By Andy May
The GWPF has just released a new report, written by John Constable describing the economic impact of their green policies, and it isn’t pretty. Some highlights:
- EU electricity prices to households are 80% above the rest of the G20, and EU industrial prices are 30% above the G20, natural gas prices to households are double the G20.
- The high prices are likely responsible for a reduction in electricity consumption. This is not good since the quality of life is closely correlated to energy consumption. Energy consumption is also the main determinant of health and environmental quality.
- Carbon dioxide abatement costs are many times higher than even the high-end estimates of the social cost of carbon, suggesting that the economic harm of the EU’s carbon mitigation policies is higher than the possible (or projected, if you prefer) cost of global warming.
- Employment in European wind and solar industries has fallen since 2008, subsidies failed to add jobs in Europe, as the equipment is now purchased from China. The only area of renewable job growth is in biofuels, basically cutting down trees and making ethanol from food. Biofuels are also responsible for a lot of Europe’s toxic air pollution.
Has the EU learned anything from their failure and the suffering that they have imposed on their people? Nope, instead they appear to be doubling down on their bad policies.
In John Constable’s words:
“An onlooker, from the United States perhaps, might note that governmental enthusiasm for the green policies continues, and if anything has grown over the thirty years since 1990. They might assume, quite reasonably, that the EU would only forge ahead in this way if the policies were working. But this assumption would be mistaken. Governments persist in their folly not only because they are too close to their own failures to bring them into focus, but sometimes because persistence is the most effective means by which failure can be concealed. There are none so blind as those that will not see.”
John Constable, 2022
Constable reports that the EU policies have produced the longest sustained fall in energy consumption in modern times. He ominously suggests that this could cause social instability. The report is well worth reading.
“…the equipment is now purchased from China.” And the EU economy is in the dumpster. Also, unrestricted immigration added to the social services costs. How to totally destroy your advanced lifestyle for fun and profit (Someone else’s fun and profit). Watch out, this woke nonsense is coming to your country next. I need a drink.
Alarmists, such as Al Gore, are like the Ulvade shooter, caring not how he harms others.
Near the end of the paper, around pages 42-45, we see:
European manufacturers have a strong lead in internal combustion engines (ICE). A rapid shift to EVs favors China, who has a big lead in electronics. Why is the EU helping to kill its own industry?
The EU trade surplus is very dependent upon Germany, and Germany is dependent upon ICE. Does Europe fail due to German economic suicide?
One would think that the European climate policies were generated in China. The only beneficiary is China after all. Just sayin.
EV’s favor China for two reasons:
China is not the leader in the power electronics essential to EV’s. EU and Japan are.
A reminder, a cargo ship with 4000 German manufactured EVs sank in the Atlantic Ocean this February. Apparently several batteries spontaneously started a fire that could not be extinguished.
I boarded the Bass Strait ferry last weekend and was asked if my odd looking 2008 diesel vehicle was an EV. It would have to be isolated in a different area if it was an EV.
I expect all ocean ferries have to be implementing similar requirements.
And parking garages.
And have to change construction. They need a hole at the bottom of the hull through which to drop…
Last on first off by the smoke detector activated drop down ramp and dozer blade.
There’s been another wee problem with the over enthusiastic smoke detector sir but they assure me the destination dock cabs are all Camry hybrids.
“This is not good since the quality of life is closely correlated to energy consumption. Energy consumption is also the main determinant of health and environmental quality.”
Something I have predicted is a horrific health crisis in Europe and the UK because of a perfect storm of factors. Budgets get pummeled and things like water testing, food inspection, and hospitals and other public health items get pinched. The nightmare of government-policy-caused inflation, bad as it is now, can’t fail to worsen in the coming couple of years, even if idiot policy is reversed tomorrow.
Wanton damage to the fossil fuel industry and anti-nuclear by the West has put an end to cheap energy for (hopefully only) the medium term and the demonstrated irreplaceable need for such dispachable energy means extreme energy poverty for more than half the population in Europe (and several billion living at the margin globally with food shortages!).
Energy is the base commodity for all human endeavor and it multiplies the cost of everything when its prices are forced up. We have to make things, grow things, mine things using energy and in the case of food, we have to actually make nitrogen fertilizers with natural gas -energy itself. Once made and grown, and mined we have to ship it using energy, distribute it using energy, bake it and shape it and assemble it, package it and reship it using energy.
