The EU Energy Crisis and a New Geopolitics of Climate Transition

Abstract

In 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had a profound effect on EU energy and climate policies. The EU redesigned its approach to the geopolitics of energy security as it sought alternatives to Russian supplies with accelerated urgency. It upgraded its commitments to energy transition internally and through external actions too, whilst member states balanced these with the domestic politics of a cost-of-living crisis triggered by the war. The new era of geopolitical power had repercussions for the conceptual contours of EU approaches to energy and climate security, which were elevated to hard security issues. The article reviews the key developments in EU energy and climate policies in 2022 and notes three emerging and inter-related conceptual shifts in these: the securitization of the green transition, a more realpolitik approach to external climate actions and a rebalancing towards state intervention. The energy crisis that shook European politics in 2022 started before Russia's war against Ukraine. A function of post-Covid recovery, European, North American and Asian economies had begun to revive in 2021, which brought back industrial demand for process heat and electricity. Strong economic recovery in Asia drove up liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices and meant that lower quantities were available for other consumers (IEA, 2022). Moreover, EU carbon prices picked up, which incentivized a fuel switch from coal to gas (Reuters, 2021). Other factors, such as a hot summer, brought about marginal additional demand. On the supply side, outages at LNG export facilities left global LNG markets strained even further. Russia had higher-than-usual domestic demand (TASS, 2021), whilst also deliberately going slow on filling up storage capacity in Europe over the summer (IEA, 2022). By the beginning of the heating season 2021, filling levels in European gas storage stood at 74.6%, 20% lower than the preceding year, and Gazprom-run storages were at a mere 22% (European Commission, 2022d). This brought Europe into direct competition with Asian consumer markets for alternative LNG supplies. Energy markets were tight as Europe went into 2022. Russia's invasion and the ensuing gradual reduction of gas exports to Europe dramatically aggravated this situation. From July to September 2022, Russian pipeline gas exports to Europe reduced by some 74% compared with 2021. Yamal Europe, the pipeline through Belarus and landing in Poland, was down almost entirely, whilst transit through the Ukrainian pipeline system landing in Slovakia and Romania was reduced by 63% (European Commission, 2023e). Russian gas supply to Europe through Nord Stream came to a halt at the end of September 2022 as the pipeline through the Baltic Sea was sabotaged. By the end of 2022, gas exports had dwindled to marginal volumes. After many years of sending around 150 billion cubic metres to European consumer markets every year or a third of overall EU consumption, Russia ended its role as a prime supplier. Against the backdrop of a strained market situation, this amounted to a perfect storm. Gas prices at the TTF, the European benchmark for LNG, saw all-time highs of 319.98 EUR/MWh in August 2022 – some 15 times the pre-war levels. Because the European power market is indirectly tied to gas – thanks to gas setting the price as the marginal fuel, the so-called merit order principle – electricity markets were in upheaval as well. As per estimates of the European Commission, power benchmark prices in the third quarter of 2022 averaged 339 EUR/MWh, an increase of 222% compared with 2021 (European Commission, 2023d). An already high Eurozone inflation picked up even further, reaching 10% by the end of 2022 (Eurostat, 2023). Clearly, skyrocketing TTF prices ensured LNG cargos found their way into Europe and drove imports of LNG to record levels. Yet, the macroeconomic impact was significant as energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals, paper and steel decreased production, making longer term European industrial competitiveness a key policy concern (Bloomberg, 2022; Reuters, 2022c). What is more, high energy prices became a social issue as they affected vulnerable households the most. European policy responses centred around replacing natural gas with alternative fuels and decarbonizing the European energy and production system. This, on the one hand, meant bringing back fossil fuels, notably coal. Though demand increments remained smaller than feared, power sector CO2 emissions alone went up by almost 4% in 2022 (Ember, 2023). It also meant enhancing the supply of renewable energy and increasing production capacity. In May 2022, the Commission presented a comprehensive policy package dubbed REPowerEU, aimed at phasing out Russian fossil fuels in Europe's imports ‘well before 2030’ and at speeding up the clean energy transition. The REPowerEU plan rested on enhancing clean energy sources by raising renewables targets, eventually agreed to be 42.5% by 2030, accelerating the permitting processes for major renewable projects and building up a (green) hydrogen economy. Aimed at helping the decarbonization of industry, the EU prepared a Green Deal