8. Areas of Future Interest to be Explored
This paper has raised a number of questions that deserve further investigation. The anticipated path of geopolitics during the process of the energy transition would be ideally suited to investigation using a scenario methodology. The sort of questions to consider would include the following:
- What will be the geopolitical implications of the transition for vulnerable countries (and for other countries more widely)? How will these dynamics be influenced by i) the speed of the transition (or technological and regulatory change in consumer markets); and ii) actions taken by countries? How should governments and businesses prepare for the possible ramifications?
- What will the ‘residual’ geopolitics look like once the transition has happened, and in what areas is thinking needed today to prepare for this eventuality? For example, how will governments and industry players address potential insecurity of supply of cobalt from the DRC; issues around major interconnectors; cybersecurity; and questions around the nature and design of future grids? The geopolitics surrounding these issues will not necessarily be as combative or as important for foreign affairs, but will still be worth exploring.
- How will the transition affect gas?58 The geopolitics of gas are already shifting in light of various developments: in markets for liquefied natural gas, in the US shale gas industry, and in the Russia–EU gas trade. This is occurring against a backdrop of major uncertainty. While climate plans often explicitly address coal and renewables, gas is often treated as a residual or secondary element. So how would these developments be affected as the energy transition proceeds?
58 Gas has many dimensions, and comes in many types: blue, green, synthetic, decarbonized, ammonia, hydrogen, just to mention a few.