Colorado utility company locks 22,000 thermostats in 90 degree weather due to 'energy emergency' - "Thousands of utility company customers in Colorado were locked out of changing their thermostats due to an "energy emergency," sparking outrage that spilled onto social media. Xcel Energy, a utility company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, confirmed that 22,000 customers in the Denver, Colorado area who were signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats for several hours... the customers were part of a rewards program that gave them a discount on their energy bill in exchange for permission to give the company some control over their smart thermostats... Customers receive a $100 credit when they sign up for the program and $25 annually. The company says the program helps make the system more reliable... this week was the first time in six years that customers could not override their thermostats."
In future customers will not have a choice
Dylan LeClair 🟠 on Twitter - "German multinational corp BASF, the worlds largest chemical producer, is downsizing permanently in Europe “These conditions in Europe endanger the international competitiveness of producers & force us to adapt our cost structures as quickly as possible & also permanently," - CEO"
Andrew Hammel on Twitter - "BASF is downsizing and offshoring permanently. The de-industralization of Germany's already beginning. The average German is about to find out how much of their prosperity was down to cheap energy. (The answer: A lot more than they assumed.)"
Germany confronts a broken business model | Financial Times - "BASF is not alone. Since the summer, companies across Germany have been scrambling to adjust to the near disappearance of Russian gas. They have dimmed the lights, switched to oil — and, as a last resort, cut production. Some are even thinking about moving operations to countries where energy is cheaper. That is triggering deep concern about the future of German industry and the sustainability of the country’s business model, which has long been predicated on the cheap energy guaranteed by a plentiful supply of Russian gas. Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution, has said Germany is a case study of a western state that made a “strategic bet” on globalisation and interdependence — and was now suffering the consequences. “It outsourced its security to the US, its export-led growth to China, and its energy needs to Russia”... BASF has largely dismissed concerns that it’s repeating the same mistakes German business made in Russia — becoming too dependent on an authoritarian state with potentially aggressive intentions towards its neighbours. Brudermüller, who spent ten years living in Hong Kong, says BASF can’t afford not to be in China, which accounts for 50 per cent of the global chemicals market and is growing much more strongly than Europe... Government statistics released last month said production in energy intensive industries, which account for 23 per cent of all industrial jobs in Germany, had declined by 10 per cent since the start of the year. Sectors like metals, glass, ceramics, paper and textiles have taken the biggest hit. “That means there are 1.5mn workers in Germany whose industries are currently under pressure,” says Clemens Fuest, head of the Ifo Institute... "In September, chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the creation of a €200bn “protective shield” to cushion the impact of higher energy costs on companies and households, including a “brake” on the price of gas. Heinz hopes this is just the start. “The government will do what’s needed to keep industry in Germany alive,” she says. “Because without industry our country is worth nothing.”"... Germany has Europe’s largest chemicals industry by far — yet it is almost entirely reliant on imported energy and raw materials. For decades, BASF, Europe’s largest industrial consumer of gas, derived most of those imports from Russia. Now the cost of that dependence is becoming clear... The business environment in Germany — and Europe more broadly — has “deteriorated”, BASF’s Brudermüller said in October. Growth in the European market has been sluggish for a decade. EU regulation is creating “great uncertainty”, he said. Industry leaders cite measures such as the EU’s industrial emissions directive and its chemicals strategy for sustainability, designed to ban the most harmful chemicals in consumer products."
The degrowth people are going to get their wish. When they proclaim that they want to destroy the economy, we're still supposed to pretend that's a conspiracy theory
Europe Is Turning to Firewood As Russian Gas Remains in Flux - "Soaring energy prices in Europe are pushing the continent to revert to heating sources like coal and firewood... consumers are rushing to purchase old-school heaters for their homes, which could pose more problems if not installed properly. Another source said the rush to switch methods of heat in homes leads him to believe that "we're going to have to carry some people out horizontally this winter." Energy prices in Europe have climbed as much as 1,000% above pre-war levels... Analysts cited by the Washington Post predict an uptick in poverty and government debt coupled with further negative ramifications to the environment for essentially pivoting backwards on energy."
