Do Renewables Bring Peace? Assessing Key Hypotheses of the Geopolitics of Renewables

An emerging literature on the geopolitics of renewables poses that the rise of renewables has a democratizing effect, with positive consequences for international levels of conflict. This hypothesis ties into a long-standing IR debate on the ‘democratic peace’ theory, as a corollary of which a low carbon world will see less armed interstate tension thanks to more states being democratic. The assumed mechanism here rests on a changing political economy of domestic power distribution: thanks to revenues from decentralized renewable energy predominantly resting with prosumers not big corporations and governments, citizens see empowerment and opportunity for voicing their preferences in the political process. Testing these assumptions by using a longitudinal dataset on global renewable energy investment, the paper finds that the core hypothesis is empirically not supported. Instead, statistical tests reveal that variables such as the level of development or growth are more significant in explaining the degree to which energy investment is decentralized (and may therefore underpin democracy). The results therefore put in question the validity of some of the prevalent assumptions in the geopolitics of renewables literature. The paper critically discusses the findings in light of the limitations of large-n tests, and suggests further avenues for empirical research into what has become an emerging field of academic inquiry.