“The power of the oil cartel is fading”

The switch to renewable energies will make oil and gas “increasingly less important trump cards” in geopolitical conflicts and lessen energy’s significance “as one of the strategic causes of geopolitical conflicts,” writes German utility E.ON’s CEO Johannes Teyssen in a guest commentary for Handelsblatt. “By the middle of this century at the latest, electricity will be the new oil, and to an increasing extent, this electricity will be produced from renewable energy forms," Teyssen writes. "The electrical society of the long-term future will [be based] on wind, solar energy and other renewable energy sources. This will also increasingly change the geopolitical landscape because power struggles for wind and sun are pointless.”

Read the guest commentary in English here.

For background read the CLEW article Sino-German tandem: Export champions promote global energy transition and the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and its implications for international security.