For most of the fossil-fuel era, energy security meant securing a continuous flow of things that disappeared when they were used. Oil arrived in tankers, natural gas crossed pipelines or oceans as LNG, and coal moved by rail and ship. Burn the fuel and another shipment had to follow, which made access to producing countries, sea lanes, pipelines and foreign exchange central to keeping an economy running.

Electrification changes that relationship because much more international trade moves productive equipment rather than continuously consumed fuel. A country can import solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, transformers and power electronics, then use those assets for years while drawing increasing amounts of energy from domestic sunlight, wind, hydro or other electricity sources. The supply chains remain international, but the economic dependency is structurally different.

That is the central argument in my updated TFIE Strategy Briefing on globalization, electrification and energy security. It also corrects something I got wrong when I first made the sustainability case for globalization in 2021.

At the time, I argued that expanding trade and economic integration would spread technology, increase productivity and create a useful side effect of greater peace. Russia invaded Ukraine less than six months later. The pandemic had already exposed brittle supply chains, and the following years brought export controls, strategic industrial subsidies and increasingly overt economic confrontation between the United States and China.

Trade did not abolish geopolitics, and concentrated dependence can create serious vulnerabilities. Relying heavily on one unreliable supplier for a commodity that must be purchased every month is particularly dangerous.

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