Europe’s new energy doctrine

Brussels is showing signs that it is beginning to understand that energy is no longer merely an elegant and ambitious climate policy. Energy is security infrastructure, industrial competitiveness, and strategic autonomy. Europe is entering a new energy phase. Not because it has abandoned its climate objectives. But because the world around Europe has changed.

The war in Ukraine showed that energy can be used as a weapon. Crises in the Middle East demonstrated how quickly geopolitics turns into geoeconomics and puts hefty bills on the table. And the persistent gap between European energy prices and those of the main global competitors is beginning to cost industry, investment, and jobs.

In 2025, the price of electricity for energy-intensive industries in the European Union was, on average, more than twice as high as in the United States and almost 50% higher than in China, according to the International Energy Agency. This is the fundamental problem. Europe can no longer confuse expensive energy with “virtuous energy.” Brussels appears to have understood this already. European documents from 2026 outline, but unfortunately without explicitly calling it that, a new energy doctrine.

The first pillar is energy security and strategic autonomy. REPowerEU was Europe’s response to the Russian shock. The next step is to transform that response into a permanent security architecture. But autonomy does not mean autarky. Europe does not have to produce every molecule of energy it needs on its own. It must, however, stop being critically dependent on a single supplier, a single route, or a single technology. Therefore, European energy security means diversification, infrastructure, storage, interconnection, domestic production capacities, and stable partnerships with external suppliers. And it means something Brussels is beginning to take more seriously: protecting energy infrastructure against physical, cyber, and climate risks. The European Commission is even preparing to review the European energy security framework.

The second pillar is affordable energy as industrial policy.

This is perhaps the most important paradigm shift. Energy can no longer be viewed solely as a component of climate policy. It is an industrial input. Its price directly influences the competitiveness of steel, chemicals, cement, the automotive industry, data centers, transport, and the entire manufacturing ecosystem. The European Council already explicitly states that high energy prices represent one of the major challenges to European competitiveness and calls for measures to reduce them, alongside accelerating the clean transition. This is where the true European doctrine must emerge: decarbonization must reduce economic vulnerability, not amplify it. It is not enough to produce green energy. We must produce green energy at a price that allows Europe to remain competitive. This means functioning markets, investment, long-term contracts, reducing administrative bottlenecks, smart taxation, flexibility, and a pragmatic reconsideration of system costs.

The third pillar is clean energy abundance. Europe needs much more electricity. Not less. The electrification of transport, heating, industry, and the digital economy will increase electricity demand. And the answer cannot be a European economy built around scarcity. Infrastructure for abundance must be built: renewables, nuclear, hydropower, gas in its security and transition roles where necessary, storage, hydrogen and other low-emission gases, energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and, above all, grids. In fact, grids are Europe’s new oil. Without them, cheap energy produced in one corner of the continent cannot reach where it is needed.

And here an essential condition emerges: technological neutrality.

Europe cannot afford to administratively choose the winners of the transition. It must set objectives for security, price, emissions, and competitiveness and allow technologies to compete in achieving them. Renewables will have a major role. But so will nuclear. And hydropower. And storage. And gas, wherever it is necessary for system security. And carbon capture for industries where emissions are difficult to eliminate. This is not a retreat from the energy transition. It is, in fact, its maturation.

Europe has moved through the “clean energy” doctrine. It then moved through the “secure energy” doctrine. Now it must build the doctrine of “secure, competitive, and European energy”.

The three words must work together. Therefore, the new European energy doctrine should not be about choosing between climate and the economy. It should be about understanding that, in the new geopolitical world, climate, energy, industry and security are the same policy.

Europe does not need less energy ambition. It needs smarter ambition.Europe’s energy must be secure. It must be abundant. It must be competitive. And, as far as possible, it must be European.

This could be Brussels’s true energy doctrine for the next decade.