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At the Siemens Gamesa factory in Aalborg, Denmark, where the next generation of offshore wind turbines is being built, workers are on their hands and knees inside a shallow, canoe-shaped chamber that runs along a football field. It is a die used to manufacture half of a single propeller blade. Guided by laser beacons, the team covers the sides with balsa wood panels.

The massive blades offer a glimpse into the energy future that Europe is running into with sudden urgency. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union’s largest supplier of natural gas and oil, prompted governments to step up their plans to reduce their reliance on oil. climate-changing fossil fuels. The armed conflict has led to policy-making commitments to be more distant. threat of an uninhabitable planet does not have.

Managing Europe’s energy transition smoothly was always going to be difficult. Now, as economies stagger from the second year of the pandemic, Russia’s attack on Ukraine is accelerating and energy prices are rising, Painful trade-offs became more apparent than ever before.

Moving investments from oil, gas and coal to sustainable sources like wind and solar, limiting and taxing carbon emissions, and building a new energy infrastructure to transmit electricity is crucial to shifting Europe away from fossil fuels. But all of these are likely to increase costs during the transition; This is an extremely difficult pill for the public and politicians to swallow.

The crisis, which encourages Europe to reach clean energy sources such as wind and solar faster, also risks turning Europe back. loosening efforts to close coal mines and stop drilling new oil and gas wells to replace Russian fuel and Price:%s down.

In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, leaders plan to have several coal-fired power plants recently taken off the grid in reserve so they can be up and running quickly when needed. After years of hesitation to invest so much in gas infrastructure, Germany is also accelerating its plans to build its own terminals to take in another fossil fuel, liquefied natural gas.

“Right now, the security of our energy supply is above all else,” said Robert Habeck, the country’s economy minister and leader of the Greens party in the coalition government.

Local authorities are taking similar steps. Last week, the Munich government decided to extend the life of one of the city’s coal-fired power stations, shelving plans to burn natural gas in the spring of 2023.

And this is in a country leading Europe’s efforts to transition to renewable energy.

In Poland, which gets 70 percent of its energy from coal and is at odds with the European Union over its climate agenda, the sudden energy shortage is used by critics as proof that the pressure to close the mines was a mistake.

Dominik Kolorz, head of the Solidarity Union’s Silesia region, said through a translator that “the so-called EU climate policy” has led to “a major economic crisis” and “total energy dependence on the Russian Federation”.

In many ways, Europe has been a leading laboratory for decades of transition. More than 20 years ago it started levying taxes on carbon emissions. The European Union pioneered an emissions trading system that limits the amount of greenhouse gases companies produce, creating a marketplace where licenses for these emissions can be bought and sold. Pollutant industries such as steel were gradually forced to clean up. Last year members proposed a carbon tax in imports from carbon-producing sectors such as steel and cement.

And it paved the way for generating wind power, especially from ocean-based turbines. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, for example, was instrumental in planting huge eddies in rows that could produce enough green energy to light up cities.

Europe is also on the verge of investing billions of dollars in hydrogen, potentially the future all-purpose clean fuel that can be produced by wind turbines.

European countries, especially Germany, drew up strategies based on increasing dependence on Russian gas and oil in the medium term. This is no longer an option.

After the invasion, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Nord Stream 2 has been discontinuedIt’s an $11 billion gas pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea, directly connecting Russia to northeastern Germany.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said: announced a plan To make Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels on March 8: “We cannot trust a supplier that openly threatens us.” The proposal calls on member states to cut Russia’s natural gas imports by two-thirds by next winter and to end it completely by 2027.

This week, European Union leaders are meeting again to discuss the next phase of bids, but deep divisions remain over how to manage current price increases amid concerns that Europe could face inflation and recession.

On Monday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned: Intense focus on rapidly changing Russian oil It could mean that major economies “neglect or kneel on policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel use.”

