The world turned upside down: The impact of renewable energy on geopolitical complexities

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Although not a major security preoccupation, alternative energy is entering geopolitical considerations of states and features prominently on the agendas of non-state actors. Renewables are one more variable that affects the perspectives of actors in their interactions, and alters their value judgments in strategy making. What this variable reveals is that in the modern interconnected and globalised world, one country's security solution could be another country's security threat.

Renewable energy is reshaping the global energy map, affecting security considerations and skewing the balance of power among nations. The development of new energy capabilities to utilise resources such as the sun, wind and biofuels can be transformed into economic and geopolitical power, just as fossil fuel reserves proved a source of geopolitical influence for exporting countries.

Beyond the opportunity to play a new role in the global political economy, states that acquire renewable energy capacities could generate benefits that affect the balances that underpin the world system inherited after the end of the Cold War. The rising attention that alternative energy generates among policy makers is contingent with the significance ascribed to renewables from the perspective of state actors seeking to find a new role in the current geopolitical disequilibrium.

Renewable energy capacities, world, EU-27, BRICS and Top-7 countries

Source: US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), World Factbook, July 2012 estimate.

As a local solution to global problems, renewable energy can endow specific actors with new forms of power--whether by enhancing energy security through energy independence and diversification, or using renewable energy as a stepping stone toward a new international dynamic. The ability to wield greater influence on energy prices and markets can transform the positions of both net energy consumers and net energy suppliers.

This is an attractive option that many seek to pursue. Examples include EU member countries' projects for development of massive solar power arrays in Africa, the biofuels revolution in Brazil and the reliance of Denmark on wind power. Renewable energy offers rising powerhouses like China and India opportunities to stake new claims in energy markets and foster home-grown green industries.

At the same time, alternative energy sources demonstrate how from a solution to a security problem they can become a potential threat to many. Biofuels, for example, rank among the most contentious renewable energy sources from a geopolitical perspective. They are highly dependent on geographical location, arable land and climate conditions that allow growing specific crops, such as corn and other cereals, beet and sugar cane, and their production is contingent on the availability of essential resources for production, such as food and water.

Nations that have the right conditions for their production tend to endow biofuel production with political and geopolitical value that goes beyond their immediate utility as an energy source. That is why the production of biofuels is making inroads into national security agendas. For countries like the United States and Brazil, it could be an answer to long-term energy dependency, as well as to specific economic and environmental security threats.

Mass deployment of renewable energy technologies could spur localised resource competition and conflicts that could foster national, regional, and global security challenges. It can galvanise economic disputes between countries, such as the ongoing disputes over biofuels between the United States and Brazil, or the quarrels over the ability of US suppliers of renewable energy technologies to enter the Chinese or Indian markets.

Development of alternative energy technologies can skew economic balances because of their extensive requirements for subsidies, driven by the high cost of production and political considerations. Like clashes over fossil fuels, the prospects for conflicts over biofuels and other renewables' production will increase exponentially in areas poorly demarcated and disputed by countries, especially in Africa and Asia where many states have artificial or unclear borders.

What does the future of alternative energy developments reveal about upcoming geopolitical challenges

The developments in alternative energy also provide a novel perspective on the new energy complexities and their repercussions for the geopolitical equilibrium of the 21st century. The rapid growth of wind, solar, biofuels and other sources of renewable energy sheds new light on the manner in which new centres of power are emerging, revamping the traditional areas of contention and strategic competition, and generating new splits between developed and developing countries.

The new energy relations that will emerge in line with future alternative energy developments will influence the reshaping of the institutional framework of geopolitics. It could also exacerbate global divisions and provide new grounds for potential conflict. One example is the North/South split between the industrialised free-market democracies of North America, Western Europe, Japan, and the poorer and, from a geopolitical perspective, weaker countries representing the Third World and the nations previously comprising the Communist bloc.

The emergence of renewable energy could impose on the nations of the South new demands on scarce resources for regime and national survival. Though it could spawn new bargaining opportunities with the OECD states based on the claim of industrialised countries' historic responsibility for such environmental problems as climate change--it also could spark new confrontations.

