Abstract

The seminar will discuss the foundations of global energy governance. Energy as a regulatory object is multifaceted, involving different resources (fossil, fissile, renewable), products (refined fuels, electricity, heat), activities (prospection, extraction, transportation and storage, conversion and distribution), and levels (international, domestic, contractual). International law regulates these different dimensions from various perspectives (delimitation, environment, trade, investment and human rights) that have so far received only scattered attention. In addition, there are currently some 1000 bilateral energy agreements that remain virtually unexplored. The seminar will seek to identify ‘patterns’ of energy governance defined by these different layers of regulation in order to lay the foundations of a research project on how energy is regulated in public international law.

Jorge E. Viñuales is the Harold Samuel Professor of Law and Environmental Policy at the Department of Land Economy of the University of Cambridge. He has published widely in his specialty areas, most recently his books Foreign Investment and the Environment in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Harnessing Foreign Investment to Promote Environmental Protection: Incentives and Safeguards (Cambridge University Press, 2013, co-edited with P.-M. Dupuy), and Diplomatic and Judicial Means of Dispute Settlement (Martinus Nijhoff, 2012, co-edited with L. Boisson de Chazournes and M. G. Kohen). Professor Viñuales has wide experience as a practitioner. He has worked on many cases under ICSID , UNCITRAL, ICC or LCIA rules, including several high profile inter-State, investor-State, and commercial disputes, and he regularly advises companies, governments, international organisations or major NGOs on different matters of environmental law, investment law, and public international law at large.