UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A workshop focusing on the rise of cross-border electricity interconnections — and the high stake challenges they introduce — will be held from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m on Monday, April 15, in 603 Barron Innovation Hub. The workshop will also be available online via Zoom.
Moderated by Chiara Lo Prete, associate professor of energy economics at Penn State, the workshop, “The Geopolitics of Cross-border Electricity Grids” will feature a 12-person panel of policy and academic experts who will discuss the implications of increased international electricity trade implications in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as the impact on research.
The registration deadline is Monday, April 1. A $10 registration fee is required; however, Penn State students can attend for free by using the "geostudent100" promo code. The workshop is open to Penn State faculty, staff, students and alumni. Lunch and light breakfast options will be provided.
According to Lo Prete, Russia’s attacks on the electricity system in Ukraine have raised the level of concern about this new geopolitical energy challenge. The workshop will focus on the tensions between the benefits of grid stability and the improved, cost-efficient dispatching of electricity versus risk factors such as potential electricity coercion or attacks. The geopolitical benefits countries experience by hosting electricity trading hubs, or conversely, the benefits to countries that could threaten such hubs, will also be covered.
Lo Prete stressed that the United States must consider how the increased role of energy trade “by wire” changes its ability to defend global energy security via its energy exports and leadership role in key regional alliance systems.
“Despite the growing importance of cross-border electricity flows, the geopolitical relevance of electricity trade has traditionally been underestimated,” said Lo Prete. “Many argue that physical interconnection and re-routing possibilities in electricity grids leave little room for direct geopolitical pressure. However, power asymmetry can exist in specific instances and could proliferate as more nations link grids. Further, cutting these electric interconnections may pose a more serious risk than fossil fuel disruptions, given the challenges in storing electricity in large quantities. This workshop will look at all the nuances of cross-border electricity interconnections and how regions across the globe will navigate the upcoming opportunities and challenges of a more electrified world.”
The workshop is hosted by the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in partnership with the Center for Security Research and Education and the Center for Energy Law and Policy.
Panelists Include:
- Margarita Balmaceda, professor of diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall University
Balmaceda has conducted research in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova and Hungary with the goal of studying energy and resource politics from the “inside.” Her latest book, “Russian Energy Chains: the Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union,” received the Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize and the Ed A. Hewett Book Prize. She spent 2022-23 at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany through a Fulbright Fellowship. She is concurrently an associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. - Alvin Camba, assistant professor the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver
Camba is also a faculty affiliate at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy’sClimate Policy Lab at Tufts University. His research has been awarded multiple best research paper awards by several academic networks and has been published in top development and political economy journals. He has contributed to widely circulated policy papers on China’s activities in Southeast Asia. He also has been cited and/or interviewed by the Financial Times, Bloomberg and NPR. Most recently, Camba is part of Responsible Public Engagement project at the Korbel School, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, to investigate China’s disinformation strategies and investments in rare earths. - Songying Fang, associate professor of political science at Rice University
Fang specializes in international relations and her research areas include global governance, territorial disputes, military alliances, great power competition and public opinion on foreign policy. She applies both game-theoretic and survey experimental analysis in her research. Her work has appeared in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics and British Journal of Political Science. She has received prestigious fellowships from Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and has served on the editorial board of leading political science and international relations journals such as American Political Science Review, International Organization and Chinese Journal of International Politics. - Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University's School of Professional Studies
Jaffe is a research professor who teaches graduate level courses examining global climate finance, clean tech innovation and business and energy and climate policy. Jaffe is the author of several books and regular contributor to “The Energy Gang” podcast and a frequent commentator in the New York Times, Financial Times of London and the Wall Street Journal. Jaffe holds a career prize in energy economics from the U.S. Association for Energy Economics. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations where she served as the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment and director of the program on Energy Security and Climate Change from 2017 to 2020. - Ira Joseph, senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University
Before joining Columbia University, Joseph was the global head of global generating fuels and electric power pricing at S&P Global Platts. Prior to his pricing role, he was global head of Gas and Power Analytics at Platts. Joseph joined S&P Global Platts during the acquisition of PIRA Energy Group in 2016, where he started the firm’s European Gas and Power and Global LNG services in 1999. Before PIRA, he worked at Energy Intelligence Group, where he was the editor in chief of World Gas Intelligence and authored versions of the “International Crude Oil Handbook” and the original “Global Gas Handbook.” - Chloé Le Coq, professor of economics at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas
Le Coq is also a research fellow at both the Stockholm School of Economics’ Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). Her research investigates topics related to industrial organization, law and economics, with a specific emphasis on energy markets and regulation. Her recent work includes empirical studies on nuclear safety, technology-mix competition, discourse patterns among B-Corp certified companies and energy security issues. - Ted Loch-Temzelides, George and Cynthia Mitchell Professor in Sustainable Development at Rice University
Loch-Temzelides is also Rice Scholar in Energy Studies in Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. He is currently a visiting research scholar at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University. He conducts interdisciplinary research using mathematical modeling to guide science-based policy. His current work concentrates on policies to enhance resilience and mitigate risks resulting from emerging infectious diseases and from climate change. He also studies the role of incentives in sustainability and conservation, and applications of economics principles to ecology. - David R. Mares, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego
Mares currently is a nonresident scholar for Latin American Energy Studies at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. He was awarded the Alfred Stepan Lifetime Achievement Award by the Latin American Studies Association in Defense, Public Security and Democracy in 2021. He has been a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; and held a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs. His current research project analyzes the variations in how Latin American countries are confronting the transition to a low carbon energy future. - Anna B. Mikulska, research staff member at the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI), a federally funded research and development center operated by the Institute for Defense Analyses
Mikulska has a background in political science, international relations and law. Prior to joining STPI, she was a fellow in energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute, where she co-led the Program on Energy and Geopolitics in Eurasia, and a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She is focused on markets and geopolitics of energy, including the use of natural gas as a geoeconomic tool and the role of U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas in the context of domestic and international energy security. - Joseph Webster, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center
Webster works on energy geopolitics and leads the center’s efforts on Chinese energy security, offshore wind and hydrogen. He specializes in energy geopolitics and previously worked as an energy consultant at an energy firm in Houston. Parallel to his energy work, Webster is editor of the China-Russia Report, an independent, non-partisan newsletter exploring developments in Sino-Russian relations. His energy and geopolitical analyses have been published in Axios, Politico, Politico Europe and the Wall Street Journal. - Abay Yimere, postdoctoral scholar at the Climate Policy Lab at the Fletcher School, at Tufts University.
Yimere’s research investigates policy barriers and drivers for renewable energy adoption, with interests in climate finance, low-carbon economic development and energy access and transition. Prior to joining the lab, Yimere worked extensively in sustainable development, green growth, climate finance and climate change. Currently, Yimere is engaged in researching the geopolitics of renewable energies, particularly within the context of the DRC-Zambia Integrated Battery and Electric Vehicle Value Chain.