Putin’s War Threatens Europe’s Ambitious Climate Goals

The EU last year proposed a radical decarbonization plan, but Russia’s invasion has forced several countries to burn more coal and build new gas facilities.

Last summer the European Union unveiled «Fit for 55,» a radical plan to move away from carbon-based energy, which envisions deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to meet a goal of reaching net-zero by midcentury. But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced several countries to backpedal on decarbonization, at least in the short term, to compensate for cuts in fuel supplies from Russia.

Since Russian troops rolled across the Ukrainian border on Feb. 24, European countries have started to burn more coal, plan new liquefied natural gas terminals and extend the region’s network of gas pipelines. “I understand some governments are having to make difficult decisions to ensure energy supplies for their citizens,” says Fatih Birol, executive director at the International Energy Agency, which just last year called for an end to new oil and gas projects. “The current strains on energy markets are painful for us all.”

The climate plan announced on July 14, 2021, by the European Commission proposed tightening its existing cap-and-trade system for carbon emission permits, ramping up renewable power, and phasing out cars with internal combustion engines to slash emissions by 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels. The war in Ukraine has highlighted the degree to which those ambitions relied on gas piped from Russia to keep the lights on and factories humming while awaiting a payoff from hundreds of billions of euros in planned investment in renewables, electric cars, and technologies to cut emissions from heavy industry.

The region relies on Russia for about 40% of its gas and a third of its oil. With Putin weaponizing deliveries of the fuels, the EU is backing investment in infrastructure such as LNG production anyplace other than Russia and facilities to import it to the region. And it’s increasingly clear that larger quantities of coal will have to serve as a significant backup, which, until recently, was viewed as unnecessary and dangerous. Since February, carbon emissions from coal have jumped more than 6% from 2019 levels, according to researcher Kayrros SAS.

Russia has reduced gas shipments through every major pipeline to Europe this year, with exports at times falling to less than one-third of their March peak, the IEA reports. The curbs come despite a post-pandemic rebound in demand, with gas usage in Europe in 2021 hitting its highest level in a decade, British oil major BP Plc estimates.

“There’s a growing realization of the dependency that’s been allowed to develop,” says Martin Bradley, head of European infrastructure investments for Macquarie Asset Management. “There will be a five- to 10-year scramble to address that dependency issue.”

The crisis has prompted Germany to delay the retirement of a number of coal- and oil-fired power plants that together amount to about 10 gigawatts of installed generation capacity, a move researcher ICIS says will increase carbon emissions in the power sector by 20% next year and 17% in 2024. BloombergNEF says the shift increases the chance that Europe’s biggest economy will fall short of its 2030 climate goals. The Dutch government is removing a cap on power from coal, Austria ordered its state-controlled utility to revive a shuttered coal power station, and France is preparing a coal plant as a reserve for the winter.

“Recommissioning coal-fired power plants to meet short-term energy needs is a quick fix,” says Peter Vis, a former top climate-policy official at the European Commission who now works at consultancy Rud Pedersen Public Affairs. “However, it will require even steeper decreases in emissions later.”

Many countries are also investing in terminals to import LNG as an alternative to Russian gas delivered via the web of pipelines spanning Europe. While gas is typically considered to be cleaner than coal, some environmentalists oppose the construction of new facilities and pipelines to connect them to existing networks. That’s because the infrastructure will last decades, and gas wells and pipelines are notorious for leaking methane, which is a more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The 20 LNG projects in the works would be able to handle 120 billion cubic meters of the fuel a year, or about 80% of the volume Russia supplied in 2021, according to researcher FTI Consulting.

State-backed investment banks, which had been prioritizing wind and solar, have signaled a renewed willingness to back carbon-fuel projects. The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development says it will consider funding gas storage facilities or LNG infrastructure as alternatives to coal and oil. And the European Investment Bank, after pledging to stop supporting fossil fuels, says it will consider financing terminals to import LNG.

“We need to be more flexible,” EIB President Werner Hoyer told reporters in Frankfurt on June 20, “but always under the condition that we fund infrastructure that can also receive, distribute, and use hydrogen”—a potential low-carbon alternative to natural gas that might use the same infrastructure, though it remains unclear how or whether that will work.

The news isn’t entirely bad, as the war has jump-started investment in wind turbines, solar farms, and carbon capture and storage facilities. The EU understands that there’s only a fixed amount of carbon it can put in the atmosphere this decade and still meet its goals.

So the bloc is seeking to double solar capacity to 320GW by 2025 and to hit 600GW by the end of the decade—which would make solar Europe’s biggest source of electricity, whereas today it’s not even in the top five. And Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands in May announced a $150 billion plan to build North Sea wind farms that would provide enough power for 230 million households. To make it all happen, the EU has set out guidelines to speed up permitting for new projects, a key roadblock.

“It’s always risky to allow higher emissions, but if that’s coupled with razor-sharp focus on wind and solar deployment, probably that means a faster energy transition,” says Charles Moore, head of Europe at researcher Ember. “It would be a risky strategy if you had any other options, but you don’t.” —With Samy Adghirni, Anna Shiryaevskaya, and Isis Almeida