Green Energy Statecraft for Comprehensive National Security

Research and analysis have highlighted the potential national security benefits of the green energy transition in terms of its economic, social, environmental and geostrategic payoffs. But these components have not been integrated in a strategic new approach to energy transition governance. We call this new approach Green Energy Statecraft, offering it as an ‘ideal type’ conceptual framework for researchers and national decision makers alike to better develop ambitious, strategic and effective green energy policy.

The green energy transition has profound implications for national security, comprehensively conceived. States with the ambition and ability to govern the shift will reap significant energy, economic, social, environmental, and military security rewards. These multifaceted national security gains will be larger than those accruing from a less integrated, non-strategic governance approach. The latter would substantially diminish the likelihood of achieving a successful energy transition – the obvious and ultimate imperative for all nations. A non-strategic approach would also jeopardise related objectives like the achievement of ‘green energy superpower’ status, now the stated ambition of several national governments including China, the US, UK, Australia and India.

A crucial new question thus demands attention: what kind of governance approach enables policymakers to expedite the green transition and advance a comprehensive security-enhancing agenda?

Existing research has explored different dimensions of energy transition governance and how it might help or hinder certain aspects of national security – be it energy, economic, social, environmental, or military – typically leveraging (sub)disciplinary specialisation. What is lacking, however, is a holistic approach to analysing and evaluating national energy transition governance, one that integrates and extends these insights. A holistic approach is crucial because national policymakers must grapple with pressing energy, economic, social, environmental and military security challenges simultaneously. This complexity is captured in the language of “polycrisis” – a term widely invoked to indicate the interwoven and mutually reinforcing nature of multiple contemporaneous security challenges.

Today’s polycrisis can elicit reactive, confounding and contradictory policy responses. For example, we currently see countries from China to the United States and Australia releasing ambitious green industry-building strategies while continuing to support the expansion of fossil fuel industries through subsidies and other measures. But amongst such contradictions, in some national contexts we also observe the elements of a more coherent approach to governing the green transition – one that can capitalise on the unavoidable energy shift to address pressing energy, economic, social, political, environmental and military security problems simultaneously. We call this approach ‘Green Energy Statecraft’.

In essence, Green Energy Statecraft involves national governments adopting a highly ambitious and strategic role in guiding, shaping, and accelerating the green transition to advance a comprehensive national security-enhancing agenda. Our aim here is to identify what we see as the essential features of this new statecraft-in-the-making. We offer it as a map to assist decision makers and researchers in their quest to both conceptualise the governance challenges and changes taking place, and to assess progress towards a more coherent, goal-oriented approach to governing the green transition and maximising its multifaceted and connected national security payoffs.

This is an excerpt from the AP4D publication Green Energy Statecraft for Comprehensive National Security by Elizabeth Thurbon, Alexander M. Hynd, Hao Tan, Susan Park & Andrew Walter. To read the report in full click here.