Energy Security: A Transatlantic Challenge?

The EU and the USA are facing similar threats to their energy supply. Both of them have published strategies to deal with that topic. While the US energy supply is still somewhat self-reliant, the Europeans have to import most of their needs from abroad. Especially the Eastern European member states are almost completely dependent on energy imports from Russia. The author compares the energy data of both regions and offers a closer look on future trends in energy policy. Although there is much commonness on a general level, common action will be rare. But still a transatlantic energy partnership may be the point of origin for a large-scale regime on sustainable energy security. Florian Baumann is research assistant at the Center for Applied Policy Research (C·A·P) in Munich and member of the project's working group "EU-Enlargement and Transatlantic Relations".