The EU De‐Risking of Energy Dependencies: Towards a New Clean Energy Geopolitical Order?

Tomasz Jerzyniak
Additional contact information
Tomasz Jerzyniak: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), Maastricht University, The Netherlands / European Commission, Belgium

Politics and Governance, 2024, vol. 12

Abstract: The mounting geopolitical tensions and rivalries between the world’s major economies transform the goals and instruments of domestic and external policies. Industrial strategies of leading global powers call for technological decoupling, strategic autonomy, and the de-risking of dependencies in critical value chains. Economic interdependencies become a liability and de-globalisation tendencies come to the fore. The energy sector is not exempted from these trends, leading even to the weaponisation of energy in some cases. In that vein, this article explores the character and directions of EU international energy engagement through the geoeconomic lens. Taking inspiration from literature on energy security and the geopolitics of energy transition, the article theorises the concept of de-risking in energy to investigate how the EU is positioning itself as a power while ensuring security and competitiveness. Looking at three illustrative examples of the energy transition—supply of natural gas, access to energy-critical minerals, and international hydrogen markets—the article shows that EU de-risking means not only diversifying suppliers but, most notably, constructing new economic, sustainable, and potentially long-lasting international relations. As a result, despite the deep geopoliticisation of energy and the new global “disorder,” the EU’s de-risking has the potential to reshape international relations by forging new partnerships or reconfiguring existing ones, thus establishing a new economic order driven by clean energy while offering new economic opportunities to create local value chains and decarbonise economies in third countries.

Keywords: clean energy transition; dependence; de‐risking; EU energy policy; geoeconomics; geopolitics; international cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/8285 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v12:y:2024:a:8285

DOI: 10.17645/pag.8285

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().