ADVERTISEMENTWhile supplies of liquefied natural gas from the US “remain of strategic importance for the European Union”, Ursula von der Leyen gave no indication that the EU executive planned to further ramp up imports, in a speech at a two-day summit on the future of energy security that opened in London on Thursday.
The Commission president noted how Russia had “intentionally weaponised” energy supplies while conflict in the Middle East threated global shipping. “And across the Atlantic, the threat of tariffs risk further disruption of crucial supply chains,” she added in a direct reference to the trade war launched by the US president.
Even before taking office, Trump had threatened the EU with tariffs unless it started buying more US oil and gas.
Von der Leyen underlined the progress the EU – which lacks any significant fossil fuel reserves – had already made in switching to clean energy, with renewables providing nearly half the bloc’s electricity, and 78 gigawatts of new generation capacity deployed last year alone.
The North Sea can be a future “power house” for wind energy, the German politician said, listing key EU initiatives such as the Clean Industrial Deal and noting that growth in electricity demand had doubled last year.
Von der Leyen also asserted Europe’s commitment to the agreement to triple renewable energy production by 2030 at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, part of the UN climate action talks that Trump has withdrawn the US from for a second time.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke of “overexposure, over many years, to the roller coaster of international fossil fuel markets”, blaming associated price shocks for more than half economic recessions.
“We will make energy a source not of vulnerability, but of strength,” Starmer said, linking energy security to national security. “We can’t deliver that by defending the status quo, or by trying to turn the clock back to a world that no longer exists.”
“Home-grown clean energy is the only way to take back control of our energy system,” the UK premier added, while noting fossil fuels would remain part of the mix for “decades to come”.
‘Emerging security challenge’
Opening the conference earlier in the day, IEA chief Fatih Birol had stressed that Europe’s energy security hinges on rapidly scaling up solar, wind and other renewable energy resources. Last year 85% of new power stations were based on wind, solar and hydropower, while one in every four cars sold globally is electric, Birol said.
But the Turkish economist also pointed to the “emerging energy security challenge” related to the “risky” concentration of production of essential raw materials needed for clean energy technology.
“When we look at…where the critical minerals are produced, where they are refined and where they’re manufactured, there is a huge concentration,” Birol said. without naming countries like China, which has a near stranglehold on the market for rare earth metals used in electronics, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, which dominates cobalt production.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Russia’s war on Ukraine had exposed the “simple truth” that “as long as energy can be weaponised against us, our countries and our citizens are vulnerable and exposed”.
Oil and gas, including from the North Sea, would continue to play an important role, he said, but the UK’s modest production meant it is a price taker in international markets.
“So our vision of low carbon power goes well beyond the climate imperative, important as that is – homegrown low-carbon is our nationally chosen route to energy security,” Miliband said, listing solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and – “also an essential part” – nuclear power.
ADVERTISEMENTIn an opening discussion, government ministers from Spain, Malaysia and Colombia echoed this message to varying degrees, with Egypt’s minister for petroleum and mineral resources Karim Badawi saying Cairo wants to increase output from the equivalent of 1% to as much as 6% of GDP.
Iraqi deputy prime minister Hayyan Abdel-Ghani spoke of plans to shift the petroleum-rich country’s production away from crude oil towards gas, pointing to aspirations to deploy 12 gigawatts of solar power, starting this year.
Net-zero focus ‘harmful and dangerous’
Washington, however, was conveying a different at the summit in the person of Tommy Joyce, acting assistant secretary for the office of international affairs at the Department of Energy.
The signs were there earlier this month at an energy security summit in Washington DC, where Joyce spoke of “a battle waged against our most affordable and abundant energy sources” in the name of the “single solitary risk…of climate change”.
ADVERTISEMENT“We will not sacrifice our economy or our security for global agreements for a so-called net zero future. Nor do we encourage any other nation to make that sacrifice either,” Joyce said in the US capital.
His message for delegates on the first day of the UK conference was that they should be “honest about the world’s growing energy needs, not focused on net-zero politics” and that the push for clean power over fossil fuels was “harmful and dangerous”.
Among the dozens of business leaders attending the IEA summit today, the executive chairman of Spanish energy firm Iberdrola, Jose Ignacio Sanchez Galan, said “electrification is unstoppable”.
The UK government used the occasion to announce a financing agreement with Italian firm ENI allowing for the start of construction of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the north of England, part of a ₤21bn commitment to develop the technology – which critics say has yet to be proven at the scale needed to have a significant climate benefit – where CO2 is pumped underground for permanent storage. Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, meanwhile symbolically switched on an 882MW wind farm of the north-west coast of Scotland.
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