Emerging Asia and the Middle East: The New Energy Silk Road
Energy remains among the most strategic natural assets in the world economy and a fundamental basis for achieving and sustaining development goals. As we look to the future, two key mega-trends are catalyzing changes to the traditional energy security landscape, with important links to the development agenda: rising energy demands from Asia’s emerging economies such as China and India; and the ecological crisis facing the planet and the related move towards low-carbon models of development. This essay discusses the new partnerships that are rapidly emerging between Asia and the Middle East to engage these trends — on the one hand to expand supply of Middle East energy to Asia, and on the other to expand clean energy technology and finance from Asia to the Middle East.