The case for joint European energy procurement is irresistible

In an echo of the Nineteen Seventies, the world is within the throes of a geopolitically induced power worth shock. That decade is rightly remembered as a painful time for western economies. However excessive oil costs additionally yielded sudden advantages. The tip of low-cost power and the apparent want for long-term power safety spurred a profitable drive for power effectivity.

After Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine, the EU’s must take away the nationwide safety danger of counting on Russian power is a brand new alternative to make a advantage out of necessity.

EU leaders have already requested the European Fee to set out plans to wean the bloc off Russian power dependence. Germany says it is going to largely finish its reliance on Russia for oil and coal this yr, and pure fuel by 2024.

Europe also can flip power coverage into an lively device of exterior affect. The EU is — not earlier than time — probing its potential to represent a consumers’ cartel. Some member states have resisted requires joint EU procurement of pure fuel. Putin’s aggression has lifted their doubts: on Friday the European Council vowed to work on a typical buy platform.

This can be a momentous transfer. Think about the worldwide results ought to EU nations collectively procure and handle the fuel wanted to completely replenish the bloc’s fuel storage yearly. That may imply yearly shopping for as much as 100bn cubic metres of fuel, about one-tenth of the world’s annual commerce. If it was all purchased as liquefied pure fuel it could be one-fifth of the LNG market. If largely concentrated in the summertime, the non permanent market share could be greater nonetheless. Alternatively, if a joint buy company purchased on the similar price in winter as what it wanted to replenish storage in summer season, the market share may keep greater all year long.

This could not fairly attain Opec ranges — the oil-producers’ cartels account for greater than half of world crude oil exports. However a European consumers’ cartel in pure fuel may nonetheless wield important market energy.

The obvious profit is mercantile. The muscle of collective procurement would certainly over time afford Europe decrease costs than in any other case. It will additionally change the incentives guiding power decisions nicely past Europe’s shores. Within the brief run, joint EU buying in a squeezed LNG market would elevate costs for others, particularly Asian economies. Together with European carbon border tariffs, that may enhance demand for zero-carbon power.

In the long term, joint procurement would make it simpler for EU nations to pre-announce plans for cutting down fuel use — which, via its international market affect, would forged doubt on the knowledge of investing in long-term fuel improvement elsewhere. The general impact could be a lift to incentives for international renewable power investments right this moment.

Then there’s the geopolitical achieve. If strategic autonomy means something, it’s certainly that the pursuit of European values and pursuits shouldn’t be constrained by the stranglehold stored by Russia or different powers on the power provides of EU nations. Moscow has minimize off fuel provides for geostrategic causes earlier than. And Gazprom’s unwillingness to fill its German reservoirs earlier than final winter worsened the EU’s strategic place when Putin launched his warfare.

This isn’t a brand new level. There was curiosity in an EU power union, together with frequent purchases from Russia, within the final decade. German complicity with Russian power pursuits stood in the best way. However so did the tragedy of the post-2015 Polish authorities’s anti-European flip. It did not collaborate Europe-wide on such an agenda due to home variations with Donald Tusk, the previous Polish prime minister, who in his subsequent job as president of the European Council may have rallied a coalition of nations behind this very important Polish curiosity.

However higher late than by no means. The situations are propitious for Europe to make up for misplaced time. Germany has been shocked out of complacency. The EU has some expertise with frequent procurement of a collective good: its purchases of Covid-19 vaccines throughout the pandemic had been extra profitable than they get credit score for, and modern vaccines are a way more sophisticated market to enter than pure fuel.

The EU shouldn’t be prepared in a single day to turn out to be a gas-buying cartel at scale. It should construct up experience and enhance its regasification and home piping capability. However that is taking place. And establishing a typical buy platform will speed up the method.

The Nineteen Seventies shocks got here from the younger Opec flexing its muscle tissue. The 2020s shocks ought to give beginning to a European anti-Opec.

martin.sandbu@ft.com