Course Overview
Energy is one of the organising principles of international order, a source of state power and state vulnerability, a driver of conflict and cooperation, and an increasingly contested terrain of geopolitical rivalry. This course examines the relationship between energy systems and world politics through the sustained study of two strategic regions — Eurasia and Africa — while situating regional developments within the transformations reshaping the global order: the accelerating energy transition, the rise of critical minerals, the fragmentation of supply chains, and the strategic competition between established and emerging powers.
The course is structured around major analytical questions rather than thematic surveys. Each week, students investigate a central problem in energy geopolitics using case studies, policy documents, maps, and data, building towards independent analytical and policy-oriented work.
Teaching combines seminar discussion, applied exercises, scenario analysis, and a structured simulation. Students are expected to engage seriously with international relations theory, political economy, and strategic studies as analytical tools.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Explain and critically evaluate major theoretical approaches to energy geopolitics and energy security, including realist, liberal, institutionalist, and postcolonial perspectives.
- Analyse the relationship between energy systems, state power, and patterns of international conflict and cooperation.
- Assess the strategic significance of energy infrastructure, transport corridors, and critical mineral supply chains.
- Compare the energy strategies of major global and regional powers across Eurasian and African contexts.
- Interpret and critically engage with geopolitical maps, policy documents, energy data, and strategic assessments.
- Evaluate the implications of energy transitions and climate governance for global security and international order.
- Construct independent, evidence-based analytical arguments in written and oral forms, drawing on primary and secondary sources.
- Develop strategic forecasts and policy recommendations under conditions of geopolitical uncertainty.
Assessment
- Seminar Participation and Analytical Engagement — 15%
- Analytical Development Portfolio — 35%
- Applied Exercise and Reflection — 15%
- Final Research Essay — 35%
Seminar Participation and Analytical Engagement — 15%
Students are assessed on the quality, consistency, and analytical depth of their contributions to seminar discussions throughout the semester.
Strong performance demonstrates:
- sustained engagement with weekly readings
- ability to apply theoretical and conceptual frameworks
- critical discussion of empirical cases and policy developments
- constructive engagement with the arguments of others
Students are encouraged to incorporate comparative perspectives, primary sources, and contemporary international developments into seminar discussions.
Analytical Development Portfolio — 35%
This is a two-stage analytical assignment submitted in connected parts across the semester. Part II builds explicitly on Part I, and students may revise aspects of their earlier analysis in light of feedback received before incorporating it into the second submission.
Part I: Energy Governance Case Analysis (Week 5) — 1,000 words — 15%
Students select an energy governance arrangement in either Eurasia or Africa from a list provided by the lecturer and produce a focused analytical paper examining the political, institutional, and geopolitical dimensions of the governance challenge it presents. The analysis should:
- identify the key actors, interests, and structural conditions shaping the governance arrangement
- apply at least one theoretical framework from the course to the case
- construct a clear analytical argument supported by evidence from academic and policy sources
Part II: Strategic Policy Brief (Week 8) — 1,500 words — 20%
Building on the Part I analysis, students prepare a policy brief addressed to a specified decision-making audience, which may be a government ministry, an international institution, or a strategic advisory body. The brief should:
- summarise the core energy geopolitical challenge identified in Part I
- evaluate the available policy options and their trade-offs
- assess implementation risks and alternative scenarios
- recommend a coherent strategic course of action
Students may revise their Part I analysis in light of feedback before developing the brief.
Applied Exercise and Reflection — 15%
Students participate in a multilateral energy negotiation simulation held across Weeks 10 and 11. Each student represents an assigned state, international organisation, or non-state actor in a structured scenario involving competing energy interests. Assessment has three components:
- Position paper (500 words), submitted before the simulation — 5%
- Simulation participation and negotiation conduct — 5%
- Reflective commentary (750 words), submitted after the simulation — 5%
The reflective commentary should evaluate the student’s own strategic decision-making during the exercise, the negotiation dynamics that emerged between actors, and the relationship between the theoretical frameworks studied in the course and the practical logic of the simulation. Role assignments and detailed instructions are distributed at the end of Week 7.
Final Research Essay — 35%
A research essay of 3,000 to 4,000 words addressing a substantive question in energy geopolitics. Students may develop an argument arising from any area of the course, provided they situate it clearly within the relevant theoretical debate, draw on primary sources or policy documents alongside academic scholarship, and advance an original analytical claim. A one-page essay proposal with a preliminary bibliography is submitted at the end of Week 7 for formative feedback. The final essay is due in Week 13.