At five times the price for energy in Europe, the multiplier causes failure of businesses
, unemployment, famine, inability to heat, light and run appliances, for more than half the population. Impaired health, disease and death follow.
Even the policy for dealing with policy-caused inflation is totally wrong from our challenged leaders! This is not the classic “too many dollars chasing too few goods”. People don’t have too many dollars and there aren’t too many goods. Jacking up interest rates simply harms the housing and all other industries that may wish to invest in their enterprises and employ more people.
To end this on a cheery note, the whole renewables and neomarxist centralized Great Reset is over! They don’t appear to know it yet, but that is 100% right. We now have the major problems to fix and clean up the mess
Don’t forget to add Vaids to the perfect storm ingredient list. The 24 – 44 age group mortality rate is already up 40% over last year. And wait til this flue season when people begin to discover they have no immune system left…
Sic transit gloria mendacium.
Lies die when truth arrives, as long as you’re paying attention and awake. The latter two qualities are often missing in politicians.
Being awake and attentive are necessary, but not sufficient. One also needs to recognize and understand the truth when it appears.
People like Nick Stokes want useless eaters gone. There can be no other explanation for this idiocracy.
There certainly are some anti-human fanatic monster fascists who fully grasp the logical end-state of their dogmas and are ok with it. The scum that built the Georgia Guidestones for example.
I wouldn’t want to assume that Nick is counted among their number or accuse him of it.
In other words, I give him the benefit of the doubt. He may be in denial, refusing to think it through.
I reckon he doesn’t want to think it through because he has financial or emotional incentives to keep on believing the fantasy.
Who wants to admit that they have been tricked into supporting evil when they have believed that they were helping to save the world? An ethical person who recognizes that they have done harm feels an obligation to make amends. That’s a strong incentive to avoid self-awareness.
It is such a sad state when honorable people have been led into this awful mess. It will remain a blight on science for decades to come.
Honorable people??? Money talks, bullshiff walks.
In the end the poison planted in the EU by the former Soviet Union via it’s creation and funding of radical environmental movements and other far left organizations has succeeded where communism could not. Putin must be celebrating the success of the policy he helped to launch.
My take on this is that the poison was/is planted by China; but it could easily have been by both.
Also my view is that it was/is planted in the UN and its acolytes such as the IPCC etc.
Otherwise why is it that NONE of this Climate Hysteria NONSENSE existed before the IPCC was set up by the UN.?
All in all it is a matter of the resurgence of Communism seeking the Global Levers of Power through the control of energy.
The IPCC point is a very good one, about which I had not before thought.
The poisonous Soviet Union/China/IPCC/UN conspiracy.
You guys are funny.
You are. We aren’t. Don’t like the West committing economic suicide because of lies.
Do you want people to die?
It doesn’t require a conspiracy or collusion for individuals and governments to act independently on their incentives, Loydo.
Weakening a West Germany that their DDR puppet state could never hope to match economically was certainly in the Soviet’s interests.
If you don’t recognize that the Reds rebranded Green when Communism appeared to collapse, you’re just naive.
Communism had been in remission for awhile and has now metastasized.
Unlike you, we don’t rejoice at that.
That the Soviets backed most of the anti-war, and environmentalist groups in the pre-collapse days has been well documented.
That most of the pro-soviet groups re-branded as environmentalists after the fall of the Soviet Union is also well documented.
However, Loydo has already demonstrated that facts and reason are not permitted to inform his opinions.
“That most of the pro-soviet groups re-branded as environmentalists after the fall of the Soviet Union is also well documented.”
Where? You won’t get that sort of documentation from google.
I can find this:
https://global-warming.environment.narkive.com/FtYJwXmk/is-it-true-that-after-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-marxists-simply-took-over-the-green-movement
Not so sure how authoritative it is.
Does Loydo have a Swiss bank a/c being filled with rubles and yuan
Naw, he does this for free, like all useful idiots.
Look up Maurice Strong. He was an early proponent in setting up the UN ‘sustainability’ program and the Kyoto Protocol.
Soros, Strong, Obama and Gore were all working together.
