When the Trump administration reached a trade deal with the European Union this week, the tariffs got much of the attention. But the agreement also includes a remarkable provision that could more than triple the amount of oil and gas America sells to the European Union.
Under the trade deal, the 27-country bloc says it will buy $250 billion in energy resources from the United States every year through the end of President Trump’s term. That’s a huge jump from the $70 billion it now buys, mainly in the form of crude oil and liquefied natural gas.
Analysts say it would be almost impossible to meet that sales target. Nevertheless, the terms, even if realized only in part, could have far-reaching effects on Europe’s economy and politics.
A significant change in fossil fuel use in Europe, one of the world’s biggest economies, could affect how quickly the Earth’s atmosphere continues to heat up, and thus, the fate of billions of people around the world. The burning of fossil fuels has raised global temperatures and aggravated heat waves, fires and floods, including in the United States and Europe.
Fossil fuels have shaped America’s interests abroad for decades. But rarely has an American administration used fossil fuel exports so aggressively as a political and economic tool in the energy choices countries make.
“This will strengthen the United States’ energy dominance, reduce European reliance on adversarial sources, and narrow our trade deficit with the E.U.,” the administration said in a fact sheet, referring to the European Union’s stated objective to reduce, if not eliminate, its purchasing of fuel from Russia.
A deal to buy so much energy from one country flies in the face of Europe’s other worry: energy security. Europe has been succeeding at weaning itself off Russian gas.
But the Trump deal could risk locking in dependence on the United States, and that’s not the only question surrounding the details of the agreement.
Could Europe even buy that much?
No, according to energy industry analysts. The dollar figure is “so far away from what is really possible that it has the hallmarks of something said just to get an agreement over the line,” said Chris Aylett, a research fellow at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank based in London.
The European Union’s official statistics show that it imported an estimated $70 billion of oil and gas from the United States and $26 billion from Russia last year. So even if the European Union replaced all its Russian imports with American ones — which is a tall order on its own, given that U.S. fuels are shipped rather than piped — it wouldn’t make it halfway to the agreement’s target.
Europe is also rapidly adding renewable energy infrastructure. The countries of the European Union together are the leading importers of Chinese-made solar panels, and China now sells one in five electric vehicles bought in Europe. The European Union has adopted a law to have renewable energy sources make up at least 42.5 percent of its energy consumption by 2030, up from a quarter currently.
“Europe is well on its way to independence, thanks to the rapid growth of renewables,” said Laurence Tubiana, a former French climate diplomat who now heads the European Climate Foundation, an advocacy group. “It doesn’t need more high-price, high-risk L.N.G.,” she added, referring to liquefied natural gas.
There’s another hitch. It’s unlikely that E.U. political leaders have authority to dictate whom private companies buy energy from.
The agreement says it could also include the export of American nuclear technology to Europe. But analysts said the most promising technologies around a new generation of reactors were still years away from being ready to deploy.
Could the Trump administration slow down Europe’s climate ambitions?
It could, in two ways.
First, if Europeans end up buying more oil and gas over the next three years, it would increase Europe’s climate pollution. Second, U.S. gas is in liquefied form, and its carbon dioxide emissions are 10 times that of an equivalent volume of piped gas from Russia and elsewhere. That’s because more energy is required to liquefy it, transport it by ship and turn it back into gas.
The Trump deal could also bolster the president’s far-right political allies in Europe, who have sought to scuttle the European Union’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over time. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has proposed reducing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by 90 percent by 2040, compared with 1990 levels. The European Parliament has yet to agree on the proposal.
This isn’t just about Europe
Fossil fuels were a central focus of the United States’ other recently announced trade deals. Japan, for instance, agreed to invest billions of dollars in the United States, including on a major expansion of U.S. energy imports, according to the White House.
The Trump administration has been pressuring Japan, South Korea and other Asian nations for months to finance a $44 billion liquefied natural gas project in Alaska. The project has been stalled for many years over questions of who will pay for it and whether Asian demand will last long enough into the future to justify it.
Most liquefied natural gas projects have an estimated life span of 40 to 50 years, and countries like Japan and South Korea have pledged to make their economies carbon-neutral by 2050.
COP30
Dance poles and leopard-print walls: love motels ready rooms for climate summit
The suite, with its crisp white sheets and tiny soaps, could almost pass for any no-frills hotel room. That is, if it weren’t for the mirrored ceilings and the dance pole by the bed.
The décor of Motel Secreto, on the fringes of the Brazilian city of Belém, normally serves as a backdrop for lunch-hour trysts, clandestine affairs and passion-struck lovers seeking a few hours of privacy away from cramped family homes.
But the love motel, like others across Belém, is now preparing rooms that range from the sensual to the raunchy for a different kind of guest: diplomats and climate scientists, civil servants and environmental activists, all descending on the city in November for the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP30. — Ana Ionova
Ask NYT Climate
We love our dogs and cats. But are they bad for the environment?
Our dogs and cats provide all kinds of benefits. They improve physical health, reduce stress and can fend off loneliness.
Research shows that interacting with pets can lower blood pressure. Dogs need walks and playtime, which helps people stay active. And dogs and cats can form deep bonds with humans. Basically, they enrich our lives.
“There’s a whole body of literature supporting that,” said Pieter De Frenne, a bioscience engineer at Ghent University in Belgium.
Yet for all the good, pets come with environmental costs. Cats and dogs eat a lot of meat, for example. They also kill wildlife.
So, how can you get all those benefits and keep the environmental, um, pawprint, as low as possible? Here’s what the experts had to say. — Rachel Nuwer
More climate news from around the web:
Two-thirds of Africa’s population can’t afford a healthy diet, according to a new United Nations report highlighted by The Associated Press. Climate change is one of the driving factors of the continent’s food insecurity, the report found.
Bloomberg reports on how Scotland got residents to love wind power, after one project was stalled for decades.
The Texas floods in July rank as the 10th deadliest flash floods in United States history, according to an analysis by Yale Climate Connections.
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