Europe’s political narrative increasingly presents natural gas as a fading bridge fuel — something to be minimised rapidly on the road toward renewables and hydrogen. From a climate perspective, this ambition is understandable. From an industrial reality standpoint, however, it is dangerously simplistic. Natural gas remains deeply embedded in Europe’s industrial architecture, not only as an energy source, but also as a chemical feedstock, a power-system stabiliser, and a practical enabler of transitional technologies. Declaring gas obsolete before scalable alternatives are fully operational introduces serious execution risks for Europe’s industrial base.
Structural Dependence Across Key Industrial Sectors
The uncomfortable reality is that many core sectors — steel, chemicals, fertilisers, refining, glass, ceramics, and parts of metals processing — still depend structurally on gas. This dependence is functional, not symbolic. Hydrogen-based steelmaking remains largely in pilot or demonstration phases. Large-scale industrial electrification requires grid capacity, price predictability and system reliability that are not yet available across Europe. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure for high-temperature and process-emission industries is still at an early stage.
Meanwhile, regulatory pressure is intensifying, while capital markets increasingly penalise gas-linked investment. Europe is drifting toward a dangerous timing mismatch between climate ambition and industrial capability.
The most significant threat is a premature exit from gas. If availability is constrained or costs are driven sharply higher before transition technologies reach scale, industry is left with three options: shutdown, relocation, or permanent state support. None of these outcomes enhance competitiveness, resilience, or credible climate leadership.
A gas exit that weakens Europe’s industrial capacity and shifts production — and emissions — to other regions may look positive in carbon accounting, but it represents a strategic failure that undermines Europe’s economic and geopolitical position.
Beyond direct industrial use, gas plays a crucial role in electricity system stability. Power systems with high shares of intermittent renewables rely on flexible generation and fast-response balancing capacity. Today, natural gas fulfils that function across most European grids. Marginalising it without a fully tested, scalable and affordable alternative risks grid instability.
In an era of electrification, electricity reliability is no longer just an energy issue — it has become a cornerstone of industrial sovereignty.
Hydrogen: Promise Without Short-Term Scale
Hydrogen is often promoted as the clean replacement that will seamlessly displace gas. In reality, hydrogen availability at scale remains limited. Infrastructure adaptation requires massive capital investment, while cost competitiveness is still unresolved. Gas networks can evolve toward hydrogen compatibility, but presenting this transition as easy or imminent ignores engineering, logistical and political constraints.
Europe must invest consistently and materially — not rhetorically — before hydrogen can genuinely replace gas in industrial systems at meaningful scale.
Europe cannot simply legislate ambition and expect industry to solve physics and economics in parallel. What is required is a sequenced transition: stabilising industry today while building the infrastructure of tomorrow. This means acknowledging gas as a necessary transition fuel, supporting efficient and lower-emission gas-based technologies where they form credible pathways to hydrogen or electrification, and designing ETS and regulatory frameworks that penalise inertia without punishing essential transitional steps.
Gas security of supply remains a critical issue. While Europe has dramatically reduced dependence on Russian gas, it remains exposed to global LNG markets, price volatility and geopolitical risk. Even as demand gradually declines, industrial users require diversified supply routes, storage capacity and contractual stability. Assuming demand will collapse quickly does not change the structural reality that Europe will continue to need gas throughout the transition period.
South-East Europe as a Strategic Stabiliser
This is where South-East Europe gains renewed strategic relevance. The region is emerging as a key geography for gas transit, interconnectors, LNG access and storage — and potentially for future hydrogen corridors. It can act as a stabilising bridge for European industry, sustaining transition-linked capacity while hosting new renewable and hydrogen infrastructure. Rather than treating the region as peripheral, Europe should recognise its role in managing the very timing risk the continent currently underestimates.
Europe’s real challenge is not whether natural gas disappears — it will, eventually. The challenge is whether Europe preserves industrial strength during the decades required to build a fully non-gas system. Mishandled, climate policy risks becoming deindustrialisation by design. Managed intelligently, gas becomes what it should be: a disciplined, strategically managed, gradually declining transition fuel that buys time for genuine technological, infrastructural and market transformation.
Honest policy, realistic timelines, industrial prioritisation and strategic geography will determine which path Europe takes. Natural gas will not define Europe’s industrial future — but mismanaging it could prevent that future from emerging at all.
Elevated by Clarion.Engineer
