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https://oec.world/en/profile/country/rus https://oec.world/en/profile/country/rus Russia’s exports are >50% oil and gas products. The biggest retaliation the

• pyuser583 5y ago
  Realistically we’d need to do it faster than switching to renewables allowed.
• nomercy400 5y ago
  Like Russia cares. They have a growing, energy-hungering neighbor (China) buying their gas in the east, and a Europe committed to reduce their gas and oil usage in the next 10 years in the west.
  • tobylane 5y ago
    Russia cares in the short and medium term, while their gas setup is nearer to and pointed towards Europe.
    • mellavora 5y ago
      And in the short and medium turn, Europe cannot get to renewables. Re-doing an continent's energy grid takes time. Also, remember that many water heaters and house heating systems run on gas. Switching these to electric will also take time.
      • MattGaiser 5y ago
        One immediate action would be to cancel closing the nuclear plants.
      • ingenieros 5y ago
        Exactly, not to mention that Europe only has about 6 weeks worth of gas reserves according to German analysts. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/europe-winter-gas-reserves-russian-imports-german-analysis-ukraine https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/europe-winter-...
        • tpm 5y ago
          which is plenty because the winter is ending, so even without gas nobody should freeze. What would the industry do is other question.
        • runarberg 5y ago
          There have been energy crisis in the past and most people survived it, albeit with major inconveniences. I would say that is a small price to pay for peaceful resolution.
  • kalessin 5y ago
    It is important to note that the gas exported to China and Europe are exported from different fields, and are not connected with each other. As it stands right now, Russia cannot export the gas it produces for Europe to China.
    • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      Yes it can, it just takes longer to put it in ships or trains. Transport by ship from where NordStream would leave the land to China is becoming feasible now that the north pole is melting, and Russia is really interested in that. A good, seemingly unbiased video on the subject is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvy9usF7ohE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvy9usF7ohE
      • koenneker 5y ago
        I don't know about the trains but looking at shipping: -Nordstream 2 has a capacity to transport 55 billion cubic meters per year[1] -The biggest LNG transport ship "Mozah" built by Samsung Heavy Industries can transport a equivalent of ~162 million cubic meters in a single load This leads to a ~339,5 full loads per year needed to replace the pipeline volume. Nordstream 2 probably wouldn't run at full capacity initially but even at 50% utilisation it would be nearly impossibe to replace it with shipping. [1]https://www.gazprom.com/projects/nord-stream2/ https://www.gazprom.com/projects/nord-stream2/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozah
        • kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
          They don't need to replace something that doesn't even exist?
          • wukerplank 5y ago
            Nord Stream 2 was finished last year, it just isn't used yet.
            • 5y ago
  • ed_balls 5y ago
    They care deeply. China is >10x in pretty much everything. They don't to be a vassal state of China. Russia has lost the independence twice - threat from Asia and threat for united countries between Moscow and Berlin. I'd speculate the whole action is to force the West to a new deal with Russia, so they can balance China.
    • darebak 5y ago
      >threat for united countries between Moscow and Berlin. Are you talking the PLC or the Nazis?
      • ed_balls 5y ago
        Polish-Russian War (1605–1618) and Unity Day.
    • starfallg 5y ago
      >I'd speculate the whole action is to force the West to a new deal with Russia, so they can balance China. If they are serious about partnering with the west, they should have embraced reforms and become a member of NATO. The fact that they haven't is indicative of Putin's plan to counter the west. It's more likely they will partner with China just because Putin isn't thinking beyond that. He's 70 after all and they have no effective playbook against China (ala Foundation of Geopolitics against the west).
      • ed_balls 5y ago
        > they should have embraced reforms They tried that in the 90s. There are two problems. They don't want to be a colony for Western powers. Russia is a collection of a few different nations. You have to hold it by a strong hand, otherwise you have a civil war e.g. Chechnya. So they want to do it now on partner relations with Europe. Russia will provide, natural resources, transportation link to Asia, you can relocate polluting factories to Siberia, you get access to our market and labor. Also, you we will provide security and balance China. You don't need those pesky Americans. In return Russia wants, capital, tech and modernisation of the country. So Europeans, do you want EU from Lisbon to Vladivostok or war? trains and artic route.
