EU bets €25bn on importing green power from North Africa and the Middle East

EU bets €25bn on importing green power from North Africa and the Middle East The Commission's €25bn T-Med plan targets 15 GW of North African and Middle Eastern green power by 2035, but does nothing for Europe's near-term winter supply squeeze. On Tuesday (2026-06-09), the European Commission set out a plan to help build 15 GW of green power capacity across the Middle East and North Africa by 2035, backed by a €25bn fund and new cross-border electricity and hydrogen links to Europe, under what it calls the Trans-Mediterranean renewable energy and clean tech cooperation, or T-Med, initiative.⁶ On the same day it pledged €5 billion of EU money to renewable projects in the region that could eventually feed power back into Europe's grid.⁷ The wager is geographic. The EU is betting that the future of its electricity system lies under the North African sun, eenews.net reported, with solar and wind farms exporting electrons north across the Mediterranean.⁷ For a bloc that still imports most of its fossil energy, that is a real change in where Europe sources power. It also pays off in 2035, not this winter.⁶ The push is framed as security, not climate. Geopolitical volatility will "absolutely" accelerate the development of renewables in Europe, EU competitiveness commissioner Teresa Ribera said on Thursday (2026-05-21), arguing the Middle East war has exposed the risks of fossil fuel dependence.² There is an awkwardness in courting the same region for clean power. The conflict the Commission cites as its motive runs through the Middle East, the very area now lined up to host EU-financed solar, wind and hydrogen.^2,6 Brussels is betting that long-run renewable links prove more durable than the oil and gas flows the war has disrupted. None of this touches the immediate squeeze. European gas inventories began the 2026 injection season around 7.2 bcm, or 17%, below last year's level, Timera Energy said on (2026-05-19), with a TTF forward curve pushed into backwardation by Middle Eastern supply disruption.³ ICE Endex TTF front-month was last around €46.77 (2026-06-14). That tightness was flagged early. Europe would face a tighter energy supply situation from April as the war derailed key oil and gas exports, analysts told Montel in late March (2026-03-25), though they expected government-led policy to soften the crunch.⁴ With near-term prices elevated relative to winter delivery, the economics of injecting gas do not stack up, and the market is under-filling against the rate needed to hit the Commission's 80% storage mandate, Timera said.³ Its model puts roughly $0.40/MMBtu of January-2027 TTF upside on every 1 bcm less gas in store at end-September.³ Utilities are hedging the near term with coal, not Saharan sunlight. European thermal coal imports were set to reach a five-month high in April, up 25% on the month and 10% on the year at 2.27m tonnes, provisional Kpler vessel-tracking data showed on Friday (2026-05-15), as buyers stocked up against further gas price spikes linked to the war.¹ Colombian supply led the rise, climbing 48% from March to 1.12m tonnes.¹ Private money is already moving into the region's clean-energy supply chain. ZOE Energy Storage agreed a joint venture with a Saudi partner in late May (2026-05-26) to build the kingdom's first large-scale battery manufacturing plant, with an initial phase targeting 6 GWh of annual capacity.⁵ The distance between announcement and delivery will decide whether T-Med matters. A 2035 target, €25bn of stated funding and undefined interconnectors are commitments, not megawatts.⁶ Cross-border hydrogen links in particular have a record of slipping. The €5bn pledged is real money, but it is a down payment on a system that does not yet exist.⁷ For traders, T-Med changes little before 2030. The prices that move this year sit elsewhere: how fast storage refills against the 80% mandate, whether coal imports keep climbing into the summer, and whether the Middle East disruption Brussels cites as both threat and opportunity eases or deepens.^3,1² The end-September storage figure will set January TTF. A solar farm in the desert will not.