Europe’s Energy Transition Just Lost Its Illusions... 👉 My new piece in The National Interest: How the Iran War Is Changing Europe’s Energy Transition https://lnkd.in/eV9GKy33 The war in Iran is not just another energy shock. It is arriving at a moment when Europe is already under cumulative strain: a war on its eastern border, the lingering aftershocks of the 2022 energy crisis, industrial decline, political fragmentation, fiscal limits, and a widening debate over how much of its own security it must now provide. This is why the shock matters. It tests not only Europe’s energy system, but the broader strategic model on which Europe has relied for decades. For years, energy transition was framed mainly as a climate project. The old language of “transition” is no longer sufficient: Europe is not moving through a smooth linear shift from fossil fuels to clean energy. Today it is something else: a test of whether Europe can reduce emissions without replacing one dependency with another. To be clear: Europe cannot stop the transition: a continent that still imports 88% of its gas and 93% of its oil, would remain strategically exposed if it slowed down now. But it also cannot afford a naïve version of decarbonization that weakens industry, deepens external technology dependence, and mistakes speed for strength. Europe cannot go back to Russian gas. It cannot build long-term security on permanent dependence on American LNG. And it cannot decarbonize by outsourcing the next energy system entirely to Chinese clean-tech supply chains. The real divide is between a transition that strengthens Europe and a transition that leaves it greener, but weaker. What the Iran shock reveals is that Europe does not need the fastest green transition on paper. It needs the fastest move toward a more resilient, flexible, and protected energy system: – with a safer and more diversified hydrocarbon cushion during the transition; – with faster expansion of domestic low-carbon power; – with much more investment in grids, storage, flexibility, and efficiency; – and with a serious industrial strategy behind it. Green energy is central to this shift. But only if introduced intelligently - as part of a broader architecture of resilience, not as a new layer of strategic vulnerability. Structural takeaway: the goal is not the fastest green transition; the goal is the fastest SECURE transition. Ann Mettler Anne-Sophie Corbeau Kruthika A. Bala FEI
Tatiana Mitrova nice piece. Let’s hope the EU matches the urgency with equally forceful action to reduce dependency. One point often overlooked: the fastest path to a resilient transition is not where most of the debate sits. Around two-thirds of European gas demand goes into heat across buildings and industry, yet policy and capital remain disproportionately focused on power and transport. Heat is the largest, fastest lever for reducing imports, strengthening energy security, and rebuilding local industrial value chains. Climate is an added bonus.
One difference is that a solar panel you buy once. Oil you buy every day.
Very well put Tatiana. The real question is not just the speed of the transition, but the resilience of the system we are building. Electrification alone does not guarantee security. Without grid, storage and flexibility at scale, we risk replacing one dependency with another.
Eicke R. Weber
16h
Very well said , Tatiana Mitrova , I would suggest to change our wording: We are not facing a transition, but a fundamental transformation of our energy system, away from the non-sustainable burning of stored fossil fuels and emitting dangerous, catastrophic amounts of CO2 and other dangerous gases into our athmosphere, to a sustainable energy system, to a long- term sustainable economy based on renewable energy from the sun’s nuclear fusion process and on a circular economy making nest use of our limited ressources! To call this process a ‘Transition’ vastly underestimates what has to be done, it is a disruptive transformation process!
"Green energy is central to this shift." You do not have to call it "green". Wind, solar and BESS happen to be green. But it does not matter any more now, since we have to rush away from fossile. Nuke is not an option: way too costly and too long to deploy. In fact China, by racing since 10 y in wind solar and BESS, was not trying to be "green". It wanted to avoid the fossile dependancy, perfectly illustrated by this war. China did have to follow COP 30. It set the pace of the COP. To avoid cahos at home, see that the sky was blue and abate pollution in cities. Technically, you do not need to be "green" anymore. The shift is naturally "green" as a by consequence.
Lau Høgsted
1w
Europe didn’t misjudge geopolitics, it misjudged itself. The transition was built on the belief that intentions could override physical constraints, that targets could substitute for buffers, and that supply chains controlled by others could somehow deliver sovereignty. The Iran shock doesn’t change the transition, it exposes that the model was never structurally coherent. The core issue isn’t dependency on Russia, the US, or China. It’s Europe’s inability to design an energy system that doesn’t recreate dependency as a by product of its own choices. A system that keeps producing the same failure mode isn’t unlucky, it’s mis architected. A secure transition isn’t a geopolitical response. It’s a redesign of the operating model, domestic capacity, diversified hydrocarbons, industrial depth, and real flexibility. Until that exists, every shock will look new even though it’s the same structural weakness repeating itself.
More of than not, the green route is also the secure route, assuming attention is paid to the network, nit just the point of generation or use.
Capitole Energie•3K followers
1wTatiana Mitrova One dimension worth adding to your architecture of resilience: the financing constraint. A transition that is simultaneously faster, more diversified, and more infrastructure-heavy requires significantly more capital at a moment when European project finance banks are already repricing geopolitical risk, industrial balance sheets are compressed, and sovereign fiscal space is narrow. The Chinese clean-tech dependency you flag is real. But the alternative, building domestic clean-tech supply chains at the speed and scale required, competes for exactly the same capital that needs to fund grid expansion, storage, and the hydrocarbon cushion during the transition. These aren't sequentially funded. They have to happen simultaneously. This is why "intelligently introduced" is the phrase that carries the most weight in your piece. The risk is that it designs a transition architecture that is strategically coherent on paper but financially non-executable in practice. The Iran shock doesn't just test Europe's energy system. It tests whether European capital markets, development banks, and industrial policy can move at the speed the security imperative now requires.