When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and brought disaster
to the people living there, a key part of its plan backfired.
It tried to blackmail Europe with energy.
"We will make it as difficult as possible for the Kremlin
to pursue its aggressive actions."
Europe slapped sanctions on the dirty Russian fuels
that had powered its industries and homes for decades.
And suddenly, it found itself in the middle of a devastating...
But one year into the war Europe hasn't frozen.
Its economy is still growing.
And, most surprising of all,
its carbon emissions shrunk by 2.5 percent.
So did Putin speed up Europe's green transition?
And will the changes last?
For years, Europe has been hooked on Russian fossil fuels.
In 2021, the EU got 40% of its total gas from Russia.
More than half of Russia's oil exports went to Europe.
And a steady supply of coal moved from Russian mines
to European power plants.
Altogether, Europe bought about $100 billion of fossil fuels
from Russia the year before the invasion.
That left its prosperity dependent on a warmonger.
"In the school, we were always taught
not to put all the eggs in one basket."
This is Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA –
an organization led by the energy ministers of rich countries.
"Europe put all the eggs in one basket and the basket
was destroyed and the eggs were broken."
Within a week of the invasion, his team had put together
a 10-point plan to wean Europe off Russian gas.
It included actions like buying gas from other countries,
keeping nuclear plants from closing,
and building more solar panels and wind turbines.
The report also contained another, dirtier option:
burning more coal and oil.
Altogether, these policies promised to halve
the demand for Russian gas by the end of 2022.
"At that time, I talked with government leaders in Europe.
They found them too radical."
But despite some reservations,
the EU took most of the suggestions on board.
The first thing Europe did was to replace Russian fossil fuels
with other fossil fuels.
The EU piped more gas in from Algeria and Norway.
It bought shipments of liquefied natural gas,
or LNG, from the US and Qatar.
And it went back to one fuel it had sworn to quit.
"Coal has no future."
That was the EU's top climate envoy at a summit in 2021.
There, rich countries reliant on gas had lectured poorer ones
on the importance of phasing out coal.
But with Putin cutting gas supplies to Europe –
and by October 2022 having stopped them almost entirely –
countries began to turn old coal plants back on.
Germany pushed ahead with pre-existing plans to raze
a village for a coal mine.
But the problem was:
Russia wasn't the only reason
Europe was facing an energy crisis.
"Europe is in the grip of its most extreme drought in decades."
A withering drought had dried up rivers in Europe,
so hydropower dams generated less electricity.
Nuclear is the most important source of electricity in France
but its fleet has been plagued by maintenance problems.
And to make matters worse,
Germany and Belgium were shutting their nuclear plants down.
Though Belgium agreed to a 10-year extension
and Germany a few months.
But altogether,
Europe's climate goals mean
it would have to move away from coal quickly –
and in theory quit it completely by 2030.
Instead, the EU burned 7% more coal in 2022 than in 2021.
But that was the first big surprise of Europe's energy crisis:
coal's comeback turned out to be way smaller than predicted.
In the final quarter of that year, the 26 coal plants brought back
as emergency standby only ran at 18% capacity.
And nine of them weren't used at all.
So while Europe did burn a bit more coal, it was wind and solar
that saw the biggest growth in 2022.
They were what made up for most of the shortfall – not coal.
"Solar is the king of power markets around the world
and replacing the old king, which was coal."
Europe didn't just turn to other fossil fuels
to replace Russian gas.
It also sped up its switch to clean energy.
In 2022, the EU laid down more solar panels,
put up more wind turbines,
built more batteries
and installed more heat pumps than ever before.
The European Commission raised its renewable energy target
for 2030, from 40 percent to 45 percent.
And it made it easier to build the infrastructure
needed to get there.
Now, you'd think bureaucracy shouldn't be a problem
when it comes to stopping climate change
or keeping money from flowing to the Russian war machine.
But we're making this video in Germany.
Where you need this much paperwork
to build three wind turbines.
One company said it cost 10,000 euros to print it out.
With those sorts of hurdles in mind,
the EU sped up the permitting process
for new solar and wind farms.
It declared their construction to be in
the "overriding public interest"
– which made renewables higher priority.
But the big boost these technologies got
was that gas prices soared,
making a switch to electricity more attractive.
Awareness about energy security also grew –
and home-grown renewables became the safer option.
But the unsung winner of the energy crisis
was something else.
Not flashy electric cars or shiny solar panels.
