Energy Security Innovation in the Baltic Sea Region: Competing Visions of Technopolitical Orders

ABSTRACT

Energy security is among the top security concerns of the 21st century requiring technological answers. However, the technological innovations adopted often not only serve to ensure adequate energy access and stable flow of energy, but also foster specific visions of socio-economic and techno-political orders and security. This paper tweaks the analytical lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, in which desired futures are connected to social and technical elements in concrete cases by adding a focus on identity formation and ontological security to the analytical model. Zooming in on the Baltic Sea Region, the paper traces sociotechnical imaginaries tied to the desired future of energy sovereignty through coal and nuclear energy in Poland and the bright future of energy independence through a liquified natural gas terminal in Lithuania. Nationally embedded understandings of how (in)security can be managed through technological innovation and how the desired national energy visions can be attained in the process highlight the importance of ontological security concerns. In tracing those themes, the paper combines a historical view with developments since the mid-2010s in Polish and Lithuanian energy discourse and analyzes the mainstream energy security imaginaries as envisioned by political elites. The study draws on speeches of key political figures, official documents concerning energy planning as well as semi-structured interviews. The analysis highlights how the study of energy innovation in the Baltic Sea Region can contribute to the conversation between critical security studies and science and technology studies.

The multidimensional crisis sparked by the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 exposed the security implications of European over-reliance on Russian fossil fuels. Not only had classical geopolitics appeared to have returned to Europe, but energy had also become a huge factor in finding solutions and ways out. As many critical geographers note, energy security is a particularly contested and malleable concept (Judge,Maltby, and Sharples 2016), and it has been subjected to different interpretations. Oftentimes, the term has been understood as denoting the balance between security of supply, affordability, and the sustainability of energy provision (‘World Energy Trilemma Index’ n.d.). We argue, however, that energy security should be seen through a geopolitical lens that shows age-old insecurities intertwined with domestic energy security considerations and national identities. Here, Poland and Lithuania offer cases in point. With a historical background as part of the Soviet space, both countries have advocated for energy resilience building for decades and made extensive energy sector investments to become more independent from Russian influence. In Western Europe, this has been seen as a sign of history-driven paranoia and Russophobia and has run contrary to the general policy of extending energy ties with Russia through Nord Stream projects, which were to connect Russia with Germany and create peaceful relations through trade and interdependence. Conversely, Polish and Lithuanian energy projects were intended as guarantors of energy security as well as being expressions of wider, identity-rooted national visions of energy. Such visions set the course for the future design of domestic energy systems and innovation paths that tackle deep-seated anxieties towards Russia understood through geopolitical connotations of power and domination through the energy weapon.

Grasping this dynamic requires that we go beyond the mainstream energy policy layer or a classical Realist analysis of power politics. Following important work in political geography that emphasises the (re-)making of space through practices and discourses (Clark and Jones 2019), this paper seeks to shed light on how (in)security and energy innovation draw on basic notions of national identity and sociotechnical imaginaries shaped and reshaped at national and regional levels. By making this move, the article reframes our understanding of energy innovation while also implicitly shifting the focus from a unitary state’s survival in a classical Realist understanding to a notion of the construction of ontological security in malleable spatial containers: ‘The idea that (w)ithout ontological security, the self cannot know where it begins and ends’ and ‘what is essential to the body (and its survival) can only be defined by the self’ (Zarakol 2017, 48) stands at the centre of such an approach. Here, ontological security is seen as a public mood that imposes certain mechanisms making the future more manageable (Rumelili 2021). Following from this, we argue that the construction of ontological security in specific spatial contexts stands at the heart of the security‒innovation nexus. Basing our argument on a combined analysis of what is known as ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009) and national identity-making, we seek to draw out the importance of how the constitution of national identities draws on historical markers and produces a sense of ontological security and innovation, which is spatially negotiated and sustained. With the empirical examples of Poland and Lithuania, we show how the mainstream visions were constructed and how it came to dominate the way energy innovation is understood today.

The analytical prism explores how core national identity markers inform wider energy security visions and determine concrete approaches to the energy security‒innovation nexus in both countries. It sheds light on the emerging regional technopolitical energy security order grounded in specific national values and understandings of the geopolitical situation. More specifically, we trace how sociotechnical imaginaries tied to the desired future of energy sovereignty through coal and nuclear energy in Poland and the bright future of energy independence through a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Lithuania align with national values produced over time. In turn, these constrain the innovation paths in the domestic energy sectors. The paper combines a focus on the formation of identity through the use of historical and spatial identity markers with the development of the respective energy projects since the mid-2010s in the Polish and Lithuanian energy discourses. The focus is on the production of the dominant energy security imaginaries as envisioned by political elites. The study draws on speeches made by key political figures, official energy planning documents, and semi-structured interviews. We are fully aware of how discourses are never monolithic and that obtaining a dominant status requires the silencing of alternatives. In the analysis of the coming into being of identity, however, we have chosen to primarily zoom in on what became of the mainstream visions. Where appropriate, we also briefly mention alternatives. With this focus, we are able to illustrate an analytical point about the technology‒identity connection and to compare the Polish and Lithuanian cases. We go into more detail in the section on the state of the art and the approach.

The argument of this article unfolds as follows. First, the analytical approach is outlined against the backdrop of the sociotechnical imaginaries literature and an analytical framework of national narratives consisting of a state‒nation nexus, energy visions, and energy innovation. The infiltration of a sense of ontological security in the approach is highlighted. Second, the analysis outlines how the core concepts of state and nation in Poland and Lithuania inform the dominant energy visions in both countries and how the ‘energy as sovereignty’ and ‘energy as independence’ visions inform concrete energy innovation policies. The historically grounded visions channel innovation attempts and simultaneously seek to provide answer(s) to the question of ontological security. The conclusion reflects on how the analysis of the Polish and Lithuanian cases adds to the scholarship at the intersection of critical security studies, political geography, and science and technology studies through the application of the concept of imaginary to the field of energy (in)security and innovation.

Energy, Security, and Sociotechnical Imaginaries

Ever since Jasanoff and Kim (2009) coined the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, the debate has flourished and demonstrated the value of this approach for understanding the deeper policy drivers behind the choice of energy sources and technological innovations across different national settings (Berling et al. 2021). Sociotechnical imaginaries were defined as the ‘collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfilment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 120). Since the desirable futures that they picture are ‘animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through (…) advances in science and technology’ (Jasanoff 2015, 28), they shed light on key questions such as ‘why do technological trajectories diverge across polities’? (Ibid., 7) while also highlighting what is considered good or desirable in a given social context (Jasanoff and Kim 2009, 122–23). Studying the sociotechnical imaginaries of energy provides a good starting point for understanding energy policy choices and approaches to energy innovation.

