The Green Transition: Implications for Energy Security and Geopolitics

The transition from fossil fuels to green energy will require a new paradigm for thinking about energy security

Even as the world begins to undergo a green energy transition, the implications of this shift for states’ energy security remain poorly understood. The old paradigms of oil and gas security will not suffice for a world with more diverse, less concentrated energy production. In the coming decades, U.S. policymakers will need to grapple with the question of how to best secure their energy needs in an unfamiliar and developing energy ecosystem.

The world is entering the early stages of a major energy transition: from oil and gas to green energy sources. This idea is neither hyperbole, nor some climate activist’s fantasy, but rather a shift with many causes: significant progress in the development of renewable energy technology,¹ the reshaping of global energy markets in recent years, an upsurge in greener hydrocarbons such as natural gas, and perhaps most important, a growing public and business awareness of the issue of climate change and benefits of cleaner energy. As a result of these trends, a slow but steady shift has begun that will see demand for oil and gas peak sometime in the middle of the 21^st century.

This does not mean that the problem of climate change has been solved. Indeed, from the point of view of limiting the rise in global temperatures and the damage caused by climate change, the energy transition may well be slower than needed — or incomplete. But even under so-called “‘business-as-usual” emissions models, the world is starting to move away from hydrocarbons as its primary source of fuel. Goldman Sachs estimates that the peak demand for oil will occur in 2035; the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that the demand could peak as early as 2030.²

This raises a series of questions for U.S. policymakers. The most obvious ones relate to the energy transition itself: Which technologies offer the best investment opportunities? Is concerted political action to speed up the transition and mitigate the effects of climate change possible? How will climate change affect communities — and military bases? The U.S. Department of Defense, for example, has conducted studies on the impact of climate-related flooding on U.S. bases.³

Another set of largely unanswered questions, however, concerns the foreign policy and national security impacts of the transition away from hydrocarbons. Energy security remains a core component of how most states think about their national security. There is a general sense that renewables — which are typically derived domestically and are less dependent on foreign sources of supply than oil and gas — could make states more energy secure. But relatively little thought has been put into exploring how this seismic shift in the global economy might reshape core components of the international system and influence states’ foreign policies. The authors of this paper seek to provide an overview of some of these key issues. They caution against applying the paradigms of oil or gas security — which are well suited to the current energy ecosystem — to understand the potentially distinct implications of a post-transition energy system.

The Coming Energy Transition

Most energy experts agree that some level of transformation in the global energy system is inevitable. Shell plc, an energy company and long a pioneer of foresight methodologies, put it simply in their most recent forecasting report: “The energy system will be transformed—the issue is speed.”⁴ As this implies, a variety of factors could make the transition quicker or slower, more complete, or more fragmented and balkanized. These range from the cost of renewable energy technologies to the presence of corporate action, the impact of pollution on public opinion, government regulations, or technological shifts.⁵

In fact, the transition from fossil fuels toward other forms of energy is already under way. In the last decade, the amount of power generated from renewable sources globally has more than doubled.⁶ And the IEA assesses that from 2023 to 2030, there could be worldwide “10 times as many electric cars on the road, with renewables nearing half of the global power mix.”⁷ Although past progress is clear, the picture gets murkier when looking further into the future. Various organizations have attempted to use scenarios to understand the scope of possible outcomes in the energy transition.

Shell, for example, explored several alternative futures in a recent report. In one, the green transition accelerates in the 2040s thanks to hydrogen and biofuels, focusing almost entirely on decarbonization rather than carbon capture. In a second scenario, Shell posits that trade and technology barriers might inhibit the spread of green technology, contributing to highly unequal decarbonization around the globe.⁸ Another set of scenarios from the consulting firm Deloitte contrasts a future in which rich countries in the G-20 help to finance the transition for poorer states—dramatically improving the uptake of renewables—against a future in which geopolitical tensions result in global energy inequality.⁹

Although the timing and exact structure of this energy transition remain unclear, the general outlines can be sketched. The world is in the process of shifting away from fossil fuels towards greener forms of energy, divesting from dirty hydrocarbons such as coal and oil, transitioning over time to cleaner hydrocarbons like natural gas and eventually to a mix of renewables and biofuels.¹⁰ For many countries, a plausible future energy mix will include some combination of solar, wind, and other renewables, along with nuclear power, hydrogen, and biofuels.