See http://www.unitypublishing.com/Government/Maurice%20Strong.htm
What is it about socialists and their belief that all they need to deny a conspiracy, is to call it a conspiracy?
Read Rules for Radicals.
by S. Alinsky.
Rud
Two things. Firstly the IPCC was set up in 1988. China was a very weak country at that time and did not have the means to direct the IPCC along the path suggested.
Secondly what has made a huge difference with the promotion of the ‘climate catastrophe’ are numerous reports and colourful models only made possible by computers which were only starting to get going when the IPCC started but which has certainly fuelled its growth and fear factor in more recent decades
tonyb
The Chinese were still in a primitive economic state, focused almost exclusively inward back in the 70s when the Soviets were doing their best to cripple nuclear power in Europe and especially in Germany.
However, once the Chinese exited that stage, they did see how successful the former Soviets had been, so they picked up where the Soviets left off.
Wasn’t the Monteal Protocol on CFCs, and Kyoto, before the IPCC was established?
The Montreal Prototype, sorry Protocol, of 1987 was the trial run for the IPCC that was formed in 1988.
I have no doubt that any initiative of the UN would have been driven in large part by socialists with all their hidden agendas. But it would be a mistake to miss the fact that Montreal was a business opportunity to replace cheap commodity refrigerants with higher-margin, less-safe government-mandated products.
It was also a political opportunity for unscrupulous politicians (apologies for the redundancy). That was how Al Gore established his branding as Savior of the Earth.
Just as with Climate Change ™ today, the Ozone Hole scam had many factions pursuing their own interests, mostly independently and without a formal conspiracy.
“without a provable formal conspiracy.”
There, fixed it.
Here in Belgium they just reversed their decision to close their nuclear power plants in 2025. These account for 40% of the country’s electricity. Now they’re hoping to prolong them both for 10 further years.
Meanwhile our power bill just increased by 250% from one month to the next.
Phil
Which country are you in? Was part of that huge increase due to increased usage? That sounds a terrifying increase
tonyb
Germany here, our gas bill has just increased by 250% as well. We’re paying €483/month now. 1kwh increased from 0.9 cents to 0.24 cents. Many old people will not be able to afford these prices.
And we’re still on schedule to switch 2 of our remaining Nuclear Power Plants off this year. Which really just leaves one conclusion, as in, the government obviously wants our OAP’s to die of exposure come winter Temperatures.
And the death of the OAP will save the government billions in health and pension expenses.
Nice plan.
Thank Merkel for putting it in place.
Tony – no change in usage. We’re in Belgium. One month 176 euros, the next – 403.
It is too bad that there isn’t a way, in isolation, where they could choke on their green initiatives, and leave the rest of us to get on with a rational, pragmatic life free of left-wing idealism.
Don’t you have America for that? at least the Red states?
The plan is to MAKE supporters of GREEN to pay for the costs of GREEN.
BTW, griff, why do you hate poor people?
….
I started making some charts from the latest BP World Energy Statistics. This one cropped up early on, and tells a tale of history better than most words:
Me too !
NB : It is unclear whether their “European Union” numbers from 1990 are for the “EU-28” (including the UK) or the “EU-27” (only official since 2020 or 2021).
All reductions in emissions, to 2030 at least, “must” come from “developed” nations (USA, EU, Japan, …).
China and India (and …) have no “obligations” whatsoever to fulfil in this regard.
Still “Work In Progress”, but leaving off the top two emitters (China + the USA) allows for a much higher resolution on the Y-axes …
It will take much more of this sort of objective bad news to awaken the EU Green woke to their folly. Hopefully this now happens sooner rather than later because of several factors:
The interconnector situation in Europe is very interesting. The loss of capacity on IFA1 in September last year immediately led to high and volatile pricing for the UK. By November, with half the capacity back on stream but proper winter looming, the French nuclear shutdownssaw a switch from export to the UK to importing from it, except when there was extreme shortage in the UK due to lack of wind or generally low demand.