Submission, Formatting Requirements and Academic Integrity
- All written work must be submitted as a PDF file, regardless of the word processor used.
- Use font at 12 points Times New Roman or Arial. Pages must be numbered. Include your name, student number, course name, assignment title, and word count on the first page; a separate cover page is not required.
- The word count stated in the assignment brief is a guide to scope and depth, not a rigid threshold. Work within 10 per cent of the stated count in either direction. The word count covers the main body of the text, including in-text citations, but excludes the reference list, any tables or figures, and any appendices.
- All written work must follow APA 7th edition throughout. In-text citations use the author-date format: (Yergin, 2020) or Yergin (2020) argues that… For direct quotations, include the page number: (Yergin, 2020, p. 47). The reference list appears at the end of the document, ordered alphabetically by surname. Do not use footnotes for references; footnotes may be used sparingly for substantive clarifications that would otherwise interrupt the argument.
- Formal policies on academic integrity and the use of AI tools vary by institution and will be communicated where applicable. The question beneath those policies does not change: is the goal to understand, or simply to appear to have understood? A qualification obtained without the knowledge it is meant to represent is a transaction, not an education, and it shortchanges the holder as much as anyone else. I invest genuine effort in connecting students to scholarship, practitioners, and professional networks that extend well beyond any syllabus. Whether that investment meets a reciprocal commitment is, in the end, a question of character rather than compliance.
Literature
- Balmaceda, M. M. (2021). Russian energy chains: The remaking of technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union. Columbia University Press.
- Epstein, A. (2022). Fossil future: Why global human flourishing requires more oil, coal, and natural gas – not less. Portfolio/Penguin.
- Gustafson, T. E. (2021). Klimat: Russia in the age of climate change. Harvard University Press.
- Högselius, P. (2019). Energy and geopolitics. Routledge.
- Scholten, D. (Ed.). (2023). Handbook on the geopolitics of the energy transition. Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Sivaram, V. (2018). Taming the sun: Innovations to harness solar energy and power the planet. MIT Press.
- Smil, V. (2017). Energy and civilization: A history (2nd ed.). MIT Press.
- Yergin, D. (2020). The new map: Energy, climate, and the clash of nations. Penguin Press.
Students are expected to work across three categories of source material:
- Academic literature provides theoretical frameworks and empirical analysis.
- Policy documents — from governments, international organisations, think tanks, and energy agencies — provide the primary material through which energy geopolitics is actually practised and debated.
- Energy data, produced by bodies such as the International Energy Agency, the US Energy Information Administration, and the African Development Bank, provides the empirical foundations for strategic assessment.
Learning to read across all three, and to identify the assumptions, interests, and limitations embedded in each, is itself a core intellectual skill of the course.
Research articles do not appear in the bibliography above. This is intentional. Each week, students are expected to identify a peer-reviewed article relevant to that week’s topic, bring it to the seminar, and share it with the group. The lecturer contributes selections alongside the class. This practice develops independent literature-searching habits, exposes the seminar to a wider range of scholarly perspectives than any fixed reading list could provide, and keeps the course in sustained contact with current debates in the field.
Structure
Week 1 — Why does energy matter in international politics?
Energy has shaped the trajectory of states, empires, and alliances for over a century, yet it remains undertheorised in mainstream international relations. This week establishes the foundational analytical vocabulary of the course: energy security, strategic dependence, resource power, and the relationship between energy systems and international order. Students examine how the organisation of global energy has evolved from coal to oil to the contested pluralism of today, and why both Eurasia and Africa have emerged as structurally central to global energy geopolitics in the twenty-first century.
Key Themes
- Energy as a source of state power and strategic vulnerability
- The concept of energy security: definitions, dimensions, and debates
- The historical evolution of global energy systems
- Eurasian and African energy in the context of multipolarity
Case Studies
- The 1973 oil crisis and the weaponisation of energy
- European energy dependence and its political consequences
Seminar Exercise
- Map reading and strategic geography: students identify and interpret major energy regions, chokepoints, and corridors on geopolitical maps, and discuss what the geography of energy tells us about the distribution of international power.
Analytical Focus
- Reading geopolitical maps; identifying strategic energy regions; introducing the concept of energy security
Week 2 — Do energy resources create geopolitical power?
