Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column In justifying his military operation against Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump reached back in time over two centuries and grabbed hold of the Monroe Doctrine. But it’s another 19th-century interest that propelled his extraordinary gambit in the first place — oil. According to the New York Times, what started as an effort to press the Venezuelan regime to cede power and end the flow of drugs and immigrants into the U.S., began shifting into a determination to seize the country’s oil last fall. And the president was the driving force behind this shift. That’s hardly surprising though — Trump has been obsessed with oil for decades, even as most of the world is actively trying to leave it behind. As far back as the 1980s, Trump was complaining about the U.S. protecting Japan, Saudi Arabia and others to secure the free flow of oil. “The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help,” he wrote in a 1987 newspaper ad. Having supported the Iraq War from the outset, he later complained that the U.S. hadn’t sufficiently benefited from it. “I would take the oil,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2011. “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take the oil.” That same year, he also dismissed humanitarian concerns in Libya, saying: “I am only interested in Libya if we take the oil.” In justifying his military operation against Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump reached back in time over two centuries and grabbed hold of the Monroe Doctrine. | Henry Chirinos/EPA Unsurprisingly, “take the oil” later became the mantra for Trump’s first presidential campaign — and for his first term in office. Complaining that the U.S. got “nothing” for all the money it spent invading Iraq: “It used to be, ‘To the victor belong the spoils’ … I always said, ‘Take the oil,’” he griped during a Commander in Chief Forum in 2016. As president, he also insisted on keeping U.S. forces in Syria for that very reason in 2019. “I like oil,” he said, “we’re keeping the oil.” But while Iraq, Libya and even Syria were all conflicts initiated by Trump’s predecessors, Venezuela is quite another matter. Weeks before seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump made clear what needed to happen: On Dec. 16, 2025, he announced an oil blockade of the country “until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Then, after capturing Maduro, Trump declared the U.S. would “run the country” in order to get its oil. “We’re in the oil business,” he stated. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies … go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money.” “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Trump insisted. “It goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.” On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Venezuela would ship its oil to the U.S. “and then infinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” effectively declaring the expropriation of Venezuela’s most important national resources. All of this reeks of 19th-century imperialism. But the problem with Trump’s oil obsession goes deeper than his urge to steal it from others — by force if necessary. He is fixated on a depleting resource of steadily declining importance. And yet, this doesn’t seem to matter. Throughout his reelection campaign, Trump still emphasized the need to produce more oil. “Drill, baby, drill” became as central to his energy policy as “take the oil” was to his views on military intervention. He called on oil executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign, promising his administration would be “a great deal” for their industry. And he talked incessantly of the large reservoirs of “liquid gold” in the U.S., claiming: “We’re going to make a fortune.” But these weren’t just campaign promises. Upon his return to office, Trump unleashed the full force of the U.S. government to boost oil production at home and exports abroad. He established a National Energy Dominance Council, opened protected lands in Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration, signed a mandate for immediate offshore oil and gas leases into law, and accelerated permitting reforms to speed up pipeline construction, refinery expansion and liquid natural gas exports. At the same time, he’s been castigating efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a climate change “hoax,” he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement once again, and he took a series of steps to end the long-term transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. He signed a law ending credits and subsidies to encourage residential solar and electric vehicle purchases, invoked national security to halt offshore wind production and terminated grants encouraging renewable energy production. Then, after capturing Nicolás Maduro, Trump declared the U.S. would “run the country” in order to get its oil. | Henry Chirinos/EPA The problem with all these efforts is that the U.S. is now banking on fossil fuels, precisely as their global future is waning. Today, oil production is already outpacing consumption, and global demand is expected to peak later this decade. Over the last 12 months, the cost of oil has decreased by over 23 percent, pricing further exploration and production increasingly out of the market. Meanwhile, renewable energy is becoming vastly more cost-effective. The future, increasingly, lies in renewables to drive our cars; heat, cool and light up our homes; power our data centers, advanced manufacturing factories and everything else that sustains our lives on Earth. By harnessing the power of the sun, the force of wind and the heat of the Earth, China is building its future on inexhaustible resources. And while Beijing is leading the way, many others are following in its footsteps. All this, just as the U.S. goes back to relying on an exhaustive fossil fuel supply. What Trump is betting on is becoming the world’s largest — and last — petrostate. China is betting on becoming its largest and lasting electrostate. Which side would you rather be on?

