EME 444 - Global Energy Enterprise

Industry perspective on the resources, technologies, engineering approaches, and externalities involved in satisfying worldwide energy demand profitably and sustainably.  A strong focus is placed on non-market actors and stakeholders.

The global energy enterprise is the collective industry supplying the energy that an increasing majority of the world depends upon. The industry consists of many competing yet interdependent organizations. Some energy producers are large, but many are small; some are independently owned, others state-owned, and still others a little of both. A desired competitive advantage may be viewed in the context of the market environment alone. However, in the industry of global energy enterprise, a significant advantage can be won or lost due to nonmarket forces and strategies. The activities of the energy industry tend to generate large externalities that may be obscured, exported, or passed on to future generations. Social networking tools have reduced costs of coordination for collective action against externalization, potentially leading to impediments and even loss of access to markets. This suggests the critical need to learn both market and nonmarket strategies in the global energy enterprise.

The energy enterprise is technology-intensive. A vast technological infrastructure and highly skilled workforce is needed to discover, assess, extract, process, and distribute energy resources sufficient to power our globalized world. As energy demand increases, and easily recoverable resources are constrained, the enterprise relies increasingly on innovative technologies and engineering solutions to sustain production and profits. A primary objective of the course is to ensure students’ familiarity with established and emerging energy production, processing, and distribution technologies.

The energy enterprise is also capital-intensive, due to the high cost of building and maintaining energy infrastructures and sustaining research and development efforts. Government regulation is often necessary to minimize risks that discourage capital investments and to incentivize investments in emerging technologies that may help countries achieve energy security and reduce the detrimental impacts of fossil fuel use. A secondary objective of the course is to equip students to prepare and defend recommendations for investments in emerging energy technologies and businesses.