Europe has been unable to repeat the shale gas revolution that has swept the United States, and that could prove to be the unlikely saviour of long-term EU efforts to spur renewables and curb greenhouse gases.

The United States has managed to lower greenhouse gas emissions as well as energy prices as cheap shale gas has displaced coal, prompting calls from industry for Europe and others to follow suit.

“I wouldn’t completely write off shale gas development in Europe, but certainly the scale and speed at which it happens will not be like in the US,” said Chris Rowland, an associate at Ecofin, a British-based investment manager with around €1.5 billion of assets under management, covering global energy, utility, infrastructure and alternative energy sectors.

“It’s a good fuel for reducing emissions but not a good fuel for decarbonising,” he added.

A series of European Commission roadmaps envisage virtually carbon-neutral power generation by 2050.

Unless carbon capture and storage can be developed on a commercial scale, that means gas as a fuel has a limited future and should not be invested in too heavily, environmental campaigners say.

They are especially against shale gas, whose environmental credentials are questioned in Europe.

“We need natural gas as a transition fuel. However, we don’t need such a huge amount of gas and certainly not cheap gas, because that would kick out not just coal, but also renewables,” Greenpeace renewable energy director Sven Teske said.

In the medium term, the value of conventional gas is in providing reliable baseload power to supplement unpredictable renewables, which depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing.

Danish state-owned DONG Energy, which has relied heavily on coal-fired power generation, sees a combination of gas and renewables as the way to go.

“We see gas-to-power and wind energy as the ideal mix, together comprising clean and stable energy. Wind energy as the clean energy source, and gas-to-power as the balancing power,” said Carsten Krogsgaard Thomsen, DONG Energy’s acting CEO.