> The European energy war of 2022 will almost certainly go down in history, along with the Treaty of Versailles, as one of the worst economic blunders in history.
No, it is absolutely necessary. What will go down as one of the worst blunders in history is allowing Europe to become so dependent on a single hostile country for energy.
> What will go down as one of the worst blunders in history is allowing Europe to become so dependent on a single hostile country for energy.
Correctomundo, thank you so much for this. It was making my skin crawl to see this called an "economic blunder".
Your take is 100% correct.
In fact I would go farther and suggest that decision makers should be investigated at the highest level. Lots of German ones have interest in Russian oil companies. If "compromising European security to further your own interests" isn't a crime yet we need to make it so. One as serious as espionage or treason.
In Germany, Gerhardt Schroeder and Angela Merkel were perfectly fine promoting Russian gas and shutting down nuclear to improve their own positions and economic outcomes.
The same corruption happened in many places throughout Europe.
And the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Obama's policy of not arming Ukraine because Ukraine was not a US priority and more important to Russia than to the USA (yes, he said that). Trump shaking down Zelensky for political favours as a condition on security assistance probably didn't help either, way to signals support for an ally.
All of them, as almost all developed nations can now build nuclear, for example. It just requires not being reliant on fossil fuel. Which would have been easy to avoid had the process started earlier.
The first mistake was being reliant on gas for energy.
The second mistake was that it was Russian gas.
It’s the first mistake that should have been avoided, not the second.
1) the capacity should exist for the EU to be energy independent
2) capacity that cannot be attained need not be supplied by only a single source
3) peaceful countries exist in great amounts but we would consider them either too far to be serviceable without impact to the planet (importing/shipping fuel from Australia or the USA); or we would consider ourselves to be exploiting people (Africa).
It's not that I care, but you should be downvoting spam, not people who have different takes. I'm also puzzled how is it a strawman if I was quoting it.
> 1) the capacity should exist for the EU to be energy independent
Please show it then and I'll go to Brussels myself and inform them about it.
> 2) capacity that cannot be attained need not be supplied by only a single source
Maybe instead of downvoting, you should read things first, I used plural 'countries'.
> 3) peaceful countries exist in great amounts but we would consider them either too far to be serviceable without impact to the planet
I'm sure there is also plenty of gas in the Solar system, yet somehow it might as well not exist from our point of view.
> the USA
I said peaceful, countries that are constantly at war with other countries don't count as peaceful.
> or we would consider ourselves to be exploiting people (Africa).
The reason Europe does not buy gas from Africa is because of wars and high terrorism, it would be a nightmare to secure it, even in the Baltic terrorists can blow pipelines up. I also find it curious that you would consider buying energy from Africa exploitation.
It had better. The UK was, for a few years, an oil and gas exporter. Look at it now. The North Sea fields have run down.[1] Fracking bought another decade or so, then the downtrend resumed.
Ukraine has increased its coal mining because it's going to burn it and it will give Poland some as well. In Hungary Mr Orbán came up with the genius idea of burning wood.
I would love to live in the world of renewables, but reality is that it's not as easy as flipping s switch.
We can't even make batteries without causing immense pollution and harm to the environment.
I know that good intentions and $5 will get you a coffee these days, but the economics of renewables is getting more compelling day by day.
We need more carrot (cheaper prices) and more stick (taxes/regulations) on fossil fuels to accelerate this change. I would think that energy independence would be valuable to sovereign nations -- relying on others for the energy you need is risky business when things get messy.
> the economics of renewables is getting more compelling day by day.
It's actually not getting much better, let's assume that we have multiple clean energy sources that can sustain our demands and I'll explain why I don't think we are not a in a good place.
Building electric cars causes so much pollution that you have to drive a lot (see: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d... ) to reach parity with gasoline powered cars and even then I'm not sure if you are still able to use your battery. At the moment the single problem electric cars actually solve is air quality within bigger cities, however it merely shifts the pollution elsewhere.
In countries where it can get cold, you usually have gas heaters, replacing those would be a Herculean task, it would cost astronomical amounts of money which is just unimaginable in the current economy.
Even if you have your clean energy sources the economics are not there yet.
> We need more carrot (cheaper prices) and more stick (taxes/regulations) on fossil fuels to accelerate this change.
You will likely end up accelerating the decline of your economy and will be forced into burning coal. We do't need more incentives, they are already there, fossil fuels are horribly expensive so if there is a way to get around them, the private sector will find a way, you don't need to give them handouts and you don't need to punish them with taxes. Unfortunately we do need to be realistic and stop nuclear shaming.
> I would think that energy independence would be valuable to sovereign nations -- relying on others for the energy you need is risky business when things get messy.
Absolutely, unfortunately geography is not equally kind to all countries, therefore not all countries can be truly sovereign, large blocs like the US and EU have a chance to do become independent, however not all individual EU countries have that luxury.
I am pro renewable energy and I do believe we need to move closer and closer to a world where we use clean energy more and more, however I also believe we need to be sober, understand reality and not give in to the hype marketing and cults.
> Even if you have your clean energy sources the economics are not there yet.
This is patently untrue. The only thing holding wind back is ever more byzantine regulations coming largely from fossil fuels and nuclear. In any country south of lithuania (about 90% of people) solar or solar storage is also more viable than nuclear.
> Unfortunately we do need to be realistic and stop nuclear shaming.
Realism involves doing the thing that lowers emissions fastest with the smallest amount of resources.
For almost any country with <50% penetration this is wind and solar. Many countries can have a mix with up to 80% for less than nuclear.
Even for countries without hydro or good sunlight having whatever already exists (or gas if it replaces coal) fill the remainder is far more emissions prevented far sooner. If you have a funded commitment for those 80% renewables, by all means plan nuclear for the rest, but unless you do you're just helping fossil fuels stay on.
And when 4 day storage or electrolysis becomes viable that can be phased out too.
Then there is the absolute certainty that -- the millisecond let the likes of chevron or shell or anyone similar run nuclear plants -- we'll have some idiot manager order the 5 or 6 colossally stupid things you have to do in sequence to get another chernobyl (or significantly worse) in the name of cost saving or pumping up some kpi.
There is something similar [1] in Nevada, USA that uses molten salt to store energy. I drove through a few months ago and was blown away by it. The top of the tower was so bright that I could see it from the moment it started to crest the horizon.
Solar panels gain efficiency in the cold. In winter there is less sunlight so they produce less power overall (40-60%), but you could double up the panels or add alternative energy generating methods.
No they aren't; don't be daft. Power companies and grid operators do their own research. They're not reading HN comments and blindly following their advice. Use some common sense.
And there is plenty of solar in Scotland so it's clearly not that bad.
