field of energy and resources, starting his career as a mineral and petroleum exploration geologist before moving into the academic field of energy and resource governance. His research has been directed at the governance and regulation of energy and natural resources with a focus on Asia, especially China. His book, with Sufang Zhang, China as a Global Clean Energy Champion: Lifting the Veil (Palgrave, 2019) received the 2024 Award for Best International Energy Economics Book from the International Association for Energy Economics. The current focus of his research is on China’s role in clean energy supply chains.
Professor Chris Alden teaches International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (½ûÂþÌìÌÃ) where he is Deputy Head of the Department (PhD and Research). He is also Director of ½ûÂþÌìÌà IDEAS. He is a Research Associate with South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).
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½ûÂþÌìÌà IDEAS () is ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.
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