Filippos Proedrou

• Associate Professor of Global Political Economy at University of South Wales

This chapter provides a succinct but comprehensive overview of the geopolitics of the global energy transition literature. It is divided into two parts. The first presents the main assumptions and expectations regarding the global energy transition winners vs. losers conundrum. This part is structured across the energy security, economic power and...

This chapter assesses the EU’s position in the emerging energy geopolitics. The chapter is divided into two parts, each aligning with one main research objective of the monograph. The first part aims to map the extent and the ways in which the EU emerges as a relative winner of the global energy transition across the energy security, economic power...

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of EU agency in the global energy transition. It starts with mapping the defining features of EU actorness in the international stage, the pivotal interests and ideas driving EU grand strategy and the principal forms of power the EU operationalizes to achieve its foreign policy goals. It subsequently z...

The concluding chapter connects the theoretical, conceptual, empirical and policy-making threads of the analysis together. First, it sums up the strategic benefits and risks the global energy transition generates for the EU across the energy security, economic power, foreign policy and power position dimensions, and distills the main dilemmas lying...

This paper explores the evolution of the representation of climatechange as ecocide in EU policy circles. Premised upon and bringinga green criminological lens into EU climate policy, it asks to whatextent and in what ways the EU approaches climate change asecocide, and how such representations link to EU climate policyand legislation. Methodologic...

This paper explores whether, to what extent and in what ways climate change is represented as ecocide in scholarly literature. Premised upon a historical materialist lens utilizing the world systems theory and the concept of the Capitalocene, and by means of conducting a scoping literature review, the paper finds there is an increasing trend of cli...

This paper aims to assess the impact of EU energy and climate policy as a response to Russia's war in Ukraine on the EU decarbonization enterprise. It showcases how the Russian invasion was a crunch point that forced the EU to abandon its liberal market dogma and embrace in practice an open strategic autonomy approach. This led to an updated energy...

Focusing on climate change, this chapter outlines how the topic has gained increasing importance on the political agenda and explores the role of public service organisations as actors. Climate change and the progressing energy transition calls for all actors, including public services, to change the way they operate and work around their goals. In...

Energy transitions have been framed in environmental-economic terms, which shaped their scale and design. A strategic frame has emerged, however, with strategic energy security and geopolitical considerations penetrating governmental rationalities. An analysis of strategic framing allows advancing the debate on energy transitions, opening up unexpl...

This paper provides a geopolitical lens to explain the evolving tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean. More specifically, it unpacks conceptually how sovereignty, balance of power and energy security concerns drive exploration schemes and forge pipeline politics. First, the discovery of new gas deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean have created sig...

This paper applies the demoi-cratic theory to EU energy governance and policy, and explores whether the demoi-cratic criteria of equal legislative powers between statespeople and citizens and the supremacy of multilateral law through participatory jurisprudence apply to EU energy affairs. More specifically, it zooms in on democratic pathogenies der...

Scholarly literature has recently developed the notions of Anthropocene geopolitics and planetary security. How these relate to and whether they inform states’ foreign policy, however, remains a largely underdeveloped issue. This paper goes some way towards addressing this gap both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, it unpacks how tradit...

Three main drivers underlie states’ intent to expand gas supply: energy security, geopolitics and climate goals. Such considerations also drive Greece’s expansive gas policy, but come with significant caveats. First, pipeline politics entails geopolitical costs and inflated anticipated gains. Second, while gas supply has yielded energy security for...

This article discusses EU energy and climate policy through the prism of multidimensional power. In so doing, it explores the forms of power EU policy draws from and employs. The article argues that through its gas first policy the EU misused its productive power and failed to shift structural power dynamics, while overplaying its institutional and...

Energy diplomacy, regulation of the single energy market and the export of this regulatory model to EU’s vicinity govern EU energy affairs. This governance nexus, however, suffers from three distinct shortcomings. This paper addresses these in the context of EU external energy governance vis-à-vis Egypt. Firstly, it highlights how geopolitical rati...

This chapter analyses the opportunities that prosumers, as new energy actors, bring to achieving energy security goals in the context of the European Union (EU). In energy governance, there is a progressive top–down diffusion of potential, competences, and leverage across the energy value chain from States and corporate actors towards prosumers. Pr...

The paper assesses Black Sea politics through the lens of regionalism as the path to a security community, the effects of an outdated and dysfunctional pan-European security architecture, and the shared hegemonic potential of Russia and Turkey in the region. Drawing from diverse strands of literature, the paper critically discusses integrative sche...

This chapter reasserts the central argument of the book, namely that responses to climate change necessitate understandings that go against and beyond the growth imperative. In this context, we summarize the main features of steady-state energy policies and their merits across energy security, geopolitics and development. The conclusions subsequent...

This chapter assesses the merits of a steady-state energy policy across the energy security framework and, in doing so, compares and contrasts it with mainstream energy policies. A steady-state energy policy not only achieves sustainability, but also offers significant security of supply advantages in terms of physical availability of and access to...

