23 ms·

Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

114 points by leonkunert 4y ago

pastor_bob 4y ago
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Nordstream 2 and the general concept of "Germany buys tons of Russian gas" was very controversial in Poland and the Baltics, too. Most of the former Eastern Bloc countries were distrustful of Russia in general, much more so after Russia took Crimea in 2014.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  Plenty of countries that were not Germany predicted this. This was not some unique insight on his part.
  - hyperman1 4y ago
    'Literally dumber than Trump' is not a good label, even for a politician.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  NordStream was widely criticised from the very beginning, to the point many suspect some kind of corruption being involved in its approval.
_8j50 4y ago
Covid shut down most LNG production in north america, good opportunity to get back to fracking and ruining the environment in US and Canada for the right price, theh can use tanker ships not just pipes unless they simply can't move that volume with ships.
- 88840-8855 4y ago
  there is no lng supply possible for Europe. you can frack as much as you want and ship as much as you want. the next 4 quarters will decide about the downfall of Europe (and ultimately the US).
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    "Constraint is a forcing function for ingenuity." Renewables are going to ramp, floating LNG import terminals are already en route (to add capacity to the existing 24 in EU countries), and industrial processes requiring LNG will make due with less or seek alternatives. Europe will place a small number of coal plants on temporary standby, and they will only add 1.3% to EU emissions annually, even in the worst-case scenario where they run at maximum output. There will be some pain, but this is the 21st century, not the 19th.
    - 88840-8855 4y ago
      How will renewables help this winter? All the stuff you describe are need at least 2 years. At least. Plus, they are expensive. Energy will come with a huge premium in Europe. This is the time that Putin needs to build the pipelines to other countries. Let us not forget that NOBODY is against the war: not a single South American, not any African country, not China, not India. This is a US/Canada/Europe/South Korea/Japan/Australia thing. Nobody else cares. They are happy to get cheap energy soon. Short term impact on Europe: - cold winter - populism - crashing economy - gov financial support and more inflation - no inflation control as we cannot let Southern Europe crash, hence, no interest rate hikes Mid-term effects - Expensive American dirty LNG - No competetive advantage anymore I disagree with the West to 100% and hope that Putin will finish off Ukraine asap so this topic is finally closed. Disclaimer: I have Ukranian roots, visited Ukraine often, support refugees here in Germany from day 1 and was for many weeks at the border when the war started. So please go away with your "morals" and value bs.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        We have different perspectives. Are there challenges? Absolutely. Conversely, the free world ("United States and Co") has strong incentives to not allow Europe (a NATO ally) to fail due to Russia's actions. Direct military action is off the table at the moment (it appears?), but the US has robust economic capacity to assist logistically speaking. India may do nothing except get a deal on Russian energy, but China is in no position to assist considering the economic razor's edge they're currently on (they're even considering accepting imports of Australian coal again due to internal constraints). Also, I take issue with "Expensive dirty LNG." While a greenhouse gas, fossil gas burns clean. It is a fine short term solution until this conflict reaches resolution, as long as you can shim in import infra at underutilized infrastructure intersections. The LNG shipping capacity is not a challenge (although import logistics are, as mentioned), and the cost premium is the cost of energy demand during a conflict. > I disagree with the West to 100% and hope that Putin will finish off Ukraine asap so this topic is finally closed. Speaking only based on factual information, this is unlikely. Putin is in poor health (shaking in public, puffy appearance likely due to heavy steroid use, putting off events without explanation), and the US will remain solvent longer than Russia can continue its military actions while under crippling economic sanctions. To allow Putin to succeed would set a geopolitical precedent that the developed world can't allow to be set. The American-supplied HIMARS are proving very effective in recent combat ops (per The Economist) against Russian assets, which is a positive sign that Ukraine continues to receive military support. In short, Putin will fail eventually because he cannot be allowed to succeed, we're simply haggling over the timeline. Disclaimer: US citizen, not a warmonger, pragmatic about the application of military force as a necessary evil.
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Finternational%2Feurope%2Fa-stress-test-for-solidarity-looming-natural-gas-shortages-has-the-eu-scrambling-for-solutions-a-c3e1cdb9-e11b-4f7a-bdbc-f252e1ebe013 https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Finter...
hash07e 4y ago
Errr... How about turn on those Nuclear plants?
- option 4y ago
  - smcl 4y ago
    If said teenager was in charge of Germany's energy policy they'd be doubling down on Nuclear rather than falling back to Coal
- shafyy 4y ago
  Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).
  - lolinder 4y ago
    Is there a difference between the kind of gas used in power plants and the kind for residential use? If not, couldn't nuclear plants reduce the need for gas in power plants, allowing that gas to go to heating homes instead?
    - fsh 4y ago
      There is currently almost no gas used for electricity generation in Europe (much too expensive). Even under normal conditions, heating and industry consume an order of magnitude more gas than electricity generation.
      - lolinder 4y ago
        EDIT: This is wrong, as the commenter notes below, this is energy, not electricity. Citation? The number that I consistently see cited is 1/4 of all electricity in EU comes from Natural Gas [0]. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2a.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
oxff 4y ago
Glad to let moralistic foreign policy drive the entire trade block down the shitter (it is moralistic FP because EU did not nut up and actually deploy to protect the so-precious-Ukraine, but instead threw its own economy and living standards into chaos just so they wouldn't be mistaken to be pro-Putler). In short, insanity.
- MauranKilom 4y ago
  Right, starting WW3 by entering the theater would not have been "insanity". Obviously.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  "Let's not get nuked" isn't moralistic or insane, in my book. A hot war between EU/NATO and Russia is not something anyone should advocate for, nor is letting Russia just take countries it wants on the edges of Europe. The current situation is a direct result of ignoring a long pattern of Russian aggression and expansionism in Georgia, Moldova, and Crimea.
  - oxff 4y ago
    I'm not recommending to have a nuclear war over who gets to collect vodka taxes in some East European town. I am pointing out that these people let moral foreign policy run their entire trade block and foreign policy choices, and not a cold rational calculus of any kind. All the self-sanctions have come to nothing: they have not and will not materially affect the end result of the war. They've made me, as a citizen in an EU country, pay out of my nose for their moral betterness though, when we are not even a party to the war.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The rational calculus here is "Russia will keep doing this as long as we let them". The time to start getting off Russian gas was 2014. The EU, and Germany in particular, let a gun be pointed at their head for far too long.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
Given that Germany ignored decades of warnings about this, let them take the brunt of the cuts.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Technically they didn't ignore the warnings, they actively laughed at them: https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249?lang=en https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249?...
- jlangenauer 4y ago
  There are so many people who want to see ordinary Germans suffer for decisions their government made. Do you think the pensioners who will freeze are the ones who decided on energy policy?
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    Are you saying that Germany is not a democracy?
    - zirror 4y ago
      The party who was supposed to be against abolishing our nuclear plants, the conservative CDU and the liberal FDP, actually abolished them. So, kinda? No matter who we elected at that time, nobody would have kept them.
  - veeti 4y ago
    How many of those pensioners naively participated in Germany's anti-nuclear movement in the 70's, 80's, 90's? You reap what you sow. No sympathy for Russian puppets.
    - pydry 4y ago
      It's kind of amazing that Germany can make the biggest effort of any western country to switch over to renewables and when they start suffering because America and Russia decided they want a proxy fight, Americans opine that Germany should be suffering because they decided to switch off a source of 4% of their power and didnt build enough port capacity for overpriced American LNG. If this truly is the official American line then Id be pushing to have American military bases in Germany shut down.
kstrauser 4y ago
Overcoming addiction sucks. If your heroin dealer is arrested, maybe it’s a good time to consider stopping heroin. Withdrawal is going to be awful at first, but after a while, you’ve overcome it and you can move ahead with a better life.
nisa 4y ago
To get some perspective why this is such a hotly debated topic - just got my heating bill for the last year - just a small 2 person flat in a small town - most flats in Germany are heated by gas one way or another - 700€/year with 5.2ct/kWh for 2021 - current market is more like 15ct/kWh and will probably rise. With the rise in rent prices in the last years this could push quite a bit of poor / lower middle class people into poverty/problems which is the majority of the population. Furthermore gas is used in almost every chemical process in some way or another - it's difficult to just disable a single industry because the network effects are not really known. So this will be a shitshow because industry/lobbyists groups and regulation will probably collide at the expense of the tax-payer. Still me and all of my friends are still fine with this. There is no alternative anyway - Russia is a fascist totalitarian state that declared war against Europe and is using gas as a weapon. After reading https://osce.usmission.gov/response-to-moscow-mechanism-report-on-ukraine/ https://osce.usmission.gov/response-to-moscow-mechanism-repo... as just as a single example I just hope we can cut off Russian gas/oil as fast as possible. edit: Looks like I was wrong on the burning of gas for electricity: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?stacking=stacked_absolute_area&source=fossil_gas_unit&interval=month&l=en&c=DE https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?stacking=s... edit: Damn'it just took a quick look at the calculation of the whole house and took a wrong number it's not 1600€/year but 700€/year - still triple that and it's still a problem.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  >it's difficult to just disable a single industry because the network effects are not really known. Not to mention the unfairness of choosing one industry full of workers to say, "sorry, you're going to go jobless for the greater good," to.
- MrRiddle 4y ago
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Have you seen any impact of the Euro's drop against the dollar in your day to day life? Say, things from American companies getting substantially more expensive, or salaries rising to keep pace with American counterparts?
Spooky23 4y ago
The whole Ukraine/Russia conflict underscores how poor the strategic position of Europe and the US is with respect to Europe. We’ve been phoning it in since the Clinton era and assuming that “norms” and oligarchs would keep Russia at bay. End of the day they got tanks, nukes and are learning what they can get away with.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  No, most europe and the us told germany it relies too much on a single source of energy. Schroeder, Merkel, both were in bed with russia’s oil and gas tsars. Nord Stream’s ceo is a former stasi officer, ursula is corrupt and many many alternative pipelines have been pushed back in favour of we know who. Please dont mix everyone else in. As you can see some german commenters even admit to germany wanting to push for eu wide de nuclearisation. Some even go as far as saying germany shouldnt get involved in east europe - despite it making copious amounts of profits from the region, with many policies actually preventing development there in favour of germany. The eu needs reform so that it works nicely for all members. It can be done but germany needs to take a welcome step back and to stop sanctioning allies each time they have dissenting opinions. Germany’s economy was subsidised by dirty energy and the policies of the eu it controls have done it favour too much and too long.
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    Who in Europe isn't heavily affected by the gas shortage? How is this Germany's fault? To me it seems like a lot of the smaller/weaker countries in Europe just always need a scapegoat to blame when things get difficult.
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      Switching off their own nuclear power plants, replacing them with gas and coal, when gas is lacking and creating shortage of electricity, thus propelling prices up. Thing is that energy is traded in EEX (https://www.eex.com/en/ https://www.eex.com/en/) so everyone who is trading there is feeling Germany's stupid decisions. For example Sweden is not in EEX and has no problem with high energy prices.
Gravityloss 4y ago
Unfortunately Brunsbüttel terminal only finally got the go ahead in January 2022 and it will take 3.5 years to build. It's anyway a good alternative source. https://www.gem.wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_LNG_Terminal https://www.gem.wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_LNG_Terminal Increasing insulation and installing and building more heat pumps are obvious ways to save on gas. Italy used some big EU subsidies to pay 100% of people's home and house renovations. Would something like that be possible in Germany? 50% subsidy for insulation renovation. Run all the styrofoam, rock wool and glass wool factories nonstop in three shifts. Found new heat pump factories. Train employees.
- nickserv 4y ago
  A lot of manufacturing for these materials aren't in Europe though. New factories and associated logistics chains, finding and training workers, these things are difficult to set up in a few months, never mind the actual process of renovating millions of homes.
  - greggsy 4y ago
    It certainly shouldn’t be ignored, simply because it might take some time. Targeting public housing and (responsibly) incentivising landlords to improve less efficient homes would go a long way.
- 1234letshaveatw 4y ago
  my god- the EU redistributed tax revenue from member countries to fund 100% of home improvements in Italy? I can't even imagine.
  - jamesrr39 4y ago
    You don't have to imagine, it is commonplace around the world. Lots of tax revenue from countries all around the world is distributed to different areas of the country/world (obvious e.g. foreign aid). If the amount of tax isn't excessive, allows everyone to have a good standard of living, and is resulting in something positive, why not?
jonathan-adly 4y ago
There are solutions, just unpopular and require a political class that is not fickle and weak. Solution #1. Capitulate to Putin and treat Russia as a regional power that can gobble and punish its neighbors when they stray too far. Solution #2. Forget about the climate for the next 5 years, turn on all coal, nuclear powerplants. Solution #3. Put the Euro printer in overdrive and pay whatever price needed for the little natural gas that's out there and the expense of transportation. #3 is probably the worst, but also - the easiest for a fickle and weak political class to do. So, that's what's happening. Won't be surprised if we get hyperinflation in the EU in the winter. The ECB barely functions in good times with its one monetary policy, but different budgets nonsense.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  > Solution #2. Forget about the climate for the next 5 years, turn on all coal, nuclear powerplants. Nuclear power is perfectly compatible with climate goals.
  - jonathan-adly 4y ago
    I am with ya there. But the Germans populace have been thoroughly brain-washed that nuclear is bad. So, better just to tell them : "its bad, but needed because we are in a war."
    - oxff 4y ago
      It is absurd that we're having "energy crisis" when we have the technological know-how to build nuclear energy, literally a solved problem.
      - XorNot 4y ago
        Also before anyone talks about fuel: Australia is right here. We have a bonkers amount of Uranium in the ground, to the point that our coal is actually pretty dang radioactive.
  - 4y ago
olivermarks 4y ago
https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#section-overview https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor... I'm on the fence about an all electric future- we simply don't have the grid capacity in most parts of the world - but the Germans and French who control the EU should have been developing SMNR years ago. They are now in an energy checkmate situation with a hostile country with an economy the size of Italy. Not clever,
