The push to transition to “green” energy technologies threatens to further entrench the long history of global inequalities and Western domination and exploitation.

Vast quantities of raw materials (such as cobalt, nickel, lithium) are required to supply the European Union’s demands for “green” energy – battery production and green hydrogen deployment – over the coming decades.

Most of these raw materials are derived from African, South American, and Indonesian countries.

To secure these resources, then, Western exploitation of less-advantaged countries – disguised as a façade for “climate action” – appears to be a nearly inevitable policy pathway going forward.

Some scientists (Boretti, 2025 and Boretti et al., 2025) are concerned with furthering institutions of global inequality and draining less-advantaged countries of their natural resources. Thus, they are encouraging the leaders of countries in the “Global South” to assert their sovereignty over their resources and resist the impending “green colonialism.”

Image Source: Boretti, 2025 and Boretti et al., 2025