Energy Crisis in Europe : A deeper look

Europe is set to face an unprecedented energy crisis this winter. Various factors could contribute towards many homes experiencing indefinite blackouts and suffering from sub-optimal heating as the temperatures rapidly drop. Natural gas, a key source of the EU's electrical power generation has seen many shortages and price fluctuations lately. Russia has reliably supplied natural gas into the EU via the Nord Stream pipeline so far.

Recently, however, Russia has decreased shipments citing a need to cater to escalating domestic demand. Qatar, the world’s largest supplier of LPG, seems to have hit a wall in production capability and has resorted to import additional tankers from China and South Korea. Nuclear power is the epitome of clean power generation, but nuclear power plants are expensive and politically challenging to build in many countries. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to shut down nuclear plants.

Existing power stations, such as the one in France, the workhorse of the French power system have been severely under-maintained owing to the pandemic. France is also a key exporter to neighboring countries, meaning that the effects of a crisis would reverberate in Germany, Spain, Italy, and Britain.

The EU does have solidarity principles in place to guide equitable power distribution to its member nations, but these principles haven’t yet seen the test of such a wide-scale energy crisis. Diversification of energy sources in the EU is hampered by restrictions on the EU's renewable energy directive. These restrictions need to be lifted while the utmost needs to be extracted of all available power this winter.

ENPOSS can do its part to alleviate the energy crisis by the usage of its revolutionary product FORCE, which successfully optimizes power consumption.