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Security must keep pace with Europe’s offshore wind expansion, EIES report warns.
Europe is funding its Chinese battery dependence, EIES report warns
Sixteen independent energy security experts, including Albéric Mongrenier, EIES’ Executive Director, and General Tom Middendorp (Ret.), member of the ESLC-E, former Netherlands Chief of Defence, Chairman of the International Military Council on Climate and Security, have written to Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, urging a stronger response to the ongoing global oil and gas crisis.
The group of former military chiefs, academics, and geopolitics experts says that accelerating the transition to clean, safe, and affordable energy systems is a security imperative. It calls on the IEA to provide guidance to governments on how to reduce exposure to volatile oil and gas markets, as it did to the EU immediately after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, 13 February, SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy and the European Initiative for Energy Security (EIES) hosted a high-level dinner on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, ‘The Elements of an Alliance? NATO’s critical minerals imperative.’ The dinner brought together representatives from NATO and Allied governments, and leaders from the defence and minerals sectors to assess how the Alliance can deliver the greatest value in coordinating and implementing new investments in critical minerals supply chains and best align with efforts by the US, EU, G7, Allied nations, and Asian partners.
On Friday, 13 February, SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy and the European Initiative for Energy Security (EIES) hosted a high-level dinner on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, ‘The Elements of an Alliance? NATO’s critical minerals imperative.’ The dinner brought together representatives from NATO and Allied governments, and leaders from the defence and minerals sectors to assess how the Alliance can deliver the greatest value in coordinating and implementing new investments in critical minerals supply chains and best align with efforts by the US, EU, G7, Allied nations, and Asian partners.
Sixteen independent energy security experts, including Albéric Mongrenier, EIES’ Executive Director, and General Tom Middendorp (Ret.), member of the ESLC-E, former Netherlands Chief of Defence, Chairman of the International Military Council on Climate and Security, have written to Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, urging a stronger response to the ongoing global oil and gas crisis.
The group of former military chiefs, academics, and geopolitics experts says that accelerating the transition to clean, safe, and affordable energy systems is a security imperative. It calls on the IEA to provide guidance to governments on how to reduce exposure to volatile oil and gas markets, as it did to the EU immediately after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
We are writing as practitioners of energy, economic, environmental, and national security at a moment when all of these, as well as Europe’s industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy, are threatened by China’s dominance of critical resources and supply chains.
Building better batteries and secure supply chains has been a top-of-inbox issue for Western political and industrial leaders for several years, initially driven by the push for electric vehicles. More recently, COVID and the Ukraine war have alerted us to both our near-total dependence on China, and the dangers of depending on adversaries for the building blocks of modern economic and military power. Meanwhile, battery capabilities have soared, and prices plummeted, in one of the greatest, if less heralded, innovation revolutions of recent years.
Brussels
27 October 2026 - invitation only
Europe's energy grids have become frontline security assets, not just power infrastructure. This event, co-hosted by EIES and Statnett, brings together NATO, EU and industry voices to examine what secure-by-design, market-integrated grid reconstruction actually requires, and how public and private capital can be mobilised once credible security guarantees are in place.
Warsaw
October 2026 - invitation only
EIES’ annual Energy Security Summit convenes senior figures from government, defence, business, think tanks and media. As Poland executes the most significant grid modernisation in its history, integrating offshore wind, nuclear and distributed clean power, the summit weighs what a redesigned energy system and a stronger industrial base mean for Europe’s strategic autonomy and economic resilience.
Warsaw
29 September 2026 - invitation only
On the sidelines of the New Mobility Congress in Warsaw, EIES hosts a roundtable on “Made in Europe,” local content criteria, and precautionary resilience to drive demand for European-made clean technologies in Poland’s fast-growing mobility and clean-tech sector.
Brussels
2 September 2026 - invitation only
Co-hosted by EIES and T&E, the roundtable brings together around 20 policymakers and industry leaders from across the entire battery value chain to examine concrete proposals for ensuring that the IAA establishes a framework conducive to the development of strategic technologies in Europe. The IAA is, to date, the most far-reaching policy response in this space, but its proposals need to be strengthened to build a competitive supply chain on European soil.