- raverbashing 4y ago
  France is looking into small reactors it seems But has RR actually shipped one of these?
  - theplumber 4y ago
    I believe NuScale is leading the way
- XCSme 4y ago
  This is why I think the more likely future is for each house to have their own electricity generator (solar panels?) and batteries to store the energy.
  - lazide 4y ago
    The capex to do that was unreachable for the vast majority of the population, even when money was ‘cheap’.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    In Europe, much fewer people live in houses, and thanks to the dense, walkable cities they enjoy, they have much fewer roof and yard space to put the panels. Also, unlike US, most of Europe doesn’t have huge swaths of hot and sunny plains that are currently not used for anything valuable. Look at the satellite view of Germany, France or Poland: it’s all farms, with occasional forests.
    - 4y ago
ibeckermayer 4y ago
Related content "Trump: Germany 'Totally Controlled By Russia'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLZBVTid4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLZBVTid4I German bureaucrats laugh at Trump after he says the country could become totally dependent on Russian energy: https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249 https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249
- credit_guy 4y ago
  I generally despise Trump, but here he looks like a visionary and the German diplomats look like morons (in hindsight, at least).
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    Even a stopped clock is right twice a day :) Have to hand it to him this time...he was so right.
    - parkingrift 4y ago
      Obama said the same things.
      - credit_guy 4y ago
        Was he loughed at too?
  - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
    I'm still reeling with what I just watched....
  - theplumber 4y ago
    But "Russia has been treated so unfairy" and "European Union is the biggest foe of the United States" not Russia or China...So let's listen to what that clown(Trump) says next, right? Germany's dependency on Russia's energy has been well known for decades.
- 4y ago
nootropicat 4y ago
>Both countries drew the ire of the others, and for a time, it seemed as if the European Union's internal market would break apart under pressure from the crisis due to the egoism of the member states. >A repeat this time around is to be avoided at all costs. Because this time solidarity is in Germany's interests, duh. >Germany Blocks Joint Gas Purchases >But resistance is coming from large natural gas utilities in Germany, like RWE, and from industrial customers as well. They want to buy their own gas and fear that they won't be allocated sufficient supplies by the EU. Seems like the German definition of solidarity is that they get gas from others.
akmarinov 4y ago
Break out the coal, boys. It's not like the US is in any way trying to be green. Honestly, China is Earth's best shot at climate change.
- usrn 4y ago
  China is 1) Not self sufficient, they have to import food from the US 2) Burning nearly a million more cubic feet of coal per capita than the US does (and they have way more people, so that means they're really burning far far more coal) Honestly I'm not sure how you thought that made any sense. EDIT: (out of comment quota) >China also installs more renewables than anyone else I'm sure that's great for the companies producing those, I'm not convinced that will lead to them burning less coal (although their coming demographic collapse almost certainly will.) Germany was in a pretty similar situation too and the current situation is the consequence.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    China also installs more renewables than anyone else
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    China imports food from the US. China does not have to import food from the US. In all honesty, China and the US are unique nations in that they don't have to import anything from anyone. It's politically and financially convenient for them to import the things they import, so they do. But they are both perfectly capable of meeting their own needs with domestic production if the issue is pressed. Even where they don't currently manufacture a thing, they're both able to ramp up manufacturing of that thing in a timeframe unthinkable for other nations.
- aftbit 4y ago
  Oh yea, China who emitted 2x as much CO2 in 2017 as they did in 2005, vs the US who has been flat since 1990[1]. China who is operating 1100 coal plants vs the US who is operating 240[2]. Sure, China's growing their economy, and they have ~4x as many people as the US, but they are not some bastion of clean green energy or anything. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...
raverbashing 4y ago
My uninformed bet is that a) Russia likes money more and b) if they wanted to cut the delivery of gas they would have done it already They like playing the panic angle of course, and closing the tap once in a while, but I think it's mostly hot air
- rebuilder 4y ago
  I’m guessing Russia will fully cut off gas to EU when it seems that either the EU is about to ban gas imports or turning the taps off will likely break the EU.
- pirate787 4y ago
  This was also the argument about Ukraine in early February.
- rolobio 4y ago
  The Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Europe is currently off. Its a planned maintenance however. But what if they run into "issues" and the maintenance takes a few weeks? A month? Pure speculation of course, but these things do happen. I doubt they would keep it off forever, Putin likes Europe being dependent on him.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    Yes but there are other pipelines (and they still continue pumping)
- sorenjan 4y ago
  Russia is making more money on their oil and gas exports now than last year [0], due to higher prices. Imagine what could happen when winter comes and Russia shuts off the gas deliveries until EU pulls back sanctions. Would all countries stand united even though some are very dependent on that gas to heat their homes? Will people still care enough about a war that's almost a year old by then? [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/27615/daily-russian-fossil-fuel-revenues-in-may-2021-may-2022-and-components-of-change/ https://www.statista.com/chart/27615/daily-russian-fossil-fu...
etempleton 4y ago
The EU and the US need to have been building new nuclear power plants yesterday. Not everywhere in the world is ideal for nuclear due to the potential for significant natural disaster, but much of Western Europe and the United States are perfectly safe with the latest nuclear reactor designs.This was known before the current energy crisis and there has been complete inaction for decades. Coupled with solar, wind and existing hydro, it is our best path forward for sustainable future in the mid term. It is not just about being "green" or saving the planet from global warming. It is about energy independence.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  Everyone wants to build nuclear. People get quiet when they realize that the energy investors won't pay for it so you end up with Uncle Sam footing the bill. Any analyst just looks at the financial disaster that is Vogtie and it becomes impossible to justify investment. Unless the government bankrolls you. In the US, we need to get comfortable with the government owning large swathes of energy production capacity. Until we are, and are willing to pay the taxes and authorize the disbursements to make these things happen, nuclear will not happen in the big way we need it to.
  - q1w2 4y ago
    How does China build 24 Gen III+ reactors in 10 years, and we spend billions in court arguing about environmental reviews. We F ourselves because we don't allow construction companies to do their jobs.
    - bilbo0s 4y ago
      It's not the environmentalism that gets us. In fact even if there were no environmental rules or any other regulations at all, we'd still have Vogtie in the mess it's in. Construction costs money and time. Metallurgy costs money and time. And on and on and on. I doubt we could build a reactor for less than USD5 Billion even with no regulations at all. This stuff takes time, and if you don't get it right, the damn things don't work. It's not like they work with less efficiency, they just don't work at all if any one of a thousand critical things is done incorrectly. Then that has to be fixed, and you try again. And so on. And keep in mind, that's for designs we are familiar with and understand. Just imagine trying to build and scale out the new designs. When it comes to the new designs, what is it that we don't know that we don't know? How much time and money will those mistakes cost? It's about a lot more than environmentalism. Put in layman's terms: "This stuff is just hard." Getting rid of regulations helps some. Getting rid of the need to actually make any kind of money by making the government shoulder the costs helps even more. But in the end, you're still left with constructing a nuclear plant. Which is an extremely hard problem that is enormously expensive to solve. So put yourself in the place of an energy investor, what's s/he going to do? Raise USD5 Billion to spend on the hopes that we can actually construct one of these correctly and under budget in under 10 years? Or just keep slapping up wind farms and start pulling in his/her generation fee in less than a month?
