The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia has made western countries rethink their dependency on Russian oil and fossil fuel in general. The EU gets roughly 40% of its gas from Russia: According to figures from the research group Transport & Environment, this dependence costs around $118m a day.
But moving with a speed few thought possible, the EU has now laid out a strategy that could cut reliance on this fuel source by two thirds within a year. An initiative called REpowerEU aims at making Europe independent of Russian fossil fuel by the year 2030, it proposes growing Europe’s domestic oil output initially and then doubling down on its green energy efforts.
The plan is to import oil and LNG from non- Russian sources, options are Azerbaijan, US, Australia and Qatar among others. It is expected that the carbon emissions will shoot up in the initial years but the shift to renewable energy will be accelerated in the longer term. Meanwhile, Germany has announced that it’ll shut down all its nuclear power plants and is planning to set up LNG production plants, which could increase the dependency on fossil fuels in future.
I think we're living in a tricky time, that there's so much political pressure to make these energy policy decisions," said Prof Paula Kivimaa from the Finnish Environment Institute and the University of Sussex.
"But we also must look beyond the next couple of years. If Germany builds new LNG infrastructure, there is a risk that it kind of locks it in for the foreseeable future."
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Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master, it was rightly said. Electronic devices have grown into an inevitable part of our daily lives.
