Kerry Praises Europe As ‘The Lead On The Planet’ For The Energy Transition

Sometimes it is hard to know what to even say in response to some of the things that come out of the current American administration in terms of energy policy. No one personifies this more frequently than President Biden’s Climate Envoy, former Democratic senator, secretary of state and presidential nominee John Kerry.

As Russian troops and tanks began rolling into Ukraine to wage Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war on that country in late February, Kerry famously expressed his main concern that “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.” Seven weeks later, it’s safe to speculate that few Ukrainians today have Mr. Kerry’s concern at top of mind.

This week, during a “Fireside Chat on U.S. Climate Finance” sponsored by the Center for Global Development, Kerry carried his unique brand of logic a step further, praising Europe as “the lead on the planet” for the global energy transition. In response to a question from moderator Judy Woodruff of the PBS Newshour, Kerry said the following:

“No government in the world has enough money to be able to affect the transition we need to affect, to move us much more rapidly into sustainable energy postures in our nations,” he said. “Europe is probably the lead on the planet in terms of the efforts it’s making.”

Wisely, Kerry quickly added that those efforts in Europe are “partly because of Russia, Ukraine.”

“Europe has had no choice but to understand they’ve got to move off of Russian fossil fuels as fast as they possibly can,” he continued. “And to their credit, they’ve really taken the initiative to double down on their deployment of renewables, to be dramatic in the degree they’re going to try to reduce the dependency.

“But, if anything should come out of what should happen with Ukraine in the last months, it is that we are much better off if we can be energy independent, certainly not dependent on somebody like Putin.”

Yes, it certainly is better to be energy independent, as Kerry states. But to be clear about Europe, that has clearly not been a main goal amid the energy policy moves these governments have made in the 21st century. Let’s take a moment to analyze how the governments in Europe have “led” on the issue:

• During the early years of this century, many European governments, most prominently Germany and the United Kingdom, made the conscious decision to avoid exploiting their own energy natural resources, such as oil, natural gas and coal;
• They did this in conjunction with policy efforts to force a rapid transition to renewable energy, with wind energy as a special focus;
• As a result, they chose to become reliant on energy exporting countries for their fossil fuel energy needs;
• As it turned out, the cheapest source of such exports was Russia;
• Thus, Europe consciously made the decision to abandon its energy security and instead become an energy client state of Russia, as seen in the chart below:

Many observers now agree that Europe’s lack of energy security and status as a Russian energy client collective played a significant role in convincing Putin that he would be able to conduct this war on Ukraine without incurring major sanctions on his energy sector from the Western world. Although his war has predictably not gone according to Putin’s plan, there is little question that his assumption has so far been proven mostly correct, as the EU still struggles to secure the alternatives to Russian energy that would allow it to invoke significant sanctions in that area.

While Kerry praises Europe’s efforts in that regard, here’s the reality about it: Regardless of how successful they may ultimately be, these efforts will still leave Europe dependent on other countries for its fossil fuel energy needs, and thus still lacking in real energy security.

Any cuts the EU nations manage to achieve on oil imports from Russia will likely render them more dependent on the Middle East for their needs. Where natural gas is concerned, Europe now faces the prospect of forcing its people to pay much higher prices for LNG imported from the U.S., Algeria or Qatar than they have been used to paying for Russian gas coming in via pipeline. Alternative exporters for coal are up in the air, but regardless will still leave EU nations dependent on other countries.

Kerry also praises the EU and national leaders for their predictable pledges to “double-down” on its subsidies for deployment of renewables, a constant refrain of the energy transition narrative that seems to be a daily requirement for all Western leaders to repeat now. But that constant doubling-down and redoubling-down on renewables while failing to account for more traditional and reliable energy-generation sources is what led directly to the current crisis in Europe in the first place.

There is no question that the European model is the model that the Biden administration is focused on emulating with its Green New Deal policies. But given the events of the last few months, we simply must ask now if Europe is “the lead on the planet” that any other nation should be holding up as an example to replicate.