Europe reconsiders its energy future

AFTER RUSSIA’SLNGEULNGEU annexation of Crimea in 2014 Europe feared that Vladimir Putin would cut supplies of piped gas passing through Ukraine to European customers. That worry led Poland’s then prime minister, Donald Tusk, to issue a stark warning: “Excessive dependence on Russian energy makes Europe weak.” As a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Mr Putin’s forces unfolds, Europe looks, if anything, weaker. Despite some efforts to diversify supply, install cross-border gas connections and build plants to import liquefied natural gas (), in the decade to 2020 Russian exports of piped gas to the and Britain shot up by a fifth by volume, to make up roughly 38% of all that fossil fuel consumed in Europe. That year more than half of German gas came from Russia.Mr Putin’s latest aggression may at last shake the old continent out of its energy complacency. On February 22nd, as Russian tanks were preparing to roll into Ukraine, Germany suspended final approval of Nord Stream 2, a controversial new gas pipeline linking it with Russia. Days later the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, vowed “to change course in order to overcome our import dependency” with more renewables, bigger domestic stores of gas and coal, and revived plans for terminals. At the level, a wide-ranging proposal to guarantee the bloc’s “energy independence”, due to be unveiled by the European Commission on March 2nd but postponed as a result of the war, is expected to advocate strategic stocks and mandatory gas storage to deal with the Russia risk in the short term, and a dramatic expansion of renewable energy and clean technologies such as hydrogen in the long run.