We consider problems of national energy policy in selected European and Eurasian states. Ideally, three student-research teams of five-to-six students each will work on a problem of energy policy presented by one of three outside "clients" that "contract" for research/policy deliverables. [Links to the three institutes and descriptions of the three research projects are at the top of this page.]
CHALLENGES: To formulate energy policy, professionals must assess information from many sub-sectors where they are not expert, and find/weigh expert advice. So too, a country's specific social, economic, political, ideological and historical constraints, and its market externalities must be considered, including its geopolitical realities.

ISSUES: Typically, these include climate-change mitigation, increasing EU dependence on natural gas and on Russian imports; EU transport dependence on oil (ca. 94%); energy populism and excessive .technological optimism./futurism v. data-driven and scientific assessments; high EU energy prices and volatility and their impacts on competitiveness and citizens; institutional incapacities, corruption, resource nationalism; geostrategy and conflicts, etc.

ORGANIZATION & METHODS:
1. About one-third of class time entails discussing overall readings and professor.s presentations; then group. consultations with the instructor (viz., directed research) and group work. Office-hours consults in off-weeks may be important.
2. Groups use electronic collaboration, a research .notebook., as is common in natural- and social-science collaborations. Here a group-blog site suffices for ongoing archiving and sharing of sources and data, strategy, division of tasks, analysis, etc. This is accessible to the professor and perhaps client, to comment and contribute.
3. As work matures, the instructor may recommend experts to call/write to answer questions or interview. Consulting experts/practitioners is important as many questions cannot be decided realistically from written sources alone.