Al Jazeera: Strategies for energy security and climate protection are one and the same

Not so long ago, the consensus in Europe — and across the Atlantic, too — was that hard-boiled energy security didn’t have time for extravagant clean-energy agendas. Every time Russia shut off Eastern Europe’s gas, some spooked nations questioned the logic of trying to meet EU climate goals while simultaneously wrangling energy independence from Putin’s petro-state.

Even earlier this year — with Moscow’s springtime annexation of Crimea — some politicians panicked: Suddenly fracking was back on the agenda and Europe was once again grasping for new, short-term fossil-fuel sources and routes.

But Europe’s energy security and climate protection strategies aren’t mutually exclusive. On the contrary, it’s by embracing a far-reaching green-energy transition that it will most effectively — and enduringly — be able to slash energy imports from abroad, with their accompanying exorbitant costs. Fortunately, there finally appears to be a shift toward this mentality in Europe, which until now has always seen energy security and climate-related energy concerns as separate issues.
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