Cold climates are often at high latitudes. The sun is oblique at those latitudes. So solar is at it's most inefficient there. An argument can be made that solar is not a good choice in 'cold climates'
> Their pilot project of two rows of 70 kW panels suggested that the farm would work on a larger scale. The first rows went in during the summer of 2018, and after eight months, the costs came in on target, says Chris Colbert, chief finance officer of Renewable. “We monitored production throughout the year, which also came in on target,” he says. That made it easier for them to get the attention of investors to allow them to expand.
Small modular reactors being closer to consumers, or, well, just excess electricity (since nuclear generates no CO2, it is trivial to do overprovision).
This article is very light on data, so I wondered what kind of research it came out of. Most notably this exact quote, fluffy as can be:
"""If a negotiated settlement took place, Russia would restore the gas."""
There is absolutely no evidence supporting this statement, on both sides of the equation: no indication of what kind of settlement would be offered, nor what would be accepted.
So I googled further, and courtesy of nymag: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/what-is-compact-maga...
This magazine is founded by a former NYPost Op-Ed editor & Wall Street Journal columnist. It's not surprising to me that they run, essentially, conservative opinion pieces dressed up as Meaningful Analysis.
Some have argued in the past that a large part of the economy is money laundering for Russian oligarchs - hence the pejorative "Londongrad" nickname. Might a slowdown of this activity be affecting the economy as well?
>>Gas prices now are around the same levels seen in Q3 2021.
For whom? I'm on a flex tariff for gas, in Q3 2021 was paying about 3p/kWh, now I'm paying 10p/kWh, the price of gas has literally tripled for me and millions of people compared to the same time last year.
If they had been able to pass on the wholesale prices to consumers - you would have been paying 10p/kWh in Q4 2021 more than 3 months before the invasion of the Ukraine. Businesses have been paying wholesale prices, as the cap does not apply to them.
The "cap" is a terrible system, which has only resulted in a very short lag to prices hitting the consumer - The energy price cap changes every six months, though this will change to every three months from October as requested by the energy companies, opposed by all consumers but the consumer lost on that one.
In Q3 2021 you were paying about 3p/kWh on a wholesale price of 300, now you are paying 10p/kWh on a wholesale price of 400 - and your daily standing charge has increased just because they can get away with it.
I fail to see the relevance. Household gas prices had already tripled before the mini budget. Nobody’s household gas prices today reflect the price volatility in the last 10 days, the price changes have been in the works for months.
Household gas prices are as high as they can make it partly because the government has given a blank cheque to the energy producers, partly because of the way the cap is calcuated (Feb23 delivery of gas was a far higher cost in August -- 880p per therm [1])
the cost of gas for delivery in the winter is high due to predicted demand outstripping predicted supply. Prices per therm in Feb are 480p [0], and while prices are dampened a little next summer, similar high costs are there the following year. This time last year though prices for Feb 23 delivery were down in the 120p/therm level. The cost peaked at 330 last December then backed off a little
Cost for Feb 22 delivery this time last year was about 200p, and for Feb 21 delivery in Oct 20 was about 40p. Pre covid it was about 80p in Oct 2019 for delivery in Feb 2020 [2], so we're running at 5 times the cost of pre-covid despite the recent falls in price.
Sensible countries have put in measures to reduce and move towards rationing gas usage (thus reducing costs), the UK has put in measures to encourage gas usage by subsidising consumption.
the "energy war" isn't an economic blunder, it's a consequence. It's a consequence of politics and and it reveals alot about what is going on under the covers - but the outcome will be simple.
We swap growth and prosperity for recession and hard times. But we keep geopolitical independence.
The alternative is to go along with the Russians until the next time, when the next time will be far too late.
Yes, agree very much. The energy war was a consequence that in a market economy it is almost impossible to choose options which aren't price optimal (cheap).
Germany gets a lot of flak for buying Russian gas cheaply the last 30 years in ever increasing volumes. But it seems strange to argue that Germany just should have bought gas from Qatar or the US for double the price from the start.
How should Germany have done that? Import tax on Russian gas? Laws preventing importing cheap gas from the east? Sounds a bit aggressive towards our big neighbor to the east.
No, I think the article is just plain wrong. Europe benefitted from cheap gas over the last decades and it will be somewhat affected by higher prices for this and next year, but it will accelerate the transition to renewables and strengthen nuclear in those countries in Europe where it is still an option. In the end it push Europe in the right direction.
This is what people miss. What is the opportunity cost of over-paying for gas for 30 years? By not over-paying, Germany was able to invest in its own economy, and it is now in a position to help Ukraine and complete its transition to renewables.
Germany's strategy is currently unpopular because the costs all happen at once, whereas people generally put up with small costs spread over a long time, but it would have been foolish to harm German economic growth while Putin could just sell his gas somewhere else and grow the Russian economy at a faster rate than Germany's.
One cost is that is directly funded the regime that is now invading a neighboring country, causing more burden on the current military budget as the populace demands support for them, and shoring up local defense budgets as it puts support to the fear that it may be needed at some point in the not-too-distant future.
You can't really say what would have happened, but if nobody purchased that cheap gas, I think it's safe to say the Russia of today would look very different, with that being a rather large part of the country's total exports.
There is no transition to renewables in a 20 year or less horizon. Europe will be wrecked economically and industrially if there is no negotiated end to this war, anything else is wishful thinking.
Why would you think so? To replace Gas for electricity for instance it seems to suffice to double wind and maybe quadruple solar. That is totally doable.
Everything on top would help reduce heating use of gas.
The major issue is that until then we are back to burning coal which is cheap but environmentally much worse than gas.
Last, your point on a negotiating end of the war is weird. Russia blew up their own pipelines. We are never going back to Russian gas in Germany in the near future. This war will be won on the battle field.
There is nothing about fracking in Germany in this article. Regarding "Russia blowing up their own pipelines", that makes zero strategic sense. The pipelines being an option played into Russia pressuring EU. That potential leverage going away is not really helping the Russians.
I see a lot of posts written from point-of-views that can only be described as outlandish, as they do not reflect the grim reality. I'd be surprised if full-scale riots in every major Northern European city are not the order of the day in a couple of months, never mind years.
The alternative to to not provoke a conflict when you are not ready.
ie invest in alternatives - so you aren't on the hook down the line, but don't provoke a conflict when you are on the hook.
Russia has the economy about the size of Italy - and as you can see by the progress in Ukraine, it's not going to be able to sweep across Europe anytime soon.
There is no existential threat - apart from the one we have just created by timing the conflict when we are not ready.
I think that they may have intended that for "phase 3", if Ukraine had fallen swiftly then 2 years from "then" a push into the Balts would have very much been on the cards.
Do you think the Russian armed forces can redeploy from Ukraine (while holding onto their invasion gains there) and launch a successful attack against NATO members?
Not from Ukraine. I'm not sure if there are forces in the Kaliningrad region though. But you're right. Poland is a NATO country and that would be very unlikely.
Probably because it's become painfully clear just how poorly prepared the Russian armed forces are for this, or any, modern conflict. Their equipment is old and badly maintained, their personnel are ill-trained and have low morale, and their intelligence appears to be of the "tell the egomaniac dictator what he wants to hear" variety rather than the "get the best information, no matter what it may imply about relative strengths or whatever" variety.
Putin tried for months to secure Ukraine and is being pushed back. He's instituted a draft to replace lost personnel there, and over a hundred thousand able-bodied Russians have fled the country rather than take the risk that they're called up.
I wouldn't put the odds at zero (because Putin is also not the most stable and sensible person), but it seems very unlikely that he would even try to send troops to open up a completely new front, against actual NATO members, let alone succeed in any meaningful way.
Frankly it's more dangerous now than it's been at any time since the 80s. Russian forces are so weak that basically any confrontation with Western powers is going to be nuclear from the very start. The fact Western powers haven't said that a tactical nuclear strike inside Ukraine will be responded to in kind is basically permission on a silver platter for Putin to do so.
I thought they did say, or it leaked out that they have told the Russians: they would respond with conventional airstrikes to destroy all Russian military personnel and equipment in Ukraine, including Crimea.
> We swap growth and prosperity for recession and hard times. But we keep geopolitical independence.
> The alternative is to go along with the Russians until the next time, when the next time will be far too late.
Sorry, but that didn't read as sarcasm to me?
Or, unless the "swapping growth and prosperity" is in reference to Brexit and is not a reference to supporting Ukraine, or is a reference to short lived gains by depending on Russian energy sources.
I'll take the US state department over Russia any day, thank you. It's why most Eastern Europeans have no love for FDR and Churchill: they basically gave our countries to Stalin.
The US has long enough told the EU, specifically Germany, to ditch Russian gas and direct 2% of their GDP towards their militaries/NATO. Did Merkel listen? No. Only Poland and to some extent Romania listened. France already had the most capable military in the EU.
> The US has long enough told the EU, specifically Germany, to ditch Russian gas
That's kind of like telling the US to ditch China for manufacturing. It would make sense, it's just easier said than done. The issue is that it seems that Europe lacks gas reserves, Russia was a convenient and reliable source and it would have made no economic sense to diversify the same way it makes no economic sense for the US to bring back manufacturing from China.
> France already had the most capable military in the EU.
The answer to that is World War 2, the Germans were reluctant to militarise, for a while they were outright forbidden to.
Stalin was taking them anyway. Failed to take them away from Stalin yes, I suppose we could have started WW3 in 1945 and tried to nuke our way across Eastern Europe to Moscow.
yeah.... it's not good, but it's better than the alternative. And, if we wiggle hard we can probably get out of it in a few years. Once we go under the Russian hand that really will be that.
Not even mentioning Brexit, possibly the single biggest change in the fundamental economic underpinnings of the UK in the last 50 years, feels deliberately misleading to me.
Living in Britain right now, I can tell you nobody I've met believes in capitulating to Russian demands - any dissatisfaction is purely on the reaction to that, and mismanagement of the response.
And a completely tone-deaf political stance - the proposed budget just said the quiet parts loud of the general Tory stance and highlighted just how "different" they are to the average man on the street.
> Europe’s manufacturing base underpins the value of the euro. When this base is obliterated by high energy costs, the euro will sink.
Hmm... but when the Euro falls the attractiveness of its exports increases.
One consistent thing about these articles is that they fail common sense tests.
Anyway, Brexit is almost certainly to blame for the magnitude of the calamity in England. The bigger problem is that nobody buys anything from there, that English industry and innovation have been stagnating for a long time.
> but when the Euro falls the attractiveness of its exports increases.
They're talking about manufacturing. Energy input costs are still denominated in dollars/rubles, so those exports will still be pretty expensive if the factory doors are to remain open. A falling euro will only make the labor portion of cost inputs decline. And because labor needs to eat, even those input costs will be rising as well.
Will a falling euro help? Sure. But probably not as much as you think.
The main problem is that some journalists have read enough economists to be able to pass themselves off as having done the work. When you scratch, there is no quantifying of anything. This article is shock-value based clickbait.
That’s normally the story, but probably not the case when you can’t make stuff overnight or move it because energy is too expensive (just for you). You can’t afford to import the stuff you were making because your currency slid 25% which further breaks supply chains fueling more inflation. Inflation goes up with no levers to pull to slow it down (moderate interest rates will send Southern European over the edge). At the same time, central budgets have to get reallocated to just keep citizens alive through winter.
The problem is that manufacturing those exports requires imported energy which goes up in price every time the Euro sinks in value, and those energy prices are already so much higher than (for example) the USA that it's basically infeasible to manufacture stuff in Europe. The price is only half the story as well, Europe has serious problems with the availability of energy and it probably wouldn't be possible for Germany to import enough energy to keep its industries running at any price.
My reading of this is that high energy costs disable the (production of) supply coming from Europe, such that demand (and the attractiveness of demand for European goods) is irrelevant, because supply is just not there.
Calling it an "energy war" rather than "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" is disingenuous at best, and combined with other articles by the same writer, it's clear that nothing of value is to be found here.
No doubt. Germany , the powerhouse of budget surpluses was relying on unusally cheap russian gas and now that is gone , even if they get gas back russia has no reason to sell it for cheap. This is evidenced by the lack of german solidarity in the energy crisis, the unwillingness to impose price caps at the same time that they are spending $200B in their own market. The cost of war is proving too much for EU
Was Germany in effect driving the alternative sources of gas up in demand and subsequently price, that caused the energy crisis as electricity linked to price of gas for some mad reason.
Why did Europe become so dependent on Russian Energy? Did it come down to money? At some level I can see Europe thinking that trade would reduce the possibility of war but still how could they have been do gullible? History shows that they can't keep from going to war. It was only a matter of time before they started one again.
Im guessing, it was just short-sightedness and unjustified optimism - "it wasn't a problem until then, so it probably won't be in the future!". The Arabs did the same thing to the US in the 1970ies, US was as unprepared back then.
>> Why did Europe become so dependent on Russian Energy?
For the same reason the U.S became so depended on China for manufacturing of electronics and most of the world on OPEC for energy. These bad actors provide good value for money, at least for the short term.
Perhaps, but perhaps europe will draw inwards and support its own workers vs buying stuff from outside. Energy, yeah, but aside from foodstuffs what is critical for survival?
Better this and previous European actions when faced with shortages…
In 2020, The Netherlands was the second-largest exporter of food (excluding fish) globally, behind only the United States [1]. I would say its fairly rare for me to go to the supermarket here and buy food that was produced outside of Europe.
