# The Fossil Fuel Order and the Electric Transition: Power, Politics and Governance **Date de l'événement :** 05/06/2026 * Publié le 05/06/2026 ### Date 05/06/2026 ## Chapô **As the Santa Marta Conference brings together 45 countries to chart a path away from fossil fuels, the structural forces that sustain the existing energy order — and those that are beginning to erode it — have rarely been more visible. On 23 April 2026, Laurence Tubiana, Dean of the Paris Climate School and associate professor at Sciences Po, delivered [the lecture Power in the Electric Age as part of the Tsinghua Climate Change Global Lecture series](https://www.sciencespo.fr/paris-climate-school/en/news/power-in-the-electric-age/), drawing nearly 1,200 participants; this article is the written version of that intervention. What does the shift from a fossil fuel order to an electric one actually mean for the distribution of power between states — and why is that shift far from automatic?** ## Corps du texte The new crisis in the Middle East has delivered a major shock to the global energy system — the largest in modern history, and one to which every country is exposed. Even if the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened, the significant damage to Gulf oil and gas infrastructure means supply will take a long time to fully recover. This is now the second fossil fuel shock of this magnitude in less than five years, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the fossil fuel–based energy order is inherently vulnerable to this kind of disruption. The emerging renewables-based electric order is, by comparison, a better system: more stable, more resilient, and ultimately more desirable than the one it replaces. But complacency about the automaticity of the transition would be a mistake. The fossil fuel order has been built over more than two centuries. It is deeply embedded in the political and economic structures of most states, and these create inertia and strong incentives to resist rapid change. The electric order will also bring its own challenges. The distinction between "petrostates" and "electrostates" offers a useful starting point. It is a simplified lens, but it helps frame a central question: how political power is structured in the energy system of today, and in the system being built for tomorrow. ### Why most countries want out of the fossil order Practically every country today still operates within the fossil fuel system, but most are not producers — around three quarters are net importers. Shocks are experienced through higher costs, rationing and demand destruction. In developing economies, they can easily become a full macroeconomic crisis. Until recently, countries had few alternatives. With the rapid emergence of clean technologies, that constraint is now weakening. Between 2022 and 2025, the price of solar panels declined by close to 70 per cent. Solar now requires less upfront capital than fossil power. Countries now have a viable pathway to reduce their structural dependence on imported fuels, through two distinct shifts: electrifying end uses, and pushing fossil fuels out of electricity generation. Countries are advancing along these two dimensions at different speeds. In Pakistan, solar adoption has accelerated very quickly: in 2024 alone, Pakistan imported around 22 gigawatts of solar panels, expected to reduce fossil fuel imports by around $7 billion. China is making impressive advances on all fronts: wind, solar and hydro now supply around 40 per cent of electricity, and electric vehicles account for around 50 per cent of new car sales. In Europe, the divergence is becoming stark. In the first months of 2026, gas-reliant markets such as Italy and Ireland have seen wholesale electricity prices around €140/MWh, while more renewable-rich systems — including Spain and Portugal — are closer to €40/MWh. As long as electricity prices remain tied to fossil fuels, the electrification of end uses will be held back. ### Why the fossil fuel order persists In some countries, entire state structures, fiscal models and political settlements depend on the fossil fuel system, creating strong incentives to resist rapid change. This is particularly true in what can be called "petrostates". The term is often used loosely for any country that produces oil or gas, but what defines a petrostate is not production alone, but dependence on that production. In a petrostate, governments rely heavily on revenues from oil and gas — rather than broad-based taxation. The state's central function becomes the capture and distribution of these rents. This shapes incentives in a very direct way: to maintain production and defend oil and gas demand, and therefore to slow the energy transition. Most petrostates recognise the vulnerability of their dependence on oil and gas exports. They know that their long-term interests lie in diversifying their economies. Fluctuating prices leave them highly vulnerable to sudden budgetary swings, and fiscal decisions are made under persistent uncertainty about future prices. Due to the current crisis, all six Gulf states are expected to record negative GDP growth this year of 5–10 per cent. Countries like Saudi Arabia are thus spending heavily on projects to diversify their income away from fossil fuels, while also investing heavily in renewables. Saudi Arabia aims to generate 50 per cent of its electricity from renewables by 2030, primarily solar. But as the transition becomes more credible, the incentives for petrostates to double down on fossil fuels actually intensify. The more uncertain the future of demand, the stronger the incentive to extract and monetise reserves while markets still exist. The result is a tendency to reinforce the very model those countries ultimately need to move beyond. Petrostates have consistently worked to slow political and diplomatic progress on the transition: lobbying against phase-out language at COPs, and promoting technologies that extend fossil use, such as carbon capture and storage. They have been strategic in their outreach to developing countries that are not petrostates but whose economies do rely significantly on fossil export revenues. Colombia illustrates the situation of countries that are neither classic petrostates nor fossil-fuel-free. Fossil fuels (oil and coal) account for around half of its exports and 3–6 per cent of GDP. By contrast, in many Gulf economies, oil and gas account for the majority of exports and often more than 50–70 per cent of government revenues. Colombia relies on fossil fuel revenues for employment and to help fund public services, but unlike in a petrostate, the state is not structurally organised around the capture and distribution of fossil rents: the rents are simply too small for fossil fuels to define the system in the same way. For these intermediate countries, the