By Yunus Emre Özgün
To secure planetary health and emancipate humanity from persistent cycles of conflict and deprivation, the strategic deployment of renewable energy, backed by reliable nuclear baseload power operating within a strict zero-trust architecture, is an absolute necessity. However, a colossal, multinational fossil energy oligarchy continues to inflict irreversible environmental devastation upon our species and the broader biosphere. Rather than facing structural accountability, this multinational oligarchy weaponizes the superficial slogan of “decarbonization” to aggressively shift the systemic burden onto the shoulders of individuals and small enterprises.
We are witnessing a barrage of hypocritical PR campaigns and token regulations. Instead of actually cutting mass petrochemical production, these policies push superficially green “circular economy” mandates, treating the commodification of plastic recycling as a cure-all. Paradoxically, this mechanical recycling loop only worsens public health by repeatedly shedding toxic, carcinogenic micro- and nanoplastics back into our bodies and ecosystems. Ultimately, these measures serve to hide corporate responsibility, protect monopolies, and distract from the root causes of the ecological crisis.
Building a truly sustainable future requires European nations to drop these performative tactics and match the massive state investments in solar, wind, and nuclear energy seen in China, the United States, and France. Instead, Brussels has turned legitimate climate goals into political weapons and economic sanctions, often wielding them against developing nations. This aggressive approach is backfiring, driving rapid deindustrialization and destabilizing historic manufacturing bases across the continent, most notably Germany.
Speaking from the heart of the European Union’s capital, Prof. Dr. Samuel Furfari analyzes this systemic failure. Backed by decades of institutional experience, the veteran Belgian energy geopolitics expert breaks down how shifting global powers are rendering the old OPEC monopolies obsolete. Most crucially, he exposes the contradictions in the Commission’s climate agenda, detailing the heavy economic toll of replacing hard engineering reality with rigid political ideology.
The Hydrogen Illusion and the Politicization of the Grid
UWI: Starting with the physical realities of the grid: As you know, the REPowerEU plan relies heavily on scaling up intermittent renewables and green hydrogen to replace Russian pipeline gas. However, from a strict engineering perspective, a major industrial grid requires a stable baseload. How can the European grid physically compensate for the loss of this baseload flexibility, and how realistic are the current hydrogen targets in addressing this specific gap?
Prof. Dr. Samuel Furfari: The Commission has morphed into a highly politicized institution, abandoning the diplomatic, non-ideological character it held in the past. Consequently, technological limitations and numerical realities have been aggressively sidelined. The REPowerEU strategy (the European Commission’s overarching plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels) is fundamentally a political reaction against Russia, not a mathematically sound engineering plan. These reports are often drafted by consulting firms driven by a mandate to please the Commission, frequently bypassing rigorous impact assessments altogether.
The foundational error lies in physics: wind and solar infrastructure produce electrons, whereas Russian pipelines transported molecules. Banalizing this distinction, politicians erroneously believe that erecting more solar panels will neutralize geopolitical disruptions in chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime artery strictly dedicated to oil, gas, and fertilizer transport, not electrons.
Furthermore, the 2022 delusion that hydrogen would serve as an immediate panacea borders on the absurd. We witnessed a German minister travel to Kyiv in the midst of a brutal war, floating the ridiculous proposition that Ukraine could produce hydrogen for Germany. This ignores the material reality that Ukraine’s centralized grid was under severe bombardment, requiring electricity it desperately needed to keep. Even more absurdly, Ukraine’s remaining electricity relies heavily on coal and nuclear, energy sources deemed absolute taboos by the Greens in Brussels. Tellingly, the May 2022 REPowerEU document completely omitted nuclear energy, deliberately ignoring the fact that Germany was concurrently shuttering highly efficient, economical nuclear plants at the height of a systemic crisis. Even the renewed insistence on energy efficiency in existing buildings is economically illiterate; the retrofitting costs far exceed what can be recovered over a 20 to 30-year horizon.
A Waiting Game: Deindustrialization Until 2029
What about the economic consequences? We are seeing a severe cost issue to counter the loss of cheap pipeline gas and protect local manufacturing. Despite new legislative efforts like the Net Zero Industry Act, imported LNG remains structurally higher in Europe than in the US or Asia. Are we risking a permanent deindustrialization?
A structural reversal will not manifest until at least 2029. Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) was recently re-elected on her decarbonization mandate; therefore, one cannot expect her administration to pivot from this ideological trajectory. In the intervening years, Europe’s heavy industry will continue its rapid exodus. By 2029, the catastrophic balance sheet of this decade-long policy will provide a natural mandate for new leadership to revert to rational politics.
Ultimately, geography dictates destiny: 20% of the world’s natural gas reserves lie directly on the borders of the EU, and it is cheap gas. Whether it takes until 2029 or 2039, and regardless of what political shifts occur in Moscow, economic gravity will eventually compel Europe to import Russian gas once again. It is simply the nature of life.