We build a lot of high tech products, for example cars / trucks / busses as well as tooling.
The Netherlands alone - a tiny little country - are world leaders in Yacht production, Food (per m2) and via ASML cutting-edge chip fabs.
Germany, our neighbours, are the production power house of Europe. They make basically everything the USA does and a lot of things produced in China. They're more quality focused than China (and to some extent the USA too).
There were tons of attempts of negotiation. So mich that the long table became a meme. But if a party has aims which are unacceptable for the others, there isn't much negotiations can lead to.
Russian displomats demanded denazification of Ukraine. When pressed on the details, they didn't know what it meant.
They can't know because they have a paranoid, ramblish (did you see the recent speech?) geneatric emperror and slave-ish, self desteuctive subservience.
As xwdv points out, it's implied, inescapably, by two points:
1) it blames the EU, somehow, instead of Russia
2) if by some magical thinking one avoids blaming Russia somehow, the only other possible thing the EU could have done wrong is to have not somehow built a lot more of its own fossil-fuel infrastructure and production, earlier. Which isn't really a strong argument, but if you're trying really hard to avoid admitting that Russia is the problem, and you have a bone to pick about relying more on fossil fuels, that's the only trick in the bag.
Russia is the primary problem. The secondary problem - as it pertains to the energy context - was the EU's (affluent Europe more broadly) wide failure to understand or accept what Russia is (and what consequences the Russian culture would inevitably produce again for Europe, namely wars of conquest against their neighbors).
If they'd actually done the thing everyone is blaming it on (ie. spend vastly more on renewables than fossil fuels or nuclear) it wouldn't be a problem
It's more about Pilkington's longstanding right-wing anti-American, Russophilic bias; even as late as August he was trumpeting the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a stunning success and Russian weapons as qualitatively superior to US systems, even as Ukraine -- with a tiny portion of NATO's arsenal and a fraction of the average NATO soldier's training -- was already assaulting into Russian-occupied territory.
So pushing energy doomerism (Putin's last card, short of the nuclear ladder, to play against Europe) and blaming Europe for Putin's decision to cut off energy supplies (and pipelines!) is just amplifying the Kremlin's message against the West, something that Pilkington seems very happy to do.
Thanks for pointing this out. The author's other articles remind me of something you'd see from a Russophilic survivalist blogger like Dmitry Orlov. I think the general tone of the world has become biased toward negativity and so anything that predicts doom is getting paid attention and given less critical thought.
> The European energy war of 2022 will almost certainly go down in history, along with the Treaty of Versailles, as one of the worst economic blunders in history.
No, it is absolutely necessary. What will go down as one of the worst blunders in history is allowing Europe to become so dependent on a single hostile country for energy.
> What will go down as one of the worst blunders in history is allowing Europe to become so dependent on a single hostile country for energy.
Correctomundo, thank you so much for this. It was making my skin crawl to see this called an "economic blunder".
Your take is 100% correct.
In fact I would go farther and suggest that decision makers should be investigated at the highest level. Lots of German ones have interest in Russian oil companies. If "compromising European security to further your own interests" isn't a crime yet we need to make it so. One as serious as espionage or treason.
Clearly ignoring all the signals since the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008.
s/ignoring/profiting from/
In Germany, Gerhardt Schroeder and Angela Merkel were perfectly fine promoting Russian gas and shutting down nuclear to improve their own positions and economic outcomes.
The same corruption happened in many places throughout Europe.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
>Since leaving public office, Schröder has worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom.
And the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Obama's policy of not arming Ukraine because Ukraine was not a US priority and more important to Russia than to the USA (yes, he said that). Trump shaking down Zelensky for political favours as a condition on security assistance probably didn't help either, way to signals support for an ally.
A sample of article's titles by the same author:
-Freezing Yourself To Own Putin
-Demanding roubles for gas is a victory for Putin
-Sanctions won’t hurt Russia
-The West played itself with Russia sanctions
-You can’t blame Russia for all the world’s problems
-Banning Russia from SWIFT will hurt the West
I think I will pass on reading those...
> Europe to become so dependent on a single hostile country for energy.
Name peaceful countries that have the capacity for energy export at that scale to Europe.
All of them, as almost all developed nations can now build nuclear, for example. It just requires not being reliant on fossil fuel. Which would have been easy to avoid had the process started earlier.
The first mistake was being reliant on gas for energy.
The second mistake was that it was Russian gas.
It’s the first mistake that should have been avoided, not the second.
I'm downvoting you for attacking a straw-man.
1) the capacity should exist for the EU to be energy independent
2) capacity that cannot be attained need not be supplied by only a single source
3) peaceful countries exist in great amounts but we would consider them either too far to be serviceable without impact to the planet (importing/shipping fuel from Australia or the USA); or we would consider ourselves to be exploiting people (Africa).
> I'm downvoting you for attacking a straw-man.
It's not that I care, but you should be downvoting spam, not people who have different takes. I'm also puzzled how is it a strawman if I was quoting it.
> 1) the capacity should exist for the EU to be energy independent
Please show it then and I'll go to Brussels myself and inform them about it.
> 2) capacity that cannot be attained need not be supplied by only a single source
Maybe instead of downvoting, you should read things first, I used plural 'countries'.
> 3) peaceful countries exist in great amounts but we would consider them either too far to be serviceable without impact to the planet
I'm sure there is also plenty of gas in the Solar system, yet somehow it might as well not exist from our point of view.
> the USA
I said peaceful, countries that are constantly at war with other countries don't count as peaceful.
> or we would consider ourselves to be exploiting people (Africa).
The reason Europe does not buy gas from Africa is because of wars and high terrorism, it would be a nightmare to secure it, even in the Baltic terrorists can blow pipelines up. I also find it curious that you would consider buying energy from Africa exploitation.
That appears to be the one bright side of the war. Hopefully it will accelerate the migration to renewables.
It had better. The UK was, for a few years, an oil and gas exporter. Look at it now. The North Sea fields have run down.[1] Fracking bought another decade or so, then the downtrend resumed.
[1] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/946/cpsprodpb/10F88/production...
Offshore wind seems to have arrived -- competitive pricing even without subsidies. We should be going full tilt boogie with them.
Ukraine has increased its coal mining because it's going to burn it and it will give Poland some as well. In Hungary Mr Orbán came up with the genius idea of burning wood.
I would love to live in the world of renewables, but reality is that it's not as easy as flipping s switch.
We can't even make batteries without causing immense pollution and harm to the environment.
I know that good intentions and $5 will get you a coffee these days, but the economics of renewables is getting more compelling day by day.
We need more carrot (cheaper prices) and more stick (taxes/regulations) on fossil fuels to accelerate this change. I would think that energy independence would be valuable to sovereign nations -- relying on others for the energy you need is risky business when things get messy.
