Secure Oil and Alternative Energy: The Geopolitics and Energy Paths of China and the European Union is the follow-on study to the well-received The Globalization of Energy: China and the European Union (Brill 2010). While intensive cooperation between China and the EU in the fields of energy use, environmental protection, and sustainability is highly needed, the question remains unanswered how this cooperation could be organized. Since the proven gas and oil reserves lay outside China and the EU, they are both facing geopolitical challenges to energy security in the foreseeable future. This volume puts the geopolitical implementation of China ?s and the EU ?s energy security into the context of (a) geo-economic systems in a global scale including the Central Eurasian, the Middle East and Africa hydrocarbon energy complex and (b) the emergence of a geo-economic energy network spreading from China to Western Europe. The edited volume consists of 14 high-quality papers on topics announced in the title of the volume: the geo-politics of energy-supply security, alternative sources of energy, energy transition and, at the global level, energy governance. Prof. Dr. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, Director Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenb©?ttel, Forschungs-und Studienst©Þtte f©?r Europ©Þische Kulturgeschichte Germany