Europe rapidly found alternatives to Russian gas

Bloomberg:

 Europe’s most remarkable response to Russia’s war on Ukraine hasn’t been marshaling military equipment and billions of euros in aid. It’s been the unprecedented speed of an energy transition that in one year has nearly eliminated its dependence on Russian fossil fuels in an attempt to strangle the key source of funding for President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

The shift has been far from the kind of climate-first transition that Europe has envisioned for its long-term future, with governments paying whatever it takes to secure liquefied sources of natural gas brought in by ships, burning more coal and ripping up some environmental plans in the process. And it’s been painful, with Europe getting hit by a roughly $1 trillion energy bill last year, cushioned by hundreds of billions of euros of government subsidies.

Still, even the most optimistic outlooks from analysts and the bloc’s own leaders at the outset of the war failed to predict how quickly Europe could move. A year ago, Europe spent about $1 billion a day to pay for gas, oil, and coal imported from Russia. Today, it pays a small fraction of that amount.

“Russia blackmailed us by threatening to cut the energy supply,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this month. “We have completely got rid of our dependency on Russian fossil fuels. It went much faster than we expected.”
...

Europe at the same time increased its dependency on alternative energy such as wind and solar.  Since they are basically supplemental sources of energy, Europe also had to find alternative sources of fossil fuels. Besides adding solar panels the Europeans also added batteries to deal with interment aspects of wind and solar energy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more