Russia’s attack on Ukraine has forced Europe to speed up its farewell to fossil fuels and focus on abandoning Russian oil and gas. The EU announced new measures on Wednesday, and at the same time the European Commission has released an action plan in case the Kremlin turns off the gas itself.

According to the updated plan, the EU is going to spend an additional 200 billion euros to completely abandon Russia’s fossil fuels by 2027.

Before the war, it was only a matter of banning long-term contracts with Gazprom after 2050, but two weeks after the Russian invasion, the European Commission has drawn up a plan to phase out oil and gas from Russia by 2030.

Now this plan has been specified, the term is approaching for another three years.

“Putin’s war has destabilized the global energy market and shown how vulnerable we are to relying on Russia as a fossil fuel supplier. We must reduce our dependence on Russia as soon as possible. And we can do that,” said EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen. when presenting a plan.

To this end, the European Commission has strengthened the goals and deadlines of the European program of “green” economic restructuring RePowerEU, designed for 2050. The EU intends to accelerate and reduce gas consumption by 30% by 2030.

The EU intends to partially replace Russian oil and gas by increasing purchases in other countries, primarily in the United States and the Middle East. 12 billion euros will be spent on the preparation of terminals, pipelines and other infrastructure.

But the main and much more expensive part of the plan is renewable energy production and energy savings.

The EU now intends to double the share of renewable energy sources to 45% (40% in the pre-war period), reduce energy consumption by 2% instead of 1.5% per year and reduce it by 2030. 13%, not 9%.

To accelerate the “green” restructuring, the European Commission has proposed to make solar panels mandatory for all office and public buildings from 2025, and from 2029 – and for new homes. Gas boilers will be quickly replaced by heat pumps, and the construction of windmills on land and at sea will be approved under an accelerated program.

The costs must pay off in the end, not only politically by reducing dependence on a militant eastern neighbor, but also financially. According to the European Commission, the 27 EU countries will save 80 billion euros annually by 2030 on gas imports, 12 billion – oil and almost 2 billion – coal.

However, this requires that they all follow the recommendations of the European Commission and adopt all necessary decisions and laws. Now they are united, as never before, before the Russian aggression, but not all the proposals of the European Commission are approved.

Thus, Hungary continues to block the sixth package of sanctions and requires subsidies to compensate for losses from the oil embargo. Part of the money from the announced plan could go to pay for these costs and allow Hungary to do without Russian supplies through the Druzhba pipeline.

New measures and plans would not have been born without Russia’s energy war against the European Union, its largest, closest and richest market.

It began in the fall, when Gazprom turned on the tap. Gas prices in Europe have soared to unprecedented heights, leading to a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy and discontent among EU citizens. They faced record inflation and falling living standards, which had already fallen into disrepair after a two-year coronavirus pandemic.

But as soon as Russian President Vladimir Putin sent an army to seize Ukrainian lands, the energy war also shifted from a cold to a hot stage.

The EU has imposed sanctions, abandoned Russian coal, planned to cut gas purchases in Russia by two-thirds by the end of the year, and almost agreed to an embargo on Russian oil. In response, Putin ordered to charge for gas in rubles, and Gazprom cut off supplies to dissenting Poland and Bulgaria.

This is a struggle not for life, but for death.

The EU imports 57.5% of all energy consumed, and Russia is a key supplier . The EU buys about 40% of all gas from Russia and up to 30% of oil and petroleum products.

Raw materials Russia is no less dependent on the EU. The oil and gas sector brings in half of its budget revenues and more than half of its exports, and it sells 70% of its gas and 60% of its oil and petroleum products to Europe.

In less than three months of war alone, the EU has paid Russia more than 50 billion euros for oil and gas.

The next blow in the energy war, each of the opponents is trying to strike where it hurts the other. Russia earns more on oil, the European Union can not give up gas yet. Therefore, the EU, preparing an oil embargo against Russia, fears that Putin will respond by cutting off gas.

The plan for this case was announced by the European Commission on Wednesday, along with a large package of measures to reduce dependence on Russian energy resources. It has few details, and in general it consists of two general points.

First, solidarity: fan out the industry, but coordinate it at EU level so that all countries suffer equally, not just those who are most dependent on Russian supplies.

And secondly, subsidizing prices if they become sky-high. This is usually forbidden, but recently many EU countries have been actively doing so in the context of an energy war with Russia.

“Since September 2021, Germany, France, Italy and Spain have each spent between € 20 billion and € 30 billion on artificially curbing rising gas, electricity and petrol prices,” said Simone Tagliapietra, an economist at the Bruegel Research Center.

“Such large-scale subsidies are unaffordable for taxpayers and harmful from the point of view of geopolitics and energy security, not to mention the environment,” he wrote. “In fact, EU authorities subsidize President Putin.”

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