Europe is locking itself in to US LNG

Renewables solves this.

This is confidently incorrect.

Gas power generation is a necessary evil to balance out the variability of intermittent energy generation (i.e. wind and solar).

Hydropower isn't a feasible alternative because the easy resources have been developed.

The only alternative source of flexibility available today is demand side response.

Edit: I appreciate the down votes, as I've not explained in detail. It is a complex issue. My opinions are based on having a phd in the topic, 10+ years in control rooms, years of market operations and design, and years contributing to europe-wide risk assessment methodologies.

I emplore anyone who is actually interested in how energy mix actually impacts grid stability/reliability to look into the Eirgrid DS3 programme (https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-susta...).

What about large quanzities of batteries everywhere around europe?

If prices continue to drop, there will be a powerwall alike in every second house in some years.

You can't run a factory or data center off of batteries for long. Why do people think that residential power is the issue here?

If the batteries are big enough, also that is possible.

Many things are technically possible. Fewer things are economically practical. Does Europe have the capacity to manufacture batteries that are big enough? How much will that cost and how many years will it take? A few local small-scale demonstration projects don't tell us much about the difficulties of scaling up by orders of magnitude. Have you actually done the math on this or are you just repeating platitudes?

> Does Europe have the capacity to manufacture batteries that are big enough?

why is this relevant? clearly europe can also buy from outside of europe.

the nice thing about batteries is you dont need a new battery for each watt, compared to needing gas.

the simplest thing is to keep buying russian gas, and also pay ukraine to attack russia. no need to change anything or do any new buildouts whether thats batteries or in US LNG export terminals+european import terminals. those also take time where the russian fuel is readily available. the russian invasion isnt gonna last forever, so a move to US gas is wasted investment when europe can move back to Russian gas eventually anyways