GPT 5.1 quickly demolished the claim that “Europe’s Green Energy Rush… Crippled the Economy”

Today the Wall Street Journal ran a hit piece on Europe’s energy transition, full of cherry picked data, hand waving, and a flat out incorrect premise and headline. This was a news article, not an opinion piece… shame on you WSJ. Rather than spending several hours fact checking it, I decided to ask AI (specifically Gemini 3 Pro and ChatGPT 5.1) to do that for me. Both AIs drew similar conclusions, but I’ll share ChatGPT’s excellent response below.

1. “Emissions down ~30% since 2005” – basically right, but missing the bigger decoupling story

The WSJ piece (and its syndications) say Europe cut emissions by about 30% since 2005.Wall Street Journal

What the broader data show:

  • EU net greenhouse gas emissions fell by about 36–37% vs 1990 by 2023, while GDP grew ~60–70% over the same period. European Environment Agency+1
  • The energy transition has accelerated recently: emissions fell 8% in 2023 alone, driven by coal decline, renewables growth, and lower demand. European Environment Agency+1
  • The share of renewables in EU overall energy consumption roughly doubled from about 10% in 2005 to ~24% in 2023. ETEnergyworld.com

So “cut emissions by ~30%” is not wrong, but the framing suggests “big cuts, big economic damage” when the aggregate data actually show long-term decoupling of emissions from growth: emissions down a lot; economy up a lot.

That decoupling is pretty much the opposite of “crippled.”

2. “Europe’s electricity prices are among the world’s highest” – true recently, but the article blurs cause and effect

There was a brutal price shock:

  • The European Commission’s own energy-prices report notes an unprecedented gas and power price spike in 2021–2023, driven by the collapse of Russian gas supplies, with wholesale electricity prices surging and only recently stabilizing (still above pre-crisis levels). Energy+1
  • Household gas prices in 2023 were nearly 2× pre-crisis levels; electricity prices for households and firms also remain higher than before 2021. Energy
  • Country data: Germany, Denmark, Ireland are indeed at the top of EU household power prices in 2024–25. Voronoi

But the main driver of the spike wasn’t “too many renewables,” it was expensive gas and the Russia shock:

  • Empirical work on the “energy crisis” shows European power prices are dominated by natural gas prices, with gas being “the most critical factor” in setting electricity prices, especially in 2022. ScienceDirect+1

So the article’s factual point (“prices are/were very high”) is fair.
The causal story (“green rush → high prices → crippled economy”) is where it starts to slide into hand-waving:

  • It underplays that renewables actually helped cap the damage; without them, a gas-driven price spike would have hit an even larger fossil share of the power mix.
  • It treats a temporary crisis shock as if it’s the inherent, permanent outcome of green policy.

3. “Crippled the economy / hobbled industry” – exaggerated and one-sided

What the macro data say

  • EU GDP in 2024 was about 1% higher in real terms than in 2023, continuing positive (if modest) growth. European Commission
  • Over the long term, the EU has grown more slowly than the US, but analyses from places like Bruegel show a complex mix of causes — demographics, productivity, fiscal policy, etc. — not just energy or climate rules. Bruegel+1

“Crippled” would suggest deep, broad, persistent recession. That’s simply not what the EU-wide data show.

What’s actually happening in industry

There is real pain in some sectors:

  • Germany’s energy-intensive industries cut gas use by ~22% vs pre-crisis (2018–21), largely due to high prices and weaker demand. Argus Media+1
  • Some German emissions declines were explicitly attributed to a weak economy and high energy prices reducing industrial output. Clean Energy Wire+1

So: yes, real harm to specific industrial segments, especially in Germany.

But the article glosses over several counter-points:

  • Much of this damage stems from fossil fuel price exposure (imported gas), not from the existence of renewables per se.
  • High prices and weak industry show up after the 2021–22 gas shock; they are not a smooth function of “more green energy.”
  • Even within Europe, the impact is uneven; some economies are doing relatively better, with ongoing growth and investment.

Blaming this whole picture on “the green rush” is like blaming airbags for injuries in a car crash without mentioning the truck that ran the red light.

4. “AI can’t come to Europe because power is too expensive” – plausible concern, but very incomplete

The article claims high electricity costs are scaring off AI / data-center investment.

There’s a kernel of truth:

  • Electricity demand from data centers and AI is rising sharply, particularly in the US, and cheap power is a competitive advantage. IEA+1

But:

  • Some European countries are actively courting data centers with renewable PPAs and infrastructure, not just cheap gas.
  • Globally, renewables are now the cheapest new source of power in most markets; 91% of new utility-scale renewables commissioned in 2024 produced electricity cheaper than the cheapest new fossil option. IEA+3IRENA+3IRENA+3

So the idea that an AI industry cannot thrive in Europe because of renewables is… overstated. Policy and permitting, interconnection queues, and broader investment climate all matter at least as much as spot power prices.

