Geopolitical energy shocks and consumer protection under fiscal constraints

How can energy-importing governments protect fuel-dependent households during geopolitical crises without suppressing conservation incentives or making unaffordable fiscal promises? We develop conditional insurance based on pre-crisis reference fuel consumption, with transfers independent of current purchases. Under stated assumptions, fixed payments preserve the marginal pump-price signal; a strictly concave allocation problem determines how to distribute scarce assistance. A dated liquidity rule prioritizes binding infrastructure guarantees and committed low-carbon investment before discretionary relief, and identifies the conditions under which protection must be rationed or financing fails. Guarantees require verified project-specific external losses and contractual caps. French monthly fuel-price analyses for 2020–2026, a longer exploratory global VAR, and a European synthetic-control comparison of France’s September 2022 intervention illustrate implementation. The latter captures a combined public–private discount and has low-powered donor placebos; it does not isolate the causal effect of the state rebate. Externally released geopolitical energy and macro surprises provide additional exploratory transmission diagnostics; their underlying structural model is not re-estimated and French event samples remain sparse. The framework offers conditional, auditable policy rules rather than a demonstrated universal welfare ranking or unconditional sovereign solvency.