United States Secretary, Antony Blinken has revealed that the United States government have more than doubled supply of natural gas to European continent, exporting 56 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas last year (2022).
Blinken who made the revelation at the European Council Building in Belgium on Monday, said when this council met on February 7th, 2022, Russia was on the verge of invading Ukraine while Europe was on the verge of an energy crisis.
The Secretary noted that because of this US exportation and other efforts, Russia’s natural gas only accounted for about 16 percent of the EU’s natural gas imports by the end of 2022, compared to 37 percent in the month of March of 2022.
According to him, “Russia’s President Vladimir Putin bet that his threat of stopping gas supplies would deter Europe and the world from standing up to his aggression against Ukraine. Putin then doubled down stopping natural gas supplies to many European countries.
“Dramatically reducing flows to others, forcing record-high prices on millions in Europe and around the world. Putin sought to wipe Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure while destroying 50 percent of Ukraine’s grid, leaving millions without reliable power and heat”, he said.
He pointed out that US supplies went up more than twofold over 140 percent increase between 2021 and 2022 adding that the EU’s leadership has been vital in this for example, with its Save the Gas for a Safe Winter program.
“Through which citizens voluntarily lowered their electricity use and used more energy efficient appliances. These and other efforts contributed to a 19 percent reduction in natural gas demand between August of 2022 and January of 2023”, Blinken said.
On clean energy transition, the Secretary said U.S.-EU Task Force on Energy Security is helping govts and private sector partners share information to boost energy efficiency and diversify supply, like deploying more heat pumps and smart thermostats.
“The EU has shown remarkable leadership, increasing its goal of energy from renewables from 40 percent to 45 percent by 2030. EU countries added 50 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity last year which together generated more electricity than natural gas in 2022”.
He recalled in 2022, United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in American history, and heartened that Europe too is working on ambitious clean energy incentives.
“Through the Clean Energy Incentives Dialogue, which President Biden and President von der Leyen launched last month, we are working together to make sure that these efforts are mutually reenforcing, so that our incentives create a positive feedback loop of innovation, investment for energy transition, jobs for our people”, he said.
Adding that US, EU also come together to support Ukraine’s energy needs. “Together, the EU, the U.S., and our G7+ partners have delivered more than 4,000 power generators, 1,000 transformers, and more than 5 million pieces of equipment, like circuit breakers and cables, to help repair and replace the country’s battered energy grid.
“Today, we’ll talk about ways to continue rebuilding Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. We’ll also talk about our shared work to deploy new technologies like clean hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, among other efforts, to advance the energy transition across Europe and the United States”, he said.