Numerous studies have analysed why certain sociotechnical imaginaries gain traction and energy policy relevance, whereas others become marginalised. Among the multitude of explanations, scholars have noted the importance of the socio-material reality of the existing infrastructure system and importance of national/international interests (Mutter 2019), actors’ access to power and resources (Delina 2018), previous experiences with a given energy source (Schelhas et al. 2018), the importance of collective action frames in making sense of the national imaginaries (Eaton et al. 2014), and the extent to which national narratives co-evolve with the available energy resources (Kuchler and Bridge 2018). Research has also explored the dynamic of sociotechnical imaginaries at different levels of the policy debate by zooming in on, for example, the second-generation bioenergy technology in the global debate (Kuchler 2014), governmentality of shale gas in Europe (Kuchler 2017), or how the mainstream sociotechnical imaginaries of energy can be interpreted differently and contested locally in diverse contexts such as the US (Eaton et al. 2014; Tidwell and Smith 2015) and the Global South (Cloke et al. 2017). Several studies have also investigated in greater detail how sociotechnical imaginaries might embrace or drive innovation in the energy sector. For instance, Levidow and Papaioannou (2013) analysed the link between three major imaginaries and innovation pathways in the UK bioenergy sector, while Vesnic-Alujevic et al. (2016) have investigated the policy-level innovation narratives behind the mainstream visions for European smart grids. Levenda et al. (2019) approached sociotechnical imaginaries as cultural resources in the governance of energy innovations of smart grids in the US using the analytical concept of energy values, the latter defined as ‘heterogeneous, historically specific, socially rooted, culturally shared ideals regarding the role of energy technology in (re)creating public good’ (p. 182), including values such as reliability, democracy, or independence, that were expressed differently across the two studied metropolitan regions (Portland and Phoenix) that resulted in diverse local imaginaries. Scheer et al. (2017) also introduced contextual values and linked individual preferences for energy technologies from focus groups in Germany to broader values, such as power, autonomy, fairness, justice, self-reliance, and self-determination. Some studies have argued that imaginaries of energy can be rooted in competing collective memories of place (Eaton et al. 2014) or historical memories of nationhood (Perreault and Valdivia 2010). However, research combining a sociotechnical imaginary approach with a focus on energy innovation and insecurity is absent. First, while the innovation dimension is frequently highlighted in research on sociotechnical imaginaries of energy, it is rarely analysed through the prism of the national identity markers that are paramount to understanding what has been accepted as the major security challenge to be managed through innovation. Second, despite certain exceptions, such as the study by Tidwell and Smith (2015), who argued that the very concept of energy security should be understood as a sociotechnical imaginary, the research on sociotechnical imaginaries of energy frequently features the security dimension by default; usually as part of the broadly conceived energy security that can be improved by realising specific energy futures. In contrast, this paper argues that sociotechnical imaginaries must be understood as highly contextual and heavily shaped by a sense of national identity and the security of the Self. In this way, security becomes an integral part of the analysis, which in turn shapes energy innovation in specific states. The next section unpacks this analytical approach in greater detail.

The Approach: Sociotechnical Visions, National Identity, Innovation, and Ontological Security

Basing our research on Berling et al. (2021), who followed Hansen and Wæver (2002), we analyse national identities through a ‘layered analysis of national narratives’. In the original work, Hansen and Wæver analysed how basic concepts of state and nation were historically shaped in different European states. They unpacked the notions of nation and state by analysing questions such as ‘what is the idea of the state, what is the idea of the nation, and how are the two tied together?’ (Hansen and Wæver 2002, 33). Delving deeper, they explored how the combination of specific nation and state concepts were understood in relation to different ideas of, for example, ‘Europe’, and how this would translate into different foreign policy visions, which in turn would guide concrete policy decisions (Ibid.). In their adapted approach, Berling et al. (2021) examined how specific ‘energy visions’ similarly build on specific conceptualisations of nation and the state and how they inform concrete energy policies. In this approach, a basic constellation of the concepts of state and nation at the core of national identity would constitute the most stable element, which influenced what broader energy visions could be conceived of in a given national context and the energy policies that could be expected to follow. As such, this model was seen as a filter through which energy policies must travel to improve their chances of being considered legitimate by the wider public (Hansen and Wæver 2002, 9). In this article, we tweak this model in an attempt to understand the energy innovation‒security nexus in Poland and Lithuania. We argue that in order to capture this, we must return to the fundamental discussion of ontological security. Energy innovation, security, and a basic sense of the Self are inextricably linked and must be understood as such.

The concept of ontological security traces back to late 1950s, as defined by an existentialist psychologist Laing (1990) in search of the individual’s need for ‘security of being’. In the 1990s, the concept was adopted in IR (Huysmans 1998; McSweeney 1999; Wendt 1994), where it was introduced as a state-level concept and has been further explored theoretically and empirically ever since (Kinnvall 2004; 2006; Mitzen 2006; Steele 2008). Drawing on Giddens’ (1991) notion of ontological security, anxiety is perceived as something that a society aims to control by imposing mechanisms that render the future more manageable. Here, the notion of anxiety is not taken as an emotion conceived individually, but rather as a public mood that looms over society and is translated into mass-level agency (Rumelili 2021, 1027‒33). The security of Self is linked to safeguarding one’s identity, and any restriction to that identity is considered a threat (Krickel-Choi 2021). The ontological security concerns the ability of the state to maintain biographical continuity and a healthy sense of the Self through routines and stable relationships (Moulioukova and Kanet 2021). In international politics, it is argued that these routines allow state actors to maintain cognitive control of their environment and a sense of purposeful agency (Ejdus 2020, 3–4).

As Zarakol (2017, 3) has argued, however, ‘the concept of ontological security in IR does not have to be limited to a synonym for “state identity”’, and ontological security is usually applied to the analysis of identity-related conflict (Browning 2018; Cash 2017; Hansen 2016; Innes 2017; Kay 2012). Self-identity is the foundational element of the ontological security of states, and it is continually reproduced through the routinised practices and narratives forming around them. We are aware of how the focus on sustaining a dominant version of identity largely means the omission of alternative voices. We have provided examples of such voices where relevant but highlight the dominant version here in order to make a comparison between the Polish and Lithuanian cases.

By introducing the debate about ontological security, we aim to highlight the connection between the deeply embedded concepts of nation and state, innovation, and energy security. The national imaginaries both build on the ideas of state and nation and aim to manage ontological insecurity by making the future less uncertain (Giddens 1991). While these visions may be either positive (utopias) or negative (dystopias) (Berenskötter 2021), as far as ontological security is concerned, they seek to make the future more manageable and to create favourable future conditions in line with national values. At the same time, these visions inform innovation policies.

At its core, innovation is about creating or imagining new and bright futures and about defining visions and hopes (Petersen 2019, 8). Nevertheless, the scope, process of implementation, and extent of novelty embraced by such future-oriented innovation policies are all closely tied to the underlying sense of ontological security and, hence, often the dominant versions of national identity. Here, energy innovation attains meaning in the same way that security, identity, and the state do in our analytical model.

The model above illustrates how the technopolitical visions of energy futures are shaped and constrained by the deeper layers, founded on national identity. The immediate energy policy agenda in Poland and Lithuania and the national attitudes to energy innovation envisioned to bolster ontological security in both contexts are also grounded in the concepts of nation and state. Following the ‘post-Schumpeterian innovation regime’ (Rammert 2000), we scrutinise how the dominant, national discourse defines, communicates, and justifies what innovation is (Rammert 2021, 528). Rather than seeing innovation as a binary phenomenon of either incremental or radical change (Kahn 2018, 454) or a mere synonym of ‘new idea, method, or device’ (Oxford Dictionary), we move away from fixed meanings (Tierney and Lanford 2016, 2) and perceive it as a construct of national narratives. Innovation is therefore always context-dependent (Koselleck 1972; Tierney and Lanford 2016).