North-South disputes over renewable resources could become frequent, analysts John Podesta and Peter Ogden warn, requiring "a complex North-South bargain... where development, energy security and environmental protection are incorporated into a meaningful and mutually beneficial package". An international platform might need to be created, ensuring dialogue and transparency with other energy players, such as Russia, China and India, perhaps along the lines of the proposed "E-8" of major emitting nations.

China in particular has provided massive subsidies to its domestic solar photovoltaic and wind turbine producers, sparking fierce complaints of unfair competition from the United States and the EU. As a result, China has risked its position within the WTO--which could indicate the value it places on renewable energy development.

China's pursuit of alternative energy development could enable it to emerge as an overall winner in the development of alternative energy solutions, further bolstering its geopolitical position and providing it with still more leverage in its relations with the West. At the same time, it needs to contend with the fact that "China's continued economic success remains heavily dependent on the inflow of Western capital and technology and on access to foreign markets, and that severely limits China's options", as pointed out by Zbigniew Brzezinski.

China forecast renewable generation

Source: OECD/IEA 2012.

In the new multi-centric world order, the dominance of the West during the 20th Century appears to be diminishing, not because of an absolute decline, but rather because of the rise of the other players, particularly in Asia. The perception of a seesaw balance and competition between East and West had persisted since the times of ancient Greece and Rome, evolving over the succeeding centuries, and after World War II broadened to encompass the bipolar division of a US-led West and a Soviet-dominated--or at least influenced--East.

China's emergence as a world leader in renewable energy production and technology manufacturing is one more element of the shift in perceived balance of power between West and East. Alternative energy technologies are among those techno-economic advantages that go beyond short-term calculations and affect the geometry of geopolitics, imposing new distinctions on geopolitical notions and strategies, and facilitating new policy agendas and actions while precluding and limiting others.

Further, the cleavage between the fossil fuel-producing nations of OPEC and the energy-consuming industrialised countries is undergoing fundamental change. Renewable energy alters the whole notion of control of natural resources, where the predominant consideration has been that legal title to a resource belongs to those that "possessed" and "exercised actual control over" it. The resulting revamped energy map could presage, as security analyst Michael Klare notes, the "emergence of a new geography of conflict in which competition over vital resources is becoming the governing principle behind the disposition and use of military power".

The alternative energy megatrend contributes to the further entanglement of already complex geopolitical interactions and is both delineated by and reshapes traditional dynamics. This influence on the equilibrium incorporates the growing tendency to politicise developmental concerns, including the economic and environmental impact of energy, that reinforce the perception of geopolitical cleavages and divergent interests.

The geopolitical implications of alternative energy developments must therefore be seen from the perspective of a shifting consensus of political knowledge and certainty.

It is important to note that renewable energy still constitutes a small portion of the global energy mix, and countries from China to the United States to Brazil are likely to depend heavily on coal, oil and natural gas for years to come. But in a world where a billion people have no access to electricity while emerging economic powerhouses like China and India scramble to provide their citizens with the energy essential for a better quality of life, renewable energy is turning traditional notions of energy and political power upside down.

Irrespective of whether or not the EU returns to its previous policy stance on carbon emissions now, five or 10 years later, the likelihood is that some form of political support for renewable energy developments will remain in place. Such support is an intrinsic part of how modern trends of this type have modified political attitudes, redirected policy attention to new problems and challenges, and affected the notions of where actors derive geopolitical power from. It points to signs of transformational changes in strategic perspectives worldwide, possibly signs of civilisational transition, created by, to paraphrase Toynbee, "a crisis that requires emergency responses".

Like the British surrender at Yorktown more than two centuries ago that eventually gained America its independence, the global drive for renewable energy stands to reshape the geopolitical map in both anticipated and unexpected ways.

Dr Alexander Mirtchev is Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is also Vice-President of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), London, est. 1831, and Executive Chairman of RUSI International. A project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the study "The Alternative Energy Megatrend: A Global Security Discourse in the Universally Securitized World", will be published this year.

BY : Dr Alexander Mirtchev, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars