8 April 2022
\nRoudi Baroudi<\/p>\n
DELPHI, Greece: Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine could force Europe to delay key decarbonization efforts for up to a decade, a prominent regional energy expert warned on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t have many choices left,\u201d said Roudi Baroudi, CEO of Doha-based Energy and Environment Holding, an independent consultancy. \u201cUnless some European countries pull out all the stops, much of the continent could soon be looking at crippling shortages, prohibitively high prices, or both.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that Europe is moving to reduce imports of Russian oil and gas, he explained, some of the measures expected to reduce carbon emissions may have to be put off \u201cfor eight, nine, maybe ten years\u201d, as would planned shutdowns of nuclear generating stations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe European Union will need to provide the necessary permissions in some cases, plus financing in others,\u201d he said. \u201cEight to ten nuclear plants and as many as 30 coal stations slated for decommissioning will have to remain online to keep up with electricity demand, and several projects required to replace Russian gas will need to be accelerated with additional funding and\/or guarantees.\u201d<\/p>\n
If and when gas stops flowing through pipelines from Russia, Baroudi told the conference, \u201cit cannot be replaced by simply ordering more liquefied natural gas from Qatar, the United States, and\/or other producers. Europe doesn\u2019t have enough receiving facilities to re-gasify such huge amounts, which is why efforts to expand capacity in Germany and the Netherlands are so urgent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coordinated releases of strategic oil reserves by the US and other countries are helping to contain upward pressure on crude and other energy prices, he said, but reasonable levels \u201ccannot be maintained unless more supply makes it to market and that means oil producers \u2013primarily OPEC but others as well \u2013 have to start pumping more.\u201d<\/p>\n
On yet another front, \u201cSpain has both spare LNG receiving capacity and an undersea pipeline for imports of gas from North Africa \u2013 but very little of that can reach the rest of Europe unless and until a new pipeline connects the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of Europe via France,\u201d said Baroudi, who has been advising companies and governments on energy policy for decades. \u201cParis has recently voiced new openness to that idea, but the EU can and should do more to facilitate it. It should also do more to establish an agreed route for another pipeline to carry gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Greece and\/or Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baroudi also argued that the EU would be wise to ensure adequate capital flows into renewables such as wind and solar. \u201cWe might have to retain fossil fuels longer than we had planned, but that\u2019s no reason to stop funding a cleaner future,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact it\u2019s a reason to move as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole situation is very sad,\u201d he added. \u201cEver since the Paris Agreements of 2015, and especially since the Glasgow climate summit last year, Europe had been on the right track to be ready for a decarbonized economy. But now those plans are temporarily being pushed to the back burner. Apart from the lives being lost in the fighting, the energy and economic implications will mean severe hardships across the continent and even beyond, especially for lower-income people, who are the most vulnerable as rising energy prices cause the cost of food to spike as well. So there will be hunger, too. And much of the cause is due to repeated delays in the diversification of Europe\u2019s sources of supply. Now it finds itself scrambling to prevent an economic disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
8 April 2022 Roudi Baroudi DELPHI, Greece: Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine could force Europe to delay key decarbonization efforts for up to a decade, a prominent regional energy expert warned on Friday….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,9,20,22,23,24,27],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,81,82,86,87,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,112,113,121,122,134,137,139,146,148,160,174,176,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,239,244,246,249,250,252,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,283,285,288],"class_list":["post-6020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blue-economy","category-clean-energy","category-climate","category-maritime-disputes","category-oil-gas","category-politics","category-qatar","category-roudi-baroudi","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-closure-of-nuclear-power-plants","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-market","tag-energy-peace","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-fuels-russian-gas-oil-and-gas-natural-gas","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-liquefied-natural-gas","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-renewable-energy","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-russia-in-the-european-energy-sector","tag-russian-sanctions","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-ukrain","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}