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Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

It'd also hit Europe very hard. Natgas is like a third of European electricity generation and much of the heating. Europe has supplies for the winter but if the conflict is extended and the embargo maintained, millions of Europeans would be under heat rationing and rolling blackouts beyond 2022. It wouldn't be a humanitarian disaster with some planning but it's certainly not going to be popular, nor particularly good for the economy.

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That's too bad then. I'll drain the pipes here and we'll live without heat. Fortunately it is a relatively mild winter and we're getting towards the end of it.

Compared to what Ukraine is going through right now that's a very small price to pay, it is ridiculous to be standing there on the one hand hand wringing about the Ukrainian hardships and on the other to buy our fossil fuels from the aggressor directly financing the war.

> That's too bad then. I'll drain the pipes here and we'll live without heat. Fortunately it is a relatively mild winter and we're getting towards the end of it.

And with cold showers of course.

I've lived like that for years. This really doesn't bother me.

This is the most clear case of first world problems that I can think of. Places like hospitals and so on is a different matter.

I really hate cold showers or being cold in Winter in general... but if that's what it takes to support Ukraine, then it's worth it.

Very small price I would say.

That's the spirit!

I stand with you!

I have a new born and a 2 years old daughter. I’ll pass of course.

It's a pity, but what else we can do to stop the agression? As an European, I'm ready to bear the costs if it will help to stop the agression and the war. Spring is coming and it should be enough time to prepare for the next winter.

edit: spelling

Half a year is not nearly enough time to prepare. It's not just heating and electricity. It's also chemical industry etc. You will have to be willing to do more than just turn down the heating a bit. How about job security? 20% inflation?

There will be much anger. However, with Covid-19 there was no one really to blame, so people turned against local politicians imposing measures or people turned towards conspiracy theories for explanations and comfort. Here the culprit is clear and has one name.

This is why abandoning nuclear was a horrendous mistake.

Most of e.g. Germany's gas consumption is from heating, not electricity. So nuclear plays a minor role, though admittedly even needing just 10% less gas might be the difference of being able to procure what you need from non-Russian suppliers or rationing. (Sure, heating and electricity is kind of equivalent if many households had heat pumps, but they don't.)

Nuclear or not, the horrendous mistake was not reducing dependence on Russian exports even when their aggressive foreign policy was apparent even 10 years ago. That was inexcusible complacency.

Why is this the case? The only reason I could think is electricity prices. Here in Montreal where the average low for today is -11oC and electricity is very cheap, nearly everyone uses electric baseboards or electric boilers.

I'd imagine Germans would be quick to install electric heating if electricity was cheap, no?

Wouldn't expanding nuclear drive down electricity prices?

I don't know why gas heating is so prevalent in parts of Europe historically, I guess fossil fuels were just the cheapest way of heating compared to electricity. Google says that in Canada also much heating is gas or oil based, so perhaps the prevalence of electric heating is a feature of your particular residential area?

In any case, I think electric heating will become much more prevalent anyway since it's necessary for the clean energy transition. But that will take far longer than the current Russia crisis, so it's unfortunately no short term fix.

You've got loads of hydroelectricity in Québec, that's fairly cheap. In Europe most of the electricity was (and still is) generated with fossil fuel so if you are going to heat a place, you might as well use the gas directly, that's more efficient.

There are a few special cases though: if you go in southern Europe, especially in Greek islands, you will find a lot of solar water heating. And France has a higher than average electric heating due to its nuclear grid.

I think history will ultimately judge this as the Merkel administration's biggest shortcoming.

Is not that the nord stream 2 pipeline? Germany was able to buy Russian gas without problem. Why build the new pipe?

It seems that Germany thought that Russia was a rational player interested in growing their economy, but it seems that it was just power play for personal aspirations.

Nord Stream 2 was put in place by her predecessor Gerd Schröder. Merkel was never in favor of it.

Or when it's framed as "global competitors playing dirty games"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt3Zv-e4n1M

Good point, maybe so.

> It'd also hit Europe very hard. Natgas is like a third of European electricity generation and much of the heating.

By percentage of their gas imports that come from Russia: DE, LT, PL, and IT at about 50%; FR and NL at about 20%.

* https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/15/business/ener...

* https://archive.fo/iUJ7j

By volume, mostly Germany and Italy:

* https://i.redd.it/qs12fw6kmdj81.jpg

Poland is just finishing a pipeline to Norway, we'll stop buying any Russian gas at the beginning of 2023. And we also have ability to import LNG through a shipping terminal at Swinoujscie.

Norway is on full capacity already. They will not be able to replace Russian gas in volume.

Well, I assume that "full capacity" includes gas they decided to sell to Poland when the construction of Baltic Pipe started. They might not have enough to supply the whole Europe, no argument here.

Which will make it harder for Germany and Italy to enforce effective sanctions towards Russia.

