Politics in the energy-security nexus: an epistemic governance approach to the zero-carbon energy transition in Finland, Estonia, and Norway

ABSTRACT

To reduce the energy sector’s CO₂ emissions, sustainability transitions are essential but may have unexpected national security consequences. We investigate policymaking around energy transitions and national security, combining sociology with sustainability transitions thinking to analyse 73 policy documents issued between 2006 and 2023 in Estonia, Finland, and Norway and investigate how zero-carbon energy and security issues have co-evolved with, strengthened, or undermined one another by analysing the rhetoric in official national strategy documents. With an epistemic governance framework, we identify the discourses that contextualise, justify, and explain policymaking in the energy–security nexus. We find that sustainable energy transitions are strengthened by connections to national security when alternative energy niches have matured but undermined for the same reason when fossil fuels are viewed as more robust sources of security. We detect policy intervention points aiming to indicate how transitions are enabled. Estonia and Finland evince strategic directions to destabilise the regime while supporting niches, whereas Norway focuses on continued oil and gas production. Whereas all are in principle in favour of sustainability transitions, they define transitions differently: Estonia values national sovereignty, Finland preparedness and the economy, and Norway sustainable development and economic security tied to hydrocarbons.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy transition
• epistemic governance
• security
• sustainability transitions
• energy-security nexus
• zero-carbon energy

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and constructive feedback. We are grateful to the members of the Tampere Research Group for Cultural and Political Sociology and professors Pertti Alasuutari and Matthias Kaiser, as well as Academy Research Fellow Jukka Syväterä for insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Not all documents included cross-references.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Research Council of Finland (decision numbers 322667 and 328717).

Notes on contributors

Marja Helena Sivonen

Marja Helena Sivonen is Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Tampere University with MSc in Global and Transnational Sociology from Tampere University. She works at the Finnish Environment Institute Syke. Her work focuses on politics around energy transitions from governance perspective. Sivonen has gained experience by studying also at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and University of Lapland in Finland, and has research experience from University of Bergen, Norway.

Paula Kivimaa

Paula Kivimaa is Research Professor in Climate solutions in the Finnish Environment Institute Syke, Associate at SPRU, University of Sussex, and member of the Finnish Climate Panel. Her research focuses on sustainability transitions to zero-carbon energy and mobility systems and how public policy (climate, energy, transport, innovation) contributes to such transitions. She has published circa 50 journal articles and contributed to reports, policy briefs and responses addressed to policymakers, including a report ‘Sustainability transitions: policy and practice’, published by the EEA. She holds an MSc in Environmental Technology and a PhD in Organisations and Management.