We are pleased to invite you to our next GCILS Webinar on Wednesday, 3 November, at 3.00pm UK time.
As Glasgow is preparing to host COP 26, the topic of our next online webinar could not be more timely. Please join us for session on “Energy in International Trade Law: Concepts, Regulation and Changing Markets”.
Our guest speaker will be Anna-Alexandra Marhold who is Assistant Professor at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University. Her specialization is international economic law, with a particular focus on international trade law at the intersection of energy and environmental regulation.
During this event, she will discuss her recently published monograph Energy in International Trade Law: Concepts, Regulation and Changing Markets (Cambridge University Press 2021). Her book addresses the following topics:
The relevance of multilateral energy trading rules was for a long time overlooked, downplayed and underestimated. One explanation for this may be that for many years energy was almost exclusively traded by international, vertically integrated and often state-owned companies. However, energy trade is no longer confined to oil tankers transporting barrels from the Gulf; it now extends to, inter alia, wind turbines and solar panels. The last three decades have indeed brought revolutionary advancements in renewable and clean energy. The clean energy transition has been accompanied by increasing regulation, which in turn has triggered disputes in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO). And this rise in international trade disputes relating to both renewable and non-renewable energy has led to a growing awareness of the importance of regulating international trade in energy. Moreover, an increasing number of major energy producing, exporting and transporting countries are joining the WTO, acceding to the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and/or concluding preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that include provisions relevant to energy.
The book seeks to clarify what we mean by ‘energy’ in the context of international trade rules. Subsequently, the book addresses the relationship between the existing rules and the huge challenges faced by energy markets today – notably, their decentralization and decarbonization – in the light of the ongoing quest for energy security. Through several case studies, it demonstrates that current international rules are often unable to meet the challenges faced by today’s changing energy markets. Energy is by no means the only subject in need of revision within the global trading system but is certainly a topic that, given today’s changing markets, can no longer be overlooked.
The first two chapters of the book are available open access via Cambridge. To access, please follow the links to Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
After a presentation, our webinar on 3 November will continue with a conversation between Anna-Alexandra Marhold and GCILS Director, Christian Tams, followed by an interactive Q&A session.
Please join us for this timely discussion and register via our Eventbrite page: https://bit.ly/3b9OwF4.