The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

Daniel Yergin argues that a new global map is being shaped by dramatic shifts in geopolitics and energy. Two kinds of power are in play: the power of nations, shaped by economics, military capabilities, and strategy, and the power derived from energy sources and the policies seeking to reorder the world's energy system toward net zero carbon, the goal of balancing human carbon emissions with equivalent carbon removal. The book, organized into six major sections, traces how these forces interact across the globe, complicated by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and the deepening rivalries among the United States, Russia, and China.

The first section chronicles the American shale revolution. In the early 1980s, Texas entrepreneur George P. Mitchell became convinced that commercial gas could be extracted from dense shale rock, contrary to established petroleum engineering wisdom. After nearly two decades of experimentation, his company achieved a breakthrough in 1998 using "slick water fracturing," a water-based method that feeds sand more slowly into the well to open fractures in the rock. When Devon Energy acquired Mitchell's company in 2002 and combined this technique with horizontal drilling, the two technologies proved capable of liberating vast quantities of natural gas from shale formations across the country. Natural gas displaced coal as the leading source of U.S. electricity, driving carbon dioxide emissions down to early-1990s levels despite a doubling of the economy.

The revolution extended to oil. In 2007, Mark Papa, CEO of the independent company EOG, pivoted toward shale oil after recognizing that gas oversupply would crash prices. Production boomed across Texas and North Dakota, including in the Permian Basin, deemed to hold the second-largest oil field in the world. By autumn 2018, the United States overtook both Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world's largest oil producer for the first time in over four decades. A forty-year ban on crude oil exports was lifted in 2015, and the country transformed from an aspiring importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) into one of the world's top exporters. The shale revolution supported over 2.8 million jobs, attracted hundreds of billions in manufacturing investment, and reduced the U.S. trade deficit by an estimated $309 billion.

The second section examines Russia's map. Yergin traces how Vladimir Putin's overriding project since taking power in 2000 has been to reassert Russia as a great power, with oil and gas revenues providing 40 to 50 percent of the government budget. Natural gas binds Russia to Europe but also creates friction: two gas cutoffs to Ukraine, in 2006 and 2009, alarmed Europeans and spurred the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea triggered Western sanctions, pushing Moscow toward a pivot to the east. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a $400 billion, thirty-year gas deal in May 2014, and the Power of Siberia pipeline began delivering gas to China in December 2019. Russia also established itself as a major global LNG supplier through a $27 billion Arctic project. Yergin concludes that the Russia-China relationship, once based on Marxist ideology, is now grounded in oil and gas and strategic opposition to what both governments call American "hegemony."

The third section maps China's rise. The "WTO consensus," the idea that integrating China into the rules-based trading system through its 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) accession would promote convergence, has broken down. China imports 75 percent of its petroleum, with most passing through the South China Sea. Beijing's claims to nearly all of this sea, based on a 1936 map known as the 9-Dash Line, put it in direct confrontation with the United States and neighboring countries over sovereignty and freedom of navigation. China has constructed artificial islands with military bases; an international tribunal at The Hague rejected China's claims in 2016, but Beijing refuses to recognize the ruling. China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013 with an estimated $1.4 trillion in potential infrastructure investment, aims to reorder the global economy with China at its center, though critics warn of a "debt trap" for borrowing nations.

The fourth section addresses the Middle East. Yergin traces the region's modern map to the Sykes-Picot agreement during World War I, when British and French diplomats carved spheres of influence from the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Challenges to this order range from Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab nationalism in the 1950s to the 1979 Iranian Revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini, Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. After the 2003 invasion, Iran penetrated Iraqi structures through its Quds Force, the regime's elite external military arm, under Qassem Soleimani. The 2011 Arab Spring toppled governments but yielded civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Syria's conflict drew in Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on one side, with various rebel groups on the other, displacing over half the population. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a jihadist group that proclaimed a caliphate, lost all its territory by March 2019. The P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, reached a 2015 nuclear deal constraining Iran's program; President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

The oil price collapse of 2014, triggered by surging U.S. shale production meeting slowing global demand, forced a new alignment. Saudi Arabia and Russia forged the OPEC-Plus partnership in late 2016, uniting the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with non-member producers to coordinate production cuts for the first time. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched Vision 2030 to diversify the kingdom's economy and loosen post-1979 social restrictions. When the alliance collapsed in March 2020 as the coronavirus crushed demand, an oil price war followed. President Trump helped facilitate a broader OPEC-Plus agreement for cuts of 9.7 million barrels per day, the largest supply reduction in history. The episode established a new oil order dominated by the Big Three: the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

The fifth section examines what Yergin calls the "Roadmap" to new mobility. The electric vehicle, catalyzed by Elon Musk's founding of Tesla, challenges oil's century-long dominance of transportation. European regulations force automakers toward electrification, while China pursues electric vehicles as a national strategic priority. The potential convergence of electric vehicles, ride hailing, and autonomous driving could create what Yergin labels a transformative "Auto-Tech" industry, though battery costs must fall further, charging infrastructure must expand, and autonomous technology faces regulatory and psychological barriers.

The final section addresses climate and energy transition. The 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which 195 countries pledged to limit warming to two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, galvanized global action. Solar panel costs fell 85 percent between 2010 and 2019, and wind power expanded rapidly, but the intermittency of both sources poses challenges for grid reliability. Yergin identifies three technologies with the greatest breakthrough potential: carbon capture, hydrogen as an energy carrier, and advanced batteries. The drive for net zero also creates enormous demand for mined minerals, with lithium demand potentially rising 1,800 percent by 2030 and supply chains concentrated in a few countries, above all China. For much of the developing world, the priority remains access to commercial energy for billions who lack electricity or clean cooking fuels.

Yergin concludes that the momentum toward a collaborative world order has reversed, replaced by great-power competition, rising nationalism, and the fragmenting of globalization. The U.S.-China rivalry, which has shifted from engagement to strategic rivalry, represents the most consequential geopolitical development. In the epilogue, he tracks how President Joe Biden rejoined the Paris agreement and pledged to halve U.S. emissions by 2030, while over 70 percent of global carbon emissions came under net zero pledges. The 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, driven partly by shared opposition to Iran, represented a dramatic redrawing of the Middle East's political map. The emergence of climate change as a defining feature of the new map, Yergin writes, opens "a new era in the relationship between energy and nations" (451).