Tuesday 29 March 2011
13:30 hrs - 15:00 hrs
China made a number of important strategic choices about its energy supply under its new Five-Year Plan this month. Some are a continuation of earlier trends: acquisition of overseas oil and gas resources, expansion of refineries, strategic oil reserves, ambitious GHG emission reduction targets, heavy investment in solar and wind power technologies, and LNG facilities and gas pipelines. Some are new: unconventional sources of gas, nuclear technology exports, greater emphasis on hydropower, lower economic growth rates. These choices are part of an industrial policy, but also made by Chinese companies based on world market expectations. In this lecture, China energy expert Eduard Vermeer will discuss the implications for other countries and international markets and some main conflicts of interest. How aggressively nationalistic are Chinese policies and people's attitudes?
| Speaker | Dr. Eduard B. Vermeer, Affiliated senior fellow at the EPA-IIAS |
| Chair & discussant | Prof. M.P. Amineh |
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Tuesday March 15th, 2011
Time: 13:30-15:00
Venue: Graduate School of Social Sciences- University of Amsterdam, Room 0.07, Prins Hendrikkade 189-B, Amsterdam
The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy: a perspective of Brazil and its biofuel industry
Much has been argued on the geopolitics of energy, especially of oil trade, and much has been said about the need for a transition to renewable energies. However, there is yet very little investigation on how renewable energies may, too, become an instrument of geopolitics. I propose to look at it taking the case of Brazil, increasingly regarded as a leader in its adoption of biofuels. The Brazilian biofuel industry has been growing fast, but how is it being used as a tool for stronger international relations and to advance Brazil's ambition of becoming a world power? I first provide a state-of-the-art picture of the Brazilian biofuel industry and of its main issues with regard to production and to sustainability. Then, I discuss how that has become a geopolitical tool, and how it has been used differently in Brazil's relations with Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and with its Latin American neighbours.
Speaker Mairon G. Bastos Lima, MA, PhD candidate, Institute for Environmental Studies - Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Chair & Discussant Prof. M.P. Amineh
