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See more from Canary Media’s “Chart of the Week” column.
The European Union is once again facing an energy crisis due to its reliance on imported fossil fuels — and is once again poised to lean into renewables to blunt the effects.
As the war in the Middle East upends global oil and gas markets, European Union energy chief Dan Jørgensen urged member states on Tuesday to build even more renewable energy, faster.
It’s an uncomfortable but familiar position for the EU. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the bloc rapidly reduced its reliance on Russian gas imports and swiftly built out new wind and solar power to cushion the blow to the region’s electricity sector.
The results speak for themselves. The European Union more than doubled its solar generation between 2021 and 2025. Wind grew at a more modest 24% over that time period, but it was already providing a higher share of the bloc’s electricity generation. Meanwhile, fossil fuel–generated electricity declined. For the first time ever, in 2025 the EU produced more electricity from wind and solar than it did from fossil fuels.
But the region has not ditched gas entirely. The EU got about 17% of its electricity from gas last year, and it imports almost all the natural gas it burns — 86% in 2024.
That means its energy system is still exposed to the historic disruption caused by the Iran war. The war has shut down liquefied natural gas production in Qatar, the world’s second-largest exporter of the fuel, for the past month. Gas prices globally and in the EU have surged as a result.
This energy shock will be messy and play out in different stages. For Europe, the most immediate and acute effects are being felt in the availability of jet fuel and diesel. But electricity costs will rise too, as nations are forced to buy much-more-expensive natural gas. In certain countries, it will also get dirtier, at least for a time — some EU nations are relying more heavily on coal-fired electricity to get them through the immediate fallout.
But over the longer term, this energy shock is likely to produce the same outcome as the previous one: an even faster transition away from imported fossil fuels and to domestic wind and solar.
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