In Norway, the opening of the interconnector to Germany has seen the importation of German shortage pricing: this was exacerbated when the North Sea Link to the UK opened, and Norwegians are now hesitating about further links, with their reservoirs running way below where they should be, and in danger of running out over winter.
http://pfbach.dk/firma_pfb/references/pfb_norway_at_the_limit_of_its_transmission_capacity_2022_06_19.pdf
What happens in the winter, when capacity losses and lack of gas and Dunkelflaute combine will be interesting to say the least. Already French baseload power has been trading over 1,000/MWh for the winter. There will be real shortages and likely a shutdown of interconnectors anywhere a country doesn’t have a surplus to offer. Much industry will have to shutter. If that starts extending to the domestic sector expect governments to fall, and the EU to get extremely fractious.
Australia’s new Labor government has landed in the middle of this mighty mess. If it was not so serious, it would be funny to watch the emerging schizophrenia. (maybe Bidenphrenia)
I’m praying for the coldest winter in a hundred years. Only when the system collapses and people suffer will there be change and it’s better for that to happen earlier than later down the lunatic net-zero road.
“Biden incapacitated”
Nothing new there.
Social instability in Europe is most definitely a thing to be avoided.
Gore and others like him; like Mann etc do not seem at all embarrassed by the abject failure of there predictions.
It has never had a happy ending.
Exactly. The rest need not be said.
It’s selfish of me, I know, but now that Biden has the US economy running full-tilt toward obliteration, I’m rooting for some country, somewhere, to feel the effects first and quite dramatically. Germany seems the odds-on favorite.
It’s too bad our midterm elections occur before the first bills arrive from heating your home this winter. Up in the Northeast, where there’s less natural gas and people have to fill their propane or oil tanks, at least they’ll have a look at this winter’s contract early enough. But the Northeast is a dead zone for states that actually might decide to elect someone smart enough to challenge the status quo.
It’s all unfolding as planned. Wealth redistribution, now called The Great Reset, is nothing more than taking from the successful Western economies and giving it to the Marxists. Without Capitalism to steal from the Marxists can’t finance anything.
Socialism has always been at it’s core, a taking from the successful in order to buy the votes of those who would rather not work.
This “report” written by an English teacher, put out by a secretive, lobby group headed by a politician, funded by his anonymous, elite friends who “tend to be richer than the average person and much more intelligent than the average person.”
…here is another, from the Royal Meteorological Society:
An ice-free Arctic: what could it mean for European weather?
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.4069
Isn’t “follow the money” supposed to be a skeptic axiom?
Your problem is not the RMS report you cite. It is that there is still no ice free Arctic in summer. The RMS report is just wrong. Deal with it.
The RMS report is heavily based on bizarre IPCC/CMIP6 model scenarios which are pure unadulterated fantasy. It would be helpful if Loydo would keep within the bounds of the real world without slipping into the Narnia-like delusional fantasy world of his.
It is contrived garbage. If the Arctic warms, the Jet Stream (the lowest altitude and latitude manifestation of the Polar Vortex) will rise in both altitude and latitude.
i.e. It will ‘move out of the way’ and thus cause more settled weather where it now causes unsettled weather’
Even Lodo knows this is why the weasel word ‘could’ was employed in their post.
In no special order, the only real probems we all have are:
lies lies lies. wrongness wrongness wrongness
By saying “there is no ice free Arctic summer”…(now), therefore it is “wrong”, what you seem to be meaning is that this trend:
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
and this trend:
…because those three metrics do seem to be vaguely linked…
will all simultaneosly start to reverse soon. Because they are all part of the same ‘natural’ cycle and thus unrelated to CO2 concentration.
Is that right? In other words you’re fine with the ice snapshot today because, well, we can just ignore the volume trend as an artifact.
Meanwhile you ignore the previous history of the Holocene Sea level before 1880 since there were periods of time sea level was HIGHER than now during the Holocene as well shown in a post by David Middleton three years ago:
The Holocene Sea Level Highstand
There is simply not a lot of easy to melt water left to worry about.
Wow, half a degree °C temperature increase in a century. Panic! 25cm sea rise in a 140 years. Panic!
Certainly not 0.0 but only 3.7″ in 140 years (0.65mm/year)
The Arctic was seasonally ice-free for most of the Holocene Thermal Optimum, and may have also been occasionally ice-free during the Roman Warm Period. Perhaps you could tell us about the ecological and climatic catastrophes which occurred in those times.
And once again, Loydo demonstrates his complete absence of any scientific knowledge.