Hopefully they will do the right thing and support Ukraine anyway they can.

A good indication is going to be if Germany will support the exclusion of Russia from SWIFT:

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/germany-open-to-c...

There is a lot of pressure put on Germany right now regarding SWIFT.

The exclusion from SWIFT will hit Germany hard, as it will also mean the end of gas delivery. The resulting outages, rising gas prices, the profiteering of the new gas vendors will also have an affect of public support for the sanctions.

It will also be a boost for the alternative systems, that China already built.

In the end, this might backfire really hard.

I do however also not have any better ideas. I'm happy that I'm not the one having to make that decision.

I don’t believe that removal from SWIFT means an end to payments. Much more likely it makes the process considerably more manual, still worthwhile for larger trades. Really it’s the hit to the volume of trades that does the damage. However, they might have to rely on the two parties (or their banks) having a bank in common. That gets harder as the banks themselves get sanctioned.

Edit: see correspondent bank https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondent_account

(13 years out of investment banking on the technology side. Never touched SWIFT directly but was involved in more than one in multi-bank project)

Ukraine itself is proof of how undisruptive is lowering natural gas use as it reduced it's own imports back in 2014.

Natural gas has a lot of substitutes in electricity generation and other uses, and demand will fall as prices rise (good for global warming anyway). Energy poor households can get help, so no one will freeze to death, without subisizing the natural gas. Spring and Summer are holding which makes this the best time to act.

Advanced market economies like the ones in the EU are very resilient to supply shocks like this and Eastern European countries can be helped.

Over the long term dependence on insane dictators is also bad for the economy and diversification and decarbonization are good!

You seem to be assuming that the substitute for natural gas plants isn't coal.

It may be short-term, but long-term coal is being priced out of the market by cheaper sources.

Speaking as a german, i'd be happy to wear another pullover and deal with rolling blackouts, when the alternative is war.

Pullis gegen Putin

https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=en&text=Pullis%20gege...

> Sweaters against Putin

There is a good article at The Guardian, discussing replacing the Russian gas. The conclusion seem to be that this will be very hard and take a long time.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/25/how-can-eur...

That rings true. It reminds me of the US reducing its dependence on foreign oil, which was also very hard and took a long time — but was worth it.

US oil dependence was largely ended through unexpected/unplanned technological innovation -- fracking and horizontal drilling opened up many reserves, and improved deep water drilling tech added more offshore capacity. It also happened pretty rapidly, from about 2005 to 2015.

That is why it is only being contemplated in response for a brutal and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. It wasn't contemplated lightly. And Putin flagrantly leverages this power over Europe... paying for the privilege of enriching a neighbor that has now made it clear is your determined enemy is less unpopular than you may realize.

> It'd also hit Europe very hard.

If I lived in Europe I wouldn't care.

No matter the cost (taxes etc.), no matter if I would have to wear multiple jackets at home.

I would still be in favor.

But EU shall not worry because the US can readily supply it at even higher price.

It's not that there isn't sufficient natgas to offset most of the Russian production. The LPG terminals, pipelines and other infrastructure required for that doesn't exist yet, and even if we started crash construction projects today they wouldn't be online in time to prevent a disruption. That said, such construction clearly needs to start anyway.

Yes. If it takes two years to get off Russian gas, so be it. Start today.

And seize some oligarchs’ assets to help pay for it.

Europe isn't able to do such quick emergency projects anymore. The environmental review to see what kind of salamander's might be woken up by the digging would take years alone.

Events like a war going on in Europe can change such policies. We have a madman at the door and continuing to finance his war makes us co-responsible. It is the least painful option anyway (the other being letting him to realize his goals of resetting Europe to pre-1997 state as he stated in his recent speech, or direct military conflict with NATO that nobody wants for obvious reasons - and in both cases, climate change would be the least of our worries).

Same in the US.

The West is looking for ways to impose effective sanctions. Investing in increased trade between the US and Europe which also hits Russia seems like a promising approach.

Russia is obviously geographically closer than the US to Europe. Once an investment is made and the infrastructure built, to what extent could American natgas compete with Russian on price if there is a return to normalcy?

US exported LNG can't compete with pipeline gas from Russia on price, nor on volume.

There is no answer, unfortunately, in US LNG exports to Europe. That's merely a very small bandaid on a serious energy wound. It's impossible to push US LNG exports high enough to offset the pipeline supply from Russia, no matter what we do.

At best it can relieve a bit of the pricing pressure while Europe figures out something else (nuclear, bolstering their own natural gas production, increased renewables).

If the us could feasibly supply the gas via LNG at cost then I’d imagine it would have been done.

The best bet would be for all energy suppliers to max production, however there is good evidence that that is already the case due to preexisting energy shortages.

Next step would be shutting down energy intensive operations such as bitcoin mining, gold mining, driving, potentially some steel production and shipping activities.

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