belorn 4y ago
If we just went based on the political message in the past then Germany could just use that massive amount of solar and wind they have been subsidizing for the last few decades, and for heating they could simply use that green hydrogen. Both of those were supposed to be both cheaper than any other for of energy. More realistically, this is a time where most countries in EU should be scrambling to throw money at new energy projects and energy modernization. That should help with both the energy crisis long term, and focusing money on internal infrastructure seems to have good track records for reducing inflation. Reducing imports dependency from Russia, especially in a different currency, should strengthen the euro.
- lazide 4y ago
  The political message was always wishful thinking - even with Germany’s massive spend, there was never a realistic way to replace baseline heating needs in the winter without spending at least 10x more. Most off grid systems have some sort of generator for the long stretches of cloudy days, and in a cold climate, pretty much everyone uses fossil fuels for heating off grid due to the energy density, reliability, and low cost. Anything else starts being really cost prohibitive if you do the math on ‘I get X amount of heat during these long tail scenarios or the pipes burst/I freeze’. Physics is a bitch.
bamboozled 4y ago
I love the absolute BS of the world in 2022. The whole world is supposed to be off fossil fuels by now, and here we are hoping and praying Germany and the rest of the EU gets enough fossil fuels to burn this winter. If humanity was to look at itself in the mirror, it would see an image stupid freaking hypocrite clown. Solar, Nuclear, Wind, get after it, it's so late now it almost feels like a waste of time...
- usrn 4y ago
  Part of the reason Germany is still stuck on fossil fuels was the ultimatums of the environmentalists that killed their nuclear power. IMO if they really care about the environment they need to chill out so people can work out how to transition. Hard rules like this will first result in desperation which causes people to make sub-optimal choices like you're seeing now and eventually economic collapse which will absolutely destroy the environment (think of all the messes the USSR made when it fell apart.) Whatever regime replaces the one that causes this probably will care a lot less about the environment too.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    Do we really need to keep blaming hippies? I've read from a few different places now that people who are part of Nordstream were powerful in German politics and had an incentive to push Gas over nuclear. I'm sure there are multiple factors at play.
    - usrn 4y ago
      I'm blaming blindly siding with environmentalists (especially corporate funded ones) without reasoning through the consequences. If you want to call those hippies than yeah I'm blaming the hippies, this is a direct consequence of their actions no matter what you call them. The exact same thing is going to keep happening if they don't change their behavior.
      - theplumber 4y ago
        We invested more in oil and gas than in renewables so I think you should blame oil and gas more than environmentalists
tomputer 4y ago
Gas prices were already rising since 2020 but yes, the Ukraine/Russia conflict made it worse. Below a graph from the Dutch TTF Gas Futures from the past 2 years. The contract price is in Euros and Euro cents per MWh. https://www.theice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5408202&span=3 https://www.theice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futur... Edit: those are just numbers on a screen but in real life that means the energy/gas bill increases between 5x - 10x if this continues.
- q1w2 4y ago
  Russian influence operations have been sabotaging western gas production via "green party" lobbyists. They've done the same for nuclear. They've planned this invasion and freezing Europe this winter is all part of their plan.
sremani 4y ago
Germany wanted to have and eat it cake too. It worked to an extent during Merkel. They made European South pay the hefty price while humming on their exports using Cheap Russian gas/oil and supplying manufacturing components to china and finished goods to rest of Europe and America. Russia is not some bit player in Oil and Natural gas industry, 5 million barrels per day ? That is a huge amount of hydrocarbons to replace. Of course, Europe will scramble to find alternatives and before they go cold, will fuck the Global South again from its limited supplies, it already started happening - Pakistan got its NG supplier broke contract and sold gas under contract to Europe. Europe is going to get screwed but in an effort save its ass it will create a frenzy in global south that would tip many countries into absolute choas.
marsven_422 4y ago
dukeofdoom 4y ago
When ideology meets reality. Expensive, overbuilt capacity for Wind and Solar in countries with not much sun or wind for most of the year. Now with the declining Euro will make purchasing energy even more expensive. Fertilizer shortage and declining working age population. And threats to the free flow of goods across the world. Inflation is here to stay. It will be interesting to see how many governments fall in the next few years the way Sri Lanka's did.
sorenjan 4y ago
Frankly, I think it's embarrassing that such a large part of Europe is still so dependent on natural gas. It's being portrayed as a problem now due to economics, but global warming and making yourself dependent on authoritarian regimes has been an issue for much longer than that. The switch should have happened much sooner, but I guess the money was always more important and Russian gas was cheap enough to forget about the external costs. And it's not only about finding other energy sources, it's also about using the energy in a smarter way. Better insulated houses and heat pumps work well here in northern Europe, why hasn't this been a priority the last ten years at least? I'm paying much more for my electricity now even though we hardly use any natural gas in this country, because we're exporting electricity to countries that do, driving up our prices. Their shortsightedness is costing me money and adding more CO2 to our atmosphere. If it was only because of the war in Ukraine I wouldn't mind as much, but come winter and millions of people in other countries are going to burn expensive Russian gas to heat poorly insulated houses leaking heat like a sieve.
- q1w2 4y ago
  Because they are morons and shut down their nuclear plants and bet everything on Russian gas and renewables that aren't even designed to provide baseload. They absolutely should have seen this coming.
  - sorenjan 4y ago
    Might be true for Germany, but other countries are also dependent on natural gas. In 2018 natural gas accounted for 45% of Italy's electricity production [0], in 2021 28% of Hungary's electricity came from gas [1]. And that's just electricity, 63% [2] of Europeans energy consumption is used for heating, I would guess a large part of that is gas as well. This is bigger than Germany closing some nuclear plants, although that obviously isn't helping. Despite knowing that natural gas is a fossil fuel that we need to stop using the cost of using it hasn't been high enough to dissuade using it. This sudden increase in cost and the crisis it has and will cause really shows that economy is the only thing that matters, people will continue burning whatever they can get as long as it's cheap, since the external cost of global warming isn't properly included in the price. Neither was security risks, and we're all paying for that now. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/873552/energy-mix-in-italy/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/873552/energy-mix-in-ita... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235432/hungary-distribution-of-electricity-production-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235432/hungary-distribu... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_consumption_in_households https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
pumnikol 4y ago
European LNG spot market prices went up by much more than an order of magnitude between Summer 2020 and Spring 2022. They also went up for other regions while Russia has no problems selling gas outside of Europe, even with steep mark-ups. It pains me to write this, but Russia is coming out on top because of Europe cutting itself off from her gas.

