On 15 August 2024, the AUCEL hosted Professor Anatole Boute (Chinese University of Hong Kong). Professor Boute, who used to work at Aberdeen Law School in the past, presented his book Energy Dependence and Supply Security: Energy Law in the New Geopolitical Reality (Oxford University Press 2023).
The book offers an insightful and timely interdiscipinary exploration on the role of law in energy transition in the context of current geopolitical reality. It uses Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine as a starting point to examine the unprecedented shock to the European and global energy markets, triggering emergency interventions and market reforms to limit the impact of the crisis on energy prices and supply security. It further examines how the supply shock sparked a profound reappraisal of foreign supply and infrastructure dependencies (for example, on China), leading states to adopt new legal initiatives to strengthen the resilience of their clean energy supply chains.
Energy geopolitics and supply security are now firmly back at the centre of global energy policy, and in this new geopolitical reality, we critically need to reassess the role of energy law in the creation - and avoidance - of dangerous energy dependencies. Using the 2022 energy crisis as core example, Energy Dependence and Supply Security offers a legal analysis of energy trade and investment as a tool of geopolitical power, an issue seldom considered outside of economic statecraft and energy geopolitics. Anatole Boute's timely analysis illustrates the paradox of energy law and security: legal instruments of energy security have helped create the supply and infrastructure dependencies that allowed for the weaponization of energy. The book examines the legal responses adopted by the European Union to the impact of the Russian energy shock, reflecting on strategies to avoid similar disruptions in the clean energy industry. In turn, it proposes innovative supply security reforms that would allow dependencies to be managed, while still preserving the international collaboration that is needed to accelerate the transition to clean, affordable, and secure energy systems.
The AUCEL staff and research students thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and the Q&A with Prof Boute.
The book is available at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/energy-dependence-and-supply-security-9780198890478?cc=gb&lang=en&