Asian Energy Futures Event Report (II):
The Asian Energy Futures decision event

We designed the Asian Energy Futures decision event with these major goals in mind: 

• Generate "new maps" of global energy market relationships based on a clearer understanding of the developmental challenges faced by major Asian economies over the coming decade 
• Delineate the key scenario variables and dynamics likely to emerge as Asia's energy needs balloon in the coming years, focusing on possible regional flashpoints 
• Construct comprehensive downstream scenarios capturing both the regional and global adjustments to Asia's energy expansion. 

The event involved two dozen participants drawn equally from the financial community, the political-military community, and the regional expert community. The point of the effort was not to amass the most impressive collection of energy and Asian experts, but to bring together a diverse array of experts, decision makers, and opinion leaders from both the public and private sectors, and let the synergy of their intellectual interactions serve as the fundamental analytic output. In short, this event’s calling card was a “clash of paradigms,” and not a rigorous forecasting effort. 

The event unfolded over four major sessions. Each session involved both facilitated discussion by the group as a whole and individual participation in collective brainstorming tasks, in which we employed a decision software system known as GroupSystems. Using GroupSystems, each participant entered ideas anonymously via a dedicated laptop, while simultaneously commenting on each other’s inputted ideas asynchronously via a portable Local Area Network, or LAN. In effect, then, we interspersed facilitated discussion with a LAN equivalent of a “chat room” where we explored numerous specific ideas in greater detail.

The Asian Energy Futures event basically explored, over four substantive sessions, a rough "influence net" model that we’ve constructed regarding the key dynamics of Asia's energy future and its impact on the global economy and security environment: 

• Concerning “The Choice,” we conducted one session called “You Make the Call! Participants were shown the current energy profile of the country(ies) in question (expressed as percentage breakdown by major category—namely, oil, natural gas, coal, and renewable), as well as the expected total energy requirement for 2020, and were asked to propose a new percentage breakdown for the 2020 timeframe. We did separate mini-sessions on Japan, India, China, the rest of Asia, and Asia as a whole. 
• Concerning “The Players,” we conducted a session called “The List” (based on the cable network VH-1's show of the same name). Participants were asked to nominate countries and/or non-state actors for the following "best awards": Best New Villain, Best New Ingénue, Best New Odd Couple, Best New Long-Distance Romance, Most Likely to Get Hitched, and Most Likely to Get Dumped (these categories are explained in detail in later slides). 
• Concerning “The Unfolding,” we conducted a session called “Scenario Flashpoints,” where participants wrote advisory emails to the leaders of countries involved in three crisis scenarios: oil blockade/sanction vignette, gas pipeline disruption vignette, and coal emissions/air pollution vignette. 
• Concerning “The Adjustment,” we conducted a session called “Headlines from the Future,” where participants named four long-term outcome scenarios for Asian energy developments, brainstormed likely headlines found along each pathway, and decided which Asian states are most likely to end up in each scenario. 

All of these participant brainstorming sessions were captured in the GroupSystems software program for our subsequent analysis. They form the basis for the analysis we present in this report.

Our participants can be grouped in the following manner:

• Dr. David Gordon, National Intelligence Council
• Cdr. Mark Montgomery, USN, National Security Council
• Mr. Robert Randolph, U. S. Agency for International Development.

• Under Secretary of the Navy Jerry Hultin
• Dr. Leif Rosenberger, U.S. Pacific Command
• Dr. Alberto Coll, Center for Naval Warfare Studies
• Amb. Paul Taylor, Center for Naval Warfare Studies
• VAdm. Arthur Cebrowski, USN, U.S. Naval War College.

• Adm. William Flanagan, USN (ret.), Cantor Fitzgerald
• Dr. Philip Ginsberg, Cantor Fitzgerald
• Mr. Doug Gardner, eSpeed
• Mr. Lundy Wright, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
• Mr. Neal Wolkoff, New York Mercantile Exchange
• Mr. Roy Nercesian, Poten Partners
• Mr. Mike Feeley, Sino-American Development Corporation.

• Mr. Jim Caverly, Department of Energy
• Dr. David Jhirad, Department of Energy
• Mr. Jim Bishop, Caithness Energy
• Dr. Dennis Eklof, Cambridge Energy Research Associates

• Capt. Dave Duffie, USN, Council on Foreign Relations
• Dr. Minxin Pei, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Dr. Ellen Frost, Institute for International Economics/National Defense U.
• Dr. David Baldwin, Columbia University
• Dr. Katsuaki Terasawa, University of Mississippi.

This graphic serves as both table of contents for the presentation of analysis to come and as rough theoretical model for the NewRuleSets.Project as a whole. 

On the question of Asia’s future energy requirements, we break the process down into five distinct stages (moving from left to right across the graphic): 

• We begin with the Here and Now time period, which encompasses the Starting Line environment (i.e., current global energy market), the dialectical relationship between Plans (what Asian states hope to achieve in energy consumption by 2020) and Realities (the roadblocks they may face in that quest), and the Altered States (new roles, new relationships) that may result from whatever gap arises between what is planned and what actually unfolds. 
• Moving from the Here and Now into New Rule Sets, we describe the transition point as Asia’s fundamental acceptance of, and adaptation to, the energy Rules of the Road, meaning certain underlying realities, trends, and “iron laws” that cannot be ignored if progress is to be achieved in meeting most or all of Asia’s planned energy needs up to the 2020 timeframe. 
• In the New Rule Sets time period, we define two possible pathways: one where Asia Finds [its] Way to achieving its ambitious energy growth plans, and one where countries Lose [their] Way. Rather than trying to present an all-encompassing theoretical model of how those pathways unfold, we offer instead a “black box” model, or Scenario Dynamics Grid that displays a matrix listing of the key economic, political, technological, cultural, environmental, and security dynamics involved in Asia’s expected energy expansion. 
• Moving from the New Rule Sets to the There and Then, we describe the transition point as a series of Tipping Points, or paradigm shifts that we think Asia must undergo before being able to achieve its energy growth targets within the 2020 timeframe. 
• In the There and Then time period, we lay out a series of possible sign posts (here, projected newspaper headlines) for both positive (Good Signs) and negative (Bad Signs) outcome scenarios. We also present an X-Y axis with four major outcome scenarios, or Landing Paths, and wrap up this model with a simple prediction of “who ends up where?” (Kto Kovo?, or the Russian phrase meaning, Who gets whom?). 

We begin our analysis with the Starting Line.

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