In Towards war ecology (2024), Pierre Charbonnier returns to the air conditioning of international relations in Europe that the “Petro-aggression” (Jeff Colgan) of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. With what he calls the“War ecology”THE “Carbon dividends” – to transpose the original expression of Laurent Fabius to the “Peace dividends” – are no longer as profitable as they have been since 1945.
The democratic and economic pact of the post-war period consists in the promise of material abundance, based on the ability of states to hold fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas). The emergence of ecological emergency, from the 1980s, struck this vision of energy sovereignty. Ecology only appears to be alors as a vow, helpless, akin to a liberal pacifism in international relations.
There is thus an asymmetry between the legitimacy of the environmental cause and its real effectiveness in public policies and in international relations. At the European Union level, this makes it possible to shed light on the lively controversies of 2019 around the Green Pact for Europe (“Green Deal”), which sets the ambitious objective of carbon neutrality for 2050. It is still difficult to accept that the “Carbon peace” of the post-war period be a “Ecological impasse”to use Pierre Charbonnier’s words.
In February 2022, a historical opportunity opens with war between Ukraine and Russia, considerably changing the representation of the green pact. The naivety of the European Union energy strategy is revealed in broad daylight: almost 50 % of the gas imported by its member countries comes from the Russian Federation. To speak like Bruno Latour, there is a forced “landing” of ecological questions, in this case energy, on the track of strategic security questions posed by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
“The European objective of decarbonation is going through an internal bad pass”
The security argument brutally overlaps with the climate argument. Long reluctant to the challenges of ” power “, ecology converted, almost in spite of itself, to the “Geopolitics”as Pierre Charbonnier writes. Energy sovereignty is now less linked to the ability to have fossil energy than to the ability to do without it.
Acting “ecological realism”
While the European Union must establish military sovereignty in the face of the isolationism of the United States, the stake of energy sovereignty is nonetheless at the agenda. According to the philosopher, the turning point of war in Ukraine calls for a “Ecological realism”both in military and economic strategies.
Published in September 2024, the report of the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, is alarmist on the future of Europe’s competitiveness in post-carbon industry. The integration of European countries into this new global economy will go less through decrease, than by the revival of sluggish growth using an ambitious industrial strategy. Conversion to the post-carbon economy is not cyclical, but truly structural.
As for good news, in January 2025, as part of the Beauthyfuel, Turbotech, Safran and Air Liquid project announced the crossing of a threshold in the decarbonation of light aviation: they successfully demonstrated the first gas turbine supplied with low carbon hydrogen. A stage all the more beneficial when the Trump administration has paused its projects on sustainable aviation.
Two months later, the news of the bankruptcy of the manufacturer of Swedish batteries Northvolt weakens the European objective of prohibiting the sale of new heat engine vehicles from 2035, decided in April 2023. However, in the ecological conversion of the European Union, electrification and decarbonation operate as communicating vases. At the same time, the European supply of fishing electric vehicles and consumer demand are not yet up to expectations.
“The European Union must be re -enchanted strategically”
The European objective of decarbonation is going through a bad pass in -house. Externally, the table is not much more brilliant. While the Trump administration declared a pricing war on China, the latter aims to feed Europe with own technologies, after having borrowed the turning point in solar and wind power. European manufacturers are facing unfair competition from Chinese companies, including the competitiveness of products, especially electric cars, could attract consumers, even European states close to Beijing.
Growth by decarbonation
It is in this delicate context that the European Commission presented on February 26 the first version of the Clean Industrial Deal (CID) to more than 100 billion euros. If the formatting of the issues of energy sovereignty is made, it is now a question of operating their strategic and normative formatting to be up to it.
First of all concerning electrification, which, as we have just seen, is a key issue of decarbonation, the text offers a drop in the cost of electricity, in particular by the lever of the taxation of the Member States. Also, if only to take advantage of the American slowdown in this area, the emphasis is placed on the pursuit of the European agenda on low carbon hydrogen. Measures will help economic sectors whose electrification is not yet a viable decarbonation solution.
For the financing of the measures proposed, the text evokes the creation of a European investment bank on clean technologies in order to promote investment in industrial decarbonation. The acceleration of decarbonation cannot be done without simplifying procedures for public aid. The Commission recommends a shortening of deadlines for sectors with high competitiveness, where international competition is intense such as electric automobile and batteries, which echoes what we previously mentioned. Finally, in order to guarantee the social acceptability of this industrial decarbonization strategy, a European Fair Transition Observatory to ensure a socially just ecological transition, if only to avoid new dividing lines within the European Union, in particular vis-à-vis the countries of Eastern Europe.
Dead angles
However, however a decarbonized energy, the deployment of nuclear energy is the large absent from the text. Defender of this French strategic interest, Commissioner Stéphane Sévisnéné faced Teresa Ribera, the executive vice-president of the European Commission, favoring renewable energies to nuclear energy.
Also, at the end of 2024, in the context of the global crisis in the steel industry, the ArcelorMittal group announced the drop in its investments in the decarbonation of steel in Europe. More generally, the Cleantech sector in Europe deplores the drop in investments in France and Europe after an increase constitutes. Faced with what seems to be a dead angle of the Clean Industrial Deal, the Cleantech for France coalition requires an increase in national and supranational public investments to deal with global competition. In addition to these efforts, the actors wish to strengthen carbon protectionism at community borders, to allow better efficiency of the structural investment plans in decarbonation.
During the presentation of the Clean Industrial Deal, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, assured that the European Union would have its objective of reduction by 55 % its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. An ambitious roadmap, which remains to be declined in legislative measures in a European parliament largely recomposed during the last elections in June 2024. Depreciation of peace and carbon dividends, the European Union must be re -enchanted strategically.
Gauthier Simon is a associate researcher in the “European affairs and public affairs” pole of the Think Tank Tank responsible.
