Could Europe turn off Russian gas?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Ukraine invasion is forcing the European Union to completely rethink its energy policy.

Tamasin Ford asks how easily the continent could wean itself off Russian fossil fuels. After all, Europe's oil and gas purchases from Russia helped to fund this war in the first place, according to Kristine Berzina of the German Marshall Fund in Washington DC.

The immediate task is to slash dependence on Russian gas before winter returns in nine months, and Simone Tagliapietra of Brussels-based think tank Bruegel says that is doable. However, it's a much tougher task to stop Russian oil exports, according to Jason Bordoff of Columbia University, given that oil - unlike gas - is an integrated global market with many buyers.

Nonetheless, there is optimism that the invasion mark a turning point in the Western world's transition to carbon-free energy. Although Rosie Rogers of Greenpeace fears that in the short term, the scramble to turn off the gas pipelines could actually see European carbon emissions increase.

Producer: Laurence Knight

(Picture: Frozen gas pipeline valve; Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Russia is Europe's main supplier of oil and gas. So how has its invasion of Ukraine changed the way European leaders think about their energy sources? I think it absolutely is the biggest shock to the way that Europe conducts its energy policy.
0:24.5	That is not a regime that Europe can afford to prop up if Europe believes in any of the values that it represents.
0:33.3	But some say switching off the supply from Russia would mean ramping up the use of coal instead.
0:40.2	What we are now is a worse situation.
0:43.6	If the gas flows from Russia gets interrupted, we will need to reopen certain coal-fired power plants.
0:50.8	In today's Business Daily from the BBC, we take a look at whether the Ukraine invasion
0:56.0	could reverse Europe's progress towards sustainable energy or whether it could be the final
1:02.8	push to ditch fossil fuels for good.
1:08.9	Russia supplies about 40% of the European Union's natural gas imports. It arrives through pipelines
1:17.1	and then gets distributed across the continent. Germany and Italy are by far the biggest importers,
1:24.6	while some Eastern European countries buy all of their gas from Russia.
1:29.2	As for oil, around a quarter of the EU's imports come from Russia.
1:34.5	Oil and gas is a very significant part of the Russian economy.
1:38.6	Christine Bersinger is the head of the geopolitics team at the German Marshall Fund in Washington,
1:45.2	an independent think tank that works to promote transatlantic relations. If you look at 2021, oil and gas revenues
1:52.2	accounted for 36% of Russian budget revenue. And what does the government budget pay for? It pays for
1:59.8	the military.
2:08.8	So then in essence, Europe, who relies heavily on Russia for its energy, is also somewhat responsible in that their money has ended up fueling this invasion.
2:13.7	Europe in some ways complicit, right? Because what does European money go to when you heat your
2:21.1	homes with Russian natural gas? When you make electricity from Russian natural gas, all of that
2:29.0	props up the Russian state and directly fuels the levers of power it exerts over the rest of the world.
2:37.0	So Europe, which is 40% overall dependent on Russian gas, is inevitably really closely tied to Russia through the energy sector.
	...

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