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?
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.