It was the humble heat pump.
These big, boring devices act like reverse air-conditioners –
sucking heat from the surroundings
and pumping them indoors.
They run on electricity and can heat your home cleanly.
"In the crisis, people were looking for solutions that
would be insulating them from fossil fuel prices."
"And a heat pump – given its efficiency
– is a great way to do that."
This is Monika Morawiecka,
the former CEO of a Polish wind company,
who works as an advisor for a global climate think tank.
In a country like Poland,
the war gave heat pumps a much-needed push.
Its cities have some of the worst air pollution in Europe
because people mostly burn coal to heat homes.
But on top of that...
"A big part of this coal was actually imported from Russia.
So you had a double sort of incentive to move away."
The government was subsidizing alternative heating systems
before the war started.
Gas prices were already high
and soared with Russia's invasion.
So gas boilers became less attractive.
The result was that the heat pump market grew faster
in Poland than anywhere else in Europe.
"People were just voting with their feet, if you will,
for the technology that appeared
more affordable and more secure."
Now that doesn't mean the outlook is rosy for renewables.
The cost of raw materials is rising and some
wind turbine makers are struggling to stay afloat.
But despite everything that happened in 2022,
clean energy capacity grew faster than fossil fuels.
Still, European leaders seemed reluctant
to pull one obvious lever: using less energy.
The average European building is heated to 22 degrees Celsius.
Well above what's needed for comfort.
The IEA's action plan showed turning thermostats
down one degree Celsius
can cut gas demand by 10 billion cubic meters.
But only a few governments really invested
in public awareness campaigns to make those shifts happen.
"There was a definitely a bigger room in Europe
to push the gas saving, energy saving, much harder.
We did a good job.
But if you tell me, did we do an excellent job?
No."
Two things happened here.
The first is that high gas prices and a sense of solidarity
with Ukraine meant many people heated less anyway.
Some countries, like Germany,
lowered the temperature in public buildings.
France asked citizens to heat homes and offices
to no more than 19 degrees Celsius –
though it didn't really enforce it.
But the biggest help unexpectedly came from the climate.
The winter of 2022 was Europe's second-warmest on record.
That meant people needed to heat their homes less.
On top of that, industries scaled back production
and used 25 percent less gas.
Total demand in the EU fell 50 billion cubic meters in 2022 –
its steepest drop in history.
From September, electricity demand was unusually low.
"We were lucky with the mild winter.
And when I talk with the governments,
I underline this luck bit, because for the next winter
we shouldn't count on the luck and the mild winter again."
So how serious is Europe's green transition?
Well, it could have certainly
done more to ditch Russian oil faster.
"Price cap on Russian oil entered effect today, drawing the ire
of Moscow and adding another kink to global oil markets."
Sanctions only started in December 2022
so over the year the EU imported just 16% less
than it did the year before.
Lots of countries even subsidized fuel for drivers –
instead of making it easier for people to ditch cars
or buy electric ones.
The second big worry is how big it bet on LNG.
Countries like Germany,
which didn't have any way of receiving shipments,
approved way more terminals than experts say
is needed to secure their gas supplies.
Only half of Europe's planned LNG infrastructure
will be needed by 2030.
Either the rest will become stranded assets
as the continent ramps down its fossil fuel consumption.
Or Europe will use more gas than it should.
On top of that, some of the deals European governments
have made to buy gas from countries like Qatar
have locked them into 15-year-contracts.
Which makes you wonder if they really learned lessons
from their overreliance on Russia.
"When the dust settles down, there will be a job for
the governments in Europe, including Germany,
to have a self-critique in terms of their energy policies,
because it was a strategic mistake, in my view,
which had implications not only for energy
but also for foreign policy and beyond."
But altogether, Putin's invasion of Ukraine dealt a mixed blow
to the EU's energy system.
On the one hand, it pushed the EU to burn more coal
and build infrastructure to receive more gas.
That pushed it away from its climate targets even as
it was lecturing other countries on the dangers of fossil fuels.
But it also shocked the continent into cutting
its dependence on Russian fossil fuels.
And that's not only given a short-term boost to renewables.
It's also led to structural changes that
will fast-forward its green transition.
If experts are right, the coal surge will be short-lived.
But the boost to clean energy will only get bigger.
"The Russian invasion of Ukraine changed everything
about the world of energy.
Let us know in the comments
which aspects we should look at next."