  • zaarn 5y ago
    China will just press Russia into servitude by demanding lower prices (who else they gonna sell to). It's still going to ruin Russia and maybe China then remembers some of the ethnical-chinese regions of Russia that Putin just set a convenient precedent for.
  • light_hue_1 5y ago
    Russia cares a lot about who its sells its energy to. China is a far worse trade partner than Europe. Europe is easy to bully, it doesn't have a single voice and its pretty predictable which parts will have competing interests. China is not. Russia will lose a lot of its independence if it becomes beholden to China. That would be a bad endgame. Europe is also beholden to public opinion that does not want increased energy prices. China doesn't care about that.
    • MobiusHorizons 5y ago
      As a motivation that makes sense, but what alternative will Russia have? Do you think Russia is banking on Europe eventually lifting sanctions and purchasing gas again?
      • light_hue_1 5y ago
        It's not a matter of "again". Gas purchases are not on the table as far as sanctions go. It's the other way around. The EU is afraid that if they impose serious sanctions Russia will cut off the gas supply. This will hurt the EU far more than it hurts Russia in the short term.
        • gpderetta 5y ago
          Doesn't most of european gas run through Ukraine? Ukraine could use it as leverage .
          • light_hue_1 5y ago
            Ukraine's goal is not to antagonize Europe. There's on leverage in threatening your friends.
            • gpderetta 5y ago
              It is certainly a last resort option, but on the face of existential threat, denying Russia a major source of income to finance the war is a legitimate goal. The major point of Nord Stream 2 was to remove this PoF.
  • Gwypaas 5y ago
    May be a large market for Russia, but China is completely invested in renewables. Just look at their pledged energy pipeline. No sane country builds new energy infrastructure not firmly anchored in renewables today. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annual-power-capacity-additions-in-china-in-the-announced-pledges-scenario-aps-2020-2060 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annua...
    • nosianu 5y ago
      > China is completely invested in renewables > No sane country builds new energy infrastructure not firmly anchored in renewables today. Eh?? "China Is Planning to Build 43 New Coal-Fired Power Plants" https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/ https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/ "China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/five-asian-countries-80-percent-new-coal-power-investment https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/five-asi... "COP26 aims to banish coal. Asia is building hundreds of power plants to burn it" https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cop26-aims-banish-coal-asia-is-building-hundreds-power-plants-burn-it-2021-10-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cop26-aims-banish-co... There only is "China pledges to stop building new coal energy plants abroad" -- the last word matters. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58647481 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58647481
  • kubav 5y ago
    I doubt that China would pay the same price. They will use it to get discount.
    • PedroBatista 5y ago
      They already have, Putin’s gas deals with China are ruinous for Russia, they even managed to sell it at a loss half the time. What a mastermind that guy is.
• georgeplusplus 5y ago
  China benefits most from the electrical energy economy. Let that sink in. The reason why we arrived at today is people not thinking through the effects of their actions and desires.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    Chinese at least care about their material prosperity. Russia seems fine with whatever sanctions fall on their lap.
    • thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
      Sanctions barely work on small countries. They're but a nuisance for mid-sized countries and do approximately nothing to big countries. Russian economy is mostly autarkic - consuming overwhelmingly goods and services produced within Russia. Their exports are energy commodities, not consumer goods - energy commodities are the bedrock of the modern world - they'll always find a buyer at market price or slightly below. Their national debt is negligible. China is not going to stop exporting their goods there, and I don't see corporations like Apple/Google/Volkswagen/Toyota giving up such a large market just to make a point. Token slaps on the wrist for the few selected oligarchs who haven't secured British citizenship yet are laughable We should be honest to ourselves - short of Western citizens dying on the battlefield, there's nothing of consequence the West can do. Russia exploited our weaknesses really well - our irrational hesitance of nuclear energy, our greenwashing of natural gas, our love for petrol-guzzling SUVs, kowtowing of our financial system to ultra-rich, profit-uber-alles of our corporations, hypocrisy of our diplomacy, etc.