BRUSSELS — The European Commission has unveiled a new plan to end the dominance of planet-heating fossil fuels in Europe’s economy — and replace them with trees. The so-called Bioeconomy Strategy, released Thursday, aims to replace fossil fuels in products like plastics, building materials, chemicals and fibers with organic materials that regrow, such as trees and crops. “The bioeconomy holds enormous opportunities for our society, economy and industry, for our farmers and foresters and small businesses and for our ecosystem,” EU environment chief Jessika Roswall said on Thursday, in front of a staged backdrop of bio-based products, including a bathtub made of wood composite and clothing from the H&M “Conscious” range. At the center of the strategy is carbon, the fundamental building block of a wide range of manufactured products, not just energy. Almost all plastic, for example, is made from carbon, and currently most of that carbon comes from oil and natural gas. But fossil fuels have two major drawbacks: they pollute the atmosphere with planet-warming CO2, and they are mostly imported from outside the EU, compromising the bloc’s strategic autonomy. The bioeconomy strategy aims to address both drawbacks by using locally produced or recycled carbon-rich biomass rather than imported fossil fuels. It proposes doing this by setting targets in relevant legislation, such as the EU’s packaging waste laws, helping bioeconomy startups access finance, harmonizing the regulatory regime and encouraging new biomass supply. The 23-page strategy is light on legislative or funding promises, mostly piggybacking on existing laws and funds. Still, it was hailed by industries that stand to gain from a bigger market for biological materials. “The forest industry welcomes the Commission’s growth-oriented approach for bioeconomy,” said Viveka Beckeman, director general of the Swedish Forest Industries Federation, stressing the need to “boost the use of biomass as a strategic resource that benefits not only green transition and our joint climate goals but the overall economic security.” HOW RENEWABLE IS IT? But environmentalists worry Brussels may be getting too chainsaw-happy. Trees don’t grow back at the drop of a hat and pressure on natural ecosystems is already unsustainably high. Scientific reports show that the amount of carbon stored in the EU’s forests and soils is decreasing, the bloc’s natural habitats are in poor condition and biodiversity is being lost at unprecedented rates. Protecting the bloc’s forests has also fallen out of fashion among EU lawmakers. The EU’s landmark anti-deforestation law is currently facing a second, year-long delay after a vote in the European Parliament this week. In October, the Parliament also voted to scrap a law to monitor the health of Europe’s forests to reduce paperwork. Environmentalists warn the bloc may simply not have enough biomass to meet the increasing demand. “Instead of setting a strategy that confronts Europe’s excessive demand for resources, the Commission clings to the illusion that we can simply replace our current consumption with bio-based inputs, overlooking the serious and immediate harm this will inflict on people and nature,” said Eva Bille, the European Environmental Bureau’s (EEB) circular economy head, in a statement. TOO WOOD TO BE TRUE Environmental groups want the Commission to prioritize the use of its biological resources in long-lasting products — like construction — rather than lower-value or short-lived uses, like single-use packaging or fuel. A first leak of the proposal, obtained by POLITICO, gave environmental groups hope. It celebrated new opportunities for sustainable bio-based materials while also warning that the “sources of primary biomass must be sustainable and the pressure on ecosystems must be considerably reduced” — to ensure those opportunities are taken up in the longer term. It also said the Commission would work on “disincentivising inefficient biomass combustion” and substituting it with other types of renewable energy. That rankled industry lobbies. Craig Winneker, communications director of ethanol lobby ePURE, complained that the document’s language “continues an unfortunate tradition in some quarters of the Commission of completely ignoring how sustainable biofuels are produced in Europe,” arguing that the energy is “actually a co-product along with food, feed, and biogenic CO2.” Now, those lines pledging to reduce environmental pressures and to disincentivize inefficient biomass combustion are gone. “Bioenergy continues to play a role in energy security, particularly where it uses residues, does not increase water and air pollution, and complements other renewables,” the final text reads. “This is a crucial omission, given that the EU’s unsustainable production and consumption are already massively overshooting ecological boundaries and putting people, nature and businesses at risk,” said the EEB. Delara Burkhardt, a member of the European Parliament with the center-left Socialists and Democrats, said it was “good that the strategy recognizes the need to source biomass sustainably,” but added the proposal did not address sufficiency. “Simply replacing fossil materials with bio-based ones at today’s levels of consumption risks increasing pressure on ecosystems. That shifts problems rather than solving them. We need to reduce overall resource use, not just switch inputs,” she said. Roswall declined to comment on the previous draft at Thursday’s press conference. “I think that we need to increase the resources that we have, and that is what this strategy is trying to do,” she said.

