For decades, energy security has been shorthand for access to fuel—and the Strait of Hormuz crisis is a staggering demonstration of this. This limited definition, however, is incomplete.
Crucially, energy security is dynamic and multidimensional. Any assessment represents only a snapshot. Today’s tenuous position can erode further if innovation slows, supply chains shift, or competitors gain technological ground. In that sense, research and development (R&D) is no longer peripheral to energy security; it is central to its future trajectory.
Technological capability shapes geopolitical relevance. Countries that lead in the development of energy technologies—whether in batteries, grid systems, advanced materials, or efficiency solutions—do not simply export products. They shape standards, capture value chains, influence alliances, and reinforce strategic autonomy.
One revealing, if imperfect, indicator of this future positioning is patenting.
What the patent landscape reveals
The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) State of Energy Innovation 2026 offers a stark picture. Energy-related patents now represent roughly 10 percent of all global patents (ahead of other important economic sectors, such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, or transport)—a figure that underscores how central energy technologies have become to industrial strategy and national security.
The technological center of gravity has shifted decisively toward low-emissions technologies, and particularly toward energy storage. In 2023 alone, batteries accounted for about 40 percent of global energy patenting.
Geographically, the trend is equally striking. China now accounts for close to two-fifths of global energy patenting and has dramatically increased its share of low-emissions technology patents over the past decade. The United States remains a major innovator, though its patenting intensity has fluctuated across sectors.
Europe, however, recorded its third consecutive year of declining energy patenting through 2023, the last year for which consolidated data are available. While the region remains an important source of innovation, its relative trajectory lags behind both China and the United States.
In a world where intellectual property increasingly shapes industrial power, this is not a minor statistical fluctuation. It is a structural signal.
The limits—and importance—of patent data
Patent counts are not destiny. More patents do not automatically translate into technological superiority or commercial success. The value of a patent depends on its strategic relevance and eventual integration into marketable systems. Many patents remain dormant; some represent incremental improvements; a few reshape entire industries.
Moreover, categorizing patents is complex. Technologies often overlap across digital systems, materials science, energy hardware, and software controls. International classification systems attempt to impose order, and legal provisions aim to prevent “double patenting,” but quantitative measures inevitably simplify a more intricate reality.
And yet, even with these caveats, patenting remains one of the clearest early indicators of innovation intensity. International patent families—used in the IEA analysis—capture inventions that applicants consider valuable enough to protect across multiple jurisdictions. They are not a perfect measure of quality, but they do signal intent, ambition, and strategic positioning.
Viewed through this lens, Europe’s relative slowdown suggests something deeper than temporary volatility. It points to a widening gap in the upstream race to define the energy system of the future.
Innovation does not depend on scale. It precedes it.
Europe’s competitiveness debate frequently centers on familiar structural challenges: high energy prices, regulatory complexity, permitting delays, limited economies of scale, and fragmented capital markets. These constraints undeniably affect manufacturing competitiveness and large-scale industrial deployment.
But R&D and patent generation do not require perfect scale conditions. They depend on sustained investment, institutional coherence, strong research ecosystems, and strategic clarity. Innovation is the first stage of the value chain. Manufacturing scale comes later.
Europe’s difficulties in scaling certain industries cannot serve as an excuse for weakening its upstream research output. If anything, in a fragmented geopolitical environment, protecting and expanding intellectual property generation becomes even more critical.
It is also worth dispelling a common misconception: innovation is not confined to clean technologies. Fossil fuel sectors continue to evolve technologically. The shale revolution in the United States fundamentally altered global oil and gas geopolitics through innovation in drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Today’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) expansion, methane mitigation technologies, digital optimization, and efficiency improvements are all R&D driven. Even as fossil fuel patenting has declined relative to low-emissions technologies, it remains a competitive arena shaped by technological progress.
Energy geopolitics, in other words, is a race across multiple technological fronts.
And this is where Europe’s recent patent trajectory raises a deeper concern. Beyond the numbers themselves, the decline suggests something more structural: not simply a funding issue, but a mindset gap. Despite strong rhetoric in Brussels about strategic autonomy, technological sovereignty, and industrial leadership, the measurable outputs of innovation tell a more cautious story. If Europe’s patent intensity is weakening relative to its peers, it may indicate that the broader ecosystem is not yet calibrated to nurture the next generation of disruptive innovators—those capable of producing breakthrough technologies rather than incremental improvements.
Europe’s policy response—and its contradictions
This diagnosis echoes beyond energy circles. In his 2024 European Competitiveness Report, Mario Draghi warned that Europe’s innovation gap with the United States and China reflects deeper weaknesses in public and private R&D investment, coordination, and commercialization—calling for a reorientation of EU competitiveness strategy toward sustained and coherent research and innovation support. Draghi underscored that closing this gap is essential for Europe to maintain industrial strength and strategic autonomy in advanced technologies.
It is important to acknowledge that the patent data featured by the IEA currently extend only through 2023. Since then, the European Union has intensified its focus on strategic technologies. Horizon Europe, EU’s key research and innovation funding program, continues to channel significant funding into climate, energy, and mobility research. Other initiatives including the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform, the Net-Zero Industry Act, and the Critical Raw Materials Act all reflect recognition that technological sovereignty is now a geopolitical imperative.
Discussions around the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034) suggest expanded allocations for research and innovation, reinforcing the EU’s ambition to strengthen its industrial and technological base.
However, policy coherence remains fragile.
Recent calls by Italy to suspend the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), citing competitiveness concerns for energy-intensive industries, illustrate the tension between short-term industrial pressure and long-term innovation strategy. While the political logic behind such arguments is understandable, the strategic implications are more troubling. In its March 19 summit conclusions, the European Council did not endorse a pause; instead, it requested targeted temporary measures for the current price spike induced by the Iran war and invited the Commission to present an ETS review by July 2026 to reduce carbon-price volatility and limit impacts on electricity prices—while explicitly safeguarding the ETS’s role as a market-based signal that drives investment and innovation.
A significant portion of ETS revenues finances innovation mechanisms such as the Innovation Fund—one of the world’s largest programs supporting innovative low-carbon technologies. Weakening the ETS would not only alter carbon price signals; it would directly constrain one of Europe’s primary financial channels for scaling breakthrough technologies.
In an era where patents increasingly reflect geopolitical positioning, reducing innovation funding would compound—not resolve—Europe’s competitive challenges.
A strategic choice
Reversing Europe’s patent trajectory is not a matter of a single policy tweak and will require more than higher budgets. It will demand sharper prioritization, faster translation of research into protected intellectual property, and greater coherence between industrial policy and innovation strategy.
In a system where technological capability increasingly shapes geopolitical leverage, patent intensity is not a peripheral metric. It is an early indicator of who is preparing to shape the energy system of the next decades—and who is preparing to adapt to it.
Andrei Covatariu is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.
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