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How Closing the Strait of Hormuz Has Sparked a Wider Energy Debate in Europe

The lessons from these shocks is clear.

For the second time in less than five years, a politically driven energy crunch is buffeting Europe, leading to soul-searching about how to avoid these damaging episodes in the future.

In 2022, Russia, while invading Ukraine, slashed natural gas supplies to some European countries, including Germany, its best customer, squeezing businesses, consumers, and forcing governments to spend hundreds of billions of euros on supports.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key conduit for oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf region, means that Europeans face the threat of disruption of energy supplies, including aviation fuel, and a rise in prices that were already high. The European price for natural gas, which many countries use to generate a portion of their electricity, has risen about 40 percent since the beginning of the war to levels several times above those of the United States.

For some European politicians and clean energy executives, the lessons from these shocks are clear. Europe, they say, must accelerate already robust efforts to shift to clean energy technologies like wind and solar power not only to mitigate climate change but, increasingly, to avoid blackmail and preserve independence.

“Energy is being leveraged, and this comes at an exceptionally high price for households and businesses,” Rasmus Errboe, the chief executive of Orsted, a Denmark-based developer of multibillion-dollar offshore wind farms, told journalists on Wednesday. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he added.

“The way forward is obvious,” European Union President Ursula von der Leyen said on April 29. “We must reduce our overdependency on imported fossil fuels and boost our home-grown, affordable, clean energy supply.”

Some European green energy advocates, though, are less confident about the way ahead. While the Trump administration’s antipathy toward renewable energy has yet to take hold in Europe, there is questioning about whether decades of heavy investment in these technologies has produced enough of a payoff.

Countries like Britain and Germany have been among the world leaders in deploying technologies like wind and solar to tackle climate........

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