By: Piyush Verma
The following excerpt is from Chapter 2 — Ten Fault Lines That Will Define the Global Energy Transition of ORF Global Quarterly: Energy and Tech: Powering the Future.
Global energy and climate policy is entering a period of deepening divergence. The world is not abandoning the energy transition, but countries increasingly disagree on what the transition should prioritise, how fast it should move, who should pay, and who should benefit from the new energy economy. What is emerging is not a singular global transition, but several of them, across various and overlapping domains: security, industry, finance, minerals, digitalisation, and resilience-building. These transitions are progressing at different speeds across regions and are creating new fault lines between advanced economies, emerging markets, fossil fuel exporters, mineral-rich countries, climate-vulnerable states, and technology powers.
These divergences can be understood through three analytical lenses: security and geopolitics; equity and development; and systems and technology. How these divergences are managed will determine not whether the energy transition advances, but at what pace, on what terms, and for whose benefit. For the Global South, the stakes are particularly high: the transition could unlock industrialisation, resilience, and strategic bargaining power, but it could also reproduce older patterns of dependency through new technologies, standards, minerals, and financial asymmetries.
The global energy transition is becoming more fragmented as industrial policy, critical minerals, trade and national security reshape countries' energy priorities. Learn more in ORF Global Quarterly: Energy and Tech: Powering the Future.