Europe gains energy independence from Russia | Popgen Tech

BERLIN—Last weekend, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other top officials traveled to the northern port city of Wilhelmshaven to inaugurate Germany’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. The terminal, the first of five planned at ports across the North and Baltic Seas, is one part of Germany’s strategy to survive this winter – and the next, and the one after that – without the Russian gas imports that it and other European Union countries have. become deeply dependent on.

“This is a good day for our country and a good signal to the whole world that the German economy will be in a position to continue to be strong, to produce and to deal with this challenge,” Scholz said. . “When we said that such a terminal should be built here in Wilhelmshaven already this year, many said that it was never possible, that it would never succeed. And the opposite is true.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost 10 months ago, European countries like Germany have learned the hard way what it is like to live without Russian energy. From the beginning, the Kremlin went all in on energy politics, trying to use Europe’s energy dependence as a weapon to sow discord among European leaders and weaken the EU’s united front to support Ukraine. It is mostly failed.

BERLIN—Last weekend, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other top officials traveled to the northern port city of Wilhelmshaven to inaugurate Germany’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. The terminal, the first of five planned at ports across the North and Baltic Seas, one part of Germany’s strategy is to survive this winter – and the next, and the one after that – without the Russian gas imports on which it and other European Union countries have become deeply dependent.

“This is a good day for our country and a good signal to the whole world that the German economy will be in a position to continue to be strong, to produce and to deal with this challenge,” Scholz said. . “When we said that such a terminal should be built here in Wilhelmshaven already this year, many said that it was never possible, that it would never succeed. And the opposite is true.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost 10 months ago, European countries like Germany have learned the hard way what it is like to live without Russian energy. From the beginning, the Kremlin went all in on energy politics, trying to use Europe’s energy dependence as a weapon to sow discord among European leaders and weaken the EU’s united front to support Ukraine. It is mostly failed.

When Russia turned off the gas flow to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in September, EU leaders have warned it could lead to a full-scale energy crisis across the bloc. Many EU countries, including Germany, quickly introduced measures to reduce energy consumption and encouraged citizens to do the same. However, rising energy prices and record-high inflation have put enormous pressure on Europeans’ wallets and companies’ bottom lines.

Now that winter has arrived, fears of acute energy shortages have largely subsided, at least for now. Gas reserves are nearly full, countries are investing in support packages to ease the pressure of higher energy prices, and EU leaders have been working to quickly replace Russian energy imports with gas and oil from other countries, as well as expand their renewable energy infrastructure .

“It’s no small thing to change so quickly from what you’ve relied on for decades,” said Ben Cahill, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “So far, heading into this winter, Europe has been relatively prepared because it has made such strong efforts to refocus. They are in relatively good shape.”

Still, Cahill added that next winter will be much more difficult, largely because EU countries will have to start with the assumption that it will have to meet its energy needs entirely without Russia. This includes refilling gas storage tanks next summer without a large influx of cheap Russian gas. “The big challenge is what happens in the years ahead,” Cahill said. “Because it’s only going to get harder.”

Not that this winter will be easy. The EU’s rapid shift away from Russian energy has come at a cost, both for households and companies struggling to keep up with rapidly rising energy prices as well as for the countries introducing expensive rescue packages to help consumers and businesses offset their higher bills. deck. And a particularly cold winter could send energy consumption soaring, depleting reserves faster and renewing fears of possible shortages.

A particularly frigid week in Germany this month, for example, resulted in just a 5 percent decrease in energy use compared to recent years, well below the country’s target of a 20 percent reduction in energy use. Klaus Mueller, head of Germany’s network agency, warned that such use “must remain outlier”. “We have taken good precautions, but we have to remain vigilant,” Mueller said.

But the situation forced leaders at the EU and national level to step up and work quickly to fill the gaps left by Russia. They turned their attention to the ways in which the war is impacting and in some ways even helping the EU’s long-term energy goals.

European Union leaders have said the war has a silver lining in terms of moving the bloc forward on renewable energy targets. Countries that were previously reluctant to get on board with the expansion of renewable energy are finally doing so, and those on the bandwagon are investing more. As a result, as part of its REPowerEU package, the EU agreed this week to raise its renewable energy targets to 45 percent by 2030, up from a previous target of 40 percent. (The EU currently gets just over 20 percent of its total energy from renewables.) A new report from the International Energy Agency suggests that the world could add as much renewable energy in the next five years as it did in the past 20 years.

“I do believe that this terrible war of Russia against the Ukrainians really changes a lot, and we will become independent of fossil fuels much faster,” said Tiemo Wölken, a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s center-left Social Democrats . “In the short term it is definitely a setback, but in the medium and long term it is definitely a boost for renewable energy.”

But you can’t make silver without getting foam. In an effort to replace Russian oil and gas in the short term, countries such as Germany are reactivating some old coal-fired power plants to fill the energy gap. Countries including France, Austria, the Netherlands and Italy are farm mothballed coal plants back into operation. And EU countries are negotiating long-term contracts for gas with countries such as Qatar, which policymakers say could eventually lock these countries into buying more gas than they hope to need by 2030.

“If at a certain moment we start adding up how many gas contracts we enter into until 2030, we probably have more gas contracts than we had with Russia,” says Bas Eickhout, deputy leader of the Green Left party in the European Parliament. . “This becomes a problem for our climate neutrality targets after 2030 – it is not yet sufficiently in the minds of policy makers.”

As for the overall impact of the war on the EU’s energy and climate goals, Eickhout added: “Frankly, the jury is still out.”

The whole debate raises the question of what Europe’s complicated yet concerted effort to offset Russian energy imports will mean for the Kremlin’s strategy. Support for Ukraine remains high: A Eurobarometer poll released this month found that 74 percent of EU respondents approve of the bloc’s support for Ukraine. There have been scattered protests in a handful of countries and some notable recalcitrants such as Hungary, which still clings to Russian energy and slow European energy sanctions. But if Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped he could use the energy hug to weaken support for Ukraine and divide Europe, he is likely to be disappointed. So if Moscow can’t freeze Europe into submission, what other tools will it achieve?

Cahill said it was too soon to say what this might mean for Russia’s strategy going forward, largely because the next round of sanctions against Russian exports will not take effect until early February 2023. If Russia retaliates by further cutting energy supplies, it will punish the very countries that need it most, such as China and Turkey.

“It would be shooting themselves in the foot to do that,” Cahill said. “But all things are possible: Putin does not always act in economically rational ways.”

Reporting for this article was supported by a travel grant from Clean Energy Wire.