Rethinking Energy Geopolitics: Towards a Geopolitical Economy of Global Energy Transformation
- Author(s)
- Caroline Kuzemko, Mathieu Blondeel, Michael Bradshaw, Gavin Bridge, Erika Faigen, Louis Fletcher
- Abstract
We are in the midst of a global energy system transformation (GEST) which is rewiring the world economy, opening new axes of political contestation, and revolutionising the energetic basis of human civilisation. Energy geopolitics has not yet reconciled itself to this challenge. The field has traditionally been preoccupied with the dependence of Western states on cross-border flows of fossil fuels. More recently, efforts have been made to prospectively map out what the geopolitics of a fully renewable world might look like. What both literatures miss, however, is the very fact of the GEST: that we are living through a changing and contested process of global transformation, across interacting high- and low-emissions systems, whose contours are open and actively constructed over time. In this paper, we start to develop a provisional framework to make sense of the GEST, that is able to capture the full scale of the transformation, and its dynamic, contingent, constructed nature. We attend to three areas of geopolitical economy: the wide-ranging material dimensions of the transformation, its geographical space-making, and its conflict-ridden political economy. We then apply this framework to two case studies, one looking at the fraught role of fossil gas as a ‘transition fuel’, the other at lithium-ion batteries.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Geography and Regional Research
- External organisation(s)
- Durham University, University of Warwick, University of Amsterdam (UvA)
- Journal
- Geopolitics
- Pages
- 1-35
- ISSN
- 1465-0045
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2024.2351075
- Publication date
- 2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 211908 Energy research, 507026 Economic geography, 211911 Sustainable technologies
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development, Political Science and International Relations
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/aef46697-9e45-493c-9de1-696dcff23058