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Geopolitical, geoeconomic, and other evolving global dynamics are today transforming narratives around climate mitigation and the low-carbon transition. Where does this leave international efforts to achieve net zero and, crucially, our pathways for reaching that goal?

In a time of intensifying geopolitical turmoil, economic crisis, and regional conflict, governments the world over are emphasising security over other pressing concerns like climate change, which has fallen down the priority list of many. Today, decarbonisation initiatives are increasingly recast as energy security imperatives, with new narratives centring on national resilience and strategic autonomy.

How is this new framing substantively reshaping the low-carbon transition in the face of waning official interest in the climate and sustainability agenda, and to what extent could the new discourse of securitisation be used to reinvigorate the global shift to net zero whilst preserving the green ambitions at its core?

Uniting perspectives from academia as well as policy, this panel will examine whether the new push for energy security is helping to accelerate investment in – and deployment of – renewable and other low-carbon technologies, or if it is instead heightening the risk of governments backpedalling to pursue narrower short-term national interests and renewed fossil fuel exploitation as they navigate the present moment of crisis and change.