threatening to turn the EU's energy crisis into a full-blown catastrophe should Russia turn off the gas supply, it is worth reflecting on how we got here.
Russia has been exporting fossil gas to Europe since the late 1960s. While discoveries of oil and gas in the North Sea and the Netherlands allowed some European countries to be largely self-sufficient in the 1970s, European gas production has been in steady decline since the early 2000s and is currently at historically low levels.
While the EU did eventually agree to set a renewable energy and energy savings target for 2030, both targets were set at a woefully low 27%. In fact, the 27% renewable energy target represented a slowdown in deployment compared to the 20% target that had been set for 2020. The EU also decided to scrap binding targets for renewable energy for each member country.
The Commission refused to model more ambitious targets for renewables and energy savings, but it is clear that they would have accelerated the phase-out of fossil gas. The study concluded:"The shares of natural gas decline as the scenarios get more ambitious."In 2022, the European Commission appears to still be committed to keeping money flowing into the gas industry and keeping our energy system dependent on gas in the long term.