Serbia and Indonesia are resource-rich developing countries on the periphery of global capitalism. They face significant financial and technological challenges in the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy systems. However, the return of great power competition in the form of US-China rivalry has seen them take on strategic relevance in the race to secure critical minerals, energy infrastructure and supply chain resilience for green technologies. How does US-China rivalry shape developing countries’ transition pathways and does it alter the terms of their peripherality?

The geopolitics of energy transition has been characterised by a power shift from fossil fuel producing to renewable energy producing states. So far, states have been centred as the primary agents in this shift, but state-centric analysis overlooks the power of multinational firms in shaping state policy and how such power reflects deep-seated inequalities within global capitalism.

The research brings critical political economy in dialogue with environmental and energy politics, taking both a broader, global perspective on the particular constraints imposed on peripheral states in contemporary capitalism, yet grounding analysis in the concrete agency of multinational firms that have been key in globalising production. The research advances a transnational analytical perspective – beyond, within and through states as unitary actors – on the geopolitics of energy transition. I conceptualise three distinct roles of foreign multinational firms in peripheral states transition pathways: repositioning corporate strategy amidst US-China rivalry, influencing transition policy design, and implementing transition policy at the firm level. This approach will then be used to assess the extent to which US-China rivalry alters the terms of peripherality in Serbia and Indonesia. By studying macro-global phenomena like great power competition and energy transition through fine-grained analysis of multinational firms, the research develops new tools to further understanding of the inequalities built into real world transition pathways.