Welcome to week eight of Politics and Economics of International Energy. In this week, we are going to focus on the interplay between energy and economic development. This is a very important interface, because in the end, energy is meant to deliver economic development. You may remember that in a previous unit, I introduced the concept of the trilemma. The fact that as the word Energy Council proposes, the transition in the energy system needs to achieve at least three major objectives. The first is environmental sustainability. But the second is energy security, which we discussed in week seven. The third is accessibility or affordability of energy, which means that energy must be made available to all in this world and it must be made available at a price which most people or all people can afford to pay. So that means the eradication of energy poverty. These are very important objective and they need to be kept in mind and pursued, just as importantly as deliberately as the goal of ensuring environmental sustainability or security of supply. Energy is closely linked to development. In fact, all idea of energy transition was born with the development of the steam engine and that also marked the beginning of fast development almost 200 or more than 200 years ago. The economic impact of energy is a fundamental importance, because in the end, energy is a tool, is a medium, it's something that enables economic development. Availability of energy, makes it possible to improve our technology, to improve our productive capacity, our productivity, and achieve better economic results. But the final goal, the objective is to improve the standard of living of the vast majority of the people in this world. So energy is not a goal, per se, it is a tool and it must deliver economic improvement. Otherwise, it's no good. The energy transition, therefore, that we have in mind that we are seeking must translate into greater economic opportunities for most people. If it is a break to economic growth, if it is an obstacle to further economic development, if it ends up increasing poverty rather than reducing it, it will not receive the required political support. It will be impossible to reach a consensus on promoting the transition itself. Some believe that decarbonization will automatically be beneficial to the economy. This has been frequently proposed. We need to move towards renewable energy, because renewable energy is absolutely superior, cheaper, more convenient, and so on. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. It depends very much. The process, the way in which we will approach the energy transition will need to be carefully governed and discussed in order to make sure that we avoid potential backlashes, potential negative results that may lead to opposition to the energy transition itself. So during this week, we will discuss several facets, several aspects of this relationship between energy and the economy. We begin with the pricing of energy. What kind of energy prices should we aim at having? We follow with a discussion of the development of energy resource rich countries. The producers of oil, gas, coal which run the risk of being negatively affected by the energy transition. Then we approach the issue of the link between the energy transition and economic growth. Is the energy transition something that will speed up economic growth or be a break for economic growth? Finally, we are going to explore the link between the energy transition and energy poverty, and that's where we'll see things are much more complicated than they may appear at first sight. The main thrust of this discussion is that the energy transition is not just a technological or technical challenge. It is also a social and political challenge. It has to be dressed, therefore, not just from a technological point of view, but also from a political point of view. Which means we need to form and maintain a cohesive coalition to deliver decarbonization, and that must include the vast majority of participants in this game. The participants in this game are literally billions of people who use energy, who make decisions everyday that are relevant for our production and consumption of energy. All of these people must see themselves as winners in the process. It has to be a win, win, win a billion times process. If that is not achieved, if we are unable to convince the vast majority of people in this world that they will gain out of the energy transition, it is inevitable that the process will be unstable, there will be resistance towards it. In some cases, even revolts. Or at best, that some parts of the global population, some countries will adopt a free riding behavior, wait for the other people to take upon themselves the burden of the transition and benefit out of that without doing there lot in what is needed to do. So if that's the case, if we cannot avoid this behaviors, the objective of preserving, or at least significantly limiting global warming will be missed.