This chapter sets out a description of a steady-state energy policy. It begins with a close look at the implications of a steady-state monetary, trade, tax, and investment policy for energy policy. Drawing from developments in the current energy transition (e.g. proliferation of micro-generation, deployment of smart grids, and the emergence of pros...

This chapter presents the ecological and steady-state economics theory, highlights the theory’s relevance for a climate-strained world, and juxtaposes it with growth orthodoxy. The analysis then addresses three policy realms (green auditing, monetary and trade policies), underlines the main fallacies underpinning mainstream policies in the respecti...

This chapter considers the impact the implementation of steady-state energy policies will bear on geopolitics and development. The analysis explores avenues of change, traces central issues of concern, and provides a separate discussion on the geopolitical risks of the energy transition. In doing so, it also studies the geopolitics of renewable ene...

‘A very topical contribution that integrates mainstream energy and ecological economics literature to establish a novel energy policy framework. The author not only showcases the merits of a steady-state energy policy for climate change mitigation and energy security, but also masterfully navigates through the implications of such a shift for world...

This article discusses and critically evaluates the impact of the Russian gas strategy through the theoretical lens of power. I delineate different kinds of power and discuss within which forms of power the Russian gas strategy analytically falls. In doing so, I move away from simplistic understandings of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power in energy politics...

This article questions the currency of contemporary pipeline politics and diplomacy as applied in the Eurasian gas system. In doing so, it argues that the mosaic of proposed pipelines— notably Nord Stream 2, South Stream, and Turkish Stream—is out of tune with the current traits of global political life, namely geopolitical ruptures, changing marke...

The paper argues that Russia’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Ukraine and Turkey severely compromises its gas diplomacy. In utilizing the concept of issue salience, it attempts to show how, by means of prioritizing geopolitical benefits in both cases, Russia has failed to serve its energy security goals in two distinct ways. Firstly, it has not managed t...

This paper critically analyses the new challenges and opportunities that prosumers, as new energy actors, bring to achieving energy security goals in the context of the European Union (EU). Following trends in the EU towards new levels of cooperation in energy governance, decentralization, and the emergence of a gig economy, the energy sector is cu...

The EU energy strategy is hard-poised to ensure energy security for the Union, mainly due to its fixation on fossil energy imports. This paper argues that energy security can holistically be addressed only in case sustainability becomes a priority goal. Such a re-conceptualisation does not only pave the way for a radical restructuring of the energy...

The aim of the article is to explore the risks emanating from the EU’s gas security architecture, based on the twin pillars of diversification and enforced interdependence, in the context and aftermath of the crisis in Ukraine. Interdependence with external suppliers has been hit hard by the diversification rhetoric and rationale and given a crucia...

Mainstream discourse on energy security is premised upon the assumption of infinite growth. It hence focuses upon the economic, political, and security aspects of energy security. Consequently, it fails to provide satisfactory answers to the global environmental, energy, economic, geopolitical, and developmental challenges. An alternative paradigm...

Although we have gone a long way from old to new public diplomacy, it is widely accepted that it underperforms. We thus aim to offer strong grounds for the term strategic discursive public diplomacy and to show how taking this path can fundamentally refocus and improve the practice of public diplomacy. Strategic refers to the need to refocus the th...

This article concerns itself with the agenda, the instruments, and the goals of public diplomacy (PD). Taking into account the current state of PD that concentrates predominantly on forging cultural and educational links and promoting values, but not policies, it refocuses PD in two substantial ways: driving it, first, to focus on the most signific...

Recent gas discoveries off Cyprus have elevated tensions and created an energy and security complex in the Eastern Mediterranean. While the mainstream understanding of this complex focuses on energy as a zero-sum game that will be played out in accordance with geopolitical alliances and dividing lines, this paper aims to counter this view. It consi...

This book fills an important gap in the literature on energy security in the gas sector in the European Union. Whilst the emphasis is often on energy security in the oil sector, the gas sector has grown in importance in recent decades, with increasing liberalization raising critical questions for the security of gas supplies. The share of gas in Eu...

The paper is based upon the assumption that international relations theories are, and should be, complementary, not mutually exclusive. Hence, we instrumentalize insights from the realist, liberal, and constructivist schools of thought, incorporating systemic factors, state, and societal actors’ preferences and interests, and identity politics. We...

Globalisation's advent is based on the dominant role of liberalism in the development and organisation of the world system. In both economic and political realms, liberal values and theories guide the process of globalisation. Today's neoliberal form of globalisation, however, is under attack nowadays. While attention is usually directed to anti-gl...

This essay aims to analyse and interpret the EU–Russia approach in the energy sector under the prism of interdependence. It seeks to account for both the increasing cooperation among EU member-states and Russia as far as security of supplies is concerned, but also provides a sound explanation for the steady clashes between the two sides. For this r...

Russia's persistence in conventional foreign policy goals, methods and means, as the wars in Chechnya and Georgia attest, and the establishment of a "sovereign democratic" regime, with an emphasis not on civil society but on strong state institutions, form a normative disjuncture with EU's postmodern international posture. In the energy sector, Rus...