Decades of cooperation between the United States and its Middle Eastern partners have come to a turning point. The 2008 Shale Revolution has brought the United States heretofore unknown scale of energy independece. The Revolution has created an unprecedented increase in United States' unconventional cost-effectively extractable energy reserves. It is estimated that within next two decades the United States should change from net importer of hydrocarbons to net exporter. There is a lot of speculation, whether due to possible energy independece, the foreign policy towards its Middle Eastern partners would change and whether the United States would isolate itself. Aim of this work is to explore the impact of the Shale Revolution on energy security of the United States and its implications for future geopolitics towards the Middle East. The main question to be explored is whether it would change United States' geopolitics at all and if yes, how would it look like. Since domestic oil prices are based on global energy prices and since Middle Eastern partners are unique in their capability of supplying global energy markets with large quantities of oil in the long run, even after the Shale Revolution it will be essential for the United States to continue its cooperation with its Middle Eastern partners....

Energy security is currently a favourite topic. It is being talked about in the context of several conflicts in Third World countries that, due to the supply of energy raw materials such as oil and gas, affect the rest of the world. For some states, however, the issue of ensuring energy security is a more vital. Some states, such as the Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, are dependent on supplies of fossil fuels from neighbouring countries. Moreover, up until recently their energy markets have not been liberalized, nor connected to the rest of the Europe. It is a well-known fact that the Russian Federation is the main supplier of these raw materials to them. Therefore, the Baltic states have been trying to reduce the influence of the Russian Federation in the Baltic region since they regained independence 26 years ago. This diploma thesis deals with the analysis of the energy security of all three Baltic countries. The thesis carefully analyses all aspects of their energy sector. It examines the historical development of the region, thanks to which we can understand the influence of the Russian Federation on the Baltics energy sector, as well as the level of international cooperation of the Baltic states with the EU in ensuring energy security. The analysis also focus on the...

Practically every single state sees energy security as one of the main security and political topics nowadays. Its significance is on the rise. Although there is a continuous progress regarding renewable sources of energy, the world remains largely dependent on non- renewable resources. They are unevenly distributed across the world, especially in case of oil and natural gas. This results in dividing the countries between importers and exporters. This diploma thesis focuses on energy cooperation or more precisely on motivations for energy cooperation between member states of the Visegrad group. These four Central European countries share some similarities. In energy area they all are the importers of both oil and gas and they rely on the Russian Federation as their main supplier. Energy cooperation within the Visegrad group is usually explained by two theoretical approaches - realism or neoliberal institutionalism. This thesis introduces these approaches and works with a hypothesis that energy cooperation between the member states of the Visegrad group is best explained by neoliberal institutionalism. The thesis represents a qualitative study and uses the method of a comparative case study. The analytic part of the thesis is divided into four case studies regarding each member state of the V4....

This thesis focuses on analyzing the themes that arise from the Finnish energy discourse between the years of 2009-2018. Finland is completely dependent on Russian gas, but as a member state of the European Union (EU), it should consider reducing this dependence and moving towards a common energy policy as a key objective. The EU has struggled to project itself as a unified whole to the global community owing to the fragmented nature of its decision-making regarding the use and procurement of energy. This results in EU member states having bilateral energy relations with Russia. Energy policies differ depending on the member state, also the geographical location of a state plays a significant role. As energy consumption rapidly rises and climate change becomes increasingly evident, non-fossil sources of energy must be taken into use. The development of technology along with the use of renewable forms of energy will further facilitate the battle against climate change. In order for the EU to succeed in one of its major objectives becoming independent in energy matters, it requires to further increase the internal cooperation between member states and to develop an even further consistent energy strategy. With the combination of the chosen theories together with examining the collected research data...

Within the current epoch, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is challenged more than ever. The axiomatic values established in the post-Cold War era from the Western Liberal block are faced once again with antithetic narratives, reflecting strong elements of authoritarianism and dogmatic positions. This time however, the threat is coming from within. Turkey's stance after the 2016 military coup is steadily developing a rift not only with the European Union, but NATO as well.

As the world's largest energy consumer and producer, China is the leading player of the international energy arena. Among other important achievements, China has become the world's largest wind power market as well as largest producer of hydroelectricity and solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity. In recent years China has been at the centre of almost every work stream within the International Energy Agency (IEA), and many other international energy organizations. This thesis aims to understand what role China can and will play in global energy governance by examining how its domestic energy context shapes the country's attitudes toward the multilateral, market and climate change aspects of global energy governance. China's recent re-emergence has resulted in a significant increase in the global demand of commodities and is already having major impacts on the dynamics of global commodity markets. In the case of the global uranium market, we are at the very beginning of a new era in the global energy system. However, we can already observe interesting trends. My research question will be," How China's search for supplies changes and influences its role in the global energy governance? "

