The geopoliticization of Europe's energy transition: Geopolitical risk and selective transition adjustment across EU member states

Renewable energy transitions change rather than remove the geopolitical dimensions of energy systems. In recent years, geopolitical fragmentation, strategic rivalry, and geoeconomic insecurity have increased the importance of security, resilience, and strategic dependence within Europe's energy transition. Against this background, this study examines how geopolitical risk exposure is associated with four observable transition adjustment outcomes across 25 EU member states from 2001 to 2023: external energy dependence, domestic renewable energy capacity, economic globalization, and climate-significant public investment. Geopolitical risk exposure was measured by interacting the annual Global Geopolitical Risk Index with countries' geographical proximity to Russia, allowing the empirical models to incorporate both country and year fixed effects. The empirical analysis combined conventional two-way fixed-effects estimation with double machine learning (DML), alternative exposure specifications, robustness analyses, moderation analyses, and heterogeneity analyses. The results showed that greater geopolitical risk exposure is associated with lower external energy dependence, greater domestic renewable energy capacity, and lower economic globalization, while its relationship with climate-significant public investment is statistically insignificant. The moderating and heterogeneity analyses further indicated that these relationships vary with countries' energy-consumption levels, innovation capability, industrial structure, Russian energy dependence, and institutional capacity. Overall, the findings indicate selective rather than uniform adjustment across Europe's energy transition.