No, it means that the thing that Europeans have been feeling - that they need to get off fossil fuels before there is enough technology to enable an all-renewable grid - appears to be wrong. There is no doubt that European governments jumped the gun here, and they are now relying on dictators to cover their energy shortfall. I'm sure that many of them relied on the US as a supplier of LNG in wartime, but they didn't count on the fact that our government would cut production too.
I'm not sure how you have constructed your argument here.
My understanding is that the European Union has had 2 options:
a) pay dictators for non-renewables, or
b) switch to renewables and not pay dictators.
It is a fact that European countries have been slow to adopt renewables, and have continued to pay dictators for access to fossil fuels. Due to the situation with Ukraine, this has now been shown to be an untenable position.
The remaining option is for West European countries to adopt renewables as rapidly as possible. This is now not (just) for moral reasons, but rather it has now become a national security imperative.
The EU had a third option: hold off decomissioning the "dirty" plants (nuclear and coal) until the renewables could actually handle the load. There are literally not enough lithium ion batteries in the world to solve renewable energy storage for the EU. The EU does not have very much domestic oil, but it does have coal, and there is enough fissile material in the EU to fuel nuclear reactors for long enough.
For most politicians, recommissioning those plants seems to be off the table. But why? Yes, it is expensive and not "green," but it will save the EU a lot of potential human suffering (and death) over the next year if they can do it. It only seems to be off the table because the politicians are unwilling to admit that they were wrong. The option you are not considering is to eat crow, turn the coal plants back on, and save lives.
Switching to renewables as fast as possible is literally not an option without the batteries, and there are not enough batteries to solve the problem. Switching to renewables too quickly is what causes the dependence on dictators, since the remaining plants are natural gas fired, which needs oil. Going "all in" on renewables in a more serious way will not improve the dependence on dictators for natural gas.
There is plenty of coal in the EU and plenty of fissile material. Turn the reliable energy sources back on.
> The remaining option is for West European countries to adopt renewables as rapidly as possible.
> The EU had a third option: hold off decomissioning the "dirty" plants (nuclear and coal) until the renewables could actually handle the load.
These are the same? I'm not seeing the difference between "as rapidly as possible" and "when the renewables could actually handle the load" ? That's pretty much when it's possible, isn't it?
The rest (e.g. oil vs coal vs gas, how much exactly to try to buy from Russia) is manoeuvring and details towards that goal.
* The plans to decommission nuclear power plants are looking less likely by the day, so that part we agree on.
* The EU needs to import Gas to run the gas plants. As it turns out, the EU is indirectly paying Putin to use it to blow up their own weapons supplies. Hence this needs to stop as soon as is practical.
* The EU actually needs to import Coal to run all the current coal plants it seems. Lessons Have Been Learned about the import of strategic energy supplies; so I presume that any plans leading to a long-term increase in coal imports would be a hard non-starter. Short term the EU is indeed increasing coal imports for extant plants.
The EU is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. I agree with you that the only way out will need to include very large investments in storage. I also think we both agree that batteries are not a viable solution for large-scale long-term storage, I don't think many people seriously propose them for that purpose though?
> the thing that Europeans have been feeling - that they need to get off fossil fuels before there is enough technology to enable an all-renewable grid
I do not agree that this specific and silly thing about "before it's ready" is "what Europeans have been feeling". It seems like a straw man construction. ASAP means as soon as possible, not sooner.
