I felt greatly honored to speak in Ireland, the home of my ancestors, at a high-level Irish-Polish event, invited by the Polish embassy as part of Poland’s Presidency of the European Council. [Spoiler alert: my assessment of the Green Deal’s impact on EU energy security and competitiveness was highly critical. And, I called for a radical reform, modeled on the 1970-80’s French Messmer nuclear program, the response to a similarly dire European energy and competitiveness crisis.]
For Ireland we had Secretary General Oonagh Buckley and Wind Energy Ireland CEO Noel Cunniffee; for Poland, Daniel Piekarsky, Head of Energy Security Unit in the Foreign Ministry, and myself, Global Fellow of the Wilson Center, Washington (external) working in Europe, from Berlin.
Our moderator, from the Polish Embassy, Dublin, was the Polish diplomat and patriot, Dr. Jacek Rosa — a good friend, with whom I had the great pleasure of closely collaborating, for several years, in opposition to the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas-pipeline partnership, before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Below is the lineup, the initial invitation and some pictures. The event was off-the-record, so I show here only my own, slightly redacted talk.
Opening of Nord Stream1 pipeline, 2011. Gazprom via PAP
Below are links to 12 articles that appeared in the Polish press in the last few months, interviewing or quoting me on four topics I feel are important. The topics are listed in the title above.
The links are below, sorted by topic. The first or left column has English translations of the titles, and the second or right column has the original Polish — which unfortunately I don’t speak! If you follow the links, Google Translate or Deepl will translated the Polish articles pretty well into English. My special thanks to the intrepid Polish journalist, Artur Ciechanowicz at BiznesAlert in Warsaw for his interviews in the list. (I also had about 33 quotes or interviews in several other languages since December [1]).
ENGLISH titles and links:
On German (far-right) & USA (Trump) each plotting a Russian gas return to Germany
A former Stasi agent lobbies for the resumption of Nord Stream. Expert: One of the gas pipeline lines ready to be launched,, By,:Artur Ciechanowicz, March 3, 2025, biznesAlert.pl
Some EU countries believed that Gazprom gas would be in Europe forever BiznesAlert.pl
“Like a Drug Addict Returning to Heroin.” Analyst on the Idea of Unblocking Gas Imports from Russia to Europe, Author: Artur Ciechanowicz, February 1, 2025, 07:21
Failures of EU Green Deal on technology and energy security.
American expert: recommendation to reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2040 is “fantasy” | Energetyka24
Expert: EC recommendation to reduce gas emissions is fantasy wpolityce.pl
Unrealistic EU climate plan. Expert opinion crushes – Super Business
“Rearranging deckchairs on the sinking Titanic”. Expert slams the eco-target dictates of Brussels Eurocrats – PCH24.pl
Trump, EU & Poland: Ukraine War crisis.
First talk with Putin. Trump has visions of ending the war in Ukraine | Newsweek Jan 21
How Trump Can Bring Down the Russian Economy: Analysts: He Has an Arsenal of Means to Do It, By Artur Ciechanowicz, Jan 24, 2025 | Biznes Alert
Trump may use [oil] sanctions to finish off Moscow, which is running out of money for the National Welfare Fund. – 16 January 2026 UBN
Expert: Washington, London, Warsaw should work quickly. Kiev can’t afford to be patient – Dziennik.pl
German deindustrialization: Energy & economic crisis
Major shoe retailer goes bankrupt A sharp increase in bankruptcies in Germany
Polish titles and links:
First topic.
