Donald Trump has a stranglehold over EU and UK energy supply as a result of Europe swapping its dependency on Russia for reliance on the US, analysis has shown.
In part due to the war in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions on Russian pipeline gas, European countries have become dependent on shipments of US liquified natural gas (LNG), according to a paper co-authored by the Clingendael Institute, in The Hague, the Ecologic Institute, in Berlin, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
The development is fraught with risk at a time when Trump has shifted “towards a more explicitly interest-driven, protectionist and ideologically charged approach”, the paper says.
The US president has most recently threatened to use tariffs on trade with European allies in order get their agreement on his acquisition of Greenland, which is part of Denmark, an EU member state and Nato ally.
Trump’s controversial national security strategy paper published in November explicitly stated that the White House was seeking US energy dominance, which “when and where necessary – enables us to project power”.
The US accounts for 10% of UK gas consumption, with the other 90% being domestic production or imports from Norway.
Natural gas is usage is split (approximately) between electricity generation (35%), domestic heating (35%), services (13%) and industry (13%) .
If we lost that US 10% and took it entirely out of electricity generation, we’d lose about 28% of our gas powered generation. Just 28.6% of our electricity was gas powered in the last 12 months. So we’d have an 8% shortfall overall.
I think we’re scheduled to bring online enough wind generation in the next 12 months alone to counteract that. Between Dogger Bank wind farm and Hinckley Point C nuclear this isn’t a huge problem at least for the UK. We also are on a downward trend of electricity consumption.
Yes, relative to what they were before US imports are up massively because we needed to switch sources. However we’re becoming more and more energy independent through renewables, not less so.