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Understanding the Geopolitics of the Energy Transition - a new world in the making

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, as well as the role that the energy transition has in that process. We will do so through public lectures by innovative thinkers on aspects of this topic, coupled to private engagements with the UK policy community and a public engagement programme of short podcasts and policy briefs.

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 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 the 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.

Themes
  • The New Political Economy of Supply: resources, rare earths and finance
  • The New Political Economy of Production: green technology, R&D and industrial capacity
  • The Changing Political Economy of Trade and Markets in an Era of Great Power Competition
  • Understanding the Real Digital Economy: no longer clean and free
  • Old Wine, New Bottles: nuclear energy’s unexpected revival
  • The Lithium Triangle: a suppliers’ cartel or new dependency?
  • BRICS+ as the new locus of the emerging energy paradigm
  • Persia Gulf: stranded assets or energy giant redux
  • An Historical Reading of Energy Transitions, Technology and Geopolitics: what steam, coal and horses can tell us

Events

Understanding the Real Digital Economy: no longer clean and free
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.

 

Climate Emergency and the Future of Civic Space

As the climate emergency escalates, so are efforts to securitize climate change. Will securitizing the climate crisis become a catalyst or a substitute for addressing it? And how will that affect shrinking civic space globally?

Podcasts

The New Political Economy of Supply: resources, rare earths and finance
May 2025

LSE IDEAS aims to examine the ongoing impact of this energy transition through a series of events, unpacking key features of this emerging industry.

 

Policy Briefs

The New Political Economy of Supply: resources, rare earths and finance | The international implications of China’s roles in the low-carbon energy transition 
August 2025

Critical Minerals and the New Industrial Order
September 2025

 

 

Publications

Energy Security in the Baltics: Perceptions in the Midst of the Russia-Ukraine War
April 2025

Amidst the geopolitical complexities of Eurasia, the strategic employment of energy resources has emerged as a potent tool for projecting power. Since coming to power, Vladimir Putin has wielded energy security as a means to exert influence across the region, with the pinnacle of this influence underscored during the February 2022 escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war. This paper delves into perceptions on energy in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania amidst the Russia- Ukraine war, specifically focusing on attitudes towards energy security, renewable energy sources, and energy efficiency.

Strategy and Justice: Managing the Geopolitics of Climate Change - Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
September 2024

This report focuses on the UK’s foreign, development and economic policies as they relate to climate. In examining the world as it may develop over the next decade in order to illuminate decisions needed in the short term, it argues that governments, including the UK’s new government, should treat climate as a first order geopolitical issue and examines the UK’s role and required actions within this context.

Climate change policy as a guide for orbital debris policy
4 April 2023

Orbital pollution, also known as space debris, is one of the most important global challenges in space. Although some progress has been made within the existing voluntary policy framework, more comprehensive regulations are still needed to effectively address this issue and prevent further accumulation of debris in orbit. In this commentary, Professor Nodir Adilov, Purdue University Fort Wayne, Dr. Peter Alexander, Federal Communications Commission, and Professor Brendan Cunningham, Eastern Connecticut State University, discuss a policy proposal for dealing with orbital debris that can build on climate change policy.

 

 

This initiative launches a 24-month lecture series at LSE exploring the new geopolitics of the energy transition. Each term, a leading expert will deliver a public lecture.

The series will then produce six policy briefs and podcasts, offering timely insights for both policymakers and the wider public.

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