Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; As Europe emerges from a harsh winter with depleted gas reserves, desperate European governments are increasingly firing up old coal plants to bridge the energy supply gap.
Gas Is So Scarce in Europe That Coal Is Making a Comeback
Europe is so short of natural gas that the continent — usually seen as the poster child for the global fight against emissions — is turning to coal to meet electricity demand that is now back to pre-pandemic levels.
Coal usage in the continent jumped 10% to 15% this year after a colder- and longer-than-usual winter left gas storage sites depleted, said Andy Sommer, team leader of fundamental analysis and modeling at Swiss trader Axpo Solutions AG. As economies reopen and people go back to the office, countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Poland turned to coal to keep the lights on.
…
“Energy demand has been pretty strong in Europe and we have seen a recovery from the pandemic,” Sommer said in an interview. “Gas storage is so low now that Europe cannot afford to run extra power generation with the fuel.”
…
“People thought Russia was going to book more capacity via Ukraine and that just hasn’t happened in a meaningful way,” said Trevor Sikorski, head of natural gas and energy transition at consultants Energy Aspects in London. “The market is super tight, it’s trying to get less gas into power.”
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Read more: https://www.markettradingessentials.com/2021/06/gas-is-so-scarce-in-europe-that-coal-is-making-a-comeback/
Remember, these are the climate hypocrites who a few days ago issued a G7 communique declaring the end of coal.
JoNova reports the gas shortage is self inflicted. Harsh environmental rules and public opposition to fracking appear to have crushed European domestic gas investment. Nuclear power might have saved Europe, but anti-nuclear activism and a pan-European obsession with unreliable green energy appears to be leaving Europe utterly dependent on whether Russian President Putin decides to “book more capacity via Ukraine”.
“Remember, these are the climate hypocrites who a few days ago issued a G7 communique declaring the end of coal.”
Well, the article goes on to say
“While it would be “fantastic” if politicians came to a deal, coal is likely to be phased out anyway by 2030, 2035, said Tonkin. “Politics are important, but you also have the economics of the transition really kicking in within that timeframe,” she said.”
“coal is likely to be phased out anyway by 2030, 2035”
…
“Ursula Tonkin, portfolio manager of the Whitehelm Capital Low Carbon Core Infrastructure Fund”
Yep, no likelihood of bias or wishful thinking from her 🙂
It’s a fund that invests in core infrastructure. But yes, they do seem to find it advisable to assure investors that they are avoiding “high carbon”.
There $1 unit share just crawled back above parity after the funds 5th year anniversary … man they are killing the pig as a fund manager.
Tonkin’s job is to persuade people to invest in a “low carbon” investment fund. Hardly surprising she predicts that coal has no long-term future.
KingsFord charcoal is high Carbon, what are you talking about ?
It is another alarmist climate predictions; well into the future and totally without merit.
The “kicking in” will be the public kicking politicians and subversive “activists” in the butt when the power goes of 6 times a day. They will be “really kicking in” when it is only one for 2 hours in the morning and again at night – just like the African countries and Pacific villages that have been ignored all these years. Only 30% of people in Mozambique have grid electricity in a country that exports Terrawatts to its neighbours. There are 8 generator platforms at Kariba Dam, and only 2 generators.
ROFL … now beside Nick does anyone actually believe a transition will happen in that timeframe. I suspect the image of Nick is under the dictionary entry for gullible.
I quoted what
‘Ursula Tonkin, portfolio manager of the Whitehelm Capital Low Carbon Core Infrastructure Fund, the Australia-based company that has $4.4 billion of assets under management in all of its funds’
believes.
I quoted what
‘Ursula Tonkin, portfolio manager of the Whitehelm Capital Low Carbon Core Infrastructure Fund, the Australia-based company that has $4.4 billion of assets under management in all of its funds’
believessaysFIFY.
A fool and there money are soon parted … I have a comment in moderation about that funds performance. You might like to look at there unit share price and movements.
The market trader’s article featured by Eric chose to quote her opinion.
