E-fuels should become a national security priority

Fall 2032. After months of crises, Russia launches a “special military operation to protect Russian minorities” in the Baltic countries. Limited parts of EU territory are seized. European land forces quickly put the Russian offensive to a halt. But this war is one that Russia intends to win by sieging the European Continent. Swarms of submarine drones start hitting oil and LNG tankers sailing towards western European ports. Oil and gas prices spike. European access to liquid fuels, which are mission-critical for EU navies and air forces, is no longer guaranteed in the medium term. 

This scenario is an adaptation of a realistic scenario published last October by Le Grand Continent. It begs the question: how can Europe win the battle for the Atlantic when it is starved of access to global fossil fuels? 

In the Middle Ages, castles were often lost after long sieges. Food and water were the mission-critical assets of the day. For 21st century Europe, oil and gas continue to represent around two thirds of the final energy mix, and that share is much bigger for the military. And because of its geological uniqueness, Europe imports 90% of its gas and 97% of its oil, almost entirely by sea. 

Oil is a unique energy source. It is energy dense – a lot of energy in a small mass and volume – and an easily transportable liquid. Oil emerged as a strategic energy resource at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the British Navy chose oil over coal.

As modern armies increasingly relied on aviation, tanks and trucks, oil became ever more mission-critical. Among the reasons why the Third Reich and Japan lost World War II is the scarcity of their oil supplies. The Third Reich always was constrained by its lack of access to oil. When the Allies started to successfully bomb the Romanian oil fields, Nazi Germany’s days were numbered. The last Nazi offensive of the war was in January 1945, to retake the western-Hungarian oil fields. 

When it comes to oil, Europe’s position today is more analogous to 1942 Japan. It can access overseas oil. Japan lost that access when the US submarines systematically sank Japanese oil tankers in the Pacific. This contributed to the 1945 Japanese choice to resort to kamikaze attacks, as kamikaze pilots required less oil to be trained, since they do not need to learn how to land. 

Today, although electric drones are ubiquitous, oil remains the central fuel of warfare. This is especially true for the NATO way of war, which relies on overwhelming air support. A single F-35 fighter burns approximately 6.000 liters per hour. So, could European forces win the second battle of the Atlantic if they run out of oil? Probably not. And this is why, more than ever, European freedom depends on a serious e-fuels policy. 

Just like biofuels, electrofuels (e-fuels) constitute a true alternative to fossil oil for European air forces. E-kerosene is a manmade molecule that essentially requires three main inputs: water, CO², and lots of electricity -mostly to transform water into hydrogen and oxygen (Aurora Research 2025). At molecular level, e-kerosene is just like fossil kerosene. It’s a “plug and play solution”, you can blend e-kerosene with fossil kerosene, or even make a jet fighter run only on e-kerosene. 

Today and in the near future, our armies will continue to rely on liquid fuels. While batteries take an increasingly important role for drones, naval and land warfare, the situation will not change drastically for military aviation: the energy density of military-grade kerosene is 43 times higher than the most advanced batteries. 

At this stage of the article, a key question should arise: as e-fuels are vital to ensure European military survival in case of a long confrontation with Russia, what is the EU doing about e-fuels? Short answer: too much, too little and too late. 

Too much. E-fuels are like champagne: expensive, limited in quantity, precious, and to be kept for the most strategic uses. Using a trivial metaphor, yes, you can drink champagne while watching TV and eating chips, but it is neither the best systemic nor cost-efficient tool, as Belgian beer or Czech pils would probably deliver a better service at a lower cost. This is the same for the use of e-fuels in cars. Yes, you can invest hundreds of terawatt-hours of electricity and trillions of euros to manufacture e-fuels for cars, attempt to manufacture social acceptance to pay 6-10€/liter, but it is many times less optimal than direct electrification through battery electric cars. In that context, the current push to dismantle the EU CO² standards for cars regulation to make room for e-fuels is not only an economic, industrial and air-pollution nonsense, it is also a national security threat. For our own security, we need as many civilian vehicles as possible to switch from liquid fuels to electricity, to ensure our soldiers have the greatest possible access to liquid fuels both in times of trouble, and in time of war. So, when it comes to cars and e-fuels, the EU is doing too much. Let’s not add more bureaucracy, let’s not try to fix what is not broken. Let us keep the CO² standards for cars regulation as is and focus on what we still need to do to rise to the moment. 