As the analysis will show, the concepts sometimes draw on domestic energy resources at the foundational level of the state and nation concepts. In Poland, coal has become such an integral part of narrating Polish identity that it is next to impossible to understand visions of the future in the absence of coal. At the same time, previous experience with foreign rule and domination has made centralised control over energy provision such an ingrained aspect of the national narrative and sense of ontological security that decentralised renewables can almost appear tantamount to treason when linked to foreign interests and technologies. The presence of energy resources in a country does not determine policies but may shape the pathways to energy innovation. In the Lithuanian case, past visions of a grander role for Lithuanians meant not shying away from large national energy projects for own benefit together with regional independence. This creates specific pathways to innovation in the energy domain that contribute to the sense of ontological security in the two countries.

Methodology

As Jasanoff (2015) emphasised: ‘Perhaps the most indispensable method for studying sociotechnical imaginaries is comparison (…) Cross-national comparisons have proved especially useful in revealing the ingrained normative commitments that distinguish political communities, such as their ways of knowing and reasoning’ (p. 24). We therefore conduct a comparative analysis of Polish and Lithuanian national energy narratives to uncover the dominant visions of energy futures grounded in national identities in these two Baltic Sea Region countries. Our inquiry follows interpretivist research design and scrutinises how sociotechnical imaginaries of energy security in Poland and Lithuania have been narrated in line with the widely held set of national values. As our analytical focus is on the mainstream energy visions driving national energy policy and its approach to innovation, we pay special attention to how energy imaginaries were constructed, articulated, and manifested by those in positions of power through core themes in a wider expression of contextual values.

To detect those themes, we have undertaken several analytical steps. Firstly, we have critically engaged with the literature on national identity formation and the pivotal historical developments in both contexts, identifying key concepts that enabled us to distinguish the mainstream concepts of state and nation. Here, the literature was selected using search strings including ‘Poland/Lithuania’ and ‘[national] identity’ in Polish, Lithuanian, and English. This reading gave us a better sense of how the state and nation concepts are interlinked and understood in each context, the core national values they inform, and which significant Others and Selves are encoded into the basic level of national identity. This was key for determining the foundational factors pertaining to the creation of a sense of ontological security in the countries under study. Secondly, we have researched how these core values that define local understandings of what constitutes a nation (e.g., community, sovereignty, independence) are reflected and articulated in the wider energy policy visions. Here, we have relied on multiple sources, including policy documents, regulatory statements, newspaper articles, and published accounts. Since this analysis focuses on the mainstream visions, these sources were then preliminarily scanned to uncover the energy sectors/sources/technologies that are most frequently and explicitly linked to core national values in the public energy security discourse and policy, such as sovereignty or independence. It is not to say, however, that other competing energy visions do not figure into the Polish and Lithuanian energy contexts, but rather that for various reasons they have not been potent enough to challenge the mainstream visions (e.g., see the analysis of some competing energy security narratives in Poland in Surwillo 2019). In the Polish case, the core value of sovereignty featured most explicitly in connection with the domestic coal sector, and recently also with nuclear energy and gas. In the Lithuanian case, the mission of energy independence has been intrinsically linked to the energy sector developments since the 1990s. More recently, the core value of ‘independence’ has become conspicuously linked to the country’s gas sector, and its flagship LNG terminal project was even named as such. Based on this preliminary research, a more detailed analysis followed that scrutinised how security‒innovation is reflected within the mainstream national imaginaries of energy.

In the Polish case, given the historical importance of coal in the domestic energy sector and national identity alike, the search included both more historical sources (e.g. press articles dating back to the 1950s) and contemporary debates on energy sovereignty up until 2021, which most frequently revolved around coal and nuclear energy. For the Lithuanian case, the search was optimised using a custom date range set to cover sources until November 2014 (LNG Factsheet 2014 n.d). The generated results under enquiries of ‘liquified natural gas’ or ‘LNG’ in combination with ‘Lithuania’, ‘Klaipėda’, or ‘Baltic States’ thereby tackled the developmental stages of the project. The search was thereafter supplemented with targeted enquiries that emerged from the initial search without timeframe limitations in order to expand the bandwidth.

We also conducted semi-structured interviews in Poland in September 2020 and Lithuania in September‒October 2021. In the Polish case, the interviews focused on different stakeholders connected to the domestic energy sector developments. For the Lithuanian case, the interviewees were selected based on the information gathered in the initial search stage, which enabled the mapping out of the key actors in the project development as well as distinguishing experts with in-depth knowledge of the Lithuanian energy sector development. Considering this, the qualitative data were gathered from 22 interviewees, including members of the special LNG project parliamentary commission, LNG project executives, governmental and ministerial officials, energy experts, and energy security researchers in physical and virtual settings collected in Klaipėda, Vilnius, and Copenhagen. In the Polish case, the interviews focused on energy experts, researchers, and civil servants; especially those involved in the development of the current nuclear energy programme.

The sources were then coded using qualitative data analysis software (NVivo) and screened for core themes reflecting national values in line with the basic concepts of nation and state that are expressed in the wider energy visions of each country. Lastly, we have investigated how these dominant energy visions translate into concrete energy policies and approaches to innovation in the Polish and Lithuanian energy sectors.

The next section turns to the analysis of the Polish and Lithuanian cases.

Polish and Lithuanian Energy Visions and Innovation Paths

Poland: Concepts of Nation and State

The meanings of concepts such as ‘nation’ and ‘state’ rarely develop in a linear manner, and Poland is no exception. Its troubled history resulted in an uneasy formation of the concepts of nation and state that has only recently started to crystallise. The partition of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century by Prussia, Russia, and Austria erased the Polish state from the map for 123 years and has had a strong impact on Polish national identity building. As Mach noted, the absence of the Polish national state in the nineteenth century, when Polish nationalism was constructed, resulted in Polish national identity being based more on ethnic culture: language, religion, mythologised history, memories of past victories, and sovereignty lost (Mach 2007, 121). The continuous domination of foreign powers caused Polish loyalties to remain rather localised and to embrace an abstract vision of ‘the nation’ not grounded in state institutions (Walicki 1990). This vision built on the romantic version of nationalism typical for the Central and Eastern European region, which revolved around cultural sameness and ‘mythologies of common ancestry, the kinship of blood, shared language, and linkage to native soil’ (Prizel 1998, 24). The Polish nationalism was also largely class-bound in the first half of the nineteenth century, and there was a significant divide between the Lud (people) and Szlachta (Polish nobility), with the latter cherishing the idea of recreating Poland within its previous boundaries of Commonwealth with Lithuania, which included vast parts of contemporary Belarus and Ukraine (Ibid., 46). As such, the national identity embraced by the Polish elite was initially inclusive and tied more to geography than ethnicity (Ibid., 42). The failure of the 1863 uprising led to its redefinition, as the positivist ideals shifted towards authoritarianism and ethnonationalism (Ibid., 49‒55).