The relationship between resource endowment and geopolitical influence is neither automatic nor straightforward. Some resource-rich states translate their assets into durable strategic leverage; others do not. This week examines the theoretical foundations of energy geopolitics, asking how different IR traditions understand the relationship between energy and power. Realist accounts emphasise material competition and strategic vulnerability; liberal approaches stress interdependence and institutional constraints; postcolonial and critical perspectives draw attention to structural inequalities in who controls, who profits from, and who is excluded from global energy systems.
Key Themes
- Realism, liberalism, institutionalism, and critical IR in energy geopolitics
- Resource nationalism and energy interdependence
- The limits of resource power
- Structural inequality in global energy governance
Case Studies
- Russian gas diplomacy in Europe: leverage, dependence, and miscalculation
- Gulf hydrocarbon influence and the politics of OPEC
Seminar Exercise
- Theoretical debate workshop: students are assigned IR perspectives and argue how their assigned framework explains a given energy geopolitical episode, then critically evaluate the limits of that explanation.
Analytical Focus
- Applying theoretical frameworks to case studies; identifying the assumptions and blind spots of competing IR perspectives
Week 3 — Is oil still the foundation of global power?
Oil has organised the international political economy for over a century and remains embedded in the architecture of global power in ways that renewable energy transitions have yet to displace. This week examines the political economy of global oil markets, the strategic logic of petrostates, and how the American shale revolution has redistributed energy power in ways that complicate older accounts of resource dependence. The case of Saudi Arabia illuminates the intersection of energy statecraft, regime stability, and foreign policy alignment.
Key Themes
- Global oil markets: structure, volatility, and strategic significance
- OPEC and the politics of energy diplomacy
- Maritime oil transport and chokepoint vulnerability
- Petrostates: resource wealth and political power
Case Studies
- Saudi Arabia: energy statecraft and Vision 2030
- The United States shale revolution and its geopolitical consequences
Seminar Exercise
- Market analysis exercise: students interpret energy market data and production trend charts, drawing conclusions about geopolitical implications and identifying the limits of market-based explanations.
Analytical Focus
- Interpreting energy market trends; connecting economic data to political analysis
Week 4 — Who controls the arteries of the global energy system?
Infrastructure is the physical dimension of energy geopolitics. Pipelines, terminals, maritime corridors, and electricity grids are not neutral technical systems; they encode political relationships, create dependencies, and constitute targets in geopolitical competition. This week examines the strategic geography of energy infrastructure, from the pipeline politics of post-Soviet Eurasia to the LNG revolution that has partially transformed the terms of European and Asian energy security. The Nord Stream sabotage of 2022 illustrates how infrastructure has become a domain of hybrid warfare.
Key Themes
- Pipelines and the politics of energy corridors
- LNG trade routes and maritime vulnerability
- Critical infrastructure as a geopolitical instrument and target
- Hybrid warfare and energy system sabotage
Case Studies
- The Nord Stream pipelines: history, destruction, and geopolitical significance
- Strait of Hormuz and Suez Canal as maritime chokepoints
- Post-Soviet pipeline politics in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Seminar Exercise
- Infrastructure vulnerability mapping: students analyse a set of pipeline and maritime infrastructure diagrams, identify key vulnerabilities and dependencies, and assess the geopolitical implications of disruption.
Analytical Focus
- Infrastructure mapping and analysis; identifying structural dependencies in energy systems
Week 5 — Do energy resources cause conflict?
The resource curse literature identified a troubling pattern: states with abundant natural resources tend towards political instability, authoritarianism, and violent conflict. The causal mechanisms are contested, and the empirical record is more complicated than early formulations suggested. This week examines the relationship between energy resources and armed conflict in the African context, distinguishing between resource competition as a cause of conflict, as a means of financing conflict, and as a target of insurgent strategy. The cases of Nigeria, Libya, and South Sudan offer analytically distinct pathways from resource endowment to political violence.
Key Themes
- The resource curse: mechanisms, critiques, and qualifications
- Energy and civil war: financing, targeting, and grievance
- Insurgency, sabotage, and infrastructure vulnerability
- External intervention and energy interests
Case Studies
- Nigeria and the Niger Delta: resource wealth and armed contestation
- Libya: energy governance in a fragmented state
- Sudan and South Sudan: oil, secession, and renewed conflict
Seminar Exercise
- Conflict analysis workshop: students map the actors, interests, and mechanisms linking energy resources to political violence in one case study, and assess what policy interventions, if any, might break the cycle.
