“With sun and wind against Putin and Trump”

The row between Germany, Austria and the US Senate over a planned expansion of US sanctions on Russia has renewed the energy transition’s importance as a means to achieve greater energy supply security, Petra Pinzler writes in a column for Zeit Online. The “dull economic nationalism” in the US Senate could “almost lead to sympathy for the Nord Stream pipeline”, Pinzler says. But the gas-supply project linking Germany with Russia via the Baltic Sea is also heavily contested within the EU, she argues. It would not only make Berlin more susceptible to blackmailing by Moscow but also alienate its eastern European partners. Advancing the energy transition was therefore both the cheapest and most environmentally friendly option for Germany, but also one which makes it far less susceptible to foreign pressure, Pinzler says. 

Read the column in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels for background.