      • mrjin 5y ago
        Not only that, US has been ripping off other countries using US$ for a very long time. And that why lots of countries now try to establish treaties of currency exchanging and reduce the usage of US$.
  • radicalbyte 5y ago
    China have invested strongly in electric tech for their own reasons - pollution and of course they also see climate change as a massive threat. That the US in particular has been extremely late to the table is unfortunate but hey - what else do you expect when policy is bought and paid for by incumbents and one of the to political parties are 100% owned by Fossil interests.
• jaspax 5y ago
  It's basically a Mexican standoff, right? In the timeframe of months to years, Europe needs to buy Russian oil and gas as much as Russia needs to sell them. Neither side can unilaterally break off the relationship without suffering massive harm. Getting to full energy independence with renewables is a project that will take a decade or more, not something that you can do in the timeframe of the current conflict.
  • sgjohnson 5y ago
    > Getting to full energy independence with renewables is a project that will take a decade or more. Try at least 2-3 decades. Personally I'm still a firm believer in nuclear power.
    • ct0 5y ago
      You aren't alone thinking nuclear is the best outcome in the renewables plan forward.
    • WJW 5y ago
      Not that I'm against nuclear, but getting to full energy independence with nuclear seems like it would need several decades as well. For example, the Blue Castle project in Utah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Castle_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Castle_Project) started on the drawing board in 2007, started looking for contractors in 2016, hopes to start construction in 2023 and hopes to be fully operational in 2030. That is if construction is not delayed in any way, which seems unlikely given the schedule so far tbh. The US alone has over 200 coal plants operating today, so even if the new nuclear plant would be on average twice as large you would need more than a hundred new nuclear power plants. It seems wildly unlikely that they could be constructed within three decades. Also that is in the US alone, a country with a relatively large knowledge base surrounding all things nuclear. Most of the rest of the world has no chance of replacing even a fraction of their power generation needs with nuclear, so for them renewables will be the way to go.
      • oceanofsolaris 5y ago
• Synaesthesia 5y ago
  Yeah but the US is doing the opposite, extracting huge amounts of gas and shipping it around the world.
• cm2187 5y ago
  How do you do that? The reason europe needs russian gas is precisely because renewables are very intermittent, and they use gas to compensate. More renewable means more reliance on gas, unless you build nuclear plants. And if you do, you might as well not build renewables because the cost of nuclear is pretty much the same whether you use it or not.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • masklinn 5y ago
    The reason europe uses gas isn’t even electricity, it’s mostly heating and industrial. For instance in france’s energy budget nat gas is almost as large as the entire electricity production. The policy over the last few decades has been to put everyone on gas distribution networks and encourage switching furnaces (from furnace oil, tbf).
    • masklinn 5y ago
      For an other example, nat gas accounts for 13% of germany’s electric production (out of about 600TWh). In accounts for nearly 25% of the primary energy mix (out of about 3700TWh). Even assuming all the gas plants are simple cycle peaking plants with horrid efficiency (say 20% which is extremely low even for peaking plants), electricity still would account for about 40% of germany’s nat gas consumption. In reality, much as in france, the vast majority (~75%) of nat gas goes to heating.
      • cm2187 5y ago
        I think in this case the yearly average load might be misleading. On low wind times the reliance on gas can be much higher.
        • masklinn 5y ago
          These are yearly totals, the variations are limited, and more importantly irrelevant to the point.
• HL33tibCe7 5y ago
  Unfortunately countries like Germany have made completely idiotic moves in the past months in the exact opposite direction. Hopefully other sanctions will also help. Cutting them off from the international banking system, for example.
  • mrjin 5y ago
    You serious? Each nation has their own interests. MAGA has obviously proved blindly following was a really bad idea.
    • CamperBob2 5y ago
      Shutting down their nuclear plants for no good reason was certainly not in Germany's best interests. They will now pay dearly for that boneheaded decision.
      • hamsamrma 5y ago
        Fortunately we have a friendly neighbor with plenty of nuclear power which renders germany's anti-nuclear stance into a political play with a side dish of market consolidation.
