Energy transition in an age of disorder

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.” Gramsci was writing about politics, but he could have been writing about energy. Fossil fuels are not delivering the stability their defenders claimed, and the transition away from them will not unfold in a smooth or apolitical straight line either. What lies in between is the messy middle: overlapping systems, geopolitical shocks and mounting climate stress. And until we understand that, we will keep misreading the disorder unfolding around us.

The false promise of fossil stability

For years, critics of the green transition have reached for some version of Sultan Al Jaber’s infamous COP28 warning that moving away from fossil fuels too quickly would send us “back into caves.” Move too fast, they argue, and chaos will follow. Higher prices. Supply shocks. Political backlash. Strategic weakness. Better, in their view, to stay with oil, gas and coal a while longer in the name of realism and energy security.

The last few years have shown how flawed that argument is.

With COVID, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and now war in Iran, the world has been hit by three major energy shocks in quick succession. All three tell us the same story: the real energy security risk is not the transition away from fossil fuels but our continued dependence on them.

The interregnum 

Renewables are scaling faster than almost anyone expected. In most parts of the world, they are now the cheapest form of new electricity, and the economics have shifted decisively in their favour. But transforming the energy system of human civilisation takes time. The new energy order is rising. The old one still dominates.

That is the interregnum, the messy middle. We are not watching the transition fail. We are living with the consequences of being only partway through it.

If your economy still depends on fuels whose price can be thrown around by wars, sanctions, shipping disruption, or the politics of distant regimes, then your energy system is not secure. Oil is a globally traded commodity. Gas markets are increasingly international too. Producing more at home does not insulate you from shocks in the system as a whole.

Fossil fuels are not just an energy source. They are a transmission mechanism for instability. The case for renewables is not simply that they are cleaner. It is that they offer, over time, a way out of a system defined by fuel price volatility, import dependence and strategic vulnerability. Sunlight does not pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Wind is not controlled by a cartel. The more of your economy you can run on domestic clean electricity, the less exposed you are to the next geopolitical shock.

A new map of power

But fossil fuels will not be the only source of tension in the years ahead.

The next energy system will not arrive free of rivalry. Its politics are already taking shape, and they are not always benign. Trade tensions over batteries, critical minerals and industrial policy are intensifying. The United States and China are now in open strategic competition across large parts of the clean technology value chain. Lithium and cobalt mining have already generated serious tensions in countries from Bolivia to Congo. Rare earths, processing capacity, refining and manufacturing dominance are becoming part of a new map of power.

Some countries will gain leverage because they control key minerals, manufacturing capacity or abundant clean power. Others will lose influence as the world becomes less dependent on fossil fuel exports. In some places that shift will be manageable. In others it will be deeply destabilising.

This is especially true across parts of the developing world where governments still depend heavily on revenues from oil and gas companies, or directly from state-owned fossil fuel enterprises. If that income falls faster than new industries and tax bases emerge, the consequences will not just be economic. They will be political too. States that already look fragile can become much more so.

Whenever the map of energy changes, the map of power changes with it.

Water, climate and fragility

And then there is water.

This is where the argument becomes more serious still, because the transition is unfolding inside a climate system already under severe strain.

Iran is a case in point. A six-year drought has pushed the country towards what many call water bankruptcy. Water shortages have become a fact of life. There have been protests with people demanding the most basic things imaginable: water, electricity, life. In parts of Tehran, taps reportedly ran dry long before the war.

Climate stress is no longer a side issue to geopolitics. In many places, it is becoming one of its drivers.

Water scarcity, heat, crop failures, weak infrastructure, power shortages, food inflation and repression do not sit in separate boxes. They combine and reinforce one another. They make societies harder to govern and crises harder to contain.

Redefining energy security

So when we talk about energy security, we need a broader definition.

For too long the phrase has meant one thing only: keeping fuel flowing at a tolerable price. That is too narrow for the world we now live in. An energy system is not secure if it leaves you hostage to global fuel shocks. It is not secure if it deepens climate vulnerability. It is not secure if it worsens water stress or props up brittle political systems that function only while fossil rents keep flowing.

A serious definition of energy security today has to include resilience in the fullest sense: economic, climate, political and resource resilience.

What getting this right requires 

The transition will need to be governed far better than it is now. That means building more resilient supply chains for clean technologies. It means more serious thought about mineral sourcing, recycling and material efficiency. It means grids, storage and transmission need much more attention. It means helping countries whose public finances are dangerously exposed to fossil decline.

But the central point is now hard to avoid. Fossil dependence is already a source of disorder. The transition will have to be managed carefully, because it will reshape power and create new frictions, but that is no argument for remaining tied to the old system.

The task, then, is not to romanticise either system. It is to move through the transition with our eyes open and govern it well enough to build something more resilient than the order we are leaving behind.