Trade risks to energy security in net-zero emissions energy scenarios (2025)

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Data availability Code availability References Acknowledgements Author information Authors and Affiliations Contributions Corresponding authors Ethics declarations Competing interests Peer review Peer review information Additional information Extended data Extended Data Fig. 1 The share of critical material mass required by different electricity and transportation technologies. Extended Data Fig. 2 Contrast geographic concentrations of fossil fuels and net-zero-transition-related materials in electricity (a) and transportation (b) sector. Extended Data Fig. 3 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in EU and OECD. Extended Data Fig. 4 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in East Europe and Russia. Extended Data Fig. 5 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Asia. Extended Data Fig. 6 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Mid East and North Africa. Extended Data Fig. 7 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Latin America. Extended Data Fig. 8 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. Supplementary information Supplementary Information Rights and permissions About this article Cite this article

Data availability

Historical and future energy consumption data are available from IEA Energy Statistics (https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics) and the IPCC AR6 database (https://data.ene.iiasa.ac.at/ar6/), respectively. Multiple trade flow datasets were collected from the Global Trade Analysis Project database version 11 (https://www.gtap.agecon.purdue.edu/databases/v11/), UNCTAD statistics (https://unctadstat.unctad.org/EN/) and the United Nations Comtrade Database (https://comtradeplus.un.org/). Fossil fuel and critical material reserves data were taken from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy (https://www.bp.com) and US Geological Survey (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/commodity-statistics-and-information), respectively. The datasets for extended data are available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28466435.v1 (ref. ⁷³).

Code availability

The code used to manipulate the data and generate the results is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8165867 (ref. ⁶⁶).

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Wang for providing detailed data and suggestions on estimating the material demand of future net-zero technologies, and Y. Qiu and G. Iyer for helpful discussions. S.J.D. and J.C. acknowledge support from the ClimateWorks Foundation (grant no. UCI-22-2100). D.T. and Q.Z. acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. W2412154).

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Authors and Affiliations

Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Jing Cheng&Steven J. Davis
Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Dan Tong,Ruochong Xu&Qiang Zhang
School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Hongyan Zhao
College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Peking University, Beijing, China
Yue Qin
Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Karan Bhuwalka
Gates Ventures, Kirkland, WA, USA
Ken Caldeira
Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, USA
Ken Caldeira

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Jing Cheng
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Contributions

S.J.D., J.C., D.T. and Q.Z. designed the study. J.C., D.T., R.X., H.Z. and K.B. provided and processed multiple energy-, material-, reserve- and trade-related datasets; J.C. and S.J.D. developed the energy security assessment and developed future trade scenarios with input from K.C., K.B. and Y.Q.; J.C. performed the energy security calculations and sensitivity simulation; J.C., S.J.D. and D.T. wrote the paper with input from all co-authors. All authors reviewed the paper.

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Correspondence to Dan Tong or Steven J. Davis.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 The share of critical material mass required by different electricity and transportation technologies.

The shares are estimated from mean values in published studies and reports (see Supplementary Table 1 for details).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Contrast geographic concentrations of fossil fuels and net-zero-transition-related materials in electricity (a) and transportation (b) sector.

Each circle represents an individual country, with the size for the projected installed renewable electricity capacities and colors for aggregated regions.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in EU and OECD.

Panels show regional and country-level changes in trade risk index (TRI) of the entire energy system from net-zero emissions (including assumptions of average net-zero emission energy system, current trade partners, current material intensity, and material recycling rate at net-zero emissions) to increases in the share of primary energy from renewables (a), increase in share of resource-owning countries that are trade partners (b), increase in material recycling rate (c), and decrease in material intensity of energy technologies (d). Each line represents an individual country in EU and OECD, with highlighted solid line indicating most populous countries (including U.S., France, U.K., Germany, Canada, Australia).

Extended Data Fig. 4 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in East Europe and Russia.

Panels show regional and country-level changes in trade risk index (TRI) of the entire energy system from net-zero emissions (including assumptions of average net-zero emission energy system, current trade partners, current material intensity, and material recycling rate at net-zero emissions) to increases in the share of primary energy from renewables (a), increase in share of resource-owning countries that are trade partners (b), increase in material recycling rate (c), and decrease in material intensity of energy technologies (d). Each line represents an individual country in East Europe and Russia, with highlighted solid line indicating most populous countries (including Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland).

Extended Data Fig. 5 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Asia.

Panels show regional and country-level changes in trade risk index (TRI) of the entire energy system from net-zero emissions (including assumptions of average net-zero emission energy system, current trade partners, current material intensity, and material recycling rate at net-zero emissions) to increases in the share of primary energy from renewables (a), increase in share of resource-owning countries that are trade partners (b), increase in material recycling rate (c), and decrease in material intensity of energy technologies (d). Each line represents an individual country in Asia, with highlighted solid line indicating most populous countries (including China, India, Japan, Indonesia).

Extended Data Fig. 6 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Mid East and North Africa.

Panels show regional and country-level changes in trade risk index (TRI) of the entire energy system from net-zero emissions (including assumptions of average net-zero emission energy system, current trade partners, current material intensity, and material recycling rate at net-zero emissions) to increases in the share of primary energy from renewables (a), increase in share of resource-owning countries that are trade partners (b), increase in material recycling rate (c), and decrease in material intensity of energy technologies (d). Each line represents an individual country in Mid East and North Africa, with highlighted solid line indicating most populous countries (including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran).

Extended Data Fig. 7 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Latin America.

Panels show regional and country-level changes in trade risk index (TRI) of the entire energy system from net-zero emissions (including assumptions of average net-zero emission energy system, current trade partners, current material intensity, and material recycling rate at net-zero emissions) to increases in the share of primary energy from renewables (a), increase in share of resource-owning countries that are trade partners (b), increase in material recycling rate (c), and decrease in material intensity of energy technologies (d). Each line represents an individual country in Latin America, with highlighted solid line indicating most populous countries (including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina).

Extended Data Fig. 8 Regional and country-level changes in energy-security related trade risk due to changes in renewable energy, trade, material intensity, and recycling rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Panels show regional and country-level changes in trade risk index (TRI) of the entire energy system from net-zero emissions (including assumptions of average net-zero emission energy system, current trade partners, current material intensity, and material recycling rate at net-zero emissions) to increases in the share of primary energy from renewables (a), increase in share of resource-owning countries that are trade partners (b), increase in material recycling rate (c), and decrease in material intensity of energy technologies (d). Each line represents an individual country in Sub-Saharan Africa, with highlighted solid line indicating most populous countries (including Nigeria, D.R.Congo, Ethiopia, South Africa).

Supplementary information

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Supplementary Figs. 1–18, Tables 1–16 and Text 1.

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Cheng, J., Tong, D., Zhao, H. et al. Trade risks to energy security in net-zero emissions energy scenarios. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02305-1

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Received: 17 June 2024
Accepted: 04 March 2025
Published: 09 April 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02305-1