Mehri Madarshahi: Energy Security, U.S.–China Geopolitical Rivalry, and the Erosion of Climate Commitments

UNESCO-ICCSD Advisory Member and CCG Nonresident Senior Fellow argues that climate commitments are giving way to the logic of security, rivalry, and control.

Below is the latest article by Mehri Madarshahi, Member of the Advisory Committee of the International Center for Creativity and Sustainable Development (ICCSD) and CCG Nonresident Senior Fellow.

Energy Security, U.S.–China Geopolitical Rivalry, and the Erosion of Climate Commitments

By: Professor Mehri Madarshahi

The Paris Agreement marked a rare moment of global alignment on climate change. For the first time, nearly all states, including the United States and China committed to a common framework aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting global warming. The agreement established a shared direction focus on the gradual transition toward low-carbon economies, emissions reductions, net-zero targets, and sustained multilateral cooperation.

In the years that followed, this commitment was reinforced by a series of converging developments. Governments adopted increasingly ambitious climate policies, financial markets began integrating environmental criteria into investment decisions, and renewable energy expanded rapidly across multiple regions. A broad consensus emerged around the idea that the global energy system could be progressively transformed, and that the decade between 2020 and 2030 would be decisive in accelerating this transition.

Yet this momentum has proven more fragile than initially assumed. Since 2022, a series of geopolitical shocks has disrupted the trajectory set in motion after Paris. The return of large-scale conflict, most notably following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reintroduced energy security as a central concern for policymakers. This shift was further reinforced by instability in key energy corridors, including the Strait of Hormuz, where tensions have underscored the vulnerability of global oil supply.

These developments have had tangible consequences. Governments have delayed or revised decarbonization timelines, expanded investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, and prioritized supply security over long-term climate objectives.Thus, while the formal commitments of the Paris framework remain in place, their practical influence on policy and market behavior have weakened.

Today, what is emerging is not a straightforward continuation of the post-Paris transition, but a more complex and fragmented landscape. Climate goals persist as a reference point, yet they increasingly compete with and are often subordinated to, considerations of geopolitical rivalry, economic stability, and energy security. The global energy transition, once framed as a coordinated effort, is now unfolding under conditions of strategic competition and systemic tension.

From Climate Momentum to Strategic Reversal

The disruption of the post-Paris trajectory did not,however, occur in a single moment, but through a rapid reordering of priorities triggered by geopolitical shocks. The expectation that the 2020–2030 decade would be defined by accelerated decarbonization has increasingly given way to a more complex reality in which energy security, economic stability, and strategic competition play a determining role.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine marked a critical inflection point. By exposing the vulnerability of energy supply systems-particularly in Europe-it forced governments to reassess the pace and structure of the energy transition. Emergency measures, including the reactivation of coal, the expansion of liquefied natural gas infrastructure, and the diversification of supply sources, reflected an urgent shift toward securing immediate energy needs.

This recalibration was not limited to Europe. It signaled a broader transformation in policymaking, where long-term climate objectives began to be weighed against short-term imperatives of security and resilience. Markets responded in parallel, with renewed investment in fossil fuel production and infrastructure, further reinforcing this trend.

More recently, instability surrounding critical energy corridors such as the Strait of Hormuz has amplified these pressures. Volatility in oil markets and the strategic importance of maintaining uninterrupted supply have continued to elevate the role of fossil fuels in national decision-making.

What must be emphasized, however, is that while climate commitments remain formally in place, their operational significance has been markedly reduced. What is emerging is not continuity, but a reordering of priorities in which energy security increasingly overrides decarbonization goals.

Taken together, these developments point to a structural shift rather than a temporary deviation. This energy transition is being reshaped and in some cases constrained, by the geopolitical realities of an increasingly fragmented international system.

The Persistence and Expansion of Fossil Fuel Power

Contrary to prevailing narratives of an orderly energy transition, fossil fuels remain not only central to the global energy mix but also deeply embedded in the strategic calculations of major powers. Oil and gas continue to function as instruments of geopolitical influence, shaping both the conduct of international relations and the structure of global markets.

