This book is about engaging and empowering people through their own domestic resources, by using upstream energy to create larger downstream employment opportunities. Incorporating sustainability, resource enhancement, and energy responsibility can generate awareness and better utilization of the resources and reduce reliance on foreign aid and economic development programs, which reinforce a North/ South consumption-based economy rather than empower the localized population.
The author proposes a new paradigm of employee development, localized engagement, and empowerment for resource-rich developing Asian countries, based on the utilization and upbraiding of their resources in-situ. Here scholars, policymakers, and investors will find that human resource development (HRD) can structure constructive change through criterion-based education and reap economic prosperity.

Dr. William Hickey is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management and International Business and two-time former Fulbright professor for Human Resource Development and Energy. He has worked internationally researching and teaching HRD and IB in the areas of localization, talent development, local sourcing, benchmarking, and human resource audits/ evaluation for upstream energy projects.

1. Introduction to Energy and HRD: Towards Effective Localization.- 2. Types of Energy and Usage.- 3. Energy as the non-devaluing Currency: A Store of Wealth in Todays World.- 4. The Climate Change Conundrum.- 5. Human Resource Development (HRD): The Means are There.- 6. Energy Ownership.- 7. Localization.- 8. China.- 9. Corruption and the Client Driven Energy Model.