So what? I can quote the tooth fairy or Santa ad nauseam, it means nothing.
believes? or her staus n pay pack depend on more likely Nick
Yes, and you considered that quote worthy of repetition.
Nick what a person believes, what they say and what is the truth or reality are very different matters
When I was a young man in my late teens/early 20s, I was often referred to by my older & more experienced colleagues, as being very green, by which they meant I was very gullible & naive, that is what being “green” means to me today, the creation & establishments of a gullible & naive world believing everything the green gods dictate!!!
Aussie columnist Tim Blair coined a truism –
” nothing ‘green’ ever works properly”
You want to be a bit more skeptical about the public circus picking winners Nick-
ROSS CLARK: Why aren’t we backing the real green cars? (msn.com)
Trust them they’re from the Gummint and they’re here to help you reckon?
And your point is what, exactly?
If I read her aright what she is saying is what we all know in Europe, is that apart from Eastern Europe and East Germany we mined the place clean. Add the cost of meeting envirnmental stnadrdas for supphur ppollution and new coal is pretty much on te edge of vaibility – except in Germany where they impose standards on everyone else, except Germany…
Yeah, we had every last smoker left in Britain keeping Europe warm, but we wont be using any more coal : if they dont pull their fingers out they will have cold bums the next hard winter.
The interim solution will of course be gas, and the Gazprom funded anti-frackers will ensure that means Russian gas.
In the end it will have to be nuclear power, but it will be a year or two more before that reality sinks into the head of the averarge millenial
Nick “Likely to be phased out” is the kind of probability statement you find strength in?
Here is what the probability really is given realities on the ground that generated this embarrassing ‘step back’ rationalization. The non-West will be building 4500 new coal power plants during the coming decade. Nothing will stop the Big CO2 experiment from going forward (the non-West will double down on their plans on the news of Europe clutching back at coal).
This is all ‘prior’ knowledge that has been ignored for face-saving reasons. The Nordstream pipeline was a turning point. Note well that the low gas reserve was because of unexpectedly Long and Cold Winters! Once they weather the ‘storm’ of the new coal (and gas) and find the huge improvement in reliability and the economic turnaround, the dream (cauchemar) is dead. Place your bet that renewables are dead! Germany will not build another wind farm. Nor will the rest of Europe – oh they will finish painting the last piddling few… but it’s all over but the crying.
Europe’s next step (with La Penn and German equivalents in their faces) will be to accept that EVs are done and fossil fuels are going to power cars and trucks. These ‘priors’ have been in full view for a long time. The French already came close to revolution over this so the people have had enough.
South Australians there are bargains galore in the offing .
Hello from Germany, we will vote in September and the Greens are in the lead while the Le-Pen-equivalents are at 10%. So most probably we will build a lot more wind Farms and a lot more Solar. Laws are beeing passed now to include Solar cells on each new building mandatory. There are much more poeple who have enough of coal than of EVs and renewables.
All I can say is God help you, as the highest emitters of CO2 in Europe, per country, per head and per MWh.
And with the most expensive consumer electricity
Germans do love Believing In Leaders and Causes, and Doing What They Are Told, dont they?
Heil Grün!
There are ‘much more people’ who will have enough of poverty, grid collapse and the pollution from the Braunkohle power stations that actually keep the German grid working, if the Greens get in.
Thus ends civilization. People had enough of what worked, and spent their time chasing after things that didn’t.
They should go for it, and then cry how the others are not behaving in a sustainable way.
Nicky,
Look on the bright side; without people like you around, all the grifters, scammers and con artists might have to turn to more violent methods of eking out a living!
Well, sounds like Western Europe, or the EU as it currently is, is in hock to Russia that Putin has it by the throat, probably exactly where he wants it!!!
That was the plan. Trap. Ruse. Agitate to ban fracking, remove coal, demonize nukes, sell them piped gas, then turn it off. It is hard to believe they fell for it, being so smart and all.
Russia was just behind Canada in being US largest energy supplier in 2019…
What did you say about smart?
