View / Energy is the exposed flank in Europe’s rearmament

By most measures, NATO’s summit in Ankara this month was a success. Allies pledged €70 billion in military equipment, assistance, and training for Ukraine this year and committed to sustain at least that level in 2027. European members and Canada, having increased core defense investment by more than $139 billion in 2025, announced over $50 billion in new procurements. For an alliance that has spent a decade fielding questions about its own cohesion, this was a demonstration of real seriousness.

But in the summit declaration, the call on Iran to respect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz was the lone reference to energy.

One sentence.

Yet as NATO leaders gathered in Ankara, Russian missiles struck Kyiv; on the summit’s final day, the ceasefire in the Gulf collapsed, tanker traffic through Hormuz stopped once again, and Brent moved back above $80. The bookends underscored an essential truth: Over the past four years, the price of energy has done more damage to Europe than any kinetic weapon. It has shuttered factories across Germany’s industrial heartland. It has driven inflation that ultimately toppled governments. It has forced European taxpayers to spend roughly €650 billion shielding households and businesses from cost-of-living crises.

If a hostile air force had inflicted this kind of damage, it would dominate every paragraph of every communiqué the alliance produced.

So with the summit behind us and winter ahead, Europe stands in a more precarious position than most of its leaders are willing to say out loud.

Start with the basics. Europe came into the spring with gas storage at its lowest starting point in four years, drawn down by a cold winter and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Today, storage sits around half full, at a point in the calendar when it has typically been closer to three-quarters. Europe’s own energy regulators calculate that refilling before winter will require LNG imports roughly 13% higher than last year, at a moment when Asian buyers — also restocking after the Gulf disruption — are competing for the same cargoes. Brussels has already lowered its storage mandate from 90% to 80%. And yet, incredibly, Europe has imported more Russian LNG this year than last.

Four years into this war, Europe is still funding Moscow for the privilege of remaining vulnerable to Moscow.

Three weeks ago in London, at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, I shared a stage with General Sir Richard Shirreff, who served as NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. An audience member asked him how Europe got itself into this position, and his answer has stayed with me: “toxic complacency.” And he offered a soldier’s remedy. Energy security, he argued, has to be run on the same principles as any defensive position: mutual support and strategic stockpiles.

Here is what that would mean in practice for Europe’s energy policy.

Mutual support: Dan Jørgensen, the EU’s energy commissioner, said on that same London stage that Europe’s approach amounts to “27 people building a jigsaw puzzle without looking at the picture on the box.” He is right, and everyone in Brussels knows it. Interconnection, joint planning, shared reserves — that is how 27 exposed countries become a continent, one that is very hard to coerce.

Maintaining reserves: Gas storage, interconnectors, and the subsea cables that stitch Europe’s grid together are defense infrastructure, and they should be funded, hardened, and patrolled as such.

In May, I argued that energy produced at home carries a sovereignty premium — a strategic value beyond its market price. There is no clearer example than storage. Filling the tanks at today’s prices does not pencil out for a trader, yet should happen anyway, because the alternative is negotiating with your suppliers at the height of winter. NATO’s Hague defense framework already allows allies to count resilience and infrastructure toward a 1.5% investment band. Energy storage and grid hardening belong in that category.

And then there is the deeper answer, the one I will keep repeating because it remains true: Europe must build the energy that cannot be blockaded. Once wind, solar, and batteries are installed, no strait has to stay open and no ceasefire has to hold for the power to keep flowing. Ukraine has proven the military value of this under fire. Distributed solar and battery systems have kept lights on through bombardments that took large, centralized plants offline. Europe also needs firm, sovereign, clean power, meaning life extensions for the nuclear fleet it has, new construction where the public supports it, and geothermal where the geology allows it.

Ankara proved that Europe can still summon real unity and real money when it takes a threat seriously. Energy has been used as a weapon against Europe twice in four years, and it will be again. Deterrence in this decade will be counted in megawatts as well as divisions, and Europe does not get unlimited winters to learn this lesson.