Industrial Plan that member states eventually signed off in early 2023. This aimed to support a faster transition to climate neutrality, inter alia through a Net Zero Industry Act (European Commission, 2023a, 2023c) supporting the build-up of clean tech production within Europe. The Plan envisaged the loosening of state aid to support industrial transformation by at the same time encouraging national governments to consider tax breaks in support of green net-zero technologies investments. A ban of fossil-fuel-based combustion engines by 2035 agreed in late 2022 (Reuters, 2023a), coupled with efforts to revise the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Council of the EU, 2022) sought structurally to alter demand patterns in mobility and heating. On the national level, governments also rushed to enhance clean energy targets. For example, the Netherlands announced plans to double capacity in offshore wind by 2030 (Reuters, 2022b). Germany upped its goal for renewables in the power mix to 80% by 2030 (Cleanergywire, 2022), whilst Italy entered the offshore wind business with determination, aiming to install 5.5 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 (WindPower Monthly, 2022). Greece introduced the country's first Offshore Wind Law and set a target of 2 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 (IEA, 2023). Portugal raised targets for renewable energy in its power mix by 20%, now aiming for 80% by 2026 (Reuters, 2022). In a 2022 energy security strategy, the United Kingdom promised ‘self-sufficient’ energy supply as a way of decarbonizing the electricity system by 2035 (HM Department for Business, 2022). Even coal-heavy Poland made determined efforts to increase the share of renewables in the mix, with 2022 marking a year of significant growth of the industry (Reuters, 2023b). Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, the United Kingdom and Sweden agreed on developing 300 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2050, thus effectively making the North Sea a ‘green power plant’ (De Croo et al., 2023). The European Union collectively and national governments individually mobilized significant funds in reaction to the energy crisis. Much of this funding was meant to buffer high energy costs. By October 2022, energy subsidies earmarked or spent in support of industry and households had surpassed EUR 700 billion (Goldthau and Tagliapietra, 2022). Spending was uneven across Europe and reflected European governments' differing abilities to spend their way out of the crisis. The European Commission allowed green state aid to the tune of EUR 51 billion during the year (European Commission, 2023a). Germany announced plans to invest more than EUR 200 billion into industrial decarbonization (Reuters, 2022a), whereas other large economies such as France pledged additional spending on decarbonizing its economy, on top of EUR 30 billion of green recovery money announced earlier (Euractiv, 2022a). Portugal announced more than EUR 25 billion of public and private finance over 10 years (Reuters, 2022). On the European level, REPowerEU is to add EUR 210 billion in investment for, mainly, renewables, hydrogen and energy efficiency (S&P Global, 2022). Taken together, these measures are argued to having brought forward the EU energy transition by a decade (The Economist, 2023). In parallel to these profound adjustments to domestic energy policies, European governments also introduced a battery of new external commitments in 2022. In reaction to a ‘return of geopolitical energy security’ (Kuzemko et al., 2022), European policy-makers were quick to put in place policy measures aimed at ensuring supplies, lowering demand and keeping prices in check. The EU and member states signed dozens of new energy accords to increase oil and gas imports in 2022. A flurry of energy diplomatic efforts aimed to contract additional gas from producer countries, including Norway, Qatar and the United States. The EU signed a deal with Azerbaijan to double gas supplies, whilst talks about East Mediterranean gas involved a new accord with Egypt and Israel. Several governments negotiated their own supply agreements with countries like Algeria, Angola and Libya (ECFR, 2022a). The EU invested significant time during the year in introducing a cap on the price of gas imports, a measure that would previously have been anathema to the logic of external energy policy. It also moved forward with a common purchasing vehicle, the EU Energy Platform, to help drive down the price of imported gas; this measure had been discussed on and off over many years but without gaining momentum and yet now advanced, to start operation in 2023 (European Commission, 2023a, 2023b). Significantly, most of the new gas deals included clean energy commitments. The EU was able to argue that notwithstanding the turn to alternative gas supplies to offset the loss of Russian supplies in the immediate short term, the priority in 2022 was to strengthen external co-operation on renewables. This co-operation was aimed both at supporting energy transition in third countries and more directly at increasing renewables imports into Europe. The EU's new accord with Azerbaijan included a focus on green hydrogen exports from the country. The EU signed