Agent Stasi lobbuje za wznowieniem Nord Stream. Ekspert: Jedna z nitek gazociągu gotowa do uruchomienia biznesalert.pl
Część krajów Unii uwierzyła, że gaz z Gazpromu będzie w Europie na zawsze BiznesAlert.pl
“Jak powrót narkomana do heroiny”. Analityk o pomyśle odblokowania importu gazu z Rosji do Europy | BizNes Alert
2nd Topic
Amerykański ekspert: zalecenie redukcji emisji o 90 proc. do 2040 r. to „fantastyka” | Energetyka24
Ekspert: Zalecenie KE redukcji emisji gazów to fantastyka wpolityce.pl
Nierealny plan klimatyczny UE. Opinia eksperta miażdży – Super Business
“Przestawianie leżaków na tonącym Titanicu”. Ekspert nie zostawia suchej nitki na eko-dyktaturze brukselskich eurokratów – PCH24.pl
Third topic
Donald Trump chce uchronić świat przed III wojną światową | Newsweek
Jak Trump może złamać rosyjską gospodarkę?
Trump may use [oil] sanctions to finish off Moscow, which is running out of money for the National Welfare Fund. – UBN
Ekspert: Waszyngton, Londyn, Warszawa powinny szybko działać. Kijowa nie stać na cierpliwość – Dziennik.pl
[1] Other than being cited/interviewed in Poland, I was also quoted elsewhere about 33 times so far in 2025, mainly in the USA, with many then translated to languages of Europe, Asia and Latin America. I never know what to do with all these print interviews. Here at GlobalBarrel.com, I often publish videos of some of my live-on-air expert commentary, usually accompanied by a detailed blog post. So, my idea is I will make a new tab at the top of the GlobalBarrel.com site, next to the “About Me” tab, where I can simply list link to my recent press citations or Op-Eds. [Back to text]
10-12 February, I was invited to contribute to the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on critical European infrastructure, organized in Podgorica by the Atlantic Council of Montenegro, a NATO member, and The International Society for Risk Management (ISRM), Serbia, a non-NATO member. This partnership plus experts from neighboring states made the workshop on risks to regional and West Balkan infrastructure very informative. I felt quite honored, as a regional outsider, an American working on EU energy and geosecurity (based in Berlin), to be invited. Conference FB link
I planned to discuss drivers of EU deindustrialization, but decided to focus on one sharp example: how tech failures in the EU’s energy-infrastructure model, the Green Deal, is causing the unexpected 2025 EU natural gas crisis. This comes while gas prices were still high and supply still problematic from the 2022-23 Energy War – caused by Russia maliciously stopping Nord Stream pipeline flows. This new hit to European competitiveness and security was, however, an eminently avoidable “own goal.” (The workshop discussion is off the record, but I may post my own talk.)
How has the Green Deal model caused another gas crisis?
The EU Green Deal model requires installation of high percentages of wind and solar renewables. However, to supply energy reliably, installation of wind and solar renewable (RE) technology must be paired with installation of sufficient universal, long-term, grid-scale storage (ULTGSS) technology. The idea is excess electricity generated on very sunny, windy and mild days should be stored to compensate supply on dark, calm and cold days. (Let’s put aside, for now, expert debunking of this RE-plus-storage model using weather and tech data.) Over-installation of solar and wind beyond what can be backed up by some other source, is a critical vulnerability to energy infrastructure reliability during periods of cloudy, calm and cold weather. This is called “Dunkelflaute” in German.
However, the reality is that, after some four decades of storage-tech R&D, such a technology still does not exist. There is no lack of studies and data on this. However, EU members remain mandated by the Green Deal and ancillary EU and/or national laws to continue installing ever higher percentages of renewable generation.
As a result, Dunkelflaute conditions in late-November and early December 2024, and again in February 2025 across northern Europe led to prolonged periods of plunging RE generation. Without the aforementioned ULTGSS backup (my acronym), the “de facto ULTGSS” has primarily been natural-gas-fueled generation, plus importing of nuclear, hydro and coal generation from neighboring countries having excess capacity in these.