Nice try at being clever, but what would Russia’s pct of our total energy be? What pct of Eur do they provide?
Yep!!! I believe the expression you’re looking for is, “hook, line, & sinker!”.
The EU is a 100% corrupt criminal organisation. It bought or blackmailed the politicians who took their countries into the organisation, and it was probably bought by Gazprom along with the Greens to ensure reliance on Russian gas.
Russians themselves are building nukes…
oh and USSA isnt?
or going to hypersonic missiles etc
and its usa that used DU weaponry and sold it to “nice folks like Israel along with white phosphorus
The USA has one thing that the EU doesn’t.
Democracy.
If one gang gets too over the top you can sack them and put in someone else. No Trump would have been allowed in Europe.,
The only election that the actual people in Europe have is to elect what amounts to a senate – the European Parlaiment, which has virtually no powers whatsoever.
ALL the legislation is done by unlected technocratic ‘bureacrats’ who are effectively above the law and perfectly unsackable.
Why should they bother?
And they dont. They run the EU for their own benefit, and for the benefit of major companies. Mainly German ones.
There is nothing wrong with DU weaponry.
Despite the whines and panicking of those who believe that even the tiniest does of radiation is always fatal.
As for the white phosphor, if the Palestinians would give up on trying to kill all the Jews, Israel would no longer have a need for it.
You are a silly victim of Zionist propaganda.
Yep, at least you’re partly right!!! The EU Commission is in charge of everything yet responsible for absolutely nothing!!! a) The horsemeat scandal, in which criminal gangs were able to substitute horsemeat for beef, pork, lamb, in pre-prepared/packed food to maximise profits, right under the Commission’s nose, b) the breast implant scandal whereby cheap industrial grade silicone was substituted for the expensive medical grade to maximise profits, where these implants were in the vast majority of cases, were for poor women seeking a breast reconstruction after mastectomy surgery from cancer treatment, not because some blond airhead/bimbo wanted bigger boobs to become a porn star!!!! Nobody was ever caught, nobody ever prosecuted, all brushed under the carpet by the EU Commission, un-elected, un-democratic, & un-accountable bureaucrat/fat-cats spoon-fed huge amounts of taxpayers’ dosh!!! The world should resist this tyrannical totalitarianism by the backdoor at all costs!!! AND I couldn’t give a rip if ET & his little green pals are peed off with Humans and our pathetic emissions of a trace life-giving gas in the atmosphere!!!! It’s trace, scientifically that means we can measure it, but it’s of no real significance, other than giving life to the Earth!!! So ET, you & all your little green pals can shove it where the Sun don’t shine, & if the lights do go out you Virginian Colonists are lucky to have Al Gore, because he could just drop his pants, bend over, & you’ll all be able to see perfectly until the lights come back on!!! ;-))
Yes. As late Geman economist G.Radnitzky said “Politburo have moved from Moscow to Bruxelles”.
im not Russian OR a greentard BUT I am utterly against frakking
in qld they drilled sloping lines UNDER farmland against regs and are NOT paying royalties to the land owners OR looking like paying for damages done
LOCK THE GATES!!! is being subverted by the theives
This is off topic but I do not believe it. Such issues are easily resolved with evidence.
Please provide evidence to support your paranoid rants.
Putin couldnt give a flying F about EU apart from the cash Russia gets for its gas oil etc
Eu however sure needs russian fuels wheat and other items
Russia is in business and there will be bigger and more pipelines and they will be a reliable supplier backed by large reserves. They aren’t expanding in Ukraine because Uke isn’t paying its bills and they have stolen large amounts of gas. Even Europe doesn’t want anything to do with Ukraine.
Talking of Europe and activists – this Greenpeace protester is in jail after his parachute descent into a football stadium during the France-Germany match got tangled in floodlight wiring and debris fell to the ground injuring several spectators and narrowly missing some players:
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/57488478
When they issue their weasel-worded apology they will still include some smug eco message in the text.
