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Foreign Policy magazine posits the tension between fossil fuel and renewable energy interests as the basis for a new Cold War conducted between a Sino-European bloc and a USA-Russia-Saudi bloc, with the Global South as a major battlefield. The author perhaps overstates his case, but it is an interesting read nonetheless:
What is missing from this and similar narratives is the fundamental difference between dependency on fossil fuels and dependency on (mostly Chinese, as stipulated) renewable energy technologies and infrastructure. If the supply of fossil fuels is interrupted then existing ICE vehicles, power plants, home furnaces, etc. cease to operate, more-or-less immediately. If the supply of Chinese-manufactured renewable energy infrastructure is interrupted, existing infrastructure will continue to operate for years, perhaps decades. Ongoing maintenance and spare parts may be required, and certainly new contracts are required to support capacity expansion or the eventual renewal of aged infrastructure, but those things play out over dramatically elongated timescales relative to the dependencies engendered by fossil fuels, allowing for substitution with alternative infrastructure if required. Renewable energy infrastructure does not substitute one form of dependency for another, but rather
liberates the communities, nations, etc. that use it from dependency on fossil fuel supply, infrastructure and market variability.