My talk was an analysis the root cause for another EU natural gas crisis this winter. I explained that the EU’s initial win in the energy war imposed on it by Putin, overcoming the initial, acute crisis of 2022, is nevertheless evolving dangerously into a Pyrrhic victory – into a defeat. This is because EU energy policy, the Green Deal, has critical technological failings, and the present EU Commission leadership refuses to reform it, rejects any serious criticism of the model, and is instead doubling down on an all-renewables system ASAP. In fact, it is assumed that Van der Leyen will announce, late in February, adoption of a new, more “ambitious” target of 90% net-zero emissions by 2040 relative to 1990. (GlobalBarrel.com readers might recall I termed this as “fantasy” in Op-Eds last year in the Polish daily press and elsewhere.)
A Green Deal reform, based on science, is not inherently “right”, “center” or “left”
I explained why a radical reform of this Green Deal model should not be a matter of political philosophy, rather ait requires only an honest recognition that the tech simply does not exist for this scale of installations. Refusal to reform is no longer only anti-science Green populism. After ca. 15 years of this Green Model’s hegemony in various member states, then in Brussels, ALL PARTIES are beset with ideological-scientific confusion and need a certain fresh start, a reeducation or green-energy deprogramming. In particular, center-right parties, such as the CDU in Germany, are typically confused in that they tend to see the entire problem as one of the methods of financing the Green Deal (and the German Energiewende, which provided the model the Green Deal is based on). They focus on having less government mandates, less subsidies, more public financing, and a more liberal, interconnected electricity market in Europe. All well and fine. However, if one is talking about alchemy, funding the transmutation of lead into gold, then it matters little how efficiently it is financed, and how liberal is the market model. In this case, the problem is that a highly RE based model (much less the German, Spanish, Austrian, etc. model of 100% renewables), lacking any universally applicable, long-term, grid-scale storage, is simply energy-infrastructure “alchemy”. It is simply impossible without an entire parallel natural gas system on standby awaiting any instance of Dunkelfloute. This is a disaster, an impossibly complex and expensive model that guarantees ever deeper EU deindustrialization.
Even the farthest right and left parties are hesitant to embrace a fundamentally different model of massive large-scale nuclear as the basis, with also extensive electricity-fueled mass transit build-outs as a clearly already-proven model. The alternative is further high energy prices, deindustrialization and undercutting of European security.
I appeared alongside Dr. Hashem Aqel, Oil and Energy Expert, Associate Fellow at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, who contributed several insights. Asharq News is the Mideast Bloomberg partner. My further analysis follows:
Arabic, original broadcast version.
The recent rise in EU gas prices and the rapid depletion of what had been a significant surplus in EU storage, is principally a two-sided story.
One side is indeed about the impending cutoff of Russian gas, still flowing across Ukraine. This has been expected for months, and so is already largely priced in. Expectations of new transit across Ukraine of Russian-origin gas re-labelled as Azerbaijani was being negotiated. However, this deal fell apart, with the final nail in its coffin being when Ukraine’s President Zelensky asserted that Ukraine would not transit any further Russian-origin gas after 31 December unless payments to Russia are withheld until after the war ends. This seems a very reasonable demand for a country fighting for its survival against a Russian invasion. [See “Ukraine will not allow transit of Russian gas with Azeri label, Zelenskyy says, dashing Slovak hopes,” EuroNews, Jorge Liboreir 19 Dec. 2024.] This marks the end of the five-year contract, which was only agreed to at the last moment before New Year 2020, when the US Senate finally forced then-President Trump to agree to sanctions on Nord Stream 2 construction (I was in Kyiv, for Naftogaz, and on Ukrainian television, analyzing Washington sanctions, Kyiv-Moscow negotiations, and the pro-Nord Stream position of Berlin.)
The other side is a story of yet another European energy own-goal, a consequence of its over-reliance on weather-dependent renewable energy generation. This overreliance has made its electricity supply increasingly volatile, in sync with the weather. In November and early December, especially north and western Europe experienced what the Germans call “Dunkelflaute“, a protracted wind and solar drought. Batteries can only substitute for perhaps 40 minutes, or at best an hour. So, the de facto long-term, grid-scale “storage” backing up Europe’s plethora of wind and sun generation is really just natural-gas turbine electrical generation plants. The reality of increased generation (and hence, electricity market) volatility and dependence on gas backup generation was analyzed this week in a data-driven manner by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. [See: “Dunkelflaute: Driving Europe Gas Demand Volatility” Energy Insight: 161, by Anouk Honoré and Jack Sharples, Senior Research Fellows, OIES, 2024/12.]
