The sector with the biggest challenge for Europe is natural gas, which is used for heating and electricity generation. Demand is usually 20% lower in spring than in winter. The question, however, is how it will find the EU next winter, possibly with low stockpiles.
But to avoid such a scenario, there are four concrete solutions that the EU will have to implement in order to meet next winter’s requirements, while also making its energy market independent of Russia’s gas imports. More specifically:
1. Europe should refuse to buy new gas contracts from Russia. There are many contracts that expire at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 and should not be renewed. Instead, as many alternative energy sources as possible should be used. These energy sources can come from LNG or from the reserves of Qatar, Algeria and Norway, but also from the reserves of Australia and the US respectively.
2. Energy efficiency should be improved, especially in EU Member States’ dwellings, by providing incentives for renovations and at the same time replacing gas boilers with heat pumps where possible.
3. European consumers need to become aware of their energy savings. In this way they will be able to make even greater energy savings to reduce overall energy demand on the European continent. For example, everyone will be able to set the thermostat one degree lower. Complete replacement of all energy consuming electrical household appliances in a household, with new low-consumption ones. Such a policy should be subsidized by the governments of the EU member states, and in particular to the middle and lower incomes of European societies.
4. The bureaucracy must be broken and renewable energy sources must proceed immediately, and especially the invention of the technology required to increase the storage of electricity from RES. Europe, with the simultaneous implementation of these three solutions, could thus soon reduce Russian gas imports by more than a third. Otherwise it will continue to indirectly finance Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
