Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted the biggest shake-up of European energy markets this century. This film explains how Europe became so dependent on cheap Russian gas, and explores the hard choices facing the EU as it tries to balance energy security and climate ambitions.
Produced, filmed and edited by James Sandy; Maps by Russell Birkett, Chris Campbell and Sam Joiner; Graphics by Steve BernardThis is a story about a continent that grew addicted to Russian oil and gas.I think it's a story of Europe being blinkered, of seeing what it wanted to see to keep getting cheap gas at all cost.What happens when you open up the job of securing national energy to competition.We are in a gas crisis right now. And it's about to get worse.
It wanted to move away from the dirtier, polluting fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. And gas is seen as that kind of transition fuel, whereby you can burn it, and it burns with less emissions.And, therefore, you got this greater reliance and this greater shift towards gas, as countries move away from nuclear, in some cases, and certainly, move away from coal.
But the core pipeline is Nord Stream, Nord Stream 1 in this instance, the largest pipeline running from Russia to Europe in normal times. In the 1990s and before then, most energy, and gas, electricity all came from state monopolies. So the state owned, and managed, and maintained these giant infrastructure networks.
One of the problems for Europe has been what it's done with its storage, especially the UK. The UK shut down its main natural gas storage facility, something that would be coming into great use right now.The company, Centrica, the owner of British gas, wanted government support to run it but couldn't get it. So they decided instead that they would shut it down.
Gazprom, a large, state-owned Russian energy company also acquired assets. It owns gas storage in Germany. In Britain it's one of the big suppliers of gas to business. Take the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, for example. At that point Ukraine ousted the pro-Kremlin leader, put in a more pro-western leader. And a year after that Gazprom started demanding much higher prices for its energy. Ukraine refused. And it decided to turn off the taps. So it almost seems like there's this kind of stop cock that Putin likes to move in order to further his geopolitical goals.
For example, in the sanctions regime, gas has been sort of a sacrosanct element that the politicians aren't willing to touch. The storage sites that Gazprom owned in Europe; it became clearer as winter was approaching that Gazprom was not filling them. We saw some of them just sit there, 10 per cent, 15 per cent full. And European politicians were very slow to notice this and very slow to respond.
It is clear we need to put an end to this dependence as soon as possible and a lot faster than we had foreseen before this war.The EU actually wants to cut its use of Russian gas by two thirds by the end of this year and totally by 2027. You do not want to be in an apartment or a home that cannot be heated because of a shortage of gas. And governments are deeply worried about this.
It pushed for every country in Europe to cut their gas demand between October and March of next year to try and get through this winter without having severe problems. And they made it very clear that most of the burden will fall on industry. If there are involuntary curbs to industry, economists are talking about recession. So industry is the more obvious, because it doesn't effect immediately day-to-day lifestyles. It doesn't mean that people will be shivering in their homes. But it's ultimately going to impact all of us.
Now, that may still be the case. But the conversation in Germany has certainly started up about, look, is there anything we can do to keep the nuclear plants open? If we see a complete cut-off of Russian gas supplies, we may need every bit of help we can get. We do have language on coal. We have language on phasing down of unabated coal. And I think very many people will welcome the fact that that at least has been achieved.
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