Germany To Cut Ties with Russian Coal and Oil

From this article on Germany’s energy scene: Germany will completely stop buying Russian coal in August and Russian oil by the end of the year, marking a major shift in the source of the country’s energy supply, Joerg Kukies, state secretary in the German federal chancellery, says.

Good going.

Germany has always been quite progressive in terms of its phasing out fossil fuels, despite their reputation as a risk-averse society.  And of course, there is added incentive here, since Russia has renewed its identity as a pariah nation.

The elephant in the room here, however, is natural gas.  Kukies admits that “the key challenge ahead will be filling the huge gap that will be left when the European Union weans itself off the 158 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year of gas that Russia supplies.”