The geopolitics of renewables
A mere shift or landslide in energy dependencies?
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Abstract
Renewable energy sources are often hailed as the panacea for a plethora of challenges associated with the use of fossil fuels. Partly for good reasons; while the utilization of renewables diminishes energy scarcity and lowers various kinds of pollution, their potential to address energy related geopolitical tensions among producer, consumer, and transit countries remains to be seen. This paper aims to provide some food for thought by exploring the potential political implications of the geographical and technical characteristics of renewable energy systems. To this end we conduct a thought experiment in which we exchange the existing fossil fuel based energy systems for a purely renewable based energy system where electricity is the energy carrier, keeping all else equal. We find that two major implications for renewable energy based markets stand out: countries face a make or buy decision, i.e. they have a choice to produce or import (side-stepping the scarcity issues of fossil fuels) and the nature of renewable electricity transport implies a much more physically integrated infrastructure whose load requires on the spot management, whose cut-offs or blackouts may affect all parties in the network immediately, and which knows difficulties in storing energy (fossil fuels tend to know less stringent operational conditions). Two scenarios are explored to illustrate which strategic concerns for producer, consumer, and transit countries these implications lead to: Continental (following a buy decision and more centralized network) and National (following a make decision and a more decentralized network). In the end, three observations stand out compared to fossil fuels. First, a shift in considerations from getting access to resources to strategic positioning in infrastructure management. Second, a shift in strategic leverage from producers to consumers and transit countries. Finally, for most countries the possibility exists to become a ‘prosumer’ country, thereby greatly reducing any form of geopolitical concern.