Herranz-Surralles Anna
Political Science Department, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Geopolitics. 2024 Jan 2;29(5):1882-1912. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2023.2283489. eCollection 2024.
Amidst heightened global power rivalries, the geopolitical aspects of the energy transition are taking centre stage, with even liberal-minded countries growing wary about foreign investment in the energy sector and the dependencies created by global value chains of green technologies. Building on current debates on the 'geopoliticization' of foreign economic policies, this paper sets out a conceptual framework to assess the extent to which the energy transition is becoming geopoliticized in the European Union (EU) and its impact on international energy relations. Theoretically, the paper makes the case for considering geopoliticization as a missing link in the study of politicization and securitization in International Relations, allowing for a more fine-grained diagnosis of current trends and their likely evolution. Empirically, the analysis identifies structural geopoliticizing dynamics in the EU's framing of the energy transition, although to different degrees depending on the concrete issue at hand. While demands for factoring in the geopolitical consequences of the energy transition are ever louder, normatively, the paper raises a note of caution against the adverse consequences geopoliticization may have for the global transition to low-carbon energy systems.
在全球权力竞争加剧的背景下，能源转型的地缘政治层面正成为焦点，就连思想开放的国家也对能源领域的外国投资以及绿色技术全球价值链所造成的依赖变得警惕起来。基于当前关于对外经济政策“地缘政治化”的讨论，本文提出一个概念框架，以评估能源转型在欧盟（EU）的地缘政治化程度及其对国际能源关系的影响。从理论上讲，本文主张将地缘政治化视为国际关系中政治化和安全化研究中缺失的一环，从而能够对当前趋势及其可能的演变进行更细致的诊断。从实证角度看，分析确定了欧盟在构建能源转型过程中的结构性地缘政治化动态，不过其程度因具体问题而异。尽管对将能源转型的地缘政治后果考虑在内的呼声越来越高，但在规范层面，本文对地缘政治化可能给全球向低碳能源系统转型带来的不利后果提出了警示。
