When Middle Eastern wars sparked an oil crisis in the 1970s, tripling energy prices and throwing economies into chaos, some countries looked beyond short-term solutions. The French made nuclear the pillar of their power system. Scandinavians insulated buildings and funnelled waste heat into homes. The Dutch built bike lanes where others wanted motorways. The Danes developed wind turbines.<\/p>\n
Such steps cleaned filthy air and cut imports from autocrats but took a back seat when Russia invaded Ukraine half a century later. Europe<\/a> raced to buy gas from the US and Middle East. Policies to roll out renewables by cutting red tape helped reduce dependence, but calls to use less energy and reduce waste were muted. Industry lobbying and populist backlash have since sabotaged efforts to phase out petrol cars and fossil boilers.<\/p>\n Reducing gas demand is \u201cthe only way to reduce energy prices in the EU, and the only way to ensure we are not geopolitically constrained by our addiction to fossil fuels\u201d, said Marin Gillot, an energy analyst at Strategic Perspectives.<\/p>\n Now, with ships full of Middle Eastern fuel idling<\/a> in the Gulf and the Trump administration in the US seeking energy dominance<\/a> to \u201cproject power\u201d, a chorus of voices<\/a> are calling to speed up the green transition<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lesson was never entirely about dependency on Russia, and now it\u2019s not so much about dependency on Qatar or the US,\u201d said Gillot. \u201cThe question is do we want to keep fixing the same issue, which is fossil fuel dependency, with only one aspect of the short-term response, which is diversification.\u201d<\/p>\n What did some countries do differently in the first big oil crisis? And what lessons do they hold for today?<\/p>\n Danish wind turbines<\/p>\n In the early 1970s, Denmark<\/a> burned oil for almost everything \u2013 heating, transport, and electricity. Today the birthplace of modern wind power gets 91% of its electricity from renewables.<\/p>\n Henrik Stiesdal was one of the early pioneers who kickstarted the wind industry when oil prices jumped. In 1975, he built one of Denmark\u2019s first wind turbines \u2013 using an old gearbox and a generator from the junkyard to power his parents\u2019 farm \u2013 and soon sold the licence for a better model he made with a blacksmith to a local crane company. Within a few years, Denmark had more than a dozen companies making turbines for the budding wind sector. The cranemaker Vestas is today the biggest manufacturer of wind turbines outside China.<\/p>\n A wind generator farm in Copenhagen, Denmark Photograph: Graham Mulrooney\/Alamy<\/p>\n \u201cNothing would have happened if it were not for the oil crisis,\u201d said Stiesdal, who became the chief technology officer of Siemens Wind Power and now runs a climate technology company.<\/p>\n As energy prices soared, the Danish government expressed an early desire to turn its abundant wind into usable power. It introduced a consumer subsidy for turbines, set an attractive tariff for electricity sold to the grid and told the operators not to refuse a connection without good reason. In doing so, said Stiesdal, a \u201cspecific demand\u201d for wind grew out of society\u2019s \u201cgeneral demand\u201d for cheap and reliable energy.<\/p>\n Europe now erects wind turbines and lays solar panels at a rate almost fast enough to meet its targets but has been sluggish on electrification and emerging technologies.<\/p>\n Analysts complain the distant promise of clean hydrogen and carbon capture \u2013 needed to clean a few industries but held up as a solution for many more \u2013 has been used to delay the shift away from fuel-guzzling machines. At the same time, support for tried-and-tested solutions such as heat pumps and electric cars has been fought in the name of \u201ctechnological openness\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government must want it to happen, otherwise it\u2019ll never happen \u2013 that\u2019s the first prerequisite,\u201d said Stiesdal. \u201cThen the means by which you make it happen is to create demand. You subsidise users while the new thing you want to promote is still too expensive, and then over time, due to volume, it\u2019ll get cheaper, and your subsidies can be reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n Dutch cycle lanes<\/p>\n \u201cHolland saddle-sore but fume free\u201d was how Guardian editors headlined an article<\/a> in November 1973 after oil price spikes led the Dutch government to ban cars on Sundays. The three-month measure was followed by a number of structural steps \u2013 from segregated cycle lanes to designing people-friendly cities \u2013 that got people on their bikes and out of vehicles that chugged foreign fuels.