For years, Europe treated fossil dependency as an economic question and decarbonisation as an environmental one. The last few years collapsed that distinction. The faster Europe acts on it, the stronger it gets.
For a long time, two of Europe’s biggest agendas ran on separate tracks. Energy security was an economic and geopolitical concern about prices, supply, and trade. Climate action was treated as a separate environmental commitment, often framed as a cost. Recent crises erased the line between them. Volatile fossil prices, fragile supply chains, and external political pressure made one thing clear: the dependency that threatens Europe’s economy and the dependency that drives its emissions are the same dependency. So the way out is the same too.
That is the shift worth understanding, and the opportunity inside it. Reducing fossil dependency is no longer a trade-off between competitiveness and climate. It is a single project that serves both. Once that clicks, the question stops being whether Europe should act and becomes how decisively it can move.
A dependency that is structural, not temporary
Europe remains heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels and fossil-based raw materials. Oil, gas, and coal still dominate the energy system, and many industrial value chains depend on fossil inputs, including steel, chemicals, and energy-intensive manufacturing. This exposes Europe to price volatility, supply disruptions, and external political pressures largely beyond its control. Nevertheless, it is not a passing vulnerability that a calmer geopolitical moment would resolve; it is built into the structure of the system.
As global competition for resources intensifies and trade flows fragment, long supply chains that once looked like efficiency now look like exposure. Recognising that the dependency is structural is not a reason for pessimism. It is what makes the case for acting decisively, because only structural change solves a structural problem.
Why is reducing fossil dependency a security issue?
This is why the merged agenda is an opportunity rather than a burden. Shifting from imported fossil fuels to domestically produced renewable energy and sustainable raw materials does several things at once: it lowers exposure to global price swings, reduces import dependence and external political pressure, and gives industry the predictability it needs to invest. Renewable electricity, green hydrogen, sustainable fuels, and circular material flows are not just emissions-reduction tools. They are instruments of strategic autonomy that keep industrial value creation inside Europe. Decarbonisation, in other words, has quietly become Europe’s most credible security policy. That reframe changes both what counts as a “climate investment” and who should care about one. It is the same logic now visible in EU initiatives such as the Clean Industrial Deal and REPowerEU, which treat decarbonisation, competitiveness, and security as one agenda rather than three.
Where dual-use technologies link energy security and defence resilience
The clearest sign of how far this shift has gone is that Europe’s defence community is now arriving at the same conclusion. A December 2025 European Parliament briefing on the link between energy security and the European defence industry makes the case plainly: energy is no longer a background condition for defence but a strategic variable shaping operational readiness and industrial resilience. The same fossil dependency that exposes Europe’s economy (57% of the EU’s primary energy needs were still mainly imported fossil fuels in 2024) exposes its armed forces, while attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines and on Ukraine’s grid have shown how energy infrastructure has become a target.
What turns this from a vulnerability into an opportunity is the dual-use character of the technologies involved. Deployable microgrids, portable solar and wind systems, energy storage, hydrogen, and sustainable fuels strengthen civilian resilience and military operational autonomy at the same time. Innovation moves in both directions: clean technologies developed for civilian markets are adapted for defence, while defence-driven R&D has a long history of spilling back into civilian use, from GPS to semiconductors. The European Investment Bank has tripled its defence-related financing to up to €100 billion, with energy grids and hydrogen systems explicitly included.
For Europe, and for the regions and ecosystems building the clean energy transition, this widens the strategic case considerably. Every domestically produced megawatt and every resilient regional energy system contribute to both decarbonisation and to defence.
Closing the gap between ambition and delivery
Europe does not have a strategy problem. Its targets for climate neutrality and industrial resilience are clear and ambitious. What remains hard is turning ambition into bankable, scalable projects. Industry still faces real uncertainty over shifting regulation, slow permitting, infrastructure that struggles to meet demand, and uncertain future demand. In emerging markets such as renewable hydrogen and e-fuels, supply and demand each wait for the other, the familiar chicken-and-egg problem that stalls first movers. Crossing this frontier will not come from writing better strategies. It will come from de-risking the first wave of projects through public policy, public-private cooperation, and risk-sharing mechanisms that move pilots to full scale.