Recent developments suggest that this persistence is not merely the result of inertia or slow policy adaptation. Rather, it reflects a more deliberate pattern in which control over energy resources and supply routes constitutes a core element of strategic behavior. In this context, fossil fuels are not simply commodities to be phased out, but assets to be managed, secured, and, where possible, leveraged.

The evolving dynamics in regions such as Venezuela and the Persian Gulf illustrate this pattern. Political and economic shifts in major oil-producing states have facilitated the reorganization of their energy sectors, enabling renewed access to reserves and their reintegration into global markets under altered conditions. At the same time, heightened tensions around critical transit points such as the Strait of Hormuz underscore the importance of controlling not only production, but also the flow of energy. Together, these developments point to a dual strategy: the expansion of supply in politically aligned contexts, and the restriction or disruption of supply in adversarial ones.

This duality suggests that oil functions as a strategic lever within a broader architecture of power. It enables states not only to secure their own energy needs but also to influence global pricing, market stability, and the economic conditions under which other actors operate. In this sense, the management of fossil fuel systems becomes inseparable from the exercise of geopolitical power.

Importantly, this dynamic must be understood within the coext of intensifying great-power competition, particularly between the United States and China. Access to energy resources and control over supply chains are increasingly intertwined with broader strategic concerns, including technological leadership, industrial capacity, and global influence. Actions affecting major oil-producing regions therefore have implications that extend beyond immediate resource considerations, shaping the strategic environment in which rivals pursue their economic and political objectives.

The result is a structural paradox. While global discourse continues to emphasize decarbonization, the geopolitical logic of energy security and competition reinforces the centrality of fossil fuels.

This duality suggests that oil functions as a strategic lever within a broader architecture of power. It enables states not only to secure their own energy needs but also to influence global pricing, market stability, and the economic conditions under which other actors operate. In this sense, the management of fossil fuel systems becomes inseparable from the exercise of geopolitical power.

Importantly, this dynamic must be understood within the context of intensifying competition between the United States and China. Access to energy resources and control over supply chains are increasingly intertwined with broader strategic concerns, including technological leadership, industrial capacity, and global influence. Actions affecting major oil-producing regions, therefore, have implications that extend beyond immediate resource considerations, shaping the strategic environment in which rivals pursue their economic and political objectives.

The result is a structural paradox. While global discourse continues to emphasize decarbonization, the geopolitical logic of energy security and competition reinforces the centrality of fossil fuels, re-instrumentalizing it,not only as sources of energy, but as tools of strategic positioning in an increasingly contested international system.:

Energy Transition or Energy Siege?

If energy security has become a driver of climate backsliding, the deeper question is why this pattern has become so persistent and so politically difficult to reverse. The answer lies not only in market inertia or institutional weakness, but in the geopolitical struggle increasingly shaping the energy order itself. What appears at first glance to be a clash between short-term supply needs and long-term climate goals is, in reality, embedded in a broader contest over power, strategic leverage, and the control of global energy systems.

This is why the present moment cannot be understood simply as a period in which different states are pursuing different developmental pathways. The issue is not merely that China and the United States are advancing through distinct energy models that might, in principle, coexist side by side. The deeper reality is that these models are colliding. China’s rise in renewables, batteries, electric vehicles, and clean-energy manufacturing is not only an industrial story; it is a geopolitical one. It suggests the emergence of a future in which strategic influence may depend less on traditional control of fossil resources and more on dominance in the technologies, supply chains, and infrastructures of electrification. That shift has profound implications for global power.

It is precisely this shift that sharpens the contradiction at the heart of energy security today. For the United States, energy has long been tied not only to prosperity, but to strategic doctrine, global reach, and systemic influence. Since the early 2000s, American security thinking has repeatedly treated access to and influence over major energy-producing regions, transport corridors, and maritime chokepoints as integral to its global primacy. In that framework, fossil energy is not merely a commodity, it is a source of leverage: something that can be protected, sanctioned, rerouted, withheld, or used to reinforce alliances and dependencies. This logic has not disappeared with the language of transition. On the contrary, it continues to shape the deeper strategic reflexes of U.S. power.

