Europe is heading into winter with less natural gas in storage than last year and almost no margin for error. By Sept. 30, European Union storage was approximately 72% full, compared with roughly 83% at the same point last year. A cold snap or a windless week could send gas and electricity prices soaring and force factories to curtail output. Moscow no longer needs to control Europe’s gas taps to profit from that weakness.

The lesson is not that Europe should abandon its climate goals. It is that Europe can no longer afford energy policy by aspiration. The EU needs a coherent, cohesive strategy that treats every reliable source — pipeline gas and LNG, nuclear, hydropower, wind and solar — as one system, judged by three tests: Is the power there when it is needed? Is it affordable? Does it reduce the leverage of hostile suppliers?

Europe’s energy problems trace two failures: utopian thinking and poor coordination. Germany provides the clearest example of the first. Under pressure from the Greens, Berlin shut down clean nuclear reactors and kept closing them even after Russian gas disappeared, triggering a spike in polluting coal consumption. Meanwhile, member states set their own energy mixes, underbuild cross-border interconnectors and compete for the same LNG cargoes in a crisis.

None of this is an argument against green energy. Economically competitive renewable power, as Texas has shown, can strengthen security. But turbines, transmission lines,........

© lohud.com