Public Colloquium #54: Prof. Dr. Volkan Ş. Ediger

The new guest of our Open Colloquium series will be Prof. Volkan Ş. Ediger, Director of Kadir Has University Energy and Sustainable Development Application and Research Center (KHAS CESD).

You can follow Prof. Ediger’s presentation titled “Energy and Food in the Ukraine-Russia-Turkey Triangle” on Wednesday, November 9th from 16:00 in the Fener Hall.

Summary: The world has not entered the 21st century in peace. In the first 21 years of this century, there have been at least 21 global crises, 8 of them with fatal consequences. In fact, exactly a century ago, in the first 20 years of the 20th century, a similar situation was faced. The crises were so great that 20 million people died, 21 million were wounded, and three great empires in Europe collapsed in the aftermath of the first world war. The transition from coal, the most consumed fuel since the Industrial Revolution, to oil was in its throes, and this paradigm shift in energy had a profound impact on everything. The problems were so great that one war would not be enough and a second world war would have to be fought; it was only after the war that the transition to oil was achieved. Today, especially after the signing of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, there is an energy transition period in which the transition from fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – to renewable energy is accelerating. Programs such as the European Green Deal and the Green New Deal have been announced, and after the 2019 IPCC 1.5°C Global Warming report, 33 countries and the EU have either enacted net-zero emission targets or announced them in their policy documents.

When the war between Ukraine and Russia and the energy crisis in Europe are considered from this perspective, it can be predicted that they will have important consequences in terms of green energy transformation. In this speech, the global energy transformation in this period when borders are changing and a new world order is trying to be established will be evaluated in the Ukraine-Russia-Turkey triangle.