🚨️ EU: fossil energy at the heart of the deal with Trump and climate concerns

Brussels (Belgium), July 29, 2025 (AFP) - And for some 750 billion dollars more. The European Union has not committed to importing huge quantities of American energy to avoid a trade war with Donald Trump, but these orders for liquefied natural gas and oil alarm climate advocates.

Brussels assures that this massive amount was not simply displayed to please the American billionaire. The European Union says it has not “assessed” its needs, at a time when it intends to give up all its imports of Russian energy by the end of 2027, due to the war in Ukraine.

But the calculation is subject to caution. Because it is not the EU that buys this energy, but private companies. Everything will depend on their order books and “infrastructures” will be needed in the face of such an increase in supplies, agrees a European Commission official.

For three years, Europe is counting on purchases of American energy - especially oil and gas - of 250 billion dollars each year, more than three times higher than current imports from the United States (around 70 billion dollars in 2024).

This would represent more than half of all that the EU spent to import energy in 2024 - 375.9 billion euros or around 435.5 billion USD - according to Eurostat.

So many specialists consider the objective unrealistic, both in terms of supply and demand.

Because three years would not be enough for the United States to develop such export capabilities, believes Simone Tagliapietra, an analyst at the European think tank Bruegel.

And on the demand side, it is “market dynamics that determine the choices of energy companies” and no announcements from the European Commission, recalls this expert, while imports fell in 2024.

“Gas demand in Europe is falling”, and the market “unlikely to absorb excess volumes”, also says Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, from the IEEFA Institute (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis).

Submission

A good part of the billions promised to the United States would be spent on liquefied natural gas (LNG) transported by ship, unloaded in ports, regasidified and then injected into the European network.

The United States accounts for around half of the LNG imported into the European Union currently, ahead of Russia (20% of imports), to which Brussels wants to turn off the tap.

Environmental defenders fear a massive arrival of American LNG, partly produced from the controversial hydraulic fracturing process.

They point to the contradiction with the climate ambitions of the EU, which plans to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.

The Commission is in danger of replacing one disastrous dependency with another

• Unplug Putin's gas and plug in Trump's,” the NGO Greenpeace exclaimed as early as May.

François Geme ne, Belgian researcher in climate policy and co-author of the 6th IPCC report, denounces a “submission to Donald Trump's fossil policy”, who took advantage of the meeting on Sunday with the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to attack wind turbines, as he often does.

The “deal” concluded with Trump “endangers” the EU's “decarbonization goals”, agrees Aymeric Kouam, at Strategic Perspectives, another think tank on energy transition.

According to him, this “undermines Europe's energy security strategy” “which is based on the diversification of supplies, the development of renewables and the improvement of energy efficiency”.

The Commission replies that imports only concern the next three years to make up for the end of Russian gas. “This does not in any way contradict our long-term climate goals”, assured a spokesperson.

Brussels also indicates that the envelope could include orders for “nuclear reactors”, probably SMRs, small modular reactors.

This agreement comes at a time when the European Union is debating its climate trajectory for 2040.

The Commission recently proposed maintaining its objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% in 2040 compared to 1990, but by introducing “flexibilities” in the method of calculation, in an attempt to rally the most reticent states.

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