Beneath the pavement, the beach: A semantic exploration of time, space, and their volume of permutations through Lebanon's littoral

This thesis is about the convergence of two boundlessly enigmatic dimensions; turbulent coastal morphodynamics of a vanishing coastline in the presence of acute geo-political conflict. The Lebanese coastline undergoes a permutation of intertwined anthropogenic and natural forces, ensuing its exponential recession, deterioration, and...

The Power of Justice: Spatial Strategies for a fair Energy Transition in North-West Europe

The energy industry is responsible for almost 89% of GHG emissions (IEA, 2022), and projected CO2 emissions would exceed the 1.5°C goal (IPCC,2023). There is no question that we need to transition towards renewable energy sources, it has become an urgency and we need to transition now. <br/><br/>However, there are several challenges within this...

Modelling a Race for Autonomy: A study of the system dynamics of the competition for autonomous military capabilities leading to potential arms races between two nations

With growing tensions in today's world, new powers rising and contesting old powers, two nations risk ending up in a so called security dilemma: One nation's increase in security threatens its opposing nation. The consequence could be the escalation of military buildups into arms races. With ongoing technological advancements, militaries around...

Do geopolitical risks and global market factors influence the dynamic dependence among regional sustainable investments and major commodities?

This paper uses the Quantile Vector-Autoregressive (Q-VAR) technique to examine the connectedness between three regional (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific) sustainability indices and major natural resource commodities including energy commodities (crude oil and natural gas), precious metals (gold, silver, and platinum), and industrial...

Understanding the geopolitical implications of a transition to green hydrogen as the dominant energy carrier

The effects of climate change on the global community are becoming more strongly felt every year, creating devastation on our everyday lives. To combat that, a transition to low-carbon energy carriers is being envisioned by state and private actors through pledges during climate conferences and several candidate carriers are proposed. Among...

Impact of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism: An economic and geopolitical assessment of the German-Chinese aluminium trade flows

As part of the EU Green Deal, the European Commission (EC) has announced a new renewable energy policy instrument that is to be installed in addition to the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) of the EU: the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). CBAM obligates companies, from non-EU countries who want to import products from the selected CBAM...

Dynamic dependence and predictability between volume and return of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs): The roles of market factors and geopolitical risks

We examine the dependence between volume and returns for the NFT market and three sub-markets (Cryptokitties, Cryptopunks, and Decentraland) using both quantile cross-spectral coherency and quantile regression techniques. Results from both techniques show significant evidence of dependence between NFT return and volume. Dependence between volume...

De paradox van circulariteit

Karel Van den Berghe is kritisch en bezorgd. De in Nederland werkende Vlaming stelt dat steden teveel belang hechten aan ruimte voor circulair ontwerp zoals lampen, huizen en buurten. De circulaire economie heeft echter ook ruimte nodig om het circulair functioneren te faciliteren, met name de (her)maakindustrie. Toch verdwijnen in Nederland...

Renewable energy in EU-China relations: Policy interdependence and its geopolitical implications

The geopolitical implications of renewable energy involve changes beyond the immediate impact on energy and commodity streams. Energy policies of individual countries affect each other via different economic and political channels. This paper studies the role of renewable energy in EU-China relations, two leading powers in the field of...

The geopolitical implications of renewables: Evidence from the increasing share of wind energy in the Danish electricity system

Abstract The technical and geographical characteristics of fossil fuels have shaped interstate energy relations for decades. The ongoing energy transition leads to an increasing share of renewables in the electricity mix. Since technical and geographical characteristics of renewables differ significantly from those of fossil fuels, it is likely...

Renewable energy and geopolitics: A review

This article reviews the literature on the geopolitics of renewable energy. It finds that while the roots of this literature can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s, most of it has been published from 2010 onwards. The following aggregate conclusions are extracted from the literature: renewable energy has many advantages over fossil fuels...

The geopolitics of renewables: New board, new game

This policy perspective sums up the main input of four members of the Research Panel for IRENA's Global Commission on the Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation. The geographic and technical characteristics of renewable energy systems are fundamentally different from those of coal, oil, and natural gas. This has implications for interstate...

The new oil? The geopolitics and international governance of hydrogen

While most hydrogen research focuses on the technical and cost hurdles to a full-scale hydrogen economy, little consideration has been given to the geopolitical drivers and consequences of hydrogen developments. The technologies and infrastructures underpinning a hydrogen economy can take markedly different forms, and the choice over which...

In Search For A Place In World Order: Dynamic Modelling of National Power Using A Systems Approach

Difficulties arise in the making of predictions, since ideas and views on the future are often based on current conditions and, with only minor adjustments, it is simply expected that those conditions will continue into the future. With the goal of supporting experts in their scenario analysis this thesis is part of a pilot between the analysis...

The geopolitics of renewables; exploring the political implications of renewable energy systems

This paper explores the potential political implications of the geographic and technical characteristics of renewable energy systems. This is done through a thought experiment that imagines a purely renewable based energy system, keeping all else equal. We start by noting that all countries have access to some form of renewable energy, though...

Secret Agents: An exploratory study to the added value of Agent-Based modeling to the Strategic Geopolitical Intelligence process of NATO state intelligence services

The events of the Arab spring reminds us how individual citizens have the power to overthrow powerful regimes and destabilize complete regions. The dynamics of such bottom-up instigated revolutions seem to be in line with the (Social) Constructivism paradigm. The problem though, is that this paradigm lacks a powerful forecasting method that...

The geopolitics of renewables: A mere shift or landslide in energy dependencies?

Renewable energy sources are often hailed as the panacea for a plethora of challenges associated with the use of fossil fuels. Partly for good reasons; while the utilization of renewables diminishes energy scarcity and lowers various kinds of pollution, their potential to address energy related geopolitical tensions among producer, consumer, and...

The Economic, Environmental, and Geopolitical Impacts of ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) on Indonesia

The normalization of political relationship between ASEAN and China brings a closer economic cooperation between them. It culminated through the establishment of ASEAN-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA). In this research, I analyze the economic, environmental, and geopolitical impacts of ACFTA on Indonesia. The economic analysis covers trade...