Background

Nautilus is pleased to announce the "Fourth East Asia Energy Futures (EAEF) Project Energy Paths Analysis/Method Training Workshop" to be held in Vancouver from 4 to 7 November, 2003. This workshop is being organised by the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability of Berkeley, California in collaboration with the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

The main focus of the workshop is collaborative research, involving groups from each of the countries of Northeast Asia (including, the DPRK, the ROK, the Russian Far East, China, Japan, and possibly Mongolia) on different paths to addressing energy security issues in the region. The emphasis will be on both national and regional approaches to energy security concerns. Examples of the regional issues to be discussed and worked on by the collaborating groups at the workshop and in follow-on work include the relative benefits to each nation and to the region as a whole of international gas pipeline and power grid networks, of increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and of development and adoption of measures for gas and electric energy efficiency improvement. Given that participants from several Northeast Asian nations, as well as from Canada and the United States, are expected, the Workshop will provide an excellent opportunity for an informal exchange of views.

The workshop will involve a day and a half of analysis of current national and regional energy sector development and their implications for energy security, including the continuation of collaborative project activities from previous workshops. The remaining two and a half days will focus on "hands-on" work as a group with the LEAP energy/environmental analysis software tool, including some training in both the basic and recently-added features of the software, and collaborative work on country data sets. This work will draw and build upon work in previous EAEF workshops held in Beijing (co-hosted by the Energy and Environmental Technology Center at Tsinghua University) and in Berkeley. This workshop will provide training in and experience in applying the latest version of the LEAP software, as well as an opportunity to discuss important regional energy issues.