politics of the transition are especially complex. Significant domestic constituencies want to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and move onto a more diversified economic path. But there are also legitimate development and fairness arguments about their right to use their own resources and not be the first to forego their reserves. And debt markets and credit rating agencies have reacted badly to past attempts to move away from fossil production. This is why initiatives like the Santa Marta Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels matter: to address the complex web of structural and distributional constraints that lock in fossil dependency; to break the perpetual chicken-and-egg dilemma between the demand and supply sides; and to deal with the additional risks and fairness concerns of being a "first mover". The conference saw 45 countries discuss these issues, following the more than 85 countries that came out in favour of developing roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP30 in Belem. ### The United States The United States is not a petrostate in the classical sense. Its tax base is broad, its economy highly diversified, and its political system is not organised around the distribution of fossil fuel rents. But it is increasingly exhibiting some of the characteristics of a petrostate, both domestically and in its external posture, and is now acting as a central geopolitical anchor of the fossil order. Following the shale revolution of the 2010s, the United States became the world's largest combined producer of oil and gas and a net exporter in 2019 — producing more fossil fuels than any country at any moment in history, a milestone reached under the Biden administration. This has altered the political economy of energy within the United States and its posture abroad. The role of oil and gas interests in US politics is not new. What has changed is the scale and explicitness of that alignment. The expansion of shale production has raised the economic stakes, and with it the political centrality of the sector. The United States is now using the full range of trade, diplomatic and political pressure to sustain and expand global demand for fossil fuels. The Biden years did produce one significant attempt to redirect that trajectory, by building an alternative political economy. The Inflation Reduction Act was designed to create domestic constituencies with a material stake in electrification and clean manufacturing, allocating around $370 billion in public funding to clean energy, manufacturing and deployment. The hope was that these investments would generate their own political defenders, even within the Republican Party. But that coalition proved too fragile in the face of an administration seeking to oppose renewable energy projects, even where they are not in direct competition with fossil fuel interests. The intensity of the current US position cannot be explained purely by a desire to expand oil and gas exports. For parts of the US political right, the energy transition is now positioned as a direct threat to American power. The argument runs essentially as follows: why move away from one of the country's most competitive sectors and the pillar of its energy security towards an energy system in which China holds a dominant technological and supply chain position? And why allow other countries to shift away from an energy system in which the US is a leading player towards one in which China holds that position? From this perspective, the defence of fossil fuels becomes a defence of US hegemony and national security. Promoting fossil fuel exports abroad and discouraging the transition in other countries is not just about commercial interest or domestic political alignment; it is about preserving a model of global political economy and power in which the United States retains its central role. There is an irony here: the war in Iran looks likely to undermine that very strategy. Whatever the intent behind US policy in the region, the war has done considerable damage to trust among Gulf states — the core petrostates — in the United States as a reliable partner. And it strengthens the case, for most countries, that continued reliance on the fossil fuel system is a source of vulnerability rather than security. ### The geopolitics of an electric order The significance of electrification is not only that it allows countries to reduce their exposure to fossil fuels — it changes the relationship between geography, energy and power. The fossil system is defined by the geographically uneven and arbitrary distribution of resources. Oil and gas must be continuously extracted where they are found and transported over long distances, creating enduring asymmetries between producers and importers and embedding vulnerability into the structure of the system itself. An electrified system is organised differently. Energy is generated through infrastructure — solar, wind, grids and storage — that can be deployed across a much wider range of geographies. Resource endowments still matter, but they are far more widely distributed than fossil fuels. An electrified system is more capital-intensive and less dependent on continuous commodity flows: once installed, clean energy infrastructure produces power without the need for ongoing fuel imports. A common concern in Europe and other Western countries is the concentration of clean technology supply chains. China today occupies a dominant position across much of this system: in the manufacturing of solar panels, batteries and other key components, and in the processing and refining of critical minerals. The concerns about this concentration are understandable. Concentrated supply chains are more vulnerable to disruptions — natural disasters, cyber risk, trade disputes. And there is a risk of political backlash against clean tech imports if dependencies are seen as excessive. In some European countries, opponents of the energy transition are already attempting to attack green policies by arguing they increase geopolitical dependence on China. It is important to be clear that these risks are not comparable with fossil fuel dependence. China's current position is the result of a far-sighted, sustained and coherent industrial strategy that has delivered scale, cost reductions and technological leadership, and is a major driver of the global transition — especially in developing countries. Unlike fossil fuel production, China's clean tech leadership is not geologically determined. China will remain the dominant player in many areas of clean tech for the foreseeable future: the agglomeration effects and technological leadership it has achieved will be difficult to replicate elsewhere. But other countries and regions can, over time, develop at least some of their own capacity and supply chains, if they pursue