ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Resilience
Qualitative Analysis of Stakeholder Risk Perceptions in Kazakhstan's Energy Transformation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Astana IT University, Astana, Kazakhstan
- 2Astana IT University, Nur-sultan, Kazakhstan
- 3JSC Economic Research Institute, Astana, Kazakhstan
- 4Senior Energy System Model Consultant, Turin, Italy
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Kazakhstan's pledge of carbon neutrality by 2060 confronts a legacy of coal-and oil-dependence and the intertwined technical, economic, and social risks of a rapid energy transition. Because the success of this strategy will hinge on stakeholder cooperation, understanding how different actors perceive these risks is essential. We conducted a two-round Policy Delphi with 48 stakeholders, including government officials, national-company managers, investors, experts, and civil-society representatives. Their responses were organised using a simple four-quadrant risk framework that distinguishes implementation from consequential risks and transition from physical climate risks, allowing us to map which types of risks matter most to different stakeholder groups. All risks raised by participants could be located within this framework, indicating that it captures the main concerns in the Kazakhstani context. Implementation–Transition risks dominated, led by regulatory volatility, financing constraints, grid bottlenecks, fossil-fuel lobbying, and skills shortages. These concerns were consistently rated as highly important across stakeholder groups, although financiers and civil-society actors were somewhat less alarmed by policy instability than government officials and experts. By highlighting where stakeholders see the greatest implementation risks, the study provides a practical risk map that can help prioritise reforms on regulation, finance, grid development and skills, and adds a stakeholder-based perspective to research and policy debates on energy transitions in fossil-fuel-dependent economies such as Kazakhstan.
Keywords: Delphi method, Kazakhstan, Low-carbon transition, Risk concern, The energy transition
Received: 15 Sep 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhakiyev, Khamzina, Bakdolotov and Miglio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ayagoz Khamzina
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