Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 05/05/2014
Event: XXXX
Credit: BBC Radio 4
People:
Simon Jack: Now the economies of Russia and Europe are deeply entwined, thanks, of course, to Russia's vast energy resources. Energy ministers today are meeting in Rome to discuss how to counter Russian dominance of those European energy markets. Is this the moment we finally see a co-ordinated international response to this problem. Malcolm Grimston is an energy expert, an associate fellow at Chatham House - good morning to you, Malcolm.
Malcolm Grimston: Morning.
Simon Jack: Is the crisis in Ukraine a tipping point for the energy industry, globally? Is this the catalyst to try and - to mix things up a bit?
Malcolm Grimston: You'd hope so, I mean in the year 2000, the European Union produced a green paper on energy, saying we were getting very uncomfortably dependent on imported gas from Iran and the former Soviet Union. Since 2005 it's been almost an annual event that Russia turns off the gas taps to Ukraine, and that has knock-on effects for particularly countries like Germany. So I would hope that this is a further thing that will focus their minds on what was already a major problem before this event.
Simon Jack: So they're going to sit down, and they're going to say - what? We need a major new global energy strategy? Do we assume that we won't get anything from Russia? And where is - where are we going to make the shortfall up from - is it new countries, or is it stuff like coal?
Malcolm Grimston: It's - it's not credible to believe that Russia will stop exporting, in the long term, because -
Simon Jack: They need to.
Malcolm Grimston: Yes indeed, that's a major source of income for the Russian economy. Russia exports about four times as much - if I remember right - exports certainly considerably more energy than it actually uses, and its economy depends on that. The problem is that if you become politically dependent there, then when there is a spat, Russia could ruin Europe with sanctions much more quickly than Europe could ruin Russia. So i think we are going to look for new sources of gas - we've seen the shale gas revolution in the States, there may be possibilities in some European countries for that. Liquid natural - liquefied natural gas, as opposed to piped gas, there's already been interest in Europe. But we also have to start looking at other fuels. Nuclear makes an awful lot of sense but expensive to build. Coal is the other main one -
Simon Jack: Well, this interests me, because the amount of coal that we actually use in this country to generate electricity is now at 40% - I don't think people are cognisant of that, and it's grown, it's gone up about 20-something percent in the last year.