The Daily Planet #58: Energy Sovereignty, Part 1. The Electrotech Revolution

This week's Daily Planets are all on Energy Sovereignty - to be followed by Compute Sovereignty next week.

At first glance, it appears that Energy Sovereignty is an extension of energy security. Of course every sovereign wants robust and secure energy supplies that help power your cars and trains and factories, as well as keep the lights on at night, help children study, watch movies etc: whatever you want to do, whether it's work, play, or love, needs energy.

Making sure you have enough energy for all these purposes is an essential aspect of the sovereign's responsibilities.

This level of Energy/Metabolic sovereignty is already baked into the sovereign's JD.

Further, a rational sovereign wants to make sure that their energy supplies are diverse in two ways:

Diverse in their typology. Hydropower is different from solar power which is different from wind power, though all of those are renewable technologies. Then there are the various fossil technologies - coal and gas and gasoline and then there is nuclear power. Plus a few others that aren't so important at scale. It's important that all of them are in your portfolio though we want to get rid of fossil fuels pretty much right now.

Similarly every sovereign wants their portfolio of geographical sources of energy supply to be diverse and not in collusion with one another. You don want to depend on China for everything nor do you want to depend on Saudi Arabia/OPEC for everything.

Finally, most sovereigns would want to be able to onshore as much of this energy supply as possible, or have reliable sources that won't stop feeding your machine just because they don't like how your president talked to their president.

This is much energy sovereignty is more or less souped up energy security but there's an emerging energy sovereignty game that's upping the ante quite a bit. With electrification, energy is becoming an abstract commodity - much more so than what it used to be. It isn't this particular type of fuel for this particular type of machine (so that cars are gasoline, trucks are diesel and trains are electric), but rather everything runs on electricity and the coordination of that entire electric system is done through digital means (aka AI) so it's really 'energy intelligence' that we're talking about.

Energy intelligence is a system whose scale we are barely beginning to understand. It is a profound transformation of our energy system. And that is not a question of energy security, of securing access to energy supplies, but of imagining the infrastructure of a society that is just beginning to be constructed. Hand in hand with that infrastructure is going to be a new set of social and political relations that we are also barely beginning to construct.

Energy sovereignty is not just having access to energy in a secure and robust manner but to embed this new energy intelligence into our imagination of the society itself.

Now about today's link:

The energy debate today is polarized between fossil gradualists, who defend the slow, necessary role of fossil fuels, and net-zero puritans, who demand rapid decarbonization driven by climate urgency. Both perspectives, however, miss a broader, transformative shift: the electrotech revolution. This new paradigm centers on building a more efficient, electricity-based energy system powered by solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles.

Unlike fossil fuels, electrotech is driven by physics, economics, and geopolitics--offering greater efficiency, falling costs through manufacturing scale, and energy independence by harnessing widely available renewable resources. This revolution is not just about climate action but about creating a fundamentally better energy system that empowers users and nations alike.

Electrotech's rapid growth, especially in countries like China and across the Global South, is reshaping global energy dynamics, challenging legacy fossil fuel industries and outdated assumptions. The transition unfolds as a classic technology disruption, propelled by innovation, market forces, and strategic government investments rather than top-down mandates.

Electrotech's modular, scalable nature ensures continuous cost reductions and widespread adoption. To succeed, societies must embrace disruption, focus on new technologies, and recognize that energy security and technological competition are now central to the energy transition.

Rewiring the energy debate

The electrotech perspective