Rethinking Energy Security: Geopolitics, Economics and Climate Change in a Fragmenting World Order

Abstract

Through most of the last century, "energy security" carried a fairly narrow meaning: whether a country could obtain enough oil, gas or electricity, at a price it could bear, without serious interruption. That framing has worn thin. Armed conflict, sanctions regimes, rivalry among major powers, fractured supply chains and a warming climate have together pulled energy questions much closer to the centre of international security debates. Russia's war in Ukraine, continuing instability across the Middle East, and intensifying competition over critical minerals all point in the same direction: energy markets are now bound tightly to foreign policy, national security and economic resilience.

This paper follows how the meaning of energy security has shifted, examined through three lenses economics, geopolitics and climate change. Its central argument is that energy is no longer simply a commodity traded on international markets. It has become a strategic resource that states use to project influence, manage their exposure to risk and pursue their own interests. Moving toward renewable energy does not take geopolitics out of the equation; it arguably opens new fronts of competition, over critical minerals, technology, manufacturing capacity and the supply chains linking them together.

Drawing on realism, geopolitical economy and securitisation theory, the paper develops a multidimensional reading of energy security — one that extends beyond simple access to energy and takes in economic stability, strategic autonomy, technological capability, infrastructure protection and climate sustainability. Understood this way, the emerging energy order looks less like an end to geopolitical rivalry and more like its migration into new terrain.