When Russian troops invaded Ukraine in the early hours of February 24, Germany woke up to an unpleasant reality: Russia is its top energy supplier, providing more than half of its natural gas and coal supplies and a third of its crude oil. In exchange, Germany sends Russia over $200 million per day—money that is now helping finance an invasion that Germans find intolerable. Last month German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a leader of the Green Party, pledged that Germany would stop importing oil from Russia by the end of 2022, and wean itself off Russian natural gas as soon as possible. In the short term, that may mean finding alternative suppliers for fossil fuels, including the United States. But in the long term, the crisis has only reinforced Germany’s determination to get off fossil fuels entirely, and to accelerate the Energiewende- the clean energy transition it began some 30 years ago.
A package of legislation announced last month and expected to pass this summer would increase subsidies for renewables and slash red tape that has slowed such projects in the past. “What has changed now is everyone realizes we need to ramp up renewable capacity even faster." says Matthias Buck - a director at Agora Energiewende. “The war is making it very clear that if you want to control your own fate, it’s better to prioritize renewables and end reliance on fossil fuels.”
Germany is not alone: France, long reliant on nuclear reactors for 70 percent of its power needs, has promised a major push for more renewals. During his recent re-election campaign, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged that France would be “the first major nation to abandon gas, oil, and coal.” Austria, even more dependent on Russian energy than Germany, is pouring money into subsids for renewable energy. Even Poland, one of Europe’s heaviest coal consumers, is investing heavily in offshore wind. In Germany, the Ukraine war has added an energy security argument to the climate crisis as a way of convincing people of the urgent need for an Energiewende. “We’re pretty far along, but not as far as we should be,” says Kathrin Henneberger - a Green Party parliament member and former climate activist.
The global impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have exposed vulnerabilities in U.S. energy security and undercut the myth that the United States, or any other major manufacturing economy, is truly energy independent yet. While the U.S. domestically produces 75% of its crude oil supply and 90% of its natural gas supply and only imports a comparatively small amount of Russian oil — now banned as a punitive measure against Moscow — it remains inextricably tied to Russian energy through highly globalized supply chains that rely on Russian fuel to produce goods for the U.S. market, the analysis shows. “Russia can’t sell its oil to the U.S. or Europe anymore, but it can still sell it to other major economies, such as India and China, where it’s being used to make products that we continue to import,” said Lincoln Pratson, Gendell Family Professor of Energy and Environment at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. This weakens the sting of our sanctions and presents U.S. policymakers with a conundrum, he said. If we import a product instead of making it domestically, it frees up part of our energy budget for use elsewhere, but at the same time, the imported product ties our energy security to that of the exporting nation, which may depend on Russia for its fuel.
Recent U.S. policy actions such as oil sanctions and the removal of Russia’s favorable trade status target only part of the risk, Shepard said. “They’re not really effective at addressing risks posed by the indirect, or embedded, Russian energy contained in many of the products we import from other countries.” “The most secure and economically efficient way to ensure U.S. energy independence is to support the domestic capabilities of the supply chains we depend on,” Shepard said. “Simply put, achieving U.S. energy security requires all countries to achieve energy security.”
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