Frédéric G. Sourgens, James McCulloch Chair in Energy Law & Faculty Director, Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center, Tulane University Law School &
Randel R. Young, Executive Director & Distinguished Research Fellow, Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center, Tulane University Law School.
The Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center is focused on shaping practical, scalable solutions for the complex energy challenges of our time. At the Center, we consider it our mission to produce actionable, evidence-based, non-partisan policy evaluations that are based on sound technological and commercial experience combined with an equally rigorous legal, regulatory and policy analysis.
The energy solutions we look for are those which thoughtfully address and balance each element of what has come to be known as the “energy trilemma.” What is the energy trilemma? A "trilemma" is when a choice must be made among three competing options, each difficult or impossible to achieve without sacrificing or delaying some of the benefits of the others. Solving any trilemma requires balancing tradeoffs to find the most practical solution for the situation in the given context. Each tradeoff made in this balancing act will come with the assumption of its own unique set of risk, the incurrence of economic or societal costs, and may face challenging ramp-up times that require subsidies that come with their own economic costs and risks, including the loss of benefits and optionality that could be gained on other endeavors.
It’s often said, for example, that a person faces a trilemma when they want things done fast, well, and cheaply. Often, that goal is unrealistic because you must compromise between speed, quality, and cost. You can get something fast and cheap, but it may be poorly done; slow and cheap but it may be well done; fast and well-done but it will inevitably be expensive. Alternatively, one can balance all three values against each other for something that is not fast, cheap, or perfect but gets the person enough of what that person wants or needs and for which the person is willing to sacrifice other values to get there. The challenge in achieving the right balance, however, is making these tradeoffs thoughtfully and in a way that is based on fact and reliable data rather than untested assumptions or political or other aspirations that cannot be valued and compared in any meaningful way.
The same is true in assessing competing energy policies and energy systems where we must always seek to strike the right balance among the following three key, but often conflicting, dimensions and in assessing their real costs and benefits: energy security, energy affordability, and environmental and social sustainability. For example, you may want energy to be affordable, secure (i.e., reliably and resiliently available), and sustainable. Yet, try as we might, we cannot maximize all three of these values at the same time. We must make thoughtful and intelligent tradeoffs to arrive at the best, most achievable energy policy solutions and energy systems in each context, all things considered.
At the Center, we feel strongly that you cannot reasonably assess and make those tradeoffs thoughtfully by jumping ahead of the intellectual process or by using anything other than a multidisciplinary approach to cost-benefit analyses based on a dizzying array of complex factors and considerations, the evaluation of reliable economic and financial data, a realistic assessment of the short-term and long-term impacts (both positive and negative) on global energy markets and energy systems, the effects on all global economies ranging from the richest developed countries in the world with sophisticated market dynamics and the newest technologies to the poorest countries with little or no resources to provide basic human services, and to balance all of this against the real environmental, social and human costs on the sustainability of the planet earth.
In seeking the right balance among the three competing elements of the energy trilemma, we will encourage and facilitate a cross-disciplinary teaming approach in each of the Center’s research and development programs that enables the Center to apply a data-driven, market-based technical and commercial analysis of the issues we address together with an equally rigorous legal, regulatory and policy evaluation of the costs and benefits of the issues or systems under discussion or evaluation.
But each intense intellectual firestorm that comes off any of the programs we undertake at the Center (and we hope there are many) must start with that single spark of inspiration, creativity or intellectual curiosity that spurs us on to the much deeper process of evaluation, consideration and cost-benefit analysis, and the resulting balancing of competing equities, required to achieve a meaningful, thoughtful discussion and resolution of a proposed solution to the topic at hand.
In “Tulane Energy Sparks” the name is the program, and we hope it will be the spark that ignites the more rigorous intellectual process that follows. It is our desire to spark important conversations in this “blog” about global energy issues and concerns that can address how we overcome energy challenges with short research inputs. Some of our research inputs will focus on techno-commercial energy possibilities – they will outline what technologies might be deployed and what commercial value chains such a technology would need to be brought to sufficient scale to make a meaningful difference to global and national energy systems. Some of our research inputs will focus on our ability to finance a rebalancing of our energy systems to achieve greater energy security or greater energy sustainability. Still others will be focused on the legal and regulatory frameworks that shape possible energy outcomes. When you keep reading the blog over time, you will hopefully help us weave these themes and posts together to provide assessments of what the global energy system can – and cannot do – and what obstacles and opportunities await the ongoing energy transition progressively to realize broader, cheaper, better, and more sustainable energy outcomes worldwide.
