economics Paradigm Challenge

Policies designed to make Europe 'green' are inadvertently enriching the oil and gas industry and accelerating the collapse of European manufacturing.

April 1, 2026

Original Paper

<div> <p><span>Energy Sufficiency as a New Model of Economic Development for the European Union</span></p> </div>

Ilia Balashov

SSRN · 6402458

The Takeaway

The 'energy sufficiency' model was intended to decentralize power. Instead, it has enabled corporate lobbyists to capture new forms of 'green rent,' leading to higher inflation and a more concentrated power structure for existing energy giants.

From the abstract

<span>We have analyzed the concept of <i>energy sufficiency</i> as a logical continuation of Georgescu-Roegen's ecological economics of the 1970s and the basis of the European Union's current green course. The possibilities for implementing this development model in the next 5–7 years have been assessed. The author combined three political-economic approaches — A. Krueger's rent-seeking theory, P. Haas's theory of epistemic communities, and S. Strange's concept of “structural power” — for a comp