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AbstractRenewable energy is the fastest growing energy source. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, is also the largest investor in renewable energy. Although it is expected that oil will continue to dominate the energy mix in China and in the world by 2040, a transition towards a renewable model in the energy sector is unfolding, which has also been acknowledged by international oil companies (IOCs). Then, how the Chinese national oil companies (NOCs) approach such a transition becomes important – to what extent their investment transform and what are the pressures and influences behind the transformation. This paper investigates the positions and decisions taken by the Chinese NOCs, through comparing the similarities and differences between these NOCs and IOCs. A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework that considers environmental governance through dynamics at material, organisational, and discursive levels is used to examine the Chinese NOCs’ energy transition. We find that the Chinese NOCs’ energy transition is determined by: materially, economic profits; organisationally, the administrative environmental governance structure that copes with the market competition against IOCs and other state-owned companies; and discursively, the political concept of ecological civilisation.

The energy market is shifting from fossil fuels to renewables. This transition is creating new geopolitical dynamics. In the past, traditional energy geopolitics focused on the concentrated distribution of fossil fuel resources and the conflicts and dependencies that this created. In contrast, the ‘new’ renewable energy geopolitics emphasises the dispersed distribution or decentralisation of production capacity and the independence of states this generates. However, the market for lithium, which is essential to renewable energy storage through being a key component of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, does not entirely fit theoretical conceptions of the renewable energy market’s dynamics. By focusing on China as a critical case, this article shows that lithium geopolitics has potentially created new (inter)dependencies and opportunities for conflicts, while also paradoxically enhancing state interindependence in renewable technology energy production. Thus, this hybrid form of energy geopolitics necessitates revising conventional energy security explanations to match these new market conditions.