Abstract for: Simulating the Impact of Climate Mitigation Policies on Social Unrest in Rentier States

Climate change is widely accepted as a global security topic with strong links to past, present, and future energy use. There is an extensive body of literature on effects of climate change and climate policies. The indirect effects of climate policies, for example on state stability of traditional oil and gas exporting countries, also known as rentier states, has received less attention. We present in this paper how we used System Dynamics models to explore the consequences of uncertainty related to climate and energy policies on the complex global energy system. We, therefore, generated policy related energy price scenarios which we fed into a country stability model, parameterised for Algeria, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. We found that periods with high oil prices may become impossible in the long-term if climate mitigation policies are effective. Lower energy price levels originate in structural system changes caused by climate mitigation policies, and secondarily by the accumulation of over-production of fossil fuels due to declining demand. Buffers in the form of sovereign wealth funds are insufficient to overcome these issues, making all rentier states, but especially the most resource dependent country -- Saudi Arabia, vulnerable to climate policies.