During this masterclass on the Geopolitics of Climate Change at Utrecht University’s Honours College (Geohouse), one question took centre stage: how do you make climate policy geopolitically sustainable?

A striking example is Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. This law not only quadrupled investment in American reindustrialisation and clean energy, but also created something more fundamental: new economic interests in green industries, strikingly often in Republican states.

And therein lies the geopolitical lesson. Interests have one essential characteristic: they stand up for themselves and seek political representation. When investments, jobs and regional economic development become linked to the energy transition, new interests arise that stand up for themselves. In that sense, identity may be less cultural than often thought: perhaps identity is primarily the ideological justification of accumulated interests. That makes it particularly interesting to see what kind of identity changes “green interests” bring about in conservative or fossil fuel states.

A frequently asked question following this masterclass was: “What will happen to the energy transition if Trump is re-elected?”. The concern was palpable. The answer at the time was twofold: election results are uncertain, but structural interests carry more weight. In other words, policies that create investments and green economic interests build shock absorbers for the dismantling of sustainability.

That was the core message of the masterclass: if you want to understand the geopolitics of climate change, you have to look at the strategic creation of interests. Create interests. At a certain point, those interests will defend themselves, and with them the energy transition, regardless of the political colour in power.

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