Ultimately, energy independence in today’s world is an illusion in the era of globalization because the hyper-connectedness of the market makes it impossible. Still, it’s a never ending battle cry that ends up being an argument of semantics, the outcome of which depends on how you define “independence”. America’s shale boom briefly reignited the debate about something that the nation had long come to consider a far-off dream: energy independence. But that was before Covid-19 struck, and with it a fully-fledged flight to renewable energy. The notion that the country could become self-sufficient by producing enough energy to sustain the entirety of its population and industries was first floated by Nixon when he declared war on foreign oil during the oil crisis of the 1970s. But with the ongoing shift to low-carbon energy, America might not be any closer to achieving this energy utopia than it was four decades […]