In the beginning, we hope to update Tulane Energy Sparks weekly – on Mondays - to get you ready for your energy week. As we ramp up our activities and staffing at the Center, our goal will be to update Tulane Energy Sparks on a daily basis. On the way to this goal, we hope to have a Monday and a Wednesday post by the end of September. As we update the frequency of posts, we will send you an update to notify you of the additional content.
Many of our contributions to Tulane Energy Sparks will come from our Global Research Council and its dedicated research programs. Each of these research programs will have its own journal and its own programs. As these programs publish new content, Tulane Energy Sparks will either run this content in its entirety (if it is sufficiently short for our format) or we will summarize it here. We will also uplink recordings of Global Research Council events and advertise future events that are open to the public. These posts will then migrate to the pages of the respective research program on this site to place them in their proper thematic context. One such example is the first discussion paper authored by Drake Hernandez providing a primer on the state of carbon capture today, which we urge you to read and look forward to your feedback.
Yet, this is not all that we will publish. We will also publish short articles, videos and stories of interest to all who follow what goes on in energy. These posts will include contributions from the editorial team of the blog. For example, you can read Freddy Sourgens’ preliminary analysis of the recent Advisory Opinion on climate change by the International Court of Justice. These discussion posts will be housed within our publications pages instead of being associated with a specific research project. Our research programs do not exhaust what we do and research at Tulane. That means a good bit of our content will come from outside of those subject areas.
We would also love to hear from you, our readers, on topics to address in the future. We are actively reviewing submissions for Tulane Energy Sparks and will publish original contributions on subjects of general global, national, regional and Louisiana energy interest. We are looking for pieces that make a real contribution to the techno-commercial, financial, or regulatory energy law and policy discourse. So, if you have something for us – send it along. All submissions will be subject to peer review and we will let you know of our publication decisions promptly.
It goes without saying, however, that a blog is a blog. As such, it is an independent discussion platform and a marketplace for new and developing ideas. Our authors, therefore, advance views and arguments that are their own and that do not necessarily represent the views of the Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center or Tulane University. They also do not necessarily represent the views of its editors. Similarly, they will not necessarily reflect the views of, or be endorsed by, the authors’ home institutions or their clients. They are contributions to intellectual discourse. Similarly, we are not providing or distributing legal or investment advice. We are contributing to discussions about how we might reasonably and commercially address the energy trilemma. That means that we will unapologetically publish diverse and at times controversial viewpoints. We expect that none of them alone will reflect the entire picture. That picture will take your own discerning judgment to put together the conclusions for yourself. We hope to provide you with information, analysis, and arguments that will help you do so. No more. But also no less. It’s the start of the conversation, by no means the end.
The last thing for us to do is to introduce ourselves. We are the Editors in Chief of Tulane Energy Sparks. Frederic Sourgens is the James McCulloch Chair in Energy Law at Tulane Law School and Faculty Director of the Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center. He has authored over 100 publications, including his trilogy on energy governance published by Oxford University Press (Principles of International Energy Transition Law (2023, with Leonardo Sempertegui), The Transnational Law of Renewable Energy (2024, with Catherine Banet & Teddy Baldwin) and A Global Theory of Energy Governance (2025)). He is an active expert witness and consultant in international energy disputes and is a member of the American Arbitration Association Energy panel. Randel Young is the Executive Director of the Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center and a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center. He has over 45 years’ cross-border energy experience in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean Basin, Europe, the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central Asia, and the Middle East and has balanced experience in the electricity sector (both renewable and conventional generation, market design, distribution), oil and gas (including LNG, CCUS, fracking), energy transition, hydrogen, and mining. He is a leading mind on energy projects and remains an active participant in energy decision-making as a senior consultant.
We will build out a larger editorial team as we grow. We hope to bring on a third Editor in Chief and three Associate Editors in short order. As we do, we will introduce them on the blog. As we grow, we look forward to engaging with you, our readers, and look forward to getting the conversation started!
This paper represents the research and views of the author(s). It should not be construed as legal or investment advice. It does not necessarily represent the views of the Tulane Energy Law & Policy Center, Charles River Associates, or Aligned Climate Capital. The piece may be subject to further revision.