Facilitating transition will require mass electrification — particularly of vehicles — as well as increasing energy efficiency for vehicles and buildings. It is also likely to require some level of carbon capture technology to remove the remaining emissions of fossil fuel production from the atmosphere. Some of these changes will compound over time: as freight transportation becomes electrified and stops using oil, for example, it will organically reduce the demand for the oil that today is used to transport oil shipments.¹¹ Again, the exact breakdown of these factors remains unknown. This transition will be uneven across states, but will mostly occur within these broad parameters.

The energy transition is also likely to create significant technological, financial, and social concerns. Some of these are negative. As fossil fuels begin to be phased out, for example, many jobs will be lost in the extraction sector. New jobs will be created in the renewable sector and the mining sector but are unlikely to be in exactly the same geographical location as the job losses.¹² There is some risk of financial turmoil as stranded oil and gas assets become less valuable; financial markets might struggle to adapt in a timely manner.¹³ At the same time, this energy transition is likely to generate some positive developments. Renewable sources of energy are abundant and geographically dispersed, facilitating more decentralized local energy production, reducing dependence on globalized companies, and potentially creating less oligopolistic energy markets.¹⁴

In short, the energy transition portends significant change, not only in the technical details of how industries and economies power themselves, but also in geopolitics. Past energy transitions — such as the transition from coal-powered steamships to oil, or from coal heat to gas heat —demonstrated a consistent pattern: slow initial adoption of the new fuel, followed by a peak of use for the old energy source, and then an acceleration toward the adoption of the new energy source.¹⁵ The geopolitical impacts of an energy transition are often understood only slowly or piecemeal, as states assess the vulnerabilities and security implications of the new energy ecosystem. Consider the sudden rush by both Allied and Axis powers during World War II to secure oil resources as it became apparent that oil was far more valuable than more traditional forms of energy such as coal.¹⁶

As the current energy transition proceeds, U.S. policymakers will once again have to grapple with the question of how this shift will impact national energy security needs.

The Oil Security Paradigm

Oil and security have been inextricably linked ever since oil became a primary fuel source in the early decades of the 20^th century. Oil was seen as valuable, in part because it enabled military mobility — modern industrial armies simply could not fight without it — and even more so because it powered industrial economies. Both security and prosperity were therefore dependent on a steady flow of oil from producers to consumers. Later in the 20^th century, the supply of natural gas was also considered to be essential, particularly as gas became more central to heating and industrial applications.

Oil and gas thus played a key role in the geopolitics of the 20th century: energy security considerations were a core component of US-Soviet competition during the Cold War and shaped the U.S. presence in the Middle East. Oil was the underlying factor in conflicts such as the tanker war that grew from the Iran-Iraq war or the Gulf War in the 1980s and 1990s. These conflicts — and the geopolitical considerations underlying them — emerged from the structure of global hydrocarbon production, export, and transport.

Foremost among these was the question of geography. Oil is concentrated in a relatively small subset of the world’s countries and disproportionately located in certain regions. Indeed, by the middle of the 20th century, oil production was heavily located in the Soviet Union — which was largely self-sufficient in energy — and in underdeveloped states in the Middle East and Latin America. The states most dependent upon oil imports in the 1970s and 1980s, meanwhile, were rich, Western, industrialized democracies in North America and Europe.

In addition to geography, four other key factors characterized energy security concerns for these importing states during the oil-and-gas era:

As had become apparent during the 1970s, the concentration of oil production in a relatively small number of states increased the bargaining power of those states, particularly after they banded together in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Though this leverage was sometimes limited, OPEC states were often able to use it to their political and financial advantage.¹⁷
Because oil and gas needed to be used consistently, maintaining an ongoing flow of oil from the supplier to the consumer was important. Though national reserves could act as a backstop in case of an emergency, the uninterrupted flow of oil was vital to the national economies of the importing states.¹⁸
As a result, transit routes became of supreme importance, particularly in those places where oil or gas supplies had to navigate maritime chokepoints; naval capabilities became a core component of energy security. Negotiations over pipeline routes for natural gas — and the leverage that could accrue to transit states — created similar concerns but were less easily addressed through military power.¹⁹
Due to the globalized price structure for oil — a barrel of oil costs roughly the same anywhere in the world — disruptions anywhere could impact prices everywhere. For major importing states, therefore, this implied that crises even in distant parts of the world might have significant economic impacts. Debates centered around the extent to which oil markets could handle disruptions effectively, and wars were fought over the need to safeguard global oil prices.²⁰

