Chloé Le Coq

The green transition promises to reduce Europe’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels often produced in autocratic states, but it may also create new strategic dependencies. Technologies central to decarbonization — such as batteries, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and solar panels — rely on critical minerals whose mining and processing remain highly concentrated.

At the 2026 Energy Talk, “Critical Minerals and the New Geopolitics of the Green Transition”, organised by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) in collaboration with the FREE Network, leading researchers and industry representatives examined these tensions from three perspectives: the geopolitical significance of Ukraine’s mineral endowment; the regulatory and distributional challenges of Sweden’s mining sector; and the sustainability and competitiveness pressures facing European firms in critical mineral supply chains. This policy brief summarises the main takeaways from the event.

The February 2026 conflict in the Persian Gulf and the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent European gas prices sharply higher, reviving questions about Europe’s energy vulnerability. While the EU successfully reduced its reliance on Russian gas after 2022, it has traded one dependency for another: globally traded LNG exposed to fragile shipping routes. We argue that dependence is not only a concern for energy security; it also creates decarbonization fragility — the risk that reliance on imported fossil fuels undermines the clean energy transition itself. Price spikes push producers toward coal, raise emissions, and give politicians reasons to delay climate action. The solution to both problems is the same: faster deployment of domestic clean energy, better electricity grids, and a coordinated EU industrial strategy. Reducing fossil-fuel demand at home is not only a climate goal — it is the most durable foundation for Europe’s energy security.

Abstract It is often argued that inequality may worsen coordination failures as it exacerbates conflicts of interests, making it difficult to achieve an efficient outcome. This paper shows that this needs not to be always the case. In a context in which two interacting populations have conflicting interests, we introduce ex-ante inequality, by making one population stronger than the other. This reduces the cost of miscoordination for the weakest population, and at the same time it makes some equilibria more equitable than others, thus more focal and attractive for inequality-averse players. Hence, both social preferences and strategic risk considerations may ease coordination. We provide experimental support for this hypothesis, by considering an extended two-population Hawk–Dove game, where ex-ante inequality, number of pure-strategy equilibria, and cost of coordination vary across treatments. We find that subjects coordinate more often on the efficient outcomes in the treatment with ex-ante inequality.

The U.S. sanctions on two Russian oil giants, Rosneft and Lukoil, came into effect on Nov 21, 2025. These sanctions affect not only companies per se but also their counterparties worldwide under the secondary sanctions clause. For the EU, these sanctions highlight a central trade-off: how to exert real pressure on Russia without fracturing political alignment among EU Member States. This brief discusses the consequences of the sanctions, including their immediate impact on the firms and Russia’s budget, the new tensions exposed in Europe’s energy policy, and the broader lessons for the next generation of EU sanctions tools.

As flexibility needs and energy security concerns grow, artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly central role in managing, optimizing, and securing energy systems. At the 2025 Energy Talk: AI and the Future of Energy, organized by the Stockholm Institute for Transition Economics (SITE) in collaboration with Energiforsk, several key experts and innovators showcased how AI is shaping the energy system, from household-level optimization to national infrastructure forecasting and regulation. The discussions highlighted AI’s potential to enhance efficiency, resilience, and user responsiveness, while also raising critical issues around data governance, cybersecurity, and value distribution. This policy brief summarizes the main takeaways from the event.

The Baltic States’ desynchronization from the BRELL network on February 7, 2025, cut ties with Russia and Belarus, ending electricity trade. Though the transition was smooth with no outages, recent underwater cable disruptions have highlighted vulnerabilities, raising energy security concerns. These events underscore the importance of both diversifying and decentralizing power systems, drawing lessons from Ukraine’s electricity market, which has remained operational despite sustained Russian attacks.

Ukraine’s decision to halt Russian gas transit from January 1st, 2025, marks the end of decades of direct gas links between Europe and Russia. The EU is unlikely to face significant short-to-mid-term impacts, as Russian pipeline gas imports have already dropped sixfold since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, uneven exposure to this shock has already created internal tensions within the EU. Further, increased reliance on liquefied natural gas may also slow the green transition. In the region, Moldova faces severe supply challenges and Ukraine will lose transit revenues. Targeted support and stronger cooperation within the EU and with neighboring countries, especially EU candidates, will be essential. In turn, the halt will make Russia face not only financial but also geopolitical losses.

This paper investigates how business cycles and interest rate fluctuations affect cartel dynamics. To do so, we apply a Hidden Markov Model to a unique dataset on a population of (legal) cartels in Sweden, from 1947 to 1993. We find that GDP shocks and higher interest rates, as a proxy for borrowing costs, increase cartel formation and reduce cartel dissolution, with stronger effects in the manufacturing sector. Thus, GDP shocks and higher interest rates lead to an increase in the number of cartels in the economy. These findings highlight how cartels act as shock absorbers, helping firms handle economic instability and reducing the impact of both positive and negative shocks.

Europe, like other parts of the world, currently grapples with the dual challenges of environmental change and democratic backsliding. In a context marked by rising populism, misinformation, and political manipulation, designing credible, sustainable climate policies is more important than ever. The 2024 annual Energy Talk, organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), gathered experts to bring insight into these challenges and explore potential solutions for enhancing green politics.