International relations theory on grid communities and international politics in a green world

The energy community’s analyses of international politics often rely on geopolitics, which prioritizes state competition for resources and thus may offer limited explanatory power. Meanwhile, the discipline of international relations (IR), which explicitly examines world politics, seldom focuses on energy. This Perspective brings geopolitics and IR theory together. It provides a brief history of both fields and introduces several IR theories. To demonstrate how IR theory can help illuminate energy issues, it is used to examine an unfounded assumption that has crept into the energy community’s literature. Wide-scale deployment of variable renewable energy will probably require greater cross-border electrification and regional interconnectedness, which energy scholars presume will lead to the formation of cooperative and peaceful multi-state grid communities. The consideration of IR theories presented here helps buttress this assumption and contributes towards addressing the question of whether energy security is better achieved through independence or interdependence.