Analytical Focus
- Conflict analysis; tracing causal mechanisms from resource endowment to political outcomes
Week 6 — Why is energy inequality a geopolitical issue?
More than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack reliable access to electricity. This is not simply a development failure; it is a geopolitical condition. Energy poverty constrains state capacity, limits economic diversification, and shapes the terms on which African states engage with external energy investors. This week examines the relationship between energy access, development, and political stability, and asks how the frameworks of energy justice and the global South reframe standard accounts of energy security that tend to privilege the concerns of consuming states in the global North.
Key Themes
- Energy poverty as a structural geopolitical condition
- Development, electrification, and state capacity
- Global North and Global South dynamics in energy governance
- Energy justice: ethical and political dimensions
Case Studies
- Energy access in sub-Saharan Africa: patterns, causes, and consequences
- Rural electrification projects: design, governance, and political economy
- The ethics of carbon inequality in climate debates
Seminar Exercise
- Structured policy debate: students argue competing positions on whether international energy financing institutions serve or undermine African energy sovereignty, drawing on governance frameworks and empirical evidence.
Analytical Focus
- Comparative development analysis; connecting energy access to governance and political stability
Week 7 — Can major powers shape the global energy order?
Energy diplomacy is one of the most consequential instruments of great power foreign policy. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has restructured infrastructure financing across Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia in ways that challenge Western-led development norms. Russia has historically weaponised its energy assets as instruments of political coercion. The United States has oscillated between energy multilateralism and competitive energy statecraft, particularly following the shale revolution. This week examines how each major power understands its energy interests and how their competing strategies are reshaping the energy order.
Key Themes
- Energy diplomacy and foreign policy
- China’s energy strategy: Belt and Road, financing, and geopolitical positioning
- Russian energy strategy: leverage, coercion, and the limits of resource power
- United States energy security policy: from dependence to competition
Case Studies
- China’s Belt and Road energy corridors in Africa and Central Asia
- Russia’s energy relations with Europe before and after 2022
- United States LNG strategy and its diplomatic uses
Seminar Exercise
- Strategic influence mapping: students construct an influence map for one major power in a specific energy region, identifying the instruments of energy diplomacy used and assessing their effectiveness.
Analytical Focus
- Foreign policy analysis; evaluating the instruments and limits of energy statecraft
Week 8 — Will the green transition change global geopolitics?
The decarbonisation of the global economy is not simply a technical or environmental project; it is a profound reorganisation of the material foundations of international power. States that built their wealth and influence on fossil fuel exports face existential strategic questions. States that dominate the manufacturing of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles have acquired new forms of industrial and geopolitical leverage. The European Union’s Green Deal has been simultaneously an environmental, industrial, and foreign policy strategy. This week examines the geopolitical winners and losers of the energy transition and asks whether the shift to renewables will produce a more stable or more contested international order.
Key Themes
- Renewable energy systems and the redistribution of geopolitical power
- Green industrial competition and strategic autonomy
- The politics of decarbonisation: domestic and international dimensions
- Energy transition and the future of fossil fuel states
Case Studies
- The European Union Green Deal: energy security and strategic autonomy
- China’s dominance in solar manufacturing and battery supply chains
- Gulf state diversification strategies and post-oil futures
Seminar Exercise
- Comparative policy analysis: students evaluate the energy transition strategies of two states or regions using a common analytical framework, drawing conclusions about geopolitical implications.
Analytical Focus
- Policy evaluation; assessing the strategic consequences of energy transition choices
Week 9 — Are critical minerals the new oil?
The green energy transition requires vast quantities of lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and rare earth elements. The geographic concentration of these resources — in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chile, Indonesia, and China’s processing facilities — has created new strategic dependencies that mirror, in some respects, the oil dependencies of the twentieth century. Resource nationalism is returning to the critical minerals sector. The governance of extraction, processing, and trade in these materials is emerging as one of the central geopolitical contests of the coming decades.
Key Themes
- Critical minerals: strategic importance, geographic distribution, and supply chain structure
- Resource nationalism in the minerals sector
- Governance of extraction: state capacity, foreign investment, and sovereignty
- Technological dependency and strategic vulnerability
Case Studies
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo: cobalt, governance, and geopolitical competition
- Chile and lithium: national strategy and external pressure
- China’s mineral processing dominance and its leverage implications
Seminar Exercise
- Critical mineral supply chain workshop: students map the full supply chain for a specified mineral from extraction to end-use, identify key vulnerabilities and governance gaps, and assess policy options for supply chain resilience.