The game ended 1-0 to France.
Sounds like anyone we know?
There’s a difference between jumping into what appears to be a permitted drop zone, and causing a shower of debris, injuring people and endangering lives.
The title of the film clip says
“CFACT parachutes into Durban Climate Conference”
and Lord M tells the story that way.
But it seems that he landed on the adjacent beach.
I wonder what sort of brain interprets those things literally when the film makes it clear that they aren’t intended to be taken literally.
You can’t tell the difference between landing on a beach and trying to land in a fully occupied stadium?
Stokes: You haven’t the balls to do that yourself.
I didn’t see much praise here for the balls of the Greenpeace protestor.
But I notice Lord M was firmly in the hands of an expert.
You can’t have balls in Greenpeace.
That would be sexist.
Or something . . .
You’re confusing balls w/fanatic idiocy.
Hey at least he didn’t fail and get laughed at by millions.
The two situations are in no way comparable.
Lord Monckton was tied to an experienced and competent parachutist. The Greenpeace activist was obviously inexperienced and incompetent.
The Greenpeace activist deliberately aimed to land inside a football stadium where there were lots of people. Lord Monckton landed on a beach where there were very few people.
Lord Monckton caused no damage during his descent. Unlike the Greenpeace activist.
The Greenpeace activist caused disruption to an important football match. Lord Monckton caused disruption to nobody.
Lord Monckton did not end up in jail. He did nothing illegal. He caused no damage to other people’s property. And he did not disrupt anybody else’s activities.
Maybe someone should let Greenpeace know about all of the CO2 being emitted from Kilauea.
I believe that said petty little island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, is not only the largest Shield Volcano on planet Earth, but it’s THE largest volcano on planet Earth, emitting millions of tons/tonnes (whichever, the amounts the same) every day!!! As if this tiny ape infestation on the surface of a minor planet, orbiting a minor star, in a minor solar system, in a minor galaxy, is significant??? We really do think highly of ourselves, what???
So does anyone know what this person parachuted out of?
The claws of a passing luck dragon? The middle of a rainbow? Solar heated hot air balloon?
Or an aircraft powered by ‘Fossil Fuels(tm)?
(also the irony of getting tangled in the light tower – which despite what the Greens wants us to believe, was NOT powered by renewable energy at that moment – is not lost)
The canopy of the parachute must be made from hand reared silkworms woven by Belgian nuns…..or some synthetic called nylon made from coal AND petroleum
I believe he was flying a para-glider, so he could have launched himself.
Well done Greenpeace, I can guarantee that 99.9% of people watching that match would have said the equivalent of “what a tw@t” in their own language.
#heartsandminds
Is someone going to sue greenpeace?
Well that went over about as well as their stunt on the Nazca lines. Deranged kooks with a cause are dangerous. they’re as incompetent as they are crazy. I mean even if that wacko had landed without a problem, who did he think he would win over to his cause by disrupting that match?
Leave it up to Nick to try and defend such stupidity.
As a jumper that has been under canopy more than a few times, I’ll just say such stunts require study and planning and complete familiarity with the layout. Even with that and highly trained and experienced jumpers things can go wrong. Too many variables.
These protesters always show “Pure Ignorance” – The guy is covered in oil allover (coat, helmet, glasses, shoes, etc) and used an oil based device (parachute) to do the stunt with an oil based ball. I would show some respect if he landed dressed as Tarzan and parachuted using a palm tree leaf!!
They’re coming home…..
It’s really amazing that we are expected to believe computer based predictions of “climate” 50, 100, 200 years in to the future and yet no-one saw this coming? Putin, laughing all the way to the bank.
Rather like that bunch Lehman Brothers who published two papers a few years back telling us what the climate was going to do in 100 years time, yet strangely they couldn’t foresee their own demise 12 months ahead!!! I wonder why I don’t trust these scientificky types & their models. As Bert Onestone once said, “predictions are very difficult, especially about the future!”.
countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Poland turned to coal to keep the lights on.
