Russia’s war against Ukraine turns into a challenge for the whole world. The full scope of consequences is difficult to assess now, but some of them have been already clear. As a result, the world economy is under exposures of inflation, disruptions on GDP growth, food and energy crises and further supply-chain pressures. Energy prices volatility adds uncertainty to the whole system of socio-economic relations. Energy turns into a weapon against the world stability. The paper concentrates on
the idea that current situation in the energy sector calls for a prompt response to challenges, including the war consequences. That, in turn, requires sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) and financial innovations for the immediate energy transformation, which is an essential element of the sustainable competitiveness of countries.
The research is aimed at studying interconnection between SRI and energy transformation on the way to sustainable competitiveness.
The processes on the global energy market were investigated and the main weak points which are sources of risks for the world economy were defined. Three significant energy-related weak points which turned into risks for the world are highlighted: the level of dependency from imported gas (for European countries dependency from Russian gas in particular); energy prices volatility; energy
structure (nonrenewable vs renewable).
The governmental approaches in the energy transformation sphere, which are caused by the combination of energy security issues and climate ambitions, were generalized. The paper contains an assumption about correlation between SRI and countries’ sustainable competitiveness. This hypothesis is confirmed using correlation analysis (biserial correlation) for five countries (Germany, the USA, Canada, Australia and Japan). Strong relationship between these variables is shown. This allows to make a conclusion that increasing of SRI volumes in general and clean energy projects in particular are the predominant conditions for the sustainable competitiveness of the country, which is oriented to the long-term prospective and based on effective usage of all available sources, including energy, fast transformation of energy systems to the renewable sources.