There are other technological, financial, regulatory and political barriers. The ability to cheaply produce, transport and store a clean backup fuel like hydrogen to power trucks, cars and airplanes is still years away.

And there is a need to find a better business model.

Siemens Gamesa is the world’s leading manufacturer of offshore wind turbines, a key tool for achieving climate goals. The company is also working on a giant turbine that will be dedicated solely to green hydrogen production.

Still, at the company’s offshore design center in Brande, two hours’ drive from Aalborg, conversations focus on concerns as well as bright hopes. The company has just changed its CEO due to poor financial performance.

Industry executives say that despite the huge climate ambitions of many countries, Siemens Gamesa and its competitors are struggling to keep orders coming fast enough to make a profit and finance their factories. It doesn’t help that factory building is often a condition for entering new markets, such as the United States, where Siemens Gamesa has agreed to set up a facility in Virginia.

Morten Pilgaard Rasmussen, chief technology officer of the offshore wind unit at Siemens Gamesa, said that companies like him “now have to make investments based on the prosperous future that we all expect”.

Rasmussen and other managers added that it took “too long” to identify suitable sites for the wind turbines and obtain the necessary permits for construction. The challenges are rooted in concerns that the wide arrays of turbines will hinder fishing, hinder sea drills, and disrupt the landscapes of summer homes.

According to Kadri Simson, Europe’s commissioner for energy, renewable energy projects should be seen as “first and foremost a public good” and Europe should consider changing laws to facilitate them.

“If it takes seven years to get a permit for a wind farm, we can’t talk about a renewable revolution,” said Ms. Simson.

Still, environmental regulations and other rules regarding large infrastructure installations are usually states of the countries rather than the European Union authorities in Brussels.

Decisive opposition from communities and industries that invest in fossil fuels makes it difficult for political leaders to fast-track energy transition policies.

In Upper Silesia, Poland’s coalfield, bright yellow buses show signs that they are running on 100 percent electricity, thanks to a grant from the European Union. But along the way, large billboards hung before state-owned enterprises invaded Ukraine – mistakenly – blame Brussels for 60 percent of the rise in energy prices.

At the Wujek coal mine, veterans worry whether their job will be long enough to save the 25 years it takes to retire with a lifetime pension. Several miners said the closure of the mines threatened not only the economy but also a way of life built on coal mining for generations.

“Forcing climate policy by force can lead to a drastic reduction in the standard of living here,” said Mr Kolorz, from Solidarity’s headquarters in Katowice. “And when people have nothing to plate, they can turn to extreme populism.”

Climate pressures are forcing at least some governments to consider steps they might not have taken before.

German officials decided it was too costly to keep the country’s last three remaining nuclear generators online after the end of the year. But the search for lower-emissions energy is leading to a resurgence of nuclear power elsewhere.

Britain and France say they plan to invest in smaller nuclear reactors that can be produced in larger numbers to cut costs.

The UK could even build a series of small nuclear fusion reactors, a promising but yet unproven technology. Ian Chapman, head of the UK’s Atomic Energy Agency, said every path to clean energy must be tried if there is any hope of achieving net-zero emissions in the three decades that is the deadline to prevent catastrophic climate change. “We must do everything we can,” he said.

In the short term, much of what the European Union is proposing involves shifting the source of fossil fuels, and especially natural gas, from Russia to other suppliers such as the US, Qatar and Azerbaijan, and filling up storage facilities. buffer. The risk is that Europe’s actions will further drive prices up, already nearly five times higher than a year ago, in a market where supply is partially undersupplied as companies are hesitant to invest in a fuel the world wants to eventually phase out.

In the long run, Europe and the UK are likely to accelerate their rollouts, world leaders in renewable energy and other efforts to reduce emissions, despite enormous costs and massive cuts.

“The EU will almost certainly throw hundreds of billions of euros into it,” said Henning Gloystein, director of energy and climate at political risk firm Eurasia Group. “Once trains leave the station, they cannot be taken back.”

balm eddy contributing reporting.