Many of these energy security concerns remain important in the early stages of the green energy transition. Indeed, most states are still heavily dependent on hydrocarbons. The Taiwanese Energy Ministry, for example, estimates that Taiwan only has eleven days’ worth of energy stockpiled to protect its economy — a fact that would undoubtedly play a crucial role in any future US-China conflict over the island.²¹ Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea during 2024 raised market fears of an increase in global oil prices, and Pentagon war planners must still include the need for fuel in their logistics and calculations for conflict.²²

But as the green transition unfolds, U.S. policymakers and military planners will need to consider a new paradigm for energy security. This process will not be as simple as applying the assumptions of an oil-driven global economy to one driven by a more diverse set of energy sources. Existing discussion of critical minerals — the minerals and metals required for many renewable energy technologies or electric vehicles (EVs) — often overlook this fact. But critical minerals do not necessarily come from the same locations as oil, and do not necessarily need to come in a consistent flow, as oil did. The same is true for simplistic claims that a localized, renewables-driven energy ecosystem will inevitably be more secure than hydrocarbon import. Parts of the supply chain could be more secure in a greener energy ecosystem, but there new points of vulnerability might well occur.

From the point of view of Western policymakers, a transition away from hydrocarbons could also reshape Western countries’ relations with key regions of the world and the petrostates that inhabit them. The Middle East is likely to decline in importance, while regions such as Africa or Latin America might become more important. Meanwhile, the transition period itself is likely to be fraught with increased vulnerabilities and price volatility; as the fallout of the war in Ukraine highlights, the economic impact of significant shifts in energy markets for both developing and developed countries can be significant. Even a successful transition will have critical implications for US and Western economic statecraft and the financial systems that support it.

Green Transition Risks and Opportunities

Global energy markets interact with almost every element of the global economy; a seismic shift in these markets will have profound impacts on international security more broadly. The challenge for policymakers will be to build new understandings of energy security, even as the world’s energy infrastructure undergoes this transition. A disconnect between security and energy discussions—particularly as decarbonization accelerates — has the potential to cause significant damage to the global economy. Though it is too early to tell the full implications of this shift, policymakers should bear the points discussed below in mind.

Shifting Logistics and Supply Chains

New energy systems require new supply chains and new components. Various critical minerals and metals are necessary both for extraction of renewables (i.e., aluminum for wind turbines or zinc for solar photovoltaics) and for electrification (i.e., copper wiring for electric vehicles). Contrary to their name, “critical” minerals are relatively common globally, but processing and extraction are concentrated in a very few states, most notably China. Chinese dominance of processing for minerals such as cobalt, lithium, and magnesium is increasingly viewed as an area of concern by Western policymakers. For example, over 65% of all cobalt is processed in China, as is 88% of all magnesium.²³ These concerns were heightened in 2010, when China placed export restrictions on some key critical minerals, and again in 2024 in response to U.S. semiconductor exports; both incidents raised fears of supply shortages.²⁴

This concentrated vulnerability, however, can be overcome. Chinese dominance in the minerals market is driven by an early choice by Chinese leaders to emphasize green technology as a strategy priority; former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping identified the importance of Chinese critical rare earths as early as 1992. The result was concentration of mining, extraction, and processing of critical minerals into Chinese state-owned enterprises.²⁵ This extends to overseas extraction; Chinese companies are often instrumental in the processing of resources extracted in other countries. Chinese state-owned enterprises control much of Peru’s iron and copper extraction, and a significant market share in cobalt extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, however, critical minerals are fairly evenly spread around the globe. Roughly 60% of the world’s lithium reserves, for example, are located in Latin America, in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia.²⁶ Legislative efforts in the United States to improve homegrown processing of these minerals are already underway. Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, for example, restrict tax credits on batteries in ways that should bolster U.S. domestic supply of these minerals.²⁷ The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) assesses that if processing becomes more evenly distributed, the widespread presence of critical minerals could eventually produce a system where suppliers have far less leverage than today.²⁸

