EU to step up push for clean power as Ukraine conflict escalates
Energy security concerns triggered by the war in Ukraine will step up moves towards energy self-sufficiency and clean power as Europe seeks to end its reliance on Russian fossil fuels, say climate envoys and policy experts.
Just over a week into the invasion, European leaders have vowed to wean the continent rapidly off Russian gas, and the International Energy Agency has urged the EU not to sign new supply agreements as part of a 10-point plan.
“Ending our dependency on Russian fossil fuels, and on fossil fuels in general, is essential,” Barbara Pompili, France’s minister for ecological transition, said late last week.
This followed a warning from Kadri Simson, EU energy commissioner, that the conflict had made it “painfully clear that we cannot afford to leave to any third country the power to destabilise our energy markets or influence our energy choices”.
As governments struggle to shield consumers from high energy prices, the need for reform of supply and distribution has become starkly apparent to policymakers.
The European Commission is due to present its updated energy strategy and is expected to stress the need to boost renewable sources. It is also expected to address the need for greater interconnectivity of electricity grids within the bloc and Ukraine.
The response to the crisis was likely to reorient energy geopolitics, by driving “the deglobalisation of the global energy system”, said Lord Adair Turner, senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He noted that not all countries had fossil fuel reserves but all had the potential to generate solar and wind power.
Europe has committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030, and to reach net zero emissions by 2050, in the effort to curb global warming. But for now it remains reliant on oil and gas, with Russia providing nearly 40 per cent of EU gas and more than 25 per cent of its crude oil.
The race to end this dependence will require boosting imports from nations such as the US and Qatar in the short term, and is likely to result in more domestic coal-fired power generation and fossil fuel production until further renewable sources are developed.
Germany has stepped up its goal to fulfil all its energy needs from renewable sources by 2035, compared with a previous aim to abandon fossil fuels “well before 2040”, but at the same time decided to “rapidly” build two new terminals to receive gas imports.
However, the desire to be more self-sufficient, combined with the lowered cost of renewables and ambitious national climate targets, should trigger a ramp-up in domestic clean energy, analysts said.
It was “clear that the dependence on fossil fuels is economically damaging and adds to insecurity”, said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “It would be a perverse logic that would lead you to conclude that the answer now is to invest in more.”
Climate and security issues were “pointing in the same direction”, he added.
Emergency talks about reforming Europe’s energy system followed the release of a major UN report last week that outlined the extent of the destruction caused by climate change if countries did not rapidly cut emissions and prepare for the inevitable.
“The security question could be an incredibly important moment to align our climate and our energy future,” said Jennifer Layke, global director of the energy programme at the World Resources Institute. “The crisis is going to call into question the wisdom of a system that relies on natural gas as the transition fuel” because the “risk equation” was “shifting”, she added.
Analysts said it was crucial that short-term measures to shore up Europe’s energy supplies did not prolong the use of polluting fuels, given that new extraction infrastructure has a lifetime measured in decades.
The American Petroleum Institute, which has lobbied against climate action, said last week that the current crisis demonstrated “how important natural gas and oil are and will continue to be”.
The industry found unlikely support from Tesla’s Elon Musk, who cited “extraordinary times” in a tweet: “Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately.”
Turner said policymakers would have to “guard against the danger” of locking in new fossil fuel production “without being so completely purist that we don’t recognise that there is a security of supply issue in the short term”.
An uptick in European coal-fired generation may occur in the short term, despite the pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit by countries worldwide to “phase down” its use. But Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at The Brookings Institution, said it was “difficult to imagine” a more sustained resurgence of coal.
The response to the shifting geopolitics from China, the world’s biggest emitter with a heavy reliance on coal, oil and gas, remains unclear. Russia’s southern neighbour Mongolia agreed last week to build a gas pipeline that will deliver 50bn cubic meters of fuel a year to China.
Japan, which relies heavily on Russian energy imports, has also been less definitive than Europe about cutting ties. S&P Global last week noted the “mounting” pressure on Japanese companies to review their deals with Russia following oil major Shell’s withdrawal from the Sakhalin-2 gas project.
Obtaining fuel is not the only threat to energy security: electricity networks must be resilient to power cuts that would disrupt communication and critical services.
An economic slowdown as a result of the conflict, combined with high energy prices reducing consumption, may lead to fewer emissions, as occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. But that could be followed similarly by an economic and emissions rebound, while the destruction of industrial sites during the conflict could release toxic fumes into the environment.
Europe’s energy crisis had shown that the transition to green energy had been too slow, said Jason Bordoff, co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School. “This conflict is bringing into sharp relief the disconnect between climate ambition and climate reality today.”
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