Europe Exhausting Itself Running from Boogeymen

Europe's high energy costs are driving increasing numbers of industries and large employers overseas. Most of Europe's high energy costs are caused by Europe's reflexive flight from inexpensive energy of the hydrocarbon and nuclear varieties.

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.” _NewYorkTimes

Carbon dioxide is boogeyman #1 for the European greens who control much of the continent's energy policy. But Europe's ineffectual attempts to reduce carbon emissions amount to suicidal self-flagellation and self-strangulation. It is all grand theatre, with the end result being self righteous self-immolation.

Boogeyman #2 is nuclear power. Germany is the poster boy of sacrificial self-castration in this regard.

The changes have been rapid. Nuclear power supplies 17 percent of the country’s energy needs, down from 23, while renewables have climbed from 20 to 25 percent in just months.

...Despite technological advances, wind, solar, hydro and other green energy sources still remain an unprofitable investment in a fair market. The way to encourage their exploitation is through a set of feed-in tariffs, a policy where energy companies are forced to buy electricity from green generators at a price set by the government (which is usually legislated to remain the same for two decades).

The German government has passed the cost of the payment from the energy companies to the consumer... This week, energy companies announced that the charge would go up by 47 percent for next year. The average Germany household will now pay €250 a year to sponsor green energy producers, four times more than in 2009. _RT

But green energy is expensive and unreliable. Which means that big industries whose profit margins depend upon the use of inexpensive energy, must move overseas -- and take their good paying jobs with them.

On Dec. 19, Voestalpine, an Austrian maker of high-quality steel for the auto industry, announced that it would build a plant in North America that would employ natural gas to reduce iron ore to a kind of raw iron that would then be used in the company's European blast furnaces.

...Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.” _NYT

Europeans have unwittingly handed their futures over to saboteurs in high places. Green government officials and their advisors are pushing European economies over a cliff, for the sake of faux environmental fear mongering. They are running from the energy boogeymen, and in the process are destroying the economic futures of their people.

Europeans are no longer living in a democracy, but are being controlled by a non-representative quasi-feudal system known as the European Union, based in Brussels. And the EU is essentially in thrall to the faux environmental power interests.

With such suicidal leadership, it is no wonder that demographic projections show most European populations rapidly withering away.

The future of Europe rests in the hands of her people, although Europeans have not been noted historically for understanding that fact. And there is very little time.

Looming Electricity Shortages in Europe

Industry observers last month expressed concern over a potential electricity supply crisis this winter because of a tighter nuclear supply scenario in Belgium, Germany and France.

After Germany closed some of its oldest nuclear reactors following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, another big blow to supply were cracks at Belgian nuclear reactors Tihange 2 and Doel 3, which have grounded 2,000 MW when Belgium would typically be a net exporter to France. _Reuters

The risk of freezing to death during a cold winter is many orders of magnitude higher than the risk of being harmed by a nuclear reactor. And yet Europe's leaders march steadfast toward the brink of the energy cliff, undeterred by the dangers and hardships that confront their citizens as a result of their actions.

Green dreams of intermittent unreiable wind and solar: they'll be the death of Europe yet.

Germany's Green Suicide

In the US northeast, long lines for food, water, cash, and fuels -- but no one lined up for wind turbines after Hurricane Sandy. Wind turbines are exorbitant luxuries -- the essence of inessentiality. In a disaster -- and in hard times -- the last thing you need to do is to waste money on intermittent unreliables.

And in the UK, the Energy Minister announced that no new onshore wind farms would be built:

So unreliable are wind turbines — thanks to the wind’s constant vagaries — that they are one of the most inefficient means of producing electricity ever devised. _Telegraph

Aside from the UK, can you explain Europe's headlong rush toward a green energy suicide? Can it all be explained by the pseudoscientific religion of carbon hysteria, or is something more sinister afoot?

We know that wealthy and politically-connected wind farm developers can reap a healthy return on investment, even if the wind farm never generates any electricity -- thanks to government subsidies, loan guarantees, tax breaks, mandates, etc etc. We know that political leaders can win votes and financial support / payoffs, by promising "clean energy."

Face it: there's a sucker born every minute.

Just try not to be one of them.

