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.

National oil companies (NOCs) appear resurgent in the global energy markets and now control a sizeable majority of the world's oil and gas reserves. Their performance therefore plays a key role in these markets and has implications for the supply of oil and gas resources. This paper analyzes available macro-level data on oil and gas companies in order to quantitatively compare the performance of NOCs with international oil companies (IOCs) including the global majors. Due to performance shortcomings or government-dictated strategies that differ from those of purely profit-maximizing enterprises, NOCs are seen to extract resources far less efficiently than IOCs. Much of the oil and gas reserves in NOC hands are thus effectively "dead." At the same time, NOC performance is far from monolithic - some national oil companies are able to perform at or near the level of the global majors, while others fall significantly short.

Despite over a century of investment in electric power systems, there are roughly 1.6 billion people who lack access to electricity service, mainly in rural areas. While there are some open questions regarding the precise cause and effect relationships between rural electrification and human welfare, it is generally considered an important social, economic, and political priority to provide electricity to all.

Rural electrification is a challenging task because it involves delivery of a service to populations that are remote and dispersed and whose consumption is low. This means it is generally more expensive while at the same time the customer base is generally poorer and less able to pay the full cost of service. Combine these factors with utilities that are often poorly managed and have limited finances, and it is often not feasible to expect extension of the grid to unserved rural populations in the near future. Such conditions are also challenging for the development of new renewable energy technology markets.

This paper discusses the role that electricity plays in the development process and its importance in rural areas; the contest between centralized and distributed solutions and their relative competitiveness; the previous experience and research on distributed generation and which business models fare successful; and broader lessons that can be extracted from the work.

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.

The performance of China's national system of innovation has improved since reforms began in 1978, but reform impact by sector is not well characterized. This case study dentifies factors affecting patterns of technological innovation and adoption in eight industries in China's energy sector (coal, oil and non-conventional hydrocarbons, natural gas, nuclear power, electric power, renewable sources, automobiles, and motor systems).

Innovation performance is strongest in industries that have experienced institutional transformation and growing market competition, whereas in industries where the pre-reform legacy of central control, weak intellectual property protection, and low levels of corporate R&D persists, innovation is lagging. Government initiatives to mitigate urban air pollution by strengthening environmental regulations and reduce dependence on imported oil by funding alternatives are also influencing innovation patterns. Based on current performance of the innovation system and examples of collaboration in the energy sector, China's ability to be a productive partner in international collaborative R&D efforts depends on the participation of local developers, domestic policy support for collaboration, and the strength of China's own R&D enterprise.