Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the EU has imposed six rounds of sanctions on Russia. But because Russia is the EU's largest natural gas supplier, the backlash caused by sanctions against Russia has put EU countries in a difficult position. Faced with the "gas cut" crisis, many European countries have turned their attention to coal power generation, which was previously planned to be phased out.
The German government issued a statement saying that due to the pressure of power supply, Germany will bring the sealed coal power capacity back into the grid this time. Meanwhile, coal-fired power plants in Italy have been stockpiling coal for the past few months.
The Austrian government later said it would restart a coal-fired power plant in southern Austria that had been shut down. Austria was the second European country to completely phase out coal power generation, a decision that now allows Austria to restart the coal era.
Then, the Dutch government said it planned to lift output caps on coal-fired power plants in response to the energy crisis. The Netherlands previously mandated that coal-fired power plants operate at 35% of their maximum output to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
After the announcement of the removal of the coal-fired energy production cap, coal-fired power plants can operate at full capacity until 2024, which can save a lot of natural gas.
In this regard, the European environment group said that in order for the EU to do its best to achieve the goal of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the Paris Agreement, coal should be phased out by 2030 and natural gas by 2035 at the latest. But now the whole situation has changed.
Separately, Vaclav Bartushka, Czech ambassador-at-large for energy security, pledged to do everything possible to supply heat and generate electricity if natural gas supplies run short this winter.
"We're basically facing a repeat of the oil crisis of 1973... If gas supplies go down this winter, we're going to burn everything we can to heat people and generate electricity," Bartushka said.
Bartushka also said that if European countries sign long-term contracts with liquefied natural gas suppliers, it is still possible for the other party to provide natural gas to the EU before the arrival of the heating season. The European Commission has been in no rush to sign such a contract in the past, but Bartushka said that had changed.
"You wouldn't have heard that from the European Commission a year ago, six months ago or four months ago. They now clearly understand that member states need to survive and governments need to get through the winter," he said.
European Commission President von der Leyen said the bloc had taken "urgent measures" to counter the threat of falling supplies from Russia, including energy conservation measures and consideration of which sectors were "prioritized" to use natural gas.
