Excuse us as we vent our spleens at Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission and former deputy leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, a party that is not Christian, is barely democratic and is not a union. It certainly isn’t on the right in any meaningful sense despite posing as one, while both it and von der Leyen backed every progressive fad that came along from open borders to refusing to arm Ukraine to shutting down Germany’s nuclear plants. Ever the avatar of what passes for cutting-edge thinking among the Davoisie, she now says that it was a “strategic mistake” for European countries to turn away from atomic energy, the one reliable baseload form of low-carbon affordable energy humanity possesses, which provided a third of Europe’s electricity three decades ago and under a sixth today. But naturally she voted for it.
As recently as 2024, by which point she had rethought that particular stampede by the herd of independent minds (the only real opposition to the plan was from the far left, which wanted to do it faster) she was in favour of the Energiewende not as something that should be made to work but as something that had worked:
“We invested massively in renewable energy. And we are investing in the fuels of the future, like for example clean hydrogen. And the result speaks for itself. In the first half of this year, 50 per cent of all our electricity generation came from renewables. Wind and solar generated more electricity than all fossil fuels combined. Putin’s attempt to blackmail our Union has not only utterly failed, actually he triggered the boost of European home-grown, renewable energy that makes us independent. And we have learnt our lesson. When we speak about our energy, we have to produce more of our own energy – more renewables, more nuclear, more efficiency.”
Well, yes, the results speak for themselves. Europe is deindustrializing, and has very little military power. Even with this fabulous “clean hydrogen” which, as you may well have imagined, is a purely rhetorical achievement; the EU’s own summary of “Energy statistics“ in May 2025 didn’t even use the word hydrogen, never mind the subset that is “clean”. You would think someone with such a disastrous track record would experience occasional hints of self-doubt. But it seems not.
And another thing. As Matthew Wielicki wrote on his “Irrational Fear” Substack:
“Renewable energy infrastructure does not run on sunlight and wind alone. It runs on enormous quantities of raw materials. Solar panels require silicon, silver, and specialty metals. Wind turbines depend on rare-earth magnets. Electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries require lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, manganese, and a host of other minerals. These materials must be mined, processed, refined, and manufactured into finished products. And in the modern global economy, those steps are overwhelmingly concentrated outside the United States and Europe. China dominates the refining and processing of many of the minerals that underpin the renewable energy economy.”
Despite which a curious Bloomberg Green article insisted that:
“The European Union has already seen the benefit of pivoting to renewables after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though it also sought alternative sources of gas which are now under threat. Between 2019 and 2024, EU countries installed enough wind and solar capacity to avoid burning 92 billion cubic meters of gas and 55 million tons of hard coal in 2024, according to Agora Energiewende.”
But governments throwing money at expensive trendy forms of energy isn’t a “benefit”. It’s a money pit. Hence the desperate search for alternative sources of gas everywhere but the blindingly obvious one: lift your stupid bans on domestic fracking.
We bring up that point particularly because one very typical politician reaction to the crisis has been to try to get more oil to market not by producing more but by emptying strategic reserves. After decades of hearing experts say markets are short-sighted and governments far-seeing, it’s amazing to watch this panicky reaction. And what do you do once the tanks are empty? Simpletons who, say, drive trucks for a living would point to refilling them. Politicians turn to wind power, and not in a good way.
In this context we must also lament Donald Trump removing sanctions on Russian oil currently at sea. Yes, America’s allies need help. But it’s very short-term, especially with the Kremlin evidently helping the mullahs target American forces. If only Europeans hadn’t been such smug dunces on energy for so long.
