Efforts to wean off Russian fossil fuels act as catalyst for clean transition acceleration

By Nuran Erkul Kaya

ISTANBUL (AA) - The further deployment of renewables and clean technologies along with energy efficiency measures have become more important to wean the EU off Russian fossil fuel dependence while acting as a catalyst to accelerate the clean transition, experts told Anadolu Agency.

"The era of Russian fossil fuel in Europe is coming to an end," Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, said after Russia halted gas flows to Bulgaria and Poland, calling Russia's act blackmail.

Julian Popov, the chairman of Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE) told Anadolu Agency that the European Commission, national governments and dozens of think tanks and analysts are working on options given the strong political and public pressure to reduce and cut dependency on Russian energy imports.

Popov said that he sees more options available than the established route of diversification and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, which he says are very limited in terms of infrastructure and supply constraints.

He argues that the LNG is competitively priced in a market that needs to reduce costs but suggests renewables offer a massive opportunity.

"Renewables are being scaled up, driven mostly by market forces and are simply much cheaper than gas and other conventional sources," he noted.

Last month, the EU announced a joint European action plan, REPowerEU, to make Europe independent from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030, starting with gas.

REPowerEU seeks to diversify gas supplies, speed up the roll-out of renewable gases and replace gas in heating and power generation which can reduce EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year.

Sarah Brown, a senior energy and climate analyst at London-based think tank Ember, said the EU's attempts to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels appear to be acting as a catalyst to accelerate the transition to homegrown clean power.

She cited the example of Germany with its ambitious target of 80% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

Regardless, she said more can and should be done. She said the REPowerEU plan focused too heavily on diversifying the sources of fossil gas supply rather than reducing overall EU fossil fuel demand and its associated risks.

- "Countries must avoid locking themselves into long-term fossil contracts"

She found fault with the REPowerEU only including an additional 80 gigawatts, solely for producing green hydrogen and not including the phase-out of fossil fuels which would require a massive scale-up in the deployment of wind and solar.

"The EU and its member states have recognized the urgency of ending their dependency on fossil fuels but they must now act to remove existing barriers to clean solutions such as wind and solar and energy efficiency," she said.

According to Brown, the Fit for 55 package, a set of proposals to revise and update EU legislation and put in place new initiatives to ensure that EU policies are in line with the climate goals agreed by the Council and the European Parliament, offers a means for countries to achieve independence from fossil fuels by escalating targets and improving wind and solar permitting processes.

"What they must avoid is locking themselves into expensive long-term fossil fuel contracts and unnecessary gas import infrastructure projects,” she warned.

The EU is expected to announce a new decision next month to increase the renewables target.

- Two objectives: Cutting off Russian imports and long term climate targets

Popov stressed the importance of energy efficiency which is often ignored because of its "non-dramatic nature".

"Politicians like to announce big projects and energy efficiency doesn’t offer these PR opportunities. Things, however, are changing and the drive to save energy is becoming much more prominent," he said, adding that a key technology that has come to the fore is highly efficient heat pumps to replace gas with electricity generated by renewables.

A recent analysis by the International Energy Agency showed a range of simple steps that people can take to reduce their energy use and save money and that would save enough oil to fill 120 supertankers and enough natural gas to heat almost 20 million homes if adopted by all EU citizens.

Popov communicated his expectations for Europe to accelerate the rate of electrification of transport, also increasingly connected to renewables.

"The renewables, demand response, storage and heat pumps are all very good technologies because they serve very well two objectives: cutting off Russian energy imports and the long term climate policies of the EU," he said.

Popov urged the EU to work together on these goals with Turkiye, the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova and the UK as well as reviving energy cooperation with North Africa.

In a previous interview with Anadolu Agency, Popov had advised a common strategy for the energy transition and an increase in cross-border electricity trade capacity between the EU and Turkiye given the urgency in reducing dependency on Russian gas with the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

"The EU is in a good position now because most of the developed policies under the European Green Deal are helping also the reduction of imports from Russia. That cuts policy and analytics development time," he concluded.