Greece and Israel have agreed to build a new pipeline to bring natural gas to Europe, even though the EU is promising to reduce its use of damaging fossil fuels.
The new €6bn (£5.1bn) underwater pipeline, which would be the world’s longest, is forecast to meet about 10 per cent of Europe’s gas needs by 2025.
Italy will be the largest single purchaser of the Israeli gas, but several other European countries also stand to benefit.
Download the new Indpendent Premium app
Sharing the full story, not just the headlines
Last month the European Union launched a new Green Deal policy package committing the EU to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, with ambitious targets to cut emissions by 2030 from the current 40 per cent target to “at least” 50 per cent.
Ursula Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the commission wanted to use €100bn worth of investment to help the bloc’s economies pay to switch away from fossil fuels.
The European Investment Bank decided in November to stop funding fossil fuel projects at the end of 2021.
The EastMed line, which would run for 1,900km (1,180 miles) from Israeli and Cypriot gas fields via Greece to Italy, is expected to carry up to 20 billion cubic metres of gas a year.
Under the Paris Agreement to tackle the climate crisis, Europe set a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2030.
But Europe’s gas demands are rising, and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies estimates that demand will outstrip liquefied natural gas supply within three years.
Jonathan Stern, who heads the Institute, told Al Jazeera: “What the models mostly show is, if we’re going to meet the Paris targets (COP21), never mind any consideration of net-zero [emissions], then gas has to basically remain relatively flat in terms of demand … and then post-2030 it has to decline relatively rapidly.”
Only the best news in your inbox
Natural gas is sometimes praised as a clean energy alternative to coal but scientists say a significant amount of methane, which heats the atmosphere, escapes from natural gas wells and pipelines.
Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli energy minister, has said the pipeline would take up to seven years to build and that its advantages include being less vulnerable to sabotage than if it passed through Turkey.
The country’s Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea began pumping gas just before the new year.
The current longest undersea pipeline is the Nord Stream, which runs for 1,224km through the Baltic Sea from Vyborg, Russia, to the German coast, transporting Russian natural gas to Europe.
This weekend hundreds of people in the Jordanian capital, Amman, protested against a government agreement to import natural gas from Israel, branding the deal “normalisation” with the Jewish state.
This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary for analytics and its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the cookie policy, including the personalization and analysis of ads and content. If you want to learn more or withdraw your consent to all or some of the cookies, please refer to the cookie policy.
By clicking on Accept you are agreeing to the placement of cookies on your device.
Further use of our site shall be considered as consent. You may view our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy here for more information.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.