a major new energy deal to bring renewables from Georgia and the South Caucasus across the Black Sea to Romania. It signed new co-operation with Arab Gulf states on solar and hydrogen especially (Council of the European Union, 2022b). An EU–Morocco Green Partnership also promised co-operation on hydrogen supplies. Franco-Spanish agreement was reached on a new H2MED pipeline between Barcelona and Marseilles to help transport hydrogen from North Africa to European markets. The EU increased funding under the African Green Energy Initiative and, after several years of debate, launched plans for a Global European Hydrogen Facility (European Commission, 2022c). In similar vein, the EU worked up text for a new Critical Materials Act – which would eventually be agreed in early 2023 – aimed at securing better access to minerals crucial for energy transitions. Several agreements on critical mineral supplies from countries like Kazakhstan and Namibia advanced. After years of going through the Brussels institutions, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism moved into a new implementation phase at the end of 2022 when the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a provisional agreement; this was eventually approved by the European Parliament in April 2023. European global climate funding also increased in 2022 and there were several highly notable developments in this area of EU external action. After many years resisting, at the COP27 summit in Egypt in November 2022, European countries backed a new ‘loss and damage’ fund – finally agreeing to the kind of de facto climate compensation for which developing countries had long pushed. The EU channelled funding into new Just Energy Transition Partnerships with Indonesia, India, Senegal and Vietnam, based on an earlier EU–South Africa accord. Its 1-billion-euro contribution to the 20-billion Indonesian partnership was its biggest funding climate-funding initiative ever (European Commission, 2022b). Alongside the increased renewables investments and supply agreements, there were more directly political elements to the climate agenda too. As extreme weather events in 2022 made the impacts of climate change ever more tangible, the EU also introduced several new commitments in the sphere of so-called climate security. The EU's 2022 Strategic Compass and the 2021 Climate Defence Roadmap promised to make security deployments more climate sensitive, and they committed to making Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions less resource intensive and to building better early warnings for climate stresses to trigger more effective action. New council conclusions on climate security were agreed upon under the Czech presidency in late 2022 with upgraded commitments to embed climate issues at the core of mainstream foreign and security policy (Council of the European Union, 2022a; see also European External Action Service, 2022). In similar vein, France introduced a new Climate and Defence Strategy in April 2022 (Ministère des Armes, 2022). After a summer of extreme weather events, the Commission made a pitch for more extensive crisis management powers to deal with climate disasters. A European Parliament resolution urged the EU to step up progress in moulding defence and security policy around climate factors, triggering far-reaching debate on this topic (European Parliament, 2022). In light of extreme weather experienced during 2022, this area of policy moved up several gears and was now set to become an increasingly important aspect of EU security deliberations in future years. In sum, the year 2022 saw an unprecedented urgency, intensity and breadth of policy change in the area of energy and climate action. Within this intense range of policy developments, it is possible to detect three incipient changes to the EU's overarching approaches to energy security and ecological challenges. These represent potentially significant changes that have a bearing on longstanding conceptual frameworks and interpretations of EU energy and climate-change strategies. The three changes are, first, a securitization of renewables; second, a bolder renewables extractivism; and third, a more state-interventionist energy policy. These shifts are separate from but to some extent inter-related. With regard to the first, the energy crisis of 2022 is likely to leave its mark as the moment when energy transition becomes more explicitly securitized. Whereas policy responses to past energy crises centred on making the fossil energy system more robust to external shocks, for example, by way of establishing strategic petroleum reserves at OECD level in the wake of the 1970s oil crises (Kohl, 2010), the 2022 crisis had a different outcome (Bazilian and Goldthau, 2023). This time – notwithstanding sometimes patchy emergency measures – the policy answer was to enhance resilience through energy system decarbonization. Renewables moved to the heart of European security policy. In terms of policy discourse, this coincided with a fundamental shift in the policy framing of renewables. The Commission attested ‘renewable energy […] an overriding public interest’ (European Commission, 2022a, p. 11), thus justifying the comprehensive REPowerEU policy package and its profound impact on the European