Fossil-fuel price spikes are causing pain but little climate payoff - "For three decades, climate campaigners have fought to make fossil fuels so expensive that people would be forced to abandon them. Their dream is becoming reality: Energy prices are spiraling out of control and will soon get even worse. Yet we are no closer to solving climate change... Since the 2015 Paris agreement was inked, the world’s 1,200 biggest energy corporations have slashed capital investment in oil and gas by more than two-thirds. Huge price rises are the inevitable result of forcing more energy out of an increasingly starved system. The climate-policy approach of trying to push consumers and businesses away from fossil fuels with price spikes is causing pain with little climate payoff, for two reasons. First, solar and wind are still only capable of meeting a fraction of global electricity needs. Even with huge subsidies and political support, solar and wind delivered just 9% of global electricity in 2020. Heating, transport and vital industrial processes account for much more energy use than electricity. This means solar and wind deliver just 1.8% of global energy supply. And electricity is the easiest of these components to decarbonize: We haven’t yet made meaningful progress greening the remaining four-fifths of global energy. Second, even in the rich parts of the world it is clear few people are willing to pay the phenomenal price of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Soaring prices are hiking energy poverty in industrialized economies, and prices are set to climb even further. Germany is on track to spend more than a half-trillion dollars on climate policies by 2025 yet has only managed to reduce fossil-fuel dependency from 84% in 2000 to 77% today. McKinsey estimates getting to zero carbon will cost Europe 5.3% of its GDP in low-emission assets every year — for Germany, more than $200 billion annually. That’s more than Germany spends annually on education and police, courts and prisons combined. Western leaders can’t continue to push expensive policies without a backlash. As energy prices soar, risks grow of resentment and strife, like France saw with the “yellow vest” protest movement. For the poorest billions, rising energy prices are even more serious because they block the pathway out of poverty and make fertilizer unaffordable for farmers, imperiling food production. The well-off in rich countries might be able to withstand the pain of some climate policies, but emerging economies like India or low-income countries in Africa cannot afford to sacrifice poverty eradication and economic development to tackle climate change. Globally, the inability of green energy to compete means the world is on track to remain fossil-fuel dependent. Analyzing all current and promised climate policies, the International Energy Agency finds fossil fuels will still provide two-thirds of global energy use by 2050, only a modest drop from 79% today. And green energy’s failings are why carbon emissions are still increasing. Last year saw the highest global emissions ever... We didn’t solve air pollution by forcing everyone to stop driving but by inventing the catalytic converter that drastically lowers pollution. We didn’t slash hunger by telling everyone to eat less but through the Green Revolution that enabled farmers to produce much more food. Yet innovation in green energy has been neglected for three decades. In 1980, the rich world spent more than 8 cents of every $100 of GDP on low-carbon technologies. As climate policies focused on making fossil fuels more expensive, green research spending halved to fewer than 4 cents of every $100. Copenhagen Consensus researchers, including three Nobel laureate economists, have shown the most effective climate policy possible is to increase green research-and-development spending fivefold to $100 billion per year. This would still be much less than the $755 billion the world spent just last year on often-ineffective green technology... much of the benefits will come after any patents have run out, which is why companies will be hesitant to invest. Instead we need public innovation investments. The best example of game-changing climate innovation is the 10-year, $10 billion public investment in shale gas President George W. Bush launched, which ultimately led to energy companies embracing the technology. Not intended as climate policy, it led the way for a production surge of cheap gas, outcompeting a significant part of coal. Gas emits about half the CO₂; this was a major reason America has seen the single-biggest emission reduction the past decade."