First off, sea level has nothing to do with arctic sea ice. Even a low level moron like yourself should be able to figure out why.
Secondly, there has been no loss of arctic sea ice for about a dozen years,
while CO2 continues to increase.
Finally, your models haven’t got anything right so far, why should anyone believe them this time?
Beyond that, the less ice there is in the arctic, the more efficiently the earth as a whole is able to shed heat to space. There is simply no way CO2 can ever add enough heat to the system to cause the arctic to become ice free.
Is the Arctic ice free?
Is there massively less ice than in 1980, in volume, extent and old ice? Yes.
Griffiepoo, you are lying by omission, as always. There is more Arctic ice today than there was in the 1920’s. Funny that…
Explain how the open season for shipping at the coal port in Spitsbergen went from three months in the years before 1920 to over seven months of the year in the late 1930s but you’re still around to make your asinine comments.
The decline stopped around 15 years ago.
There are a number of published papers showing evidence of little to ZERO summer sea ice earlier in the interglacial.
First this from Dr. Meier himself,
Watts up with that?
NSIDC’s Dr. Walt Meier – part 2
“Can the Arctic really become sea ice-free during summer?
It has been suggested that the Arctic really can’t lose all its sea ice during summer because there isn’t enough energy to melt all of the ice in the short summer. There are a couple of reasons why this thinking is faulty.
First, we know the Arctic can potentially lose all its sea ice during summer because it has done so in the past. Examination of several proxy records (e.g., sediment cores) of sea ice indicate ice-free or near ice-free summer conditions for at least some time during the period of 15,000 to 5,000 years ago (Polyak et al., 2010) when Arctic temperatures were not much warmer than today.”
LINK
===
Here are published papers to read from this LINK that I compiled.
Little to No Summer ice in the Arctic
You’ll never get why the Eemian saw very low arctic ice, will you?
Rather than criticizing the source, how about refuting the claims? You know, try the scientific method.
Conspiracies, conspiracies, conspiracies…everywhere hidden conspiracies
Eh Loydo???
Why the persistent belief that people won’t check your (plural) “supporting evidence” links, even if it’s only out of idle curiosity, just to see what they actually say ?
This is typical of so-called climate “science”: the projections are “suggested, and always carefully hedged with “could”, may”, possibly”.
Secretive? Really?
Why does it matter how much the people behind this report make? What matters is what’s in the report. Something that I notice you can’t refute.
By the way, what’s the salary of the politicians and ministers behind your “report”?
PS: I thought the arctic was supposed to have been ice free decades ago?
Hmm, so the (negative) economic impacts of the green policy insanity seem to be fairly significant.
Did the report tell us how much these policies dropped by? I suspect that it wasn’t much (if anything).
I’m just trying to get a handle on just how much my standard of living will have to drop by in our journey to ‘Net Zero’.
If politicians are insane enough to try, then somewhere along the road you will have no standard of living measurable by today’s standards. People talk about carbon offsets and sustainability as if those things are workable, forgetting that the extremists of the green activism have already discarded these ideas as irrelevant, diversionary and as not going nearly far enough. Their idea is for all of us to be idyllic lotus eaters with nothing but the absolute necessity for basic existence.
Duh, I didn’t check what I wrote. I meant to say dropped _CO2 emissions_ by.
Another electric bus fire — this one in Hamden CT.
Fire shreds electric bus in Hamden (wtnh.com)
“The Hamden Fire Department responded to the lithium ion battery fire at 2061 State St. The bus was unoccupied when it caught fire
.
Officials said the fire was difficult to extinguish due to the thermal chemical process that produces great heat and continually reignites. Firemen had to use “copious” amounts of water to extinguish the flames, according to Assistant Fire Chief Jeffrey Naples.”
Cause is currently unknown and under investigation.
One day after CT governor signs a bill requiring all CT Gov vehicles become electric. Good news, this will reduce capability of CT government very considerably—a good thing given their deep Blue nature.
Rud are you suggesting outrunning the cops in their battery powered squad cars?
Rud,
Thanks for the info about the legislation the CT gov signed. His timing was perfect. I love it!
I wonder if they are going to park those electric vehicles in the underground parking lots of government buildings?
