“Our continued reliance on fossil fuels makes the global economy and energy security vulnerable to geopolitical shocks and crises,” warned United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on February 28th in response to the release of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. He urged that “now is the time to accelerate the energy transition to a renewable energy future.” Activists have long emphasized the need for renewable energy to combat climate change, but this transition has become all the more urgent due to the war in Ukraine. The Russian invasion, which began several days before Guterres’ statement, demonstrated that the transition to renewable energy is essential to ensure energy security, especially in Europe.
The escalating situation in Ukraine has caused world commodity prices, especially oil and gas, to skyrocket, and has laid bare Europe’s energy dependence on Russia. The European Union (EU) sources over a quarter of its crude oil imports and two-fifths of its natural gas imports from Russia, and more than half of the EU’s energy generation comes from petroleum products and natural gas, most of which are imported. While European governments might want to put a strong stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, their dependency on Russian energy exports puts Europe in a precarious position.
“Import dependency is a big factor in energy security,” Eric Fabozzi, an energy analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA), told The Politic. Should Europe be cut off from Russian energy, many Europeans could find themselves unable to pay energy bills or heat their homes. European governments have already spent tens of billions mitigating the impact of higher energy prices on their electorate, and the fuel shortage has sent small businesses and the industrial sector scrambling to secure energy.
“Russia is a big exporter of oil, gas, and coal. While oil and coal are easy to get from other places, gas is the hardest fuel to replace,” noted Noah J. Gordon, an associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thus, Russia maintains significant leverage over certain gas-dependent countries in the EU like Germany, Italy, and other central European countries that have been unable to fully sanction Russian exports.
In Germany, the country that consumes the most natural gas in Europe, closing the valve on Russian gas would batter the economy. “In Germany, if you lose gas, the chemical industry is in trouble — glass, plastics, steel — all these things that are seen as crucial inputs for other sectors,” warned Gordon. He noted that this may affect everything from hospital operations to the education system.
Of Europe’s gas-importing countries, Germany has demonstrated the greatest resistance to implementing anti-Russian policy. As Ukraine’s allies prepared for the Russian invasion by sending military equipment, Germany offered only 5000 helmets and medical support to the country. Once the war escalated, Germany toughened its stance against Russia. It has since delivered weapons to Ukraine, increased its military spending to 2% of GDP, and agreed to the EU-wide ban on Russian coal. While the coal ban will deprive Russia of $20 million of daily payments, oil and gas imports still provide $850 million of daily revenue to Russia, in effect funding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. In 2021, Russia derived a third of its revenue from oil and gas payments. The coal ban is a token gesture if the EU still imports oil and gas. However, Germany – along with other gas-dependent countries in the EU like Germany, Italy, and other central European countries – continues to resist the restriction of Russian oil and gas imports, although an oil ban is currently under consideration by national governments.
Losing access to Russian natural gas not only impacts short-term energy consumption but could impede Europe’s transition to clean energy. Natural gas is considered a transition fuel to renewable energy due to its significantly lower emissions compared to other fossil fuels. In late 2021, the European Commission declared that power plants using natural gas would be considered generators of green energy. Fabozzi noted that “Germany is closing their nuclear plants and coal, which means the plan is to then be more dependent on gas for use in gas turbines.”
While using natural gas over coal and oil would drastically lower emissions across EU member states, critics argue that such a classification would divert investment away from renewable energy. However, given that current renewable energy infrastructure cannot fulfill our energy needs, the temporary usage of natural gas is essential. Using oil and coal to fill the energy gap instead of natural gas would severely impede Europe’s commitment to limiting global temperature increases. “The EU’s been pretty insistent with their Green Deal,” said Fabozzi. “The direction for the last five years has been moving in the direction of phasing out coal. So I wouldn’t expect to see a complete reversal of that, [with the EU] deciding that it is just going to replace everything with coal.”
