How Russia Got Leverage Over Europe’s Energy

Russia has followed through on its threats of invading Ukraine, and the U.S. and Western Europe have shown a unified initial response. They have vowed to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and announced new sanctions against Russia. These threats sound good on paper, but ring hollow after taking a look at the state of energy security in Europe. Nord Stream 2 was never going to be the primary source of Europe’s energy, but would instead augment existing Russian energy imports. Forty-one percent of the European Union’s natural gas is already being supplied by Russia and halting an additional pipeline is akin to New York City preventing a new Starbucks construction.

European politicians are trying to alleviate concerns by saying they can transition away from Russian gas to renewables, but executing such a change is difficult. Wind and solar energy are imperfect substitutes, and only intermittently provide power. Politicians do themselves no favors when they pretend that the sun doesn’t set, that the wind never dies down, and that these sources can provide limitless on-demand power.

The situation only gets worse when oil and petroleum products are taken into account. Providing 27 percent of Europe’s oil, Russia is the dominant supplier. As much as the E.U. has been pushing for electric vehicles, the truth is that only 1 percent of Europe’s passenger vehicles are electric. The E.U. is extremely reliant on Russia’s oil and there’s no reason to believe that will change in the near term.

For anyone speculating that surely the West’s response to the invasion of Ukraine will at least get these numbers trending in the right direction, we need only refer to what happened after Russia’s other recent invasion of Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. From 2010 to 2021, the E.U. increased its use of Russian natural gas from 44 percent to 48 percent. Between 2014 and 2020, Germany increased its natural gas imports from Russia by a whopping 41 percent, and now Germany gets 66 percent of its natural gas imports from Russia. In effect, Western Europe responded to Russia’s previous expansionism by increasing its reliance on Russian energy.

Sanctions are a common nonmilitary response in international conflicts, but their effectiveness is particularly blunted on energy suppliers because oil is traded in U.S. dollars,