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The lights are going out in Europe
And Germany has been the bellwether. Back in the early 2000s, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party made the momentous decision to begin the energy transition from “fossil fuels” to “renewables” as quickly as they could. The scare-quotes around both terms are on purpose, because fossil fuels are not fossils (who is to say that the geologic processes which created oil and gas are not still working on Earth?), and renewables are not either green, clean, or necessarily renewable.
Europeans decided decades ago that the entire world needs to immediately change from reliable oil, natural gas, and nuclear power; to intermittent, unreliable wind, solar, and geothermal power. Germany has been the fastest to make this transition, and most of the rest of Europe has been following. Many European countries shut down their nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. When I read about the changes going on in Europe, I said to myself, “Europeans, prepare to freeze in the dark this winter.”
I wasn’t too far wrong. German citizens pay the world’s highest prices for their electricity today, and the rest of Europe is joining them. One of the huge mistakes Angela Merkel made was the decision to mostly rely on Russia to supply them with natural gas for heating, and as a feedstock for such necessaries as agricultural fertilizer and plastics. We all know how that is turning out lately, with the Russian aggression against Ukraine resulting in sanctions upon Russia and the cutting-off of gas supplies through the NordStream Pipeline to Germany. I just had to laugh out loud when I read about Germans relying on solar power — in a country in Northern Europe that doesn’t get that much sunshine! They are further north than Seattle, and we aren’t known for all our sunny days. Here’s what one business site has to say about Europe and energy:
- Europe’s worsening energy crisis will cause economies to contract in 2023, according to Amrita Sen, director of research at Energy Aspects.
- Due to higher natural gas prices, European gross domestic product will decline by 1.4% next year, she told Bloomberg TV.
- “The burden of high gas and oil prices will actually mean that we are going to see some steep contraction in the European economies next year.”
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article entitled “Facing Gas Cuts, Europe Dims Lights.” Here are a couple of short quotes from that article.
Across Europe, national and local governments are pushing to curtail energy usage as Russia cuts its gas shipments in response to Western sanctions during the war in Ukraine. The piecemeal restrictions have so far had minor but far-reaching impacts on daily life across the continent, with some public pools lowering temperatures, city centers losing overnight lighting and fountains running dry.Let’s see…with less lighting in central cities, might that contribute to a rise in crime after dark? Dry fountains aren’t a life-or-death issue, but they might contribute to a bit of depression in both residents and tourists in old European cities. Governments are asking their people to reduce their natural gas use by 15% over the rest of the year. Hannover, Germany is reducing the temperatures in its public pools, and its public buildings too. Public employees need to get out those sweaters!
Munich has turned off hot water in city offices and most city fountains are dry at night. About half the city’s traffic lights are turned off during off-peak times. A spokesman for the city said tents at this year’s Oktoberfest won’t be heating their beer gardens with gas.Dutch officials are asking their people to take showers of less than five minutes. Italy has limited air-conditioning in public buildings to 77 degrees at the lowest. Spain is even going higher, limiting air-conditioning in public and commercial places to 81 degrees.
Europeans deserve what they get. Here is what one person said about it:
In Berlin, many of the lights throughout the city center have been turned off. Anna Soler, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student from Barcelona, said she was glad to see Berlin’s largest church was mostly dark. “It’s good that people become aware of how much electricity we spend and we waste,” she said.
So the standard of living for most Europeans will be reduced this winter, and probably into the next few years. They will be going back to using Evil Coal to generate electricity to keep their home lights on. How many citizens will stay home, rather than going out after dark, into the lightless cities? How many downtown businesses will see reduced patronage, and more break-ins when the lights go out?
The people driving the move backward to wind and solar power are Leftist Greens, and the people of Europe voted them into office. I wonder if the average European citizen will approve of a reduced standard of living, due to their governments’ decisions on energy sources. Beware, our “betters” in the US want that for us, too. And it will be worse for us, because our average standard of living is higher than that of Europe, so we have further to fall.
[originally posted at RushBabe49.com]
Published in Energy
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The Europeans could have developed their native fracking industry. Suitable shale deposits are found on every continent just waiting to be tapped. But it will never happen while environmentalists hold so much power.
LNG is more expensive than piped gas. (Also Russia isn’t Communist post Soviet collapse.)
Be more like France, rest of Europe!
Not sure about the fracking, but one of the take aways from this is that places need to have some level of basic energy and food security within their borders. Dependence (I’d add security dependence) is a vulnerability.
More expensive than what they’re facing now?
Right now they’re facing a perfect storm. Europe’s post-Soviet contradictions have come to a head.
A storm that could have been avoided, and they were offered an alternative but they turned it down.
