Geopolitics of renewables: asymmetries, new interdependencies, and cooperation around Portuguese solar energy and green hydrogen strategies

This article explores how the implementation of solar PV and transportation infrastructure – grid or hydrogen pipeline – has implications for various aspects of security, cooperation, and geopolitical powershifts. Highlighting the emerging intra-European green hydrogen pipeline project H2Med, we examine the Portuguese geopolitical ambitions related to their geographical advantage for solar PV energy production. Using media and document analysis, we identified two main axes of solar PV implementation in Portugal – one centered on resilience, and one on exports – and further explored underlying and resulting tensions in neighboring countries' energy strategies and cleantech innovation policies. Our analysis revealed that policy prioritizations in solar PV diffusion result in unequal effects on resilience, energy security, and power shifts. In particular, solar PV implementations such as individual to local or regional grid-based ‘prosumption’ setups result in notably different geopolitical effects compared to large-scale solar PV to green hydrogen-production for storage and export. Thereby, emerging possibilities of storage and long-distance trade of renewable energies have more significant implications on geopolitics and energy security than what is typically recognized. • Different characteristics of renewables have different geopolitical implications. • Green hydrogen restructures the power asymmetries of the fossil fuel era, as a wider range of countries can produce it. • Green hydrogen introduces new power asymmetries, that are less pronounced than with fossil fuels. • In Portugal's energy relations, renewable energy exports are impacted by a return to power politics. • Portugal's national energy aspirations fail to anticipate competing countries' strategies.