For decades, Europe relied on pipelines bringing Russian gas to heat its homes and provide its electricity, arguing that President Vladimir Putin would not shoot himself in the foot by turning off the taps. That assumption was proved wrong when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, leading to restrictions on gas exports to European countries.
With Russian supplies largely cut off, Europe’s gas and electricity prices shot up, causing a cost-of-living crisis across the continent. While speeding up policies to get their economies off fossil fuels in the long term, European governments scrambled for alternative gas suppliers in the short term.
One of those stepping up supply to Europe was the US, which is building out liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals on its Gulf Coast. But with Donald Trump back in the White House and threatening to invade Greenland, before toning down his rhetoric last week, these energy ties are coming under scrutiny.
A legally binding ban on Russian gas imports was approved by European Union countries on Monday and will take effect by late 2027.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on the same day that “it was a huge mistake to be dependent on Russian fossil fuels. We should never have done that and now we have to make sure that we will have no dependencies on other countries outside Europe.”
Chris Aylett has co-written a well-timed new research paper for Chatham House titled “Why renewables and electrification hold the keys to EU energy security”. He spoke to Climate Home News about northern Europe’s offshore wind ambitions and who holds the power in the US-Europe gas relationship.
Q: On Monday, ten northern European governments gathered in Hamburg for the North Sea Summit, where they committed to developing offshore wind and interconnecting their national grids. They said this would improve Europe’s energy security. Are they right?
A: Yes. Renewable generation, especially offshore wind, helps to reduce Europe’s dependence on imported gas, which we know only too well can be used against Europe to devastating effect. So there’s a simple energy security benefit in that respect.
The wind projects are also combined with interconnectors. It’s really exciting because the wind assets connect to lots of different countries and this can increase the efficiency of the system and renewable generation. Interconnectors give grid managers in different countries access to more generation options, boosting energy security and pushing down prices.
One caveat though is that new electricity infrastructure does mean new challenges, and nothing is risk free. So there will be work to do to ensure that the infrastructure is resilient to physical attack – for example the undersea cables – and cyberattacks. But that can be done, it can be mitigated, and there’s a lot of work going on in these areas.
Q: How much of the supply chain for offshore wind is European rather than reliant on China and other countries?
A: We live in an integrated, globalised world – and even though Europe has a pretty strong wind sector and much of what is being used to generate electricity from wind in Europe is from European suppliers, there are Chinese components in there and there are Chinese companies now which are trying to get into the European market.
It’s not as simple as ‘use Chinese equipment or don’t use Chinese equipment’. It’s all to do with the entire supply chain. There will be decisions around what aspects you would want to buy in and use, and which you wouldn’t, and there will be security regulations involved in that. It’s certainly an aspect to consider.
Q: In 2024, the US supplied a sixth of the EU’s gas imports. Does this make the EU reliant on the US for its gas in the same way it was on Russia? Or, with the International Energy Agency forecasting declining European gas demand and a global glut of LNG, is the US reliant on Europe? Where does the power lie – with the buyer or seller of gas?
A: The power lies with both at the moment. Europe buys about half of the US’s LNG exports – it’s a massive customer and the US government is very keen to sell it, there’s no doubt about that. You can tell in some of the government rhetoric over the last year and the “energy dominance” agenda that they want to sell. So it seems a little bit like all the power is with the EU.
But the issue is that there are not that many countries that export LNG – not in these quantities anyway. And the glut in LNG that is starting to emerge and is likely to play out in the run up to 2030 and beyond, most of that is going to be US producers. So you haven’t got that many options if you’re looking at which countries you get LNG from, and some of the EU’s other gas suppliers – Norway, Algeria – they’re not likely to be expanding anytime soon. Australia is expensive, Qatar is difficult.
So there’s a mutual dependency at the moment, but the EU has a chance to escape this by reducing demand. Once it brings gas demand down by switching to renewable resources, energy efficiency and so on, then it’s in a much better situation. Whereas for the US, it might find that it’s not got any other markets to sell into, as the big hope was the US would start selling to China and that now doesn’t look to be happening.
Q: Could the US government order its gas companies to restrict exports to Europe, in the same way Vladimir Putin did? Would it do so, given that the oil and gas industry is a major funder of the Trump administration and Trump promised to support them?
In principle, the US government could not stop US companies exporting to Europe. There’s the rule of law, there’s contracts between companies but, with this administration, it’s not totally clear that this would be an insurmountable barrier if they wanted to exert leverage.
What the US government could do is incentivise that the gas which would have been bound to Europe is sold into the domestic market instead. LNG is flighty, it goes where the highest price it can fetch is. We’re seeing that now with the winter storm in the US. Gas production has gone down and there’s huge demand for heating and electricity so prices have shot up in the US, so LNG is going there. Europe has had to start buying from Australia.
If you look at the upward trajectory of US demand for electricity, with data centres combined with the scrapping of incentives for renewable deployment, you’ve got a situation where demand for gas in the US is increasing and prices are going up.
You can imagine a situation where a populist government could go ‘right, we know US citizens benefit from US gas and we’re not going to export it’. So there’s a quite subtle sort of interplay there which wouldn’t necessarily be as brutal as what Putin did in 2022.
This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.