That is why the conflict is more serious than a simple disagreement over energy choices. A world moving decisively toward renewable energy, electrification, and more distributed systems of production would not only alter emissions trajectories; it could also reduce the geopolitical centrality of the fossil-fuel architecture on which American power has long relied. It would shift the terrain of competition toward sectors in which China has already gained significant advantage. Seen from that perspective, the issue is no longer merely environmental. The transition itself becomes a strategic problem. Climate science is not necessarily denied in a direct or uniform way; rather, it is displaced whenever its implications threaten to accelerate a redistribution of power unfavorable to Washington.

This helps explain why the pursuit of energy security so often reinforces fossil dependence even in the face of overwhelming evidence about climate danger. It is not simply that governments are slow, inconsistent, or hypocritical. It is that fossil energy still offers forms of strategic utility that renewable systems do not yet fully replicate. Oil and gas remain tied to shipping lanes, military protection, territorial influence, sanctions regimes, pricing power, and coercive diplomacy. They are deeply embedded in the older grammar of geopolitics. Renewables may promise greater sustainability, but they do not automatically provide the same architecture of chokepoints and command. For states accustomed to thinking in terms of control, scarcity, and leverage, this matters enormously.

The war in Ukraine brought this contradiction into full view. What began as a military and territorial conflict quickly exposed the enduring centrality of energy to geopolitical order. Europe’s rupture with Russian gas did accelerate the search for alternatives and strengthen the political case for renewable expansion. But it also deepened the short-term reliance on alternative fossil supplies, especially liquefied natural gas, emergency contracts, and intensified competition for secure access. In this sense, the Ukraine war did not simply disrupt the old energy order; it reactivated its deepest logic. Supply security once again overrode climate coherence, and the politics of transition were pushed back under the pressure of strategic urgency.

The same logic extends beyond Europe. Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz are not disconnected episodes in a chaotic global landscape. They are parts of a wider chessboard in which control over fossil resources and routes continues to matter because key rivals, especially China, still depend on them. China may be advancing rapidly in renewables, but it has not escaped fossil vulnerability. Its economy still requires substantial imported oil and gas, much of it moving through contested spaces or politically exposed producers. This creates an opening for a strategy in which dominance over non-renewable energy sources and transport corridors serves not only traditional energy security goals, but the broader objective of constraining China’s room for maneuver.

This is why the current energy order cannot be described as a neutral coexistence between an old model and a new one. It is increasingly a field of confrontation. On one side stands the logic of transition, with China seeking advantage in the infrastructure of the next energy era. On the other stands a strategic reflex that continues to draw power from fossil control, maritime oversight, regional pressure points, and the preservation of an international system in which energy dependence can still be converted into geopolitical leverage. The two are not peacefully unfolding in parallel. They are competing over the terms of the future.

Europe occupies an uneasy place within this confrontation. It is at once a victim of energy insecurity and, at times, an inadvertent participant in the reproduction of the fossil-security order. Its thirst for reliable energy, exposed dramatically by the loss of Russian supply. This has made it more vulnerable to external shocks and more dependent on alternative fossil arrangements precisely at the moment when it seeks to present itself as a global climate leader. Europe may speak the language of green transformation, but its structural exposure to energy scarcity and price volatility continues to pull it back toward the imperatives of immediate supply. In doing so, it reinforces the very geopolitical environment in which renewable ambition is subordinated to fossil necessity.

The result is a deeply unstable global condition. Climate change demands accelerated decarbonization, yet the rivalry surrounding energy is pushing major powers and vulnerable regions toward strategies that preserve fossil relevance: a geopolitical contest in which control over energy remains inseparable from the struggle for strategic dominance.

The real danger, then, is not just climate inaction. It is that climate action has entered a theater of power in which energy transition is increasingly shaped, delayed, and distorted by geopolitical competition.

