This study investigates monopoly and dependency concerns on countries with weak democratic institutions in emerging renewable energy trade using social network theory. We do this by comparing the still-developing trade in renewables with the existing and supposedly OPEC+-dominated fossil fuel trade.
We develop hypotheses based on technological and economic aspects and test them using various social network metrics.
Through this comparison, we want to understand whether the renewable energy trade is developing freely or constrained.
For this purpose, we use the fossil fuel trade as a negative and combine it with institutional benchmarks. We use a broad sample of trade data from 1991 to 2022. We find that trade in renewable products displays more supplier-diverse, interconnected, and robust attributes. The aforementioned aspects highlight the non-ecology-related advantages of renewable energy technology over fossil fuels.
However, we identify emerging risks, such as elevated market concentration in fossil fuels, mainly through developed economies. Conversely, we detect that developed economies rapidly lose market share in critical products like photovoltaics to developing nations, particularly a rapidly ascending China, giving some credibility to future dependency concerns.
Altogether, current dependency appears overstated, even in fossil fuels. The presented work allows a closer look at risk factors in the energy trade and the trade-related advantages of renewable energy sources, highlighting geopolitical and economic implications.