But the war-driven cost shock has reminded Europe’s green skeptics and supporters alike that their resource-poor continent is vulnerable to volatile import prices as long as oil and gas constitute a core part of its energy mix.
From Spain to Poland, governments this week united around one message: Europe needs to speed up its transition away from foreign fossil fuels and toward domestic clean power.
“We are living in a geopolitically unstable environment. So we have to reduce our dependency on imported fossil fuels,” Bulgarian Environment Minister Julian Popov, currently part of the country’s caretaker government, told POLITICO.
“I mean, do we want to be a petro-state or petro-union or petro-continent without petro resources?” he asked. “It’s totally ridiculous. We have to accelerate our electrification.”
The energy price surge following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine led to a systemic drop in gas consumption in Europe, and the current situation could well have a similar effect, Dutch Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven said in an interview Tuesday.