Europe, Ukraine, Hormuz, and the Fossil-Security Chessboard

If the preceding section identified the strategic collision between energy transition and geopolitical rivalry, the next step is to observe how that collision is being played out across concrete theaters of crisis. The contradiction is no longer abstract. It is visible in the war in Ukraine, in the renewed strategic relevance of Venezuela and Iraq, in the persistent volatility surrounding Iran, and above all in the continued centrality of chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz. Together, these cases reveal that the global energy system remains deeply structured by the politics of fossil control, even as the language of transition grows louder..

Europe’s search for supply became part of a wider reinforcement of the fossil-security order. Liquefied natural gas assumed greater strategic importance. External suppliers acquired new leverage. Infrastructure once justified as temporary necessity began to generate longer-term implications. What was presented as an emergency response also had the effect of preserving fossil dependence at the very moment when the climate crisis required sharper departure from it. Europe did not abandon the transition, but the transition was forced to coexist with a security panic that strengthened the old system from which it was supposed to be escaping.

That development matters beyond Europe itself. Europe’s energy thirst does not operate in isolation; it reverberates through global markets and deepens competition for scarce supply. It also helps legitimize a wider political narrative in which fossil expansion is defended as a rational answer to instability. In this sense, Europe becomes both a casualty of geopolitical energy disruption and a participant in the reproduction of the fossil-security logic. The more insecure Europe becomes, the more it reinforces the global importance of hydrocarbons, shipping routes, and external suppliers. And the more that logic is reinforced, the harder it becomes to treat climate transition as the overriding organizing principle of international energy policy.

The war in Ukraine also altered the strategic map in a second sense. It reaffirmed that energy remains inseparable from coercion, alliance management, and global power alignment. Energy is not merely a consequence of conflict; it is one of its operating terrains. Control over supply, sanctions, price shocks, and substitution patterns all became tools through which the war radiated beyond the battlefield. This is precisely why the transition cannot be treated as a purely technical or environmental matter. As long as energy systems remain vulnerable to geopolitical rupture, governments will continue to privilege forms of supply they believe can be secured, controlled, or militarily protected.

That same logic is visible in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela, long treated as politically radioactive in Washington, periodically re-enters strategic calculation whenever supply conditions tighten or geopolitical flexibility becomes useful. This is not an incidental contradiction. It reveals how quickly normative language can be recalibrated when fossil energy regains urgency. A sanctioned producer can suddenly become relevant again, not because its governance has fundamentally changed, but because its resources remain embedded in a global security equation. The same broader pattern applies to Iraq, whose importance persists not only because of its reserves, but because it sits within a region where energy, security architecture, and great-power competition remain closely interlinked.

Iran sharpens the picture further. Few cases better illustrate how fossil energy, strategic geography, and geopolitical confrontation remain fused. Iran matters not only because of its hydrocarbons, but because of where it sits and what it can threaten. The Strait of Hormuz is not simply a narrow maritime corridor. It is one of the arteries of the global fossil economy. Any instability there reverberates far beyond the Gulf, affecting prices, market psychology, insurance costs, shipping calculations, and strategic planning across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Hormuz is where geography itself becomes leverage.

This is especially significant in relation to China. China’s advance in renewable energy and electrification does not eliminate its continued need for imported fossil fuel. Its economic scale still requires substantial oil and gas inputs, much of them exposed to maritime routes and politically unstable regions. That means the global shift toward renewables has not yet dissolved the strategic value of fossil chokepoints. On the contrary, these chokepoints remain instruments through which rivals can calculate pressure, exposure, and constraint. In such a world, control over the old energy order retains immense relevance precisely because the new one is not yet complete.

What emerges, then, is something more than a set of regional crises. It is a chessboard on which different theaters serve a common strategic function. Ukraine exposes the vulnerability of energy-dependent Europe and revives the politics of emergency fossil supply. Venezuela reminds us that resource access can quickly override political consistency. Iraq demonstrates the continued relevance of unstable but indispensable producers. Iran and Hormuz reveal that maritime chokepoints remain central to the management of global energy insecurity. Across these cases, the same pattern recurs: whenever energy security becomes urgent, fossil systems regain strategic primacy, and climate logic is pushed to the side.

