The US energy secretary says the quiet part out loud: the tributary $750 billion in energy purchases the EU has promised in its Trump deal is meant to lock Europe into “long-term” energy dependence.
The US energy secretary says the quiet part out loud: the tributary $750 billion in energy purchases the EU has promised in its Trump deal is meant to lock Europe into “long-term” energy dependence.
Hydroelectricity will certainly be necessary! But sadly even that’s insufficient (1). Many people underestimate the scale of the intermittency problem, and resulting storage requirements.
There’s a need for long term storage. But sadly existing technology such as green hydrogen, syngas, compressed air… is still incredibly inefficient and/or does not scale. Until that exists, our current path of wind + solar power generation will require fossil fuels. Of those fuels, EU bet hard on gas. That was (is?) politically the most convenient in terms of price - ecological impact tradeoff.