Energy Security in the Indo-Pacific: Strategic Implications for Canada

Abstract

Over the past decade, climate change and the global energy transition have begun to reshape the strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific. What was once treated primarily as an environmental policy agenda has increasingly become a matter of economic strategy and national security. Nowhere is this transformation more visible than in the Indo-Pacific. The region accounts for a rapidly growing share of global energy demand while simultaneously serving as a central hub of clean-energy manufacturing and technological innovation. This article examines how Northeast Asian governments increasingly govern the energy transition as a strategic project. China is set as a structural driver of the transition given its large-scale industrial policy to secure sheer dominance in the global renewable manufacturing and battery supply chains. Japan and South Korea, while operating under different institutional constraints, have likewise expanded state-led initiatives to strengthen clean-energy technologies and reduce strategic vulnerabilities associated with imported fossil fuels.