Consequently, the interwar period (1919‒39) was marked by a contradictory goal to rebuild the Polish state within the boundaries of the old Commonwealth yet with the exclusion of minorities from important state functions (Prizel 1998, 60). Two opposing political camps at the time – led by Piłsudski and Dmowski – differed in their views on whether Russia or Germany constituted the main threat to Polish independence but agreed that Poland should be based on the principle of the nation-state and concentrated their efforts on ‘state building’ rather than society building (Ibid., 59). The national ideas propagated by the Polish elite in the interwar period gradually filtered into popular consciousness but were not fully implemented until the re-emergence of an independent Poland in 1989 (Ibid., 38).

Further loss of sovereignty during German and Soviet occupation in 1939 and the communist rule in the aftermath of World War II (WWII) meant, as some have noted, that ‘historical consciousness and the establishment of traditions of the Polish people [became] (…) concentrated mainly around the question of national independence and sovereign rights’ (Jaworski 1985, 351). Foreign domination gave rise to a ‘tradition of external enemies’ that serves as the key element of Polish national identity (Ibid.) and sense of ontological insecurity, with Germany and Russia in particular figuring as Poland’s significant Others. The repeated experience of foreign rule also meant that, similarly to other Eastern European nations, Polish national identity has long developed in opposition to the state as opposed to within the state (Mach 2007, 119). This process took quite a peculiar form in the communist era, as both the state authorities and anti-communist opposition, including the Roman Catholic Church, constructed an image of a unified nation, albeit along with different narratives. In the view of the political elite, the nation was united in its progress towards socialism under the party leadership, whereas the opposition saw the nation as united against the communist state; as Mach noted:

The symbolic political discourse of the Church and the anti-state dissidents presented society as ideologically polarised into two segments clearly set apart and in permanent conflict: the communist, atheistic state and the Polish, Roman Catholic nation with its Church [as a leader]. (2007, 122)

Notably, the ethnic dimension was no longer prominent in these considerations, as Poland found itself in the aftermath of WWII within the new boundaries and with a population that went from the most heterogeneous to the most homogenous in Europe (Prizel 1998, 75). The big question therefore remained: How would the nation‒state nexus play out in this new context? On the one hand, the Roman Catholic Church, widely perceived as a de facto leader of anti-communist opposition, presented itself as a mediator between state and society (Ibid., 90). On the other hand, different communist leaders sought to bridge the gap between the communist state and society, some more successfully (e.g., Gomułka in 1956‒58) than others. Moreover, even though Poland was largely recognised as being trapped on the front lines between two blocs in a bipolar world, it could not achieve full sovereignty (Prizel 1998, 87); some dimensions of national identity, such as a strong connection between the soil and people (Neumann 2003), were reflected in the prioritisation of the use of domestic resources that were utilised to achieve limited autonomy and a greater sense of ontological security within the Soviet bloc by the Polish ruling elite.

The evolution of the Polish national narratives that involved (at different points in time) varying degrees of inclusiveness, ethnic dimensions, significant others, and external as well as internal drives towards sovereignty reached a new stage following the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 as the discourse of binary nation‒state opposition largely disappeared (Mach 2007, 124), and the sense of national identity started to crystallise. While the process of redefining the national self-image is ongoing (Mach 2007, 117; Prizel 1998, 39), defending independent statehood and sovereignty, which were so long fought for, tends to take precedence within the state‒nation constellation. This is how ontological security will be produced in Poland. The ideas of the interwar period that revolved around establishing a strong nation-state and pointed towards threats to the Polish sovereignty from the significant Others strongly resurfaced after 1989. And it is against this backdrop that the Polish policy agenda has been shaped; especially in its key areas: foreign and energy policy.

Consequently, the sociotechnical imaginaries of energy, which embrace visions of what the nation stands for in its pursuit of ontological and energy security, have strongly reflected the underlying goal of sovereignty that has been increasingly prominent in the evolution of Polish national identity and that has often served as a threshold against which different imaginaries are shaped and operate. As such, innovation in the field of energy technologies in the Polish context is frequently employed to address the burning question of energy insecurity, yet only if it fits the mainstream vision of the energy future underpinned by the notion of national sovereignty.

Poland: Energy Visions

The political and economic transformation in Poland since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s had a profound impact on the domestic energy sector. If the issue of energy dependency was not politicised during the Soviet period and economic reasoning still dominated Polish energy relations with Russia in the early 1990s, the increasingly strained relationship in the gas sector with the significant Russian Other in the years that followed brought the dominant ‘energy as sovereignty’ vision to the fore. Hence, the agreements on building gas import infrastructure from Russia in 1993 (Yamal pipeline) and the gas imports in 1996 (Fischer 2008, 10‒12) signed by Poland with Gazprom started to be questioned as a ‘threat to the national energy security (…) and even to the sovereignty of the Republic’ (Pawelczyk and Kudzia 1999). This led to the politicisation of the energy supply diversification attempts, with the subsequent Polish governments considering alternative routes of gas supply¹ working to re-negotiate the already-signed contracts with Russia or trying to elude the building of the new gas transit system (Chekaleva–Demidovskaya 2005). This policy reached its peak following the rise to power of the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) in 2005 and the Ukrainian gas crisis of January 2006, with new diversification plans from Central Asia (Heinrich 2007, 25), plans for an LNG terminal (Nowakowski 2006), or rejection of further energy infrastructure projects with Russia (Yamal 2 pipeline) (Kubacki 2009). The rationale of protecting the national interest and retaining sovereignty over the country’s energy policy also intensified. Following the Ukrainian gas crisis of 2006, Kaczyński took further steps to expand the role of the President in the state’s energy security policy. The preparation of the energy security analysis and the action projects were turned into a responsibility of the National Security Agency subordinate to the President, and a special energy security working group was established. The energy security issue itself was included in the National Security Strategy of the Polish Republic, adopted on 13 November 2007 (Lasoń 2008). The political and media rhetoric also became more filled with historical references and metaphors that brought forth visions of a state under attack, whose very sovereignty and ontological security are challenged. On numerous occasions, the Polish President referred to the Russian use of oil and gas as an ‘energy weapon’ and its energy policy conduct as imperialistic (Heinrich 2007). This rhetoric was echoed by other political actors who used the ‘energy weapon’ phrase, compared the Nord Stream project to the infamous Ribbentrop‒Molotov pact, or proposed the ‘European energy solidarity’ project under the slogan ‘energy NATO’ (Ibid.; Cohen 2006a; Parnes 2007). Several stories in the media at the time followed a similar logic and painted a picture of an energy war that threatens the very territorial integrity of the Polish state, with titles such as ‘Gas blitzkrieg?’ (Gonchar 2006), ‘Pipes of war’ (Baliszewski 2006), ‘Energy annexation’ (Piński 2006), and ‘Geopolitical leash’ (Cohen 2006b).

Even though the debate on national energy security was the most intense in the years 2006‒2009, when energy policy clearly became securitised, the ‘energy as sovereignty’ vision that became more prominent in the Polish context already in the mid-1990s continuously guides the mainstream energy policy approach. It also serves as a threshold against which imaginaries of energy security are conceptualised and operate, favouring those that reflect the underlying national values most.

Poland: Innovation Paths

Visions regarding energy have profound consequences for how energy insecurity is managed through the choice of energy sources and new energy technologies. The energy sectors that are most favoured in the Polish context are those with the closest links to state sovereignty, a soil‒people nexus as expressed by a strong attachment to domestic resources, and centralised decision-making. Both coal and recently also nuclear energy fit in here. Following that, innovative solutions to tackle domestic energy insecurity build on rather traditional types of energy. Policymakers will rather promote ‘clean coal’ technology or present nuclear energy as a modern solution than, for example, make a more decisive policy turn towards renewables. We argue that this is because big energy generation units under state control better serve the Polish sense of ontological security tied to the protection of state sovereignty.