The Destruction of Supply Security
The EU constantly talks about sovereignty, yet the current transition has introduced new supply chain realities, a heavy reliance on China for critical minerals, and the ongoing importation of laundered Russian fuels via India or direct LNG. Looking at this complex picture, how would you evaluate Europe’s actual level of energy independence today?
Back in October 2000, we published a Green Paper, when the term “green” lacked today’s ideological connotations, outlining a strategic triad for European energy security: diversification of energy sources, diversification of supplier nations to avoid overreliance on OPEC or Russia, and diversification of transit routes, such as the strategic development of LNG.
Instead, Germany chose to completely dismantle this architecture, prematurely phasing out nuclear power in favor of intermittent solar and wind, a disastrous policy subsequently adopted whole-cloth by the Commission. Paradoxically, Germany then deepened its dependency on Russian gas, overtly violating our established security pillars. During her first mandate, von der Leyen wholly abandoned the objective of cheap, abundant energy supply security, subjugating all industrial logic to carbon limitation and CO2 binding. We destroyed our own strategic vision in favor of ideology, which has directly culminated in the crippling energy prices currently asphyxiating European industry.
The Atlantic Shift and the Death of OPEC’s Monopoly
On the broader geopolitical picture, how do you read the shifting balances in the Middle East and the Global South in relation to these energy policies?
The geopolitical volatility in the Middle East is actually a direct consequence of tectonic developments occurring across the Atlantic. The staggering hydrocarbon revolution in the United States via shale oil and gas, coupled with massive expansions in Canada, Guyana, Brazil, and now Argentina, has effectively shifted the global center of energy gravity. Collectively, these Western Hemisphere reserves now rival or surpass the Middle East.
This material abundance is precisely what enabled Donald Trump, during his first term, to insist upon the Abraham Accords (a series of treaties normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations). Following the oil shocks of the 1970s, Arab nations maintained a highly collaborative balance of production and pricing with OECD countries. However, the Trump administration leveraged the new Atlantic abundance to bluntly signal to Gulf producers that while they remain significant, they are no longer the exclusive drivers of the global market.
Recognizing this irreversible geopolitical shift, nations like the United Arab Emirates pragmatically aligned with the new reality. The UAE, capable of producing 5 million barrels per day, was historically constrained by OPEC’s 3.3 million barrel quota. To participate in this new era of energy geopolitics and maximize output, they signaled a departure from the cartel’s archaic limitations, opting to normalize relations with Israel. Conversely, this structural loss of leverage over the West deeply alarmed Iran. Stripped of its primary instrument of pressure against the OECD and the USA, Tehran’s ability to act as the overarching security guarantor for the Palestinian cause was severely compromised, fueling the current regional conflicts. We are definitively turning the page on the 50-year geopolitical paradigm established in the 1970s.
Era of Energy Addition, not Transition
So-called Pax Americana essentially designs the Middle East as strategic partners, not sovereign drivers. Control remains firmly within the Western Hemisphere and the transatlantic alliance, heavily intertwined with Israel. Trump’s transactionalism demands subjugation, leveraging exceptionalist threats. Does this US-led hegemony actually benefit Europe in any real capacity?
One must aggressively separate Donald Trump’s theatrical rhetoric from the structural reality of his cabinet’s energy strategy. The actual masterminds of this policy are exceptionally clever, pragmatic technocrats.
Chris Wright (CEO of Liberty Energy and Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy) is the brilliant engineer who operationalized the initial shale fracturing concepts pioneered by George Mitchell (the American businessman widely regarded as the “father of fracking”), driving the United States toward absolute energy independence. Concurrently, figures like Doug Burgum (the Governor of North Dakota, the second most crucial region for shale extraction, and Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior) have been positioned to manage internal affairs, ensuring sweeping domestic exploitation rights. Trump is merely the communicator leveraging the profound strategic frameworks developed by these pioneers of energy abundance.
Meanwhile, Europe remains completely paralyzed by its own “Net Zero” dogma. By unilaterally declaring a cessation of oil and gas consumption by 2050, the EU has utterly alienated the Middle East. When European diplomats preach decarbonization in Iran, Iraq, or Jordan, they are met with justified derision; these nations seek tangible, future-oriented energy partnerships, not suicidal green theology. By willfully destroying its own heavy industry, Europe has cut itself off, losing all global credibility and the geopolitical leverage required to balance the USA.
The raw data speaks for itself. Global energy consumption has surged to 600 exajoules, and we are witnessing an era of energy addition, not transition. While wind and solar are increasing, fossil fuel growth continues to outpace renewable deployment by 60% globally. Europe’s refusal to accept this reality has sealed its geopolitical irrelevance.
Editor’s Note: The transcript of this interview has been lightly edited for grammar, syntax, and stylistic flow to ensure readability, while strictly preserving the interviewee’s original talk, meaning, and tone for full intellectual freedom.