In a speech at Davos last month, President Donald Trump railed against “windmills” as “losers” and called nations that buy them “stupid people.” Just five days later, nine European countries signed a deal to build a vast offshore wind power hub in the North Sea, the epicenter of the continent’s oil and gas industry.
The deal — not a direct response to Trump’s wind-bashing speech — offers an immense potential prize for Europe: it could increase energy security and wean the continent off its heavy dependence on US oil and gas at a time when the US is proving to be a volatile partner.
Europe is one of many energy-importing economic powers increasingly seeing renewables as synonymous with energy independence: India is adding solar at a rapid clip and China installed more wind and solar in 2024 than the total amount of renewable energy operating in the US.
The US is in stark opposition, going all in on fossil fuels while trying to shut down wind and solar projects. On energy, the US is now more “aligned with petrostates like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Russia,” said Thijs Van de Graaf, an associate professor of international politics at Ghent University.
Europe’s gargantuan offshore wind project will be “the largest clean energy hub in the world,” according to the joint declaration, signed by Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK at the North Sea Summit held in Germany in January.
It is expected to produce 100 gigawatts of offshore wind energy — enough to power around 50 million homes — connected to countries through high-voltage subsea cables. It is framed as a way to build energy resilience, provide affordable electricity and safeguard energy security.
Europe, unlike the US, does not have vast reserves of homegrown fossil fuels, and domestic production is falling. A huge gas field in the Netherlands has been wound down after years of causing earthquakes, and production from the aging North Sea oil and gas basin is in decline.
The bloc currently imports nearly 60 percent of its energy. This level of dependence “is a kind of vulnerability… for others to press on,” said Louise van Schaik, a senior research fellow at Clingendael, an international relations think tank based in the Netherlands.
And over the past few years, countries have been pressing on it hard.
Russia has “really used gas as a weapon” against Europe since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, van Schaik said. As Russia reduced flows, prices spiked, pushing up energy bills and helping fuel a cost of living crisis.
Europe moved swiftly to reduce its dependence on Russia, but instead of diversifying, it swapped a reliance on Russia for a reliance on the United States, van Schaik said. Nearly 60 percent of Europe’s liquified natural gas imports in 2025 now come from the US.
The explosion of US LNG powering Europe was an important replacement for Russian gas, but it has also exposed the bloc to volatile natural gas prices that can rise when there is more demand.
“We’ve seen a lot of real economy impacts from not having the cheap Russian gas, then moving to LNG, which was much more expensive,” said Linda Kalcher, founder of EU-based think tank Strategic Perspectives.
What’s more, while relying on the US may have seemed a safe bet a few years ago, it’s looking increasingly shaky under a Trump administration that’s shown no hesitation in wielding its economic might against both foes and allies.
Last summer, as Trump ramped up tariff threats, Europe pledged to buy $250 billion of American oil, gas and nuclear a year for the next three years — more than triple the amount it currently imports from the US.
In October, the Trump administration helped collapse the shipping industry’s plans for the “world’s first global carbon tax” and in November, it published a national security strategy which sharply criticized Europe’s clean energy policies and explicitly said expanding US energy exports “enables us to project power.”
But Trump’s demands to own Greenland — with brief fears he would consider using military force to get it — was the true “galvanizing moment,” Van de Graaf said. It was a huge blow to the transatlantic relationship.
The US is engaging in “bullying tactics,” said Jennifer Morgan, a former German climate envoy. “I think that’s just kind of woken up the EU to the point that they are now very dependent and vulnerable to another leader,” she said.
Clean energy offers a path away from US dependence and toward energy security, experts told CNN. It is something the continent has in abundance from the sun-soaked south to the windy north. The North Sea, with its shallow waters and blustery climate, is the “world’s most promising area” for offshore wind, Van de Graaf said.
Wind and solar generated 30 percent of the European Union’s electricity in 2025, overtaking fossil fuels for the first time. Wind dominates, generating 19 percent of the EU’s electricity last year. “You cannot talk about these energy sources as alternatives anymore; this is the new backbone of our electricity supply,” Van de Graaf said.
Globally, the renewable energy industry does face challenges: raw materials and labor are more expensive, investment levels have faltered, and in the US, Trump is trying — not yet successfully — to kill wind projects, further denting investor confidence. But Europe’s offshore wind deal hopes to bring costs down with its vast scale and emphasis on interconnection between countries.
The way Europe thinks about clean energy has shifted, Morgan said. Where once it was about climate policy, now it’s about cost and politics. Renewable energy has “changed the economics,” she said. “It’s changed the political economy.”
As the Trump administration turns away from clean energy and doubles down on fossil fuels, it’s helping accelerate this clean energy movement across the Atlantic, Van de Graaf said. “In spite of all of his rhetoric, (Trump) is actually doing the renewables business a favor.”