Is there a U.S. government policy on where electric vehicles can be parked, considering the potential fire hazard?
Another one bites the dust .
“Once the fire is out the problems are not over. EV fires are known to reignite hours, days, and even weeks after the initial event”
From an advisory note by the UK Bedfordshire Fire Service
Visiting a friend who has a small family farm in Western Germany, he showed me the many acres of maize being grown around his farm which was destined for biofuel. Not for ethanol conversion, but for direct burning in power plants. Food should NOT be burned. I fear serious food shortages are on their way.
That maize is mixed with animal waste in biogas plants: it isn’t burned directly
How is that an improvement, Griffy? Whether it is burned or destroyed in some other manner, food isn’t being used for it’s purpose – food! Please enlighten us as to exactly how this is an obviously far better use! sarc (well the last sentence anyway)
The USA uses corn for ethanol for petrol, doesn’t it?
The maize used… any greenery will do – is a tiny percentage of German crops. It makes the biogas process more efficient… it isn’t a primary feedstock
Government policy failures in response to covid and CAGW are proof positive that government is not the answer but is the problem.
“Constable reports that the EU policies have produced the longest sustained fall in energy consumption in modern times.”
It’s a feature, not a bug.
It is energy efficiency.
Some energy efficiency but mostly outsourcing manufacturing to China.
Has it ever occurred to anybody, that by time the Globslists eliminate 90% of the population through poison vaxxes, starvation and war, the existing green infrastructure will be more than sufficient to provide their energy needs. Add to that the fact that robots, drones, and various other automation will be sufficient to provide the replacements for the now dead workers. They’ll live like the Kings they believe themselves to be.
The rich are already living like kings, I think you’ll find.
I’ve never been in the USA, but when I watch videos of US big cities and see how many homeless there are, I do not know if quality of life here in the EU is so much worse than there… That said, quality of life depends on how jobs are paid. Salaries are going down because globalism has pushed companies to decentralize in low salary countries. You cannot buy anything in Germany that does not have even only a single part produced in china. On the other side people a so spoiled in Europe that they must go at any price in holiday even if they do not have money for that: the recent months have signed a very negative trend in the car market because it seems that people cannot afford to buy a new car. Money is not enough but people take loans to pay a journey on holiday !!! it’s crazy. They cannot renounce to costly smartphones, stupid gadgets, going to the restaurant where they eat extremely low quality food at incredibly high price. They can also not renounce to expensive cars, but because they cannot afford paying them, they accept leasings that inflate the real price of a car. so instead of 30L they pay 40K and the spiral is worse and worse because at any economic conjuncture their economic situation worsen without possibility to recover. The most recent trend is that nobody is able to buy a house, because there is not enough job stability to allow people to pay a loan. This is not the EU energy policy, but the f** globalism. But eventually people do not deserve better, they could vote differently but they don’t.
“I’ve never been in the USA, but when I watch videos of US big cities and see how many homeless there are, I do not know if quality of life here in the EU is so much worse than there”
The homeless problem is mainly limited to Democrat-controlled cities. The Democrats invite the homeless to come litter their streets.
The same with violence which is also mainly limited to Democrat-controlled cities. The Democrats encourage violence and criminality and promote the criminals.
There still isn’t anything like it anywhere in UK or EU
Er, there is. Much of Paris is a violent, filthy slum, and the banlieues are positively dangerous.
Oh come on: there is no homeless or drug problem in Paris like LA, even in the banlieus
You clearly don’t know anything about the city:
https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/sdf-566-personnes-sont-mortes-en-2018-dont-6-enfants-de-moins-de-5-ans-7797206496
The photo of tents along the Seine embankment is from four years ago. It’s vastly worse today.
We (UK) are slowly drifting towards that state Griffy; powered by ignorance, blinkered delusion, fear and condescension.
Never you fear, lad, we will get there in time!
I’ve never seen a blind person living on the street in the UK: I have in the USA.
I do not see miles of street lined with makeshift shelters.
The most idiotic thing about it is that its anyway not reducing global emissions one iota.
We will see north of 40 billion tons global CO2 emissions by 2030, and north of 45 by 2040. Driven by China, India and the rest. The only sensible policy for Europe is carefully to assess what the local consequences of this will be, and to prepare to protect their own populations. Which going to Net Zero doesn’t do.
