BAKU, Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani gas supplies to Europe play a big role in ensuring its energy security, Fellow and Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University Jonathan Elkind said during the round table discussion on energy security and the role of Azerbaijan, Trend reports.

According to him, Europe discusses the transition to renewable energy sources in detail.

“Europe is currently making efforts to reduce its energy dependence by increasing the green energy production. While transiting to renewable energy, European enterprises still need traditional energy, in particular coal, gas, and other types of fuel,” Elkind outlined.

He stressed that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has created an energy crisis in the global market.

“We’re talking about an abrupt rise in prices for energy carriers and other types of fuel. Furthermore, this is about the violation of the supply chain, we see inflation, rising food prices. Not only Russia and Ukraine, but the whole world suffers from this,” Elkind emphasized.

As he noted, Russian gas supplies to Europe amounted to 155 billion cubic meters on an annual basis.

“The suspension of Russian gas supplies to Europe has led to large economic costs and the suspension of industry and heavy industry production,” Elkind added.

Source: TREND News Agency