This is a continuation of my remarks in Warsaw, on 18 November.Part 1, which posted on 19 December, reviewed failures to develop critical tech elements required by the EU Green Deal, a program modeled on the German Energiewende. I argued that, after decades of R&D efforts, these technology failures indicate the systemic failure of heavily renewable models, pointing to a need for “radical reform” of the Green Deal. I advocated for the historically proven Messmer model, which succeeded, some 40 years ago, in decarbonizing French electrical generation using nuclear power, without any need for new grids or long-term grid-scale storage tech.
Below, Part 2 (edited for clarity) focuses on the political intransigence of the new Von der Leyen commission, which is doubling down on the Green Deal’s renewable model. I argue this is not “reindustrializing” Europe or making it “more competitive” as claimed, but rather driving it into deindustrialization. This mirrors the process underway in Germany via its continuing push for new “green tech,” on the theory this should spark a broad new European industrial competitiveness. From an historical perspective, this is theoretical and practical nonsense – or so I argue. Critiques are welcomed. (PS, Happy holidays!)
Leon (moderator): So, I’m going to turn to Thomas again. You argued that that some form of radical overhaul is necessary, you know, with regards to the EU Green Deal, if I understand it correctly, and you’ve cited one of the issues is the complexity of the fact that there are certain technologies that haven’t emerged over the last 30 years that have just been growing incrementally rather than rapidly to meet our needs. But at the same time there’s seems to be some sort of political rationale for why this sort of revolutionary approach. How would you respond to that?
Tom: Yes, politically, I do think the new Commission presents a big problem for European competitiveness, for energy policy and security.
The new commission is anti-energy-policy reform
Firstly this is because Ms. Teresa Ribera, from Spain, is President Von der Leyen’s new chief executive vice-president. She is in charge of attaining both the Green Deal and has also been given responsibility for “industrialization of Europe,” for making it competitive again.
The problem is, Ms. Ribera is a true believer in all-renewable energy systems, I would say a career-long renewable fundamentalist.
For example, she’s said to be so good at negotiating that she managed to get the Spanish nuclear industry and civil society to agree on a timetable to close all the Spanish nuclear power plants, and she’s very proud of this. This is politically and ideologically identical to what Mr. Robert Habeck, the German Green Party leader, who is energy and economics minister, carried out with the approval of Chancellor Scholz of the SPD-party. Habeck closed Germany’s last three nuclear power plants during a wartime, Russian-instigated, European energy crisis.
The fact that Von der Leyen fought hard to appoint Ribera and then put her in charge of the Green Deal and of European industrialization, and made her the most powerful commissioner, the executive vice president of the commission, shows that Von der Leyen, a member of the German conservatives, the CDU, has no interest in reform of the renewables model despite its suffering technological failures on several key aspects.
The problem is not that Europe has not had an industrial policy. Europe has had an industrial policy, one that has failed
I’ve been thinking about what to say on Monday in Warsaw: at the “Energy Security in Central & Eastern Europe” conference. As soon as I saw the title of my panel: “Does EU Climate Policy Need Evolution or Revolution? What Should We Change in the European Green Deal?” I accepted! This question goes beyond politics – left, right or center – it is a pressing matter for European energy security
Then, I recalled my syndicated interview with Polish AP’s Arthur Ciechanowicz (Brussels) this February. It’s exactly what I should say in Warsaw (see below: LHS in EN, RHS in PL), especially given President Von der Leyen’s choices of long-time anti-nuclear politicians to be her top commissioners for climate and (re)industrialization (Teresa Ribera), and for energy (Dan Jørgensen). (**Details in footnotes). See what you think.