President Donald Trump is no longer content to stand aloof from the global alliance trying to combat climate change. His new goal is to demolish it — and replace it with a new coalition reliant on U.S. fossil fuels. Trump’s increasingly assertive energy diplomacy is one of the biggest challenges awaiting the world leaders, diplomats and business luminaries gathering for a United Nations summit in Brazil to try to advance the fight against global warming. The U.S. president will not be there — unlike the leaders of countries including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, who will speak before delegates from nearly 200 nations on Thursday and Friday. But his efforts to undermine the Paris climate agreement already loom over the talks, as does his initial success in drawing support from other countries. “It’s not enough to just withdraw from” the 2015 pact and the broader U.N. climate framework that governs the annual talks, said Richard Goldberg, who worked as a top staffer on Trump’s White House National Energy Dominance Council and is now senior adviser to the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “You have to degrade it. You have to deter it. You have to potentially destroy it.” Trump’s approach includes striking deals demanding that Japan, Europe and other trading partners buy more U.S. natural gas and oil, using diplomatic strong-arming to deter foreign leaders from cutting fossil fuel pollution, and making the United States inhospitable to clean energy investment. Unlike during his first term, when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement but sent delegates to the annual U.N. climate talks anyway, he now wants to render them ineffective and starved of purpose by drawing as many other countries as possible away from their own clean energy goals, according to Cabinet officials’ public remarks and interviews with 20 administration allies and alumni, foreign diplomats and veterans of the annual climate negotiations. Those efforts are at odds with the goals of the climate summits, which included a Biden administration-backed pledge two years ago for the world to transition away from fossil fuels. Slowing or reversing that shift could send global temperatures soaring above the goals set in Paris a decade ago, threatening a spike in the extreme weather that is already pummeling countries and economies. The White House says Trump’s campaign to unleash American oil, gas and coal is for the United States’ benefit — and the world’s. “The Green New Scam would have killed America if President Trump had not been elected to implement his commonsense energy agenda — which is focused on utilizing the liquid gold under our feet to strengthen our grid stability and drive down costs for American families and businesses,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.” ‘WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE PARIS AGREEMENT DIE’ The Trump administration is declining to send any high-level representatives to the COP30 climate talks, which will formally begin Monday in Belém, Brazil, according to a White House official who declined to comment on the record about whether any U.S. government officials would participate. Trump’s view that the annual negotiations are antithetical to his energy and economic agenda is also spreading among other Republican officials. Many GOP leaders, including 17 state attorneys general, argued last month that attending the summit would only legitimize the proceedings and its expected calls for ditching fossil fuels more swiftly. Climate diplomats from other countries say they’ve gotten the message about where the U.S. stands now — and are prepared to act without Washington. “We have a large country, a president, and a vice president who would like to see the Paris Agreement die,” Laurence Tubiana, the former French government official credited as a key architect of the 2015 climate pact, said of the United States. “The U.S. will not play a major role” at the summit, said Jochen Flasbarth, undersecretary in the German Ministry of Environmental Affairs. “The world is collectively outraged, and so we will focus — as will everyone else — on engaging in talks with those who are driving the process forward.” Trump and his allies have described the stakes in terms of a zero-sum contest between the United States and its main economic rival, China: Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they say, are a complete win for China, which sells the bulk of the world’s solar, wind, battery and electric vehicle technology. That’s a contrast from the approach of former President Joe Biden, who pushed a massive U.S. investment in green technologies as the only way for America to outcompete China in developing the energy sources of the future. In the Trump worldview, stalling that energy transition benefits the United States, the globe’s top producer of oil and natural gas, along with many of the technologies and services to produce, transport and burn the stuff. “If [other countries] don’t rely on this technology, then that’s less power to China,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who served in the U.S. Transportation Department during Trump’s first term and is now director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. TRUMP FINDS ALLIES THIS TIME Two big developments have shaped the president’s new thinking on how to counteract the international fight against climate change, said George David Banks, who was Trump’s international climate adviser during the first administration. The first was the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats passed and Biden signed in 2022, which promised hundreds of billions of dollars to U.S. clean energy projects. Banks said the legislation, enacted entirely on partisan lines, made renewable energy a political target in the minds of Trump and his fossil-fuel backers. The second is Trump’s aggressive use of U.S. trading power during his second term to wring concessions from foreign governments, Banks said. Trump has required his agencies to identify obstacles for U.S. exports, and the United Nations’ climate apparatus may be deemed a barrier for sales of oil, gas and coal. Trump’s strategy is resonating with some fossil fuel-supporting nations, potentially testing the climate change comity at COP30. Those include emerging economies in Africa and Latin America, petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, and European nations feeling a cost-of-living strain that is feeding a resurgent right wing. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright drew applause in March at a Washington gathering called the Powering Africa Summit, where he called it “nonsense” for financiers and Western nations to vilify coal-fired power. He also asserted that U.S. natural gas exports could supply African and Asian nations with more of their electricity. Wright cast the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050 — the target dozens of nations have embraced — as “sinister,” contending it consigns developing nations to poverty and lower living standards. The U.S. about-face was welcome, Sierra Leone mining and minerals minister Julius Daniel Mattai said during the conference. Western nations had kneecapped financing for offshore oil investments and worked to undercut public backing for fossil fuel projects, Mattai said, criticizing Biden’s administration for only being interested in renewable energy. But now Trump has created room for nations to use their own resources, Mattai said. “With the new administration having such a massive appetite for all sorts of energy mixes, including oil and gas, we do believe there’s an opportunity to explore our offshore oil investments,” he said in an interview. TURNING UP THE HEAT ON TRADING PARTNERS Still, Banks acknowledged that Trump probably can’t halt the spread of clean energy. Fossil fuels may continue to supply energy in emerging economies for some time, he said, but the private sector remains committed to clean energy to meet the U.N.’s goals of curbing climate change. That doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. The administration’s intent to pressure foreign leaders into a more fossil-fuel-friendly stance was on full display last month at a London meeting of the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization where U.S. Cabinet secretaries and diplomats succeeded in thwarting a proposed carbon emissions tax on global shipping. That coup followed a similar push against Beijing a month earlier, when Mexico — the world’s biggest buyer of Chinese cars — slapped a 50 percent tariff on automotive imports from China after pressure from the Trump administration. China accused the U.S. of “coercion.” Trump’s attempt to flood global markets with ever growing amounts of U.S. fossil fuels is even more ambitious, though so far incomplete. The EU and Japan — under threat of tariffs — have promised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on U.S. energy products. But so far, new and binding contracts have not appeared. Trump has also tried to push China, Japan and South Korea to invest in a $44 billion liquefied natural gas project in Alaska, so far to no avail. In the face of potential tariffs and other U.S. pressure, European ministers and diplomats are selling the message that victory at COP30 might simply come in the form of presenting a united front in favor of climate action. That could mean joining with other major economies such as China and India, and forming common cause with smaller, more vulnerable countries, to show that Trump is isolated. “I’m sure the EU and China will find themselves on opposite sides of many debates,” said the EU’s lead climate negotiator, Jacob Werksman. “But we have ways of working with them. … We are both betting heavily on the green transition.” Avoiding a faceplant may actually be easier if the Trump administration does decide to turn up in Brazil, said Li Shuo, the director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington. “If the U.S. is there and active, I’d expect the rest of the world, including the EU and China, to rest aside their rhetorical games in front of a larger challenge,” Li wrote via text. And for countries attending COP, there is still some hope of a long-term win. Solar, wind, geothermal and other clean energy investments are continuing apace, even if Trump and the undercurrents that led to his reelection have hindered them, said Nigel Purvis, CEO of climate consulting firm Climate Advisers and a former State Department climate official. Trump’s attempts to kill the shipping fee, EU methane pollution rules and Europe’s corporate sustainability framework are one thing, Purvis said. But when it comes to avoiding Trump’s retribution, there is “safety in numbers” for the rest of the world that remains in the Paris Agreement, he added. And even if the progress is slower than originally hoped, those nations have committed to shifting their energy systems off fossil fuels. “We’re having slower climate action than otherwise would be the case. But we’re really talking about whether Trump is going to be able to blow up the regime,” Purvis said. “And I think the answer is ‘No.’” Nicolas Camut in Paris, Zia Weise in Brussels and Josh Groeneveld in Berlin contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO, California — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday confirmed he plans to attend the United Nations climate conference in Brazil next week, on the heels of a resounding political victory against President Donald Trump. The Democrat and likely 2028 White House aspirant will be the highest-profile government representative there from the United States after the Trump administration decided not to send any high-ranking officials. Stepping into the vacuum plays to Newsom’s strengths, especially after his decisive win Tuesday on his congressional redistricting measure vaulted him to the position of the Democrats’ strongest retort to Trump. Newsom put his trip squarely in that anti-Trump lineage in an interview Wednesday with POLITICO, saying he was making the trip “because of the complete abdication of the Trump administration that is joining the Saudis and Russia and the Gulf states. “It’s doubled down on hydrocarbons as the rest of the world is sprinting ahead on low-carbon green growth,” Newsom said. “For me, it is about our economic competitiveness, period, full stop.” Newsom’s attendance underscores his continued efforts to make California a leading stand-in for U.S. engagement on climate change in Trump’s second term. Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, both Democrats, are currently in Brazil for part of the climate talks, as are dozens of mayors from across the country, but they don’t have the heft of the world’s fourth-largest economy behind them. Newsom has spent all year positioning the state as a counterweight to federal rollbacks, including by brokering partnerships with other nations and subnational governments. The trip to Brazil — Newsom’s first attendance at a COP — also gives him a platform to build his national and international profile ahead of a possible presidential run in 2028. “I just want to make sure everyone understands we’re maybe 2000 miles from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but we’re a world away in terms of our mindset on these issues,” Newsom said. The California Democrat will first lead a delegation of state officials to a global investment conference in São Paulo, where his agenda includes a fireside chat with Milken Institute CEO Richard Ditizio and meetings with Brazilian officials and business leaders. Then he will travel to Belém, a city at the mouth of the Amazon River that will host tens of thousands of negotiators, scientists, and activists for two weeks of climate talks as part of COP 30. There, he is expecting to tout California’s commitments to renewable energy and meet with counterparts from around the world to formalize partnerships. He is also expected to travel deeper into the Amazon to meet with “community stewards,” according to his office. Newsom will face the reality that California, despite its swagger, can’t play any formal role in nation-to-nation negotiations. But he’s trying to get around that: He’s co-chairing, remotely, a summit in Rio de Janeiro this week gathering mayors and governors highlighting their efforts to keep cutting emissions despite national backsliding. Climate diplomats from Europe and elsewhere, who lost their bid to impose a global carbon tax on shipping last month amid opposition from the Trump administration, are already clamoring for an alternative from the United States at the Brazil talks, even as they water down their own goals. “The U.S. will not play a major role,” said Jochen Flasbarth, the Undersecretary in the German Ministry of Environmental Affairs, in mid-October. “The world is collectively outraged, and so we will focus — as will everyone else — on engaging in talks with those who are driving the process forward.” Josh Groeneveld contributed reporting.

Disclaimer: POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Polish Electricity Association (PKEE) * The advertisement is linked to policy advocacy on energy transition, electricity market design, and industrial competitiveness in the EU. More information here The European Union is entering a decisive decade for its energy transformation. With the international race for clean technologies accelerating, geopolitical tensions reshaping markets and competition from other major global economies intensifying, how the EU approaches the transition will determine its economic future. If managed strategically, the EU can drive competitiveness, growth and resilience. If mismanaged, Europe risks losing its industrial base, jobs and global influence.  > If managed strategically, the EU can drive competitiveness, growth and > resilience. If mismanaged, Europe risks losing its industrial base, jobs and > global influence. This message resonated strongly during PKEE Energy Day 2025, held in Brussels on October 14, which brought together more than 350 European policymakers, industry leaders and experts under the theme “Secure, competitive and clean: is Europe delivering on its energy promise?”. One conclusion was clear: the energy transition must serve the economy, not the other way around.  Laurent Louis Photography for PKEE The power sector: the backbone of Europe’s industrial future  The future of European competitiveness will be shaped by its power sector. Without a successful transformation of electricity generation and distribution, other sectors — from steel and chemicals to mobility and digital — will fail to decarbonize. This point was emphasized by Konrad Wojnarowski, Poland’s deputy minister of energy, who described electricity as “vital to development and competitiveness.”  “Transforming Poland’s energy sector is a major technological and financial challenge — but we are on the right track,” he said. “Success depends on maintaining the right pace of change and providing strong support for innovation.” Wojnarowski also underlined that only close cooperation between governments, industry and academia can create the conditions for a secure, competitive and sustainable energy future.  Flexibility: the strategic enabler  The shift to a renewables-based system requires more than capacity additions — it demands a fundamental redesign of how electricity is produced, managed and consumed. Dariusz Marzec, president of the Polish Electricity Association (PKEE) and CEO of PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna, called flexibility “the Holy Grail of the power sector.”  Speaking at the event, Marzec also stated “It’s not about generating electricity continuously, regardless of demand. It’s about generating it when it’s needed and making the price attractive. Our mission, as part of the European economy, is to strengthen competitiveness and ensure energy security for all consumers – not just to pursue climate goals for their own sake. Without a responsible approach to the transition, many industries could relocate outside Europe.”  The message is clear: the clean energy shift must balance environmental ambition with economic reality. Europe cannot afford to treat decarbonization as an isolated goal — it must integrate it into a broader industrial strategy.  > The message is clear: the clean energy shift must balance environmental > ambition with economic reality. The next decade will define success  While Europe’s climate neutrality target for 2050 remains a cornerstone of EU policy, the next five to ten years will determine whether the continent remains globally competitive. Grzegorz Lot, CEO of TAURON Polska Energia and vice-president of PKEE, warned that technology is advancing too quickly for policymakers to rely solely on long-term milestones.  “Technology is evolving too fast to think of the transition only in terms of 2050. Our strategy is to act now — over the next year, five years, or decade,” Lot said. He pointed to the expected sharp decline in coal consumption over the next three years and called for immediate investment in proven technologies, particularly onshore wind.  Lot also raised concerns about structural barriers. “Today, around 30 percent of the price of electricity is made up of taxes. If we want affordable energy and a competitive economy, this must change,” he argued.  Consumers and regulation: the overlooked pillars  A successful energy transition cannot rely solely on investment and infrastructure. It also depends on regulatory stability and consumer participation. “Maintaining competitiveness requires not only investment in green technologies but also a stable regulatory environment and active consumer engagement,” Lot said.  He highlighted the potential of dynamic tariffs, which incentivize demand-side flexibility. “Customers who adjust their consumption to market conditions can pay below the regulated price level. If we want cheap energy, we must learn to follow nature — consuming and storing electricity when the sun shines or the wind blows.”  Strategic investments for resilience  The energy transition is more than a climate necessity. It is a strategic requirement for Europe’s security and economic autonomy. Marek Lelątko, vice-president of Enea, stressed that customer- and market-oriented investment is essential. “We are investing in renewables, modern gas-fired units and energy storage because they allow us to ensure supply stability, affordable prices and greater energy security,” he said.  Grzegorz Kinelski, CEO of Enea and vice-president of PKEE, added: “We must stay on the fast track we are already on. Investments in renewables, storage and CCGT [combined cycle gas turbine] units will not only enhance energy security but also support economic growth and help keep energy prices affordable for Polish consumers.”  The power sector must now be recognized as a strategic enabler of Europe’s industrial future — on par with semiconductors, critical raw materials and defense. As Dariusz Marzec puts it: “The energy transition is not a choice — it is a necessity. But its success will determine more than whether we meet climate targets. It will decide whether Europe remains competitive, prosperous and economically independent in a rapidly changing world.”  > The power sector must now be recognized as a strategic enabler of Europe’s > industrial future — on par with semiconductors, critical raw materials and > defense. Measurable progress, but more is needed  Progress is visible. The power sector accounts for around 30 percent of EU emissions but has already delivered 75 percent of all Emissions Trading System reductions. By 2025, 72 percent of Europe’s electricity will come from low-carbon sources, while fossil fuels will fall to a historic low of 28 percent. And in Poland, in June, renewable energy generation overtook coal for the first time in history.  