Fuelling the Forces to 2050

Can NATO Europe fuel its forces to 2050? The evidence points to a conditional yes – and this paper outlines what those conditions look like, and why the window to secure them is the coming decade. The risk profile is set by kerosene, which dominates the military fuel mix at 60-72 per cent in peacetime, rising to 75-80 per cent in conflict. It is the product on which NATO Europe is structurally short, the fuel most likely to retain – or grow – its demand to 2050, and the one with the least stock cover, at just 49 days.

That exposure is changing shape. The European refining base is closing faster than conventional demand is falling, with closures now reaching complex, jet-capable plants, while external jet suppliers have grown markedly more concentrated since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Alternative fuels offer genuine supply additionality, but the pipeline is far from guaranteed, and peacetime volumes are largely contracted to civil consumers. The consequence is that military demand need not grow at all for its weight in the residual conventional system to triple – it need only stand still while the civil system substitutes and rebuilds around it.

Drawing on a new supply-demand model informed by consultations across the Alliance, the paper tests the system against 252 possible worlds – 6,000 world-years – spanning demand pathways, refinery closures, alternative build-out and conflict. The system holds in most futures, but finds its limits in an Article 5-scale conflict with significant North American deployment to the European theatre. Five policy levers are outlined to mitigate that risk: re-indexing stock obligations, ringfencing strategic refinery capacity, accelerating alternative capacity, diversifying imports and hardening supply lines, and preparing civil demand management protocols. The paper quantifies the potential benefit of each to the supply-demand balance.