Classic resource wars are good material for Hollywood screenwriters. They rarely occur in the real world.

For further discussion of the below article, also visit Debating Disaster: The World Is Not Enough at the National Interest.

PESD has concluded a two year collaborative study on the Indian natural gas market with the Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe). The study explores gas demand to the year 2025 in nitrogenous fertilizer production under a range of different policy and economic scenarios.

For the fertilizer sector, significant opportunities exist to import cheap fertilizer, thereby reducing domestic gas demand, but political constraints will likely buoy gas demand. Industrial consumers will benefit from increased supplies from LNG to displace expensive liquid fuels, but cheap coal remains the dominant fuel for many industrial applications.

PESD has concluded a two year collaborative study on the Indian natural gas market with the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad. The study explores gas demand to the year 2025 in the electricity sector under a range of different policy and economic scenarios.

The study concludes that coal is likely to remain the dominant fuel in the power sector, but opportunities exist for gas in reducing regional air pollution and providing peaking power.

Regional air pollution constraints in the power sector - already underway in certain parts of India could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 100 million tonnes per year. Reforms underway in the Indian coal sector, however, could bring a surge in new supplies, which would undermine the opportunities for gas in the power sector.

PESD has concluded a two year collaborative study on the Indian natural gas market with three India research groups- A.T. Kearney, Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad, and Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe). The study explores gas demand to the year 2025 in the three main gas consuming sectors within India - electricity generation, nitrogenous fertilizer production, and industrial applications - under a range of different policy and economic scenarios.

The study concludes that coal is likely to remain the dominant fuel in the power sector, but opportunities exist for gas in reducing regional air pollution and providing peaking power. For the fertilizer sector, significant opportunities exist to import cheap fertilizer, thereby reducing domestic gas demand, but political constraints will likely buoy gas demand. Industrial consumers will benefit from increased supplies from LNG to displace expensive liquid fuels, but cheap coal remains the dominant fuel for many industrial applications.

Regional air pollution constraints in the power sector - already underway in certain parts of India could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 100 million tonnes per year. Reforms underway in the Indian coal sector, however, could bring a surge in new supplies, which would undermine the opportunities for gas in the power sector.

From an international supply standpoint, India doesn't appear able to guarantee the offtake of a proposed large natural gas pipeline from Iran within the next 10-15 years, making the project very difficult to justify from a financial risk standpoint.

PESD collaborators David Victor and Danny Cullenward published a new piece in Scientific American on lessons learned from efforts to build institutions to control emissions of greenhouse gases. Their study looks especially closely at the EU experience and applies some lessons to the budding US regulatory system.

Published in the December issue of the magazine, along with a longer and more detailed essay online.

Stanford Law School Professor and director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, David Victor, authors the book chapter "Fragmented carbon markets and reluctant nations: implications for the design of effective architectures" in the recently published book by the Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard.

With increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we are embarked on an unprecedented experiment with an uncertain outcome for the future of the planet. The Kyoto Protocol serves as an initial step through 2012 to mitigate the threats posed by global climate change but policy-makers, scholars, businessmen, and environmentalists have begun debating the structure of the successor to the Kyoto agreement. Written by a team of leading scholars in economics, law and international relations, this book contributes to this debate by examining the merits of six alternative international architectures for climate policy.

PESD has been studying the emerging global market for natural gas through a series of closely integrated research projects. The topics of these studies range from focusing on the geopolitical implications of a shift to a global gas market, the factors that affect gas pricing and flows as LNG links the U.S. and European markets across the Atlantic basin, and how gas projects fare in privately-owned independent power projects (IPPs) in emerging markets.

One of the open questions in all these studies concerned China--the country uses relatively small amounts of gas now but could use much more in the future. The role of natural gas in the Chinese economy is of critical import both domestically and for global energy and environmental issues. The competition between coal and natural gas in this market has tremendous implications for local air pollution and for climate change. Rising demand for imported gas in China will also shape the LNG market in the Pacific Basin and could lead to the construction of major international pipeline projects to monetize gas supplies in Russia and the Middle East. The present paper is one in a series that looks at the Chinese market in detail.