For U.S. policymakers, however, the vulnerability of critical mineral supply chains will be a complex problem to manage. Unlike oil, many distinct minerals are needed for the green energy transition, each with different sources and processing requirements. The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, has a list of critical materials specific to energy production, storage, and transport dubbed the “electric eighteen”; their full list of critical minerals across all sectors includes more than 50 different substances.²⁹ Competition for critical minerals may well become a central feature of international economic contestation in the coming decades, as developed states seek to secure mineral supplies while keeping environmentally unfriendly extraction and processing largely offshore.³⁰

A final piece of good news is that even when critical minerals come from overseas, they are less likely to pose a security vulnerability than today’s oil flows. One reason is the diversity of supply; with many critical minerals coming from a variety of suppliers, a crisis in one part of the world is unlikely to spark widespread shortages or economic turmoil. Oil transportation is a single point of failure for many economies; critical minerals will be far more diffuse in their sources and transportation.

Critical minerals are also less vulnerable than oil because they represent stocks of energy, rather than flows. Once a wind turbine has been built, for example, it will continue to operate even in the event of an aluminum shortage. Replacing that turbine could cost more in the future, but — unlike oil — a shutoff in the flow of aluminum will not result in an immediate shutoff of energy production, providing valuable time for markets to adjust to shortages or crises.³¹ For both these reasons, IRENA predicts that maritime chokepoints might cease to be as pivotal to the global economy in the coming decades.³²

Vulnerable Petrostates — and Companies

A shifting energy ecosystem will affect not just importing states, but also the petrostates, which are today’s biggest producers of oil and gas (i.e., Iran, Venezuela, Russia, or Nigeria). As their customer base dries up. To be sure, there will always be uses for oil. But as one analyst puts it, “future oil demand growth hinges on a small number of countries…and a shrinking set of sectors.”³³ Plastics and petrochemicals — the two most obvious alternative uses for fossil fuels — will not be sufficient to replace the ample income that many governments now receive as exporters of oil and natural gas. This suggests a bleak future for many petrostates, which will struggle to fund lavish social programs and high government expenditures in a time of decreased demand.³⁴

Many national oil companies are also heavily indebted, a burden that will persist for their governments after the energy transition. Mexico’s Pemex carries a debt ratio of a stunning 170%, while Petrotrin of Trinidad and Tobago carries 152%. Even Saudi Aramco carries debt equivalent to 24% of its value.³⁵ Many of these states are likely to try to diversify their economies in the coming decades, but the economic history of these states suggests that many will struggle to make politically difficult choices and overcome the inertia of their current systems.

The think tank Carbon Trackermaintains an index of the most potentially vulnerable petrostates, considering a government’s dependence on oil and gas revenues, as well as its state budget, population, and the likelihood that the state will remain a supplier of residual oil. Some states — such as Russia, Mexico, and Iran — are relatively well positioned, with lower production costs and some budgetary flexibility that may help them to ride out a transition. In contrast, states whose economies are highly dependent on oil, such as Venezuela, Nigeria, or Equatorial Guinea, are likely to face severe fiscal constraints in the coming decades if they cannot diversify their economies.³⁶ For Western policymakers, the risk of instability in these states as a result should be borne in mind. Some regions — especially the Middle East and Africa — are likely to be more impacted by these trends than other regions.

Indeed, another area of potential vulnerability created by the green transition is those emerging petrostates — many in Africa — that are only now discovering fossil fuel reserves thanks to improved extraction technologies. Newfound oil reserves do a country little good if the value of the resources is rapidly diminishing. As the energy expert Amy Myers Jaffe has put it, this places emerging petrostates “in a desperate race against time to extract resources.”³⁷ This situation increases the difficulty of prudently managing the transition for these emerging petrostates.³⁸

A related concern for policymakers is the potential impact on financial markets of stranded oil and gas assets. For holders of these depreciating fossil fuel assets — everything from oil wells to tankers to the remaining fossil fuel reserves — the timing of when to divest is unclear. Some may choose to double down on their assets, embracing a use-it-or-lose-it approach and worsening climate change in the meantime.³⁹ Banking and regulatory institutions such as the European Systemic Risk Board, meanwhile, are increasingly studying the possibility that this uncertainty for investors could produce future financial turmoil.⁴⁰ A longer and more contentious transition process is liable to produce a substantially higher proportion of stranded assets than a more streamlined process. Like the impact on petrostates, the potential for instability in financial markets because of the energy transition should not be underestimated.

