By Benjamin Cunningham - Staff Writer
ISIFA Photo
Slovakia considered turning on a Soviet-era nuclear reactor in response to the recent gas crisis.
A European Union-brokered deal to monitor the Ukrainian gas pipeline was meant to turn the gas flow back on, but it was not until Russia and Ukraine resolved a bilateral price dispute that natural gas again started flowing west.
As of press time Jan. 20, Russia had turned on the taps, and the first deliveries had reached Slovak pipelines.
The recent Ukraine-Russia gas row, which cut off supplies to parts of Europe for more than two weeks, again raised questions about the reliability of Europe's present supply lines and the EU's ability to influence key actors, sending the Czech Republic and its neighbors searching for longer-term solutions.
In Slovakia, the quick-fix was a proposal to restart a nuclear reactor at Jaslovské Bohunice, a plan that faced strong EU opposition before eventually being scrapped.
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Czech Republic
46% coal
21% oil
16% natural gas
15% nuclear
2% other sources
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Slovakia
28% natural gas
24% coal
22% nuclear
20% oil
6% other sources
Source: International
Energy Agency, 2007
"There is no reason at the moment to re-launch the second V1 nuclear reactor at the Jaslovské Bohunice nuclear power plant," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on a Jan. 18 television talk show.
The Slovaks, however, did not eliminate the possibility of restarting the reactor in the event of another future energy crisis, a move that would break the country's EU accession treaty. Slovak Foreign Affairs Minister Jan Kubiš was in Austria Jan. 15 still trying to allay safety concerns related to the Soviet-era facility. The last reactor at the plant was shut down Dec. 31, 2008.
Natural gas is Slovakia's largest source of energy, totaling about 28 percent of use, according to Hiroshi Hashimoto, a natural gas specialist with the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Nearly 100 percent of Slovakia's natural gas supply comes from Russia.
The Czech Republic, by comparison, is both less dependent on natural gas in general and more diversified in terms of sources. In 2007, the latest statistics available, the country counts on natural gas for 16 percent of its total energy supply. Russia supplies 79 percent and Norway contributes most of the rest.
While many are quick to condemn Russia over the recent energy crisis, about 80 percent of Russian gas exported to Europe passes through Ukrainian territory. About two-thirds of Gazprom's revenue comes from gas sold after transiting Ukraine, according to a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
"On the whole [Ukraine] is not a reliable country," says Petr Kratochvíl, a Ukraine and Russia expert at the Prague Institute for International Relations. "The basic problem is that there is not a single voice. The internal political situation is a permanent political deadlock."
As instability in Ukraine increasingly worries Europeans about its reliability as a transit country, various gas-access options are on the table. The proposed North Stream pipeline would bring natural gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, then onward to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The so-called South Stream pipeline would bring Russian gas through the Balkans to Italy. A proposed Nabucco pipeline would bring Central Asian gas through Turkey and into the EU. None of these options is near implementation, and all face practical and political hurdles.
Czech Energy Envoy Václav Bartuška has publicly advocated the idea of using liquefied natural gas, which is cooled and shipped in tanks, as a means of bypassing future pipeline problems.
Coby van der Linde, director of the Clingendael International Energy Project in The Hague, is skeptical. "The quantities are much smaller. It's just not physically possible," she said.
Coal, a fuel that presently covers nearly half of the Czech Republic's energy use, has been decreasingly popular in recent years, but new technologies could be making it viable again.
"Even though coal is very negative on the environment, if we can store the carbon dioxide somehow, we can use more coal," Van der Linde said.
Green energy options are increasingly popular, at least rhetorically, and Van der Linde points to Denmark as an example of a country formerly dependent on coal and now a world leader in wind energy.
Progress on the Slovak option, nuclear power, has been slowed in recent decades "very much by the Chernobyl event," Van der Linde said.
France, however, became a nuclear innovator in response to the first and second oil crises, Van der Linde said.
Locally, both the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Social Democrats (ČSSD) support expanding sources of nuclear power. The Greens (SZ) have slowed progress as part of their governing coalition agreement, but incoming Green Humans Rights and Minority Minister Michael Kocáb has said he would support a change in party position.
Separately, the largest state-owned energy company, ČEZ, announced plans Jan. 20 to build two new nuclear reactors in Dukovany by 2035. "Nuclear energy is a political risk, but this is changing because of the environmental discussion," Van Der Linde said.
The Czech Republic has made energy policy a priority of its EU presidency. During the gas row, Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Kyiv. While most laud the effort, there are questions as to the concrete results.
"The EU's role was quite weak and the monitors were more symbolic. All the trumps were in the hands of Russia and Ukraine," Kratochvíl said. "They somehow just meet behind closed doors but never know what the agreement is about."
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the EU monitors are no longer needed because the price dispute has been settled. Kratochvíl says he is skeptical of whether the Russian-Ukrainian agreement will be honored, as the agreement is not public and various murky special interest groups on both sides persist.
Van der Linde has her own questions, mainly as to whether the EU will ever be able to have a cohesive, comprehensive energy policy. France, for example, is a strong proponent of nuclear energy, while Germany seeks to increase its access to Russian natural gas. "Member states have reaffirmed their sovereignty over energy mix," she said. "Maybe it is good that some countries are specialized."
Rather than a singular EU energy policy, she advocates power plants that can operate with more than one fuel - gas and oil, for example - and a Europe-wide "joint-crisis mechanism" to deal with shortages.
"That is something we can do," she adds. "And now."
Benjamin Cunningham can be reached atbcunningham@praguepost.com
