By Andy May
According to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, due to a rare lack of North Sea wind, already high European energy prices are climbing higher.
“Gas and coal-fired electricity plants were called in to make up the shortfall from wind.
Natural-gas prices, already boosted by the pandemic recovery and a lack of fuel in storage caverns and tanks, hit all-time highs. Thermal coal, long shunned for its carbon emissions, has emerged from a long price slump as utilities are forced to turn on backup power sources.”
“Two U.K. energy retailers—PFP Energy and MoneyPlus Energy—went out of business when electricity prices spiked this month. The companies, with a combined 94,000 gas and power customers, didn’t return requests for comment.
Winners include U.S. and Russian companies exporting gas to Europe, as well as renewable-power suppliers producing electricity with near-zero operating costs. Shares of Cheniere Energy Inc., a major U.S. exporter of liquefied natural gas, have risen 47% this year.”
The problems will only get worse in Europe. At some point the great unwashed masses will scream in unison “To hell with saving the planet, I can no longer pay my bills- Let somebody else save the planet”.
The thing is, none of this “climate change” crap was ever meant to save the planet from bad weather. It was intended to line the pockets of a few and redistribute wealth to the developing nations … all preparing for a one world government.
The problem is the redistribution of wealth to developing nations got axed last COP and so that just leaves a nonsensical mess and some fraudsters.
I do wish there was a sarcasm font, but alas … not yet. There was never any intention of actually redistributing any wealth to anyone but the bureaucrats the UN sets up in the dozens of new agency offices in the “in developing countries” … along with local politicians. The bulk of the funding goes into UN general revenue. They already act as a quasi world government.
“Some fraudsters” is damned right. Of the $billions pumped into AIDS “research and aid” , who do you think got the lions share?
This is looking more and more like “ENRON2” by the day.
The gas market could get very tight in the US this winter with an early cold winter. Gas storage currently sits about 7% below the 5 year average and hurricane Ida has left sizable amounts of GOM gas production offline which could pressure injection rates the next few weeks.
but wind does not produce useable power.
the rise is mainly due to gas price increase. Wind energy has one of those magic properties that increases gas prices and causes power shortages when any power they produce is useless. Weird stuff is energy from WECs
Things have to go from bad to worse to diabolical before people [politicians] wake up and act.
I would say that Britain is not yet at diabolical point and could take possibly 3 years to get there.
Not so sure about Germany.
France is laughing as it has aging backup nuclear power but Macron still could do something clever like shut them down and rely on Spanish wind power.
Will the chickens come home to roost this year?
No.
But electricity prices will continue to rise and businesses other than hospitality will start to fold.
Once a really hot summer [unlikely this year] or really cold winter hits, possible at end of this year the system will creak.
Winter 2022 or 2023 will be the time it all implodes.
Not to worry, despair then recovery is always the way.
Remember Russia was bankrupt what 22 years ago.
Agreed . We have been saying this here for a while….it’s going to take an existential crisis for the hoi polloi to wake up. We aren’t there yet – but getting close…..
Once the politicians start to feel the heat (!), they too may wake up……
Don’t rely on it. More likely they’ll take everyone else down with them.
Hey it’s the guy who told us to drink bleach
The chart measure electricity prices, not gas prices.
When wind drops, back up reserves have to be brought on line. This is expensive in that the backups have to make enough money to not only pay for the gas they are using while serving as backups, but also recover all the costs they incurred while waiting to be used as backups.
It’s really not hard to understand for anyone who isn’t consumed by an ideology that thinks wind and solar are inexpensive.
“But…but…the wind is ALWAYS blowing somewhere…”
“The lack of wind is proof of climate change!”
“We just need to install batteries…”
Did I miss any of the asinine comments from the AGW Cult?
Wind and solar are cheap sources of power.
One of the goals of human progress was to free man from the vagaries of nature so that we could have better possession of lives.
The Left hates that and now we find ourselves living in fear of the simple vagaries of the weather once again.
So, we can now add “monetary inflation/increasing prices” to the litany of bad things caused by “climate change”.
Yawn!
“due to a rare lack of North Sea wind”
It’s not that rare, we have had 4 to 8 day long periods in February, April, and July, where UK wind power was generating between just 0.5% and 2% of national grid demand.
The irony is that all this fuss about CO2 is a huge mistake.
The only greenhouse gas that has a significant effect on climate is water vapor. Global WV trend has been increasing about 1.49% per decade which is about twice as fast as possible from just temperature increase of the liquid water (net effect of all forcings and feedbacks). https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
It is not wise to depend on the weather for electricity.
The road to serfdom is paved with Climate Scam intentions.
How’s it going with the ‘firming’ in Californy?
Green Energy: The world’s biggest battery has overheated, and Strike moves on green hydrogen (msn.com)
Don’t fry the expensive things watermelons as they’re not going to get any cheaper by all accounts-
Pilbara Minerals just sold its lithium at auction for $US2,240/t. That’s a 550pc yoy increase (msn.com)
Well i,ll be…that graph looks like a hockey stick.
Maybe something to do with this :
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/09/ireland-freezes-power-exports-uk-energy-costs-rocket-tenfold/
Unbelievably good article – does anyone read the Telegraph anymore?
Very interesting, thanks for the link.
I thank you, too, for the link.
My question to Griff and others who favor windmills is: How will adding more windmills to the electrical grid help this problem? The fact is it won’t help this problem, adding more windmills will just exaserbate this problem. I think you have reached Peak Windmill, Griff.
You should read the link, Griff.
Behind paywall, my Telegraph free trial ran out.
The EU will still prefer to freeze in the dark than to accept gas from their racial enemies to the east, especially via the satanic Nord-Stream 2
https://www.rt.com/business/534873-gas-europe-historic-high/
No wonder DRAX Group is adding more wood pellet mill projects. They are betting on policy disaster with clear cut NA forests.
Electricity price effects go beyond the household level….
Aluminum prices soar in new construction headacheAluminum prices have surged 47% this yearAluminum prices soar in new construction headache | Fox Business
As the IEA pointed out in their report earlier this year (The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions) EVs require SIX times more minerals than an ICE car. The latter use around 40kgs of copper and manganese whilst EVs use up to 250+ kgs depending on the battery type – copper,lithium, nickel, manganese cobalt, Rare Earths and graphite.
In today’s UK news, a fire at the Dover end of the cross-Channel connector has closed down imports of (nuclear-generated) electricity from France – not yet known how long this will last, but it’s regularly maxed out to keep UK lights on.
Also – and please do not read this if eating or drinking – it has been confirmed that Controllers will be able to switch off electric car recharge points if grid supplies are under pressure. Good luck to anyone relying on an all-electric car that can go nowhere because the battery’s still flat. But that is so-called ‘Smart’ energy in a nutshell – if you can control your domestic gadgets at a distance, so can almost anyone.
Simple choice:
Nordstream gas or freeze yer a55 !!
Bad to worse….
Europe’s energy crisis goes from bad to worse as Dutch and U.K. natural gas prices see double-digit gains (yahoo.com)
Fueling the crisis with more bad policy is going to make it much worse and make the blame game messaging that much harder………
Quartz logic (not)
Europe’s record power prices are a case for more renewables, not fewer (yahoo.com)
If you accept that climate change will have the impact forecast for future weather conditions, then why would you invest in wind turbines when the wind conditions that support the viability of that investment may change rendering the investment worthless?
Exactly. If climate change is real (for the sake of argument) it would seem to be leading to less wind. Oh, the irony!