Europe has entered a zone of energy fragility that is no longer temporary but structural. Its narrative as a global power is crumbling under a brutal reality: it depends on external decisions to keep its own lights on. Decades of relying on others’ energy—cheap Russian gas, aging French nuclear power, conditional Arab oil, and still-insufficient renewables—have culminated in a perfect storm. This isn’t just about prices or inflation. It is a strategic loss of sovereignty. For the first time since the post-war era, Europe is not leading its own energy destiny. It is reacting, not deciding. And the risk is not a technical blackout, but a geopolitical one.
“Energy is no longer just a resource. Today, it is a weapon and Europe has no longer its finger on the trigger.”
- Europe Enters a Phase of Open Energy Vulnerability
Before the war, Europe consumed over 155 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually—45% of its total gas supply. By 2024, that figure plummeted to less than 25 billion, not because it stopped needing it, but because it was forced to replace it, paying three times more for US liquefied natural gas (LNG) at over $50 per MWh, compared to the $15 it paid for piped Russian gas. This wasn’t an economic adjustment; it was an instantaneous strategic collapse. Without its own energy, the continent discovered its autonomy was a mirage sustained by geography, not sovereignty.
France gets 63% of its electricity from nuclear power, but in 2023, 28 of its 56 reactors reported corrosion or cracks in critical systems. Germany, after shutting down its last nuclear plants, was left exposed, forced to import energy during emergencies. European industrial demand for gas didn’t fall; it just relocated. Over $90 billion in chemical, steel, and fertilizer industries have migrated or are migrating to the United States and Asia between 2023 and 2025 for purely energy-related reasons (see also DigitalJournal – France & questions about uranium dependence).
The symbolic blow was the return to coal. Europe burned 30% more coal in 2023 than in 2020, reactivating plants that had been ceremoniously closed. Germany alone increased its coal consumption by an additional 11 million tonnes. The continent that presented itself as a climate leader has abruptly become an energy hostage. This is not a temporary technical problem. It is the beginning of Europe’s geopolitical blackout.
- Germany on the Brink: The World’s Workshop Loses Power
Before the Russian gas cutoff, 55% of Germany’s industrial energy came directly from natural gas, at an average cost of $12 per MWh. Today, that same input exceeds $38 per MWh even with state subsidies, and in 2022 it spot prices peaked at $300, forcing complete production lines to halt. The result was immediate: BASF announced the progressive closure of its Ludwigshafen plant (19,000 direct jobs) and diverted $10 billion in investments to China.
The automotive industry, representing 13% of Germany’s GDP and over 800,000 direct jobs, is operating at the edge of profitability. Volkswagen publicly acknowledged in September 2024 that manufacturing an electric vehicle in China costs 35% less than in Germany. Mercedes and BMW are considering relocating parts of their supply chain to the United States, where Washington offers IRA subsidies of up to $7,500 per electric vehicle produced.
Green hydrogen, touted as a strategic solution, has stumbled in its initial phase. Producing one kilo of hydrogen in Germany currently costs between $6 and $8 on average, while in Saudi Arabia and Chile the projected cost for 2026 is $1.2 to $2.5. China and India already produce steel and batteries with cheaper energy. Germany, for half a century the workshop of the planet, now pays more for its own energy than it earns from exports. The silent deficit has already begun.
- France, Italy, Spain: A Fragmented and Uncoordinated Energy Model
France still boasts of its nuclear prowess, but the reality is critical. The 63% of its electricity comes from 56 reactors, and 28 of them had to be stopped or limited in 2023 due to corrosion and structural failures. Its new flagship reactor in Flamanville, initially budgeted at $4 billion, has seen costs balloon to over $15 billion and is now more than a decade behind schedule, still without a firm operational date. French nuclear power, which once exported over 50 TWh per year, ended up importing energy from Germany and Spain in the dead of winter.
Italy lives in pure dependency. 95% of its gas consumption is imported, and after breaking with Russia, it now depends heavily on Algeria and Azerbaijan. In 2024, it signed $13 billion in contracts with Algeria’s Sonatrach, but the infrastructure is unstable and subject to political pressures from North Africa. Rome controls neither the price nor the flow. It is energetically held hostage.