Legal aspects of alternative fuels' use in transport Abstract What connects solar energy, palm oil and the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline? All these topics have one common denominator, i.e. alternative fuels. This group of fuels, which is represented by electricity, hydrogen or biomethane, has the ambition to replace fossil fuels and reduce the negative environmental effects of the sectors of the economy where fossil fuels are used - in transport and energy. This thesis focuses on the transport sector and pursues two lines. The first part of the text examines, by using the example of biofuels, natural gas and electricity, whether and to what extent alternative fuels fulfill the purpose of the alternative in relation to oil-based fuels. The principle of energy security and the principle of sustainable development in its environmental and economic aspects are used as a benchmark. In the second part, this thesis pays attention to legal instruments that determine the future of alternative fuels. Specifically, emission limits for passenger cars and light-duty vehicles and financial support for alternative fuels at all stages of their life cycle are analyzed. The purpose of this work is to capture the momentum of the ongoing legislative development in the field of alternative fuels, to try to...

Access to electricity is a scarcity throughout sub-Saharan African countries. The region currently has the lowestrate of energy access in the world and a total of 13 countries have an electrification rate of 25%. Comprehensiveenergy security is regarded as essential to obtaining sustainable and economic development in which access toaffordable and clean energy is part of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Agenda 2030.A country in the region that has had some sporadic success with electrification and unique developments withrenewable energy, is Ethiopia. Despite the significant overall increase of access to electricity over the past twodecades, the country still has an electrification rate that barely covers half of the population. An aspect that isviewed to have an impact on increased electrification and successful transitioning of deploying renewableenergy, is the use and presence of strong policies. Several researchers and scholars have explored the effect thatpolicy has on increased electrification and how they are useful for promoting renewable energy. This researchaims to investigate the role of policy for electrification via renewables in Ethiopia. The objective of the thesisis to explore sustainable development in terms of energy development, how climate change and economicdevelopment is tackled, and what specific influences shape the energy outlook of Ethiopia. A case study wasconducted which combined two different methods; content analysis of policy documents and semi-structuredinterviews with experts from various fields in which the data was triangulated in order to gain valuableperspectives and insights. The findings showcase that policy developments do seem to have an influence onincreased electrification and sustainable energy transitioning to some extent, with other factors also playing arole. Thus, this research will contribute to how sustainable development can be understood from the context ofenergy policy of a global south nation and provide insights which can further be elaborated on how policies canbe utilized for successful energy developments in other countries in the region.

This thesis identifies the potential threats and impacts posed by climate change on the relationship between water availability and the Polish energy transformation sector. In doing so, the objective is to uncover and assess how vulnerable these components are to climate change. Poland provides an interesting case in a European context as the country’s energy sector is largely fueled by hard coal, and its established thermal power plant fleet requires large volumes of water at particular temperatures to operate at full capacity (Kosowski et al. 2019). Climate change is predicted to cause variations in temperature and precipitation which is likely to affect water availability (Schaeffer et al. 2012). This is set to place further strain on the relationship betweenwater and thermal power plant operation. In addition, Poland has some of the smallest freshwater resources available per capita in the European Union and the country has already witnessed an increase in droughts and heatwaves which have had negative impacts on electricity generation (Manowska & Rybak 2018; Olszewski2015). The concern for Poland then is that climate change threatens the energy transformation sectors’ ability to provide access to electricity by continuing to affect water availability. To investigate this, the study conducted a vulnerability assessment that aimed to identify climate change exposure through the analysis of different climate models. A content analysis of relevant literature was used to identify potential climate change threats. To place the assessment in the Polish context, a case study was conducted on 14 hard coal thermal power plants located throughout the country. The data gathered from the case study was then evaluated and discussed in relation to the conceptual framework. The results found that climate change is indeed causing higher airtemperatures which is likely to cause higher water temperatures as well as more extreme weather events. These trends are expected to continue well beyond 2050. Regarding water availability, it was more challenging to identify a significant change in precipitation trends but periods of intense rainfall and increases in mean watertemperatures were observed. The thesis concluded that it is difficult to predict the exact degree of vulnerability of water availability and thermoelectric power operation. It does however recognize that there is a clear relationship between water availability and the functioning of thermal power plants. Therefore, it can be said that climate change will, to a certain extent, expose the two components to further vulnerabilities. Yet, further in-depth research is required to improve the reliability of the results.

This master thesis called "Germany as an energopolitical player" deals with the problem of energy security of Germany, with the evolution of German energy policy from 1988, it means from the start of Gerhard Shroeder's chancellor period, till nowadays. The aim of this thesis is to determine whether the German energy policy, which is characterized by the energy partnership between Germany and Russia, hinders a closer integration of European energy policy (EEP) which aims at the formation of a unified EU energy policy. Therefore the interdependence of Russia and Germany, its advantages as well as disadvantages, are analyzed. Part of this work tries to analyze also the positions of German political parties (or factional groups) on the issues of energy security of Germany, as well as the possible change of the Russian-German partnership in the context of the start of Angela Merkel's chancellor period. The economic dimension of this partnership cannot be left behind as well, because there are also many private energy companies, which have a huge impact on the shape of German energy policy. Therefore, also the role of these private actors is analyzed.