Russia/Ukraine war pushes Europe to rethink gas, accelerate renewable

Jun 16, 2022 News

“Today the world is moving from fossil fuel to green energy. Hydro is green energy, a clean energy. The climate is changing, resulting in global warming; hydro power projects are the need of the hour; Solar and wind energy are being added as other forms of clean energy; Hydro is a natural requirement,” India’s Energy Minister

Kaieteur News – Taking its lead from Germany, the European Union has signalled its intention to embrace renewable energy much faster than was planned, a direct result of the war being waged between Russian and Ukraine.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed a memorandum of understanding with Egypt and Israel in what has been described as a ‘historic agreement’ [Photo: AP]

Russia provides much of Europe with its Natural Gas. As such, the EU is now looking in the interim to make its purchases from other sources, such as Israel but even those supplies would not be adequate leading to the now stated position of accelerating its push towards renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and hydro among other forms of new clean energy technology being developed.

To this end, the European Union, Israel and Egypt yesterday signed a tripartite natural gas export deal as the bloc seeks to diversify away from Russian energy. The deal, finalised at the East Mediterranean regional energy conference in Cairo, will allow “significant” exports of Israeli gas to Europe for the first time, the Israeli energy ministry said. Meanwhile as the Climate Change realities now compounded by the fossil fuel supplies India’s Union power minister R K Singh, who was on a two-day visit to the northeast from Monday, reiterated that country’s commitment saying mega hydropower projects are being constructed in the region in tandem with the global resolution to arrest climate change. He said India must move towards green energy as the rest of the world is doing.

Singh was at the time reviewing the progress of the 2000-MW Lower Subansiri Hydropower Project, which is the country’s largest under-construction hydropower project, at Gerukamukh along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border.

According to the Indian Government Officials, “Today the world is moving from fossil fuel to green energy. Hydro is green energy, a clean energy. The climate is changing, resulting in global warming,” said Singh. He added that hydro power projects are the need of the hour. Solar and wind energy are being added as other forms of clean energy. “Hydro is a natural requirement,” he said.
Union power minister R K Singh, who is on a two-day visit to the northeast from Monday, has said mega hydropower projects are being constructed in the region in tandem with the global resolution to arrest climate change. He said India must move towards green energy as the rest of the world is doing. Singh was reviewing the progress of the 2000-MW Lower Subansiri Hydropower Project, which is the country’s largest under-construction hydropower project, at Gerukamukh along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. The Lower Subansiri project received massive resistance from various anti-mega dam organisations in the northeast but Singh said commissioning of the project will be a big gain for the country.
“Today the world is moving from fossil fuel to green energy. Hydro is green energy, a clean energy. The climate is changing, resulting in global warming,” said Singh. He added that hydro power projects are the need of the hour. Solar and wind energy are being added as other forms of clean energy. “Hydro is a natural requirement,” he said.
Singh said hydropower projects will increase the state’s earnings and have multiple effects like generating jobs and creating business. “Among the infrastructure projects, hydro has the maximum multiple effects. People’s developmental needs are associated with hydropower projects,” Singh said.

In the frontier state Arunachal Pradesh, he said several new projects, including the 2,800-MW Dibang multipurpose power project will be expedited. “Arunachal’s total potential is 58,000 MW. Even if 50 percent of it is exploited, the per capita income of the people of the state will go up five times,” Singh affirmed. Guyana on the other hand, is pressing ahead with the construction of a Gas to Energy project as part of its Energy Transition with life span of some 20 years.

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