University College London

Graduate Student, School of Slavonic and East European Studies

Other Affiliations: University of Agder, Department of Political Science and Management
University of the Philippines Diliman, Department of History
University of Tartu, Baltic Sea Region Studies

Thesis Title: The Politics of Unconventional Energy Resources: A Stepwise Comparison of Estonian Oil Shale and Polish Coal and Shale Gas, 1990-2011

About

Having grown up in an environment of massive distributional inequality and increasingly alarming ecological issues, my burning desire to study, normatively and politically, come from the belief in the utmost importance of promoting democratic energy governance and energy transition towards a low-carbon economy. There is a need to consider inputs from key actors with significant overlapping concerns--such as climate change, energy poverty, and development--and to shift the worldwide energy production, which produces most of the emissions, to a low-carbon system so as to minimise the amount of emissions in the atmosphere and avert long-term environmental catastrophes across the world.

Although many studies look at models and technological solutions to effective governance and transition, I strongly believe that politics play a primary role in shaping, pushing, or halting energy trajectories. Thus, to begin a fair governance of energy and to overcome vested and entrenched interests in institutions, the involvement of public, semi-public, and private actors in global energy governing is absolutely necessary. This could best be done by unmasking the power-laden arena of governing regimes. By doing so, these actions could allow for the fair distribution of benefits and cost for the current and future generation.