MOSCOW, Jan 9. Germany's abandonment of nuclear energy is pushing Europe into dependence on Russian gas. Rachel Millard, a columnist for the British newspaper Telegraph, writes about this. The columnist recalled that Berlin has closed three of the six existing nuclear power plants in the country. The rest will be decommissioned by the end of the year. The plan to destroy nuclear power plants was adopted under Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the early 2000s. After the accident at the Fukushima station in Japan in 2011, the government of Angela Merkel confirmed the course towards building a nuclear-free Germany. 
West alarmed over Russia-China Power of Siberia 2 deal «I think the shutdown of German nuclear power plants is absurd and a terrible mistake. I would call it a climate crime. Dismissing the large Belchatow coal power plant in Poland would do much more. the benefits of nature, «- said the expert Michael Liebreich. To mitigate the effects of global warming, Europe intends to move the economy to clean energy by 2045. This means that the continent will have to produce large volumes of «low-carbon» electricity to power factories, electric vehicles and meet the needs of the population. But in reality, decommissioning nuclear power plants in Germany is a «dangerous path» that increases the continent's dependence on coal and Russian gas, writes Millard. While Berlin is keen to switch to renewable energy sources, it now has to rely on gas-fired power plants to meet the needs countries in transition. European politicians assure that this is a temporary measure: in the future they will be able to work on hydrogen, which does not emit carbon dioxide when burned. Germany has already spent eight billion euros on 60 such projects. The problem is that a hydrogen economy may never emerge, experts fear.
& # 34; What if hopes for large-scale commercial use of this type of energy do not come true? As a result, you will have a lot of capacities that require this type of fuel, but the energy carrier itself is not enough. We need a backup plan & # 34; — summed up the German environmental specialist Maria Pastukhova.
In recent months, a significant increase in gas prices has been observed in Europe. It began in April, and already in early October the cost of raw materials exceeded the $ 1,000 mark. An all-time high of $ 2,190.4 per thousand cubic meters was recorded on December 21. Experts linked the rise in fuel prices to several factors: the low occupancy rate of European underground storage facilities and high demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia. Now the mood of market participants is also influenced by weather conditions and uncertainty about the launch of Nord Stream 2.