[ad_1]
Alexei Nikolsky/AP
This story was first published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
What is the relationship between Russia’s Ukraine actions and the gas price crisis?
Gas prices are soaring globally, largely because of the resurgence of demand for fossil fuels after the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, depleted storage and the difficulty of ramping up supply after the disruptions of the past two years. But prices have also been significantly affected by Russia’s recent decision to tighten gas supplies to Europe, which experts believe was driven by Vladimir Putin’s desire to move against Ukraine.
Russia is Europe’s main source of natural gas supply. This dependency is growing despite the growth of renewable energy over two decades. Germany is particularly vulnerable because it has shut down almost all of its nuclear power stations, and plans to eliminate all coal by 2030.
A major new gas pipeline, Gazprom’s $11 billion Nord Stream 2 from Russia across the Baltic to Germany, which would heat 26 million German homes, has been the focus of Germany’s diplomatic relations with Russia since it was announced in 2015. Construction on the 1,200 km pipeline was completed last year, but no gas has yet flowed and its future is now in doubt as Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz dramatically The project was stopped from being approved on Tuesday.
There are concerns that Russia may be using its gas supplies to help achieve its political goals. It is well-founded. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, noted that Russia’s decision to drop gas supplies to Europe by a quarter came as it was heightening tension towards Ukraine. “I hope this was only a coincidence,” He told the Guardian.
Is this really another conflict over fossil fuels?
No. No. Vladimir Putin has a long history of territorial ambitions in former Soviet nations, which he made explicit this week, and of attempts to exert political control over Ukraine. Supporters claim that Putin is worried about the possibility of NATO expansion. However, many analysts believe this is a pretext.
Also, Ukraine crisis is not a war over resources, but it has many implications for resource use. Russia is effectively using its power over European gas supply to achieve political ends. Reducing reliance on Russian gas is an urgent necessity for the EU to reach net zero emissions, and would also diminish Putin’s political leverage over the EU.
It is worth noting, however, that as Europe moves away from gas and pursues net zero emission, the value of this political tool will decline in the long-term. Russia’s industries have never recovered from the fall of communism, and its economy is now based overwhelmingly on the export of fossil fuels, with much of the rest made up of energy-dependent mineral resources, such as iron, steel, aluminum and other metals, and some agriculture.
Four in ten rubles accruing to Russia’s federal budget pre-pandemic came from oil and gas, which made up 60 percenet of Russian exports in 2019. Kremlin strategists are therefore keenly aware that in the longer term the global move to net zero threatens the whole basis of Russia’s economy and global influence.
Why is Europe so dependent of Russian gas?
Europe was historically heavily dependent on coal for heat and power. Since 2004, renewable energy generation has doubled and now accounts for 22 percent of the final energy production in 2020.
But, the Nuclear power accounts for less than half of the total electricity generated., from about a third of the EU’s electricity in 1995 to about a quarter today. After the accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, Germany’s then chancellor Angela Merkel announced an “Energiewende”—an energy shift—that would see all of the country’s reactors shut down.
This has increased Germany’s need for gas, and similar moves away from coal and towards lower emissions in other countries—including the UK, which despite North Sea gas production is a net importer of gas—have heightened the dependency.
These dependences have unignorable geopolitical consequences as well as climate impacts. Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser, now with the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, DC, says: “It has taken the current crisis for Germany and the EU to recognize that its co-dependence on Russian gas is a geopolitical and climate nightmare from which they must finally awake. Reducing Russian gas reliance is a huge climate and moral imperative that Europe must prioritize.”
In response to the sanctions, Russia will cut off gas supplies to Europe.
Russia would make a huge move like this. Russia’s continued reduction in its gas supply to Europe could have devastating consequences for Russia as well. Birol stated earlier in the month, before sanctions were imposed: “If Russia stops the gas supply to Europe, it could have a seismic impact on European energy. [Russia] has to consider the consequences if existing oil and gas supplies to Europe are halted.”
He added: “Failure to maintain [supplies] would shatter Russia’s reputation as a reliable partner and that would be a tectonic shift. Russia would be considered a threat, which would have profound consequences for European economies and even more for Russia. Europe would choose a strategy to diverge from Russia.”
What impact will Russia’s Ukraine actions have on climate diplomacy?
Russia was almost invisibility at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November, after a surprising public commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060. But the Kremlin has left the details of the goal vague and shown little sign of updating Russia’s emissions commitments for 2030, which are key to limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 C.
This year is crucial for climate diplomacy as pledges from all countries at Glasgow are still insufficient to reach the 1.5 C goal. The UK Cop26 presidency hopes for major progress before the next UN climate meeting in Egypt this November. Russia’s stance on Ukraine will certainly have an impact on those discussions, not least as any conflict will focus attention on the move from fossil fuels.
It is also notable that Russia’s oil and gas operations are among the worst in the world for the climate. The IEA has released data this week shows that emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and the major component of natural gas, are 70 percent higher than countries had claimed.
Russia doesn’t make any attempt to capture methane through its oil and gas drilling. However, there are great opportunities to stop its pipelines from leaking. If Putin were serious about tackling the climate crisis, Russia could provide an invaluable service to the rest of the world by plugging these leaks—reducing methane globally by a third by 2030 Could lower temperatures by 0.2C—and at current gas prices this could be done at no net cost and could even be profitable.
Should the UK increase its fracking or produce more North Sea gas to reduce dependence on Russian gas?
No. The UK has not attempted to frack since at least a decade ago. However, protests and the economics of fracking in densely populated countries made it impossible. Any attempt to restart fracking in the UK now would take many decades to produce any gas, well after the current gas price crisis is over.
New licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea are also currently under consideration by the government, and on Thursday the Committee on Climate Change will publish its advice to ministers on whether these licenses can be compatible with the UK’s climate goals. However, any new fields licensed would still take years to go into production so it would not impact the current crisis.
Bob Ward, policy Director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change (London School of Economics), warns of False solutions are easy to fall for: “We know that some opponents of climate policy will try to hide the truth and instead fool the public into falsely believing that the soaring prices are due to green energy. If they are successful, they might slow down the transition to clean domestic energy.”
There could be far more good done in the short term. Insulating homes and ramping up renewable energy generation.
What is the solution to the crisis?
Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US and an adviser to the UN secretary-general on the climate, says: “The West needs to meet Putin’s flagrant breach of international law with tough sanctions to force a change in calculus in Moscow. Putin believes he has sanction-proofed Russia to the greatest extent. However, Russia makes hundreds of millions of dollars per day from the sale of oil and refined products and more from the sale of gas and minerals.
“Weaning ourselves off these as quickly as possible is one route available to the west. In fact, Putin’s understanding of what decarbonization would mean for Russian energy exports in the medium and long term may be a factor in the timing of Putin’s attack on Ukraine now.”
It is vital to stop using fossil fuels in order to achieve net zero emissions and prevent the worst impacts of climate collapse. But the shift will also create geopolitical tensions as the world’s massive fossil fuel exporters—Russia, Saudi Arabia and some other Middle Eastern countries, Latin American oil producers, Australia—begin to lose out economically. The Ukraine crisis has shown that some fossil fuel producers may not be willing to give up the political leverage that they have from their resources without fighting.
