The energy crisis that the world is going through is not the first, but it could be much more serious than the previous ones. The crises of the late 1970s were said to have put an end to the Glorious Thirty. This concept, based exclusively on an indicator, GDP, which is far from representing all the characteristics of a country, is misleading since growth was strong because in the aftermath of the war, production was weak. It ignores cruel realities such as the stagnation of life expectancy, the ten thousand deaths each year on the roads or the tens of billions that will have to be spent afterwards to remove asbestos from buildings built at the time.
The two oil shocks have certainly caused prices to jump. A barrel of crude oil was worth $3 in 1973, $36 in 1980. It had fallen back to $25 in 1990 before rising to $80 in 2010. It had sometimes even exceeded 100 dollars before falling back. These movements had each time resulted in inflationary surges (15% in France in 1980) and temporary slowdowns in activity. They had contributed, particularly in France with the choices in favour of nuclear power, to the adoption of policies aimed at mitigating the consequences of this instability.
The crisis triggered by the war in the Middle East is much more serious for two reasons: it does not only concern oil but also natural gas. It has a structural dimension: the destruction of production facilities and the insecurity of supply methods will be long-lasting. By affecting natural gas, it affects a fossil fuel that has become strategic. Its use has increased sharply over the past 25 years, rising in 2000 from 2200 billion m3 to 3950 billion in 2024. Two factors explain this evolution.
The implementation of new extraction techniques with hydraulic fracturing has made it possible to exploit shale gas deposits. The liquefaction of natural gas has made it possible to transport it from one continent to another. Previously, only pipelines linking production centres and consumption sites on the same continent allowed access to natural gas. Today, thanks to liquefaction plants on the edge of an ocean and LNG carriers transporting liquefied natural gas to consumption sites located on another continent, consumption has been able to develop and this fossil fuel has been able to power new thermal power plants to produce electricity.
If the current conflict worsens, the exploitation of gas fields will be affected, as will the liquefaction units that make it possible to transport it to markets where it is in demand and that cannot be served by pipelines. The restoration of the facilities will take a long time and, above all, there will be a heavy and lasting uncertainty about the mode of supply. This situation is all the more worrying as it comes at a time when the demand for electricity, which is largely met by gas-fired power plants, will increase due to the irreversible transformation of countries towards a digital society. Gas consumption in power plants has already increased by 15% between 2016 and 2023.
The solutions that have been devised and the policies adopted in Europe have focused mainly on the search for energy savings, the electrification of uses consuming fossil fuels and renewable energies. Unfortunately, these solutions are unlikely to meet expectations. The digital transformation with artificial intelligence and data centers will generate a strong demand for electricity that cannot be compensated by the efforts to save energy that have so far yielded unconvincing results. The policy of electrification of the car fleet will only increase tensions on the electricity markets while weakening the industrial apparatus since it is established that American and Chinese competitors already have a large lead.
The choice of renewables does not live up to expectations either. Production is intermittent and this requires production capacity, most often based on fossil fuels, capable of being put into operation as soon as weather conditions require it. At one point, we thought that we could compensate for this weakness by storing electricity. This solution was ruled out because it was technically too uncertain.
In addition, the crisis experienced by the Spanish and Portuguese grids in 2025, with sixteen and twelve-hour outages due to the brutality and unpredictability of the fluctuations in the production of wind turbines and solar panels, has further raised doubts about the ability of these production methods to permanently ensure the necessary electricity supplies. With the increasing digitalisation of activities, the consequences of these crises caused by renewable energies will become increasingly serious and therefore unacceptable.
Europe will quickly appear to be the big loser of this double energy shock for several reasons. First of all, the continent produces practically no oil and natural gas, unlike the United States, whose producing companies will accumulate profits to the detriment of consumers and price stability. But in this context, the Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise rates with the risk of plunging the country into stagflation. As for Asia, which benefits from its special relationship with Russia and has massive coal reserves, it should be less affected.
Secondly, the European Union will pay the price for the mistakes of its energy policy, starting with the acceptance of submission to Russian gas imports and its hostility to nuclear energy. It was not until 2022 that Community funding for the construction of nuclear power plants was finally authorised. In the meantime, under pressure from Germany, France had to close the Fessenheim plant and commit to reducing its production, before proceeding with a spectacular reversal seven years later.
Finally, the obsession with renewable energies has generated excessive and costly investments that have done nothing to strengthen the Union's energy independence. The most affected country will be Germany, which will have to face a loss of competitiveness of its industry with the rise in energy prices and the increasing pressure from Chinese competitors who will take market share from German companies in strategic sectors such as automobiles or capital goods. But there is no strong Europe if Germany is weakened.
To respond to the challenges posed by the twin shocks caused by the war in the Middle East, Europe must completely redefine its energy policy. Even if this remains largely the responsibility of the States, new rules, which could be included in a Treaty, should be imposed on the electricity market, for example. Three criteria to be respected are now essential. The first concerns the environment, with a limited emission rate for all electricity production. The second criterion concerns independence with a maximum level of fossil fuels imported for production. The third criterion, to avoid a return to crises such as the one that has just hit Spain and Portugal, sets a ceiling on the share of intermittent energies depending on the network and the availability of other sources of electricity production.
Europe must learn the lessons of the Middle East crisis and adopt measures to protect its economy and sovereignty.