But then, the aim isn't to make life better and cheaper
London's Record £9,724.54 per Megawatt Hour to Avoid a Blackout - Bloomberg - "Last week, unbeknown to many outside the power industry, parts of London came remarkably close to a blackout — even as it was recovering from the hottest day in British history. On July 20, surging electricity demand collided with a bottleneck in the grid, leaving the eastern part of the British capital briefly short of power. Only by paying a record high £9,724.54 (about $11,685) per megawatt hour — more than 5,000% higher than the typical price — did the UK avoid homes and businesses going dark. That was the nosebleed cost to persuade Belgium to crank up aging electricity plants to send energy across the English Channel. The crisis, which quietly played out within the control room of the British electricity system, shows the growing vulnerability of energy transportation networks — power grids and gas and oil pipelines — across much of the industrialized world after years of low investment and not-in-my-backyard opposition... The £9,724.54 price, settled between noon and 1:00 p.m. on July 20 via the so-called NEMO interconnector that links the UK with Belgium, was the highest Britain has ever paid to import electricity, nearly five times higher than the previous record. The absurdity of that level is apparent when comparing it with the year-to-date average for UK spot electricity: £178 per megawatt hour... The world is investing about $300 billion per year in power grids, an amount that has barely changed since 2015, according to the International Energy Agency. It isn’t enough, as the global economy electrifies and deals with a shifting generation map, with intermittent renewable energy like solar and wind replacing polluting — but dependable — coal- and gas-fired stations... Aging infrastructure, often 30 or 40 years old, needs to be replaced. But refurbishment and expansion come up against local opposition to more pylons and overhead cables. In the UK, authorities are bypassing popular resistance by moving some parts of the grid offshore, using undersea cables. “Fish don’t vote,” goes the industry’s joke. It is, however, an expensive undertaking. High metal prices are making building new grids even more costly. Cables are made of copper or aluminum which, at today’s prices, account for nearly a third of what will be spent on a new grid, up 10 percentage points from investments made between 2010 and 2020. Across the US and Europe, utilities and grid managers need to invest billions of dollars into digitalization of the network to allow demand-side load management that would reduce consumption at peak times, often via hourly prices. Managing peak demand is going to be even more important when millions of households shift to electric vehicles, creating a new source of electricity consumption."
The power of "green" energy
NIMBYism is probably the biggest downside of democracy. The irony is that the NIMBYs seem to be the ones virtue signalling about "green energy" - but in environmentalism there is no best solution, even on purely environmental grounds: only tradeoffs that greenies pretend don't have to happen
The New Great Game - "A ruthless dictator like Putin knows a bunch of “useful idiots” when he sees them. Russian interests have reportedly financed anti-fracking activities for years. But he doesn’t need to use surreptitious methods when Western powers have demonstrated such a remarkable lack of seriousness. As Mike Shellenberger has put it: “While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.” Putin, Shellenberger argues, understands his national interest: Russia produces three times as much oil as it can use domestically and twice the amount of gas or coal it needs. It supplies about 20 percent of Europe’s oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal. The most critical case may be Germany, Europe’s dominant economy, whose ballyhooed Energiewende sought to abandon nuclear power and coal at the same time. Not only has the cost of living in Germany gone up, but the country has increased its dependence on Russian gas. It’s not just green activists and politicians driving the current energy disaster. ESG stakeholder capitalism has created a lack of investment in fossil fuels, even as soaring demand for “rare earths” looks set to create a series of environmental disasters. In 2022, gas storage in Europe has fallen to a dangerous level below 50 percent capacity and the standoff with Russia has caused European gas prices to spike. Even if American LNG gas replaces Russian supply, the changeover will take months. In this sense, we are repeating history as a sad farce. As in the 1930s, Western appeasers have held the door open for Russian expansionism. A deluded West failed to take steps to contain Russia following the 2014 Crimean annexation, instead cutting back on lethal weapons for Ukraine and refusing to sanction the Nordstream 2 pipeline, and Putin responded to the perception of weakness as bullies always do. Putin is not alone in following the Westphalian energy model, which prioritizes national sovereignty over the demands of global capital or international institutions. China also benefits from the rapid de-carbonizing of the West, pumping money into Western green funds, despite its own continuing heavy coal investment at home. The Chinese know that, for at least the medium-term, fossil fuels will remain critical to their economic growth. After all, fossil fuels still account for 81 percent of all energy supplies, and even if every country meets its respective climate promises, they will still account for roughly three-quarters in 2040... The West’s green agenda—which objects to nuclear and natural gas as well as dirtier fuels—tilts the competitive edge to China. