Do we really have to choose between energy security and the energy transition?
Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, speaks on energy security at the Annual Meeting 2025 in Davos. Image: World Economic Forum / Valeriano Di Domenico
- Geopolitical factors are influencing energy transition decisions and putting increased focus on energy security.
- Experts including the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol believe a successful transition and energy security go hand in hand.
- The theme was discussed by a panel at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025 in Davos.
The world has made significant advances in the energy transition over recent decades. Last year alone, almost $2 trillion was invested globally in clean energy technologies.
Despite this, 2025 arrives as something of an inflection point. Many analysts say the energy transition won’t slow down. Yet at the same time, geoeconomic factors increasingly threaten to change the course of the transition, with countries including the US scrutinizing the economic value and national security benefits of investments and geopolitical competition increasingly defining the energy landscape.
At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025, experts have discussed these headwinds – and how a successful energy transition that considers energy security can be achieved.
Speaking at a session titled All Hands On Deck for the Energy Transition, with President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, and President of Peru, Dina Ercilia Boluarte, Birol asked:
"What is most important: energy security, or energy transition? Which one should we prioritize?... It is an annoying question, because we can do both of them.
With well-designed energy transition policies, we can have the best energy security... we can bring the prices down, we can bring prosperity to the people and we can create jobs.
”"To antagonize these two important objectives for the human beings today is in my opinion misleading. We can do both, we have done many things like that before in the world - and this is critical."
What's the World Economic Forum doing about the transition to clean energy?
Geopolitics and energy
Earlier in the week, Birol also spoke at the session The Geoeconomics of Energy and Materials, which brought together the energy ministers for Portugal and South Africa and CEOs from energy and materials firms.
“There are many uncertainties,” Birol told delegates. “But I think we shouldn’t lose ourselves and lose our perspective… Climate change, it is real. It is happening. And it will be worsened if we don’t change our policies – this is a certainty.”
Birol described energy security challenges as another certainty and here, he presented the panel with one “magic word” – diversification.
Diversification is key to secure and sustainable energy
Clean energy transitions and energy security are inextricably linked, according to the IEA, and diversification, efficiency and flexibility within the energy sector are “basic conditions for both energy security and accelerating energy transitions”.
That means increasing the variety of energy sources used to meet a country’s needs to avoid overdependencies, which can quickly turn into vulnerabilities, Birol said, citing the recent example of Europe’s heavy dependence on one source two years ago.
An overreliance on Russian oil and gas imports taught the European Union (EU), in the bloc’s own words, a “hard lesson”. Today, the EU is ensuring greater diversity in the sources of its energy imports while working towards a longer-term goal of achieving energy security by replacing imported fossil fuels with domestically produced renewable energy.
An EU study said that making clean energy technologies fit for energy security challenges is an “important objective” for future research and innovation.
Achieving a clean, secure energy transition
The recent Fostering Effective Energy Transition report from the World Economic Forum underscored that, while most countries are progressing in the energy transition, energy security continues to be tested by geopolitical tensions. The report recommends a series of actions to regain momentum across energy security, equity and sustainability, concluding that decision-makers across the globe must act “decisively and collaboratively” to accelerate the transition while considering all three of these factors.
The Forum’s Centre for Energy and Materials, which authored the report, works across stakeholders and industries to help accelerate progress to these goals.
At Davos, the IEA’s Birol concurred, describing his definition of the energy transition as not only reducing emissions but also providing prosperity to people and making energy more secure.
“For me, a successful clean energy transition is the one which makes the energy systems much more secure and resilient, makes the energy prices affordable and at the same time reduces the reliance on other countries,” he said.
“Do we really have to choose?” between energy security and the energy transition, he asked the panel. “I don’t think so … a real energy transition programme, in my view, is not a rival of energy security. They can be [achieved] together.”
Watch the full session The Geoeconomics of Energy and Materials below:
