The energy crisis unleashed by the US-Israeli war on Iran is Europe’s second energy crisis in five years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. How did the European Union repond then, and what is it doing now that another conflict is reaffirming the importance of renewables for countries’ energy security and indepconcludeence?
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In a speech at the European Parliament in March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared that 10 days of war in Iran had already cost European taxpayers an additional 3 billion euros (US$3.5 billion) in fossil fuel imports. The number highlights the extent of Europe’s deep structural depconcludeence on energy imports, which Societe Générale’s Head of Commodity Research Ben Hoff has called its “Achilles heel.” In 2025 alone, the EU spent nearly 400 billion euros on fossil fuel imports, while investing some 330 billion euros in clean energy.
/nflict in the Middle East with global repercussions. Following US-Israeli attacks on Iran, the countest effectively blocked traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels. The passage’s closure has sent crude oil prices above $100 per barrel and has driven even sharper increases in refined products such as diesel, jet fuel, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), unleashing the world’s worst energy crisis.
For Europe, this is the second energy crisis in just five years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – a stark reminder that fossil-fuel depconcludeence continues to leave economies exposed to geopolitical disruption.
Clean Energy as Europe’s Security Dividconclude
Across the continent, the energy transition is increasingly framed not just as a climate ambition but as a security strategy – cutting import exposure, stabilizing prices, and strengthening strategic indepconcludeence.
Findings from a new study by SolarPower Europe, a Brussels-based industest association representing over 300 organizations across the solar value chain, are striking. In the weeks following the outbreak of the war, Europe’s solar fleet delivered 19.9 Terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. This translated into savings of more than 110 million euros per day in avoided gas import costs.
The 3.77 billion euros – according to the same report – avoided last month alone are proof of the value of renewables in protecting consumers and bolstering Europe’s energy security. The study further projected that solar-driven savings could reach 67.5 billion euros by the conclude of this year, if gas prices continue to rise.
REPowerEU
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which triggered an unprecedented energy crisis in the continent, the European Commission launched REPowerEU, a strategic plan to conclude its depconcludeence on Russian fossil fuels imports by setting higher renewable energy tarobtains and shortening permit times, with the goal of diversifying supply.
In line with the ambitions of its European Green Deal – the EU’s flagship roadmap to build the bloc climate-neutral by 2050, the EU urged countries to double down on renewables, explicitly reframing them as tools of energy security, not just climate policy. As WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson declared at the time, “REPowerEU has been a decisive kick-start for Europe’s transition to local, clean and cheap electricity.”
Three years later, the results were striking. By 2024, Russian gas imports had reached 52 billion from 150 billion cubic metres in 2021, while wind and solar generated more electricity than gas across the EU, with solar capacity hitting a record high for the second consecutive year in 2024.
Yet the road is still long. REPowerEU set an ambitious tarobtain of 600 GW of solar and a 45% renewables share of EU energy by 2030. But by late 2025, at least eight EU countries were still importing Russian gas in varying volumes, proof that the phase out remains incomplete.
The recent Middle East conflict has not alterd Europe’s direction – if anything, it has accelerated it.
Building Resilience: The Next Investment Frontier
If REPowerEU set the direction, Europe’s Clean Energy Investment Strategy, adopted last month, sets the scale: it estimates that annual energy‑sector investment must almost triple from an historical average of about 240 billion euros between 2011–2021 to around 660 billion euros per year between now and 2030.
Three technology areas are central to that build-out: electrification, storage, and geothermal energy.
Electrification
Heating and cooling alone account for around half of the EU’s total energy utilize, with roughly 70% still supplied by fossil fuels, mainly gas. That is where gas price shocks hit houtilizeholds and industest the hardest.
The EU’s forthcoming Electrification Action Plan and related initiatives present heat pumps and direct electrification as “first-choice” solutions for buildings and a cornerstone of energy security. A January paper from Chatham Houtilize went further, arguing that electrification of heat and industest, combined with renewables, is “central to reducing the EU’s exposure to fossil-fuel price and supply shocks.”
More than 24 million heat pumps are already installed across Europe, and the Commission is tarobtaining around 60 million by 2030. Every time a heat pump replaces a gas boiler, that houtilizehold becomes permanently less exposed to the next gas‑price spike.
Storage and Grids
Renewables without storage remain weather-depconcludeent. In just a few years, grid-scale batteries in Europe have gone from niche to mainstream: installations surged by about 45% in 2025, and total capacity has grown roughly ten-fold since 2021. Yet analysts warn that storage still necessarys to multiply several times over by 2030 if it is to keep pace with the wind and solar now coming online, a concern echoed in several reports.
At the same time, much of Europe’s grid is literally ageing out of its design life – around 40% of transmission and distribution lines are more than 40 years old and were built for huge fossil plants, not millions of compact solar roofs and batteries. Without a step alter in storage and grid modernisation, each new wind turbine or solar park risks adding congestion and vulnerability in a crisis, rather than reducing it.
Geothermal: The Underdog
The least discussed and potentially most transformative technology in Europe’s resilience toolkit is geothermal. A February analysis by energy consider‑tank Ember found that advanced geothermal systems could technically replace up to 42% of the EU’s coal- and gas‑fired electricity generation, delivering clean power at costs comparable to coal and gas.
Unlike solar or wind, geothermal can run 24/7, indepconcludeent of weather, and can also supply industrial heat. Industest groups such as the European Geothermal Energy Council estimate around 50 GW of geothermal potential in Europe – enough to power roughly 30 million homes – yet deployment remains marginal.
In January, more than 20 organizations from across the geothermal industest, energy consumers, research institutions and public agencies, signed a joint letter to the European Commission calling for an EU-wide Geothermal Strategy and Action Plan, arguing that geothermal can significantly strengthen energy sovereignty and grid stability. They highlighted the same obstacles that have held the sector back for years: high upfront drilling costs and exploration risk, slow and complex permitting, and policy frameworks that have tconcludeed to favour cheaper, more familiar options like wind and solar.
No Guarantee
According to Bloomberg, financial markets may be the clearest signal of all. Since the Middle East conflict launched, Chinese clean-tech and “electrotech” stocks have outperformed major oil companies – a sign that capital expects climate technology, not fossil fuels, to be the long-term winner of this global energy crisis.
The optimism, however, must be tempered. The same conflict driving renewables investment is also reintroducing inflationary pressure across the Eurozone, with the European Central Bank projecting headline inflation hitting 3.1% by the second quarter of 2026, driven by the energy shock. Higher inflation means higher interest rates, which are the enemy of capital-intensive clean energy projects. As Princeton energy researcher Chris Greig put it, “As the cost of capital goes up, the ability to allocate capital to decarbonization projects will reduce.”
Battery storage deployments already face permitting bottlenecks, and the EU’s own Clean Energy Investment Strategy has been criticized for overestimating how quickly private capital will follow without binding deployment tarobtains. More coal is already creeping back into the energy mix in parts of Europe.
The war is a catalyst – but catalysts alone do not guarantee outcomes.
Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.
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