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, the unreliable and expensive reality of “renewable” energy was already accelerating the de-industrialization of the United Kingdom and other parts of the EU. The current energy shortage is causing factories in Europe to close, and short of a concerted attempt to revive manufacturing, high energy prices are likely to hasten the shift to less regulated places like India and China, which are by far the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide. By the time China, India, and other developing countries feel able to embrace lower emissions by turning to nuclear power, the self-driven de-industrialization of the West will likely be all but complete, with even once-great industrial powers permanently ensnared in China’s notoriously high-carbon supply chains. Like Russia, China can thank the ESG movement for all this, led by the likes of financial firms like Blackrock, which insist that developments meet their “net zero” obsessions. Wall Street’s dual standards represent an effective embrace of China’s hegemony by hamstringing Western industry while expanding business with the world’s dominant polluter and autocracy par excellence. So far, more palatable options—increasing remote work, geothermal energy, production of natural gas, nuclear power, and new technologies—are not on the woke corporate agenda. Government mandates on things like electric cars essentially hand China a dominant position in the future of ground transportation. China also retains a near-monopoly on the EV battery supply chain, which includes control of 80 percent of the world's raw material refining, 77 percent of the world's cell capacity, and 60 percent of the world's component manufacturing. China produces four times more batteries than the second-place United States, and controls critical raw materials, including large concentrations of rare earths, lithium, copper, and cobalt. The United States actually possesses some of these minerals, but environmental opposition makes it unlikely they will be developed, at least during the Biden years. China and Russia have moved rapidly to secure those they happen to possess but others can be procured from emerging vassal states in Africa and Central Asia as well as Latin America. All this supports China’s stated aim of dominating the supply chains and becoming the leading global superpower by 2050—a frightening prospect but one at least more coherent than Western governments’ vague dreams of “building back better” or of an anti-growth “reset.” An industrial revival in the West will be difficult without reliable energy like natural gas and nuclear—unreliable alternatives like solar and wind have to be backed by other sources when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow... Europe and America may call this a war for democracy, but the world’s largest democracy, India, has been circumspect on the issue, and Israel, which needs Russia to control its unruly neighbor Syria, has been reluctant to join the anti-Putin cause. Just as revealing is that many African countries which are highly dependent on China have failed to join the condemnation of the invasion... It would certainly help if the Western defense establishment were to refocus on the challenges posed by the duopoly. Sadly, if a bizarre tweet by the head of MI6 is any indication, much of it remains preoccupied by green absolutism and gay rights. Militaries in the US and Europe worry about fighting climate change and rooting out white nationalism, when their time would be better spent improving their dubious war-fighting abilities. China, meanwhile, is building the world’s largest naval fleet—not to be a “force for good,” as the Obama-era Navy crowed, but to extend its influence in the eastern Pacific, and then to Africa and beyond. Sadly, it’s difficult to identify Western leaders who might provide the liberal democratic world with some backbone. There is no one who resembles Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, or even Reagan. The chaotic Trump presidency is gone, replaced by a bland and weak-looking Biden, who even the Guardian thinks may be compromised by his family’s connections. The reaction of Biden’s climate tsar John Kerry to the Russian invasion was classic: he was concerned, he said, by its “massive emissions consequences.” Maybe he didn’t consider the reductions from weak economic growth and the deaths of thousands of emissions-producing soldiers and civilians. Ultimately, the West may have to choose between the current climate agenda and the hegemony of the authoritarians. The best hope now is that Putin’s aggression will cause the West to wake up, reindustrialize, and find a workable energy policy."
