Title: Europe's Keystone XL: Planned gas pipeline is reckless
Headings: Europe’s Keystone XL: Planned gas pipeline is reckless
Europe’s Keystone XL: Planned gas pipeline is reckless
The Southern Gas Corridor risks locking in higher fossil fuel dependence and wasting colossal amounts of public money
By Anna Roggenbuck

Content: How Russia and neighbours could go 100% renewable by 2030
Proponents of the project argue for its necessity as a substitute for Russian gas imports. But it is no other than Russian energy giant Lukoil, as part of a larger consortium, that is controlling the tap of the Shah Deniz gas field, the source of the Southern Gas Corridor, and mostly thanks to a recent €500 million loan from another public lender, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. A bank official is also reported to have recently said the bank is considering finance for sections of the Southern Gas Corridor. The answer for Europe’s energy security woes is not with fossil fuel imports, especially not from authoritarian regimes such as Azerbaijan. Rather, to truly boost energy security, EU public investments should go to home grown wind and solar power, high energy efficiency potential and an actual decrease in energy consumption along with better integration of EU internal energy market and infrastructure. Comment: Is Brussels killing the Paris climate dream? Last month, EU leaders discussed Europe’s contribution to the global effort to tackle the climate crisis in light of the Paris Agreement. The international accord requires nations to progressively ratchet up their climate goals. With the Southern Gas Corridor project already being constructed, the EU – whose climate action and energy commissioner claims to have led the so-called High Ambition Coalition in Paris – risks not even meeting its current goals, and pushing Europe even farther from its decarbonisation objective.