A Conversation on Climate Change, the Energy Transition, and National Security

The energy transition may worsen the balance of power globally, given current efforts to build new nuclear reactors and the mad rush for global resources and critical minerals like copper, lithium, cobalt or nickel. That was the message of an Institute of Global Politics roundtable held February 21 titled “Climate Change, Energy Transition, and National Security.” 

The discussion featured Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the Former UK National Security Adviser and an IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Columbia SIPA’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP). He was joined by Diego Mesa Puyo, the former Colombian Minister of Energy and Mines.

The competition for minerals “has the enormous capacity to disrupt the balance of power between nations. There is no doubt that we will have a greater number of new nuclear reactors popping up all over the world in the future.”
— Sir Stephen Lovegrove

The energy transition has heightened tensions between Western countries and the Global South. "Being told that they are not in a position to go after cheaper sources of energy by the developed world is extraordinarily irritating [for the Global South],” said Lovegrove. “This fracture between the developed West and the Global South is a particular problem."

The policies needed for a just and equitable energy transition may also exacerbate political tensions within countries, too. “The affordability of moving into energy transition in a conservative and effective way is going to be a real pressure point [for politicians],” he added. “It will be a very difficult thing for leaders and politicians to make the kind of choices that will accelerate energy transition in the way we would all like it to be accelerated in. If they do, I think that will potentially lead to a degree of polarization within some economies, which we're already seeing in the United Kingdom and in the United States.”

“Depending on the country, you may be able to get a better response if you also think about the social impact of increasing energy prices on average, and then trying to protect specific communities. I think there are many examples of countries that actually managed to do it well, but many more that haven't been able to sustain the reform.”
— Diego Mesa Puyo

Achieving standardization of the supply chains of critical minerals – particularly that meet ESG standards – will prove challenging, according to Puyo, given the diverse political economies of each country. "I suspect it will likely be a bit better in the future partly [because] Western companies partly are exposed to scrutiny and also the governments of the countries in which they aim to operate in are probably more sophisticated in the way in which they license this type of activity,” he said. “I think more of the problem is whether or not China is going to be capable or willing to cooperate with anything like those kinds of standards."