Thread by @ShellenbergerMD on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Greta Thunberg said “I want you to panic” and nations did. They over-invested in unreliable weather-dependent energy sources & under-invested in reliable energy. Now, global energy shortages are forcing the poor to choose between food & electricity. Overdependence on unreliable energies isn’t the only reason for energy shortages. Post-pandemic economic recovery resulted in higher energy demand. And too little natural gas stored on-site after a colder-than-expected winter played a role. But the heavy investment in unreliable renewables made energy supplies more vulnerable to a single commodity’s volatility. Today’s grids mean that high gas prices cause energy price spikes and a return to the dirtiest forms of electricity production, including diesel and coal. The return to coal was most dramatic in Germany. Electricity from wind was 20% lower in Germany in the first half of 2021 than the first half of 2020, resulting in a 24% higher use of fossil fuels and 28% greater emissions from electricity. Lack of wind in Britain led its grid operator to ask French electricity giant, Électricité de France, to restart a coal plant in Nottinghamshire. And California requested permission from the federal government to violate air pollution regulations so diesel plants can operate. In 2019, @GretaThunberg called nuclear “extremely dangerous, expensive & time-consuming” & unnecessary for most nations. Afterwards, Germany and Sweden closed nuclear reactors that could have kept running for decades. Germany, Sweden, the US and other nations replaced their nuclear plants with fossil fuels, contributing to global energy supply shortages. As a result, what turned out to be “dangerous and expensive” wasn’t nuclear, it was Greta Thunberg & her anti-nuclear climate movement. This isn’t the first time that pro-scarcity environmentalists created real world scarcity. They have done so in the past. I describe the history of pro-scarcity Malthusians in Apocalypse Never. Since World War II, the pro-scarcity activists have hidden their anti-abundance agenda behind the mask of concern for nature... Greta made clear last year that she hates “the system” more than she fears climate change. In 2019 Greta singled out for attack France & Brazil, which get 86% & 79% of their power from zero-carbon sources. Why? Because her real concern isn’t climate change, it’s destroying “the system”. Americans should be relieved that that global energy crisis occurred before Congress passed disastrous climate legislation, which would have increased energy scarcity and electricity prices even more than unreliable renewables already have... Advocates of unreliable renewables are scrambling to explain how over-investment in them, and under-investment in reliable energies, are not to blame for global energy scarcity, which is contributing significantly to inflation, but when you’re read what they write it’s word salad. These are *physical* & *economic facts :
Unreliables make electricity less reliable and more expensive when deployed at scale
Over-investment in unreliables led directly to blackouts in California & Texas
Over-investment in unreliables led directly to today’s energy shortages
Here are the sources which include my testimony to the Senate and House where I predicted the current global energy crisis"
How Europe is trying to build a future free of fossil fuels in the midst of an energy crisis - The Globe and Mail - "Entering a winter in which its member states will struggle to keep lights on and homes heated, the European Union is aiming to wrap up years-long negotiations for what might be the world’s most ambitious climate-policy package... there are also all the binding transitional targets that are being set. That means, for instance, increasing the EU-wide requirement that 32 per cent of all energy be produced from renewable sources by 2030 to somewhere between 40 and 45 per cent, while also setting sector- and country-specific renewable demands and hammering out what does or doesn’t qualify as renewable.
When elites profit and everyone else suffers, you can barrel headlong towards destruction
In Europe's Energy Crisis, Ideology Trumps Basic Math - "Facing the worst energy crisis since World War II as the cold-weather heating season starts, Europe continues to dither. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has presented a series of new European Union energy policies, including planned price caps, additional taxes on energy producers, establishment of a new European hydrogen bank, and new support for electric vehicles. European Union member states, meanwhile, are nationalizing utilities, setting electricity prices, and subsidizing consumers. These EU policies do not represent a significant departure from the policies that got the continent into the energy mess in the first place. The fundamental problem is that Europe is still not facing the sources of its energy security crisis, preferring to blame outside forces for its current predicament. Von der Leyen and other European leaders point at Russia and its war on Ukraine for Europe’s energy woes. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s throttling of the gas taps has undoubtedly made things worse, but this will already be the third winter of Europe’s energy crisis. In the winters 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, Europe already experienced significant spikes in the prices of electricity and natural gas, as well as gas shortages that led to increased use of coal and fuel oil. European policymakers either did not take notice or preferred not to change course... Europe’s crisis has been two decades in the making. Aiming to engineer a fast transition from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to renewable sources, European policymakers forced profound changes in the energy supply. At the same time, they ignored projections for continued demand for oil and natural gas, as well as the need for a reliable baseload fuel source to back up intermittent solar and wind. Many EU member states cut back domestic production of fossil fuels and constrained imports, with the notable exception of gas