Europe's plan to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels by 2027 has a major flaw

• The EU wants to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels by 2027 and has cut its use of piped Russian gas dramatically.
• Even so, EU countries imported a record amount of Russian LNG this year, per Global Witness.

After the war in Ukraine started, Europe said it wanted to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

Even so, the bloc has been snapping up a record level of Russian liquefied natural gas this year, seemingly to make up for the lost piped gas supply from the country. LNG is a supercooled version of natural gas that can be transported on ships.

EU countries have bought 40% more Russian LNG between January and July this year than in the same period of 2021 before the war — and the sweeping sanctions against Moscow — taking the volume shipped to 22 million cubic meters, per an analysis from Global Witness, a non-governmental organization, released on Wednesday.

The analysis used data from Kpler, a commodities data firm.

In fact, the EU bought over half, or 52%, of all 41.6 million cubic meters of LNG Russia exported this year — up from 49% and 39% in 2022 and 2021, respectively, according to Global Witness' analysis.

The other big buyers of Russian LNG are China, Japan, and South Korea.

The EU's imports of Russian LNG from January to July this year breached the record high last year — meaning the bloc could be buying an unprecedented amount of the fuel this year.

Global Witness projects the EU's Russian LNG purchases in 2023 to total nearly 5.3 billion euros, or $5.75 billion.

The EU used to import around one-third of Russian piped gas for its energy needs. But it is now importing more LNG as most Russian piped gas flows to the EU via a key pipeline have been halted after a major explosion.

And there's a key reason why the bloc continues to snap up Russian LNG.

"Russian LNG shipments continue to flow to EU countries at least in part due to long-term contracts that were signed long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022," Kpler analyst Adam Bennett told Insider.

Bennett added that 90% of Russian LNG flows into the EU went to Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Spain — all of whom hold contracts that extend "far into the next decade."

Still, Global Witness is calling for an EU ban on Russian LNG altogether.

"Buying Russian gas has the same impact as buying Russian oil. Both fund the war in Ukraine, and every euro means more bloodshed," said Jonathan Noronha-Gant, a senior fossil fuel campaigner at Global Witness. "While European countries decry the war, they're putting money into Putin's pockets."

The EU is aware of the issue.

In March, Kadri Simson, the EU's energy commissioner, called on member states to stop buying Russian LNG as it's a "reputational risk." Teresa Ribera, the Spanish energy minister, also called the situation "quite absurd" in the same month, per the news agency.

European Commission spokesperson Tim McPhie said at a Thursday press briefing that even though EU's imports of LNG have increased, the bloc's overall natural gas imports from Russia have dropped by around two-thirds since the invasion of Ukraine.