Interactions With Great Power Competition

The energy transition will not occur in a vacuum; it will happen alongside — and intertwined with — the usual give-and-take of states in a competitive international system. Policymakers will thus need to be aware not only of the potential implications of the energy transition, but also the ways in which their own security concerns might inhibit the transition. A variety of studies highlight US-China competition as a key variable in the projected speed and scope of the green transition; great power competition itself will likely shape the extent to which a decarbonization process can be coordinated effectively at the international level.⁴¹

The issue at hand is a more practical question than a matter of simple diplomacy. Today, there is relatively little prospect of any concerted government action on climate targets at the international level. Instead, it is mostly a question of China’s role as a supplier of green technology; the country has opened the floodgates of production on a variety of relevant products — from solar panels to EVs — in ways that dwarf production of similar products in every other region. Nearly two-thirds of all solar energy capacity deployed in 2024 was in China, and the country produced eight times more EVs than the United States.⁴²

Chinese productivity in these areas has raised both security and trade concerns for Western states. Some critics worry about Chinese market dominance and the inability of Western companies to compete in critical technologies; others worry about the surveillance and intellectual property risks inherent in allowing Chinese companies to sell smart cars or energy technology to U.S. consumers.⁴³ Concerns about oversupply and dumping, for example, underpin recent restrictions on Chinese electric vehicles put in place by the European Commission, which would make Chinese EVs more expensive and difficult to obtain. Though merely one part of the growing tit-for-tat between China and Western economies, these restrictions are also likely to contribute to slower diffusion of green technology globally and a more expensive, more difficult energy transition.

Other geopolitical considerations might also come into play with the energy transition. Major exporting states share a common interest in inhibiting a shift towards adoption of greener energy sources, even when otherwise they have little in common. This dynamic has already played out in the last decade with the development of the OPEC+ arrangement drawing together Russia and the OPEC member states. Though these states have typically been unwilling to cooperate on energy issues, their declining ability to shape international oil prices independently — because of falling market share — has ultimately contributed to closer relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia, among others. In the future, such partnerships could have repercussions for U.S. foreign and economic policy.

A final point linking great power competition and the energy transition is worth noting. From Washington’s perspective, there is a relatively obvious trade-off between the U.S. position as a revived market leader in energy production and the need to move toward a more sustainable, greener energy ecosystem. The United States has substantially benefited in recent years from the fracking revolution, and in 2019 the U.S. overtook Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest oil producer — a position it had not enjoyed since the middle of the 20^th century.⁴⁴ The United States is now a net exporter of oil, and most supplies for the U.S. market now come from domestic sources or neighboring Mexico and Canada — a shift that has been a massive strategic boon to the United States. As one scholar noted in 2018, the United States now occupies a uniquely favorable position: “The structure of international oil markets — characterized by the strong position of American corporations, North America’s relative energy self-sufficiency, and the dollar denomination of the oil trade — continues to underpin the global hegemony of the United States.”⁴⁵

For its part, China finds itself in a much poorer position: heavily dependent on seaborne Middle Eastern oil and gas supplies, which are vulnerable to U.S. naval interdiction.⁴⁶ The green transition will erode that source of strength for the United States over time. This cannot be prevented; the transition is already under way, and the United States cannot force other countries to remain dependent on oil. But policymakers should seek to manage the transition within the United States in ways that ensure America’s strong position as a domestic energy producer continues — even as the sources of that energy diversify over time.

Conclusion

The 21^st century will see a major energy transition, from fossil fuels to renewables, nuclear, hydrogen, and other diverse, greener sources of energy. Yet it remains unclear how thorough and how quickly this transition will occur. As academics Thijs Van de Graaf and Michael Bradshaw have accurately noted, “energy scenarios are notorious for missing disruptive trends.”⁴⁷ But existing trends in technology and climate policy will see demand for oil and gas peak sometime in the middle of the 21^st century.

This period of transition will have significant implications for how states secure their energy needs in military and geopolitical terms. Energy is fundamental to almost every element of the global economy; a seismic shift in energy production, supply chains, and resilience will have profound impacts on the security of states. The challenge for policymakers will be to build a new understanding of energy security as the world shifts toward a different — and perhaps more complex — energy ecosystem.