To start with, ever since the end of WWII, coal became central to a wider energy vision grounded in national identity. Frequently referred to as ‘black gold’ (czarne złoto), the political elite depicted it as a national treasure and a key building block in the search for a strong state and nationhood (TR 1973). The elite frequently praised the role of miners in the country’s economic development, awarded them state honours, and even referred to them as the ‘mining army’ that fought for the development of Polish industry and the entire national economy (Ibid.; TR 1962). Miners therefore served a key role in creating the sociotechnical imaginary of coal grounded in national identity ‒ as they reflected the connection between soil and people, as well as the wider state‒nation constellation as envisaged by the ruling party – in which the representatives of the Polish nation fought for the self-sufficient socialist state with the use of domestic natural resources (TR 1974). ‘Poland stands on coal’ (Polska węglem stoi) (TR 1956) is a slogan which very literally grasped the tight connection between coal and Polish statehood and has been frequently repeated ever since the 1950s, when it permanently entered the domestic energy security discourse. Coal is a prerequisite of ontological security in Poland.

The coal sector remained strategically important after the dissolution of the USSR and the strengthening of the energy sovereignty paradigm since the mid-1990s. Just a few years back, the Polish political elite still depicted coal as a national treasure, calling it a guarantor of the state’s energy sovereignty and referring to mining as the great achievement of the Polish nation on a number of occasions during the yearly mining celebrations in different coal regions of Poland (Dudała 2021). Not surprisingly, then, the shift in the policy course triggered by the EU climate agenda did not sit well in the Polish domestic setting, as it was perceived as a forceful measure and a direct threat to national energy sovereignty – with some right-wing politicians even establishing a Parliamentary Group on Energy Sovereignty in the Polish lower chamber, Sejm, in April 2021 (Energetyka 24 2021). The group’s goal is to ‘defend and protect the status of an energy sovereign state’ by placing coal at the centre of the Polish energy transformation (Oksińska 2021).

Given the threat of lost energy sovereignty resulting from the accelerated coal phase-out² that would stir ontological insecurity, nuclear energy became a new means to maintaining the vision of an energy sovereign state. Although the nuclear power plans that resurfaced in 2005 (Ministry of Economy and Labor 2005) have been justified by climate protection goals and energy security (‘‘Polish Nuclear Energy Program’, 2020), the fact that Poland could choose nuclear technology supplier and control the entire process – with the government recently taking over the ownership of the company in charge of the project – also played a role (Rzeczpospolita 2021). Large, state-controlled power generation units corresponded well to the underlying energy sovereignty vision. As Polish President Andrzej Duda stated in April 2021, it is absolutely necessary for Poland to ensure stable sources of supplies and energy sovereignty, ‘and the only way [to do it] really is through the atom’ (PAP/AT 2021). In the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the domestic plans for the deployment of the first small modular reactors (SMRs) have also materialised. As the Russian military forces were gathering along the Ukrainian border, Poland signed an ‘early works agreement’ on 14 February 2022 with NuScale, a US company, for the first SMR to be installed in Poland as early as 2029 (Patel 2022). Although SMR technology is more decentralised than a traditional NPP, the state would hold a tight grip over the regulation of all nuclear facilities.

The strong imaginary of energy sovereignty that provides ontological security and links to national identity channels energy innovation in a certain direction. First, coal has been linked to modern energy solutions and innovation in the political discourse, with former Prime Minister Beata Szydło stating in 2017 that coal is to become once more ‘a synonym of development and modernity’ (Polish Ministry of Energy 2016), and Mateusz Morawiecki thanking the Polish miners in November 2018 in Katowice for ‘the effort to build a strong, modern, innovative Poland’ (Ibid.). Second, the deeply entrenched coal imaginary dictates that the coal sector should be transformed and maintained through novel energy solutions and technologies. Hence, Polish politicians promoted the idea of Poland becoming a clean-coal technologies leader in the EU (Senat 2017). In a similar manner, albeit to a lesser extent, nuclear energy is being promoted by drawing on historical sentiments regarding modernity and environmental protection from the 1970s by painting a picture of the clean, green, and safe Poland for future generations that can be reached with the help of modern nuclear energy technology. The images of modern nuclear power plants, a clean green environment, and societal contentment have saturated government campaign materials on nuclear energy as well as public announcements that accompanied the development of the nuclear energy programme (e.g., Poznaj Atom and Świadomie o atomie campaign materials).

The dominant energy vision that hinges on ‘energy sovereignty’ favours traditional big power generation units and centralised decision-making in the energy sector. Significant technological innovations to manage Polish energy security dilemmas have largely been conceived of within the limits of this centralised techno-political order that results from mainstream national values. As Szulecki et al. (2015) have argued, the centralised decision-making and technocratic energy governance in the Polish context have prevented the democratisation of the domestic energy sector with the use of, for example, decentralised renewable energy source (RES) technologies. Even though the Polish Energy Policy 2040 strategy outlines several technological innovations to improve energy security (e.g., energy storage technologies, smart metering, and energy management systems, or improved electromobility) (Polish Ministry of Climate and Environment 2020), it still downplays new technology trends when it comes to the role played by consumers and the growing importance of distributed energy (Gawlikowska-Fyk and Maćkowiak Pandera 2019). The latter goes against the mainstream energy vision rooted in the sense of identity and ontological security, which stalls the transformation of the socio-economic context and development of more progressive techno-political orders based on, for example, the large-scale citizens’ energy projects (Surwillo 2019).

Lithuania: Concepts of Nation and State

While the name ‘Lithuania’ was first enshrined in the Annals of Quedlinburg in 1009 AD (Baranauskas n.d), it was first in the thirteenth century that the silhouette of what eventually turned into Lithuanian statehood began to take form (Gerutis 1984). Stretching along the sixteenth century, the ‘grandness’ of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania (GDL) finds its echoes in contemporary identity. The conflictual routines, in particular, are used to maintain cognitive control over purposeful agency (Ejdus 2020, 3‒4), such as the recent disputes with China, a decisive position against the Belarusian regime, and a pioneering decision to cut off Russian gas imports in the face of the war in Ukraine. With references to the ‘once great nation’, Lithuanian identity has been forged against Others, relationships with whom have been routinised in the pursuit of stabilising uncertainty and thereby boosting ontological security.

The Union of Lublin actualised the creation of the Lithuanian‒Polish Commonwealth, subsequently laying the foundations for Lithuanian identity formation. The GDL encompassed wide territories, and the common narratives were found in inclusion and power and anchored in the material environment (Ejdus 2017), voiced as ‘Lithuania from the Baltic to the Black Sea’. In the federal monarchy of the Commonwealth, the narrative became fragmented, followed by ideational disputes regarding legitimacy between the Lithuanian Duchy and the Polish Kingdom. While the Lithuanian elites took upon ‘Polonised’ identities to abut authority voluntarily, the remainder – Tauta (the nation) – constructed the national identity in internal opposition to the Szlachta/Šlėkta (Polish/Lithuanian nobility) and an external reference to the Russian Empire. Partitions of the Commonwealth in 1772, 1793, and 1795 saw territorial components slipping away and the conceptualisation of Tauta increasingly taking on an ethnicity-based identity. The 1795 division erased both Lithuania and Poland from the map for the next century. In Lithuania, this meant that the Russian Empire became the main state threatening its ontological security.

