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Comment by Moissanite | Hacker News Reader

20/20 hindsight. In a less miserable timeline, the absence of hostilities with Russia makes gas storage a non-issue, and any government putting money into gas tanks rather than renewable energy would have been (rightly) lambasted. I'm willing to tear chunks out of our inept leaders over many things, but this isn't one of them.

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My friend… Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Two different US presidents warned Europe about Russian energy dependency, publicly. Who knows how many times this was brought up in private conversations.

This was so easy to predict that even Donald Trump managed to put two and two together and make four. He brought it up, publicly, and German leaders literally laughed at his face.

European politicians deserve no benefit of the doubt here after 2014. They were told this was a huge risk and chose to do nothing.

Germany gets a lot of flak for buying Russian gas cheaply the last 30 years in ever increasing volumes. But it seems strange to argue that Germany just should have bought gas from Qatar or the US for double the price from the start.

How should Germany have done that? Import tax on Russian gas? Laws preventing importing cheap gas from the east? Sounds a bit aggressive towards our big neighbor to the east.

Germans maybe were naive to think (up to until this summer) that Russia would need the money as much as we needed the gas. Still from the grand scheme of things (fossil fuels need to end anyway, gas is better than coal for climate, trade is better than no trade) the idea to partner with Russia made a lot of sense.

Europe benefitted from cheap gas over the last decades and it will be somewhat affected by higher prices for this and next year, but it will accelerate the transition to renewables and strengthen nuclear in those countries in Europe where it is still an option. In the end it will push Europe in the right direction.

>But it seems strange to argue that Germany just should have bought gas from Qatar or the US for double the price from the start.

That was never on the table. The US doesn’t even have the export capacity to manage it.

Germany should have pursued energy independence for the the European Union. It’s as simple as that.

Whenever the Germany was critiqued on its Russian gas dependence by the US it was always brought up that Germany could rely more on US gas (from fracking if I recall).

> Germany should have pursued energy independence for the European Union. It’s as simple as that.

Nothing simple about that. Germany financed the first solar boom under the Green party before 2005 which cost German consumers a pretty penny (EEG Umlage). When Merkel got into power this renewables surcharge got so high that it was threatening consumers and industry. Merkel put on the brakes for renewables (which cost Germany pretty much all solar industry) and ushered in the Gas dependence.

Only with expensive fossils do renewables have a chance in Europe. So the current prices do have at least one advantage and might eventually lead to the energy independence.

Meh; I take your point, but in 2017 there was definitely more emphasis on risks from climate than from Russia. Not saying that was a valid position, just that it isn't too surprising that politicians don't eagerly swim against the tide being set by the media and general public. The root of the problem is that those journalists and voters aren't capable of holding enough complexity in their minds to acknowledge both risks at the same time.

Germany lost momentum in transitioning to renewable energy when Merkel/CDU gained power in 2005.

Cheap gas was nice for people and politicians back then, in 2014 and would be nice now.

I do/did not support joining the war against Russia but reducing fossil fuel usage is the right thing anyway.

The UK had relatively little dependence on russian gas though.

So you'd have to basically predict what did happen. Russia turning off the taps to the whole of Europe / Europe refusing to buy, and Europe scrambling to find alternative sources.

I don't think any of that was reasonably foreseeable.

Not hindsight, reducing our storage capacity is something that was decried as it was happening. Anyone with sense saw this problem coming (not specifically a Russian war, just potential problems from a lack of gas storage). I personally have been complaining about it for years.

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