Energy Transition: Understanding the New Global Energy Landscape
The energy transition is about far more than the environment. It is reshaping energy value chains, corporate strategies, and the global economic and geopolitical order. From technological breakthroughs to new industrial dependencies and resource tensions, understanding these dynamics has become a strategic imperative for business leaders. Sophie Méritet, energy economist and Vice-President for International Affairs at Université Paris Dauphine – PSL, shares her perspective.
The energy transition is fundamentally reshaping energy systems. How is it redefining global economic and geopolitical balances?
The energy transition doesn't make energy geopolitics disappear — it reinvents it. The very nature of strategic resources is shifting: alongside hydrocarbons, critical minerals have moved to center stage, underpinning batteries, hydrogen, and low-carbon technologies. States are fully aware of this, and we are now witnessing a global race to secure supply chains and build industrial capacity. In that sense, the transition is reshuffling power dynamics and redrawing industrial strategies on a worldwide scale.
The energy transition is upending value chains and giving rise to new players. How is this reshaping corporate strategy?
The traditional model — centralized, dominated by a handful of major producers — is giving way to a more fragmented system, where new players are asserting themselves: prosumers, aggregators, data managers, local authorities. The boundaries of the sector are becoming increasingly porous.
For companies, energy is no longer just a line item on a balance sheet — it has become a strategic variable. Decisions about securing supply, self-producing energy, or optimizing consumption are now core business questions. New roles are emerging, such as the energy buyer, tasked with navigating between markets and in-house production.
Companies that get ahead of these shifts can turn them into a competitive edge. Those that don't are exposing themselves to growing energy and economic risks.
Why can business leaders no longer treat energy as a simple cost variable?
Energy has re-emerged as a major strategic issue for companies. For a long time, it was seen as a relatively stable, predictable expense. That world no longer exists.
The energy transition, layered on top of geopolitical tensions, has profoundly transformed the energy landscape: price volatility, shifting global markets, fast-moving regulation, and technological disruption. In this environment, how a company sources and manages its energy can have a direct bearing on its competitiveness.
Energy decisions have become strategic decisions. Securing supply, anticipating international energy policy, investing in efficiency or renewables — these can all translate into genuine competitive advantage. For leaders, understanding global energy dynamics is now essential to staying ahead of risk and seizing opportunity.
How can programs like the Executive MBA Dauphine – PSL or bespoke initiatives such as "100 Leaders pour la Planète" help executives navigate the energy transition?
The energy transition raises very concrete questions for business leaders: how international energy markets are evolving, what new regulations are coming, how geopolitical tensions are playing out, and what the shift to a low-carbon economy really means for their sector. Getting to grips with these dynamics has become essential — both to anticipate risk and to spot opportunity.
Programs like the Executive MBA Dauphine – PSL, or tailored initiatives like "100 Leaders pour la Planète," offer a space to step back and make sense of these transformations. They provide frameworks for reading international energy markets and emerging industrial strategies, and for understanding the energy and climate challenges companies are now facing.
They also bring something harder to replicate: the chance to exchange views with experts and peers from different countries and industries. In a field as fast-moving as energy, those cross-border, cross-sector conversations are often where the clearest strategic thinking begins.
