The outbreak of war between Russia-Ukraine has given rise to a series of energy dilemmas for Britain, the European Union and their allies. The EU imported 40% of natural gas from Russia in 2019, a figure almost identical to Britain’s 39%. With so many states heavily reliant on Russian imports for their energy production, the invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble for a wide-ranging re-think of energy and security policy.
Key to this re-evaluation is the need for new strategic alliances between states to meet energy needs and to continue with the decarbonisation of the energy sector. Will this crisis mean Britain and the EU succeed in forming new alliances to achieve their energy policy objectives? Who might these future allies be? And in a world of interdependence, how can states find the right balance between forming strategic energy partnerships and autonomous energy production?
This public webinar will see a panel of energy experts discuss the relationship between energy and national security, and consider what the future of energy co-operation between Britain, the EU and their allies could look like.
MODERATED BY:
Adnan Vatansever – Adnan is a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and Acting Director of the King’s Russia Institute. Previously, Adnan worked as a senior associate in the energy and climate program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a senior associate in Russian and Caspian energy at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and a consultant for the World Bank and the U.S. Department of Energy. He combines a wealth of industry knowledge and experience on energy markets with a robust academic perspective. He holds a PhD from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and M.A. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
ON THE PANEL:
Sylvia Elisabeth Beyer – Sylvia is a senior energy policy analyst in the IEA Energy Policy and Security Division. Since June 2012, she has been managing the country reviews and bilateral collaboration with IEA member, partner and accession countries, including Lithuania. She is also the coordinator of the IEA multilateral collaboration with the G20 and G7. Prior to the IEA, she served as policy officer at the European Commission DG Energy with a focus on gas security, energy infrastructure, EU budget and the Connecting Europe Facility. She was strongly involved in the development of a genuine EU energy policy. During 2006-2009, Sylvia worked as consultant, advising telecoms and energy network operators at APCO Worldwide and project assistant at the Union of Electricity Industry (Eurelectric) in Brussels in the project ‘Role of Electricity’. Sylvia holds a diploma in economics, a diploma in culture and business administration (Diplom-Kulturwirtin, Diplom-Volkswirtin) from Passau University in Germany and a postgraduate master in European Studies from the College of Europe.
Michael Grubb – Michael is Professor of Energy and Climate Change at University College London, following positions at Imperial College London and then Cambridge University. Since leading the Energy and Environmental Programme at Chatham House in the 1990s, his career has combined academic with half-time implementation roles. Following eight years as Chief Economist at the UK Carbon Trust, the UK’s lead organisation for business implementation, he was Senior Advisor to the UK Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (the energy regulator, Ofgem), and then Chaired the UK government’s Panel of Technical Experts on Electricity Market Reform. He has contributed to several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in 2018 was appointed as Convening Lead Author for Chapter 1 of the Sixth Assessment Report – Mitigation.
Roger Hutcheon – Roger has over ten years’ experience as an energy regulatory professional and is currently Head of Regulation working in partnership with SSE’s Renewables, Thermal and Energy Portfolio Management business units. Roger is a graduate of Edinburgh University and spent the first part of his career working in research roles in the upstream oil and gas sector. He initially joined SSE in the wholesale risk management team, focusing on market risk associated with the long term planning of dispatchable generation, before moving into regulation where he has extensive experience of assessing the commercial opportunities and risks associated with regulatory reform of both retail and wholesale markets.
Ben McWilliams – Ben is working at Bruegel as a Research Analyst in the field of climate and energy policy. He studied his BSc Economics at the University of Warwick and then studied an MSc in Economic Policy at Utrecht University. His work is focussed on objective and data-driven analysis of EU public policy, and particularly its impact on energy and climate indicators. Some examples include work on support policies for industrial decarbonisation, the impact of hydrogen on energy systems, and the impacts of the ongoing Russian energy crisis on the EU.