European leaders were already deeply motivated to reduce their countries' reliance on imported oil and gas after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine cut off most pipeline gas supply to the continent. The Iran crisis has reinforced that commitment. But the strategy Europe has chosen may be creating a new vulnerability as dangerous as the one it is trying to escape.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O'Sullivan warn that a European approach based on electrification and the expansion of domestic power generation using renewable sources "also carries risks, because it would increase the continent's dependence on Chinese-dominated clean energy supply chains." In trying to escape one form of geopolitical exposure, Europe may have to accept another, as detailed by Foreign Affairs.

The scale of China's grip on clean energy inputs makes the problem acute. Beijing commands the refining of critical minerals and leads global manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles. When China restricted rare-earth exports in 2025, European automakers scrambled to source parts, some production lines shut down, and prices for key EV components soared.

The authors argue that the lesson from 2025 was unambiguous: dependence can be weaponized in the clean energy economy just as easily as it has been in the fossil fuel market. The clean energy transition, far from eliminating geopolitical risk, "has layered new vulnerabilities atop old ones."

Bordoff and O'Sullivan suggest that rather than pursuing energy autonomy, governments should manage interdependence more effectively - mitigating the most critical vulnerabilities without abandoning the efficiencies of global trade. For Europe specifically, that could mean diversifying clean energy supply chains away from China by working with countries in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere to build critical mineral refining and processing capabilities.

The authors caution that over time, the efforts of individual countries to insulate their domestic markets could reshape the global energy system entirely. Trade may be rerouted as countries prioritize security over cost, and investment may be driven less by market signals than by geopolitical considerations.

Also read why Europe has politically foreclosed energy options it still possesses.