The geopolitics of renewable energy: Debunking four emerging myths

By Indra Overland. Energy Research & Social Science, 2019

229 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This article seeks to nip in the bud four emerging myths about the geopolitics of the rise of renewable energy and the concomitant increase in electricity usage. The article presents alternative perspectives, arguing that (1) the risk of geopolitical competition over critical materials for renewable energy is limited; (2) the resource curse as we know it from the petroleum sector will not necessarily reappear in many countries in connection with renewable energy; (3) transboundary electricity cut-offs will mostly be unsuitable as a geopolitical weapon; and (4) it is not clear that growing use of renewable energy will exacerbate cyber-security risks. In all four areas, the evolving literature could place more emphasis on uncertainty and risks and less on one-sided scenarios and maximization of threats.

Subfields: General Energy, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d3c33f8959dafecacc0bf4902949ff7c6ebf77e

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Citations in the corpus

Time-varying interactions between geopolitical risks and renewable energy consumption (2021, methodology): “However, Overland (2019) suggests that the changing geopolitics will dynamically influence other indicators and implies that estimations based on a standard VAR model are less persuasive. Thus, using a time-varying method can provide more insights by combining sign restrictions with no restrictions.”
Energy system resilience – A review (2021, background): “importing country, the exporter-importer relationship is expected to be more symmetrical [117].”
Renewable energy and geopolitics: A review (2020, background): “There is no consensus as to exactly which materials are critical for the production of renewable energy (Overland [3]).”
Geopolitical Risk and Energy Transition in Russia: Evidence from ARDL Bounds Testing Method (2020, background): “Particularly, the green energy sources may not make the resource curse in energy producer countries [2] and lower regional and global geopolitical competition over domination in non-renewable energy markets.”
On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research (2022, background): “The discourse on critical materials tends to confuse the economics of commodity cycles with geological scarcity and overlooks the vital aspect that, unlike fossil fuels, most critical materials for renewable energy technologies can be recycled [404].”