Energy Security and Decarbonisation: Interactions in Energy Policy Making

Expert Interviews

The decarbonisation and energy transition strategies adopted with the German Energiewende and the European 2050 decarbonisation strategy (‘European Green Deal’) is largely seen as a win-win situation: It will reduce greenhouse gases and increase supply security at the same time. This strategy will highly influence energy relations and trades with countries in the MENA region, notably the GCC countries. Here, the German and European strive for phasing out oil consumption in transport and stronger diversification of gas supply cause serious economic concerns as they question traditional business models. In addition, they raise the question on substituting oil and gas sales by cooperation on other energy carriers and projects such as renewable energies, energy efficiency, clean mobility or smart cities. So far, these future cooperation avenues have been little investigated in scientific literature.

The project managed to retrieve a considerable stock of data: Through Social Media readout, some 200,000 Twitter messages could be analyzed, adding to online survey feedback from 20 expert stakeholders. Using event study methodology, stock reactions in the automotive, oil, and Greentech sectors were analyzed in a comparative study for Germany, the EU, and the MENA region. It emerges that the oil markets reacted only sluggishly to the Green Deal announcement. In contrast, Greentech shares across all regions reacted significantly positively, underlining that markets see a strong potential future cooperation between Germany and Arab countries in this field. The research project is followed up by the Tandem Project between Marc Ringel and Djamel Djenouri (2022) investigating the acceptance of Green Hydrogen production in Egypt.