Decarbonised defence

Europe is beating war drums, planning massive defence spending, and advising citizens to prepare 72-hour emergency packs of water and electronics for an unspecified reason that appears to be highly humourous to crisis commissioner Hadja Lahbib.

If one must name two things that successful defence rests on, they would be cheap energy and steel. It would therefore no doubt come as a massive surprise to everyone that drum-beating Europe has neither, for extremely complicated reasons that have nothing to do with EU policies at all. But it plans to have both, have them soon, and have them green. Of course.

On March 19, the European Commission released an Action Plan on Steel and Metals, in which it acknowledged the critical importance of the steel sector “in the current geopolitical context” and went on to admit said sector was not doing terribly well right now because of “high energy costs, unfair global competition, and the need for investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

These are all very serious problems for such a critical industry that just got a lot more critical with that defence plan that the EU can’t decide how to call, so it’s using both names (ReArm Europe Plan and Readiness 2030). To solve them, as is its now established habit, the EU will do mutually exclusive things. This level of consistency, self-destructive as it is, certainly deserves a kind of admiration. The schadenfreudig kind.

In fairness, this could be a really short post, with me just quoting the power purchase agreements that the Commission proposes as one solution to the energy cost — and greenhouse gas emission — problems. But since PPAs, no doubt with wind and solar producers at preferential terms, are not the only weapon in the EU’s problem-solving arsenal, it will be a longer post, also featuring carbon taxes, a reduction in imports, and “a strong plan” to respond to Trump’s tariffs that are set to enter into effect today.