First, a personal note: As some of you know, this is an idea I’ve been floating in Berlin since well before Corona. Then, last October, I had an experimental test run, a one-off, sponsored by the Qatari embassy’s Divan – and it went very well.
However, the biggest success from that event was that Ben Aris, co-founder and editor-in-chief of bne IntelliNews enthusiastically joined me to found the Berlin Energy Forum as a regular monthly sort of membership club. Amongst the longest serving foreign correspondents in Eastern Europe, Ben has been covering Russia since 1993, with stints in the Baltics and Central Asia. He is a former Moscow bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph and was a contributing editor at The Banker and Euromoney for a decade amongst writing for many other publications. He is also a professional photographer, and nowadays based in Berlin.
Ben is one of those rare people who relishes doing analysis and data-driven writing (non-stop!), AND who knows how to do business – and thoroughly enjoys doing it. Just the partner for this endeavor.
My model and inspiration for this forum was always the New York Energy Forum, which has run for over 40 years now. I happily attended while teaching in NYC. My experience with that forum, plus familiarity with a few top DC think tanks, and various foreign diplomats (esp. in NYC/UN), is how, as an academic, I got to know a broad spectrum of USA oil and gas executives, journalists, financial-institution analysts and government officials. Those personal connections have, over the years, anchored my assessments of USA, of OPEC MENA-and-Latin American members’, and of Russian and Chinese strategy. This sort of community doesn’t exist in Europe in such a focused manner, save perhaps in London. Perhaps we can now bring a bit of that world to Berlin with our new BEF.
Berlin Energy Roudtable. L to R: Ben Aris, Tom O’Donnell, Morten Frisch & Andriy Kobolyev (video link from Kyiv) 24 October 2023, Haus der Bunderpresskonferenz – PHOTO GALLERY BELOW(Divan staff)
On 24 October, I was honored to moderate a great roundtable in Berlin with three European energy experts, sponsored by Der Divan Kulturehaus. SUGGESTION: While listening, open up that speaker’s file below. You’ll find Ben Aris’ data-slides on Russian price-cap failings, Andriy Kobolyev’s proposal to tax Moscow’s oil & Morten Frisch’s slides on EU renewable shortcomings & continued oil and gas needs.
I had a good live talk with CGTN TV hosts on my analysis of a growing “asymmetry” in energy relations between the EU and Russia.
Especially in natural gas, the EU is increasingly dependent on Russian supplies while Russia is decreasingly dependent on its EU market.
Under Putin, Russia and Gazprom have constantly worked not only to:
Build new pipelines to Europe (principally via the Baltic Sea-to-Germany) so as to detour its exports around Ukraine. This has enabled Putin to committ his present massive aggression there without risking delivery of Gazprom gas to its European markets west of Ukraine. However it has also worked to
Diversify its market for natural gas away from Europe. This includes 10-15-years of projects to build new major pipelines to China and Eurasia and plans for more still (e.g., Power of Siberia 2 pipeline), and to build large-scale LNG export terminals, owned mainly by Russia’s Novatek firm, in its Arctic regions and on Sakhalin Island in the far east. This gas is relatively sanctions-proofed in that it can be delivered by ship to any world market, though it mainly goes to Asia where LNG prices are generally highest.
I explain that this growing asymmetry is precisely why the USA-and-EU have NOT included energy sanctions in their package retaliating for Putin’s present war on Ukraine.
Dr. Thomas W. O’Donnell, Berlin 27.01.22 (Polish original 22.09.22)
Photo from interview in Bankers.pl (in Polish-language)
Printed in Polish by Banker.pl as Komisja Europejska może uznać energetykę jądrową za “zieloną”2021-09-22, from a written interview with Artur Chierskiwsky (PAP, Brussels) Here’s the unpublished English.-Tom O’D. [Edit:: Headline word “betrays” was initially miswritten “belays”].