Choosing to use different types of energy requires nations to think about the “three pillars of the energy trilemma: energy security, affordability, and the sustainability aspect,” explained Fabozzi. He noted that natural gas is compromised in both security and affordability at this moment, and it is only a more sustainable option compared to other fossil fuels. Currently, Europe needs to either make gas more secure and affordable or switch to an energy source that better meets both criteria while being sustainable. Continued Russian aggression in the Donbas, mass killings in Bucha, and the current assault on Mariupol are forcing European nations to address their energy dependence on Russia, but this requires planning both in the short and long term.
Short Term
“As far as the short term, you can’t build enough wind and solar to meet the demand for tomorrow, of course,” said Fabozzi. “As far as security of supply, that I think we’ve covered pretty well in this 10 Point Plan. The idea is to reduce dependency on Russian gas by 30% over the next year,” explained Fabozzi. The IEA’s 10 Point Plan offers advice on how to reduce energy dependence on Russia, and in sum, it calls for: the diversification of gas imports, usage and investments in alternative low-carbon forms of energy generation, and the reduction of energy consumption tied to gas.
To reduce Russian gas imports, securing replacements from other countries would be the most convenient and least disruptive remedy to the current issue of energy dependence. The EU already relies on Norway and Algeria to supplement its Russian gas imports and may ask them to increase their exports. Another feasible option is to look to the United States and Qatar, two of the largest producers of exportable Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), which can be transported by ship.
However, in order to receive seaborne LNG imports, countries must rely on import terminals, more than half of which are located in Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Other countries reliant on Russian gas would need to construct new terminals, which would take between two and five years. Furthermore, most Qatari and U.S. LNG is promised to Asian markets. Fabozzi pointed out that “the U.S. just signed some pretty big, long-term LNG contracts with China” in late 2021, which may limit the amount the U.S. can provide to Europe. Other LNG producers like Canada would need to build export facilities on the Atlantic. Nonetheless, Germany announced plans in February to build two LNG import terminals that would be operational by 2024. Low carbon alternatives like nuclear energy could also be considered to plug the energy gap.
“Germany has closed its nuclear reactors over the last decade,” something Fabozzi says has contributed to their gas dependency. France, by contrast, “still has a lot of nuclear reactors.” France operates 56 nuclear reactors, the second-largest fleet in the world, and these generate 70% of the nation’s electricity. Macron, the French president, has pledged to build 14 more reactors by 2050. Nuclear energy has zero emissions, making it desirable in the transition to a low-carbon future. France has therefore been relatively unaffected by the issue of energy dependence on Russia and has been pushing for an EU ban on Russian oil.
However, Gordon stated that nuclear energy “only has a limited role to play in the current crisis … the plants generally take a long time to be built, and they generally go over budget.” Nuclear energy is not feasible for many European nations that have eschewed nuclear energy since it will require infrastructure that will come online in a decade. Furthermore, nuclear reactors have a limited lifespan of 40-50 years and require renewal or new infrastructure, which might take up to a decade even in nuclear countries. Fabozzi remarks that even in France “a lot of the nuclear fleet, these traditional larger nuclear generation sites, are close to retirement age.”
Still, the IEA points out that the reactivation of temporarily-offline plants and the delay of reactor closures can help substitute gas in electricity generation. Some countries have done exactly this. France announced in February that it would extend the lifetime of some of its reactors by another decade, and in March Belgium announced a 10-year extension for two reactors it had previously planned to shut down by 2025. In addition, recent technological developments in Small Modular Reactors can generate smaller amounts of electricity while being cheaper and taking less time to build. This can also help European countries with little existing nuclear infrastructure offset their electricity demands.
Gordon also stresses that nuclear energy cannot replace gas in the industrial and domestic heating sectors, especially in Germany. Furthermore, he noted that “Germany spent the whole Cold War worrying about being the battleground for a US-Russia conflict, and there were huge protest movements. The Green Party in Germany actually has its origins in environmental, anti-nuclear, no-US-weapons-on-our-soil movements.” Certain elements of the European public might never get behind expansions of nuclear energy production, especially with the Russian attacks on Ukrainian reactors generating alarm. Depending on the fallout caused by fighting around Chernobyl and missile strikes on other reactors, the European public might see this as another Fukushima and be further convinced to avoid nuclear energy.