from Russia. Germany, which has significant gas deposits of its own, banned fracking—as did France and other countries. Over the past decade, European domestic production of natural gas has halved, and today imports make up 83 percent of Europe’s gas consumption. Under pressure from activists and green parties, Germany and several other countries also chose to phase out carbon-free nuclear power, despite an impeccable safety record. Today, Europe’s proposed caps on gas and electricity prices, along with new levies on energy producers, will further restrict supplies while seeking to protect consumers from the high prices that could induce them to lower the thermostat and turn down the lights. Europe’s policy of blocking gas supplies created shortages that started causing price spikes two winters ago. Believing it will soon be able to do without gas, Europe has also blocked long-term contracts for imports, with the result that Europe is starving for gas even though it is surrounded by some the world’s largest gas reserves—not just in Russia, but also in North Africa, Central Asia, and other regions. The EU could have easily ensured access to reliable gas supplies at affordable prices but is now dependent on the costly spot market instead. Even today, while European officials trot the globe for new gas volumes, they are refusing to sign long-term contracts with the courted producers... In European energy policy, ideology trumps basic math. Phase out nuclear and coal and put the brakes on natural gas—but add less energy generation from renewables than you’ve subtracted—and you get a shortage. What’s more, all attempts to force a faster transition to wind and solar ignore major resource and technology constraints: These energy sources require vast land usage, critical materials and hardware (including from China), and either backup power or nonexistent storage. And, finally, the policymakers’ forced transition ignores projections of continued demand for fossil fuels, including for transportation, industry, heating, and backup power for unpredictable wind and solar. Despite the math, the data, and a two-year-old energy crisis that has sharply worsened since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, European policymakers continue to follow each other like sheep. As if the energy crisis weren’t happening, the Netherlands announced this week that it will continue to reduce gas production at the massive Groningen field. Germany is sticking to its fracking ban and nuclear phaseout, while Belgium shut down a nuclear power plant last week that provides a significant share of the country’s electricity needs—even as Belgians protest in the streets against skyrocketing energy prices. These countries might instead take their cue from Liz Truss, the new British prime minister: One of her first announcements after taking office was a new energy policy, including a renewal of offshore oil and gas exploration and a reversal of her country’s fracking ban. Instead of changing course, European policymakers have doubled down with increased investments in solar, wind, and electric vehicles. “The renewables are cheap, they are homegrown, they make us independent,” von der Leyen said in her State of the European Union speech earlier this month. This is a plain contradiction of the facts: Europe has yet to get renewables to work without subsidies and fossil-fuel backup power, they require resource-hungry global supply chains, and they come with their own set of geopolitical challenges and dependencies, just like fossil fuels. European leaders are aware that their energy market designs are not working. National governments are bailing out or outright nationalizing collapsing utilities. Most are now setting electricity and gas prices for customers. Moreover, Europe’s high cost of carbon has not deterred utilities from firing up mothballed coal plants and switching from gas to fuel oil for electricity and heat... Instead of focusing with urgency and laser sharpness on these issues—and reversing mistaken decisions such as various countries’ nuclear phaseouts—European leaders continue to push new projects that are untested and far from commercially viable. Their current pet technology is hydrogen: Von der Leyen recently announced yet more EU funding and the establishment of a European Hydrogen Bank. Hydrogen, however, is not yet commercially viable, there are serious safety concerns about its use and transportation, and there may be significant climate and pollution impacts from its production and inevitable leaks. Were European policymakers more honest about the homegrown causes of their energy crisis, the proper policies would be clear. First, the EU needs to allow and even encourage its energy buyers to sign long-term gas import contracts, which generally span more than a decade. This would allow producers to invest in the production and transport of dedicated gas volumes for Europe. Nuclear phaseouts should be reversed wherever possible. Next, Europe should be technology neutral in its development of renewable and low-carbon energy sources—instead of directing vast subsidies to specific technologies selected by politicians and bureaucrats. In addition, Brussels and European governments should give natural gas a new look, including domestic sources, as Britain is now doing. Modern natural gas projects do not release methane like previous generations, and the switch from coal to gas is still the fastest and most efficient way to lower both pollution and carbon emissions. Furthermore, European policies need a long-term plan for baseload fuel to produce electricity in conjunction with solar and wind. Because they do not produce a consistent and predictable volume of power, solar and wind can never replace base load fuels like nuclear and natural gas. These sources go hand in hand."
Clearly Putin invading Ukraine led to Europe having heating issues in 2020. Time to double down on "renewables"
How Europe can adapt to living without Russian gas for years | Financial Times - "Much of European gas demand comes from heating. If Europeans just lower thermostats in their homes by an average of 3C — down to 19C this winter — that could make a big difference."