114 points by leonkunert 4y ago

inglor_cz 4y ago
Nordstream 2 and the general concept of "Germany buys tons of Russian gas" was very controversial in Poland and the Baltics, too. Most of the former Eastern Bloc countries were distrustful of Russia in general, much more so after Russia took Crimea in 2014.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
Plenty of countries that were not Germany predicted this. This was not some unique insight on his part.
- hyperman1 4y ago
  'Literally dumber than Trump' is not a good label, even for a politician.
TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
NordStream was widely criticised from the very beginning, to the point many suspect some kind of corruption being involved in its approval.

Covid shut down most LNG production in north america, good opportunity to get back to fracking and ruining the environment in US and Canada for the right price, theh can use tanker ships not just pipes unless they simply can't move that volume with ships.

88840-8855 4y ago
there is no lng supply possible for Europe. you can frack as much as you want and ship as much as you want. the next 4 quarters will decide about the downfall of Europe (and ultimately the US).
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  "Constraint is a forcing function for ingenuity." Renewables are going to ramp, floating LNG import terminals are already en route (to add capacity to the existing 24 in EU countries), and industrial processes requiring LNG will make due with less or seek alternatives. Europe will place a small number of coal plants on temporary standby, and they will only add 1.3% to EU emissions annually, even in the worst-case scenario where they run at maximum output. There will be some pain, but this is the 21st century, not the 19th.
  - 88840-8855 4y ago
    How will renewables help this winter? All the stuff you describe are need at least 2 years. At least. Plus, they are expensive. Energy will come with a huge premium in Europe. This is the time that Putin needs to build the pipelines to other countries. Let us not forget that NOBODY is against the war: not a single South American, not any African country, not China, not India. This is a US/Canada/Europe/South Korea/Japan/Australia thing. Nobody else cares. They are happy to get cheap energy soon. Short term impact on Europe: - cold winter - populism - crashing economy - gov financial support and more inflation - no inflation control as we cannot let Southern Europe crash, hence, no interest rate hikes Mid-term effects - Expensive American dirty LNG - No competetive advantage anymore I disagree with the West to 100% and hope that Putin will finish off Ukraine asap so this topic is finally closed. Disclaimer: I have Ukranian roots, visited Ukraine often, support refugees here in Germany from day 1 and was for many weeks at the border when the war started. So please go away with your "morals" and value bs.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      We have different perspectives. Are there challenges? Absolutely. Conversely, the free world ("United States and Co") has strong incentives to not allow Europe (a NATO ally) to fail due to Russia's actions. Direct military action is off the table at the moment (it appears?), but the US has robust economic capacity to assist logistically speaking. India may do nothing except get a deal on Russian energy, but China is in no position to assist considering the economic razor's edge they're currently on (they're even considering accepting imports of Australian coal again due to internal constraints). Also, I take issue with "Expensive dirty LNG." While a greenhouse gas, fossil gas burns clean. It is a fine short term solution until this conflict reaches resolution, as long as you can shim in import infra at underutilized infrastructure intersections. The LNG shipping capacity is not a challenge (although import logistics are, as mentioned), and the cost premium is the cost of energy demand during a conflict. > I disagree with the West to 100% and hope that Putin will finish off Ukraine asap so this topic is finally closed. Speaking only based on factual information, this is unlikely. Putin is in poor health (shaking in public, puffy appearance likely due to heavy steroid use, putting off events without explanation), and the US will remain solvent longer than Russia can continue its military actions while under crippling economic sanctions. To allow Putin to succeed would set a geopolitical precedent that the developed world can't allow to be set. The American-supplied HIMARS are proving very effective in recent combat ops (per The Economist) against Russian assets, which is a positive sign that Ukraine continues to receive military support. In short, Putin will fail eventually because he cannot be allowed to succeed, we're simply haggling over the timeline. Disclaimer: US citizen, not a warmonger, pragmatic about the application of military force as a necessary evil.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Finternational%2Feurope%2Fa-stress-test-for-solidarity-looming-natural-gas-shortages-has-the-eu-scrambling-for-solutions-a-c3e1cdb9-e11b-4f7a-bdbc-f252e1ebe013 https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Finter...

hash07e 4y ago

Errr... How about turn on those Nuclear plants?

option 4y ago
- smcl 4y ago
  If said teenager was in charge of Germany's energy policy they'd be doubling down on Nuclear rather than falling back to Coal
shafyy 4y ago
Natural gas cannot be replaced by nuclear energy (or any other source of electricity) for many applications, at least not in the short term. For example here in Germany, many homes use gas boilers (heaters) for heating space and water. You would need to rebuild a lot of infrastructure to use electricity (which Germany plans to do, but obviously this will take years if not decades).
- lolinder 4y ago
  Is there a difference between the kind of gas used in power plants and the kind for residential use? If not, couldn't nuclear plants reduce the need for gas in power plants, allowing that gas to go to heating homes instead?
  - fsh 4y ago
    There is currently almost no gas used for electricity generation in Europe (much too expensive). Even under normal conditions, heating and industry consume an order of magnitude more gas than electricity generation.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      EDIT: This is wrong, as the commenter notes below, this is energy, not electricity. Citation? The number that I consistently see cited is 1/4 of all electricity in EU comes from Natural Gas [0]. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2a.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...

oxff 4y ago

Glad to let moralistic foreign policy drive the entire trade block down the shitter (it is moralistic FP because EU did not nut up and actually deploy to protect the so-precious-Ukraine, but instead threw its own economy and living standards into chaos just so they wouldn't be mistaken to be pro-Putler). In short, insanity.

MauranKilom 4y ago
Right, starting WW3 by entering the theater would not have been "insanity". Obviously.
ceejayoz 4y ago
"Let's not get nuked" isn't moralistic or insane, in my book. A hot war between EU/NATO and Russia is not something anyone should advocate for, nor is letting Russia just take countries it wants on the edges of Europe. The current situation is a direct result of ignoring a long pattern of Russian aggression and expansionism in Georgia, Moldova, and Crimea.
- oxff 4y ago
  I'm not recommending to have a nuclear war over who gets to collect vodka taxes in some East European town. I am pointing out that these people let moral foreign policy run their entire trade block and foreign policy choices, and not a cold rational calculus of any kind. All the self-sanctions have come to nothing: they have not and will not materially affect the end result of the war. They've made me, as a citizen in an EU country, pay out of my nose for their moral betterness though, when we are not even a party to the war.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The rational calculus here is "Russia will keep doing this as long as we let them". The time to start getting off Russian gas was 2014. The EU, and Germany in particular, let a gun be pointed at their head for far too long.

throwawaysleep 4y ago

Given that Germany ignored decades of warnings about this, let them take the brunt of the cuts.

