Report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), November 2025.
The energy transition is reshaping global geopolitics. As major powers pursue decarbonization, competition over technologies, markets, and critical minerals intensifies, driving fragmentation and security-driven policies. Ukraine’s experience under war highlights both opportunities and risks: energy sovereignty, EU integration, and resource leverage amid vulnerabilities, governance challenges, and evolving green geopolitics.
The geopolitical context of energy transition
Great powers dominate the landscape of energy transition, with China investing heavily in clean energy and controlling most processing of critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt. These minerals are essential for renewable technologies, creating leverage and vulnerabilities across supply chains. While the energy transition promises diversification and sovereignty, it also risks new dependencies and unequal value distribution. For middle powers and developing economies, opportunities for industrial upgrading coexist with risks of extractivism, making governance and strategic choices central to navigating green geopolitics.
Ukraine at the centre of multiple transitions
Ukraine’s energy transition is deeply intertwined with its pursuit of sovereignty, security, and economic modernization. Historically dependent on Russian energy supplies, Ukraine faced repeated coercion through gas disputes and transit vulnerabilities, culminating in Russia’s full-scale invasion and systematic targeting of energy infrastructure. These attacks destroyed much of Ukraine’s dispatchable power capacity, including the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant, creating severe energy shortages and highlighting the strategic importance of energy independence.
In response, Ukraine has accelerated reforms despite wartime constraints. It adopted a National Energy and Climate Plan in 2024, committing to EU-aligned targets such as 27 percent renewable energy by 2030, coal phase-out by 2035, and net zero by 2050. Synchronization with the European electricity grid and legislative alignment with EU climate law reflect a broader geopolitical reorientation toward integration with the EU.
Renewables, alongside nuclear and emerging hydrogen projects, are central to Ukraine’s resilience strategy due to their decentralized nature and reduced vulnerability to attacks. However, reconstruction faces challenges of financing, governance, and institutional capacity. While Ukraine seeks opportunities in clean energy exports and critical minerals, risks of extractivism and low-value roles persist. Ukraine’s push for clean energy and critical minerals could backfire if it remains focused on raw extraction, locking the country into low-value roles. To avoid this, Ukraine must prioritize refining and manufacturing capabilities, ensuring it captures more economic and strategic benefits from its resources. Balancing immediate security needs with long-term sustainability will determine whether Ukraine’s transition reinforces sovereignty and inclusive development.
Conclusions
Ukraine’s experience illustrates how climate, security, and development priorities intersect under conditions of war and reconstruction. The following conclusions summarize the key dynamics and implications for Ukraine and the wider international system:
- The green transition is transforming global power relations, creating both opportunities and risks.
- It can reduce hydrocarbon dependence and mitigate climate change but introduces new dependencies on critical minerals and clean technology supply chains.
- Competition among major powers is intensifying, with uneven social and environmental costs.
- Ukraine’s reconstruction is an opportunity to build a resilient, modern energy system aligned with EU accession and climate goals.
- Success depends on balancing sovereignty, sustainability, and development through strong governance and inclusive policies.
Recommendations
- Ensure local value creation and participation: Condition Ukraine’s role in global supply chains on technology transfer, workforce development, and industrial upgrading, while guaranteeing public participation, transparency, and independent monitoring for energy and mining projects.
- Continue hydrocarbon phase-out and energy sector reform: Tie any fossil fuel investments to clear decommissioning schedules and emissions limits, improve energy efficiency, and adopt circular-economy solutions to reduce demand and avoid locking in long-term fossil dependencies.
- Prioritize environmental goals alongside economic and security objectives: Align reconstruction with sustainability standards and EU climate commitments, and require environmental and social impact assessments for major energy and extractive projects to ensure ecological integrity.
- Diversify geopolitical partnerships and embed resilience: Expand partnerships beyond the EU to reduce vulnerability and enhance strategic autonomy, while embedding multidimensional resilience physical, economic, environmental, and social into all reconstruction strategies.
This summary is based on extracts from the report authored Dr Jiayi Zhou and Dr Barbara Magalhães Teixeira, to read the full version of the article, follow the link.
Photo credit image: Artificial Intelligence.
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