For twenty years Germany's energy strategy could be summarised in two words: cheap gas. Nord Stream 1 (2011) and the never-commissioned Nord Stream 2 (2021) were designed to bypass Ukraine and Poland and pipe Siberian gas directly under the Baltic to Greifswald. Politically the pitch was that trade would tame Moscow — Wandel durch Handel. Economically it worked brilliantly for a decade: German industry ran on gas that was 30–50% cheaper than the world price. Then, in September 2022, both pipelines were sabotaged. The most expensive infrastructure Europe ever built to be dependent on Russia became scrap metal within a year.
Europe replaced roughly 130 billion cubic metres of Russian gas in eighteen months. It did so by building, chartering or leasing floating LNG terminals up and down the coast — Wilhelmshaven, Eemshaven, Piombino, Le Havre — and signing long-term supply deals with the two suppliers big enough to matter: the United States (now the world's largest LNG exporter) and Qatar (the world's cheapest). The gas arrived. It cost, at peak, roughly ten times the old pipeline price and forced a continent-wide industrial recession. The bill for that swap will still be paid off in 2035.
The physical replacement was gas. The structural problem is wires. Europe generates increasing amounts of cheap wind in the north (the North Sea, Denmark, northern Germany) and cheap solar in the south (Iberia, Italy, Greece). It consumes electricity in Bavaria, the Ruhr and northern Italy. Between them sit interconnectors that are decades old, chronically congested, and politically expensive to upgrade because pylons have to cross local backyards. Iberian power routinely sells at negative prices while German factories pay a premium. The energy transition is not being blocked by physics or economics. It is being blocked by planning permission.
Heavy industry — chemicals in Ludwigshafen, steel in the Ruhr, aluminium in northern Italy — was built on Russian gas. With that gone, permanently, some of it will not come back. BASF has moved investment to China and the US Gulf; ArcelorMittal has mothballed European lines. Brussels calls the response 'strategic autonomy' and pours money into batteries, chips, hydrogen and green steel. It is a genuine industrial policy for the first time in a generation, but it is being paid for by consumers whose bills doubled while they were told the transition would be painless.
The most consequential energy argument in Europe is not with Russia. It is between Paris and Berlin. France gets about 70% of its electricity from a fleet of 56 reactors built in the 1970s–80s, and is planning at least six more. Germany shut its last three reactors in April 2023 in the middle of an energy crisis, then reopened coal plants to cover the gap. Everything downstream — the EU taxonomy, hydrogen rules, industrial policy, even export credit — is shaped by that fault line. Whichever side wins the next decade of Brussels arguments determines whether Europe re-industrialises around uranium or around imported LNG.