Five things to know about the EU's big plan to become independent from Russian fossil fuels
The European Union is facing a once-in-a-lifetime dilemma: how to cut its heavy and costly dependency on Russian energy while keeping the lights on for citizens and businesses across the continent.
The sudden reckoning has been prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a large-scale military operation that is partly bankrolled by the Kremlin's profitable sales of fossil fuels, of which the EU is the number one client.
Last year, the bloc spent almost €100 billion on Russian energy, a figure that has been haunting the 27 since the war broke out. As pressure from Kyiv and other international allies intensifies, the need to slash imports from Moscow becomes a geopolitical strategy of extreme urgency.
With this in mind, the European Commission has unveiled an ambitious and far-reaching plan, aptly coined "REPower EU", to achieve full energy independence from Russia by 2027.
The plan is "fundamentally political", said a senior Commission official, and responds to the pledge that EU leaders made at the Versailles summit in March, when they vowed to "reduce our energy dependencies."
But it is also transformative: for a bloc that has for decades grown accustomed to the cheap and reliable supplies from Russia, a total halt in imports will entail enormous challenges to diversify suppliers, redesign infrastructure, mitigate price hikes, increase efficiency, boost renewable alternatives and, above all, ensure households and factories remain powered without interruption.
"Putin's war is disrupting the global energy market," said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, while presenting the plan on Wednesday afternoon.
"It shows how dependent we are on imported fossil fuels. And how vulnerable we are to relying on Russia
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