Spain is the most contradictory case. In 2024, it became the second-largest exporter of electricity in all of Europe, thanks to its 46% renewable grid. It exported over 20 TWh to France, while simultaneously importing over $60 billion in industrial products manufactured with cheap energy outside the continent. It has energy, but it doesn’t transform it. Europe is not just fragmented by strategy; it is fractured by internal energy inequality (to understand this “structural absurd”, see also: “France is effectively throttling down Spain and Portugal’s energy flow & connection to wider Europe“; or “France’s Macron opposes building new Iberia gas pipeline”, “INSTITUTE OF ENERGY FOR SOUTH-EAST EUROPE”).
- Russia, Qatar, Algeria, Saudi Arabia seizing control of the Energy Flow
Russia lost customers in Europe, but not power. It redirected over 80 billion cubic meters of gas to China, India, and Turkey, and signed the Power of Siberia II pipeline with Beijing, guaranteeing over $400 billion in sales over 30 years. Putin only needs to turn valves, not tanks; gas is now a weapon of war. In 2022, reducing Nord Stream flow by 70% was enough to send European energy inflation to a 40-year high. It wasn’t a military attack. It was a reminder of dependency.
Qatar, owner of 20% of global gas reserves, decided to double its LNG production and has already signed 27-year contracts with France, Germany, and China. No one can replace it before 2030. Saudi Arabia controls 11 million barrels per day and operates alongside Russia in an OPEC+ that no longer answers to Washington. In 2023, they ignored White House pressure and cut 1.3 million barrels per day to keep crude prices above $85.
Algeria is emerging as a key player in the Mediterranean. In 2024, it signed $13 billion in contracts with Italy and a strategic agreement with Germany to export green hydrogen starting in 2027. But Algeria answers to its own logic, not Brussels’s. Today, four capitals—Moscow, Doha, Riyadh, and Algiers—can destabilize Europe without firing a single missile. Energy is no longer just for sale. It is a tool of statecraft.
- The United States as Imperial Provider: Forcing Europe’s unsustainable Energy Bill
The US energy business with Europe is not commercial. It is geopolitical. In 2021, Europe paid an average of $15 per MWh for Russian gas from Nord Stream. In 2023, it paid over $50 per MWh for US liquefied natural gas (LNG). During panic moments, the spot price soared past $300 per MWh. The differential was not marginal; it was a tax levied by energy warfare.
In 2023 alone, US LNG exports to Europe surpassed $60 billion, with companies like Cheniere Energy multiplying their profits. Washington quietly became the continent’s top gas supplier, displacing Moscow. But this replacement has consequences.
European industries pay up to four times more for energy than their US competitors, triggering a massive exodus of industrial investment to Texas and Louisiana, where electricity costs $30 per MWh compared to $90 in Germany.
The White House isn’t just selling energy. It is selling strategic subordination. Every LNG tanker that arrives in Europe is proof that the continent has lost the capacity to negotiate from a position of autonomy. The cost isn’t measured in euros, but in structural obedience. Europe no longer just imports energy. It imports dependency.
- The Silent Coup: China buys cheap energy, sells expensive Industry to Europe
China now pays the cheapest energy prices in the global system. It imports Russian pipeline gas for less than $10 per MWh, while Europe pays between $50 and $90. The 2024 strategic agreement between Gazprom and CNPC secures Beijing over 98 billion cubic meters of gas per year at preferential prices for three decades. Simultaneously, China receives Saudi oil with discounts of up to $5 per barrel through direct contracts, bypassing the dollar. The result is that energy for production in China costs up to four times less than in Europe.
With this advantage, China is flooding the European market with electric vehicles, batteries, green steel, and industrial machinery. In 2024, Chinese exports to Europe exceeded $660 billion, while Europe exported less than $260 billion to China. The gap widens monthly. Most critically, Europe is subsidizing its own defeat. European governments provide billions in aid to their industries to help them survive high energy costs… and these same industries buy raw materials, machinery, and technology manufactured in Asia with cheap energy.
China doesn’t need to confront. Cold calculation is enough. It buys cheap energy and sells expensive industry. The differential becomes imperial power. And Europe, without realizing it, is financing the strategic rise of its greatest competitor.
Europe loses the Energy Century if it doesn’t break its Atlantic Obedience
If Europe maintains its current dependency, it will reach 2030 paying two to four times more for gas and electricity than its Asian competitors. With sustained wholesale prices above $70 per MWh, energy-intensive industries will structurally lose their margin.
The outcome is measurable today and projectable in scale. Between 2026 and 2030, the Union could lose up to 1.5 percentage points of GDP per year due to investment flight and falling productivity. The industrial trade balance with China already exceeds $400 billion annually and could reach $600 billion by 2030 if the energy gap is not corrected.
