With Energy Costs Skyrocketing, Europe Girds Itself for a Cold Winter

­Europe is preparing for what could be an especially cold winter, and the culprit isn’t mother nature, but geopolitical politics.

While the U.S. previously acquired a relatively small percentage of its natural gas from Russia, they haven’t done so since 2019, and this year, President Biden took the largely symbolic step of banning all imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal. Again, most of that activity had already ceased, but one way or another, the U.S. has definitively disentangled itself from Russian energy exports.

That said, Europe is still heavily dependent on them, with Russia responsible for about 40% of the EU’s natural gas imports and over a quarter of their crude oil. And the war in Ukraine has put a serious damper on all of that.

So the continent is preparing for the worst.

According to Forbes, Britain’s National Grid has mentioned the possibility of blackouts from 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm on “really, really cold” weekdays, while the British Broadcasting Company has already prepared scripts to reassure the populace in the event of a “major loss of power.”

Germany underlined its opposition to the war by cancelling the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, which was intended to double the flow of Russian gas to Deutschland. While that will exact a heavy financial toll from Russia, it also all but ensures a somewhat power-less winter Germany.

German politician Wolfgang Schauble has a rather blunt message for his countrymen worried about high energy prices and prospective blackouts – stop whining and wear two sweaters.

And unfortunately, unless Putin abruptly changes his tune, high energy prices across Europe aren’t likely to change anytime soon.

While the EU wants to go carbon-neutral by 2050, it’s also convinced that it can’t fully divorce itself from Russian energy until 2030.

That said, the European Commission has a plan to possibly supersede that last part, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urging: “We must become independent from Russian oil, coal and gas. We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us. We need to act now to mitigate the impact of rising energy prices, diversify our gas supply for next winter and accelerate the clean energy transition.”

Along with potential price controls, they’ve proposed diversifying gas supplies, via higher Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and pipeline imports from non-Russian suppliers, and larger volumes of biomethane and renewable hydrogen production and imports, expediting electrification and all renewables, and solving infrastructure bottlenecks.

While that sounds good in theory, particularly in the long-term, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels right when said fuels are exponentially difficult to acquire could all but ensure an unusually cold winter.