cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28204201
PARIS/BERLIN, April 14 (Reuters) - More than three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s energy security is fragile. U.S. liquefied natural gas helped to plug the Russian supply gap in Europe during the 2022-2023 energy crisis.
But now that President Donald Trump has rocked relationships with Europe established after World War Two, and turned to energy as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, businesses are wary that reliance on the United States has become another vulnerability.
Against this backdrop, executives at major EU firms have begun to say what would have been unthinkable a year ago: that importing some Russian gas, including from Russian state giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM) could be a good idea.
That would require another major policy shift given that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 made the European Union pledge to end Russian energy imports by 2027.
Every ruble send to Russia is going to be used to kill Ukrainians.
There has to be some middle eastern country that we can buy LNG from while doing a heavy push for renewable and nuclear?
We also need a push for lowering our energy consumption, put some industries into some for of subsidised hibernation just like restaurants during covid. Turning off the lights of a bunch of monuments is a nice symbol, but we use so much power (= gas) in non-essential industries. For example the production of furtilizer, an essential good that requires loads of gas, can be cut back a lot with more efficient food consumption (/ less food being wasted). We are used to a lot of luxury and this greatly increases the power LNG-exporting countries hold over us.
LNG requires massive billion-dollar facilities to purify and condense for transport, there isn’t “spare capacity” just lying around