> the economics of renewables is getting more compelling day by day.
It's actually not getting much better, let's assume that we have multiple clean energy sources that can sustain our demands and I'll explain why I don't think we are not a in a good place.
Building electric cars causes so much pollution that you have to drive a lot (see: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d... ) to reach parity with gasoline powered cars and even then I'm not sure if you are still able to use your battery. At the moment the single problem electric cars actually solve is air quality within bigger cities, however it merely shifts the pollution elsewhere.
In countries where it can get cold, you usually have gas heaters, replacing those would be a Herculean task, it would cost astronomical amounts of money which is just unimaginable in the current economy.
Even if you have your clean energy sources the economics are not there yet.
> We need more carrot (cheaper prices) and more stick (taxes/regulations) on fossil fuels to accelerate this change.
You will likely end up accelerating the decline of your economy and will be forced into burning coal. We do't need more incentives, they are already there, fossil fuels are horribly expensive so if there is a way to get around them, the private sector will find a way, you don't need to give them handouts and you don't need to punish them with taxes. Unfortunately we do need to be realistic and stop nuclear shaming.
> I would think that energy independence would be valuable to sovereign nations -- relying on others for the energy you need is risky business when things get messy.
Absolutely, unfortunately geography is not equally kind to all countries, therefore not all countries can be truly sovereign, large blocs like the US and EU have a chance to do become independent, however not all individual EU countries have that luxury.
I am pro renewable energy and I do believe we need to move closer and closer to a world where we use clean energy more and more, however I also believe we need to be sober, understand reality and not give in to the hype marketing and cults.
> Even if you have your clean energy sources the economics are not there yet.
This is patently untrue. The only thing holding wind back is ever more byzantine regulations coming largely from fossil fuels and nuclear. In any country south of lithuania (about 90% of people) solar or solar storage is also more viable than nuclear.
> Unfortunately we do need to be realistic and stop nuclear shaming.
Realism involves doing the thing that lowers emissions fastest with the smallest amount of resources.
For almost any country with <50% penetration this is wind and solar. Many countries can have a mix with up to 80% for less than nuclear.
Even for countries without hydro or good sunlight having whatever already exists (or gas if it replaces coal) fill the remainder is far more emissions prevented far sooner. If you have a funded commitment for those 80% renewables, by all means plan nuclear for the rest, but unless you do you're just helping fossil fuels stay on.
And when 4 day storage or electrolysis becomes viable that can be phased out too.
Then there is the absolute certainty that -- the millisecond let the likes of chevron or shell or anyone similar run nuclear plants -- we'll have some idiot manager order the 5 or 6 colossally stupid things you have to do in sequence to get another chernobyl (or significantly worse) in the name of cost saving or pumping up some kpi.
Not only harming the environment but virtually enslaving people to mine materials.
Can't heat off solar. Not meaningfully in a cold climate.
Finland is trying heat storage - like the "sand battery" - and should be pushing heat pumps much, much harder than it is.
There is something similar [1] in Nevada, USA that uses molten salt to store energy. I drove through a few months ago and was blown away by it. The top of the tower was so bright that I could see it from the moment it started to crest the horizon.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Pr...
It needs to be addressed from every angle simultaneously. Wind/solar/geothermal/smart grid/heat pumps/efficiency upgrades/etc.
It's a solvable problem if we all agreed to do it.
Solar panels gain efficiency in the cold. In winter there is less sunlight so they produce less power overall (40-60%), but you could double up the panels or add alternative energy generating methods.
I went to https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html, clicked on southern UK, and it gave me "Total loss [%]: -18.6".
Changes in output due to:
Angle of incidence [%]: -3.08
Spectral effects [%]: 1.48
Temperature and low irradiance [%]: -3.77
I think you’ve mixed up total efficiency with efficiency loss.
No they aren't; don't be daft. Power companies and grid operators do their own research. They're not reading HN comments and blindly following their advice. Use some common sense.
And there is plenty of solar in Scotland so it's clearly not that bad.
98% of Norway's energy comes from renewable sources.
Oh we just need to build some fjords! How come we didn't think about that?
96% of the renewable energy comes from hydropower https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/renewable-energy...
Norway doesn't generate power from fjords.
Cold climates have a variety of renewable energy options; wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, etc.
If solar and wind can be used in Greenland (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01189-x), they can be used virtually anywhere.
>If solar and wind can be used in Greenland, they can be used virtually anywhere.
Population: 57,000.
Not even comparable to most countries at all
The claim is that solar can't work in cold climates. That's demonstrably untrue.
(The original upthread post also said renewables, not just solar, so the objections are doubly silly.)
Cold climates are often at high latitudes. The sun is oblique at those latitudes. So solar is at it's most inefficient there. An argument can be made that solar is not a good choice in 'cold climates'
It's certainly not a good only choice, but it can certainly play a role.
Alaska: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200219-the-solar-farms-...
> Their pilot project of two rows of 70 kW panels suggested that the farm would work on a larger scale. The first rows went in during the summer of 2018, and after eight months, the costs came in on target, says Chris Colbert, chief finance officer of Renewable. “We monitored production throughout the year, which also came in on target,” he says. That made it easier for them to get the attention of investors to allow them to expand.
Antarctica: https://www.antarctica.gov.au/antarctic-operations/stations/...
So they have far fewer people who can do any particular job so if they can manage, larger countries should find it much easier.
That's your point right?
Nuclear is pure heat, though.
How do you transfer that heat? Every conversion is lossy.
Small modular reactors being closer to consumers, or, well, just excess electricity (since nuclear generates no CO2, it is trivial to do overprovision).
not a nuclear proponent. but the maxim "don't let perfect be the enemy of good". just because its lossy doesn't mean we can the idea.
This article is very light on data, so I wondered what kind of research it came out of. Most notably this exact quote, fluffy as can be: """If a negotiated settlement took place, Russia would restore the gas.""" There is absolutely no evidence supporting this statement, on both sides of the equation: no indication of what kind of settlement would be offered, nor what would be accepted. So I googled further, and courtesy of nymag: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/what-is-compact-maga...
This magazine is founded by a former NYPost Op-Ed editor & Wall Street Journal columnist. It's not surprising to me that they run, essentially, conservative opinion pieces dressed up as Meaningful Analysis.
It’s rather unfortunate that appeasing Russian aggression has become part of the conservative mainstream.
This is something that truly baffles me. I have some theories of course, but they are near conspiratorial.
How did this happen?
Could they even restore the gas now? Two major pipelines have holes in them.
Those pipelines weren’t fully commissioned yet. Most of the oil and gas goes through pipelines via, er, Ukraine.
This should be the top-rated comment.
> The answer is obvious: Britain is turning into an economic basket case because of the energy war being waged in Europe.
