Towards a More Resilient Energy Future: Finland and Poland amid Europe’s New Geopolitical Reality

In the era of polycrisis, European energy systems face the dual challenge of accelerating decarbonization while strengthening resilience amid external and internal pressures of geopolitical conflict, hybrid threats, technological disruptions, social unrest, right-wing populism, or critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. Europe’s energy and climate agenda has undergone profound stress as the post-2022 geopolitical environment has shifted attention from long-term decarbonization toward short-term security imperatives. This article examines how Finland and Poland - countries with overlapping historical experiences but divergent strategic orientations - are adapting their energy systems under these pressures and preparing for future shocks. Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews and national policy documents, the analysis applies a STEEP framework (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political) to examine crisis preparedness and energy system resilience in these two strategically important Member States, and to explore what their trajectories reveal about the EU’s struggle to maintain climate ambition amidst the evolving “old” and “new” geopolitics of energy. As our findings show, Finland, which traditionally treated energy security as a technical and economic challenge, has reoriented its strategy following the rupture with Russia, accelerating diversification and the deployment of geopolitically safer technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs) and liquefied natural gas (LNG).. Poland, on the other hand, that has long been approaching energy through a geopolitical and sovereignty-oriented lens, continues to prioritize large-scale infrastructure, including the expansion of LNG infrastructure, coal phase-out on its own terms, offshore wind and new nuclear investments as buffers against external coercion. By situating both countries within wider EU debates, ranging from the shift from the European Green Deal to the emerging Clean Industrial Deal, their divergent approaches to energy security illustrate tensions within the EU’s joint-up efforts, regarding, for example, critical minerals strategies or clean-tech industrial policies. The study contributes to understanding how national resilience strategies can navigate domestic political shifts and geopolitical tensions to shape the prospects for a just, sustainable, and geopolitically robust energy transition.