The consequence is sobering. Every new geopolitical shock strengthens the argument for protecting supply, diversifying imports, expanding strategic reserves, securing routes, and reinforcing old energy partnerships. But these measures, while rational within the logic of immediate security, also prolong the conditions under which climate action becomes secondary. The world becomes trapped in a repeating cycle: geopolitical crisis revives fossil urgency; fossil urgency delays or dilutes transition; delayed transition deepens climate instability; and climate instability, in turn, intensifies the scramble for secure energy.

In this sense, Europe, Ukraine, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and Hormuz are not separate chapters of world politics. They are interconnected expressions of the same unresolved reality: the international system still seeks security through structures that are helping to produce planetary insecurity. Until that contradiction is addressed directly, energy security will continue to be redefined through geopolitical rivalry, and the transition will remain vulnerable, not simply because of insufficient capacity or inadequate political will, but because delay itself may carry strategic value

A delayed energy transition does not simply defer climate goals; it also postpones the geopolitical benefits of China’s rise in future energy industries. From this perspective, delay or disruption within the transition may carry strategic value, while the persistence of the fossil-based order can serve more than a defensive role for the United States. By prolonging the centrality of oil, gas, and key chokepoints, it may not only

sustain U.S. strategic leverage but also slow China’s ability to convert its leadership in renewables into broader structural power.

In this sense, a delayed transition is not only a climate setback; it may also function as a strategic deferral of China’s ascent in the emerging energy order.

Climate Change and the Reordering of Power

What is ultimately at stake in this unfolding energy crisis is not only the pace of decarbonization, nor even the stability of the global climate taken in isolation. More fundamentally, the world is entering a period in which climate change, energy transition, and geopolitical rivalry are converging into a single struggle over the future distribution of power. This is what gives the current moment its historic weight. The question is no longer simply whether the world can move from fossil fuels to renewable energy quickly enough. It is whether such a transition can occur without destabilizing the strategic hierarchies on which the existing international order has long depended.

This is why the problem cannot be reduced to a failure of political will in the ordinary sense. The obstacles are deeper. Climate action is colliding with entrenched systems of advantage. The old energy order did not merely power industrial economies; it underpinned alliances, military reach, trade routes, financial influence, and geopolitical dependency. It created a world in which power could be exercised through control over extraction, pricing, supply, protection, and access. To move away from that order is therefore not simply to adopt cleaner technologies. It is to unsettle one of the material foundations of modern strategic power.

China’s role in this transformation is central. Its rapid advance in renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, grid technology, and industrial scale has given it a position that extends beyond economics. It has placed China near the commanding heights of sectors likely to define the next era of energy development. This does not mean that China has escaped contradiction, nor that its energy system is already post-fossil. But it does mean that the transition, if accelerated globally, could gradually shift structural advantage toward actors that are better positioned in the industries of electrification than in the older architecture of hydrocarbon dominance.

For the United States, and to some extent for other powers formed within the geopolitical logic of the fossil age, this creates a profound strategic dilemma. To support rapid decarbonization in principle is one thing. To accept a transition that may redistribute industrial, technological, and geopolitical advantage is another. This is the deeper reason why climate policy so often appears rhetorically embraced yet strategically constrained. Resistance is not always open, nor always ideological. Often it appears in the form of delay, hedging, securitization, conditional commitment, or renewed emphasis on fossil resilience. But the cumulative effect is the same: the transition is slowed not only because it is difficult, but because its success may alter the balance of power in ways that some actors are unwilling fully to accept.

This is where the climate question becomes inseparable from the question of global order. If the world were governed primarily by scientific necessity, the logic of decarbonization would already be overwhelming. The physical evidence is clear, the technological pathways are increasingly available, and the costs of inaction continue to mount. Yet the international system at this point, does not operate on scientific logic alone. It operates through competition, asymmetry, insecurity, and the preservation of relative advantage. Climate science may define the urgency of the problem, but it does not determine the hierarchy of political choices. Those choices are filtered through the enduring calculations of states that still ask not only what is necessary, but who gains, who loses, and who leads.