The UK economy has not been doing well since before Russia invaded Ukraine though, after Brexit and after COVID started.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57427997
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/uk-and-global-econ...
Some have argued in the past that a large part of the economy is money laundering for Russian oligarchs - hence the pejorative "Londongrad" nickname. Might a slowdown of this activity be affecting the economy as well?
That was only ever a minuscule fraction of offshore investment into the UK. It’s a great meme but that’s all.
shh, your not meant to say these things out loud.
"U.K.’s High Gas Prices to Hurt Consumers All Year, Industry Group Says Rachel Morison 20 January 2022 at 17:43 UTC" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-20/u-k-s-hig...
Gas prices now are around the same levels seen in Q3 2021. Russian invasion of the Ukraine took place on 24 February 2022
>>Gas prices now are around the same levels seen in Q3 2021.
For whom? I'm on a flex tariff for gas, in Q3 2021 was paying about 3p/kWh, now I'm paying 10p/kWh, the price of gas has literally tripled for me and millions of people compared to the same time last year.
So yeah, how are they at the same levels?
If they had been able to pass on the wholesale prices to consumers - you would have been paying 10p/kWh in Q4 2021 more than 3 months before the invasion of the Ukraine. Businesses have been paying wholesale prices, as the cap does not apply to them.
The "cap" is a terrible system, which has only resulted in a very short lag to prices hitting the consumer - The energy price cap changes every six months, though this will change to every three months from October as requested by the energy companies, opposed by all consumers but the consumer lost on that one.
In Q3 2021 you were paying about 3p/kWh on a wholesale price of 300, now you are paying 10p/kWh on a wholesale price of 400 - and your daily standing charge has increased just because they can get away with it.
Sep 2021 Natural Gas Futures reached 300p/therm
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/uk-natural-gas
Which is the same as it was before the "mini budget"
I fail to see the relevance. Household gas prices had already tripled before the mini budget. Nobody’s household gas prices today reflect the price volatility in the last 10 days, the price changes have been in the works for months.
Household gas prices are as high as they can make it partly because the government has given a blank cheque to the energy producers, partly because of the way the cap is calcuated (Feb23 delivery of gas was a far higher cost in August -- 880p per therm [1])
the cost of gas for delivery in the winter is high due to predicted demand outstripping predicted supply. Prices per therm in Feb are 480p [0], and while prices are dampened a little next summer, similar high costs are there the following year. This time last year though prices for Feb 23 delivery were down in the 120p/therm level. The cost peaked at 330 last December then backed off a little
Cost for Feb 22 delivery this time last year was about 200p, and for Feb 21 delivery in Oct 20 was about 40p. Pre covid it was about 80p in Oct 2019 for delivery in Feb 2020 [2], so we're running at 5 times the cost of pre-covid despite the recent falls in price.
Sensible countries have put in measures to reduce and move towards rationing gas usage (thus reducing costs), the UK has put in measures to encourage gas usage by subsidising consumption.
[0] https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/NF*0/futures-prices
[1] https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/NFG23/overview
[2] https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/NFG19/overview
Bigger picture, the UK hasn't been doing great since 2008. Its productivity growth dropped to approximately zero after the crisis.
the "energy war" isn't an economic blunder, it's a consequence. It's a consequence of politics and and it reveals alot about what is going on under the covers - but the outcome will be simple.
We swap growth and prosperity for recession and hard times. But we keep geopolitical independence.
The alternative is to go along with the Russians until the next time, when the next time will be far too late.
Yes, agree very much. The energy war was a consequence that in a market economy it is almost impossible to choose options which aren't price optimal (cheap).
Germany gets a lot of flak for buying Russian gas cheaply the last 30 years in ever increasing volumes. But it seems strange to argue that Germany just should have bought gas from Qatar or the US for double the price from the start.
How should Germany have done that? Import tax on Russian gas? Laws preventing importing cheap gas from the east? Sounds a bit aggressive towards our big neighbor to the east.
No, I think the article is just plain wrong. Europe benefitted from cheap gas over the last decades and it will be somewhat affected by higher prices for this and next year, but it will accelerate the transition to renewables and strengthen nuclear in those countries in Europe where it is still an option. In the end it push Europe in the right direction.
> buying Russian gas cheaply the last 30 years
This is what people miss. What is the opportunity cost of over-paying for gas for 30 years? By not over-paying, Germany was able to invest in its own economy, and it is now in a position to help Ukraine and complete its transition to renewables.
Germany's strategy is currently unpopular because the costs all happen at once, whereas people generally put up with small costs spread over a long time, but it would have been foolish to harm German economic growth while Putin could just sell his gas somewhere else and grow the Russian economy at a faster rate than Germany's.
One cost is that is directly funded the regime that is now invading a neighboring country, causing more burden on the current military budget as the populace demands support for them, and shoring up local defense budgets as it puts support to the fear that it may be needed at some point in the not-too-distant future.
You can't really say what would have happened, but if nobody purchased that cheap gas, I think it's safe to say the Russia of today would look very different, with that being a rather large part of the country's total exports.
There is no transition to renewables in a 20 year or less horizon. Europe will be wrecked economically and industrially if there is no negotiated end to this war, anything else is wishful thinking.
Why would you think so? To replace Gas for electricity for instance it seems to suffice to double wind and maybe quadruple solar. That is totally doable.
Everything on top would help reduce heating use of gas.
The major issue is that until then we are back to burning coal which is cheap but environmentally much worse than gas.
Last, your point on a negotiating end of the war is weird. Russia blew up their own pipelines. We are never going back to Russian gas in Germany in the near future. This war will be won on the battle field.
Edit: Article from today regarding fracking in Germany: sufficient gas for next 20 years
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/eu-kommission-befuerchtet-...
There is nothing about fracking in Germany in this article. Regarding "Russia blowing up their own pipelines", that makes zero strategic sense. The pipelines being an option played into Russia pressuring EU. That potential leverage going away is not really helping the Russians.
I see a lot of posts written from point-of-views that can only be described as outlandish, as they do not reflect the grim reality. I'd be surprised if full-scale riots in every major Northern European city are not the order of the day in a couple of months, never mind years.
Nope.
The alternative to to not provoke a conflict when you are not ready.
ie invest in alternatives - so you aren't on the hook down the line, but don't provoke a conflict when you are on the hook.
Russia has the economy about the size of Italy - and as you can see by the progress in Ukraine, it's not going to be able to sweep across Europe anytime soon.
There is no existential threat - apart from the one we have just created by timing the conflict when we are not ready.
> There is no existential threat
Well, they have the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world...
The idea that the invasion of Ukraine was "provoked" is Russian propaganda, and you are doing Putin's work by perpetuating it.
Indeed. There is no logical reason to invade Ukraine unless Russia also intends to seize the Suwałki Gap and the Baltic states.
