The EU has been buying cheap gas and oil from Russia for decades, but the war in Ukraine has forced its leaders to re-think this policy, even former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who until last week sat on the Board at Rosneft.
On the EU website, you can see the strategy for weaning the EU off Russian gas and oil, which won’t be easy as no EU nation wants to actually exploit its own carbon reserves for industry, domestic heating, or fuelling vehicles. Nor do most EU nations want to build more nuclear power stations, except perhaps the French. To square that virtuous circle won’t be easy and will involve rationing travel, heat, power, probably more green taxes and the construction of yet more non-recyclable wind turbines.
But all this provides a huge opportunity for insurers in term of covering the initial infrastructure builds, the distribution of energy and monitoring safety risks associated with turbines, solar panels, hydro-electric, upgrading housing stock, hydrogen boilers, heat pumps etc.
REPower IS THE NEW BUZZWORD
The REPower EU site states it intends to spend Euro 210 billion by 2027 on various energy projects. They also want to increase LNG imports from Canada, Gulf States and the USA. That means more pipeline and marine insurance. A pipeline from Norway’s gas fields makes sense, but can the EU sell that dream to the anti-pipeline/carbon wokeists and Greens? Tricky.
The EU also plans to invest in solar panel farms and the logical place to do this would be Greece, Spain and possibly islands like Malta, Crete, Corsica or Sardinia, although those islanders might not be receptive to having tourism replaced with solar farms and a dead local economy.
You can find out more here. Interesting times lie ahead for the EU now they have turned their backs on Russia, coal and locally produced oil/gas.
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