CRISIS: Soaring Costs of Energy in UK/Europe – A Video Interview with Dr. Benny Peiser of GWPF

Dr. Peiser should be familiar to many WUWT readers. He is of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and also of NetZeroWatch. He’s touring the USA this week talking to legislators about the soaring cost of energy crisis going on in the UK and Europe as well as the shocking fact that The Green Party in the UK Germany has now endorsed a return to coal for power generation.

He also talks about the effect of the Ukraine invasion, and the foolish reliance of Europe on Russian Gas and Oil.

Here is my video interview, recorded on 3/28/22:

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griff
March 30, 2022 9:50 am

as well as the shocking fact that The Green Party in the UK has now endorsed a return to coal for power generation.

I can’t find any evidence at all of this supposed change for the UK green party…

Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 10:30 am

I believe he meant Germany.

Scissor
Reply to  Right-Handed Shark
March 30, 2022 12:38 pm

I think griff found a legitimate mistake.

MarkW
Reply to  Scissor
March 30, 2022 2:37 pm

Blind squirrels and all that.

Richard Page
Reply to  Scissor
March 30, 2022 6:03 pm

That’d be a first.

griff
Reply to  Anthony Watts
March 31, 2022 3:31 am

Thanks!

meab
Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 10:55 am

Nobody ever said that, griffter. They were talking about Germany. You know quite well that Germany is relying on Lignite (dirty coal) whenever the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining (and the sun doesn’t produce any significant amount of power all Winter).

You appear to be listening to the voices in your head.

Vuk
Reply to  meab
March 30, 2022 11:32 am

Griffo has been consuming far too much sheep’s brains. It’s delicious. There are dangers eating it too often of start thinking and behaving in a manner of a sheep.
https://youtu.be/Wxnuid1absc

Reply to  Vuk
March 30, 2022 12:32 pm

He’s become remarkably active on WUWT recently.

Panic much?

griff
Reply to  HotScot
March 31, 2022 3:33 am

alas, I am stuck at home far more than I would wish lately… and that produces a tendency to spend too much time online…

meab
Reply to  griff
March 31, 2022 11:18 am

Petrol costs too much? Heating your place costs too much? No money left over?

How does it make you feel that poor people are freezing and it’s the fault of you and your ilk?

Reply to  meab
March 30, 2022 12:37 pm

The Green Party in the UK has now endorsed a return to coal for power generation.

That is an exact quote from this article

Reply to  AndyHce
March 30, 2022 5:31 pm

Which has, subsequently, been corrected.

Meab
Reply to  AndyHce
March 30, 2022 7:07 pm

Never spoken in the interview, as I said. Griffter likely didn’t watch the interview. If he had, he would’nt have written his comment the way he did.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  meab
March 30, 2022 2:21 pm

‘Dirty coal’ is an alarmist description, the energy produced and CO2 emitted when burned is no ‘dirtier’ than from any other source, other emissions can be minimised with current technology.

griff
Reply to  meab
March 31, 2022 3:32 am

And you surely know that Germany has a plan to eliminate all coal power, which it is accelerating due to the present crisis…

Mike Cross
Reply to  meab
March 31, 2022 10:56 am

Several years ago I (A retired UK chemcal engineer) was staying with German friends in Bremen. Our host is the equ. to home secretary to the state of Bremen. He was called in to an emergency in the city. There had been a major explosion at a power station. What happened was hydocarbon gasses had built up in a lignite coal silo and static buildup in the conveyor had caused a spark to ignite it. The top of the cylidical silo weighing many tonnes had been blown off and just missed an office block. When we arrived they had set up a temporary HQ in the shadow of a second silo that was probably also in a dangerous condtion. It turns out that they had purchased cheap dirty coal from Russia to compensate for electricity shortfalls from their wind turbines!! during a cold snap in october when solar was also negigible!!

Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 11:02 am

You can’t find any evidence for anything you post, so what’s new?

Mr.
Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 11:13 am

Instead of looking for nits to pick in the fabric of Europe and the UK’s energy troubles, how about expressing some empathy for the citizens of these countries who are the real collateral victims of imbecilic energy policies?

It’s always the poor and disempowered who suffer the most from these failed green / left / socialist experiments.

griff
Reply to  Mr.
March 31, 2022 3:34 am

I can’t see anyone suffering from green energy policy – only from fossil fuel prices and some maniac declaring war

Vuk
Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 11:15 am

Russian officials said on Tuesday that Moscow would not “supply gas for free” to Europe, a day after G7 countries unanimously rejected President Vladimir Putin’s directive requiring rouble payments.
“During the early warning phase — the first of three stages in Germany’s emergency response — a crisis team from the economics ministry, the regulator and the private sector will monitor imports and storage.
If supplies fall short, and less draconian attempts to lower consumption do not work, the government would cut off certain parts of German industry from the grid and give preferential treatment to households.” – Robert Habeck, German economics minister said
https://www.ft.com/content/0706d6f4-6668-4f67-ab1c-d535d847caf7

Griffo tell Germans that their solar panels and wind ‘bird choppers’ will provide more than it’s required to keep the power supply to industry unaffected.

Reply to  Vuk
March 30, 2022 12:42 pm

Texas has a similar policy for gas during that recent freeze; gas reserved for home heating. This was reported to have force some gas powered electrical generating stations to shut down for lack of fuel. Some areas had gas for home heating but no electricity to make the heating systems work.

griff
Reply to  Vuk
March 31, 2022 3:35 am

Because of course if Germany had been 100% fossil fuel there would have been no crisis?

Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 12:39 pm

Can’t even get that right griff, or are you just lying like a true socialist. He was talking about Germany.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 1:08 pm

There may now be a fight over coal in the market with Poland stopping imports of Russian coal.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  griff
March 30, 2022 1:12 pm

Griff, your ship is sinking faster now. Better head to the lifeboats if there are any left.

Richard Page
Reply to  ResourceGuy
March 30, 2022 6:07 pm

Griffy should remember the Birkenhead drill and either identify as female or a child – his many posts support the latter idea!

March 30, 2022 10:23 am

Prediction for 1 April 2022 for European countries stretching from England to France to Poland: a blanket of global warming. This is not an April Fool’s joke. I have just been outside and with windchill factor it is at freezing point already. Germany will not be happy about the soaring demand for heating. Russia is probably having a good laugh.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Michael in Dublin
March 30, 2022 1:10 pm

Hug a Green Party member…very hard.

DrEd
Reply to  ResourceGuy
March 30, 2022 2:17 pm

When will the voters in Europe throw those idiots that caused these crises out on their asses? WHEN? What does it take to grow a pair?

MarkW
Reply to  ResourceGuy
March 30, 2022 2:39 pm

Make like a boa and constrict.

LdB
Reply to  Michael in Dublin
March 30, 2022 8:23 pm

Cue Putin to turn the gas off.

Reply to  LdB
March 31, 2022 1:01 pm

It’s Russia’s greatest General, General Winter –
sorted Napoleon, and the chap with the little moustache.- now back to sort the EU . . .

Auto

March 30, 2022 11:20 am

~6:30 We are meeting with journalists and lawmakers …
______________________________________________

Will journalists actually report what he has to say? Maybe, and if they do then follow it up with several prominent Democrats and maybe a RINO to claim what he said really isn’t so, or at least blame it on Trump.

MarkW
Reply to  Steve Case
March 30, 2022 2:40 pm

At least two “journalists” tried to blame what Will Smith did, on Trump.

Reply to  MarkW
March 31, 2022 8:17 am

And a couple others blamed “white supremacy” and “systemic racism”

King Coal
March 30, 2022 2:37 pm

Renewable energy that feeds into the main power grid could destabilize the system and potentially cause power failures according to a new study.
Mathematicians from the University of Nottingham used data from smart meters to track how grid composition changes over time and found resilience varies over the course of a day and that a high uptake of solar panels can leave the grid more susceptible to failure. Their findings have been published today in Science Advances.

March 30, 2022 2:59 pm

BBC Headline:”Germany and Austria take step towards gas rationing
Meanwhile, today I came upon an interview with Kwasi Kkarteng (the UK’s ‘energy minister’ or something like that)
Basically he was doubling down on ‘Renewables would have or will do, Save The Day
Very very similar to how Remdesivir (according to Fauci) saves Covid patients when in fact it kills them. Folks with respiratory disease do not die because of kidney, liver and heart failure yet that is exactly what happens when they’re given remdesivir
i.e. The Climate fix is going to be much worse than the climate problem

Gawd, Kwarteng was awful but I can’t find it now. I think it was at the Grauniad

On a similar tack to Kwarteng, the BBC and the Graun, I came upon someone, who in her work with Covid, came out with the line I’ve used round here countless times…
i.e. There’s something going very badly wrong in this world and CO2 climate change is symptomatic. Climate is not The Problem

Let me introduce Brittany
(my Dropbox, 11mins – 1min10s in is ‘my’ bit)
The rest is horrifying – not dissimilar to the attitude of Climate Scientists in how they claim to care, for the children, for the coral reef, for the planet – but they don’t.

They only care for themselves.

Surrr
March 30, 2022 6:06 pm

Sucked in Germany EU, England. You deserve everything you get. Laughed and ridiculed when Trump tried to warn you, whos laughing now!
This is a warning for our upcoming federal election in Australia, a vote for the ALP is a vote for the GREENS/CCP.

observa
March 31, 2022 3:01 am

The truth is beginning to filter through and it’s getting serious with the teabags and tampons-
Europe’s energy crisis sends shockwaves through Germany’s industrial heart (msn.com)

ResourceGuy
Reply to  observa
March 31, 2022 9:12 am

I guess it took time for things to sink in for countries before and even during WW2. We already have the flattened cities in Europe in the current episode.

Carbon Bigfoot
March 31, 2022 11:39 am

Here in Pennsylvania USA our Governor and his Wolfpack are trying to shove RGGI down our throats. Here is the latest:
http://www.ifo.state.pa.us/download.cfm?file=Resources/Documents/IFO_Testimony_RGGI_Mar_29_2022.pdf
Anyone with similar issue please critique the modeling used in this presentation.

Martin Pinder
March 31, 2022 12:45 pm

The UK government thinks that the way to obtain energy security is to double down on renewables. Kwasi Kwarteng has suggested adding £300 billion of renewables to the UK grid. The people who said that net zero wouldn’t cost us very much at all have been shown by this to be absolutely wrong. Those that estimated it would cost us at least £1 trillion were nearer the mark, Kwarteng’s plan is already 30% of that & that’s just for starters. Furthermore, how can you have anymore energy security with renewables than you had before with fossil fuels when the bulk of the wind turbines & solar panels will be made in China?