About Me – Dr. Thomas W. O’Donnell, PhD

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Brief Bio – 29 November 2024

Email: tomod.com@gmail.com, twod@umich.edu | CV, Publication List & Syllabi: TomOD.com | Blog: GlobalBarrel.com

Twitter: @twodtwod | Cell & WhatsApp: +49 (0)176 92 11 89 28 | Skype: Tom.OD

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Dr. Thomas W. O’Donnell is an American energy and geopolitics strategist based in Berlin, a Global Fellow of the Wilson Center, Washington, DC (external), and an experimental nuclear physicist (PhD, U Michigan 2001), with a long academic career in both natural and social sciences. His interviews and analyses are at his popular blog, GlobalBarrel.com.   He lectures widely, provides analysis and advises.

Dr. O’Donnell has taught at Freie University (Berlin European Studies Program), Hertie School of Governance (Berlin), The New School University (NYC), and The University of Michigan (USA).[i] Earlier, he worked 15 years in USA industry (railways, automobile firms, power engineering, HVAC, cryogenics). At university, he studied Political Science and China Studies. He speaks English, Spanish, German (C1), reads French, and forgot Mandarin. His present work has these foci:

-1- Critique of “100% Renewables” Model:

Since 2000, Dr. O’Donnell has criticized the green populist “100% renewables” model and the closing of nuclear plants as “renewables fundamentalism.” [ii]  He warned that, under Merkel, this “German model” had won hegemony in Brussels, Spain, Austria, Portugal, Greece, and the Netherlands, undermining Atlantic-alliance energy security and competitiveness (viz, German deindustrialization), plus limiting decarbonization.

His thesis is that “over-installation of weather-dependent renewables” (viz, ≥ 25%) fails not only economically but also on technical grounds due to: (i) the lack of any “universally applicable, long-term, grid-scale storage technology,” and (ii) the need for “all new,” “smart grids” to accumulate distributed generation, and (iii) makes natural gas imports more geostrategic, not less, and (iv) “green” or “blue” hydrogen import schemes can never replace EU natural gas imports. Only by (v) installing hundreds of proven, Generation 3+ large-scale reactors (each ≥ 1.0 GW) can the “Green-and-Russian European energy crisis” end.

-2- Nuclear energy policy network: As a nuclear physicist and a former nuclear-reactor and radiation-safety officer, Dr. O’Donnell has championed “3 Seas” regional “nuclear renaissance”:  (i) He proposed and, with Polish colleagues at Warsaw think tanks, organized a “CEE Nuclear Policy Network.” CEE-NPN aims for competent nuclear-energy experts to advise governments and civil society. (ii) He warns that overdependence on renewables is not only a “Left problem,” as there are no programmatic alternatives offered by Center or Right parties, only calls to moderate extreme goals (e.g., Poland too has long had unrealistic national renewables targets), insisting that CEE leaders must personally champion a nuclear energy renaissance on the model of France’s 1970’s PM Pierre Messmer.

-3- Geopolitics of Global Oil Market: Following 9/11, during the “War on Terror,” O’Donnell coined the term “One Global Barrel” for the modern, post-1973 (i.e., post-oil-nationalizations), USA-led, OECD-OPEC collective oil-security system based on an open, global spot-and-futures markets. His work clarified this rests on the US dollar, US naval supremacy, the post-WW2 US-Saudi special relationship, and the IEA Strategic Petroleum Reserves Treaty. He thereby debunked “post-modern” theories of the drivers of the USA-British Iraq War on the supposed rebirth of “neo-colonialism.” showing instead that the “one global barrel” system had decisively supplanted the non-market, post-WW2, IOC-centered, neo-colonial oil distribution system, starting the new “global era.” He often gives expert commentary live on-air on OPEC, Russia, China and USA oil markets and geostrategy.

— Oil Geopolitics: O’Donnell’s global-market analysis explained the logic and constraints of the USA’s 1990s and 2000s Iraq and Afghan wars, Iran nuclear crisis, and dynamics of the USA-Russian-China-European Gulf Regional policies, as well as China’s “Go Abroad” oil policy. His annual seminar on “geopolitics of the global oil system” and “Latin American Development” proved highly popular.

— O’Donnell also spent two years (2007-08) researching the Latin American/Venezuelan Chavez-era “resource nationalism” and “oil socialism” movements, and the USA, Chinese, Russian and Iranian roles (Fulbright scholar at Center for Study of Development, UCC, Caracas).

-4- History of Industrial Revolutions vs. “Energy Transitions”: Dr. O’Donnell teaches university seminars (since 2005) on the technological and social-political histories of  Industrial Revolutions. One thesis has been that so-called “energy transitions,” have never “driven technological revolutions,” but vice-versa. This refutes the all-renewables advocates’ promise that 100% renewables-driven research would “spark a 4^th Industrial Revolution” to “leapfrog” Europe over USA tech development. It is now clear this was a false, techno-optimist claim.

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[i] At U.M., this included seminars and research in nuclear Physics, Information Theory, History of Logic & Universality in Computation, Quantum Computing, Complex Systems, and Philosophy of Emergence

[ii] Dr. O’Donnell coined this term “renewables fundamentalism” to expose the non-scientific, purely ideological motivations of German leaders to close nuclear plants.

Press Photos