Analytical Focus
- Supply chain mapping; integrating governance and geopolitical analysis
Week 10 — Can climate diplomacy manage geopolitical risk?
Climate change is not only an environmental crisis; it is also a source of geopolitical instability, a driver of resource competition, and a domain in which the tensions between major power rivalry and multilateral cooperation are particularly acute. The COP process has produced significant agreements and significant disappointments, with the gap between stated commitments and implemented policy remaining a structural feature of climate governance. This week examines climate diplomacy as a form of international politics, asking how geopolitical interests, institutional structures, and power asymmetries shape what is and is not possible in multilateral climate negotiations.
Key Themes
- Climate governance: institutions, negotiations, and implementation gaps
- Climate change as a geopolitical risk multiplier
- Water-energy-food nexus and regional instability
- Arctic energy politics and the geopolitics of melting ice
Case Studies
- COP negotiations: structure, dynamics, and limitations
- The Sahel: climate stress, governance failure, and geopolitical competition
- Arctic energy resources and great power positioning
Seminar Exercise
- Multilateral negotiation simulation (Part One): students represent assigned actors in a structured climate-energy negotiation, advancing their position papers and engaging with competing proposals.
Analytical Focus
- Risk assessment; multilateral negotiation dynamics; integrating climate and geopolitical analysis
Week 11 — Can Africa avoid neo-extractive dependency?
Africa sits at the intersection of several converging geopolitical pressures: it holds a significant share of the world’s critical mineral reserves, its energy systems remain chronically underdeveloped, and it is the arena of intensifying strategic competition between China, Russia, the United States, the Gulf states, and the European Union. The risk of neo-extractive dependency — in which African states supply raw materials to external powers while capturing little of the value generated — is real and contested. This week examines African agency in energy and mineral diplomacy, assessing the institutional, political, and strategic resources available to African states and regional bodies as they navigate a multipolar order on their own terms.
Key Themes
- Africa in a multipolar order: strategic competition and African agency
- Mozambique LNG and the politics of external investment
- Algerian gas diplomacy and the leverage of proximity to Europe
- Gulf investment in African energy and its political economy
- Pan-African frameworks and collective energy sovereignty
Case Studies
- Mozambique: LNG development, governance failure, and insurgency
- Algeria: energy statecraft and EU dependency
- Gulf investment in African renewables and hydrocarbons
Seminar Exercise
- Multilateral negotiation simulation (Part Two) and reflective presentation: students continue the simulation from Week 10, reach or fail to reach negotiated outcomes, then deliver individual five-minute reflective presentations on their strategic experience.
Analytical Focus
- Comparative geopolitical analysis; assessing African agency in energy diplomacy; connecting institutional frameworks to strategic outcomes
Week 12 — What will energy security look like in 2050?
Strategic forecasting is not prediction. It is the disciplined examination of how present trends, structural conditions, and plausible disruptions might combine to produce different geopolitical futures. This week uses energy geopolitics as a lens through which to examine the challenge of reasoning under uncertainty. Students consider the implications of artificial intelligence for energy demand, the vulnerabilities introduced by smart grids and cybersecurity threats, the potential of hydrogen economies to redistribute energy power, and the scenarios in which the green transition either stabilises or further destabilises international order.
Key Themes
- Artificial intelligence, data centres, and surging energy demand
- Cybersecurity and energy system vulnerability
- Hydrogen economies: potential, limitations, and geopolitical implications
- Strategic forecasting: methods, assumptions, and the limits of prediction
Case Studies
- Smart grid vulnerabilities and state-sponsored cyber operations
- Hydrogen diplomacy: the EU, Gulf states, and African producers
- Scenarios for energy geopolitics in a post-fossil-fuel order
Seminar Exercise
- Futures and scenario workshop: students work in teams to construct and present two contrasting geopolitical scenarios for global energy security in 2050, specifying the key variables, driving forces, and strategic implications of each.
Analytical Focus
- Strategic forecasting; scenario construction; synthesising the analytical frameworks developed across the course
*** This course is designed to be adaptable. The weekly structure, assessment components, and reading load can be adjusted to suit the requirements of a particular higher education institution or the context of individual tutoring, and can be scaled to meet the demands of bachelor’s and master’s degree students alike. The analytical framework and intellectual ambitions of the course remain constant; the format is a starting point, not a constraint.
Updated – May 2026