Sad Energy Tales of Denmark, Spain, Germany, & California

Renewables are barely halfway to the goal of getting 40 percent of [Germany's] electricity from renewable energy by 2020. (The current 25 percent figure is highly dubious since not much of the old stuff has been shut down and new coal plants are actually being added to keep the lights on.) Germany already pays the second highest electrical rates in Europe, almost twice what France pays with its 70 percent nuclear. (Just who’s #1 we’ll get to in a moment.) German industries are already complaining they won’t be able to compete anymore in the world market.

Spain paved the way to its current financial meltdown by deciding to become the “solar capital of the world” in the middle of the last decade. The government subsidized a huge homegrown industry, with whole new towns springing up around new manufacturing plants. The whole enterprise lasted about five years until high electrical rates started driving industries to France and the government ran out of money. The subsidies disappeared and the entire industry collapsed, leaving ghost towns in its wake. By the time it was over, Spain was on the critical list of Europe’s ailing economies.

Denmark has littered the landscape with windmills so that it is hard to go anywhere in the countryside without being in sight of a 40-story whirling tower. The country claims that wind to provide 20 percent of its electricity but this is deceptive. Wind generates a 20 percent equivalent of Denmark’s electrical needs, but only about half of this is actually consumed in Denmark. The rest is dumped into Sweden and Germany at giveaway prices, leaving wind’s actual grid contribution at only 5 to 10 percent. All this is made possible only because neighboring Sweden has lots of hydroelectric power available for immediate backup when the wind dies. Norway also has lots of pumped storage to handle Denmark’s surpluses. The result of all this is that Denmark is the only county with electrical rates higher than Germany.

Our own domestic version of Germany and Spain is California. The Golden State created the California Electrical Crisis of 2000 by refusing to build anything medium-sized small industrial co-generation plants and pitifully small renewable projects from 1980 to 2000. Since then it has stampeded into natural gas, so that 45 percent of its in-state generation now comes from this one source, double the national average. Californians pay twice as much for electricity as surrounding states and Governor Jerry Brown is now wrestling with an annual budget deficit of $30 billion and a total state debt of $1/2 trillion. Spain, with a 25 percent more population, has an annual deficit of $46 billion and a total debt of $1 trillion. _William Tucker in Nuclear Town Hall

Green idiocy is the bane of Europe and California, not to mention Obama's Washington DC. Green government policies have a way of destroying everything they touch, eventually becoming the victims of their own hidebound ideological thickness.

It would be nice if national electorates were intelligent enough to vote for a better class of political leaders, but that may be asking for two much, given the abominable state of modern journalism, academia, popular culture, and bloated government bureaucracies.

And in the EU, of course, the people have little say about the decisions made in Brussels regardless. Corrupt from the shell to the core.

When governments become so intent on carrying out an ideological agenda that they sacrifice the well being of the people, they are digging their own graves -- one way or another.

Wind Power is a Scam; Hydrocarbons Must Bridge the Gap to Advanced Nuclear

Germany is way ahead of us on the very path our politicians want us to follow – and the problems it has encountered as a result are big news there. In fact, Germany is being horribly caught out by precisely the same delusion about renewable energy that our own politicians have fallen for. Like all enthusiasts for “free, clean, renewable electricity”, they overlook the fatal implications of the fact that wind speeds and sunlight constantly vary. They are taken in by the wind industry’s trick of vastly exaggerating the usefulness of wind farms by talking in terms of their “capacity”, hiding the fact that their actual output will waver between 100 per cent of capacity and zero. In Britain it averages around 25 per cent; in Germany it is lower, just 17 per cent.

The more a country depends on such sources of energy, the more there will arise – as Germany is discovering – two massive technical problems. One is that it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a consistent supply of power to the grid, when that wildly fluctuating renewable output has to be balanced by input from conventional power stations. The other is that, to keep that back-up constantly available can require fossil-fuel power plants to run much of the time very inefficiently and expensively (incidentally chucking out so much more “carbon” than normal that it negates any supposed CO2 savings from the wind).

