The European Commission’s plan to terminate all Russian energy imports has now been published. But the question about what to replace those supplies with and who to source them from refuses to be settled.
According to the Commission’s new roadmap, published this week, all Russian oil, gas and nuclear fuel imports should be axed by the end of the decade.
Last year, the bloc spent a total of €23 billion on Russian energy, outstripping the amount it paid to Ukraine in military aid. It is an awful look and only helps the Kremlin prolong its invasion and war of aggression.
So something had to give and with this new strategy, the Commission does not want to hang around. By the end of the year, there will be a ban on signing new contracts with Russian energy companies and spot market gas contracts will also be prohibited.
European energy firms will have until the end of 2027 to get out of long-term agreements, which Brussels believes will be possible as they will be able to declare force majeure thanks to the proposed ban.
Other measures like cracking down on Russia’s fleet of so-called shadow vessels, which subvert the EU’s sanctions by sailing under different flags, will also be implemented.
Scrapping imports is one thing but taking up the slack left by them is another.
Finding a new dealer
EU countries have already managed to cut down drastically on Russian imports through a combination of reducing demand through improved efficiency and finding alternative suppliers.
When it comes to nuclear fuel, work is underway already to cut dependency on Russian uranium and tests have been carried out using different supplies. So far all the results seem very promising.
A less obvious part of that nuclear fuel trade is the supply of isotopes for use in medical treatments, such as cancer detection. The EU intends to launch an initiative that will encourage and scale up domestic production of those crucial supplies.
Oil might also be easy enough to phase out. Just two countries – Hungary and Slovakia – still accept Russian deliveries, as they have an exemption from sanctions, while Czechia stopped taking shipments last month.
According to the Commission, it is actively helping Budapest and Bratislava secure supplies from elsewhere, in order to cut their dependency on Moscow. The deadline to achieve that is also 2027. That has not stopped the two countries from already criticising the plan.
Gas is the problem though. Pipeline supply is at an all-time low but LNG deliveries increased last year. Other suppliers like Norway, the Gulf States, African countries and the United States have all filled some of the shortfall but can they provide even more?
Donald Trump wants European countries to buy more LNG as part of his mercurial trade strategy but there are also indications that a Ukraine peace deal might rely on Europe buying more Russian energy again. Geopolitics might yet scupper this plan.
An obvious answer?
Substituting one fossil fuel dependency for another does seem like a poor strategy and asking for trouble further down the line. Tomorrow’s Putin might yet reveal himself in one of the countries the EU is now seeking to do more business with.
That is why there have been increased calls this week off the back of the energy roadmap for EU members to increase their clean energy efforts once again.
Home-grown renewables and clean technologies like heat pumps and electric cars not only reduce immensely the amount of planet-busting emissions released into the atmosphere, they also neutralise dependencies on foreign powers.
Of course, other dependencies can be generated, such as on manufacturers of wind turbines or HVDC cabling, but these are less serious than staying in Putin’s pocket.
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