A few days after Finland formalized its application to join NATO, the western military alliance, Russia announced that it will stop supplying natural gas to the Nordic country starting this Saturday (21).
The announcement was confirmed by Gasum, the main company in the sector in Helsinki, this Friday (20), and the cut starts at 1 am (in BrasÃlia). The company’s director, Mika Wiljanen, called the decision regrettable – Moscow says the cut is due to the Finnish refusal to pay in rubles, the Russian currency, for the product.
The news did not take anyone by surprise. Gasum itself, which also operates in Sweden and Norway, had already said that the risk of imports being cut was very likely and added that it will seek to supply domestic demand through the Balticconnector gas pipeline, which connects Finland to Estonia.
Natural gas accounts for just 6% of the energy consumed in Finland, according to 2020 data, but most of it comes from Russia. The Nordic country, which sees renewable energy advancing, has biomass as its main source — a quarter of the national energy. Oil still occupies the 21% share.
Use of fossil fuels and peat dropped 10% from the previous year, bringing their share of total energy consumption down to 37%. The set of renewable sources reached 40% of consumption.
Despite the alleged justification for non-payment in rubles – which already led Moscow to cut gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland in April – suspicion in Finland grew after the country tried to join NATO, a decision promptly criticized by the Vladimir Putin’s government.
Also on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the opening of 12 more military bases to the west of its territory by the end of the year. “[A Rússia] is taking appropriate countermeasures,” said Minister Serguei Choigu, referring to the alliance’s expansion to include Finland and Sweden.
Ahead of the announcement that Russian state-owned giant Gazprom will no longer supply the Finns with gas, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters that the Russian government had no information about the company’s contracts, but amended: “Obviously nothing will be given free to no one”.
Last week, Inter RAO, the main Russian utility, had also announced that it would stop exporting energy to Finland “for the time being”, claiming not to receive payments from the Norwegian Nord Pool, a kind of wholesale energy market operating in Finland, since beginning of this month.
The energy challenge imposed on Finland puts more pressure on the European Union (EU), a bloc of which the country is a member and which, this week, expanded its efforts to invest in renewable energy. If before the climate emergency was one of the main factors in the balance, the task of reducing dependence on Russian gas entered the equation with weight after the beginning of the war in Eastern Europe, on February 24th.
Russia supplies 40% of the bloc’s gas and 27% of the oil imported from the EU. The European Commission presented on Wednesday (18) a € 210 million (more than R$ 1 billion) plan to reduce imports of fossil fuels and, thus, reduce the carbon emissions of member countries.
The move is part of the ambitious package presented by the bloc last July to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, based on 1990 levels, so that countries move closer to carbon neutrality – in which all emissions are absorbed. Emissions have already fallen by 24% compared to 1990, while the bloc’s economy grew by 60% in the period.
“We must reduce our energy dependence on Russia as soon as possible and we can do it,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive arm, during the announcement of the latest plan.
In the short term, however, the bloc plans to increase domestic electricity production through nuclear and coal. It then proposes to increase the share of renewable energy from 40% to 45% by 2030. “We propose to put solar roofs on public and commercial buildings by 2025”, continued Von der Leyen.
