“Strategic autonomy” and “sovereignty” have become dominant rhetorical goals in the European policy community including in energy policy. Advocates would deny they are talking about autarky, but the old-fashioned word serves as a convenient shorthand, while also giving us access to debates on related topics in the past.
The current, leading argument for sovereignty seems to be that the EU can buck historical trends through what often amount to relatively minor adjustments in science and industrial policy. Besides the explicit Euro-centrism of official rhetoric, policy initiatives such as the European battery and solar alliances hinge on the epistemic basis of renewal lying mainly within continental borders; as it were, an autarky of expertise as well as materials.
A political figure like Mario Draghi seems to straddle this perspective (but he also supports positions likely to be anathema to Greens, reflecting to my mind the confusing vortex of rhetoric). Looking at my own reading list of academic papers, “geoeconomics” experts Ban and Liu probably get to the idea most specifically, citing their paper last year “The Emperor has no batteries: Europe’s uneven bid for battery strategic autonomy”. They argue that Europe could become “a competitive supplier of decarbonisation technologies…free from Asian supply chains” but only if officials made changes in working methods termed “green developmentalism” focused on “the long haul of scaling, stabilisation, and sovereign retention [of technology]”.
Whatever else is understood from these arguments, they seem essentially conservative and even reactionary in nature, i.e., they envisage political economy more or less remaining the same (albeit with changed energy vectors); indeed, they sometimes go one step further, by suggesting the need to turn the clock back to a time when Europe was a major manufacturing center. That being said, the radical return to the past implied by arguments about sovereignty is generally played down.
There is an alternative, albeit minority, view from the left that is, to the contrary, explicit about the need for unprecedented changes to political economy. It posits that such a huge program of re-equipping the energy system could only emerge from such shifts. Some are minded to label this view as “pessimistic” because they take it to mean impossible, yet, to the contrary, it can be seen as optimistic, almost utopian, when viewed from the progressive side of politics.
The underpinning argument, most prominently developed by the historian, Jean-Baptise Fressoz, goes approximately as follows (as I understood it; apologies if I have accidentally misrepresented it). Autarky has been achieved in the past, to varying degrees, by dictatorial regimes such as Apartheid South Africa, but decarbonization has never been achieved (not even in small ecological communities like Findhorn in Scotland). Therefore, based on track record, it would be possible to develop an autarkic energy system, although it would be very costly. But it is important not to confuse that goal with decarbonization, which, in contrast, would represent an historically unprecedented shift in the forces of production.
The findings highlight that while intentional communities [like Findhorn] are to some degree withdrawn from the mainstream, they are embedded within and depend upon the wider society and economy. This could inhibit or accelerate further decarbonisation and could present a risk of undermining the community’s lifestyle principles.
Copeland, et al., 2023, Futures for Findhorn: Exploring challenges for achieving net zero in an ecological intentional community, in: Futures
Furthermore, decarbonization cannot occur “in one country” but has to occur globally, because carbon emissions have global impacts seemingly regardless of where on the planet they are emitted. The energy policy literature on « trade offs » perhaps fails to grasp both the unprecedented political demands of decarbonization, as compared to other courses of action, as well as the need for global change. Fressoz therefore showed great courage when he defended his position on French TV recently against powerful establishment figures such as Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
An agenda touching on Fressoz’s framework might suggest the need to encourage phenomena disruptive of existing political economy, in the hope they eventually trigger unprecedented change, although we would first have to detect such phenomena. But autarky, being an often reactionary doctrine, might not be one of them. In this regard, and without wishing to be ironic, the fact most of the technology is being delivered from a country under the rule of a Communist party is very on-brand for a revolutionary project.
The reactionary tendencies of autarky are a defense reflex of senile capitalism to the task with which history confronts it, that of freeing its economy from the fetters of private property and the national state, and organizing it in a planned manner throughout the Earth.
