"I addresses the following empirical puzzle – how can we explain the IRA’s environmentally contradictory combination of decarbonization efforts alongside further embedding fossil fuel production? I argue that this ‘one step forward, two steps back’ approach to energy transition emerged from state officials’ reactivation of a Hobbesian–Hamiltonian nexus between sovereignty, security, and prosperity in response to changing global conditions. Neo-Hamiltonian discourse strategically enfolded energy policy with broader goals of industrial modernization, prosperity, and national security, subordinating decarbonization within hybrid logics. Domestic decarbonization is balanced with maintenance of existing interdependencies between an expanded American shale oil and gas sector, economic growth, and the geopolitical leverage of American energy exports. This strategy is fundamentally unstable."

#EnergyModernization
#decarbonization
#EnergyPolitics

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2025.2540683?af=R#abstract