The Electrostate should form part of Europe’s answer to Trump and Putin

29 January 2026

Energy is the lifeblood of the global economy. The availability of cheap and plentiful energy resources facilitated the last industrial revolution, and a shortage of it may stymie the next one – the transition to the age of AI. Energy markets have driven all kinds of global events, from the oil crisis of the 1970s, to the wars in the Middle East of the 1990s and early 2000s, to the decapitation of the Maduro regime in 2026.

It is for those reasons that energy is the ultimate tool of economic coercion. We are all too familiar with this experience. In 2022, Russia weaponised Europe’s reliance on its oil and gas as it prepared to invade Ukraine, causing Eurozone inflation to surge past 10%. In response, Europe worked to diversify its energy supply, in part by importing huge amounts of shipped American Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). According to a recently published study, US LNG now accounts for 38% of European gas imports. We have effectively substituted a dependence on Russian energy with a dependence on American energy. Given the events that transpired in Davos last week, that is an uncomfortable position for Europe to be in.

Europe, unlike the USA or Russia, is not blessed with vast oil and gas reserves. Therefore, for as long as the European economy is run on fossil fuels, it will always be vulnerable to the whims of foreign powers.  

The good news is that there is a solution. As the International Energy Agency has made clear – across the world – we are entering the Age of Electricity. Economic strength will no longer be defined by what a country can extract and burn, but by countries having the power to power themselves. This shift is giving rise to a new kind of nation: the electrostate.

The ‘electrostate’ is a relatively new term, but a recognisable concept. Simply put, it is a country that produces lots of clean electricity and uses it to power its homes, transport and industry. An electrostate can be born by backing renewable generation with storage, smart grids and forward planning.

The concept of the electrostate plays to Europe’s strengths. While we as a continent are short on oil and gas reserves, we are blessed with an enormous potential for solar and wind power generation.

Europe’s number one hotspot for clean energy generation is the North Sea region. This week, Taoiseach Michéal Martin and Energy Minister Darragh O’Brien will join their counterparts from Belgium, Denmark, France, the UK, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Iceland at the 2026 North Sea Summit, which will be hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Hamburg. The stated goal of the summit – “to develop the North Sea into the largest reservoir of clean energy in the world” – is being couched in terms of security and energy independence. It is no accident that the summit will also be attended by the European Commission and NATO.

Ireland could play a leading role in bringing about this exciting new future. We are already a world leader in the technically demanding challenge of integrating renewable energy onto the electricity grid. No other country in Europe gets a larger share of their power from onshore wind energy than we do and our project pipeline grows every month.

Now we need to build on this, to accelerate the development of onshore renewables and to finally take the incredible opportunity presented to us by our offshore wind resources.

When we can harness the full potential of our offshore wind, Ireland will generate more electricity than we could ever use, transforming an island once dependent on energy imports into a net producer of clean power.

But delivering more renewables is not enough to turn Ireland into Europe’s first electrostate. We also need to shift how we use energy, away from oil and gas and towards electricity. There is no point in having the world’s largest reservoir of renewable electricity on our doorstep if we aren’t going to use it to power our economy.

This means switching out engines for batteries in our cars and our public transport systems, with expansion projects like DART+, Metrolink and the light rail projects proposed for Cork and Galway. It means replacing inefficient oil and gas boilers with efficient heat pumps to make our homes warmer. It also means delivering new Green Energy Parks that can rapidly decarbonise our industrial sector.

If we can do that, Europe will be much more resilient to foreign strongmen and dictators using energy as a weapon of economic coercion.