Both these problems have come home to roost in Germany in a big way, because it has gone more aggressively down the renewables route than any other country in the world. Having poured hundreds of billions of euros in subsidies into wind and solar power, making its electricity bills almost the highest in Europe . . . . the problem for the German grid has become even worse. Thanks to a flood of subsidies unleashed by Angela Merkel’s government, renewable capacity has risen still further (solar, for instance, by 43 per cent). This makes it so difficult to keep the grid balanced that it is permanently at risk of power failures. (When the power to one Hamburg aluminium factory failed recently, for only a fraction of a second, it shut down the plant, causing serious damage.) Energy-intensive industries are having to install their own generators, or are looking to leave Germany altogether. _Christopher Booker -- Telegraph

More at link above (via thegwpf)

Modern industrial nations cannot count on the intermittent unreliable energy sources -- big wind and big solar. And they have been slow to support the development of new generations of safer, cleaner, cheaper, factory-produced, scalable nuclear power reactors. This means that they will be forced to use coal, natural gas, oil, bitumens, kerogens, gas hydrates, GTL, CTL, and every other energy resource they can find, to bridge the gap between the hydrocarbon economy and the nuclear economy.

Europe is mired particularly deeply in the green dysfunction, and is slow to recognise its self-made energy peril. It remains badly divided over shale gas, for example. This sluggishness to adopt necessary energy resources is particularly stupid, on the part of European governments.

Europe is making itself increasingly vulnerable to a predatory Russia, just at a time when Russia's energy infrastructure is so desperately in need of Eureopean, North American, and East Asian expertise.

But Russia never did learn to work and play well with others. It has always been the schoolyard bully, and has covered up its vulnerability with bluster and threats. This is a make or break time for Europe as a whole, and for western Europe in particular.

It is obvious that the "green dysfunction" -- the lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgiast mentality of carbon hysteria, anti-nuclear hysteria, and resource scarcity hysteria, holds European governments in its grip, and threatens to paralyse governments in the UK, North America, and Oceania. Anyone concerned about the human future, will do whatever is necessary to prevent that political activist movement from grabbing enough control to widely enact its quasi-genocidal agenda.

Besides learning to build resilient communities, we also need to learn to build formidable networks of influence. These are treacherous times, but remember: It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood.

Germany's Agenda of Energy Starvation Could not Happen at a Worse Time for European Economies

Germany is proceeding along a path that puts it at greater and greater risk of potentially catastrophic power blackouts.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is unrepentant -- and almost boastful -- over her energy plan which commits Germany to invest at least $25 billion to upgrade its power grid. The German grid is the power hub of Europe -- if it fails, Europe's grid fails.

The high cost of upgrades to the power grid could not come at a worse time for Germany or Europe, already stressed by a banking crisis. But the $25 billion or $30 billion needed to improve the grid systems is only the barest down payment toward the ultimate costs of Merkel's suicidal energy decisions.

Germany is phasing out its nuclear power plants and attempting to replace its infrastructure of baseload power generation with big wind and big solar installations. Germany publicly hopes to provide as much as 50% of its electrical power from wind and solar within the next few decades.

Unfortunately, large power grids grow unstable when big wind and big solar -- intermittent unreliables -- attempt to provide more than 20% of overall power. Going far beyond that level of dependency on intermittent unreliables would place the German gird -- and thus the European grid -- in an untenable position.
More information
A look at Denmark's unfortunate experience with wind energy (PDF)

Spain was once caught up in the green fantasy of the intermittent unreliables, just like Merkel's Germany. But Spain was forced to admit that it could not afford the green fantasy any longer. Eventually, Germany will be forced to come to the same conclusion. The only question is the price that the German people will have to pay for the stubborn stupidity of its leaders.

Greens are reluctant to admit the problems which intermittent unreliables pose for grid stability, particularly the higher the levels of penetration of the intermittent unreliable sources. But the truth will come out in the most painful ways, and many people will remember who has led them to suffer unnecessarily.

Europe is undergoing a demographic implosion, which is putting increasing -- although still subtle -- pressures on the ability of European nations to maintain technological infrastructures and to pay back large debts. If Europe goes through with this suicidal abandonment of reliable power sources in favour of the intermittent unreliables -- and goes even more deeply in debt in the process -- future generations of Europeans will pay the the price.