Energy Transitions and Power Struggles

This article examines the global clean energy transition through the lenses of world systems theory and historical materialism, situating contemporary energy system shifts within broader histories of economic struggle and geopolitical contestation. Extending existing frameworks of energy transitions as products of economic conflict, it traces how energy security concerns produced divergent responses among oil importers, embodied by US market-led shale extraction versus China’s state coordinated renewable dominance. While the US approach continues to facilitate imperial decline, China’s renewables strategy has catalyzed its rise as a global power while simultaneously enabling the resurgence of resource nationalism and the developmental state across the Global South. The renewable transition thus emerges not as a technical shift but as a geopolitical rupture signifying radical economic transformation at the global scale. JEL Classification : Q40, P16, F59, Q54