In this scenario, European refining capacity would shrink by 15%, primary steel would shut down 15-20 million tonnes of capacity, and heavy chemicals would relocate over $120 billion in capital expenditure to Asia and the US between 2026 and 2035. Absolute dependency is not a metaphor. It is a sustained current account deficit financed by expensive debt and rising industrial unemployment.
An alternative path exists. It requires a strategic break with Atlantic obedience in energy and financial matters. Europe would need to secure direct, non-dollarized gas and oil contracts with diversified suppliers and set an internal price cap for industry between $40 and $50 per MWh during the transition. In parallel, it must accelerate a green energy grid with real scale and complete local supply chains:
- Solar installed capacity of no less than 600 GW by 2030 and 850-900 GW by 2035.
- Total wind power of around 350 GW by 2030 (including 110 GW offshore) and 500 GW by 2035 (with 180-200 GW offshore).
- Battery storage exceeding 200 GWh by 2030 and 500 GWh by 2035.
- Green hydrogen with 10 million tonnes of annual domestic production by 2030 and 20 million by 2035, focused on steel, fertilizers, and heavy transport.
This must be backed by electrical interconnections increasing cross-border capacity by 30% before 2030 to move solar surpluses from the south to the industrial heartland, and local content frameworks to anchor the manufacturing of panels, turbines, electrolyzers, and batteries on European soil, supported by incentives of $50 billion annually for five years. A green civilizational renewal is not a slogan. It is a budget and an industrial policy.
The 2030-2035 fork in the road is stark. With Atlantic obedience and expensive energy, European industrial unemployment could exceed 15 million accumulated jobs over the decade, and manufacturing’s share of GDP could fall below 12%. With energy sovereignty and a well-financed green policy, Europe could sustain industrial energy costs between $45 and $55 per MWh and regain 1.5 percentage points in annual productivity from 2031 onward. This isn’t about choosing a political colour. It’s about choosing who sets the price of the electricity that powers a factory. One path defines the century for Europe. The other surrenders it.
- A Global Mirror: Energy Sovereignty is the Common Battle for Europe and the Americas
Europe is not looking at a risk, but at a decision. The blackout will not be technical, but political. The lights don’t go out in the cables; they go out in the centres of power that renounce the right to decide. If it remains subordinated to prices set in Washington, Riyadh, or Beijing, it will become a premium market of indebted consumers, not a power. That destiny has already begun; it just doesn’t sound any sirens. It arrives with silent factories, record imports, and a younger generation looking more toward Shanghai than Brussels.
And this is not Europe’s problem alone. The same fundamental challenges of soaring consumption, inadequate high-voltage grids, and the desperate need for smart, automated response systems plague the entire Western Hemisphere. From North to South America, grids are straining. The urgent need is for real-time systems that can dynamically locate available power, shed load during peaks, or signal to gas plants, hydroelectric dams, and wind farms to curtail generation when it exceeds what can be consumed or stored—for instance, using upper reservoir lakes in pumped-hydro systems as continental-scale batteries.
The core issue is identical everywhere: a lack of sovereignty over a complex, fragile energy ecosystem. But the future is not closed. Europe—and indeed the Americas—still possess the human capital, infrastructure, and historical legitimacy to launch a second, sovereign green industrial revolution, if they decide to break with automatic obedience. Installing renewable energy isn’t enough. Controlling the price, the technology, and the value chain is essential. Energy is not a commodity. It is the invisible ground upon which a civilization walks. And no one masters their history if they are walking on someone else’s land.
The opportunity for choice remains, but the time left is no longer measured in decades. It is measured in years.
Bibliography:
- International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2023–2024
- Eurostat, Energy Dependency and Trade Balance Reports 2023–2024
- European Central Bank (ECB), Impact of the Energy Shock on European Industry
- European Commission, Green Deal Industrial Plan & Net Zero Industry Act 2024
- IMF, World Economic Outlook – Structural Imbalances EU-China-US
- Gazprom / CNPC, Power of Siberia I & II Agreements, 2023–2024
- Sonatrach / Eni / TotalEnergies, LNG and Pipeline Contracts Signed 2022–2024
- Bloomberg, EU Industrial Exodus Tracker – Energy Cost 2022–2024
- International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Projected Solar/Wind Costs 2030–2035
