As European Union politicians prepare to discuss climate change at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, next week, they might find themselves somewhat ironically wishing for warmer temperatures this winter. The continent is facing its first energy crisis in decades, marked by soaring electricity bills, power plant closures, and rolling blackouts.
The crisis will only worsen as the mercury drops and energy demand increases further, with highly populated areas dreading the winter. The bitter reality is that this avoidable crisis can be attributed to none other than the ill-informed climate policies that European legislators have pushed over the years.
Over the past decade, EU politicians have hastily embraced the idealized vision that renewable sources of energy alone, such as solar and wind, can meet their energy demands with a little subsidy help from the government. Countries such as Germany have embraced a “Green New Deal” mentality of throwing a lot of money at imperfect technologies without adequately considering the risks while shutting down other sources of energy that don’t fit into their vision.
They dismissed the very real reliability concerns of a renewables-powered economy and abandoned the baseload energy sources that could be saving them now, such as nuclear power and natural gas. As a result, the continent faces supply shortages, record-high energy bills, power blackouts, and a problematic over-reliance on Russia for oil and gas. Of course, this won’t be more than a minor inconvenience for the politicians responsible for this squeeze, but it will surely turn the lights off for millions of lower-income Europeans.
While these reckless energy policies have left Europeans vulnerable to an energy squeeze for much of the past decade, skyrocketing oil and gas prices in the past year lit the fuse under this crisis. Since the beginning of the year, the spot price of natural gas has increased fivefold. Self-inflicted supply shortages combined with increased global demand, particularly from Asian countries more willing to pay a premium to gas producers, have inflated prices as countries slowly recovered from the coronavirus pandemic.
While we shouldn’t necessarily blame Europe’s policymakers for external market disruptions, historically low gas prices have long sheltered the energy vulnerabilities they created for themselves. Now that oil and gas prices are back up, the time of reckoning has come.
Though some countries’ energy policies have been worse than others, over-reliance on foreign gas is a problem across the board due to the EU’s green energy mandates. A recent comment made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that “Europe today is too reliant on gas and too dependent on gas imports” seems to suggest some self-awareness. Still, European leaders won’t admit that it’s their fault.
While the United States used domestic natural gas as a helpful transition from much dirtier fossil fuels such as coal, the EU went the other way and actively discouraged natural gas production through carbon taxes and outright bans in some cases. America is now energy independent and enjoys the largest emissions reductions of any country, while Europe is increasingly reliant on imported fossil fuels — mainly from Russia.
No stranger to political hardball, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of holding up gas supplies to Europe to put pressure on the approval of the highly contentious Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Last month, the International Energy Agency even asserted, “Russia could do more to increase gas availability to Europe and ensure storage is filled to adequate levels in preparation for the coming winter heating season.”
While EU politicians try to shift blame to Russia’s geopolitical maneuvering, their egos prevent them from admitting that their own mistakes led to this predicament. Europe’s energy crisis has been lurking in the shadows for years, but the chickens have come home to roost just in time for COP26.
This presents a crucial opportunity for European policymakers to steer things in the right direction and for Americans to emphasize the importance of energy security to their international colleagues. Sacrificing reliability for climate action means you end up with neither. If that’s one thing climate negotiators take away from COP26, I’ll consider the conference a success.
Chris Barnard (@ChrisBarnardDL) is the national policy director at the American Conservation Coalition and a frequent opinion contributor on environmental issues.
