Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, stated that within the scope of the 5th sanctions package to be implemented against Russia, they will ban coal imports worth 4 billion euros per year from the country, and that this embargo will create a significant loss of income for Russia.
This decision of the EU is the first embargo on the Russian energy sector after the Ukraine war. Although the USA, the UK and some countries decided to impose sanctions on energy imports from Russia before, the EU could not take such a decision due to its high dependence on Russian energy imports.
Some large companies in the EU had announced their own embargo decisions on the Russian energy sector.
With the statement of EU Commission President von der Leyen, the ton price of coal in April contracts in the API2 Rotterdam Coal Futures Market increased by 12.6% compared to the previous closing and became 295 euros.
Germany and Poland, the countries most dependent on Russian coal in the EU
Russia, which is the third largest coal exporting country in the world after Indonesia and Australia, accounts for a large part of the EU's imports in coal, as in natural gas and oil.
According to the information compiled by the AA correspondent from the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel data, approximately 54 percent (43 million tons) of the EU's total coal imports of 79 million tons in 2020 were made from Russia.
Russia's share in the EU's metallurgical coal imports is approximately 30 percent, and its share in thermal coal imports used in electricity generation is calculated as 70 percent in 2020. The EU's share in Russia's coal exports was approximately 22 percent.
Germany and Poland stood out as the countries that import the most coal from Russia in the EU.
Germany's thermal and metallurgical coal imports from Russia were 14.3 million tons, while Poland's was 9.5 million tons. Germany made 67 percent of its thermal coal imports, and Poland 80.7 percent from Russia.
The economic equivalent of the coal embargo is low compared to gas and oil.
On the other hand, according to the data of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Russia's coal exports reached 262 million tons in 2021, an increase of 7 percent compared to the previous year. While China is the largest buyer on a country basis, accounting for 25 percent of Russia's coal exports, 32 percent of exports were made to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) European countries.
Thermal coal accounted for 90 percent of Russia's total coal exports.
Although the EU's decision to embargo coal imports from Russia is seen as an important step, the economic equivalent of this decision is quite low compared to oil and natural gas imports.
According to the instant data published by the Center for Energy and Clean Air Research and the European Institution Beyond Coal, the EU's imports of natural gas, coal, oil and petroleum products from Russia have reached approximately 19.6 billion euros since the start of the war on February 24.
Of this amount, approximately 9.8 billion euros was natural gas imports, 9.1 billion euros was oil and 720 million euros was coal imports.
Although the EU has tried to reduce electricity production from coal in recent years within the scope of its goals to combat climate change, electricity production from coal has increased due to the increase in demand after the epidemic last year and the use of coal instead of gas.
Coal accounted for 15 percent of the EU's electricity generation last year, according to Ember's European Electricity Outlook report.
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