bpodgursky 4y ago
Technically they didn't ignore the warnings, they actively laughed at them: https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249?lang=en https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249?...
jlangenauer 4y ago
There are so many people who want to see ordinary Germans suffer for decisions their government made. Do you think the pensioners who will freeze are the ones who decided on energy policy?
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  Are you saying that Germany is not a democracy?
  - zirror 4y ago
    The party who was supposed to be against abolishing our nuclear plants, the conservative CDU and the liberal FDP, actually abolished them. So, kinda? No matter who we elected at that time, nobody would have kept them.
- veeti 4y ago
  How many of those pensioners naively participated in Germany's anti-nuclear movement in the 70's, 80's, 90's? You reap what you sow. No sympathy for Russian puppets.
  - pydry 4y ago
    It's kind of amazing that Germany can make the biggest effort of any western country to switch over to renewables and when they start suffering because America and Russia decided they want a proxy fight, Americans opine that Germany should be suffering because they decided to switch off a source of 4% of their power and didnt build enough port capacity for overpriced American LNG. If this truly is the official American line then Id be pushing to have American military bases in Germany shut down.

kstrauser 4y ago

Overcoming addiction sucks. If your heroin dealer is arrested, maybe it’s a good time to consider stopping heroin. Withdrawal is going to be awful at first, but after a while, you’ve overcome it and you can move ahead with a better life.

nisa 4y ago

To get some perspective why this is such a hotly debated topic - just got my heating bill for the last year - just a small 2 person flat in a small town - most flats in Germany are heated by gas one way or another - 700€/year with 5.2ct/kWh for 2021 - current market is more like 15ct/kWh and will probably rise. With the rise in rent prices in the last years this could push quite a bit of poor / lower middle class people into poverty/problems which is the majority of the population. Furthermore gas is used in almost every chemical process in some way or another - it's difficult to just disable a single industry because the network effects are not really known. So this will be a shitshow because industry/lobbyists groups and regulation will probably collide at the expense of the tax-payer. Still me and all of my friends are still fine with this. There is no alternative anyway - Russia is a fascist totalitarian state that declared war against Europe and is using gas as a weapon. After reading https://osce.usmission.gov/response-to-moscow-mechanism-report-on-ukraine/ https://osce.usmission.gov/response-to-moscow-mechanism-repo... as just as a single example I just hope we can cut off Russian gas/oil as fast as possible. edit: Looks like I was wrong on the burning of gas for electricity: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?stacking=stacked_absolute_area&source=fossil_gas_unit&interval=month&l=en&c=DE https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?stacking=s... edit: Damn'it just took a quick look at the calculation of the whole house and took a wrong number it's not 1600€/year but 700€/year - still triple that and it's still a problem.

whatshisface 4y ago
>it's difficult to just disable a single industry because the network effects are not really known. Not to mention the unfairness of choosing one industry full of workers to say, "sorry, you're going to go jobless for the greater good," to.
MrRiddle 4y ago
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Have you seen any impact of the Euro's drop against the dollar in your day to day life? Say, things from American companies getting substantially more expensive, or salaries rising to keep pace with American counterparts?

Spooky23 4y ago

The whole Ukraine/Russia conflict underscores how poor the strategic position of Europe and the US is with respect to Europe. We’ve been phoning it in since the Clinton era and assuming that “norms” and oligarchs would keep Russia at bay. End of the day they got tanks, nukes and are learning what they can get away with.

yrgulation 4y ago
No, most europe and the us told germany it relies too much on a single source of energy. Schroeder, Merkel, both were in bed with russia’s oil and gas tsars. Nord Stream’s ceo is a former stasi officer, ursula is corrupt and many many alternative pipelines have been pushed back in favour of we know who. Please dont mix everyone else in. As you can see some german commenters even admit to germany wanting to push for eu wide de nuclearisation. Some even go as far as saying germany shouldnt get involved in east europe - despite it making copious amounts of profits from the region, with many policies actually preventing development there in favour of germany. The eu needs reform so that it works nicely for all members. It can be done but germany needs to take a welcome step back and to stop sanctioning allies each time they have dissenting opinions. Germany’s economy was subsidised by dirty energy and the policies of the eu it controls have done it favour too much and too long.
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  Who in Europe isn't heavily affected by the gas shortage? How is this Germany's fault? To me it seems like a lot of the smaller/weaker countries in Europe just always need a scapegoat to blame when things get difficult.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    Switching off their own nuclear power plants, replacing them with gas and coal, when gas is lacking and creating shortage of electricity, thus propelling prices up. Thing is that energy is traded in EEX (https://www.eex.com/en/ https://www.eex.com/en/) so everyone who is trading there is feeling Germany's stupid decisions. For example Sweden is not in EEX and has no problem with high energy prices.

Gravityloss 4y ago

Unfortunately Brunsbüttel terminal only finally got the go ahead in January 2022 and it will take 3.5 years to build. It's anyway a good alternative source. https://www.gem.wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_LNG_Terminal https://www.gem.wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_LNG_Terminal Increasing insulation and installing and building more heat pumps are obvious ways to save on gas. Italy used some big EU subsidies to pay 100% of people's home and house renovations. Would something like that be possible in Germany? 50% subsidy for insulation renovation. Run all the styrofoam, rock wool and glass wool factories nonstop in three shifts. Found new heat pump factories. Train employees.

nickserv 4y ago
A lot of manufacturing for these materials aren't in Europe though. New factories and associated logistics chains, finding and training workers, these things are difficult to set up in a few months, never mind the actual process of renovating millions of homes.
- greggsy 4y ago
  It certainly shouldn’t be ignored, simply because it might take some time. Targeting public housing and (responsibly) incentivising landlords to improve less efficient homes would go a long way.
1234letshaveatw 4y ago
my god- the EU redistributed tax revenue from member countries to fund 100% of home improvements in Italy? I can't even imagine.
- jamesrr39 4y ago
  You don't have to imagine, it is commonplace around the world. Lots of tax revenue from countries all around the world is distributed to different areas of the country/world (obvious e.g. foreign aid). If the amount of tax isn't excessive, allows everyone to have a good standard of living, and is resulting in something positive, why not?

jonathan-adly 4y ago

There are solutions, just unpopular and require a political class that is not fickle and weak. Solution #1. Capitulate to Putin and treat Russia as a regional power that can gobble and punish its neighbors when they stray too far. Solution #2. Forget about the climate for the next 5 years, turn on all coal, nuclear powerplants. Solution #3. Put the Euro printer in overdrive and pay whatever price needed for the little natural gas that's out there and the expense of transportation. #3 is probably the worst, but also - the easiest for a fickle and weak political class to do. So, that's what's happening. Won't be surprised if we get hyperinflation in the EU in the winter. The ECB barely functions in good times with its one monetary policy, but different budgets nonsense.

