National interests continue to dominate the energy transition on a global level, the World Energy Council’s (WEC) latest World Energy Pulse, surveying more than 700 energy leaders and decision-makers from nearly 80 countries for updated snapshots of current attitudes, trends and needs, has shown.

Almost half, or 46 percent, of the survey’s participants cited national priorities and the risk of an out-of-control green technology race as the biggest obstacles to a smooth and fair transition to a zero-emission economy.

Offering his interpretation, Haris Doukas, Associate Professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), member of the WEC Program Committee and head of the WEC office in Greece, described the dominance of national interests expressed in the survey as aftershocks linked to COVID-19, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and an international race to boost domestic industry, intensified by US President Joe Biden’s recent Inflation Reduction Act.

Though 54 percent of the survey’s respondents agreed that energy independence is vital to their countries’ climate and energy security agenda, an overwhelming 84 percent of participants accepted that energy interdependence is the new global reality.