IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
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European nations need to act now to prevent an energy crisis, IEA chief Faith Birol said.
Birol outlined five actions the EU could take in advance, such as lowering energy demand.
Europe needs its gas storage facilities to be 90% full to get though the winter after a cut-off from Russia, he warned.
There are five things the European nations can do to avoid an energy crunch, International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a note Monday.
Alarms have been growing across Europe that Moscow is withholding energy supplies as retaliation against Western sanctions that were imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine. Deliveries via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline were slashed last month and stopped completely last week for annual maintenance, with expectations that they will not return.
“Europe is now forced to operate in a constant state of uncertainty over Russian gas supplies, and we can’t rule out a complete cut-off,” Birol said. “In my view, it is much better to take steps now to prepare for winter than to leave the well-being of hundreds of millions of people and European economies at the mercy of the weather or, even worse, to give unnecessary extra leverage to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.”
Although some countries have already taken measures to reduce consumption, he noted that approximately 12 billion cubic meters of gas needs to be saved over the next three months while non-Russian sources can’t make up for a cut-off from Moscow.
The IEA chief outlined five actions Europe needs to take immediately as gas storage facilities must be 90% full to get though the winter after a cut-off from Russia:
First, Birol said industrial gas users could take measures to limit their consumption, such as by auctioning off gas through a bidding process, which Germany has already piloted.Second, EU could also take similar measures within the power industry, by temporarily deploying coal, oil, nuclear energy, and other fuel sources in lieu of natural gas.Third, European gas and electricity plants could coordinate to implement more efficient energy operations. Fourth, European governments should launch campaigns to encourage households to conserve energy by setting cooling standard. Those PSAs have been successful in the past, potentially reducing energy consumption by a few percent in the short-term, according to the IEA.Lastly, the EU needs to develop an emergency plan on a continent- and country-wide level, coordinating together on how to get past this winter’s energy crisis.
“If these types of measures are not implemented now, Europe will be in an extremely vulnerable position and could well face much more drastic cuts and curtailments later on,” Birol said.