throwawaysleep 4y ago
> Solution #2. Forget about the climate for the next 5 years, turn on all coal, nuclear powerplants. Nuclear power is perfectly compatible with climate goals.
- jonathan-adly 4y ago
  I am with ya there. But the Germans populace have been thoroughly brain-washed that nuclear is bad. So, better just to tell them : "its bad, but needed because we are in a war."
  - oxff 4y ago
    It is absurd that we're having "energy crisis" when we have the technological know-how to build nuclear energy, literally a solved problem.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      Also before anyone talks about fuel: Australia is right here. We have a bonkers amount of Uranium in the ground, to the point that our coal is actually pretty dang radioactive.
- 4y ago

olivermarks 4y ago

https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#section-overview https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor... I'm on the fence about an all electric future- we simply don't have the grid capacity in most parts of the world - but the Germans and French who control the EU should have been developing SMNR years ago. They are now in an energy checkmate situation with a hostile country with an economy the size of Italy. Not clever,

raverbashing 4y ago
France is looking into small reactors it seems But has RR actually shipped one of these?
- theplumber 4y ago
  I believe NuScale is leading the way
XCSme 4y ago
This is why I think the more likely future is for each house to have their own electricity generator (solar panels?) and batteries to store the energy.
- lazide 4y ago
  The capex to do that was unreachable for the vast majority of the population, even when money was ‘cheap’.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  In Europe, much fewer people live in houses, and thanks to the dense, walkable cities they enjoy, they have much fewer roof and yard space to put the panels. Also, unlike US, most of Europe doesn’t have huge swaths of hot and sunny plains that are currently not used for anything valuable. Look at the satellite view of Germany, France or Poland: it’s all farms, with occasional forests.
  - 4y ago

ibeckermayer 4y ago

Related content "Trump: Germany 'Totally Controlled By Russia'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLZBVTid4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLZBVTid4I German bureaucrats laugh at Trump after he says the country could become totally dependent on Russian energy: https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249 https://twitter.com/marcusgilmer/status/1044604107997237249

credit_guy 4y ago
I generally despise Trump, but here he looks like a visionary and the German diplomats look like morons (in hindsight, at least).
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day :) Have to hand it to him this time...he was so right.
  - parkingrift 4y ago
    Obama said the same things.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      Was he loughed at too?
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
  I'm still reeling with what I just watched....
- theplumber 4y ago
  But "Russia has been treated so unfairy" and "European Union is the biggest foe of the United States" not Russia or China...So let's listen to what that clown(Trump) says next, right? Germany's dependency on Russia's energy has been well known for decades.
4y ago

nootropicat 4y ago

>Both countries drew the ire of the others, and for a time, it seemed as if the European Union's internal market would break apart under pressure from the crisis due to the egoism of the member states. >A repeat this time around is to be avoided at all costs. Because this time solidarity is in Germany's interests, duh. >Germany Blocks Joint Gas Purchases >But resistance is coming from large natural gas utilities in Germany, like RWE, and from industrial customers as well. They want to buy their own gas and fear that they won't be allocated sufficient supplies by the EU. Seems like the German definition of solidarity is that they get gas from others.

akmarinov 4y ago

Break out the coal, boys. It's not like the US is in any way trying to be green. Honestly, China is Earth's best shot at climate change.

usrn 4y ago
China is 1) Not self sufficient, they have to import food from the US 2) Burning nearly a million more cubic feet of coal per capita than the US does (and they have way more people, so that means they're really burning far far more coal) Honestly I'm not sure how you thought that made any sense. EDIT: (out of comment quota) >China also installs more renewables than anyone else I'm sure that's great for the companies producing those, I'm not convinced that will lead to them burning less coal (although their coming demographic collapse almost certainly will.) Germany was in a pretty similar situation too and the current situation is the consequence.
- theplumber 4y ago
  China also installs more renewables than anyone else
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  China imports food from the US. China does not have to import food from the US. In all honesty, China and the US are unique nations in that they don't have to import anything from anyone. It's politically and financially convenient for them to import the things they import, so they do. But they are both perfectly capable of meeting their own needs with domestic production if the issue is pressed. Even where they don't currently manufacture a thing, they're both able to ramp up manufacturing of that thing in a timeframe unthinkable for other nations.
aftbit 4y ago
Oh yea, China who emitted 2x as much CO2 in 2017 as they did in 2005, vs the US who has been flat since 1990[1]. China who is operating 1100 coal plants vs the US who is operating 240[2]. Sure, China's growing their economy, and they have ~4x as many people as the US, but they are not some bastion of clean green energy or anything. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

raverbashing 4y ago

My uninformed bet is that a) Russia likes money more and b) if they wanted to cut the delivery of gas they would have done it already They like playing the panic angle of course, and closing the tap once in a while, but I think it's mostly hot air

rebuilder 4y ago
I’m guessing Russia will fully cut off gas to EU when it seems that either the EU is about to ban gas imports or turning the taps off will likely break the EU.
pirate787 4y ago
This was also the argument about Ukraine in early February.
rolobio 4y ago
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Europe is currently off. Its a planned maintenance however. But what if they run into "issues" and the maintenance takes a few weeks? A month? Pure speculation of course, but these things do happen. I doubt they would keep it off forever, Putin likes Europe being dependent on him.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Yes but there are other pipelines (and they still continue pumping)
sorenjan 4y ago
Russia is making more money on their oil and gas exports now than last year [0], due to higher prices. Imagine what could happen when winter comes and Russia shuts off the gas deliveries until EU pulls back sanctions. Would all countries stand united even though some are very dependent on that gas to heat their homes? Will people still care enough about a war that's almost a year old by then? [0] https://www.statista.com/chart/27615/daily-russian-fossil-fuel-revenues-in-may-2021-may-2022-and-components-of-change/ https://www.statista.com/chart/27615/daily-russian-fossil-fu...

etempleton 4y ago

The EU and the US need to have been building new nuclear power plants yesterday. Not everywhere in the world is ideal for nuclear due to the potential for significant natural disaster, but much of Western Europe and the United States are perfectly safe with the latest nuclear reactor designs.This was known before the current energy crisis and there has been complete inaction for decades. Coupled with solar, wind and existing hydro, it is our best path forward for sustainable future in the mid term. It is not just about being "green" or saving the planet from global warming. It is about energy independence.

bilbo0s 4y ago
Everyone wants to build nuclear. People get quiet when they realize that the energy investors won't pay for it so you end up with Uncle Sam footing the bill. Any analyst just looks at the financial disaster that is Vogtie and it becomes impossible to justify investment. Unless the government bankrolls you. In the US, we need to get comfortable with the government owning large swathes of energy production capacity. Until we are, and are willing to pay the taxes and authorize the disbursements to make these things happen, nuclear will not happen in the big way we need it to.
- q1w2 4y ago
  How does China build 24 Gen III+ reactors in 10 years, and we spend billions in court arguing about environmental reviews. We F ourselves because we don't allow construction companies to do their jobs.
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    It's not the environmentalism that gets us. In fact even if there were no environmental rules or any other regulations at all, we'd still have Vogtie in the mess it's in. Construction costs money and time. Metallurgy costs money and time. And on and on and on. I doubt we could build a reactor for less than USD5 Billion even with no regulations at all. This stuff takes time, and if you don't get it right, the damn things don't work. It's not like they work with less efficiency, they just don't work at all if any one of a thousand critical things is done incorrectly. Then that has to be fixed, and you try again. And so on. And keep in mind, that's for designs we are familiar with and understand. Just imagine trying to build and scale out the new designs. When it comes to the new designs, what is it that we don't know that we don't know? How much time and money will those mistakes cost? It's about a lot more than environmentalism. Put in layman's terms: "This stuff is just hard." Getting rid of regulations helps some. Getting rid of the need to actually make any kind of money by making the government shoulder the costs helps even more. But in the end, you're still left with constructing a nuclear plant. Which is an extremely hard problem that is enormously expensive to solve. So put yourself in the place of an energy investor, what's s/he going to do? Raise USD5 Billion to spend on the hopes that we can actually construct one of these correctly and under budget in under 10 years? Or just keep slapping up wind farms and start pulling in his/her generation fee in less than a month?