Remember, these are the climate hypocrites who a few days ago issued a G7 communique declaring the end of coal.
Err, I don’t think either the Netherlands or Poland were at the G7 Summit.
And Poland, which has huge coal reserves, has resisted all attempts by the EU to tell it not to use them.
Were the great Poles thinking they’d made a big mistake after 60+ years of totalitarian dictatorship, re-thinking their views on joining the EU, because some were thinking that, Russian totalitarian dictatorship wasn’t that bad after all?
mutti merkel was though
Their EU was.
Why would Putin book more capacity via Ukraine when the purpose of nordstream 2 is to bypass Ukraine? He wants Ukraine out of the picture.
well while that moron and his son are ruining usa and starting shite in Ukraine again why the hell would Russia pump more gas for them to divert and not pay for like they did before?
Here’s a delicate coal conundrum for the Queensland Labor Govt and the usual suspects-
Qld power plant’s repair faces setback (msn.com)
Touted to close in 2028 and with State sponsored dumping by the unreliables everywhere naturally the managers for Qld taxpayers have like the other State’s privately owned coal stations been running them on sticky tape and string. Hence the sudden and lumpy ‘transitioning’ that’s imposed on the large interconnected south eastern grid at any time as we’ve seen before- Liddell unit 3 out till perhaps March 2021 after transformer incident (serious injury to one person) – WattClarity
PS: More sudden transitioning-
Victoria declares state energy emergency after power station damaged by storms (msn.com)
Bearing in mind SA is interconnected with the NEM (includes Qld, NSW, Vic and Tas) and at 1:PM in Adelaide it’s overcast and raining and my original 2200W solar FIT system is pumping out a glorious 56W I notice. Time to check the genny is all in order.
Very, very interesting. I’m so glad Jo Nova caught this— and that Eric Worrall and WUWT put it up here.
Not to worry, they can just clear cut all of North American forests to make up for it.
So this implies Europe has not been decommissioning coal plants but rather mothballing. You can’t restart a coal plant unless it was on standby or reduced operating capacity.
Please, please, please, stop referring to the European Union, (27 countries – UK), with the geographical continent of Europe, (42 countries), they are NOT the same body!!!!! Oh trust me, they really do envisage such a totalitarian grouping, but they’ve not managed it yet!!!! Just like the Greenalists, they are dreaming of Dystopia all under their control!!! 1984, V for Vendatta, plus every other fantasy disaster book/movie, ever written etc, have all predicted disaster, yet they just don’t seem to get the message, people do not want to be manipulated & controlled, they want freedom of thought, & within reason, freedom of action!!! Are Humans perfect, hell no!!! Do we mostly think good thoughts, yes we do!!! Can Humans fix most things, even those we may/may not have caused, yes we can!!! Can Socialism, I don’t think so!!!
Germany will continue to operate coal plants until at least 2038.
Coal to the rescue!
How can this be? Surely they have more than enough wind and solar?
To paraphrase a most-memorable segment from the movie the Treasure of Sierra Madre:
“Paris Accord papers? We ain’t got no Paris Accord papers when we got to stay warm. We don’t need no Paris Accord papers to stay warm. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ Paris Accord papers!”
The Europeans might be dumb but at least they still have the coal fired stations to call on for backup. Not like Australia where some have been blown up!
Look at this fiasco down by Melbourne, three weeks without power for tens of thousands of households. … https://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/melbourne-residents-hit-by-devastating-storms-told-they-will-not-have-power-for-three-more-weeks/534376
I think I can summarize – Everything environmentalists do has a negative impact on the environment, and on their own ultimate goals whether good for the environment or not.
Europe’s energy demand is quite strong and we are seeing signs of recovery from this epidemic. Right now, natural gas reserves are so low that Europe can’t afford to generate additional electricity with this fuel. And carmakers, such as BMW, are dedicated to improve fuel economy as an effort to save energy.
Wait wait wait… You mean central planning based on political goals isn’t a good idea? Has anyone told the USSR?