Fighting climate change means being cold and miserable
Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com on Twitter - "Germans are on track to pay around $3k a month to heat a 2,500 square foot home this Winter"
Analysis: Europe's banks dim lights as they brace for winter blackout - "Some of Europe's biggest banks are preparing back-up generators and to dim the lights as they brace for potential power cuts and energy rationing that threaten the money system underpinning the region's economy... There is a special urgency for financial firms to act because of the importance of payments and transactions to Europe's economy, already fragile due to the fallout of war... experts fear that few companies are prepared for lengthy blackouts of more than a few days. "This represents a serious gap in resilience planning," said Avi Schnurr, CEO of the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, a think-tank that advises on preparing for such hazards."
Meme - Dominos:
Smallest domino: "An autistic Swedish girl decides to skip school"
Largest domino: "The collapse of Europe's energy grid"
EU energy crisis prompts flurry of cash aid (also titled "Warning of 'energy-industry Lehman Brothers' moment as gas crisis brings on cash crunch")
The Rich World’s Climate Hypocrisy - WSJ - "The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports. The developed world became wealthy through the pervasive use of fossil fuels, which still overwhelmingly power most of its economies. Solar and wind power aren’t reliable, simply because there are nights, clouds and still days. Improving battery storage won’t help much: There are enough batteries in the world today only to power global average electricity consumption for 75 seconds. Even though the supply is being scaled up rapidly, by 2030 the world’s batteries would still cover less than 11 minutes. Every German winter, when solar output is at its minimum, there is near-zero wind energy available for at least five days—or more than 7,000 minutes. This is why solar panels and wind turbines can’t deliver most of the energy for industrializing poor countries. Factories can’t stop and start with the wind; steel and fertilizer production are dependent on coal and gas; and most solar and wind power simply can’t deliver the power necessary to run the water pumps, tractors, and machines that lift people out of poverty. That’s why fossil fuels still provide more than three-fourths of wealthy countries’ energy, while solar and wind deliver less than 3%. An average person in the developed world uses more fossil-fuel-generated energy every day than all the energy used by 23 poor Africans... This promised paradise is a sham built on wishful thinking and green marketing. Consider the experience of Dharnai, an Indian village that Greenpeace in 2014 tried to turn into the country’s first solar-powered community. Greenpeace received glowing global media attention when it declared that Dharnai would refuse “to give into the trap of the fossil fuel industry.” But the day the village’s solar electricity was turned on, the batteries were drained within hours. One boy remembers being unable to do his homework early in the morning because there wasn’t enough power for his family’s one lamp. Villagers were told not to use refrigerators or televisions because they would exhaust the system. They couldn’t use cookstoves and had to continue burning wood and dung, which creates air pollution as dangerous for a person’s health as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, according to the World Health Organization. Across the developing world, millions die prematurely every year because of this indoor pollution. In August 2014, Greenpeace invited one of the Indian’s state’s top politicians, who soon after become its chief minister, to admire the organization’s handiwork. He was met by a crowd waving signs and chanting that they wanted “real electricity” to replace this “fake electricity.” When Dharnai was finally connected to the main power grid, which is overwhelmingly coal-powered, villagers quickly dropped their solar connections. An academic study found a big reason was that the grid’s electricity cost one-third of what the solar energy did. What’s more, it was plentiful enough to actually power such appliances as TV sets and stoves. Today, Dharnai’s disused solar-energy system is covered in thick dust, and the project site is a cattle shelter. To be sure, solar energy has some uses, such as charging a cellphone or powering a light, but it is often expensive and has distinct limits. A new study in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, found that even hefty subsidies couldn’t make solar lamps worth their cost to most people. Even in wealthy nations such as Germany and Spain, most new wind and solar power wouldn’t have been installed if not for subsidies. This is why, for all the rich world’s talk of climate activism, developed nations are still on track to continue to rely mostly on fossil fuels for decades. The International Energy Agency estimates that even if all current climate policies are delivered in full, renewables will only deliver one-third of U.S. and EU energy in 2050. The developing world isn’t blind to this hypocrisy. Nigeria’s vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, articulated the situation elegantly: “No country in the world has been able to industrialize using renewable energy,” yet Africa is expected to do so “when everybody else in the world knows that we need gas-powered industries for business.”"
Weird. We kept being told that "renewable" energy is cheaper than fossil fuels