<\/p>\n \u201cThe decision of not using cars on Sundays made it clear that societies could do without them for one day,\u201d said Jan Wittenberg, the first chair of the Dutch Cyclists\u2019 Union, which was founded 50 years ago. \u201cAnd it looked fantastic. There were picnics on motorways and kids playing in the street.\u201d<\/p>\n While campaigners such as Wittenberg had already been fighting for road safety and clean air, Dutch society as a whole had not reckoned with the dangers of car dependence. \u201cThe oil crisis made it clear to a far bigger group \u2013 specifically politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n Cyclists on Spiegelgracht bridge over the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam\u2019s old town. Photograph: Jochen Tack\/Alamy<\/p>\n In the decades since, the Netherlands<\/a> has built the world\u2019s best cycling infrastructure and provided a roadmap to other cities on giving space back to pedestrians and cyclists. But recent policies to reduce car dominance in Europe have largely been limited to individual cities. The rise of electric cars may have already caused oil demand from the transport sector to peak, but progress has been challenged by the rise of fuel-wasting SUVs.<\/p>\n Wittenberg said the equality embedded in proposals such as car-free Sundays helped with public acceptance for a radical shift in the way people moved.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not that an elite could say \u2018it\u2019s not my cup of tea\u2019 \u2013 everyone had to leave the car at home on Sundays,\u201d he said. \u201cIt changed something in the awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n French nuclear power plants<\/p>\n France had laid the foundations for a strong nuclear sector after the second world war, but it was the 1973 oil crisis that catalysed the Messmer plan to transform its energy supply. Without public debate or room for dissent, the Gaullist government of Pierre Messmer ordered the construction of nuclear power plants across the country. Its engineers built 50 reactors in a decade under the slogan: \u201cIn France<\/a>, we don\u2019t have oil, but we have ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n Although France lacked sufficient uranium deposits to fulfil the plan and relied on colonies such as Niger, the government presented nuclear as \u201cthe only way\u201d to ensure France\u2019s energy independence and its industrial modernisation, said Sezin Top\u00e7u, a historian of technology at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. \u201cThis was put forward as a state truth \u2013 and every reaction or opposition to the idea was considered antipatriotic or irrational.\u201d<\/p>\n The forceful approach was backed by loan guarantees to \u00c9lectricit\u00e9 de France (EDF) \u2013 which at the time was a state-owned company with a monopoly on France\u2019s energy \u2013 as well as long-term contracts with the manufacturer and government decrees that kept reactors safe from legal challenges.<\/p>\n France\u2019s nuclear power expansion, announced by its president, Emmanuel Macron, in 2022, provides for the construction of six new-generation EPR2 reactors in three pairs at Penly, Gravelines, and Bugey. Photograph: Ludovic Marin\/EPA<\/p>\n Today, calls for a European nuclear renaissance have been hampered by the high costs of building new plants and the falling price of renewables, which offer more energy security for countries without uranium. But a similar sense of urgency could help fix Europe\u2019s creaking electricity grid. The Messmer plan is one of the few historical examples \u2013 along with US fighter plane production in the second world war and the construction of China\u2019s high-speed rail network \u2013 of \u201cemergency-like deployment\u201d of a technology at the scale that would be needed to tackle the climate crisis, a study<\/a> looking at hydrogen production found in 2022.<\/p>\n The \u201cinvestment gap\u201d for the transition to a low-carbon economy is what matters, said Anna Creti, a climate economist at Universit\u00e9 Paris Dauphine. \u201cIf we can convert the bill that we pay to import oil and gas into investment for decarbonisation, this is really the lesson that we should learn.\u201d<\/p>\n Clean Nordic heating<\/p>\n The cold countries of Northern Europe were particularly at risk when oil prices rose, and used the crisis to invest in more efficient ways of keeping warm. They insulated buildings, tightened building rules and replaced oil-fired boilers in people\u2019s homes with centralised district heating systems, which are more efficient and can be powered with other fuels.<\/p>\n \u201cThe oil dependency in Sweden was severe,\u201d said Magnus \u00c5berg, a civil engineering professor at Uppsala university and co-author of a study<\/a> on how district heating came to dominate the country\u2019s heating. \u201cThe oil crisis really put the finger on the vulnerability of the Swedish energy system.\u201d<\/p>\n