I think that they may have intended that for "phase 3", if Ukraine had fallen swiftly then 2 years from "then" a push into the Balts would have very much been on the cards.
Ugh. The Suwalki gap? I'll be near that area in the next few weeks. Do I have something to fear?
Do you think the Russian armed forces can redeploy from Ukraine (while holding onto their invasion gains there) and launch a successful attack against NATO members?
Not from Ukraine. I'm not sure if there are forces in the Kaliningrad region though. But you're right. Poland is a NATO country and that would be very unlikely.
I'm in Sweden and used to worry (and train to resist) a Soviet/Russian air and sea assault on Gotland.
I'm a lot less worried now.
I'm not European so I'd be very interested to know why?
Probably because it's become painfully clear just how poorly prepared the Russian armed forces are for this, or any, modern conflict. Their equipment is old and badly maintained, their personnel are ill-trained and have low morale, and their intelligence appears to be of the "tell the egomaniac dictator what he wants to hear" variety rather than the "get the best information, no matter what it may imply about relative strengths or whatever" variety.
Putin tried for months to secure Ukraine and is being pushed back. He's instituted a draft to replace lost personnel there, and over a hundred thousand able-bodied Russians have fled the country rather than take the risk that they're called up.
I wouldn't put the odds at zero (because Putin is also not the most stable and sensible person), but it seems very unlikely that he would even try to send troops to open up a completely new front, against actual NATO members, let alone succeed in any meaningful way.
Russian forces are a paper tiger (now).
Also we're soon going to be a part of NATO along with Finland. The Baltic will be a NATO lake.
Frankly it's more dangerous now than it's been at any time since the 80s. Russian forces are so weak that basically any confrontation with Western powers is going to be nuclear from the very start. The fact Western powers haven't said that a tactical nuclear strike inside Ukraine will be responded to in kind is basically permission on a silver platter for Putin to do so.
> The fact Western powers haven't said that a tactical nuclear strike inside Ukraine will be responded to
is that really the fact?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/02/us-russia-puti...
how about this?
I thought they did say, or it leaked out that they have told the Russians: they would respond with conventional airstrikes to destroy all Russian military personnel and equipment in Ukraine, including Crimea.
Putin using nukes is a sign of weakness and he knows it.
>The alternative is to go along with the Russians until the next time, when the next time will be far too late.
Arguably we're already past that. This is what too late looks like.
Removed.
Apparently I can't read.
WTF, the comment you reply to is very clearly not saying that...
> We swap growth and prosperity for recession and hard times. But we keep geopolitical independence.
> The alternative is to go along with the Russians until the next time, when the next time will be far too late.
Sorry, but that didn't read as sarcasm to me?
Or, unless the "swapping growth and prosperity" is in reference to Brexit and is not a reference to supporting Ukraine, or is a reference to short lived gains by depending on Russian energy sources.
It isn't sarcasm. They are saying recession is bad but giving in to Russia is worse.
Reading comprehension... can be improved
> But we keep geopolitical independence
„You can have all the independence you want, as long as it exactly aligns with the US state department.“
I'll take the US state department over Russia any day, thank you. It's why most Eastern Europeans have no love for FDR and Churchill: they basically gave our countries to Stalin.
> I'll take the US state department over Russia any day, thank you.
The value of the Euro disagrees.
It's because Germany screwed up.
The US has long enough told the EU, specifically Germany, to ditch Russian gas and direct 2% of their GDP towards their militaries/NATO. Did Merkel listen? No. Only Poland and to some extent Romania listened. France already had the most capable military in the EU.
> The US has long enough told the EU, specifically Germany, to ditch Russian gas
That's kind of like telling the US to ditch China for manufacturing. It would make sense, it's just easier said than done. The issue is that it seems that Europe lacks gas reserves, Russia was a convenient and reliable source and it would have made no economic sense to diversify the same way it makes no economic sense for the US to bring back manufacturing from China.
> France already had the most capable military in the EU.
The answer to that is World War 2, the Germans were reluctant to militarise, for a while they were outright forbidden to.
Stalin was taking them anyway. Failed to take them away from Stalin yes, I suppose we could have started WW3 in 1945 and tried to nuke our way across Eastern Europe to Moscow.
Based and Patton pilled.
I'll take that over aligning with the politburo.
yeah.... it's not good, but it's better than the alternative. And, if we wiggle hard we can probably get out of it in a few years. Once we go under the Russian hand that really will be that.
Not even mentioning Brexit, possibly the single biggest change in the fundamental economic underpinnings of the UK in the last 50 years, feels deliberately misleading to me.
Living in Britain right now, I can tell you nobody I've met believes in capitulating to Russian demands - any dissatisfaction is purely on the reaction to that, and mismanagement of the response.
And a completely tone-deaf political stance - the proposed budget just said the quiet parts loud of the general Tory stance and highlighted just how "different" they are to the average man on the street.
> Europe’s manufacturing base underpins the value of the euro. When this base is obliterated by high energy costs, the euro will sink.
Hmm... but when the Euro falls the attractiveness of its exports increases.
One consistent thing about these articles is that they fail common sense tests.
Anyway, Brexit is almost certainly to blame for the magnitude of the calamity in England. The bigger problem is that nobody buys anything from there, that English industry and innovation have been stagnating for a long time.
> but when the Euro falls the attractiveness of its exports increases.
They're talking about manufacturing. Energy input costs are still denominated in dollars/rubles, so those exports will still be pretty expensive if the factory doors are to remain open. A falling euro will only make the labor portion of cost inputs decline. And because labor needs to eat, even those input costs will be rising as well.
Will a falling euro help? Sure. But probably not as much as you think.
The energy costs are passed on—a devalued currency doesn’t help here—and same with raw materials imported from elsewhere.
The main problem is that some journalists have read enough economists to be able to pass themselves off as having done the work. When you scratch, there is no quantifying of anything. This article is shock-value based clickbait.
That’s normally the story, but probably not the case when you can’t make stuff overnight or move it because energy is too expensive (just for you). You can’t afford to import the stuff you were making because your currency slid 25% which further breaks supply chains fueling more inflation. Inflation goes up with no levers to pull to slow it down (moderate interest rates will send Southern European over the edge). At the same time, central budgets have to get reallocated to just keep citizens alive through winter.
The problem is that manufacturing those exports requires imported energy which goes up in price every time the Euro sinks in value, and those energy prices are already so much higher than (for example) the USA that it's basically infeasible to manufacture stuff in Europe. The price is only half the story as well, Europe has serious problems with the availability of energy and it probably wouldn't be possible for Germany to import enough energy to keep its industries running at any price.
My reading of this is that high energy costs disable the (production of) supply coming from Europe, such that demand (and the attractiveness of demand for European goods) is irrelevant, because supply is just not there.
