Will war make Europe's switch to clean energy even harder?

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AALBORG, DENMARK - At the Siemens Gamesa factory in Aalborg, Denmark, where the next generation of offshore wind turbines is being built, workers are on their hands and knees inside a shallow, canoe-

shaped pod that stretches the length of a football field. It is a mold used to produce one half of a single propeller blade. Guided by laser markings, the crew is lining the sides with panels of balsa wood.

Smoothly managing Europe's energy switch was always going to be difficult. Now, as economies stagger back from the second year of the pandemic, Russia's attack on Ukraine grinds on and energy prices soar, the painful trade-offs have crystallised like never before. "Security of our energy supply stands above everything else at the moment," said Robert Habeck, the country's economy minister and a Green party leader in the coalition government.

In many ways, Europe has been a leading laboratory for the decades-long transition. It started establishing taxes on carbon emissions more than 20 years ago. The European Union pioneered an emissions trading system, which capped the amount of greenhouse gases companies produced and created a marketplace where licenses for those emissions could be bought and sold.

European countries, most notably Germany, had mapped out strategies that relied on increasing dependence on Russian gas and oil in the medium term. That is no longer an option. This week, European Union leaders are again meeting to discuss the next phase of proposals, but deep divisions remain over how to manage the current price increases amid anxieties that Europe could face a double whammy of inflation and recession.On Monday , United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that intense focus on quickly replacing Russian oil could mean that major economies"neglect or kneecap policies to cut fossil fuel use".

Morten Pilgaard Rasmussen, chief technology officer of the offshore wind unit at Siemens Gamesa, said that companies like his"are now forced to do investments based on the prosperous future that we are all waiting for". "We cannot talk about a renewables revolution if getting a permit for a wind farm takes seven years," Simson said.

Down in the Wujek coal mine, veterans worry if their jobs will last long enough for them to log the 25 years needed to retire with a lifelong pension. Closing mines not only threatens to devastate the economy, several miners said, but also a way of life built on generations of coal-mining.

 

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