Being stripped of its self-proclaimed ‘grandness’ and forced into the frames of the Russian Empire diverted attention to other nation-unifying markers. After unsuccessful efforts to restore the Commonwealth in uprisings in 1830‒1831 and 1863‒1864, the Russian Empire responded with two ‘identity programs’³: the initial one aimed at detaching the Lithuanian identity from Polish influence, and the subsequent programme focused on Russification. The latter involved a Lithuanian press ban,⁴ which triggered ideational resistance turning Kalba (language) into a central element in Lithuanian identity-building. The forced identity-shaping triggered ideational resistance that is often addressed in the period literature with references to a tsarist-oppressed Lithuania and the nobilities’ identity struggles, at that point detaching from the Polish identity, coming through with ‘the Lithuanian soul despite the Polish veil’ (Šatrijos Ragana 1922, 55). Language became an enabler to crystallise who was (not) a Lithuanian. The amalgamation of nation and language can be attributed to the oppressed Roman Catholic Church, which gathered priests for a mission to ignite the Tauta through Kalba, inciting resistance to the Russian Other. Furthermore, in the midst of the Lithuanian press ban, first Auszra, a Lithuanian newspaper written in the Latin alphabet, started being published in East Prussia; Although with only 40 issues and small circulation, it had a significant impact on the eventual rebirth of the nation (‘The Lithuanian Word’, n.d). The identity operation was further cultivated by book smugglers,⁵ who circulated Lithuanian literature and methodologically laid the foundations for the ‘renaissance of the nation’, characterised by geospatial (di)visions: Таута and Tauta – Cyrillic and Latin – and Eastern ‘Others’ and Western ‘Selves’ (cf. Gustafsson 2021).

Lithuanian hopes for sovereignty were sparked by the repercussions of the Russian Revolution in 1905. This marked an emblematic shift from ethnic to political state (re-)building within Lithuanian-speaking territories. However, the spatial conceptualisation and quest for ontological security were – once again – challenged by the shifting eastern frontline during WWI and the eventual occupation by the German Empire. Russia remained in the position of radical Other, now alongside the newly constructed Ober Ost⁶ authority. The eventual proclamation of an independent Lithuanian state in 1918, where the nation was (re-)embodied in the state (Holm 2004), led to the ‘gold-age of the nation’ (Voiška 2020).

In interwar Lithuania, Tauta (people) and Kalba (language) were re-embedded in statehood, lacing the ideational notion together with the spatial dimension of Lithuanian identity. The period, however, denotes another falling out with Poland, which occupied the capital region. Vilnius had been at the centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (‘Vilniaus istorija’ n.d.), and losing the territory therefore challenged the spatial definition of the Self, simultaneously threatening the ideational component of ‘grandness’ (Kazharski 2020) and once again categorising Poland as Other. Thereon, the ‘grandness’ narrative was reconstructed through historical memories of resistance (Budrytė 2021).

The independent statehood period bolstered the redefined Lithuanian identity and enabled it to nurture the understanding of belonging to the West.⁷ Kinetic margins and changing spheres of influence (Russian and German occupations) acted as ‘engines of discourse’ (Budrytė 2021, 984), reinforcing readiness to defend the ‘grand’ memory (Mälksoo 2015). After a half-century occupation, on 11 March 1990, Lithuanian statehood was re-established after becoming the first Soviet bloc country to break away from the USSR. Reunited Lithuanian spoke Tauta with the sense of ‘grandness’ and a dawning sense of ontological security. The centuries-long metamorphosis of the Lithuanian identity swayed between nation and state, crystallising in radical opposition to Russia and volens nolens relations with Poland.

Lithuania: Energy Vision

While breaking free from the Soviet Union in 1990 entailed fundamental changes, the energy sector remained the Lithuanian Achilles’ heel for a few more decades. The electricity system was (and remains) synchronised with the BRELL Ring,⁸ the gas and oil pipelines were Russian-owned, and even the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) was exclusively heated using Russian nuclear fuel due to the specifics of the Soviet reactor (Švedas, 2017; Šatūnienė, 2004; Grigas 2013). Operating with foreign energy infrastructure and short on domestic resources, Lithuania was inextricably linked with and dependent on its radical Other. As narrated by one of the national gas sector pioneers:

We knew that it’s just a matter of time for natural gas to be turned into a manipulation tool. Our nation largely depended on natural gas, and it’s something that you can’t change fast; it takes money and time. And as we found out, we had neither. The taps were shut off in 1990. (Interviewee 2 2021)

Just a month into political independence, the Soviet government imposed a 75-day economic blockade, shutting off oil and critically limiting the gas supply, among other restrictions (Platūkytė 2020). Consequently, this made energy policy a matter of national security, bringing about the dominant vision: ‘energy as independence’.

The first National Energy Strategy (NES) in 1994 incorporated the rather understated objective to ‘boost competition and use private funds to facilitate the economy’ (NES Resolution 1994 Art. 3.9). At the time, however, the energy strategy was constrained by three underlying factors: (i) insufficient economic capacity to invest in new infrastructure; (ii) the political efforts focused on obtaining membership in the European Union (EU) and NATO, which had a profound impact on the further developments in the energy sector; and (iii) dependence on a sole gas provider: Gazprom (Grigas 2013). The mission to join the EU occupied a primary agenda, as this meant further distancing from Russia as well as reuniting with ‘grandness’ by becoming a de jure member of the Western Selves, thereby extending the ideational expression of Self-identity (L. Hansen 2006; Della Sala 2017); integration with the EU ‘was not only a geopolitical choice, but fundamentally in line with (…) values and identity’ (Grigas et al. 2013, 16). While Lithuania initiated the negotiations in 1995, its position to become an EU member was sceptically addressed as ‘if’ rather than ‘when’, with numerous critics pointing to Lithuanian’s ‘eastern roots’ (Interviewee 20 2021).

Despite the odds, with ‘grandness’-inflicted ambitions, Lithuania landed on the 1999 European Commission’s Enlargement Report (EP: Briefing No. 11, 2000) and secured the opportunity to become part of the Western Selves. One of the conditions for accession, however, enlisted the termination of the Ignalina NPP; while ‘bringing Lithuania closer to the West’, the clause also meant ‘losing the last strand of national energy security’ (Interviewee 11 2021) and extending dependence on the Russian Other through energy. While ‘excoriating’ (Interviewee 6 2021) at the time, the EU membership did not come at the expense of ‘independence’ in the long run; as we shall see, the EU proved to be foundational in the fruition of the energy independence vision.

The 2002 energy strategy played an important role in the developments of the following decade: liberalisation of the natural gas sector (2.8.2), privatisation of the gas transmission stations (2.8.3), integration into the EU energy systems (2.8.7), and creation of the regional Baltic States’ energy market (2.8.8). The strategy also addressed continued dependence on Russia. Not unexpectedly, the country was not addressed by name, as ‘we all know what we were dependent on anyway’ (Interviewee 7 2021). To take a few examples: ‘90% of the primary energy is imported from a sole supplier, hence energy supply to Lithuania is vulnerable’ (NES Resolution 2002). Similar narratives emerged in the media: ‘Lithuania remains dependent on energy imports’ (BNS 2021).

