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US NEWS 
By Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS, Jan 28 – U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to take over Greenland has been a “wake-up call” to European governments to increase their energy security, the EU’s head of energy policy said on Wednesday.
Europe has rapidly increased imports of liquefied natural gas from the U.S. as it races to cut ties with Russia. But Trump’s push to take over the Arctic island that has been Danish territory for centuries, and recent tariff threats, have sharpened concerns among some governments of the risk of relying on U.S. energy supplies.
EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said the bloc was grateful to have increased its imports of U.S. gas, as countries shift off Russian supply.
“Having said that, it is also clear the geopolitical turmoil in the wake of the crisis concerning Greenland also has been a wake-up call,” Jorgensen told reporters in Brussels.
“I definitely hear this when speaking to energy ministers and heads of state all over Europe, that there is a growing concern, which I share, that we risk replacing one dependency with another.”
Jorgensen is Denmark’s representative in the European Commission.
Over the longer term, Europe plans to reduce the share of gas in its overall energy supply, and replace it with renewable sources that can be produced locally.
“And for the part of that that is not homegrown renewable, we need to diversify it as much as possible,” Jorgensen said.
He will travel to Canada, Qatar and North African countries in the coming months to discuss LNG supplies from these countries.
Europe agreed last year to spend $750 billion on U.S. energy – including oil, gas and nuclear technologies – as part of its trade deal with Trump.
The EU got around 57% of its LNG from the U.S. last year, and 27% of all gas when both LNG and pipeline supplies are counted, according to the non-profit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The EU imported around 40% of its gas from Russia before Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a figure that dropped to around 13% last year.
Reporting by Kate Abnett; editing by Philippa Fletcher
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