In any case, nuclear energy, despite its low emissions, cannot wholly substitute gas in European energy consumption due to politics, affordability, and other pragmatic concerns.
“The best thing to do would be to consume less energy,” Gordon commented. He offered the replacement of boilers with heat pumps, the implementation of “Car-Free Sundays,” and the promotion of public transport as possible campaign ideas. Simply turning down the thermostat by 1°C would shave one-fifteenth of Russian gas imports. In fact, the last time some of these policies were introduced was in 1973 after the global oil shock.
Long Term
Domestically-generated renewable energy is the most viable long-term solution, both in terms of energy security and in the fight against climate change. In recent years, renewable energy has also grown cheaper than fossil fuels which means it satisfies all three components of the security trilemma — security, affordability, and sustainability. The EU’s usage of renewable energy is already exemplary compared to the rest of the world, with the entire European bloc on average generating 22% of its energy from renewables in 2020. However, the war in Ukraine has created an urgency to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
“Getting rid of the bureaucracy and red tape” and “all sorts of these non-price obstacles to building up renewables,” can speed up the transition to green energy, according to Gordon.
This transition has already begun in a number of European countries. Germany has vowed to accelerate its renewable energy adoption through a newly christened Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action (previously called the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy) and is aiming to generate 80% of its energy from renewables by 2030 and nearly all by 2035. In response to the Ukraine crisis, the European Commission announced REPowerEU, a plan to increase the deployment of wind and solar by 20% this year, in addition to implementing other short-term solutions discussed in the 10 Point Plan.
However, according to Fabozzi, weather and other external factors affect the reliability of renewables. To pave the way for widespread adoption, countries must also enhance energy storage infrastructure.
Fabozzi informed The Politic that renewable energy can be stored effectively in batteries for the short term or in hydrogen over longer durations. The production of hydrogen typically produces emissions, but recent developments in hydrogen technology have made green hydrogen, which is created by electricity generated from renewable energy, viable. Fabozzi adds that green hydrogen “also relates to energy security.” He gave the example of Japan, which imports 88% of its energy and can use hydrogen to store its imported fuel. Hydrogen allows countries to store energy for the long term and buttress their energy supplies in case of future shocks.
Batteries are also critical in enabling the expansion of renewable energy, but they demonstrate that renewable energy has supply chain issues that may compromise energy security. Over the past decade, China has established market dominance in renewable energy technology and critical minerals. Lithium-ion batteries, the dominant method to store renewable electricity and the essential component of electric vehicles, are made of graphite, most of which is produced by China. However, Fabozzi notes that Tesla has diversified its graphite sourcing to an Australian company that processes Mozambique graphite. However, as the electric vehicle industry and renewable energy expand, graphite demand will increase, forcing battery producers to depend on China if enough alternative sources of graphite cannot be found. A limited supply of batteries would compromise the short-term storage of renewable energy.
China also produces more than three-fifths of the world’s polysilicon, which is crucial in solar panels. Much of Chinese polysilicon is produced in Xinjiang, where human rights abuses have been documented.
According to Gordon, “the US needs to build a lot more solar panels” but this move towards renewable energy may come at the cost of “supporting human rights violations in western China.”
It is worrisome that we, “can already see over the horizon to the next dependency,“ warned Gordon. “If China invaded Taiwan, we’d have a real problem.”
While the EU may rely on Chinese imports of polysilicon or the solar panels themselves, existing fossil fuels are continually dependent on imports. Fabozzi noted that once solar panels or wind turbines have been imported, “you only need the wind or the sun.” Thus, renewable energy’s import dependency is on a smaller scale than that of fossil fuels.
“Now, there is an imperative to ramp up renewables not just for emissions, but for energy supply,” remarked Fabozzi. It remains to be seen whether energy security will drive Europe to achieve this ramp-up.