      • mrjin 5y ago
        Fission is obviously no clean energy. The previous posts claiming neutralizing nuclear wastes in 600 years was a solution was absurd. But yeah, completely decommission nuclear power plants now for sure would be controversial. But I'm in no position to judge that decision. It's all about trade off, but for what is a question.
        • CamperBob2 5y ago
          Yeah, there are no guilt-free answers when it comes to base load generation, and fission is no exception. But when the plants already exist and you shut them down because the Japanese decided to build one in a tsunami-prone seismic zone, hire a corrupt organization to operate it well beyond its intended service life, and install backup generators in the basement, or because the Soviets built one and operated it under the "Hold my vodka and watch THIS" school of engineering, well... those just aren't good reasons, and also not the kind of thinking I expect from the Germans. France's modern plants should help, but they won't come online for years.
• cleancoder0 5y ago
  This is unfortunately highly unlikely. A lot of EU politics depends on the pockets of rich Russian oil firms. Just look at Austria, very rich but obviously Russian run EU country. (latest prime minister got fired by Russians even though Russia cyberarmy helped him win the elections. They decided he was no longer as compliant, so they leaked data many years after elections, Russian scandals several years before that etc.). Raiffeisen bank in Austria, basically launders money for Russians over the last several decades, with no consequences to the chief officers. Hungary is another good example. Another Austrian neighbor, Croatia, not rich, and less influenced by Russians, had one of the biggest scandals ever when the biggest privately owned company in the Balkans (owned by a Croatian), that employs a massive amounts of Croatians, went bankrupt and could have been acquired by creditors (Sberbank and VTB Bank). I guess there was not enough Russian influence in politics and Croatian government put a new law immediately, so that this kind of takeover does not happen (Croatia nationalized the company). Russia has quite a large reach into EU.
  • WJW 5y ago
    All power blocks have large influences into each other. That is basically the definition of being powerful in international diplomacy. You just notice it less (or caring about it less) when it's your own block influencing someone else.
  • cloutchaser 5y ago
    > latest prime minister got fired by Russians even though Russia cyberarmy helped him win the elections. Actual source? This "russian disinformation" and "russian election manipulation" has zero credibility if you read and listen to anything other than CNN at this point. Please send me actual proof before making claims like this.
    • Paradigma11 5y ago
      I dont think CNN ever reported something like this.
  • marioflach 5y ago
    > Just look at Austria, very rich but obviously Russian run EU country. This is just nonsense. Austrian government is not by any means run "by the Russians". Russia has been trying to enlarge it's sphere of influence in the west for a while now (which is nothing exceptional geopolitically speaking) and has few retired politicians working in the Russian private sector (Schröder [DE], Schüssel [AT], Fillion [FR], etc.). But to say that Austria and others are "obviously run by the Kremlin" is a blatant lie. Greets from Austria
• sergiotapia 5y ago
  Isn't the basis of the dollar based on petroleum? Hence the "petrodollar"?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ayngg 5y ago
  This is happening because the west has no leverage and asymmetrical priorities. Russia -really- cares that Ukraine stays out of NATO, probably to the point where they would scorched earth the country before it joined, and the west only kinda cares about Ukraine comparatively, as demonstrated in 2014 and 2008. If they actually really care, sanctions don't mean much. Makes me wonder why the west thought the third time would be the charm in this case. A big difference may be domestic politics in the west, things are pretty tenuous both socially and economically, which could benefit from this grandstanding far from home.
  • rjzzleep 5y ago
    > Makes me wonder why the west thought the third time would be the charm in this case Ignorance and arrogance, but mostly arrogance.
    • AniseAbyss 5y ago
      Yeah no. I'm sorry for Ukraine but how many people are willing to die over it? War was never on the table and Putin knew it so he acted.
      • phillc73 5y ago
        > I'm sorry for Ukraine but how many people are willing to die over it? Millions of Ukrainians. That is going to be the real tragedy.
        • AniseAbyss 5y ago
          True. And Russians as well. My sympathies are with the little guy and they will pay the price.
  • raducu 5y ago
    Russia does not care about Ukraine joining NATO, Russia has nukes. Russian politicians care about Ukraine being a prospering democracy and a model for russian citizens. That's it.