Notes

1
A renewable energy resource is one that can be used repeatedly and does not run out because it is naturally replaced, such as solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal energy.
2
Goldman Sachs,“Peak oil demand is still a decade away,” accessed December 11, 2024, https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/peak-oil-demand-is-still-a-decade-away.
3
Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment), Department of Defense 2024—2027 Climate Adaptation Plan (Department of Defense, 2024), 47.
4
Shell plc,The Energy Transformation Scenarios (Shell, 2021), 11, https://www.shell.com/news-and-insights/scenarios/what-are-the-previous-shell-scenarios/_jcr_content/root/main/section_1789847828/promo_copy_142460259/links/item0.stream/1652119830834/fba2959d9759c5ae806a03acfb187f1c33409a91/energy-transformation-scenarios.pdf.
5
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), A New World : the Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, 2019).
6
IRENA, Renewable Capacity Statistics 2024 (Abu Dhabi: IRENA, 2024), 2, https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2024/Mar/IRENA_RE_Capacity_Statistics_2024.pdf.
7
IEA, “World Energy Outlook 2023,” last modified October 24, 2023, accessed December 11, 2024, https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023.
8
IEA, “World Energy Outlook 2023,” 28; Gabriel Kasper, Justin Marcoux, and Jen Holk, Act Now: Future Scenarios and the Case for Equitable Climate Action, (Deloitte, May 2023), https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/monitor-climate-scenarios-report.pdf
9
Andreas Goldthau et al., “How the energy transition will reshape geopolitics,” Nature (May 2019): 69.
10
Biofuels are derived from biomass, such as plants, algae, or even animal waste.
11
IEA, Net Zero by 2050 a Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector (IEA, 2021), https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/deebef5d-0c34-4539-9d0c-10b13d840027/NetZeroby2050-ARoadmapfortheGlobalEnergySector_CORR.pdf.
12
IRENA, A New World.
13
Gregor Semieniuk, et al., “Stranded Fossil-fuel Assets Translate to Major Losses for Investors in Advanced Economies,” Nature Climate Change, vol. 12, no. 6 (2022): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01356-y.
14
Daniel Scholten et al., “The Geopolitics of Renewables: New Board, New Game,” Energy Policy (March 2020): 138, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.111059.
15
Benjamin K. Sovacool, “How Long Will It Take? Conceptualizing the Temporal Dynamics of Energy Transitions,” Energy Research & Social Science vol. 13 (March 2016): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.12.020.
16
Emily Meierding, “Dismantling the Oil Wars Myth.” Security Studies vol. 25, no. 2 (April 2, 2016); Rosemary Kelanic, “The Petroleum Paradox: Oil, Coercive Vulnerability, and Great Power Behavior.” Security Studies vol. 25, no. 2 (April 2, 2016); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Free Press, 2008).
17
Jeff Colgan, “The Emperor Has No Clothes: The Limits of OPEC in the Global Oil Market,” International Organization vol. 68, no. 3 (2014).
18
Blake Clayton, and Michael Levi. “The Surprising Sources of Oil’s Influence.” Survival vol. 54, no. 6 (December 2012): 107–22.
19
Caitlin Talmadge, “Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz,” International Security 33, no. 1 (July 2008); Charles Glaser and Rosemary A. Kelanic, eds., Crude Strategy: Rethinking the US Military Commitment to Defend Persian Gulf Oil (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016); Llewelyn Hughes and Austin Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon? Security Implications of Changes in the Structure of the International Oil Market,” International Security vol. 39, no. 3 (2014).
20
Robert Vitalis, Oilcraft: The Haunting of US Grand Strategy in the Gulf, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2020); Eugene Gholz and Daryl G. Press, “Enduring Resilience: How Oil Markets Handle Disruptions,” Security Studies vol. 22, no. 1 (January 2013).
21
Eugene Chausovsky, “Energy Is Taiwan’s Achilles’ Heel,” Foreign Policy, July 31, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/31/energy-taiwan-semiconductor-chips-china-tsmc/.
22
Keith Johnson, “Why the Red Sea Crisis Hasn’t Hit Energy—Yet,” Foreign Policy, last modified January 18, 2024, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/18/red-sea-crisis-energy-oil-houthi-attacks-shipping/.
23
U.S. Department of Energy, Critical Materials Assessment, (2023) https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/doe-critical-material-assessment_07312023.pdf.
24
