ROI-COP31 electric push tests Europe's political realities: Bousso

Europe's climate ambitions are colliding with harsher economic and political realities as delegates at the COP31 climate ​summit push to accelerate global electrification, testing governments' resolve and voters' appetite for the energy transition.

Europe's climate ambitions are colliding with harsher economic and political realities as delegates at the COP31 climate ​summit push to accelerate global electrification, testing governments' resolve and voters' appetite for the energy transition. Turkey, host of this year's climate talks, ​is urging governments to back a flagship pledge to increase electricity's share of global energy consumption to ‌35% ​by 2035, up from around 20% today.

The logic is straightforward. Replacing fossil fuel-powered cars, furnaces, boilers and other equipment with electricity is central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the worst effects of global warming, especially as the AI arms race pushes up energy demand. But electrification is only as clean as the power feeding it.

China and the US, the world's two largest economies, are among many countries planning to meet their ballooning power needs partly ‌with natural gas and coal. The European Union, on the other hand, is still aiming to pursue a cleaner path as it seeks to become the world's first "electro-continent." But that ambition increasingly collides with economic and political pressures stemming from deepening trade tensions with China and the Iran war.

The longtime cheerleader of green energy is already having to make uncomfortable choices. PANDA HUG

The EU still has an ambitious green agenda. The bloc unveiled plans in September to nearly double electricity's share of final energy consumption by 2040 to around 46%, largely through faster deployment of heat pumps, electric vehicles, solar and wind power. This would dramatically reduce ‌Europe’s dependence on imported oil and gas, strengthening energy security and industrial competitiveness. Brussels estimates that reaching its electrification target could cut the bloc's fossil fuel import bill by €260 billion ($288 billion) a year by 2040, more than half of its annual spending since 2022.

The technical and financial challenge ‌is daunting but probably manageable. The bigger problem is where Europe will get the technology to realize its green ambitions. China dominates global supply chains for many of the technologies needed to electrify an economy, including solar panels, batteries, EVs, magnets and rare-earth materials.

China manufactures around 75% of the world's EVs and more than 80% of its battery cells, according to the International Energy Agency. It also supplies the majority of the EU's imported solar modules. And although Europe is still home to several large wind turbine manufacturers, Chinese competition is growing. The Asian superpower supplied 60% of imported EU wind turbines in 2025. The rise in Chinese exports of low-carbon technologies explains in large part the growing imbalance in the bloc’s trade relationship with Beijing, its second-largest ⁠trading partner after the ​US.

The EU's trade deficit with China widened to €359.9 billion in 2025, up more than ⁠20% from a year earlier. A major driver is the export of China's high-quality, low-cost EVs, which threaten one of Europe's most important industries, car manufacturing. This has elicited a strong response from Brussels, which has ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese EVs to as much as 45%. Europe therefore faces an awkward paradox: the faster it electrifies to reduce its dependence on ⁠imported fossil fuels, the more dependent it risks becoming on its biggest industrial competitor.

Europe has also launched initiatives to expand domestic manufacturing of low-carbon technologies and the production of critical raw materials. But building competitive industries and supply chains will take years. Until then, Europe's electrification drive will remain heavily reliant on China, embedding a new strategic vulnerability in a ​policy designed partly to eliminate an old one.

WAR AND PEACE The US-Iran war presents another challenge to Europe's electrification ambitions.

The conflict, now in its ninth month, has been a harsh reminder of the dangers of Europe's dependence on imported energy. Disruption to Gulf oil and gas ⁠exports through the Strait of Hormuz sent European energy prices soaring this year, with diesel hitting an all-time high of over $200 a barrel and natural gas prices rising to their highest level since 2022. While the shock has strengthened the case for electrification, it has also highlighted the need to prioritize energy security above all else – no matter where that energy comes from.

Faced with the immediate ⁠need ​to secure energy supplies, some European countries, including Britain, Greece and Romania, have looked to boost domestic fossil fuel production or softened policies designed to curb fossil fuel consumption. Additionally, EU countries last week agreed to delay by a year rules requiring oil, gas and coal importers to report methane emissions, for fear of worsening supply pressures.

The supply shock has also put European governments in a position where they have to heavily subsidize fossil fuel use, as they did after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Since March, European governments, including Germany, France, Spain and Britain, have introduced more than €40 billion of ⁠tax cuts and subsidies to cushion households and businesses from higher energy costs, according to consultancy Bruegel.

The political pressure to move in this direction could intensify in the coming years. Right-wing parties in France, Germany and elsewhere have increasingly made support for fossil fuels and opposition to costly ⁠net-zero policies a central part of their political messaging. That leaves Europe squeezed from all ⁠directions.

Extreme weather over the past year – from floods to fires and heatwaves – has demonstrated that climate change is hardly a distant threat. But governments don't operate in a climate-policy vacuum. The case for electrification may be more urgent than ever, but the economic and political space to deliver it is shrinking. (The opinions expressed here are those of Ron Bousso, a columnist for Reuters.)

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($1 = 0.9018 euros) (Ron Bousso; Editing by Marguerita Choy)