• eej71 5y ago
  Many countries could also source fossil fuels from friendly allies. But those allies would have to be interested in extracting it from their own sources. From my stand point, and this will be very unpopular here, the push to rely on the unreliables (a better name for the renewables) has been toxic and is a destabilizing force in the world.
  • jfoutz 5y ago
    Well a car was less reliable than a horse. Cars were destabilizing. (No pun intended) but cars kinda worked out. Unreliables will get more reliable, these things take time.
  • WJW 5y ago
    As is becoming painfully clear right now, relying on other countries for your energy needs is also unreliable. You just get unpredictable and large supply shocks every few years instead of smaller predictable ones every night. Building out grid level energy storage looks like a way better solution than hoping the countries which are allies now will remain so indefinitely.
    • eej71 5y ago
      Many of the countries that can afford to do this already have fossil fuel reserves that they could use should they choose to. Even of the countries that could pay for this abusrdly expensive project - this will require mining rare earth elements that the green movement will never tolerate.
  • koide 5y ago
    Did you know that the fossil energy sources are also intermittent? No energy plant is ever working 24x7x365. Stop with the fud already. There are real concerns with solar and wind that could be ameliorated with small scale storage, nuclear, geothermal and hydro. But to call them toxic and destabilizing is patently untrue, the destabilizing factor is not renewable energy.
    • eej71 5y ago
• sgjohnson 5y ago
  Easier said than done. Most of the European Union are entirely reliant on Russia for natural gas supply.
• The_rationalist 5y ago
• xroche 5y ago
  > The biggest retaliation the West can make right now is a commitment to a rapid exit at unprecedented speed from the oil economy, in favor of renewables. You can't exit from the oil economy with renewable such as wind or solar due to their non-predictability. If you want to stop importing Russian gaz, you need nuclear energy.
  • arez 5y ago
    so let's build some nuclear power plants, they should be done in 20yrs is that fast enough?
    • modo_mario 5y ago
      A serious stretch. Nevertheless the argument that they're too slow to build has been popping up for 20 years now.
      • zuzun 5y ago
        Unlike nuclear power plants.
  • starfallg 5y ago
    You can with storage systems albeit with lots of constraints. Having nuclear is important to guarantee baseload, but we can't rely on that solely either. With current gen nuclear tech, well also run out of fuel within a few generations.
    • xroche 5y ago
      > You can with storage systems There is no such thing as storage systems at wide scale unfortunately > well also run out of fuel within a few generations Absolutely. But hopefully fusion will be around then.
      • ben_w 5y ago
        > There is no such thing as storage systems at wide scale unfortunately I can’t find actual current annual production, only estimates for now and actual values for a few years ago, but we produced somewhere between 0.5 (what we did recently) and 1.3 TWh (what some people a few years ago thought we’d be at now) of batteries in the last year. Given the likely usage patterns, this is already on a relevant scale to all 50 or so nuclear reactors currently under construction, and the expectation is that battery production will approximate rapid positive exponential growth at least to the end of the decade.
• pfortuny 5y ago
  Do you think Putin did not take this into account? Europe has messed with herself and her dealings with Russia for so long that we are totally utterly self-screwed (renewables… tell that to the 400EU/MWh). Like with China. Look: as a protest for the Uygurs, the US did not send… diplomats! What a shame.
• tomp 5y ago
  Renewables are the reason we’re still dependent on dictatorship-sourced fossil fuels in the first place.
• maelito 5y ago
  > in favor of renewables. And less energy consumption, and nuclear.
• hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
  I do not understand why Germany opts to get out of nuclear power. With enough nuclear power it would not need to rely on natgas/oil from east.
• coryfklein 5y ago
  > a rapid exit at unprecedented speed from the oil economy, in favor of renewables. In the United States alone we would have to *sextuple* our renewable energy sources just to make up for our usage of fossil fuels. That is not something any country can do "rapidly", and even if it became a primary focus it would consume a significant portion of our GDP for years on end and be the largest infrastructure project the US has ever engaged in. It seems almost ludicrous to categorize such a reaction as a "retaliation".