We need an ‘Eco-Marshall Plan’ to rebuild Europe’s energy after Russia

The barbaric invasion of Ukraine last week is inextricably linked to the terrifying update last week by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The former is funded by our addiction to fossil fuels, the latter caused by their carbon emissions. The IPCC report makes clear that our plans to wean ourselves off fossil-fuels by 2050 are suicidally late, with billions of people already in danger from extreme weather events.

But there is a glaring contradiction here. Despite the devastated cities, orphaned kids and millions of refugees – the EU, UK and US are still pumping $700m a day into Putin’s coffers for oil, gas and other commodities. That equates to approximately $246bn a year. As Biden himself admitted: “We specifically designed them to allow energy payments to continue.”

Fossil fuel sales provide 40 per cent of Putin’s income to fund his war-machine. Could anything more symbolise the depth of our addiction to fossil fuels? This cannot continue.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said the bloc can withstand a sudden disruption to all Russian gas supplies this winter. So, we have six months to prepare for next winter.

This is why Europe needs to launch an ‘Eco-Marshall Plan’ in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Marshall Plan is named after General Marshall, who advocated a plan to help Europe rebuild after the devastation of the Second World War. We need another such plan for Europe now.

First, Europe needs a huge ramping-up of renewable energy, including wind, solar, hydro, tidal and geothermal. Wind and solar are already the cheapest form of new energy we can produce. Nuclear stations take a generation to build and would be too late to impact Putin’s money spigot.

Second, Europe needs a parallel investment programme in energy storage, including compressed air, green hydrogen, batteries and pumped hydro. These are necessary since solar and wind energy are intermittent – the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.?

Finally, Europe needs an unprecedented effort for building insulation and energy efficiency across the continent. Without that we cannot reduce our reliance on natural gas.

It is crunchtime. Either we kick our addiction to fossil fuels, or democracy will go down in a hail of authoritarian bullets, and civilisation in a burst of climate flames.

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Those media and fossil fuel corporations and allied politicians who got us into this mess, by refusing to act on previous fossil fuel crises and climate warnings, are now calling to ramp up non-Russian fossil fuel investments. Or, they want us to build vast numbers of expensive nuclear power stations instead. Like a heroin addict in the last stages of terminal decline, they claim that an alternative, better heroin supplier is all we need.

But Putin’s violence has dramatically put our fossil fuel consumption in the crosshairs. We need to go cold turkey on our fossil-fuelled addiction immediately, if we want democracy, humanity and the living world to survive. Either we kick the addiction, or democracy will go down in a hail of authoritarian bullets and civilisation in a burst of climate flames.

Immediately turning off Russian gas and oil pipes is – morally – the least we can do to try to save Ukraine.