Germany is taking concrete steps to end its dependency on Russian energy:  Imports of oil and coal from Russia will come to an end during the course of 2022.  Stopping the flow of natural gas to Germany will not happen as quickly, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz assures us it will be "very soon."

Scholz had been speaking at a Downing Street press conference in London alongside of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Throughout the press conference, Scholz was challenged to explain why Germany was not willing to go faster to reduce the scale of Russian energy imports, given the €35bn (£29bn) in revenue from the EU it has generated for Russia since the war started.

He insisted it would take time to remove the legal obstacle to build the necessary liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals on Germany’s northern coast that would be able to store imported LNG from countries such as Qatar and the US.

Scholz said: “We are actively working to get independent from the import of oil and we think that we will be able to make it during this year. And we are actively working to get independent from the necessity of importing gas from Russia. This is, as you may imagine, not that easy, because it needs infrastructure to be built.”

The change in Germany’s energy supplies would be permanent, Scholz said, something that would cause long-term damage to the Russian economy. He said Germany would be using renewables for all its electricity within 20 years.