EU’s exit from Russian energy falters amid investment shortfalls

The European Union promised to break up with Russian fossil fuels. Three years later, the relationship status is best described as “it’s complicated.” A scathing report from the European Court of Auditors, released on September 9, found that the EU’s flagship REPowerEU plan is dramatically underperforming on nearly every metric that matters. Of the €300 billion allocated from EU recovery funds for the energy transition, only about €54.3 billion had been committed by member states as of April 2026. That’s less than one-fifth of the pot, with time running out. The numbers tell a grim story REPowerEU set a target of adding 103 GW of new renewable energy capacity by 2026. The expected result? Roughly 20 GW. That’s not a rounding error. It’s an 80% miss on one of the plan’s central goals. The initiative was launched in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, designed to wean Europe off the energy supplies that were effectively funding Moscow’s war machine. Russian gas accounted for 45% of EU imports in 2021, about 152 billion cubic meters. By 2025, that figure had dropped to 12%, or 36 bcm. Oil imports from Russia fell even more sharply, declining from approximately 27% to just 2...