New EU Energy Phase

Yana Popkostova, Founder & Managing Director, European Centre for Energy and Geopolitical Analysis

Europe’s energy system has entered a new phase, defined less by access to supply and more by the ability to operate under sustained stress. Writing ahead of SuperReturn Energy Transition in Berlin, Yana Popkostova argues that energy security has reasserted itself as a strategic and systemic concern, no longer defined only by supply access but by the resilience of interconnected systems. The Middle East conflict illustrates the point: Europe’s direct reliance on Gulf molecules is limited, yet it remains exposed to global price and allocation dynamics that cascade across transport, agriculture, manufacturing and defense faster than institutions can respond.

On the shift from Russian pipeline gas to USLNG, Popkostova frames it as a move from contractual dependency to market exposure. Pipeline systems operated within relatively stable contractual frameworks; LNG is a globally traded commodity redirected in real time to the highest bidder. Europe is therefore exposed less to physical interruption than to competition for access—a dynamic she describes as Europe operating as a “structural price-taker,” with direct consequences for industrial competitiveness. EU gas storage currently below one-third of capacity limits the available buffer.

On critical minerals and clean technology, she pushes back on the “swapping one dependency for another” framing as analytically insufficient. The transition redistributes risk across different layers of the system: fossil exposure was concentrated upstream in resource ownership; in the emerging system, it shifts downstream into processing, manufacturing and system integration. China consolidated control across this entire sequence through deliberate industrial strategy. Europe’s response, she argues, is not self-sufficiency but selective de-risking: diversifying supply, building domestic capacity in critical segments, and anchoring partnerships with trusted partners.

On infrastructure, Popkostova identifies execution capacity as the binding constraint. Around 40% of Europe’s distribution grid is over 40 years old, procurement times for critical components run three to five-plus years, and over a third of the energy workforce is nearing retirement. The next energy shock, she concludes, is unlikely to be a supply interruption—it will be a failure of system operability.

Full Q&A: SuperReturn Energy Transition →