The de-carbonisation of industrial economies is moving apace and bringing with it a silent transition, a phenomenon ‘hiding in plain sight’, in the foundational structures of the international political economy. New sources of energy are not only propelling the adoption of green technologies as well as reconfiguring global supply and production chains but are in the process of reshaping the centres of global power in unexpected ways. 

For instance, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are expanding membership to include Saudi Arabia and Iran (with Indonesia and Turkey waiting in the wings), making it the globe’s premier ‘energy giant’ in both carbon-based and, with China’s dominant position in R&D and production, green power. Rapidly melting Arctic ice is opening up trade routes that threaten to render existing commercial patterns – and trade entrepots of the past – less relevant while BRICS efforts to ‘de-dollarize’ trade seek to reduce the role of the US currency in that process. Concurrently, the unwinding of the Western led rules-based order, accelerated by Russia-China partnership in Ukraine and the South China Sea and – ironically, given Washington’s advocacy of that order – erratic US foreign policy in the Middle East, is causing the Global South to reposition itself away from dependency on Western democracies to one viewing authoritarian states as sources of technological innovation, infrastructure capacity and global leadership in an unstable world. Taken together, all of these suggest that a fundamental shift is underway, one that pairs the material strengths of the emerging energy giants to the desire for a revisionist world order by challenging Western presumptions of global leadership.

LSE IDEAS proposes to examine the ongoing impact of the energy transition through a series of events aimed at unpacking key features of this emerging world in the making and the role that the energy transition has in that process.

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LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.

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