The President commented on ‘the unpredictable Eastern neighbour’ (Terleckas 2022), and references given by those interviewed for this article referred to Russia as an ‘empire of pipes’ (Interviewee 11 2021), ‘Ivan on both sides of the pipe’ (Interviewee 12 2021), or euphemistically termed ‘neighbours in the East’ (Interviewee 2 2021; Interviewee 8 2021; Interviewee 11 2021).

Lithuania: Innovation Paths

Independence became the overarching vision that guided innovation in Lithuania. Nuclear energy, a regional liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, and eventually a national LNG terminal were suggested as solutions to counter energy dependence. However, not without opposition that was largely addressing the ‘economic viability of maintaining energy connections with partner Russia’ (Interviewee 20 2021), regarded as ‘strategic solitary protrusions’ (Interviewee 6 2021).

Already in 2006, with Gazprom as a majority shareholder in the Lithuanian national integrated natural gas company Lietuvos Dujos, the renegotiated gas price rates were increased by 13% (BNS 2016), with a notice of further price increases anticipated in 2007 (Ibid.). In a nation heavily reliant on natural gas for heating purposes and with strong inclinations towards independence and grandeur, gas from a former oppressor became highly politicised. Furthered by the Ukrainian gas crisis in 2006, the energy insecurity and dependence narratives were ever-growing.

Following negotiations about a new NPP project to remedy the loss of Ignalina, Gazprom removed previously applied discount rates on natural gas imports, resulting in a 43% price surge (‘VERT 2006’ n.d.). A nationwide referendum on nuclear power use in Lithuania held in 2008 proved to be yet another demonstration of power exerted by Russia. The results were interpreted ironically: ‘[It] may as well have said: “We don’t want it!” Signed, Your neighbour from the East’ (Interviewee 2 2021). The events were accompanied by an immediate withdrawal of a Japanese NPP manufacturer and another price surge. As one energy security analyst commented:

They [pro-Russian officials] were very encouraging not to proceed with this national NPP project. (…) Essentially, the argument was that building a national NPP is a bad economic decision. (…) But our intentions were focused on independence. (Interviewee 12 2021)

Parallel to the NPP project, the Baltic State governments were negotiating a regional LNG terminal project. These plans did not materialise, as they triggered insecurities related to extended dependence on others. From a Lithuanian perspective, these security concerns were grounded in the explicit Russian influence in Latvia and laggard decision-making on the Estonian part. Another regional LNG plan included Finland alongside the Baltic States, which further complicated project development: ‘Finland was very erratic in its actions, coming to meetings and declaring that the terminal must be in Finish territory or else this is of no interest to them’ (Interviewee 2 2021). Since Lithuania was pressured by rising prices, the ‘energy as independence’ vision was more prominent than in the neighbouring states in the region, resulting in an extraordinary execution of a ‘grand’ national LNG project.

The Third Energy Package (2009) set the foundations to expedite the Lithuanian energy security strategy, enabling it to better tackle the deeply rooted Russian-influence dilemma in the country; this time, with the assistance of the EU:

We wanted to enact energy independence strategies before, but our muscles were too weak. With the Union by our side, we stood strong again, and did it all without hesitation. If you look at the developments, and even the fact that we decided to go with the most stringent form of this legislation, you will see that from 2009, things were happening. It was no longer just ideas. (Interviewee 6 2021)

The ‘energy as independence’ vision even landed on the name of the national energy strategy, which as of 2009 became the ‘National Energy Independence Strategy’. As addressed by former Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė, ‘the Lithuanian energy independence was about to be initiated’ (BNS 2009). The actualisation of independence began with the nationalisation of the pipeline infrastructure and the dis-entanglement of the structural issues in the national gas market, most notably a buy-out of Gazprom’s shares in Lietuvos Dujos (finalised in 2014), and the diversification strategy, paving the way for the LNG terminal and GIPL⁹ project. The former is symbolically addressed as a ‘guarantor of independence’ (Interviewee 7), the latter as an ‘anchor of freedom’ (Gaidamavičius 2022) adjoining Lithuanian and Polish LNG terminals and recreating ‘energy commonwealth’ (Interviewee 21, 2021).

Alongside the implementation of the Third Energy Package, foundational works started with the establishment of the Ministry of Energy (Lithuanian Ministry of Energy 2021) and entrusting Klaipėdos Nafta to execute the LNG terminal project (Interviewee 18 2021). As of 2011, the LNG project was firmly instilled in the government agenda. The Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) was officially named Independence, and the project became a success story: ‘Built in record time’ (LRV 2014), ‘a symbol of independence’ (LRP 2014), grounded in the vision of independence as well as the potent constituent of ‘grandness’. Another important component of the independence narrative included emphasis on innovation, addressing both the novelty of the technology itself as well as the novelty of the application of such technology to an energy-insecurity dilemma. ‘First liquified natural gas terminal in the Baltic Sea region’ (‘LNG Factsheet 2014’, n.d.), ‘our FSRU Independence was one of the first floating units of such kind’ (Interviewee 4 and Interviewee 5 2021), ‘we were the fifth in the world to develop an FSRU-based LNG terminal’ (Interviewee 16 2021), ‘it was the first time in the world that this type of vessel had to go into the dry dock’ (Interviewee 9 2021). Addressing the technological novelty of Independence united the energy-as-independence vision and the sense of grandness with an underlying message that ‘Gazprom will simply have to put up with this’ (Karaliūtė n.d.). In the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Independence once again has resurfaced as a success story, enabling Lithuania to become the first EU country to abandon Russian gas imports and ‘with no pain to break energy ties with the aggressor’ (Subramanian 2022).

The ability of innovation to quash energy insecurity and produce ontological security was primarily addressed through international recognition and the exemplification of the project’s success. ‘We were recognised by the European Commission in 2015 to have achieved the biggest energy reform’ (Interviewee 19 2021); ‘Independence project was recognised as the best gas infrastructure project of the year’ (Interviewee 20 2021); ‘EC President Jean-Claude Juncker was so happy about our energy independence achievements’ (Interviewee 19 2021); ‘Biden was so excited to chat about our terminal’ (Interviewee 19 2021); ‘when the talks about Independence were getting quieter, government representatives started touring Europe with Independence as a success story’ (Interviewee 1 2021); and ‘Croatia has recently built their own LNG terminal too (…) Essentially, they were following the Lithuanian example’ (Interviewee 4 and Interviewee 5 2021). Today, when the entire region has experienced the cost of overdependence, the international recognition of Independence has reached new heights.