Still, ambition alone is not enough. In his closing remarks, Marcin Laskowski, vice-president of PKEE and executive vice-president for regulatory affairs at PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna, stressed the link between the power sector and Europe’s broader economic transformation. “The EU’s economic transformation will only succeed if the energy transition succeeds — safely, sustainably and with attractive investment conditions,” he said. “It is the power sector that must deliver solutions to decarbonize industries such as steel, chemicals and food production.”  A collective European project  The event in Brussels — with the participation of many high-level speakers, including Mechthild Wörsdörfer, deputy director general of DG ENER; Tsvetelina Penkova, member of the European Parliament and vice-chair of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy; Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, member of the European Parliament; Catherine MacGregor; CEO of ENGIE and vice-president of Eurelectric; and Claude Turmes, former minister of energy of Luxembourg — highlighted a common understanding: the energy transition is not an isolated environmental policy, it is a strategic industrial project. Its success will depend on coordinated action across EU institutions, national governments and industry, as well as predictable regulation and financing.  Europe’s ability to remain competitive, resilient and prosperous will hinge on whether its power sector is treated not as a cost to be managed, but as a foundation to be strengthened. The next decade is a window of opportunity — and the choices made today will shape Europe’s economic landscape for decades to come. 

BRUSSELS — In the midst of a geopolitical storm, Brussels is racing to put together a new plan by the end of this year to diversify European supply of so-called critical raw materials — such as lithium and copper — away from China.  The thing is: We’ve been here before. So far, the European Commission has provided few details on its new plan, beyond that it would touch upon joint purchasing, stockpiling, recycling of resources and new partnerships. It already addressed those measures two years ago in its first initiative on the issue, the Critical Raw Materials Act.  Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has been forced to act by Beijing’s expansion and tightening of export controls on rare earths and other critical minerals this month, as trade tensions with Washington escalated. Europe was caught in the crossfire — China accounts for 99 percent of the EU’s supply of the 17 rare earths, and 98 percent of its rare earth permanent magnets. The new “RESourceEU” plan is expected to follow a similar model to the REPowerEU plan, under which the Commission in 2022 proposed investing €225 billion to diversify energy supply routes after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.  That has European industry daring to hope that Brussels will do more than just recycle an old initiative and address the main obstacles to diversifying the bloc’s supply chains of minerals it needs for everything from renewable energy to defense applications. The biggest of them all? A lack of cash to back new mining, processing and manufacturing initiatives, both within and outside the EU. “It’s all still very much in its infancy,” said Florian Anderhuber, deputy director general of lobby group Euromines. “We hope that there will be a bigger push that goes beyond the implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act,” he added. “It doesn’t help anyone if this is just a label for things that are already in the pipeline.” CODEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP The EU should not count on any trade reprieve that may result from U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Thursday. After all, Beijing has shown time and again that it has no reservations about weaponizing economic dependencies. The key question is whether, this time around, pressure will remain high enough for the EU to mobilize brainpower and assets at the kind of scale it did when it sought to break the bloc’s decades-old reliance on Russian oil and gas. “Europe cannot do things the same way anymore,” von der Leyen said as she announced the initiative last weekend. “We learned this lesson painfully with energy; we will not repeat it with critical materials. So it is time to speed up and take the action that is needed.” “Europe cannot do things the same way anymore,” von der Leyen said as she announced the initiative last weekend. | Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images In the here and now, the EU wants to persuade a visiting Chinese delegation at talks in Brussels on Friday to speed up export approvals for its top raw materials importers. In parallel, energy and environment ministers from the G7 group of industrialized nations are slated to wargame how to de-risk their mineral supply chains in Toronto, Canada, on Thursday and Friday. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY When the Commission unveiled its first grand plan to break over-reliance on China in 2023 — the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) — industry leaders and analysts mostly lamented one thing: a lack of funding on the table.  “Money has been a real bottleneck for Europe’s raw materials agenda,” said Tobias Gehrke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Mining, processing, recycling, and stockpiling all need serious financing.” If the EU fails to free up more resources, experts warn that it is bound to fall short of the goal set in the CRMA, of extracting at least 10 percent of its annual consumption of select minerals by the end of the decade, with no more than 65 percent of some raw materials coming from a single country. It’s a steep target — especially for rare earths, where Beijing has over decades built up a de facto monopoly. While the EU executive has selected strategic projects both within and outside the EU that should benefit from faster permitting than their usual lead times of 10 to 15 years to production, those efforts are yet to bear fruit. “To finance such projects, the next EU budget must provide substantial, dedicated [Critical Raw Material] funding, and financial institutions must deploy innovative de-risking and financing tools,” the European Initiative for Energy Security argues in a new report, calling for a “permanent European Minerals Investment Network.”  “To finance such projects, the next EU budget must provide substantial, dedicated [Critical Raw Material] funding, and financial institutions must deploy innovative de-risking and financing tools,” the European Initiative for Energy Security argues in a new report. | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images The REPowerEU plan — a package of documents, including legal acts, recommendations, guidelines and strategies — was mostly financed by loans left over from the bloc’s pandemic recovery program. Similarly, RESourceEU must become “resource strategy backed by real funding,” said Hildegard Bentele, a member of the European Parliament who’s been working on critical minerals for years.  “This requires a European Raw Materials Fund, modelled on successful instruments in several Member States, to support strategic projects across the entire value chain, from extraction to recycling,” the German Christian Democrat said. THAT’LL COST YOU It’s about more than just throwing money at the problem: The Commission’s haste in rolling out its plan is raising doubts that it will meet the needs of a highly complex market — along with concerns that environmental safeguards will be neglected. “As long as European industries can buy cheaper materials from China, other producers do not stand a chance,” warned Gehrke.  In Toronto, G7 ministers will launch a new Critical Minerals Production Alliance (CMPA), a Canadian-led initiative that seeks to secure “transparent, democratic, and environmentally responsible critical minerals,” and also to counter market manipulation of supply chains, said a senior Canadian government official.  This would suggest creating so-called standards-based markets that are ring-fenced to protect critical minerals produced responsibly, to agreed environmental and social standards. A price floor would be set within that market, while minerals produced elsewhere — at lower prices but also lower standards — would face a tariff.  Beyond the immediate funding issues, ramping up mining in the EU and its neighbourhood also comes at a high societal cost. With local resistance to new mines, usually linked to environmental and social concerns, being one of the key obstacles to new projects, investors are often hesitant to pour money into a project that risks being derailed shortly after. “The EU is choosing geopolitical expediency over human rights and ecological integrity, sacrificing frontline communities for a strategy that is neither sustainable nor just, instead of building a durable and values-based autonomy that invests in systemic circularity and rights-based partnerships,” said Diego Marin, a senior policy officer for raw materials and resource justice at the European Environmental Bureau, an NGO.  Jakob Weizman and Camille Gijs contributed reporting from Brussels. Zi-Ann Lum contributed reporting from Toronto, Canada.

BRUSSELS — The EU is bracing for national leaders to vent their concerns about its green agenda — and hoping it doesn’t turn into an outright rebellion. On Thursday, the 27 heads of state and government will have their say on a new target for slashing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by 2040, a core promise of Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission president. It’s a critical balancing act for von der Leyen. She is looking for a way to appease the economic and political concerns of a growing number of EU members without allowing them to erode a set of stringent climate laws she built during her first five years leading the EU executive. Von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa “are responsible for the success” of Thursday’s summit, said Linda Kalcher, director of the Brussels-based Strategic Perspectives think tank. “It’s in their interest to manage the debate well and avoid unravelling with leaders opening the Pandora’s box to weaken laws.”  The discussion is meant to break a stalemate that is holding up an agreement on the new climate goal, but could just as easily lead to demands to weaken the policies designed to cut pollution.  In an effort to preempt such demands, von der Leyen this week offered a slate of concessions — vowing to tweak existing climate laws to address governments’ economic concerns, but without substantially weakening the measures. The question is whether that will prove enough.  SEARCHING FOR INCENTIVES Von der Leyen has already spent much of her second term chipping away at green laws she proposed over the previous five years, slashing requirements for companies and promising more flexible rules. Those efforts have been balanced, however, with her desire to protect the core of the bloc’s mission to zero out climate-warming pollution by 2050. Her proposed 2040 target also grants significant leeway to governments, even allowing them to outsource a portion of the required emissions cuts abroad. To date, this approach hasn’t placated leaders. Ahead of Thursday’s summit, 19 countries were calling for even more deregulation from the Commission. A vocal contingent — including Poland’s Donald Tusk and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni — have made far-reaching demands that the bloc’s existing measures be weakened, in return for even considering supporting the 2040 goal.  Leaders are not expected to spend much time discussing the actual target, although some countries that are unhappy with the Commission’s proposal — a plan to cut emissions by up to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040 — are bound to vent their frustration.  Costa, who chairs the discussion, has instead asked leaders to discuss how the bloc can marry climate efforts with economic competitiveness.  Ursula von der Leyen has already spent much of her second term chipping away at green laws she proposed over the previous five years. | Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images Both he and von der Leyen were unwilling to debate the target itself, according to one diplomat from an EU country and a European official briefed on the preparations for Thursday’s summit.  But his invitation to leaders to outline their conditions for supporting the 2040 target risks “a Christmas tree” effect, the diplomat said, where each leader hitches their own pet policies to the target.  The diplomat, who was granted anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the summit, added that French President Emmanuel Macron — who pushed for the leaders’ debate — was seen as pivotal.  The Commission has offered France significant concessions for backing the 2040 target, including a large hike on steel tariffs. The attitude Macron brings to the summit could make or break the talks, the diplomat warned. Other leaders are expected to push to weaken existing rules as a tradeoff for backing the target. Poland hopes to delay a carbon tax on fossil fuels used in transport and heating, while Italy has requested changes to the EU’s combustion-engine phaseout.  Others want reassurances about future policies. France would prefer to avoid a fresh renewable energy target that sidelines its nuclear power fleet, and Germany wants a less onerous decarbonization path for its heavy industry.  The details of what is agreed will be key. “It depends on the nature of the tweaks,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.  Those might simply make compliance easier, or conversely could weaken the bloc’s climate efforts. “But overall, yes, we are entering dangerous territory.”

Quit stressing about climate change — it’ll all be fine. That was the message from two of U.S. President Donald Trump’s top government appointees during a trip to Brussels last week. Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright and finance cop Paul Atkins each dismissed the EU’s comparatively stringent approach to climate regulation during their visits, with the former saying the danger posed by global warming was “overhyped.” It comes as the EU faces increasing pressure to wind back its climate ambitions to compete with countries with looser standards, such as the U.S. and China. Atkins, whom Trump appointed to head U.S. finance watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year, said global warming posed no serious threat to financial stability, and insisted it was not the place of financial regulators to police the climate-related policies of businesses. “We’re not here to be environmental police or social police or whatever. That’s not our job,” he told POLITICO. That position contradicts the European Central Bank’s stance that climate change poses real risks to the financial system. As for whether he believes in the science of climate change, Atkins said: “It doesn’t matter what I believe.” Since moving into the White House in January, Trump has unleashed a barrage of domestic anti-green reforms, from winding back his predecessor Joe Biden’s massive tax breaks for low-carbon technology to withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to stop measuring the emissions of some of the U.S.’s top polluters, including coal plants, steel mills and oil refineries. Trump has also openly waged war on wind power, a key tool in weaning the world off fossil fuel-generated electricity. Wright, a former oil man, did not deny the existence of climate change, but said its effects had been exaggerated. “[T]oday your chance of dying from [an] extreme weather event is the lowest we have in recorded history, and 20 percent of kids record nightmares about climate change,” Wright said at a press conference on Friday, without citing the source of these statistics. “So we have got people very afraid of something that’s a real issue, but we overhyped it,” he said. He urged countries to stop subsidizing renewable energy because it was having little impact on emissions, but was costly for industry. In the U.K. earlier in the week he told the BBC artificial intelligence would help solve climate change by cracking the problem of harnessing nuclear fusion to generate electricity in a decade or so. The EU has among the most stringent stringent climate rules in the world, but is under pressure to wind these back, both internally and from other countries like the U.S. European industry is struggling with high energy costs and intense competition from China, and business groups and politicians from the center to the far right have argued green rules add additional costs that industry cannot afford. EU lawmakers are currently reviewing a proposal to slash rules requiring companies to report on their impacts on the environment, and member countries are struggling to reach an agreement on the EU’s 2040 emissions target.

BRUSSELS — The U.K.’s policy of boosting renewable energy production while winding down domestic oil and gas extraction is a mistake that has left the country poorer, Washington’s top energy official has claimed. Speaking on a conference call with reporters during a visit to Brussels Thursday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said President Donald Trump’s strategy is to “unleash American energy” and drive down costs for industry. The EU, he said, has “ambitious” plans to buy more American gas, in a bid to ensure security of supplies and bolster economic competitiveness. However, he took aim at successive British governments for their approach to the net-zero transition. “The U.K. example is to me heartbreaking — to see the birthplace of the industrial revolution export almost all of its energy-intensive industry, its steelmaking, its petrochemical making, its aluminium fabrication. It’s been tough to watch as an outsider,” Wright said. Britain, he went on, “has had the largest drop in terms of greenhouse gas emissions of any country in the world, 40 percent. But what you don’t hear as much about is almost three quarters of that drop is attributed to reduced energy consumption.” That, he claimed, is because “energy intensive manufacturing left the country.”  Wright made the comments ahead of Donald Trump’s second state visit to the U.K. next week, when he will meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer and attend a banquet hosted by King Charles at Windsor Castle. Over the summer, Trump used a sit-down at his golf course in Scotland to take aim at Britain’s expansion of renewable energy, particularly wind power, which he insisted was harmful to the environment and “a disaster.” “It is the worst form of energy, the most expensive form of energy, but windmills should not be allowed,” Trump said. Experts and fact-checkers have repeatedly pointed out that this assessment does not reflect the scientific or economic reality of the technology. The UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been approached for comment.