The impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on European electricity mix: Evidence from a difference-in-differences approach

The Russia–Ukraine war has fundamentally reshaped Europe's energy landscape, raising urgent questions about energy security, dependency, and the pace of clean energy transition. This study takes the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate whether the war acted as a catalyst for accelerating the adoption of clean energy in electricity generation among European countries, particularly those highly dependent on Russian fossil fuels. Based on the monthly panel data of 16 EU countries from 2017 to 2025, we adopt a Difference-in Differences (DiD) approach combined with an event study design to identify the causal effect of the war on the clean energy share of European electricity mix, and verify the research hypotheses through parallel trend tests and a series of robustness checks. Results reveal that high-dependency countries experienced a statistically significant increase of 8.7 percentage points in clean energy share after the war, suggesting that geopolitical crises can trigger structural shifts in national energy mixes. Robustness tests—including placebo tests, alternative control groups, and controls for the weather and policies — confirm the reliability of the findings. These findings offer timely evidence that energy transition and energy security are not mutually exclusive, but potentially reinforcing under geopolitical stress. This research sheds light on the evolving relationship between energy policy, international conflict, and climate goals—offering valuable insights for policymakers navigating Europe's clean energy future.