Too little. The EU crafted one central piece of legislation to provide certainty to e-fuel entrepreneurs: the Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) mandate. Through this tool, the EU provides predictability to the industry by mandating that at least 2% of all aviation fuel in Europe is made of SAF, with that percentage increasing gradually to reach 70% in 2050. Given that SAFs are currently more expensive than untaxed fossil kerosene, the SAF mandate obviously increases the cost of aviation. A typical Brussels-New York flight costs around 500€, of which zero cent is spent on VAT, nor on kerosene taxes, nor on the non-CO² impact of aviation. Depending on the level of the SAF mandate and SAF costs, it would increase the plane ticket by a few tens or hundreds of euros. Would the Brussels-New York air travel disappears because of such increase? Obviously not. But some companies might provide less generous dividends and share buybacks programs to shareholders. So, borrowing from the diesel lobby textbook, rather than investing in industrial transformation to structurally transform civilian aviation, they invest in lobbying to structurally transform EU legislation into an empty shell, expecting active support from the pro-Putin far-right. Like many policies pushed by President von der Leyen in her first mandate, the SAF mandate risks being thrown under another omnibus during her second mandate. This would not only be a tragedy for humanity’s future – as we still need a healthy environment to live – it would also be the death of what’s left of Europe’s regulatory stability, and a blow to our capacity to counter a Russian energy siege of the European continent. 

Too late. So far, close to zero final investment decisions have been taken. And time is running out as it typically takes seven years to go from FID to operational production. This is also true in my home region of Normandy. The city of Le Havre is one of the best places in the world to produce e-fuels. It has historic refining capacities, competencies and skills. It benefits from massive access to decarbonised electricity, with already 12 GW of nuclear and 1,5 GW of wind power, with wind power potential rising to 10 GW by 2035. It also already sits on the kerosene pipelines that supply kerosene to the Parisian airports. All the planets are aligned to see the dawn of e-kerosene production, and yet, not a single final investment decision has been made yet… 

So what to do? 

First, do no harm.

Let’s not complexify EU legislation to push for e-fuels and biofuels in areas where we already know they have no strategic role to play. 

Second, do good. Let’s launch an industrial platform, a genuine European Commission-led e-fuels Alliance modelled after the EU Battery alliance, to build an industrial pathway for the massification of e-kerosene, looking at the entire value chain from electricity generation to decentralised small-scale e-kerosene refineries. 

Third, act quickly. To borrow the words of Russian diplomats stated in a recent article, Russia considers “burning everything until the English Channel”. We know they have the intention to destroy us, through military means in countries where political groups remain true patriots, and through political means in countries like France or Germany where pro-Kremlin parties Rassemblement National and AfD could realistically win the forthcoming elections. Time is of the essence, and if there is one organisation built to react quickly, it’s the army. Commissioner Kubilius should therefore deepen his engagement with national ministries of defence, to push them to sign offtake agreements for e-kerosene with European companies, with our air force as first customers. 

Conclusion: 

We now need to make Europe in a world of bullies. The more uncertain our future becomes, the more we need to think creatively, build disruptive scenarios, and accept that we decide in uncertainty. 

In this world of uncertainty, we can always refer to something that is certain: the laws of physics. Because of physical constraints, biofuels and e-fuels will both remain available in limited quantities. Burning them in civilian cars is not only wasteful from an energy-system perspective, it would nowadays also constitute a threat to national security. 

Working with national air forces to support them in signing offtake agreement for domestic production of e-kerosene is one of the clear no-regret option that we must now take. The time is now, because the more time we waste, the more destructive Putin’s energy siege of Europe might become. 

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1 S. Audrand, « Poutine et la guerre à l’Europe : le scénario du front atlantique », Le Grand Continent,
20 October 2025.
2 European Parliament resolution of 8 July 2025 on the security of energy supply in the EU
(2025/2055(INI)).
3 Lockheed Martin F35 Lightning II website.

4 G. Lancereau, « Tout brûler jusqu’à la Manche » : face à l’Occident, la diplomatie russe appelle au
sang », Le Grand Continent, 1 December 2025.