Europe Shows Us the Very High and Very Real Costs of Green Political Correctness

This morning’s news is full of stories about how our supposed European betters are doing with their energy transition. It’s a tale of woe by any measure as blackouts approach from just over the horizon, electric prices rise to record levels and nation turns against nation in a battle for energy security.

First, consider this from the great Robert Bryce:

For the scond time in a month, Germany’s electric grid has been hit by a wind drought, known in German as a Dunkelflaute. The lack of wind sent Europe’s electricity prices soaring to their highest levels since the end of 2022, when Europe was in the midst of an energy crisis due to concerns about supplies of Russian gas. That’s saying something since Europe — and Germany in particular — now appears to be amid a permanent energy crisis.

Yesterday, German consumers paid an average of $400 per megawatt-hour for electricity. During peak times, prices in Germany’s wholesale power market came close to $1,000 per MWh, the highest level in 18 years.

And, then there is this reaction from Germany’s backup source of power:

A jump in power prices in Europe has made the case for Norway’s ruling party to limit power exports, according to a new Bloomberg report…

Power prices in Oslo hit their highest since December 2022 on Thursday but dropped 65% by Friday.

Lawmaker Ingvild Kjerkol commented: “In spite of full water reservoirs, power prices are sky high. It’s very hard to explain to people in Norway why a country with a large power surplus should have high electricity prices.”

This aligns with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store’s Labor Party and its coalition partner, the Center Party, which previously advocated curbing power exports during the energy crisis. While not an EU member, Norway is part of the single energy market, which restricts prolonged export limitations.

Norway’s stance on electricity contrasts with its pivotal role as the EU’s top natural gas supplier, providing a third of the bloc’s needs. Analyst Bjorn Inge Vik attributed recent price spikes to cold weather and low wind output, which pressured Europe’s gas reserves and electricity costs.

According to the Bloomberg report, Norwegians, long accustomed to low, stable hydroelectric power prices, now face higher rates due to increased market integration and volatility. With 17 international power cables, Kjerkol noted that Norway will remain tied to the global power trade.

Finally, there is what’s happening in the UK, as reported in Spiked (emphasis added):

Figures released today revealed that the UK economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in October, the second month of contraction in a row. Although it is still early days for the Labour government (the growth figures predate its first budget), any hope that this government would kickstart the British economy after decades of stagnation was surely dashed by announcements made by energy secretary Ed Miliband earlier today.

As part of his new Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, Miliband has restated his promise to ‘sprint’ away from fossil fuels and towards ‘clean, homegrown energy’ (although he now says the grid will be 95 per cent carbon-free by 2030, rather than 100 per cent). The biggest change announced is that new planning rules will make it easier to build on-shore wind farms. Miliband claims all this will lower energy bills for households and businesses; lead to an industrial renaissance with thousands of new jobs; and guarantee a steady, secure supply of energy unaffected by the volatility of global markets. But all of these claims are straightforwardly untrue.

Building new wind farms, as Miliband plans to, doesn’t resolve these problems – it just creates new ones. Britain already has so many wind farms that on days when it’s too windy, electricity ends up being wasted. This year, the UK spent more than £1 billion paying operators to turn off their turbines to prevent the grid from being overloaded. All this adds to the price of electricity…

All this creates the perfect conditions for blackouts. Imagine a windless winter night in 2030. By then, Miliband will have shut down much of our oil and gas generation. Our friends in Norway will be sick of paying higher bills and won’t want to bail us out. Where, then, does the power come from? Earlier today, Miliband tried to stress that there would be no risk of blackouts in his clean, green-powered Britain. But given his dishonesty and delusions about renewables, how can anyone feel reassured by such a claim?

Take note of that part about “new planning rules." Irina Slaw reports this on that:

The UK government is considering curbing communities’ rights to protest against wind and solar power projects, which extends to preventing these projects from being built.

Currently, communities can oppose projects through judicial reviews and they can do it repeatedly. The Starmer government’s proposal is to limit potential opponents of wind and solar installations to just one judicial review per project, a new document published today has suggested.

The document features plans to speed up planning and permitting processes for large wind and solar projects and “streamlining” those processes to make sure that there is nothing to “unduly slow down vital infrastructure development,” the FT quoted from what was probably an earlier version of the document. The final version published on the UK government’s website does not contain references to community opposition to wind and solar.

So, what we have in Europe is a disintegrating electric grid deliberately created by politicians who want to be seen as green as an emerald. They have delivered, what can only be desribed as a green slime that threatens to engulf and smother them all. Electric prices are out of control, blackouts are approaching and, yet, the ideolgues want to prees even harder.

Why? Because that’s what ideologues of the left do. They always seek to destroy and rebuild and they’re being enabled by the corporatists collecting all those subsidies. Meanwhile the UK is siitting on top of the Bowland Shale, which could be a massive reliable energy source.

#Solar #Wind #Oil #NaturalGas #UK #Germany #Subsidies #GreenEnergy #Milliband #Norway #Blackouts