A widening gap in energy strategy is separating Europe from its Asian counterparts. While China’s renewable power capacity crossed a historic threshold in 2024, the European Union spent hundreds of billions of euros securing energy imports and built new institutional machinery to purchase natural gas. The divergence raises hard questions about whether Europe’s crisis-driven pivot to liquefied natural gas has locked in fossil fuel dependence at the very moment Asian economies are pulling ahead on decarbonization.
China’s Clean Energy Surge Outpaced Demand
China added so much wind and solar capacity in 2024 that renewables reached 56% of installed capacity, according to data from the National Energy Administration (NEA). That means more than half of the country’s installed power capacity is now in renewable sources, a shift that took less than a decade to accomplish at industrial scale.
The speed of that buildout carried a global consequence. Growth in China’s clean power output outpaced rising electricity demand, which allowed the country to cut into its fossil fuel generation even as its economy continued expanding. That dynamic strengthened the role of clean power in meeting demand growth, a shift that could influence global emissions trajectories and the timing of a potential peak in power-sector pollution.
The conventional assumption in many Western policy circles has been that China’s coal fleet would keep growing in lockstep with its economy, locking in decades of high emissions. The 2024 data tells a different story: new clean capacity is absorbing demand growth before coal plants can claim it. If that pattern holds, it could mean China’s power-sector emissions peak sooner than most forecasts anticipated just two or three years ago, with knock-on effects for global carbon budgets and the competitiveness of low-carbon industries.
Europe’s Fossil Gas Pivot After Russia
Europe’s energy crisis after the cutoff of Russian pipeline gas forced a rapid restructuring of fuel supply chains. The EU moved away from Russian deliveries and toward a far more prominent role for liquefied natural gas, a shift that the European Commission has described as part of structural changes in gas markets during 2023. By the fourth quarter of that year, Commission monitoring showed that LNG accounted for 41% of EU gas supply, underscoring how central seaborne gas had become in a short period.
That shift was not passive. The Commission actively created mechanisms to aggregate demand and jointly purchase gas, launching its fourth tender for joint purchases in late 2023 to secure volumes from international suppliers. The United States emerged as the leading supplier of LNG to the EU during the second quarter of 2023, according to Eurostat trade data, cementing a new transatlantic energy trade that partly replaced the old pipeline relationship with Russia.
These procurement drives stabilized markets after the worst of the crisis, helping to avoid physical shortages and easing the price spikes that battered households and industry. But they also embedded a long-term commercial relationship with fossil gas suppliers that will be difficult to unwind quickly. Long-term contracts, new import terminals and expanded regasification capacity all create economic and political constituencies with a stake in keeping LNG flows high, even as climate targets demand rapid reductions in fossil fuel use.
The financial scale of this dependence remains enormous. In 2024, the EU imported 720.4 million tonnes of energy products worth €375.9 billion in total, according to Eurostat. While that figure was down from the crisis peaks of 2022, it still represents a massive capital flow directed toward fossil fuels rather than domestic clean energy infrastructure. Every euro spent on imported gas is a euro not invested in wind turbines, grid upgrades or battery storage that could reduce future import needs.
Coal Fell, but Gas Filled the Gap
One complicating detail often lost in the “Europe doubled down” narrative is that EU coal production and consumption hit historic lows, according to the latest Eurostat data. That decline is real and significant, reflecting the closure of mines and coal-fired power stations across the bloc. It also shows that the crisis did not trigger a wholesale return to coal, despite fears in some climate circles that governments would revert to the dirtiest fuels under pressure.
Yet lower coal use does not automatically translate into a structurally cleaner energy system. In many member states, gas has replaced coal in the power mix, and the new LNG supply chains have created their own form of carbon lock-in. Combined-cycle gas plants are often framed as “transition” assets, but once built, they tend to operate for decades, shaping dispatch patterns and investment decisions long after the immediate crisis has passed.
The distinction matters because natural gas, while less carbon-intensive than coal per unit of electricity, still produces substantial greenhouse gas emissions. When upstream methane leakage from LNG extraction, liquefaction, shipping and regasification is factored in, the climate advantage over coal narrows considerably. Europe’s coal-to-gas switch looks like progress on paper, but it may be trading one fossil dependency for another rather than making the structural leap to renewables that China executed in 2024.
The Ukraine Transit Cutoff Tightens the Vise
The end of Russian piped gas transit via Ukraine on January 1, 2025, removed one of the last remaining channels for Russian gas into Europe. The International Energy Agency’s Gas Market Report for early 2025 warned that this cutoff could increase EU LNG import requirements and tighten market fundamentals further. In practical terms, Europe now needs to source even more seaborne gas to fill the gap, which means higher costs and greater competition with Asian buyers for the same global LNG cargoes.
This dynamic creates a feedback loop that works against Europe’s climate goals. Tighter LNG markets push prices up, which in turn makes gas contracts more politically sensitive and encourages policymakers to secure additional long-term deals to shield consumers from volatility. Those contracts then lock in future LNG purchases, complicating efforts to phase down gas use in line with the EU’s emissions targets.
At the same time, the growing appetite for LNG in Europe risks crowding out supply for emerging Asian economies that are trying to manage their own transitions away from coal. While China has raced ahead on renewables, many other Asian countries still rely on imported gas as a bridge fuel. If European buyers dominate the market, they could inadvertently slow the pace at which those countries can shift to cleaner power systems, undermining global climate progress.
Strategic Choices for the Next Decade
The contrast between China’s clean energy surge and Europe’s gas-heavy response to crisis underscores a broader question about strategic sequencing. China used a period of strong demand growth to saturate its grid with new wind and solar, allowing clean generation to outpace consumption and displace fossil fuels. Europe, confronting an acute supply shock, prioritized security of supply through LNG, even as it continued to expand renewables and improve efficiency.
Whether the EU can now pivot from emergency procurement to structural decarbonization will shape global energy markets for years. Accelerating investment in grids, storage and flexible demand could allow Europe to reduce gas-fired generation more quickly, easing pressure on LNG markets and freeing up capital for domestic clean industries. Conversely, if LNG infrastructure and contracts continue to expand, the bloc risks locking itself into a slower, more expensive transition just as competitors consolidate their lead in low-carbon technologies.
The widening gap is not yet irreversible. Europe’s coal decline, its existing renewable base and its institutional capacity all offer a platform for a faster shift away from gas. But closing that gap will require treating LNG not as a new normal, but as a rapidly shrinking backstop in a system increasingly dominated by clean electricity, closer to the trajectory now emerging on the other side of Eurasia.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
