[jabl]

> Europe should perhaps have diversified their gas suppliers, with more LNG.

If climate change is supposed to be an existential threat, we shouldn't be doing major investments into fossil infrastructure.

Anyway, if we spend all that money to build LNG infrastructure, like terminals, ships, and having contracts with suppliers etc. just for the few and far between situations where the price of LNG drops below Russian gas, the price/kWh is going to be pretty high as well due to all that capital sitting idle most of the time.

A bit like this, per se sensible, argument someone in this thread made that keeping a nuclear plant around just to balance wind/solar output is pretty expensive.

[PeterisP]

One of considerations for LNG is that it's not purely an economic concern as from a country perspective energy independence might be considered just as important as climate change (in the short term) and it's worth paying some premium to secure it. Just as Europe has farming subsidy policies that essentially result in Europe paying a premium for food over what would be a "global market price" (importing more food from e.g. Africa and exporting less food), mostly in order to ensure long-term food supply independence.

[jabl]

I fully agree. Energy, particularly gas, is certainly seen as geopolitics in the Kremlin.

That being said, I think the focus should be on (massively!) building out wind/solar/nuclear/transmission/storage, allowing Europe to tackle both climate change and dependency on a not-entirely friendly Russia at the same time.