They went from [February] Germany basically saying Ukraine wouldn’t be joining NATO to [today] an economic crisis due to sanctioning Russia’s energy exports. I don’t think Europe truly had the freedom to really make that choice about Ukraine and NATO.
Not the point. They were warned – most recently by Trump, and they laughed – not to rely on Russian energy. They started down that road way before Ukraine.
Oh absolutely. They should either have fully shouldered the burden of their own security, and then been able to stick to their guns about Ukraine and NATO , or they should have taken on the cost of more expensive energy. Today they’ve got the worst of both worlds.
LNG ports so they could control how much gas they are buying from Russia. They also shouldn’t have wasted so much money on wind turbines and solar panels.
Personally, I have always been skeptical that clean coal was a great big terrible thing when you consider everything, as in what is happening now. Put up comprehensive compact nuke plants and then get rid of the coal.
Russia is literally sending them as little natural gas as they can so they can’t store it. You don’t have any other option than to think strategically about energy.
Personally, I don’t think we ever should have traded with China and buying energy is some thing that everybody should be leery about when it comes to Russia. It is just flat out stupid for the west to not do everything t can to keep fossil fuels in a certain price range.
The West has printed too much money while at the same time restricting fossil fuel production. The whole industry is about seven years behind on capital investment.
Central planning never works.
While Europe (as part of the West) is sanctioning Russian oil. Do you think there’s a connection?
Something notably lacking from the imposition of sanctions. Or maybe it was decided that Europe would have to take one for the team?
Yeah. Sanctions against Russia raised global prices. ??
If you want to get Russia, you increase the supply of oil. Sanctions just help them on net. See “Doomberg” interviews.
Furthermore, what is “Doomberg” wrong on? Nothing.
LNG is cheaper than the pipeline gas you can’t buy.
Here endeth the lesson.
First you have to believe that C02 is a threat to the planet. I happen to believe the idea is total rubbish (I’m a gardener and I know that CO2 is plant food! That’s why nutters like me talk to the plants). The models have not been predictive of temperature, which means they’re rubbish too.
Climate is an enormously complex system that we’ve barely begun to understand. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, have been God’s gift to humanity. Sure, build nuke plants except in areas where earthquakes and tsunamis are abundant. And remember, like wind farms, they’re going to have to be in somebody’s backyard because we can’t afford the power loss over long distance transmission. And, unlike wind farms, nobody wants to deface the national parks (remote areas of beauty) with even the relatively small footprint of nuke plants.
But, we can’t do away with fossil fuels. The planet will be just fine (or otherwise do what it’s going to do). It’s people that won’t survive the green agenda. Lots and lots of people. Crop yields falling off (back to pre-industrial levels), products (including food) unable to be transported, all the plastics used in every imaginable industry from electronics to medicine. . . We’d be living back in the stone age. Those of us who survive.
I wasn’t clear. I was just talking about how coal genuinely does pollute more. The thing is, when they are printing money and coal is low priced and has all kinds of logistical advantages, you can get to a point where nobody’s going to give a damn. The honest, obvious high economic output from a coal plant can compensate for a lot of grief. Now we have all kinds of geopolitical problems, too.
The thing about clean coal is, they don’t just scrub it, they use less of it.
In convenient image form, for sending to family and friends as I’m doing:
From my understanding they will not even consider Fracking. That alone might save them a bunch of issue. I am all for clean energy but this killing the old before the new is ready is insane.
That is what gets me about our “betters” they act like spinning up factories and plants are like flipping switches. A nuclear or coal or gas power plant is a complex entity. Almost alive in complexity. They can not be turned off and turned back on via whim. It take months maybe years to do so. Why were these not in continuoususe and updated with as environmentally friendly tech as they could afford?
One of the things that could contribute massively to inflation is something about distillate production and its derivatives or something like that in Europe. Turning those plants off and on takes months. It must be something they create from natural gas. I got that from doomberg.
Come on man, coal is great. It provides cheap reliable energy. All of the above is the correct answer, but when nuke plants cost $34B, they are not ready to compete.
The operating cost might be a lot lower. I’m pretty sure nuclear fuel is almost negligible compared to anything else.
New modular (and cheaper) nuclear power plans will be online this decade.
Re-opening shuttered coal and nuclear plants is critical.
After that, fracking is the fastest way to bring more indigenous power sources online. The new UK PM, Truss, has promised to make this possible, and to pause “Net-Zero.”
Only an idiot hands Putin the keys to their own future by sourcing the bulk of their energy from Russia.
She has autism. They use her to make everybody do stupid things and then she can’t field even one question about what she is so angry about. Russia laughs.
I believe the better word is “exploit.” Same as how they exploit dementia Joe.
Google tells me that age 18 Greta is 4’7″ tall.
One of the comments was: “As Neil Oliver said, it’s not about going green, it’s about going without. Think about it.”