5. “Europe chose an ‘or’ strategy (renewables instead of fossil), unlike the US/China’s ‘and’” – rhetorically neat, empirically messy

The article paints a clean contrast: Europe supposedly shut down fossil capacity while pushing green, while the US/China added both.

Reality is more mixed:

  • The EU is still importing huge volumes of fossil fuels, especially LNG, and has scrambled to sign new gas deals since 2022. Reuters+1
  • Several European countries are now re-opening or expanding fossil exploration and production (UK North Sea, Italy reconsidering moratoria, Greece issuing new offshore licenses) in direct response to the gas shock. Reuters
  • At the same time, renewables’ share of EU electricity surpassed 44% in 2023, overtaking fossil fuels. ETEnergyworld.com+1

So Europe is both decarbonizing and still backing a lot of fossil supply — just like everyone else. The “or vs and” framing is more of a debating device than a clean description of policy reality.

6. “Intermittent renewables are overloading the grid, making projects unusable”

The article highlights cases like an offshore wind farm that can’t run fully due to grid constraints.

Grid issues are real:

  • Rapid renewable build-out has outpaced grid and storage expansion in many places, producing curtailment and congestion.
  • But that’s a known infrastructure bottleneck, not proof that renewables themselves “don’t work.” The same thing happens with gas plants if you don’t build pipelines.

Missing context:

  • Grid constraints are a fixable engineering and regulatory issue, and many countries (including the US) are facing similar problems with interconnection backlogs.
  • Long-term cost data show that adding renewables plus grid upgrades still tends to be cheaper than doubling down on fossil capacity, especially when you factor in volatile fuel prices. IRENA+2IEA Blob Storage+2

The article appears to treat transitional grid friction as if it were definitive evidence that the strategy is structurally broken.

7. “Political backlash proves the green strategy failed” – oversimplified

The piece ties rising support for anti-establishment or far-right parties to green policies and high energy prices.

There’s some link:

  • Energy prices and inflation clearly feed public anger and can hurt incumbents.
  • In Germany and other countries, backlash against specific climate measures (like heating rules) has been a real political factor.

But:

  • Political scientists point to multiple drivers of populist/anti-establishment surges: migration, cultural issues, inequality, broader economic anxiety, and trust in institutions — not just energy policy.
  • Some of the sharpest recent emission cuts came after the 2022–23 crisis, as renewables ramped and demand adjusted, even while political turmoil persisted. European Environment Agency+1

So treating current European politics as a one-variable function of “green overreach” is more narrative than analysis.

8. The big missing pieces / cherry-picks

Things the article seems to underplay or omit, based on the summary and syndications:

  1. Counterfactual:
    What would 2022–23 have looked like without a big renewable fleet already in place? Most independent analyses say the gas shock would have been even worse if the power mix had relied more heavily on gas and coal.
  2. Decoupling evidence:
    The EU is one of the few big blocs that has substantially cut emissions while growing its economy over decades. That’s inconvenient for a “green policies cripple the economy” thesis, so you mostly see it reduced to a single, out-of-context “30%” line. European Environment Agency+1
  3. Global cost trends:
    Renewables are now cheaper than new fossil capacity in the vast majority of cases worldwide; that undermines the suggestion that green power is inherently uneconomic and doomed to drive prices up forever. IEA+3IRENA+3IRENA+3
  4. Other structural headwinds in Europe:
    Aging population, slower productivity growth, post-COVID fiscal tightening, trade tensions, etc., all drag on growth and competitiveness. Pinning “Europe’s problems” primarily on green policy is, at best, extremely incomplete.

Bottom line

  • Accurate core facts:
    • Emissions are way down vs 2005–1990.
    • Electricity prices were extremely high in 2022–23 and remain elevated vs pre-crisis.
    • Energy-intensive industry has been hit, especially in Germany.
  • Where it goes off the rails:
    • It strongly implies a simple causal chain “green rush → high prices → crippled economy → political turmoil”, while the best evidence points to a mix of:
      • fossil fuel price shocks (Russia/gas),
      • pre-existing structural economic issues, and
      • transitional grid/market design problems.
    • It largely ignores the long-term decoupling of emissions and GDP, and the fact that new renewables are generally cheaper than new fossil plants.
    • It uses crisis years as representative “proof” instead of acknowledging how unusual that period was.

So your instinct is valid: the article is not pure fabrication, but it leans heavily on selective data and dramatic language to support a very particular political conclusion. A more balanced reading would be:

Europe’s green transition coincided with — and partly cushioned — a massive fossil fuel price shock. The transition has real costs and missteps, but the claim that it has “crippled” Europe’s economy is not supported by the broader evidence.