WSJ: Warmists Leave Europe Vulnerable to Putin

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Green Politics Made Europe Vulnerable to Putin
Germany's dependence on renewable energy is a bonanza for Gazprom.

Until the crisis over Ukraine, there was an inbuilt tendency in Germany to embrace closer ties with Russia. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is close to Vladimir Putin (he has compared Russia's intervention in Ukraine to NATO's action against Serbia in the 1990s) and is chairman of the board of Gazprom joint-venture pipeline company Nord Stream. In 2012, Russia piped 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Germany, accounting for 28% of the 105.5 billion cubic meters of gas delivered to the European Union.

Friendships aside, the most significant driver of German energy-related foreign policy has been its powerful Green Party. Other countries considering letting domestic or foreign policy be determined by environmentalists would do well to consider where Germany's embrace of environmentalism has led.
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In October 1980, Germany's Green Party was formed to stand in parliamentary and state elections. Eighteen years later it entered government in a Red-Green coalition with the left-of-center SPD and in 2000 successfully pushed for the gradual phaseout of nuclear power.

The Greens' biggest triumph came with Germany's adoption of its Energiewende, the transition to renewable energy. The policy is a long-term bonanza for Gazprom. It means that Germany will buy more and more Russian gas because it cannot depend on electricity from unreliable wind and solar to power its industries and keep the lights on.

The emergence of the Greens has had a huge impact on German and European politics. But not all of Europe is so enthusiastic or willfully naive about dependence on Russian gas. Some countries are looking to America for alternatives.

Russia supplies around one third of the EU's gas, but the proportion rises the farther east you go. The Baltic states and Bulgaria buy all their gas from Russia. In the middle are Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, dependent for 50% of their gas on Russia.

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