energy system. Germany's finance minister renewables (Euractiv, their contribution to on foreign such as similar were made by the to the effect that of and renewable was key to enhancing energy security Germany, 2022). this shift to renewables. et energy securitization is in would as a of the 2022 that policy had on security before the war. Yet, it is highly significant that it was renewables that were and were made to crisis policy including as as industrial policy In its the shift towards renewables and clean as a of the 2022 energy crisis changes the of energy security in EU policy. Energy security was by the and patterns oil and and a function of its at prices be the accelerated decarbonization with the to – – of fossil fuel for years to Yet, the for and clean energy supply in the effective between public funds and private as to the mobilized by turn into capacity build-up at within a short of time and thus the system. The but from a and to a on and (Bazilian and Goldthau, 2023). In a second, and the EU moved towards policies centred on renewable energy from third countries for export to European markets. This be a of renewables – an ecological of the longstanding of powers oil and gas from This reflected an approach more directly centred on EU geopolitical and less on the balanced of the global energy order as and from other countries dramatically in 2022 against this ever more EU argue that new green hydrogen projects now in developing states are and increasingly to the European energy than in with the of 2021). Even the EU that its climate actions in other countries are of and (Council of the European Union, in European policy is increasingly with of the EU's own supplies – with help for developing states to in a way towards ecological a more The EU's for access to developing critical mineral own energy and in 2022 an incipient in critical mineral third countries during the year that the EU was the European Green Deal in a way that was towards its own energy crisis (ECFR, 2022). This reflected a more realpolitik approach to – on the EU's longstanding in a that is and The way in which the EU its own targets in 2022 with other energy and climate or the for more effective global ecological action. The third conceptual and change in the EU energy policy to the role of state intervention. of market sought to European energy markets and enhance their the 2022 events saw the to a deliberately with policy (Goldthau and 2022). of the policy measures were to the crisis situation, such as the of European gas under costs. Yet, the Ukraine war the more political – or security – of in for gas supply at costs. the going forward a of the approach EU energy rebalancing political and economic even through state in and energy The is significant in the of the EU Energy (European Commission, and gas price cap dubbed (Council of the European Union, 2022b). with the to in green enhance the resilience of supply and to competition in the emerging global clean tech the way forward is likely to be by state than the EU's economic more In 2022, energy and ecological issues a more place in EU state against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in to energy security and climate too. a moment of such the to energy and climate policy commitments in 2022 a core of the European remained on energy and climate-change the war brought European governments in agreed support for accelerated and more far-reaching ecological transition With on the to from Russian energy supplies, support for energy transition notably in 2022. the commitments made in 2022 were be a long and the large of new European climate and ecological made during the year by most of these had been on the energy transition to is to the ecological in economic or too, the longer the war into 2023 and a focus on security the less there been for effective through on the external 2023). Yet, the year was one of change in the sphere of energy and by the way that the invasion of Ukraine and issues with which the EU had been for many years. This place of climate transition in to the 2022 invasion with earlier in the EU's with This ecological commitments a more place in European in of the impact of energy prices but also green issues had by now become more to the EU's and 2023). Moreover, there were in 2022 of change in the way the EU and energy and climate policies. The policy commitments were highly significant in their own but also a more energy and climate policies are more that across other of European In 2022, energy and climate issues became a issue of domestic politics and also a core of EU security and geopolitical is this but that the policy changes introduced in 2022 trigger The shift between the different – and their and geopolitical – that have been to EU energy and climate policies. These adjustments extensive in the years to as the events of 2022 out over In 2022, climate and security to more into with Yet, as EU and between energy security and ecological in 2022 and as they forward in their and it is possible that some of the strategic and of the invasion this was a year for energy and climate policy and one that to the of the EU's to a new geopolitical The would like to and for to an earlier of this funding and by

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