Seen in this light, the greatest danger may not be denial of climate change in the traditional sense. It may be the emergence of a world in which climate disruption is fully acknowledged, yet still subordinated to strategic rivalry. In such a world, governments may invest in adaptation, green technology, resilience, and selective decarbonization, while continuing to preserve fossil leverage wherever it remains geopolitically useful. The result would not be total inaction. It would be fragmented action within a competitive system that protects national advantage more fiercely than planetary stability. That is a far more subtle and perhaps more durable form of failure.

Europe’s position once again illustrates this tension. It seeks to lead on climate norms and regulatory ambition, yet its energy insecurity repeatedly pulls it back into the hard realities of supply dependence and geopolitical vulnerability. China seeks leadership in the industries of the future, yet remains exposed to fossil bottlenecks and maritime risk. The United States promotes clean innovation, yet continues to derive strategic benefit from a world in which hydrocarbons, sanctions, sea lanes, and producer influence remain central. Each major actor is therefore caught in a contradiction between the energy future it proclaims and the strategic present it still inhabits. Accordingly, the climate crisis is no longer only about emissions, it is also about the political terms under which a new energy order will be built.

The challenge is not just to accelerate the transition, but to prevent it from being driven by rivalry. If renewable energy becomes another arena of competition, decarbonization may proceed unevenly and too slowly to limit escalating global disruption. If, instead, the transition is framed not as a zero-sum shift in power but as the foundation of a more stable international order, it could offer a way out of the fossil-security trap. That outcome, however, demands a level of political imagination that is currently lacking.

The crisis of climate change is therefore inseparable from a crisis of order. The old fossil system is environmentally unsustainable, yet the new energy system is geopolitically contested before it is fully formed. Between the two lies the central struggle of our time: whether humanity can build an energy future guided by planetary necessity, or whether that future will be distorted, delayed, and weaponized by the rivalries of a fractured world.

Conclusion

The climate crisis is often presented as a problem of science, technology, and political will. But that framing is no longer sufficient. What this article has argued is that climate change now sits inside a much larger geopolitical struggle over energy, power, and strategic advantage. The transition to renewable energy is not unfolding in a neutral policy space. It is taking place in a fractured international system in which states continue to calculate not only environmental necessity, but also relative gain, dependency, leverage, and control.

That is why the contradiction between energy security and climate action has become so acute. The issue is not merely that governments fail to act consistently on what climate science requires. It is that the existing energy order still provides strategic benefits that major powers are reluctant to surrender. Fossil fuels remain tied to military reach, sanctions, chokepoints, alliances, and systems of influence. Renewable energy, by contrast, points toward a redistribution of industrial and geopolitical advantage, one in which China has already secured a significant lead in key sectors of the emerging energy economy.

From this perspective, climate delay is not always the product of ignorance, denial, or institutional weakness alone. It can also reflect a deeper strategic logic: the preservation of an energy architecture that continues to serve geopolitical purposes even as it drives ecological instability. The wars, crises, and pressure points examined in this article be it Ukraine, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Hormuz, and Europe’s energy vulnerability, are not separate disturbances on the margins of the climate story. They are part of the climate story. They reveal a world still seeking security through the very structures that are worsening planetary insecurity.

This is the real danger. The transition may continue, but in a distorted form: slowed by rivalry, fragmented by insecurity, and subordinated to the chess game of great-power competition. In such a world, decarbonization does not stop, but it ceases to be governed primarily by scientific urgency. Instead, it becomes entangled in the struggle over who will shape the next energy order and who will dominate its strategic consequences.

The central question of our time, then, is no longer simply whether the world will move beyond fossil fuels. It is whether it can do so before the transition itself is captured by geopolitical conflict. If that happens, climate change will no longer be only an environmental emergency. It will become the terrain on which a new hierarchy of power is fought out.

And that may be the cruelest paradox of all: that humanity already knows what it must do to avoid deeper climate catastrophe, yet remains trapped in an international system that turns the path to survival into an instrument of rivalry.