Leon Trotsky, 1936, The “friends” of the Soviet Union, in: The Revolution Betrayed*
Fressoz is not Nostradamus, nor did he claim to be. But the more numerous voices from the academic community promoting the idea of “energy transition” have, to the contrary, made oracular claims (with which Fressoz takes issue).
A complication in the political interpretation of “sovereignty” lies with its varied meanings in different political cultures (I am not going to get into the philosophical and social scientific literature on the topic because I am not yet convinced this is a resource in public debates). In that sense, Fressoz’s ideas are interpreted politically in contrasting ways according to where exactly in Europe they are heard.
In Ireland, for example, the electricity system also lies at the heart of ideas about Irish modernity and the struggle against British colonialism. The legal scholar, Sinéad Mercier, sees this history as a resource in efforts to bring about positive change, tying it to the putative anti-colonial sympathies of Ireland’s ruling class and evoking the fortitude they showed after partition. ”It is time to explore whether re-nationalization of Ireland’s energy system can remove the restrictions of the profit motive,” Mercier wrote in 2021. Speculatively, an argument about the need for historically unprecedented actions might run counter to cherished ideals in Irish political history.
The American attack on Iran that started in late February 2026 has further upturned policy discussions. American decisions are undoubtedly causing profound human suffering. But wider predictions about the energy system seem premature. The history of past oil shocks does not strongly support the idea of karma, i.e., spontaneous progressive change on the back of them.† Rather, we potentially face a complex pattern of outcomes which defy a single global story.
Decarbonization was of course not a political factor during the oil shocks of the 1970s (“energy independence” was a common framework in that period) – at least one big difference between then and now (another is the fact the Cold War ended). This suggests strictly historical interpretations of the present are likely to be misleading.
The layering of rhetoric does not stop here. Namely, due to the long term consequences of decolonization and the rise of Asian economies such as China, South Korea and Taiwan in the later twentieth century and beyond, the Cold War/post-Cold War, Western-centric, narrative is no longer credible. This is not just for reasons of equity and shifting power relations, but because the explosion of ingenuity at global scale, long constrained by Western powers, has become the crucial dynamic force in technology and ought to be enthusiastically embraced. It seems to be the kind of argument you hear from the public intellectual Adam Tooze, as I could understand it, but perhaps it could be traced back to Marxists such as Joseph Needham. At least, I don’t believe Needham would have been greatly surprised about China’s technical achievements.
A last detail on the latter is “reluctant acceptance” perhaps comprised self-described realists and practical thinkers. It is an acknowledgment that the supply chain is, to a considerable degree, in Asia and cannot be overturned. Outside of a time machine, re-shoring manufacturing and knowledge production is therefore impossible, for epistemic and other reasons. Furthermore, because of the fear of a zero-sum game developing in which Europe was the zero, Europe should strive for a more convivial international atmosphere.
The fossil fuel lobby and the general lack of sincerity in language adds the final twist, which I shall not detail here. Overall, therefore, a confusing picture; I could not give a clear account because I did not grasp it myself, but I think it in part reflects differences in elite opinion across the continent.
Perhaps there is a correlation between support of fossil fuel incumbency and hostility towards China, as against renewables and openness to cooperation with China, reflecting divides between reactionaries and progressives.
But the camps are not clearly marked because the points about sovereignty are arguably reactionary in the sense they seek to re-center European power (literally and figuratively), as against the USA and China, even if they are often now found on the lips of progressives. This is perhaps ultimately because the bulk of the European left is no longer able to conceive of meaningful social and political change and, oddly, like their conservative counterparts, sees it even as a threat.
Notes:
*Trotsky, 1934, Nationalism and economic life, in: Foreign Affairs is notably prescient and therefore worth reading. My point is that despite almost a century, and shifts in terminology, it appears like progressives in the European policy community, suffering as it were from intellectual amnesia, are re-litigating old arguments when really they need to be updating them.
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