alt Hacker NewsI don't understand leadership thinking. Surely spending €250B on a continental scale renewable energy project would have a relatively short payoff time (on country scale) given the instability of relying on foreign energy sources. I mean how long does oil have to sit above $100/barrel before it costs everyone that much anyway?
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> spending €250B on a continental scale renewable energy project
Let me stop you there: the EU budget for 2026 was €193B. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/budget/www/index-en.htm
Basically Europe doesn't have political leadership, nor does the EU itself have a budget larger than the member states like the US Federal budget. In return, the EU, primarily Germany, has imposed "fiscal discipline" which prevents running a short term large deficit in order to make this kind of capital investment.
Also, two hundred billion Euro is a lot of money for anyone who isn't an AI startup.
It's a mix between decades of brainwashing, fossil-lobby having the bigger paychecks, unstable times, and all leaders fear to invest in something new and uncertain. In every industry/organization there is the old saying that nobody ever gets fired for supporting/using the established solutions. This is the same situation, there is more motivation for staying with the known paths, especially after there is strong propaganda against the new paths.
The problem is that 30-50% of voters would just look at that and say:
Why are you spending €250B on corporate subsidies instead of giving us €250B?!
The recent "Offshore Wind Investment Pact" announcement was aiming for 1 Trillion euro of investment into North Sea wind by 2040.
Plus there's lots of other stuff happening. Also lots of pushback from those clinging to fossil fuels.