‘Winning’ the Energy Transition: Looking Beyond Resources

The transition to low-carbon energy systems has the potential to shift geopolitical power, as it will create winners and losers across countries. The clean energy business is certainly lucrative for its winners: the IEA estimates that the transition would create a $1.2 trillion market for clean energy. Although there have been vivid debates in the past years among policymakers and scholars alike, the factors determining who will win and who will lose are still hotly debated[i]. Many scholars see physical resources as important, from solar radiation levels to critical materials. We argue that what matters for ‘winning’ transition processes are political and economic factors, such as investments in renewables and technological development, as well as relative timing of transition processes.