Dr. Kirsten Westphal is based at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. For more than 50 years, the SWP has provided analysis on foreign policy issues not only to the Bundestag and the German Federal Government, but also to economic actors and the general public.
Dr. Westphal is assigned for International Energy Relations and Global Energy Security at the institute. She was a Member of the Expert Panel to the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation in 2018-2019 and contributed to the Commission’s Report “A New World”, published in 2019. In parallel, she has been leading the Project “Geopolitics of Energy Transformation 2030 (GET 2030)” supported by the German Federal Foreign Office. Over the course of 2019/2020 the follow-up project (EU GET 2030) examines the geopolitics of the energy transformation from the EU’s perspective. This project involves IFRI in Paris, PISM in Warsaw; and Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid. It is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.

Since 2015, Westphal has been conducting a series of Track 2 dialogues with Russia and Poland, with the kind support of the German Federal Foreign Office. Previously, she has worked as a consultant in the energy industry. She has experience in international election observation missions of the OSCE and EU. She is on the Advisory Board of the Regional Centre for Energy Policy Research (REKK) Foundation, Budapest, member of the Scientific Council of the Royal Institute Elcano, Madrid, and on the Editorial Board of the European Energy & Climate Journal.

She has published widely on international energy relations and EU external energy relations. Her books include Global Energy Governance in a Multipolar World (Aldershot/ Burlington Ashgate 2010); and The Political and Economic Challenges of Energy in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2018). Her recent publications on the geopolitics of energy transformation, on energy security reimagined in times of decarbonization and on the operationalization of SDG 7 have appeared in Nature, Global Policy, Energy Strategy Review, European Energy Journal and at SWP among others.

A quote on the subject:

“International cooperation is key for the energy transition, not only to deal with the geopolitical consequences, but also to sustain the path.”