- Global energy markets have shifted dramatically as western nations reduce imports of Russian energy.
- But UK energy minister Greg Hands said this just accelerated changes that were already underway.
- Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a "harsh wake-up call" for countries dependent on its supplies, he said.
President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been a "harsh wake-up call" for countries dependent on Russian energy supplies, the UK's energy minister said.
Global energy markets have shifted dramatically as western nations reduce their imports of Russian gas and oil to try to cut off funding to the country's military and put pressure on Putin to call off the war.
Russia has responded by halting natural gas supplies to some European countries over their refusal to pay in Russian rubles.
Energy prices across Europe are soaring as countries try to plug the gap in supplies, forcing some factories to shut down.
"A number of European countries have had, if you like, a harsh wake-up call from their dependence on Russian gas in particular, but I want to urge a bit of caution," Greg Hands, the UK's minister for energy, clean growth, and climate change, said in comments heard by Insider Tuesday.
Speaking at a London Tech Week, Hands said: "It might be tempting to think that that fundamentally changes the energy reality in Europe," but ending reliance on Russian sources is "more of an accelerator, rather than a reversal of policy."
Hands said that in the short-term this may cause some issues as countries scramble to find alternative energy sources, but that it would ultimately push them to focus on renewable forms of energy as well as low-carbon energies like nuclear.
"The need to do this is being driven more greater than ever by Russia's invasion of Ukraine," he said, calling the war "barbaric."
In 2020, 43.1% of electricity generated in the UK came from renewable sources, according to data from the UK government. Around 38% came from fossil fuels, a record low, and 16.1% came from nuclear, the lowest level since 2010, the data shows.
Offshore wind energy in particular is a growing source of electricity generation in the UK, generating 27% more electricity in 2020 than in 2019, per the data.
Hands said that the UK has the world's largest installed offshore wind capacity and that the price of offshore wind in the UK had fallen by around 75% over the last seven to 10 years.
"That is the sort of energy that we're going to need going forward," with the baseload provided by nuclear, Hands said. "The move to not using hydrocarbons at all has got to be the answer."
Russia has world's largest gas reserves. But after Russian troops started attacking Ukraine in February, the UK government said that "unlike other countries in Europe, the UK is in no way dependent on Russian gas supply."
It said that its single largest source of gas came from the UK Continental Shelf, the "vast majority" of imports came from reliable suppliers, and that no gas pipelines directly linked the UK with Russia. Imports from Russia made up less than 4% of the UK's total gas supply in 2021, the government added.
The EU, in contrast, is heavily reliant on Russian supplies. In 2021, almost 40% of the EU's natural gas imports came from Russia.
The EU also imports vast swathes of its oil supplies from Russia, though it announced a ban on Russian oil in late May.