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This is the recording of the webinar from January 12, 2022. A unique opportunity to understand how the current global energy disruptions reflect the complex system challenge threatening civilization.

Based on the newly released paper, The Age of Energy Disruptions by François-Xavier Chevallerau, the briefing by the author will encourage conversation on this topic which has perplexed so many; the paper transforms what seem to be unconnected events and often feels like whack-a-mole, into a coherent narrative.

In recent months the world has been thrown into a global energy crisis that has taken most observers and global leaders by surprise. Suddenly, gas and electricity prices went through the roof in Europe, China and then India experienced widespread coal shortages and large-scale power blackouts, and fuel prices rapidly spiked across the world. This sudden “energy shock”, as The Economist titled, is bringing back memories of the 1970s. Yet what we are facing today is unlikely to be a repeat of what happened 50 years ago. The world is a very different place now than what it was back then, the causes of our energy crisis are different as well, and so are likely to be its consequences. The competing narratives that currently dominate the conversation about our energy situation however largely fail to account for these causes and consequences. Unable to grasp all the dimensions and the complexity of the crisis, they are blind to the reality of our energy past, present and future. We have entered the age of global energy disruptions, and the “energy transition” that we are inevitably headed for is unlikely to be the one we expect.

François-Xavier Chevallerau is a policy and business consultant with over 20 years of experience in management and policy consulting, mostly with the EU institutions and international organizations. He has worked with various consulting companies, including both boutique firms and large multinational professional services firms, in Europe, the UK, and the US. In 2017 François-Xavier created BiophysEco, the Biophysical Economics Policy Center, an international network and think tank working to promote biophysical economics in the public debate and the policy conversation, worldwide. He is now preparing the relaunch of BiophysEco with a different focus and in a different format.

The paper was commissioned by the Crans Foresight Analysis Consensus (FAN) with funding from Omega Resources for Resilience.

This webinar series is a collaboration of the FAN, Omega Resources for Resilience, the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere, and the New School at Commonweal.