While the modern innovation narrative flourished around Independence, the development of the project was also highly securitised and the decision-making was distinctively centralised, fearing further interventions of Russia not only posing a threat to the ontological security but also a breach of the physical security. Labelled the ‘highest order of national security’ (Interviewee 6 2021), the energy vision and techno-political order was hinged on the sentiments of the ‘undeniable grandness of our Independence’ (Interviewee 20 2021). The very name Independence itself – in English – was intended to ‘send a signal to a broader audience’ (Interviewee 19 2021); ‘with a name like this, our energy and foreign policy strategies were encoded’ (Interviewee 17 2021). Further mobilising the fundamental level of Lithuanian identity, proceeding with large-scale projects on a national level, such as the LNG terminal, makes it appear ‘as if we [Lithuania] still make strategies as an empire, like a big player in the global politics’ (Interviewee 17 2021) remaining true to the self-proclaimed ‘grandness’. Although Independence anchors ontological security, the physical security concerns became amplified by the Russian aggressions in Ukraine, once again securitising the LNG terminal; for instance, LNG carriers escorted by the navy from the Lithuanian exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea to Independence in the port of Klaipėda (ELTA 2022).

Conclusion

The link between identity, security, and energy innovation is by no means straightforward. In this article, we have shown how energy innovation can be studied fruitfully through the lens of a layered discourse analysis focusing on the concepts of state and nation, the concept of ontological security, and the energy visions. By approaching the concepts in this manner, we see both (ontological) security and innovation as distinctive elements in the analytical construct. Instead of seeing security issues as either something that comes from the outside (threats) or something that is taken for granted as the result of certain policies (energy security), we see security as the very foundation of the contemporary Polish and Lithuanian innovation paths. All three – identity, security, and energy innovation – form part of the same sociotechnical imaginary. They are contextually dependent. This adds important insight to the debates on sociotechnical imaginaries and energy studies alike.

Our analysis has also produced new insights into the concept of ontological security. Ontological security might be considered threatened by the rupture of continuity, which causes anxiety and poses threats to identity (Rossdale 2015, 373). Consequently, studies on the ontological security of states tend to focus on how the latter seek to protect their identity, ‘while largely ignoring change, or seeing it as a negative force to be avoided (e.g., Browning and Joenniemi 2017)’ (Gustafsson and Krickel-Choi 2020, 876). While all states experience ontological insecurity to a certain degree, it has been argued that the so-called ‘peripheral’ states are considered especially susceptible to anxiety (Subotić 2019, 28). The collective mood in which the two countries find themselves situated rallies around accounts of historic trauma and resistance where security of the Self is found in defending one’s identity (Budrytė 2021; Rumelili 2021), whether it be in pursuit of sovereignty (e.g., Poland) or in a fight for independence (e.g., Lithuania). Being prone to ontological anxiety limits tolerance to continuity disruptions or, in other words, tolerance to change, thereby restricting, for example, energy innovation pathways to options that do not distort biographical narratives of the Self. As a refinement and contribution to this understanding of rupture and continuity, our analysis shows how, despite the innovation concept being fundamentally centred around change (Petersen 2019) and therefore being automatically resisted for reasons of anxiety, energy innovation might in fact contribute to ontological security. However, only as long as it is achieved within the range of anxiety tolerance, which is grounded in the basic layer of the nation-state and translated into energy visions. For Poland, this means a deep-seated distrust in change, whereas for Lithuania it signifies trust in change instead.

Looking at the introduction of certain forms of energy technologies in Poland and Lithuania through this analytical prism clarified how innovation is not always about novelty, as the conventional interpretation of the term has it. The innovation path taken is highly dependent on the basic state‒nation concepts and a sense of ontological security, making what is novel to some seem antiquated to others. The novelty of a specific form of technology is produced in the narrative or sociotechnical imaginary. Technology takes a step back and enters the field in a way where the dangers and security issues attached to the technology in question will be filtered through national lenses or distilled against national insecurities. What some countries may view as safe may be construed as dangerous in others. The lack of full control over distributed renewable energy may be seen as more detrimental to ontological security than the effects of climate change in a country like Poland, whereas the help in creating independence through implementing a range of different energy technologies may be seen as the only way to create ontological security in a country like Lithuania; the technology may be the same while the understandings vary greatly. By remaining true to the dominant visions of energy and ontological security, technological innovation may be furthered or stifled.

While pointing to different innovation paths in the two countries, an interesting difference concerning the role of the future between Polish and Lithuanian visions also emerged. In Poland, the future seems more threatening if not kept within the boundaries of the defence of the present way of governing energy; nuclear energy presents a new vision but within the bounds of a continued centralised form of governing. Meanwhile, with Independence in place, trust in the future rules in Lithuania. Visions of the future can thereby be both bleak and bright in a sociotechnical imaginary; it all depends on the case at hand.

The Russian invasion in Ukraine has made the geopolitical dimension of the dominant understandings of the ontological security of Lithuania and Poland easier to understand in the broader European region. Conceptualisations of nation, state, and ontological security are becoming increasingly understood in terms of sovereignty and independence across the European continent. With the cases of Lithuania and Poland as presented in this article as inspiration, the future is likely to be altered not just at the top level of energy policies, but also at the deeper levels of assigning meaning to what it means to be a European country (identity), how to survive (ontological security), and how to create a secure energy future (innovation) in an age of the return of geopolitics.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation [CF19-0572].

Notes on contributors

Trine Villumsen Berling

Trine Villumsen Berling is a Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). She is currently the PI of a Carlsberg Foundation funded research project SECURITECH which studies the technification of security politics in the Baltic Sea Region. Berling is the author of The International Political Sociology of Security, Routledge 2015, and co-author of Translations of Security. A Framework for the study of unwanted futures, Routledge 2021, with Ulrik Pram Gad, Karen Lund Petersen and Ole Wæver.

Izabela Surwillo

Izabela Surwillo is a postdoc at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). She works on the Carlsberg Foundation project SECURITECH on Polish nuclear energy. Surwillo is the author of Energy Security Logics in Europe, Routledge 2019.

Veronika Slakaityte

Veronika Slakaityte is a research assistant at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). She works on the Carlsberg Foundation project SECURITECH on the Lithuanian work package on liquified natural gas terminal. Slakaityte holds a Master of Science degree in International Business and Politics from Copenhagen Business School.

Notes

1. Including Denmark, Norway, Germany, Central Asia, Ukraine, construction of the LNG terminal, or linking Poland to the Nabucco pipeline.

2. In Poland, 70% of electricity is generated using coal.

3. 1831 ‘Polonised Identity Eradication Program’ and 1863‒1864 ‘Russian Identity Recreation Program’.

4. The Lithuanian press ban was imposed as a part of the Russification plan by the Russian Empire; all Lithuanian publications written in the Latin alphabet were prohibited from 1865 to 1904.

5. The book smugglers, or ‘Knygnešiai’, are organised groups who risked their lives to preserve the Lithuanian language and national identity through contraband literature. They defied a ban issued by the Russians from 1866 to 1904 that attempted to replace Latin orthography with Cyrillic.

6. The German Ober Ost: Oberbefehlshabers der gesamten deutschen Streitkräfte im Osten.

7. Lithuania was de facto recognised as an independent state by Sweden in 1918, by the UK, Norway, and Denmark in 1919, by France in 2020. In 1922 de jure Lithuania was recognised by Greece, Chile, Spain, the US, Iceland, Bolivia, Venezuela, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, Weimar Republic (Germany), Belgium, and Panama.

8. BRELL Ring – Electricity Grid synchronised with Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

9. Gas Interconnector Poland‒Lithuania. The first gas pipeline connecting Lithuania and Poland and the first gas interconnector between the Eastern Baltic Sea region and Continental Europe.