What progress is the EU making on ending its reliance on Russian energy?

Russia has historically been the world’s leading exporter of natural gas and the second-largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia. It has also been the EU’s leading supplier of imported oil, gas and coal, accounting for two-fifths of gas supplies, a quarter of crude oil deliveries and almost half of all shipments of solid fuel, such as coal.

Around half of Russia’s crude oil exports went to Europe in 2021, including to non-EU members the UK and Norway. EU countries paid €99 billion ($105 billion) for Russian energy imports last year, according to the European Commission – two-thirds of the total value of goods the bloc imported from Russia.

EU bans on Russian energy

But at the end of May, the EU said it would block all Russian oil imports by sea by the end of 2022. That will cut off around two-thirds of Russian oil supplies to the bloc.

Poland and Germany have also said they will end pipeline imports, but not all member states have agreed to this. Hungary and Slovakia are dependent on receiving oil from Russia through pipelines.

The move is part of a sixth round of sanctions approved at a summit in Brussels. European Council President Charles Michel says this will cut off a huge source of financing for Russia’s war on Ukraine.

EU countries are now looking to buy more oil from other producers. More oil is also being put into world markets – members of the International Energy Agency, which include the US, said in April that they would release 120 million barrels of crude and oil products from emergency stockpiles to try to keep prices down.

The EU also committed in March to reducing gas imports from Russia by two-thirds within a year, but it has proved difficult to get agreement on further measures such as an outright import ban.

Germany relies on Russia for almost half of its gas supply, and has recently had to limit gas use in electricity production and appeal to citizens to conserve energy after Moscow cut some supplies, Al Jazeera and the Financial Times report. The supply disruption is also forcing Germany to use more coal-fired power plants.

The UK is increasing its gas exports to continental Europe in an attempt to help to fill storage sites ahead of the winter, the country’s Office for National Statistics says.

The EU is also planning for longer-term energy independence. Just weeks after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February, Brussels announced the REPowerEU plan to end all Russian energy imports by 2030.

“We must become independent from Russian oil, coal and gas,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us.”

As well as securing alternative energy supplies, the REPowerEU plan aims to speed up the green transition by increasing investment in renewable energy.

The EU had already begun a shift away from fossil fuels before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its Green Deal, launched in 2019, aims to more than halve EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and take Europe to net-zero by 2050.

It is now looking to speed this up by allowing some renewable energy projects to receive permits within a year, rather than potentially having to wait two years, Reuters reports. The European Commission will propose that countries set aside "go-to areas" of land or sea for renewable energy, where such projects would have a low environmental impact.

Germany's cabinet this month approved plans to require all states to allocate a minimum amount of land to onshore wind farms.

And on 27 June, EU energy ministers backed laws to save energy and promote renewables, with aims to derive 40% of renewables sources by 2030 and cut energy consumption by 9% against expected levels.

“Let's dash into renewable energy at lightning speed,” says Frans Timmermans, who heads the EU Green Deal. “Renewables are a cheap, clean, and potentially endless source of energy and instead of funding the fossil fuel industry elsewhere, they create jobs here.”