Anna Creti, an energy economist and chair of economics and climate at the Dauphine University of Paris, estimated on Franceinfo on Wednesday March 9 that the “impact would be immediate” if France accepted the hydrocarbon embargo against Russians, as the US announced during Tuesday about gas because of the war in Ukraine.
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At the level of the European Union, the commission, for its part, on Tuesday invited 27 member states to diversify their sources of supply, increase their stockpiles and reduce energy consumption, rather than impose a total embargo.
Franceinfo: If France imposes an embargo on Russian gas, as the US does, can we survive without it?
Anna Creti: Mechanisms can be quickly put in place to replace gas for certain purposes, but the effect will be immediate. First, there are the prices. These kinds of panic-inducing measures, as is happening now in commodity exchanges, only drive up prices. There is no doubt that prices can be even higher than today. Secondly, there will undoubtedly be rationing phenomena. You cannot imagine removing a source of supply and not feel the consequences. Can we survive without these sources of supply? Unfortunately no.
Can we do without Russian hydrocarbons in the long term?
France is one of the countries with the most diversified sources of gas supplies. We have Kazakhstan, Norway, Algeria and a number of other suppliers that can fill the gap with LNG, liquefied gas. The production is sufficient. At current prices, there is a strong incentive for gas and oil producing countries to increase production rates, perhaps also to find new oil and new gas that is currently underground.
The European Commission proposes to reduce Russian gas imports by two thirds within a year: is it realistic?
There are a number of measures that, in my opinion, are optimistic. I wonder why these measures were not taken already during the discussion of the Green Deal [plan vert européen]. Today we are confronted with a contradiction that is not new. We recognize this under the blows of these conflicts of structural phenomena that have characterized the European economy for more than 80 years and which should have been called into question long ago. I am a bit pessimistic that we manage to stick to this roadmap, even if we admit that it has a European consensus in eight months, when we set much less ambitious goals for ten years.
Could this crisis accelerate the transition to clean energy?
This is what we want, even if it is sad to come to this, to facilitate the transition of energy. Clean energy is obviously electrical as well as biogas which is not a fossil gas produced locally. There is also a new emphasis on reducing consumption. This may be the first time we hear these needs being emphasized with such force.