The cold lurks in her.. What are the plans of European countries to confront the power outage crisis?

LONDON

- The European citizen's day is hardly free now of awareness campaigns calling on him to conserve energy, and prepare him for what is worse during the coming winter due to the energy crisis that is hitting the old continent, which is "the worst since World War II," according to Maximilian Hess, an expert at the Institute for Foreign Policy Research. in London.

The European citizen found himself between the jaws of pincers, on the one hand, a rocketing rise in energy bills, and on the other hand, fears of a severe cold and energy scarcity during the coming winter.

Most European countries announced contingency plans to confront this crisis, which has become a reality that will not disappear at least during the next winter. Britain, for example, has developed a plan in which it expects to cut off electricity in many homes for 4 days during January, and Germany also said that it It will protect citizens, but it will force companies and factories to reduce consumption or stop production if necessary, which constitutes an economic disaster.

As for Paris, the capital of lights, because of this crisis, it may turn into a capital of darkness, if the pessimistic expectations that the capital may suffer from frequent power cuts in some of its neighborhoods are true.

If this is the case for the three largest economies in Europe, the situation is worse in the rest of the continent.

Attempts to resort to renewable energies in European regions to compensate for the Russian gas outage (French)

race against time

Russian President Vladimir Putin is almost completely halting gas supplies from Europe, after the Nord Stream pumping rate reached only 20%, which further scattered the papers of European governments that were hoping to reach 80% of their gas storage capacity by November. Next November, and before the beginning of January, when gas consumption for heating becomes at its highest level.

According to the data available so far, the rate of gas storage in European countries is only 66%, and it is difficult to reach 80% in the coming months with the current Russian pumping rate.

According to International Monetary Fund forecasts, the complete cessation of gas pumping from Russia will make countries such as Germany, Italy and Austria suffer from an energy shortage of 15%.

On the other hand, Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary will suffer from a gas shortage of up to 40%.

The situation is exacerbated by the rise in gas prices, which will affect the energy bill in all European countries, as the price of gas reached $220 per megawatt in Europe, compared to $30 before the start of the war in Ukraine, an 8-fold increase.

Will the Europeans pay the price?

This question is currently recurring in European political corridors, as every government is afraid of its political stability being shaken due to the energy crisis, especially since opinion polls show a relative decline in the volume of Western support for sanctions against Russia if they will lead to a rise in energy prices and a crisis during the winter.

The latest opinion poll showed that only 58% of Germans now support sanctions against Russia.

Note that this percentage was more than 65% at the beginning of the war.

In Greece, 40% of citizens oppose sanctions against Russia, according to a Eurobarometer poll.

This hesitant popular mood in balancing solidarity with Ukraine with vital needs is what Chris Giles, the economic editor of the Financial Times, warned of in an article in which he warned of the importance of European unity.

And the British economist expressed his fear of patriotism and European nationalism, as each country will seek to secure its energy needs in isolation from the rest of the countries.

"This would be a real nightmare," he said, adding that Ukraine's victory should not also come at the cost of freezing houses in Vienna, Berlin or Prague, "and the only solution is cooperation and solidarity between European countries."

However, a close experience shows that European solidarity is not at its best during a period of crises, as happened during the Corona epidemic, when every government began to act according to its own interests, and wars of masks broke out, and then wars of vaccines, so what would guarantee that the same atmosphere would not be repeated with the arrival of winter?

So far nothing.

However, the International Monetary Fund's expectations say that if European countries succeed in cooperating with each other and transferring energy across their borders to the most needy countries, this will affect the European economy by 1.2% instead of 6%.

West German (European) power plant

Will you survive Europe?

Europe will have to pay the price this winter, before the start of freedom from Russian gas, with the beginning of the first steps in this regard, especially by Germany, which has compensated a large part of Russian gas through liquefied gas coming by tankers that reach the Netherlands and Britain.

Next December, Germany will operate its first floating LNG storage station, one of four it plans to operate.

The biggest development in Germany is the government's announcement to reconsider the policy of closing nuclear reactors, despite the great opposition of the Green Party participating in the government coalition, in addition to the expected increase in energy production from clean sources by 15%.

There are pressures on the Netherlands as well, which has the ability to pump millions of cubic meters of additional natural gas by increasing production in the Groningen gas field, but the government plans to stop work in it for fear of minor earthquakes in the areas surrounding the field.