OIL PRICES, ENERGY PRICES
Spring 2008
Free: College Curriculum Package Simulates Oil Crisis
Announcement
By Eric Rosenbach, Faculty Affiliate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (on leave)
Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), in collaboration with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, has created a free college curriculum box set that includes all of the materials needed to conduct an energy crisis simulation in your classroom. The exercise is based on Oil ShockWave™, SAFE's one-of-a-kind oil crisis simulation, which has featured participants such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Dan Yergin and former director of the CIA R. James Woolsey.
May 2009
Acting in Time on Energy Policy
Book
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
Energy policy is on everyone's mind these days. The U.S. presidential campaign focused on energy independence and exploration ("Drill, baby, drill!"), climate change, alternative fuels, even nuclear energy. But there is a serious problem endemic to America's energy challenges. Policymakers tend to do just enough to satisfy political demands but not enough to solve the real problems, and they wait too long to act. The resulting policies are overly reactive, enacted once damage is already done, and they are too often incomplete, incoherent, and ineffectual. Given the gravity of current economic, geopolitical, and environmental concerns, this is more unacceptable than ever. This important volume details this problem, making clear the unfortunate results of such short-sighted thinking, and it proposes measures to overcome this counterproductive tendency.
2007
Global Perspectives on Oil and Security
Book
This book was born out of a seminar organized by the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies in January 2006, where members of the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University presented papers on topics related to oil and security.
May 2006
China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development
Book
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
In China Shifts Gears, Kelly Sims Gallagher identifies an unprecedented opportunity for China to "shift gears" and avoid the usual problems associated with the automobile industry while spurring economic development.
May 2009
"Policy for Energy Technology Innovation"
Book Chapter
By Laura Diaz Anadon, Associate Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; Director, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group; Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy and John P. Holdren, Former Director and Faculty Chair, Science, Technology and Public Policy Program
"The United States ought to be the leader of the world in the energy technology innovation that is needed. It has the largest economy, uses the most energy (and within that total the most oil), has made the largest cumulative contribution to the atmospheric buildup of fossil carbon dioxide that is the dominant driver of global climate change, has a large balance of payments stake in competitiveness in the global energy technology market as well as a large stake in the worldwide economic and security benefits of meeting global energy needs in affordable and sustainable ways, and possesses by many measures the most capable scientific and engineering workforce in the world. The actual performance of this country in energy-technology innovation, however, has been falling short by almost every measure...."
May 2009
"Oil Security and the Transportation Sector"
Book Chapter
By Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program
"This chapter proposes to answer five fundamental questions: What exactly is the oil security problem, and how serious is it going forward? Why has it emerged at this point in time, and why has it been so difficult for the U.S. government to take the actions needed to mitigate it? Finally, what alternative policies are likely to be effective as the United States attempts to improve its oil security in the future?"
May 2009
"Acting in Time on Energy Policy"
Book Chapter
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
"The book's title—Acting in Time—refers to the persistent problem in U.S. energy policy that typically just enough is done to satisfy the short-term political imperatives, but not enough is done to actually solve the underlying problems themselves. As a result, many of the fundamental economic, environmental, and security-related challenges arising from patterns of U.S. energy production and consumption have become more intractable. Some now approach a point of crisis."
AP Photo
July 2012
"Gasoline Taxes and Consumer Behavior"
Discussion Paper
By Erich Muehlegger, Shanjun Li and Joshua Linn
Gasoline taxes can be employed to correct externalities associated with automobile use in order to reduce dependency on foreign oil and raise government revenue. This paper examines how gasoline taxes affect consumer behavior as distinct from tax-exclusive gasoline prices. It suggests that traditional analysis could significantly underestimate policy impacts of tax changes and discusses the implications of these findings.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
July 2012
North American Oil and Gas Reserves: Prospects and Policy
Discussion Paper
By Jonathan Bailey and Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program
Expanding estimates of North America’s supply of accessible shale gas, and more recently, shale oil, have been trumpeted in many circles as the most significant energy resource development since the oil boom in Texas in the late 1920s. How large are these resources? What challenges will need to be overcome if their potential is to be realized? How will they impact U.S. energy policy?
To address these questions, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and two of its programs ― the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Geopolitics of Energy Project ― convened a group of experts from business, government, and academia on May 1, 2012, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following report summarizes the major issues discussed at this workshop. Since the discussions were off-the-record, no comments are attributed to any individual. Rather, this report attempts to summarize the arguments on all sides of the issues.
AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani, File
June 2012
"Oil: The Next Revolution"
Discussion Paper
By Leonardo Maugeri, Roy Family Fellow, Geopolitics of Energy Project
A new study by Belfer Center Geopolitics of Energy researcher Leonardo Maugeri finds that oil production capacity is surging in the United States and several other countries at such a fast pace that global oil output capacity is likely to grow by nearly 20 percent by 2020. This could prompt a plunge or even a collapse in oil prices. The findings by Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, are based on an original field-by-field analysis of the world’s major oil formations and exploration projects.