the industrial strategy, investment and coordination required. Some degree of trade tension is probably inevitable as countries try to build their own capacity and capture a greater share of the value chain, but it is in the interest of all sides that these tensions do not escalate into fragmentation. Critical minerals deserve particular attention. They are the closest parallel to the extractive logic of fossil fuels, but with important differences: fossil fuels must be continuously extracted, transported and burned, whereas critical minerals are inputs into long-lived assets — deployed upfront and replaced only gradually over time, rather than consumed continuously. They are also, in general, more widely distributed geographically than fossil fuels, although deposits vary significantly in scale and accessibility, and global reserves remain incompletely understood. Real risks nonetheless exist. Supply chains are currently highly concentrated: extraction — and especially processing and refining — are dominated by a small number of actors, and export controls and supply restrictions have been used more frequently in recent years, as the IEA has documented. This helps explain why diversification of supply has become a central strategic objective for many countries. There is also a clear lesson from the fossil fuel era: resource-rich countries do not want to be confined to exporting raw materials while value is captured elsewhere in the supply chain. There is a growing expectation that they will participate more fully in processing, manufacturing and value creation. Managing these risks — and building a system that is balanced, fair to resource-rich countries, and secure without becoming fragmented — should be a shared objective. It is also a central task for international climate governance in this next phase of the transition. ### The importance of international governance Governing an international electric order — in which power is shaped less by geology and more by industrial strategy, technology and infrastructure — will require robust multilateral frameworks: capable of managing trade tensions linked to clean industrial policy, not to eliminate competition but to ensure it does not produce protectionist spirals that slow the transition and raise its cost; ensuring that critical mineral development does not reproduce extractive patterns of the past; and supporting cooperation on the many practical challenges of implementation, from infrastructure planning to technology deployment. Getting international governance right will determine whether the transition proceeds at the speed, scale and cost required to limit climate disruption and build a more stable energy system. ### The political economy of electrification Pakistan provides a clear example of both the potential and the limits of the shift to an electric order. Rapid solar adoption has allowed households and businesses to reduce their exposure to imported fossil fuels and unreliable supply, giving many access for the first time to a more stable and predictable source of electricity. But this shift is uneven. Solar adoption has been disproportionately driven by more affluent households and businesses, reducing their reliance on a grid already under strain. This potentially creates a regressive dynamic: those who can afford solar reduce their bills, while those who cannot face rising prices and deteriorating service. The problems arise in the absence of a state capable of maintaining the system as a shared public good, which requires rules, coordination and investment. Electrification, if it is to be efficient and equitable, must be managed as a system-wide public good. Supporting countries — particularly developing economies — in building the state capacity to manage this transition well should therefore be one of the central tasks of international climate diplomacy. These challenges take different forms in advanced economies, but the underlying dynamics are similar. In Europe, electrification is being pursued at continental scale. From a system perspective, the logic is clear: solar resources in the south, wind in the north, connected through expanded, interconnected grids. In aggregate, integration will improve outcomes through lower prices, more efficient investment and greater resilience. But integration has distributional effects: consumers and taxpayers in one country may be asked to fund grid expansion while the benefits — lower prices or greater system stability — are shared across the wider system. Electrification also changes the relative cost of energy between regions, raising difficult questions about where economic activity should be located. There may be a strong economic case to locate industry where clean power is cheapest, but this implies shifts in jobs, investment and regional development that are politically difficult. ### The case for China–Europe cooperation China is grappling with many of the same questions. Renewable resources are concentrated in the north and west, while demand is highest in the east. China has demonstrated impressive state capacity in addressing these challenges: large-scale transmission investment, coordination of where capacity is built, and an innovative grid system for matching supply and demand. In their bilateral clean trade and investment relationship, Europe and China will need to find a sustainable arrangement. Europe is right to want to build its own clean-tech sector, but resorting to high tariffs would be a mistake. When the EU imposed high tariffs on Chinese solar panels in the mid-2010s, it effectively crippled its own solar installation sector by raising prices. A smarter approach is to seek agreements that create the conditions for joint ventures, investment and technological cooperation. The Industrial Accelerator Act proposed by the European Commission is not a perfect instrument, but it reflects a sincere attempt to strike that balance. If the right balance is not found, there is a real risk that attitudes will harden and support for open trade in clean technologies will weaken. Together, Europe and China are central to the functioning of the Paris Agreement and to the broader system of multilateral climate cooperation, and there is a great deal to gain from deepening that cooperation. _The recording of this speech is available [here](https://www.xuetangx.com/live/live2025qhbhdjt58z/live2025qhbhdjt58z/27171232/81139654?channel=i.area.course_list_all)._ ### Thématique `#Géopolitique` `#Environnement` **Licence :** `#CC-BY-ND (Attribution, Pas de modification)` **Langue :** `#Anglais` --- ### Navigation pour IA - [Index de tous les contenus](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/llms.txt) - [Plan du site (Sitemap)](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/sitemap.xml) - [Retour à l'accueil](https://conference.sciencespo.fr/)