Resilience is built regionally
The most important insight in this transition is also the most overlooked: self-sufficiency is not delivered from the centre. It is built in regions.
Regions that combine renewable energy, industrial demand, research capacity, logistics, and public engagement move from concept to deployment far faster than centralised programmes alone. They do four things that matter:
- Connect producers with off-takers
- Reduce project risk
- Accelerate learning and replication
- Anchor new value chains locally
Hydrogen valleys, clean industrial hubs, and regional energy clusters are not pilot curiosities. They are the working prototypes of European resilience, showing how local strengths deliver continent-wide objectives. This is where ambition becomes real, and where the gap between strategy and delivery starts to close.
What it means for industry
For European industry, moving beyond fossil raw materials is both a demand and an advantage. It requires new investments, skills, and operating modelsand business plans but it also produces future-proof competitiveness, as low-carbon products and resilient supply chains become genuine market differentiators. Early movers who engage in pilots, partnerships, and standard setting get to shape emerging markets rather than react to them.
From dependency to resilience
Europe’s resilience will not be built overnight, but every investment and policy decision made today shapes tomorrow’s level of dependency or self‑sufficiency. By focusing on domestic renewable energy, sustainable raw materials, and strong regional ecosystems, Europe can move from reactive crisis management toward proactive resilience building. The question is no longer whether to reduce fossil dependency, but how decisively and coherently Europe is willing to act.
Finland’s role, and how CLIC Innovation moves the transition forward
At its core, the challenge Europe faces is a challenge of connecting things: renewable resources to industrial demand, strategy to bankable projects, regional strengths to European goals.
Finland is well positioned to strengthen national and European security of supply, building on a diverse energy system, strong industrial clusters, and advanced research and innovation capacity. The focus is increasingly on scaling fossil-free solutions, including renewable electricity, hydrogen and Power-to-X, and the circular use of materials, while ensuring permitting, infrastructure, and skills keep pace with investment.
CLIC Innovation’s role is to make those connections happen. As an ecosystem orchestrator and project enabler, CLIC brings companies, research organisations, public authorities, and financiers together to tackle system-level challenges and translate long-term policy goals into concrete, investment-ready initiatives. Through strategic research and innovation agendas, ecosystem facilitation, and project preparation, CLIC reduces the uncertainty and risk that hold first movers back, and links regional ecosystems to European-level initiatives.
That is how the transition away from fossil dependency accelerates: not as a trade-off against competitiveness, but as the route to it. Resilience, climate action, and strategic autonomy are advanced together, for Finland and for Europe.
For more information
Sources
- European Commission – REPowerEU Plan: reducing fossil fuel imports and strengthening energy security. https://commission.europa.eu/topics/energy/repowereu_en
- Frank Elderson, European Central Bank – “Europe’s fossil fuel dependence poses risks to price stability”, The ECB Blog, 7 April 2026. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2026/html/ecb.blog20260407~dfa96b8bfc.en.html
- European Commission – Clean Industrial Deal: competitiveness, decarbonisation, and resilience. https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/clean-industrial-deal_en
- Nature Communications (2026) – “Aligning EU energy security and climate mitigation through targeted transition strategies”, vol. 17, article 875, 7 January 2026. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67595-7
- European Commission – Hydrogen Valleys S3 Partnership (Regional Policy). https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/policy/communities-and-networks/s3-community-of-practice/partnership_industrial_mod_hydrogen_valleys_en
- Clean Hydrogen Partnership – Working with the regions: the role of hydrogen valleys. https://www.clean-hydrogen.europa.eu/get-involved/working-regions_en
- Heidecke, L., Dijkhof, Y., & Cinova, D. (2025). The critical link between Energy Security and the European Defence Industry. European Parliament, ECTI Briefing PE 780.411, December 2025. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/780411/ECTI_IDA(2025)780411_EN.pdf