What they and the UK at the moment are doing is like if the government of Tuvalu should propose addressing threatening sea level rises by going to Net Zero for Tuvalu. Thus wasting the money they could have used to protect their people, without have any effect on the global phenomenon.
EU puts a value on efficient electrical appliances, roll out of LED lighting – efficiency accounts for a large part of drop in EU wide demand…
do look up EU energy efficiency targets and how it achieves them…
griff the public circus doesn’t invent or produce any energy efficient products but merely mandates/subsidizes them when private enterprise comes up with them. They end up giving out taxpayer funded compact fluorescents when private enterprise is busy coming up with LEDs. We don’t need a bunch of taxeaters to tell us when there’s a better bang for buck mousetrap in the shops. Well for most of us but you can’t fix stupid for some as there’s the Law of diminishing returns.
My point though is GWPF says demand has dropped… and I’m saying ‘of course it would: it is down to energy efficiency’ – and not people priced out of using electricity
Some is down to energy efficiency but most is down to de-industrialisation: industrial demand in the UK is down 20% since 2000.
We have outsourced a lot of our manufacturing to China (and India) like most European countries. As you know China and India are building lots of new coal fired power plants.
The time for the EU to end their energy insanity is NOW. Despite the current heat wave, summer doesn’t last forever in Europe, most of which is above 44 degrees north latitude.
The tendency of the EU to shift to “green” energy away from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power has weakened its power in the global energy market, making it vulnerable to a lack of supply from Russia.
In fact, the energy weakness of the EU, combined with the Biden adminstration’s efforts to restrict oil and gas production in the USA, may have led to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. During the Trump adminstration, when the USA was self-sufficient in energy and exporting natural gas as LNG, Putin realized that the USA could at least partially fill any energy shortfall in the EU by exporting LNG, and sanctions would hurt Russia’s economy more than that of the EU, so he refrained from attacking.
During the time of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was its bread-basket–containing the most fertile land in the Soviet Union, with year-round ice-free ports on the Black Sea. Putin’s initial invasion from the north toward Kiev was likely a diversion, to lure Ukraine’s defenses away from the southern ports along the Azov and Black Sea, which were the true targets.
If Russia manages to take all the Black Sea ports (including Odesa), it could control most of the exports of Ukrainian grain to the entire Mediterranean basin, including the Middle East. It could buy Ukrainian grain at a discount, then sell it to foreign nations at a huge profit, with a virtual monopoly. Northern Africa and the Middle East, which are mostly desert, are energy-rich but food-poor, and depend on imports to feed their population. Russia could control a large fraction of the food market, particularly for the Middle East, by controlling Ukrainian grain.
For the EU, now is the time to re-start its nuclear and coal-fired power plants, and start hoarding natural gas for the winter, with the virtual certainty that Russia will cut of its natural gas supply. No need to worry about what the temperature or sea level might be in the year 2100, but the more immediate concern is getting through the winter of 2022-23.
Russia has used winter as a weapon twice before in its history–to beat back Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, and Nazi Germany’s invasions in 1942-43. Will 2022 be its third time?
In Ireland the Green Party is the tail wagging the government dog.
Gazprom has always fulfilled and intends to continue fulfilling all of its obligations. The attempts of our partners to shift their own mistakes onto Russia and Gazprom have no basis.
So what is happening with energy supplies? Look, in the first half of 2020, gas in Europe cost 100 euros per 1000 cubic meters. In the first half of last year [2021] – 250 euros. Today, it’s 1700 euros per 1000 cubic meters.
So what is happening? I have already spoken about this many times. I don’t know whether it is worth going into the details about the energy policy of European countries, who neglected the importance of traditional energy sources and took a bet on non-traditional ones. They are great experts in non-traditional relations, so in the field of energy they also decided to rely on non-traditional sources, such as solar and wind. But the winter turned out long and non-windy – and that’s it.
Vladimir Putin, 2022
It’s all hunky dory out there-
Germany ‘on brink of recession’ amid gas shortage fears; UK factory growth weakens – as it happened (msn.com)
but the climate changers do need to be flexible-
Germany extends the life of remaining nuclear plants, amid European gas crisis (msn.com)