Reportedly, the EU Commission plans to soon include nuclear power in its green finance taxonomy, finally making it eligible for favorable financing and carbon credits on a par with wind and solar.[1]
This could be spun two ways: as a victory for science over populist capture of climate policies, or as a tipping point in Brussels angst at the growing complexities and costs of the “100% renewables and no nuclear” model.
In reality, it’s some and some.
On the one hand, in March, the Commission received reports solicited from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), its scientific expert arm, finding that nuclear waste is “manageable”, posing no “significant” harm to the environment, and that nuclear energy has been demonstrated to be eminently safe.[2]
However, these assessments are not surprising. Had the Commission requested these years ago, they undoubtedly would have concluded similarly. Nuclear, public-health, risk-assessment and other expert bodies have been saying these things for years (full disclosure: my PhD is in experimental nuclear physics [3]).
The question then is, why is this scientific consensus only now becoming actionable for the Commission?
ENGLISH – Dr. Tom O’Donnell spoke from Berlin (Українське відео розміщене нижче)
Українська мова: з Берліна говорив доктор Томас О’Доннел
Here is my talk [English & Ukrainian videos] for the Ukraine Energy Security Dialogue of 01.12.21, via Zoom, organized by Kyiv’s Dixie Group. Program & Speakers are below.
I outlined failures of the legal and political models Russia’s Gazprom has embraced to eventually bring the Nord Stream 2 pipeline into operation under the anti-monopoly provisions of the EU’s Third Energy Package law..
Critical observers have understandably interpreted the public optimism and “gas-Godfather”-like posturing of Kremlin and Gazprom officials as evidence of self-confidence, even arrogance. In contrast, here I outlined what actually amounts to a history of repeated failures of Nord Stream 2 AG strategies.
I termed its first two failed strategies as “Plan A” and “Plan B,” and the current one as “Plan C.”
Note: The Polish Interpreter’s voice dominates; however with headphones I could follow the English. Apologies, there’s no separate English audio.
“Cooperation in energy transformation and trade to increase the economic strength of the Three Seas Region …”
Kongres590 – Warsaw – 14 October 2021
Moderator: prof. dr. hab. Zbigniew Krysiak, Chairman of the Program Council of the Institute of Schuman Thought Panellists:
Dr. Thomas W. O’Donnell, (PhD Nuclear Physics; Lecturer in Berlin & Energy & Geopolitical Analyst),
Julius Zellah, (President of the Light for Africa Online Foundation)
Paweł Kotowski, (Deputy Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Jarosław Malczewski, (President of the Polish Dairy Group),
Dr. Krzysztof Malczewski, (President of the B-2M Company)
Key points of my talk:
1. Poland has no previous experience in nuclear energy; and this is a difficult problem that needs to be tackled starting now. Also, any institute needs a sufficient scale to guarantee both high standards and employment security to those trained for industry, academia, safety, and planning. It is for this reason that nuclear training in Poland’ should be done jointly, together with all 12 of the Three Seas Initiative members (i.e., the eastern EU member states, and this may soon include also Ukraine – many of which countries already have established nuclear programs). And, as part of the Three Seas Initiative, this means also in conjunction with the USA, in particular its Department of Energy with a vast network of nationl laboratories and obviously decades of nuclear experience to draw on. Continue reading →
Video is set to Dr. Fadi Birol’s interesting answers to my two critical questions. However, I recommend going back and watching his entire talk – and others.
I was quite happy with the answer of IEA (International Energy Agency*) director, Dr. Fadi Birol, to two critical questions I posed, first on how the European Commission should include nuclear power in its “green financing taxonomy,” and secondly, against German over-reliance on variable renewables (I termed this “renewable fundamentalism”) which I said produces high “organizational entropy,” that is, unworkable and unaffordable, completely “reinvented” so-called “smart grids” with “grid scale stage” whose technology is not sufficiently developed all to cope with the problem of unavoidable wind and solar energy fluctuations, which become more massive as the percentage of installed renewables increases. This is a significant contribution to Germany’s (and the EU’s) present crises of energy supply and price security. (The video above is set to start at my two questions.)
The Global Barrel 