Why EU didn’t include nuclear energy in plan to get off Russian gas

For Europe, the war in Ukraine has created an urgent priority to stop being dependent on Russian gas.

The International Energy Agency, a policy organization with members from 31 national governments, and the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, both recently published plans for how Europe should accomplish this.

The two published plans are roughly parallel, recommending the EU focus on renewables, efficiency, and imports of liquid natural gas. They do, however, differ in one obvious way.

The plan from the IEA recommends keeping existing nuclear plants operating, while the plan from the EU makes no explicit reference to nuclear power at all.

Addressing natural gas imports from Russia is no small feat. About 25% of the EU’s energy consumption comes from natural gas, according to the Directorate-General for Energy for the EU. And the EU only produces 10% of the natural gas it needs, importing the rest from countries like Russia (41%), Norway (24%), and Algeria (11%).

In a press briefing on Tuesday, Frans Timmermans, an executive vice president of the EU’s Green New Deal, was asked about nuclear power, since it was not included in the written documents.

“Member States are free in the choices they make in terms of their energy mix,” Timmermans said, according to a transcript provided CNBC by a European Commission spokesperson. Member states in the EU are “legally bound” to reduce their emissions, Timmermans said, and “we will support them in the choices they make.”

Timmermans said a reliance on nuclear should be accompanied by an equal buildout of renewables.

“It is imaginable that some Member States would decide to, for instance, not use gas as a transitional energy carrier but then remain a bit longer with nuclear or with coal than they had imagined,” Timmermans said. “If that is combined with a speeding up for the introduction of renewable energy for climate and for our energy self-sufficiency that could be two wins.”

Public sentiment around nuclear power affects local politics and in the EU, those sentiments change country by country. hen the European Commission suggested in February that nuclear and coal could play a role in the transition to clean energy, it drew drew ire from many European leaders.

“Adding nuclear capacity is clearly part of the measures that should be taken, but nuclear has always been a difficult topic for the EU as certain countries, like France and Finland, are pro-nuclear and other countries, like Germany and Sweden, are against…