Calling it an "energy war" rather than "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" is disingenuous at best, and combined with other articles by the same writer, it's clear that nothing of value is to be found here.
No doubt. Germany , the powerhouse of budget surpluses was relying on unusally cheap russian gas and now that is gone , even if they get gas back russia has no reason to sell it for cheap. This is evidenced by the lack of german solidarity in the energy crisis, the unwillingness to impose price caps at the same time that they are spending $200B in their own market. The cost of war is proving too much for EU
Was Germany in effect driving the alternative sources of gas up in demand and subsequently price, that caused the energy crisis as electricity linked to price of gas for some mad reason.
> The answer is obvious: Britain is turning into an economic basket case because of the energy war being waged in Europe
Who waged that war?
Why did Europe become so dependent on Russian Energy? Did it come down to money? At some level I can see Europe thinking that trade would reduce the possibility of war but still how could they have been do gullible? History shows that they can't keep from going to war. It was only a matter of time before they started one again.
Im guessing, it was just short-sightedness and unjustified optimism - "it wasn't a problem until then, so it probably won't be in the future!". The Arabs did the same thing to the US in the 1970ies, US was as unprepared back then.
Good point, sometimes it's hard to see what's right in front of us. Especially, when it's inconvenient to see it.
>> Why did Europe become so dependent on Russian Energy?
For the same reason the U.S became so depended on China for manufacturing of electronics and most of the world on OPEC for energy. These bad actors provide good value for money, at least for the short term.
Actual title:
The Pound's Warning for Europe
Indeed.
> The answer is obvious: Britain is turning into an economic basket case because of the energy war being waged in Europe
I'm sorry, but who exactly waged this war?
those who do not study history, are doomed to repeat it
google search term "great game"
Unfortunately Germany and other companies didn't go green, they just outsourced the gas extraction to other countries.
Know that Compact is an authoritarian, illiberal rightwing publication with contributors such as Sohrab Amari. Pro Orban and Pro Putin.
Perhaps, but perhaps europe will draw inwards and support its own workers vs buying stuff from outside. Energy, yeah, but aside from foodstuffs what is critical for survival?
Better this and previous European actions when faced with shortages…
What does Europe manufacture? So much of the products in the supermarkets and department stores and even Euroshops come from outside the EU.
In 2020, The Netherlands was the second-largest exporter of food (excluding fish) globally, behind only the United States [1]. I would say its fairly rare for me to go to the supermarket here and buy food that was produced outside of Europe.
[1] https://www.fao.org/3/cb9928en/cb9928en.pdf
> In 2020, The Netherlands was the second-largest exporter of food
Much of which is produced in greenhouses heated by Russian gas ... not sure what your point is.
Netherlands imports about 20% of it's energy, spiking to 35%: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.IMP.CONS.ZS?location...
The Netherlands is one of the more energy independent countries in the EU generally speaking.
a large percentage of those 20% imports are actually from France.
We build a lot of high tech products, for example cars / trucks / busses as well as tooling.
The Netherlands alone - a tiny little country - are world leaders in Yacht production, Food (per m2) and via ASML cutting-edge chip fabs.
Germany, our neighbours, are the production power house of Europe. They make basically everything the USA does and a lot of things produced in China. They're more quality focused than China (and to some extent the USA too).
Germany, Poland and Spain have huge manufacturing industries - what are you on about?
Exported €3,428 billion worth of stuff in 2021.
Guessing they must make some stuff.
> Exported €3,428 billion worth of stuff in 2021.
How much of that is services vs. manufactured goods?
A bit over €2tn is goods. A lot of high value stuff like medical products, aircraft, but also cars and petrolium products.
EDIT: nevermind, I misread the post.
That's right, the rest were services.
You can find out with a straightforward Google search.
Around 18%: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
I think that is because you supermarket doesn't sell cars, airplanes, ships or machined tools.
A lot of things still. A lot of manufacturing jobs moved to eastern Europe rather than Asia in the late 90's and early 00's.
Machines that are used in factories worldwide to produce stuff.
I've never seen a better example of a useful idiot for Putin
What do you think about this guy, or the various experts he quotes:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498491107902062592.html
They're 7 months, +6,000 deaths, 2 NATO membership applications and 2,000 tanks outdated.
Ukraine didn't join NATO and Russia still invaded them, so all these statements aged really poorly.
Not a single sentence of this article refers to renewables.
I think it’s implied.
I don't think so, he explicitly states exactly what he thinks Europe should have done, and that's negotiate with Putin. Out and out victim blaming.
There were tons of attempts of negotiation. So mich that the long table became a meme. But if a party has aims which are unacceptable for the others, there isn't much negotiations can lead to.
Right, by negotiate with Putin he means accept whatever terms Putin demanded.
Russian displomats demanded denazification of Ukraine. When pressed on the details, they didn't know what it meant.
They can't know because they have a paranoid, ramblish (did you see the recent speech?) geneatric emperror and slave-ish, self desteuctive subservience.
One does not simply negotiate with the Russians. It only works until after the've been beaten them and they have their back to the wall.
As xwdv points out, it's implied, inescapably, by two points:
1) it blames the EU, somehow, instead of Russia
2) if by some magical thinking one avoids blaming Russia somehow, the only other possible thing the EU could have done wrong is to have not somehow built a lot more of its own fossil-fuel infrastructure and production, earlier. Which isn't really a strong argument, but if you're trying really hard to avoid admitting that Russia is the problem, and you have a bone to pick about relying more on fossil fuels, that's the only trick in the bag.
Russia is the primary problem. The secondary problem - as it pertains to the energy context - was the EU's (affluent Europe more broadly) wide failure to understand or accept what Russia is (and what consequences the Russian culture would inevitably produce again for Europe, namely wars of conquest against their neighbors).
If they'd actually done the thing everyone is blaming it on (ie. spend vastly more on renewables than fossil fuels or nuclear) it wouldn't be a problem
Replying to myself as I just realised it was written by the same person:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/europe-s-descent-into-de...
It's more about Pilkington's longstanding right-wing anti-American, Russophilic bias; even as late as August he was trumpeting the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a stunning success and Russian weapons as qualitatively superior to US systems, even as Ukraine -- with a tiny portion of NATO's arsenal and a fraction of the average NATO soldier's training -- was already assaulting into Russian-occupied territory.
So pushing energy doomerism (Putin's last card, short of the nuclear ladder, to play against Europe) and blaming Europe for Putin's decision to cut off energy supplies (and pipelines!) is just amplifying the Kremlin's message against the West, something that Pilkington seems very happy to do.
Thanks for pointing this out. The author's other articles remind me of something you'd see from a Russophilic survivalist blogger like Dmitry Orlov. I think the general tone of the world has become biased toward negativity and so anything that predicts doom is getting paid attention and given less critical thought.
What do you mean by all that?