The global decarbonization of the energy and industrial system is both shaping and being shaped by a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape. (Quitzow and Zabanova, 2025). The rise of clean energy technologies has reinforced the position of China as a geopolitical leader and challenger to the Western-dominated liberal order (Liu and Yang, 2023). Supply chains of clean energy technologies are increasingly shaped by developments in China and the regional dynamics in East and Southeast Asia (de los Reyes & Nem Singh 2024). Furthermore, new energy technologies drive growing demands for critical raw materials particularly among resource poor, advanced economies in Europe and East Asia, most notably Japan and South Korea. In addition, as more countries roll out their energy transition strategies, decarbonization of industrial production has raised the prospect of trade in renewable hydrogen-based fuels and related commodities (Kalantzakos, Overland and Vakulchuk 2023, Siddi 2023). While major economies are engaging in intense competition over who controls and leads these new energy supply chains, decarbonization likewise opens up new opportunities - but also generates novel challenges - for other actors, depending on their relative position, strategic assets, political alignment and domestic conditions (Gagyi and Gerőcs 2025).
This section invites theoretically informed, empirically grounded research on how firms and states are engaging in the new geoeconomic landscape developing along clean energy supply chains. We conceptualize clean energy supply chains in terms of technology- and sector-specific production networks as well as the physical supply routes connecting the major economies vying for geoeconomic leadership. We are interested in contributions that consider how actors – i.e. governments and firms - at different positions along these supply chains are engaging in strategies to pursue their geoeconomic and industrial policy objectives and how these intersect with their broader geopolitical aims and positioning (Babic and Linsi 2025).
We place particular emphasis on how actors from emerging economies and so-called middle powers are engaging in this rapidly evolving geoeconomic space and how their counterparts in China, the US and the EU are positioning themselves vis-à-vis these actors (cf. Claes 2025, Giacomello and Verbeek 2024, Prontera 2025). This includes approaches to economic statecraft that leverage upstream critical minerals, renewable resources, and clean hydrogen to pursue industrial policy goals. Empirically, we aim to map out emerging patterns in resource diplomacy, economic cooperation, and investment flows. This includes analysis of emerging regional blocs, alliance formation (e.g. around CRM governance), and regionalized supply chains of manufacturing.
We are especially interested in scalar analysis of supply chains, with emphasis on connections and linkages between regions and pay special attention to the efforts of countries from Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and Asia as more countries reformulate their industrial strategies to participate in segments of clean energy supply chains. We also welcome analysis of fossil-fuel exporting countries and their engagement in diplomacy to shape (or obstruct) clean energy supply chains and position themselves within a net-zero future. We welcome cross-disciplinary work that draws on the fields of political economy, international relations, climate and energy governance and development studies.
Topics of interest include:
- The use of upstream minerals and renewable energy resources within clean industrial policy strategies
- Economic statecraft and diplomacy by emerging economies and middle powers in clean energy supply chains
- Middle-power and emerging economy strategies to navigate competition among China, the USA, and Europe, strategic balancing and hedging to reduce exposure to single-power dependencies
- Coalition-building, regional partnerships, and “multi-vector” diplomacy to diversify risk
- BRICS as a potential actor in leading green industrialization
- Engagement in and reshaping of international institutions and global governance arrangements
- Standards diplomacy and the projection of influence through global norms
- Instruments of economic statecraft and industrial policy (e.g. trade policy, investment screening, local content requirements, export controls, etc.) and their impacts and effectiveness
- State-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds within economic statecraft and strategic industrial policy
- The role of finance and investment in shaping clean energy supply chains
- Changing business-state relations in the context of new clean energy supply chains
References
Babic, M., & Linsi, L. 2025. Mapping corporate investments between China and Europe in an era of geoeconomic competition. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 63:3, 932-963.
Claes, D. H. (ed.) 2025. Energy Politics in a Turbulent Era, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
de los Reyes JA and Nem Singh JT (2024) Net-Zero Emissions and the China Challenge: Decarbonization amid Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific. Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine (July-August). Epub ahead of print 2024.
Gagyi, A., & T. Gerőcs. 2025. Polyalignment as geoeconomic bridging: Hungary’s reindustrialisation amid global protectionism. Third World Quarterly, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2025.2525233
Giacomello, G., and B. Verbeek. 2024. Foreign Policy of Middle Powers. In Kaarbo, J., and Thies, C. G. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 519–537.
Kalantzakos, S., I. Overland & R. Vakulchuk. 2023. Decarbonisation and Critical Materials in the Context of Fraught Geopolitics: Europe’s Distinctive Approach to a Net Zero Future, The International Spectator, 58:1, 3-22.
Liu, R. and Yang, S. 2023. China and the liberal international order: a pragmatic and dynamic approach, International Affairs, Volume 99, Issue 4, July 2023, Pages 1383–1400, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad169
Prontera, A. 2025. Green Superpowers: China, the European Union, and the United States in the Global Energy Transition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quitzow, R., & Zabanova, Y. (2025). Geoeconomics of the transition to net-zero energy and industrial systems: A framework for analysis. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews, 214: 115492. doi:10.1016/j.rser.2025.115492.
Siddi, M. 2023. The geopolitics of energy transition: New resources and technologies. In, Berghofer,J., A. Futter, C. Häusler, M. Hoell, J. Nosál, The implications of emerging technologies in the Euro-Atlantic space, Cham: Springer, pp. 73–85.
