E-International Relations - A Geopolitically Sustainable Green Energy Agenda

Open Markets executive director Barry Lynn’s “rule of four" notion, stipulating that “no country should hold more than a 25% market share in any crucial commodity such as critical minerals,” in an article on China’s overwhelming control over many key natural resources.

Nations have increasingly come together to ward-off an existential climate crisis. Yet wars in Europe and the Middle East, rising nationalism and growing superpower tensions are raising questions about whether the climate agenda can remain insulated from rising concerns about energy security. With fading confidence that the modern liberal international order represents a clear disjunction from the realist politicking of the last century, it is necessary to reconsider whether in focusing on the climate change agenda in isolation from geopolitical variables, there has been a neglect of the lessons of the old energy order’s political catastrophes. With China accumulating dominance over large spectrums of the green energy value chain, and with Western nations attempting to break the market’s hyper-concentration, there is a need for broader multilateral efforts led by third parties that accommodate mature discussions on geopolitical, and in particular energy security, concerns.