The energy transition which the world economy is going through is a move away from fossil fuels towards renewable and clean sources of energy. Driven by factors such as climate change, this transition is likely to bring tectonic changes in economy, geopolitics, societies and politics, challenging the status quo across vast geographic areas.
This course builds knowledge and provides tools for the critical analysis of the effects this energy transition may have on the so-called ‘paradox of plenty’, whereby the energy-rich states lag behind in terms of development, economic growth and democracy. While this outcome is not fully determined, theory and practice prove a high probability of poverty, conflict and autocracy in the resource-rich states. The course, covers major approaches to the study of a ‘resource curse’, including rentier states theory, from the perspective of the current energy transition and tries to answer the question: Will the transfer from fossil fuels to clean sources of energy lead to a more prosperous, stable and democratic world? The diversity of approaches to the nature of the changes brought about by a full energy transition shows, at the very least, the ambiguity of the political and economic effects of the transition.
We will explore how this energy transition will surely pose new risks, changing the geopolitics of energy, reshaping the ‘paradox of plenty’ and inequality in the metal-mining states, and affecting the probability of conflict in the solar and wind-producing states. While oil-dependent rentier states might lose their significance, poor governance will still remain a critical factor of the "resource curse" involving renewable sources of energy.