TY - JOUR
T1 - The EU Energy Transition in a Geopoliticizing World
AU - Herranz-Surralles, Anna
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper falls within the Project ‘Dangerous Assets? Foreign Investment Governance in times of De-Globalization,’ funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The author is grateful to Bjarn Eck for research assistance in the collection and visualization of data on foreign energy investment; as well as to all the colleagues that contributed detailed comments on previous versions of this piece: Germán Bersalli, Sjorre Couvreur, Niels Gheyle, Naná de Graaf, Fredi de Ville, Scott Hamilton, Thomas Jacobs, Daniel Scholten, Michal Natorski, Jan Orbie, Bernardo Rangoni, Clara Weinhardt, Veronika Zapletalová, and the two anonymous reviewers.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Amidst heightened global power rivalries, the geopolitical aspects of the energy transition are taking centre stage, with even liberal-minded countries growing wary about foreign investment in the energy sector and the dependencies created by global value chains of green technologies. Building on current debates on the ‘geopoliticization’ of foreign economic policies, this paper sets out a conceptual framework to assess the extent to which the energy transition is becoming geopoliticized in the European Union (EU) and its impact on international energy relations. Theoretically, the paper makes the case for considering geopoliticization as a missing link in the study of politicization and securitization in International Relations, allowing for a more fine-grained diagnosis of current trends and their likely evolution. Empirically, the analysis identifies structural geopoliticizing dynamics in the EU’s framing of the energy transition, although to different degrees depending on the concrete issue at hand. While demands for factoring in the geopolitical consequences of the energy transition are ever louder, normatively, the paper raises a note of caution against the adverse consequences geopoliticization may have for the global transition to low-carbon energy systems.
AB - Amidst heightened global power rivalries, the geopolitical aspects of the energy transition are taking centre stage, with even liberal-minded countries growing wary about foreign investment in the energy sector and the dependencies created by global value chains of green technologies. Building on current debates on the ‘geopoliticization’ of foreign economic policies, this paper sets out a conceptual framework to assess the extent to which the energy transition is becoming geopoliticized in the European Union (EU) and its impact on international energy relations. Theoretically, the paper makes the case for considering geopoliticization as a missing link in the study of politicization and securitization in International Relations, allowing for a more fine-grained diagnosis of current trends and their likely evolution. Empirically, the analysis identifies structural geopoliticizing dynamics in the EU’s framing of the energy transition, although to different degrees depending on the concrete issue at hand. While demands for factoring in the geopolitical consequences of the energy transition are ever louder, normatively, the paper raises a note of caution against the adverse consequences geopoliticization may have for the global transition to low-carbon energy systems.
U2 - 10.1080/14650045.2023.2283489
DO - 10.1080/14650045.2023.2283489
M3 - Article
SN - 1465-0045
VL - 29
SP - 1882
EP - 1912
JO - Geopolitics
JF - Geopolitics
IS - 5
ER -