The madness of fuel and energy prices on the stock exchanges caused by the war and the restriction on imports from Russia shows that almost all the ideas for an energy revolution have gone in the wrong direction. They are highly ineffective and have only filled pockets of Putin’s state. I do not intend to enter into polemics here against the fight to reduce CO2 emissions, but merely to say that this is not the way. Admittedly, I have been saying for many weeks that the coming economic crisis will lower oil and gas prices, but why do we need this crisis?
There are enough fossil fuels in the world. It is technologically possible to give them up completely. There is no great problem with supplying the whole world with these fuels at prices appropriate for maintaining economic development. Both, however, require time and investment. The abandonment of coal mining in EU countries has not resulted in a decrease in global demand for this fuel. Coal has started to be purchased in Russia, Australia and other countries that do not have to worry so much about the EU’s climate policy. The most energy-intensive industries have fled beyond the borders of the EU to, for example, Asia, where coal is burned on a massive scale. The slowdown of economic development in many European countries will soon lead to a situation where there will not be enough money for the green revolution, and it will stop by itself. It will result in putting millions of people out of work and into poverty beforehand. However, the worst consequence of these actions is the bonus received by Putin’s state for closing the hydrocarbon supply gap. It is impossible to achieve two objectives at the same time – a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions and independence from Russian supplies. So instead of fighting the carbon footprint, fight the Russian carbon footprint. Let us reduce our imports from Russia, and let us reduce CO2 emissions by precisely that quantity. The idea is that not only Russian fuels should be sanctioned, but also everything that is produced from fuels originating from that source anywhere in the world, including outside the EU. These products must be taxed like those concerning carbon footprint. This could simply be an algorithm of the carbon footprint and the level of hydrocarbons that a country imports from Russia. Green energy should first replace Russian fuels and only then indigenous fuel. Only in this way can we avoid a rapid increase in prices. Such a project would probably be joined, apart from the EU, by the USA, the United Kingdom, etc.
Russia has made itself the biggest beneficiary of the EU’s climate policy by making Europe dependent on its hydrocarbon supplies on the one hand and supporting the green revolution on the other. CO2 emissions worldwide have hardly changed. It is, therefore, necessary to change the direction of these measures completely and to start reducing carbon dioxide by replacing Russian hydrocarbons with green energy. The alternative may be high CO2 emissions from cities in the EU that are burning after the next war.