Category Archives: Energy crisis

EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen presented the commission’s plan to address the growing energy crisis before and during the coming winter. Now there will be two weeks of discussions among Member states until their energy ministers gather on 30 September to decide which to endorse.
There will undoubtedly be no price caps on Russian or other natural gas.
There will be liquidity for those energy companies struggling to purchase high-priced gas.
There are measures to decouple the effects, at least, of the coupling of the electricity prices to high natural gas prices in the wake of Putin’s regime cutting its pipeline flows to Europe. The idea here, as I explained, is a sort of “windfall profits taxes” on low-cost energy producers, such as renewables and nuclear, to capture their rents and redistribute them to those citizens and firms struggling to pay energy bills during the crisis.
I explain that this is a wholly appropriate measure during wartime, which is what this is – an economic and energy war vs. Russia to support the Ukrainian people’s fight against Russian aggression.
I was asked, again, as on other networks recently, whether the EU is “divided” on these measures.
I explained how there are absolutely no proposals that the EU (or USA) back down on its sanctions program vs. Russia and esp. vs. Russian energy.
I explained how, despite Orban of Hungary and some similar examples, these have been pretty well handled by the majority of Member states and the Commission and in fact the sanctions and emergency measures have gone forward.
I noted that in two or so years, Russia will be relegated to a second-level energy exporter, and the EU will certainly be able to be independent of Putin’s regime in the energy sector.