Gracelin Baskaran and Meredith Schwartz, “China Imposes Its Most Stringent Critical Minerals Export Restrictions Yet Amidst Escalating U.S.-China Tech War,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, December 4, 2024 accessed December 11, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-imposes-its-most-stringent-critical-minerals-export-restrictions-yet-amidst.
25
Belinda Schäpe, “How to De-risk Green Technology Supply Chains from China Without Risking Climate Catastrophe,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 14, 2024, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/08/how-to-de-risk-green-technology-supply-chains-from-china-without-risking-climate-catastrophe?lang=en.
26
Christina Lu and Rocio Fabbro, “China’s Latin American Gold Rush Is All About Clean Energy,” Foreign Policy, February 27, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/27/china-latin-america-lithium-clean-energy-trade-investment.
27
U.S. Internal Revenue Service, “Credits for New Clean Vehicles Purchased in 2023 or After.,” Internal Revenue Service, accessed December 11, 2024, https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/credits-for-new-clean-vehicles-purchased-in-2023-or-after.
28
IRENA, A New World.
29
U.S. Department of Energy, “What Are Critical Materials and Critical Minerals?” Department of Energy, last modified August 4, 2023, https://www.energy.gov/cmm/what-are-critical-materials-and-critical-minerals.
30
Daniel Scholten, “An Introduction and Expectations,” introduction to The Geopolitics of Renewables, Lecture Notes in Energy (New York, NY: Springer International Publishing, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67855-9_1.
31
Jim Krane and Robert Idel, “More Transitions, Less
Risk: How Renewable Energy Reduces Risks from Mining, Trade and Political Dependence,” Energy Research & Social Science 82 (December 2021): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102311.
32
IRENA, A New World.
33
Thijs van de Graaf and Michael Bradshaw, “Stranded Wealth: Rethinking the Politics of Oil in an Age of Abundance,” International Affairs vol. 94, no. 6 (2018): 1317, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy197.
34
Tokhir N. Mirzoev et al., The Future of Oil and Fiscal Sustainability in the GCC Region (International Monetary Fund, 2020).
35
National Resource Governance Institute, “National Oil Company Database,” last updated May 1, 2024, https://www.nationaloilcompanydata.org/.
36
Guy Prince, “Petrostates of Decline: oil and gas producers face growing fiscal risks as the energy transition unfolds,” Carbon Tracker, December 1, 2023, https://carbontracker.org/reports/petrostates-of-decline/.
37
Amy Myers Jaffe, “Striking Oil Ain’t What It Used to Be,” Foreign Affairs, January 20, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/africa/striking-oil-aint-what-it-used-be.
38
Sian Bradley, Glada Lahn, and Steve Pye, Carbon Risk and Resilience : How Energy Transition Is Changing the Prospects for Developing Countries with Fossil Fuels, July 2018, https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2018-07-12-carbon-risk-resilience-bradley-lahn-pye.pdf.
39
Don Grant et al., “A Worldwide Analysis of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets’ Impact on Power Plants’ CO2 Emissions,” Nature Communications vol. 15, no. 1 (2024): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52036-8.
40
European Systemic Risk Board, Climate-related Risk and Financial Stability by ECB/ESRB Project Team on Climate Risk Monitoring (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: European Systemic Risk Board, 2021); “What are stranded assets?,” London School of Economics, July 27, 2022, https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/explainers/what-are-stranded-assets/.
41
IEA, World Energy Outlook 2023; Kasper, Marcoux, and Holk, Act Now.
42
David Wallace-Wells, “What Happens if China Stops Trying to Save the World?,” New York Times, September 16, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/opinion/china-solar-climate.html.; Edward White, “China’s accelerating green transition,” Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/4afdd319-230f-4763-8107-d8a43308dcfc.
43
Ansgar Baums and Thomas Ramge, “Are Tariffs the Best Way To Address Green Tech Overcapacity?” Stimson Center, November 4, 2024, https://www.stimson.org/2024/are-tariffs-the-best-way-to-address-green-tech-overcapacity/.
44
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “The United States is now the largest global crude oil producer,” US Energy Information Administration, December 12, 2024, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37053.
45
Van de Graaf and Bradshaw, “Stranded Wealth,” 1,313.
46
Hughes and Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon?”
47
Van de Graaf and Bradshaw, “Stranded Wealth,” 1,319.