2 May 2022

The EU’s plans to replace Russian gas: Aspiration and reality

John Roberts and Julian Bowden

On March 8, the European Commission, delivered the outline of its REPowerEU plan, which is aimed at securing a massive immediate reduction in EU consumption of Russian gas and goes on to make the somewhat vague claim that “phasing out our dependence on fossil fuels from Russia can be done well before 2030.”

The vagueness is inherent in the fact that the EU does not define what constitutes dependence on Russian energy. But the accompanying statement by Commission Ursula von der Leyen made it clear that a massive reduction is envisaged: “We must become independent from Russian oil, coal and gas. We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us.”

The question, then, is how to replace a very big volume of gas with other gas, other energy sources, and demand reduction.

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