When Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, it had already started to use gas and oil as a weapon a long time ago. With pressure. And even cuts in the supply of certain European countries. “For us it’s not extraordinary, it’s a reality in which we livedexplains the economist Michal Kurtyka, Minister of the Environment in Poland until the fall of 2021. At the time it was being talked about in Berlin, Brussels and Paris, there was a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions where we were seen as Russophobes crying wolf when nothing is happening.”
“From this point of view, an unfortunate exercise for Europe was the Nord Stream 2”, explains the former Polish minister about the giant gas pipeline project, linking Russia to Germany. It was stopped dead by the start of the war but which had started, continued despite the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 2014, and the start of the war in the Donbass. “Germany, but also France and Austria, choose not to reduce their dependence on Russian gas but choose to increase it”says Thomas Pellerin Carlin, director of the energy center of the Jacques Delors Institute. There is no fatality in that, it was the fruit of a political choice.
As a result today, the European Union is unable to implement an embargo on Russian gas, which is nevertheless one of Moscow’s main sources of income. And Russia is cutting off its supply, as it wishes. In an attempt to fill their stocks before winter, European countries are turning, among others, to American shale gas or coal-fired power plants. With all the ecological problems that this raises. But that will not be enough explains Thomas Pellerin Carlin, including in France: “Even in a rather optimistic scenario, if the winter is not cold, we risk having the need for limited power cuts. The best service that politics can render to the population and to the general interest, it is not to lie and to put in place a public policy which makes it possible to prevent and prepare. All these TVs, these large screens, to show us advertising in the streets of our cities, we must stop.
“We are burning gas in July for advertising when we risk not having any more to heat people in January.”
Thomas Pellerin Carlin, specialist in European energy policyat franceinfo
Another example of measures, really put an end to the lighting of offices at night and also limit the air conditioning to 26° C this summer and no less.