belorn 4y ago

If we just went based on the political message in the past then Germany could just use that massive amount of solar and wind they have been subsidizing for the last few decades, and for heating they could simply use that green hydrogen. Both of those were supposed to be both cheaper than any other for of energy. More realistically, this is a time where most countries in EU should be scrambling to throw money at new energy projects and energy modernization. That should help with both the energy crisis long term, and focusing money on internal infrastructure seems to have good track records for reducing inflation. Reducing imports dependency from Russia, especially in a different currency, should strengthen the euro.

lazide 4y ago
The political message was always wishful thinking - even with Germany’s massive spend, there was never a realistic way to replace baseline heating needs in the winter without spending at least 10x more. Most off grid systems have some sort of generator for the long stretches of cloudy days, and in a cold climate, pretty much everyone uses fossil fuels for heating off grid due to the energy density, reliability, and low cost. Anything else starts being really cost prohibitive if you do the math on ‘I get X amount of heat during these long tail scenarios or the pipes burst/I freeze’. Physics is a bitch.

bamboozled 4y ago

I love the absolute BS of the world in 2022. The whole world is supposed to be off fossil fuels by now, and here we are hoping and praying Germany and the rest of the EU gets enough fossil fuels to burn this winter. If humanity was to look at itself in the mirror, it would see an image stupid freaking hypocrite clown. Solar, Nuclear, Wind, get after it, it's so late now it almost feels like a waste of time...

usrn 4y ago
Part of the reason Germany is still stuck on fossil fuels was the ultimatums of the environmentalists that killed their nuclear power. IMO if they really care about the environment they need to chill out so people can work out how to transition. Hard rules like this will first result in desperation which causes people to make sub-optimal choices like you're seeing now and eventually economic collapse which will absolutely destroy the environment (think of all the messes the USSR made when it fell apart.) Whatever regime replaces the one that causes this probably will care a lot less about the environment too.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Do we really need to keep blaming hippies? I've read from a few different places now that people who are part of Nordstream were powerful in German politics and had an incentive to push Gas over nuclear. I'm sure there are multiple factors at play.
  - usrn 4y ago
    I'm blaming blindly siding with environmentalists (especially corporate funded ones) without reasoning through the consequences. If you want to call those hippies than yeah I'm blaming the hippies, this is a direct consequence of their actions no matter what you call them. The exact same thing is going to keep happening if they don't change their behavior.
    - theplumber 4y ago
      We invested more in oil and gas than in renewables so I think you should blame oil and gas more than environmentalists

tomputer 4y ago

Gas prices were already rising since 2020 but yes, the Ukraine/Russia conflict made it worse. Below a graph from the Dutch TTF Gas Futures from the past 2 years. The contract price is in Euros and Euro cents per MWh. https://www.theice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5408202&span=3 https://www.theice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futur... Edit: those are just numbers on a screen but in real life that means the energy/gas bill increases between 5x - 10x if this continues.

q1w2 4y ago
Russian influence operations have been sabotaging western gas production via "green party" lobbyists. They've done the same for nuclear. They've planned this invasion and freezing Europe this winter is all part of their plan.

sremani 4y ago

Germany wanted to have and eat it cake too. It worked to an extent during Merkel. They made European South pay the hefty price while humming on their exports using Cheap Russian gas/oil and supplying manufacturing components to china and finished goods to rest of Europe and America. Russia is not some bit player in Oil and Natural gas industry, 5 million barrels per day ? That is a huge amount of hydrocarbons to replace. Of course, Europe will scramble to find alternatives and before they go cold, will fuck the Global South again from its limited supplies, it already started happening - Pakistan got its NG supplier broke contract and sold gas under contract to Europe. Europe is going to get screwed but in an effort save its ass it will create a frenzy in global south that would tip many countries into absolute choas.

marsven_422 4y ago

dukeofdoom 4y ago

When ideology meets reality. Expensive, overbuilt capacity for Wind and Solar in countries with not much sun or wind for most of the year. Now with the declining Euro will make purchasing energy even more expensive. Fertilizer shortage and declining working age population. And threats to the free flow of goods across the world. Inflation is here to stay. It will be interesting to see how many governments fall in the next few years the way Sri Lanka's did.

sorenjan 4y ago

Frankly, I think it's embarrassing that such a large part of Europe is still so dependent on natural gas. It's being portrayed as a problem now due to economics, but global warming and making yourself dependent on authoritarian regimes has been an issue for much longer than that. The switch should have happened much sooner, but I guess the money was always more important and Russian gas was cheap enough to forget about the external costs. And it's not only about finding other energy sources, it's also about using the energy in a smarter way. Better insulated houses and heat pumps work well here in northern Europe, why hasn't this been a priority the last ten years at least? I'm paying much more for my electricity now even though we hardly use any natural gas in this country, because we're exporting electricity to countries that do, driving up our prices. Their shortsightedness is costing me money and adding more CO2 to our atmosphere. If it was only because of the war in Ukraine I wouldn't mind as much, but come winter and millions of people in other countries are going to burn expensive Russian gas to heat poorly insulated houses leaking heat like a sieve.

q1w2 4y ago
Because they are morons and shut down their nuclear plants and bet everything on Russian gas and renewables that aren't even designed to provide baseload. They absolutely should have seen this coming.
- sorenjan 4y ago
  Might be true for Germany, but other countries are also dependent on natural gas. In 2018 natural gas accounted for 45% of Italy's electricity production [0], in 2021 28% of Hungary's electricity came from gas [1]. And that's just electricity, 63% [2] of Europeans energy consumption is used for heating, I would guess a large part of that is gas as well. This is bigger than Germany closing some nuclear plants, although that obviously isn't helping. Despite knowing that natural gas is a fossil fuel that we need to stop using the cost of using it hasn't been high enough to dissuade using it. This sudden increase in cost and the crisis it has and will cause really shows that economy is the only thing that matters, people will continue burning whatever they can get as long as it's cheap, since the external cost of global warming isn't properly included in the price. Neither was security risks, and we're all paying for that now. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/873552/energy-mix-in-italy/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/873552/energy-mix-in-ita... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235432/hungary-distribution-of-electricity-production-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235432/hungary-distribu... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_consumption_in_households https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

pumnikol 4y ago

European LNG spot market prices went up by much more than an order of magnitude between Summer 2020 and Spring 2022. They also went up for other regions while Russia has no problems selling gas outside of Europe, even with steep mark-ups. It pains me to write this, but Russia is coming out on top because of Europe cutting itself off from her gas.