EU, say farewell to cheap energy for a decade
Tom KirkmanIndependent Project Manager
EU, say farewell to cheap energy any time within the next decade or so.
Whichever governments went to the trouble of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, should be held accountable for destroying the economies of most EU countries.
The EU economic model depended on cheap energy.
That economic model got blown up.
And so far, I don’t see a workable replacement economic model for the EU.
Hydrocarbons power modern civilization.
Expensive hydrocarbons make modern civilization much more difficult.
Wind and solar can *add to* hydrocarbons and nuclear.
Wind and solar *cannot replace* hydrocarbons and nuclear.
The countries responsible for blowing up Nord Stream are now responsible for:
– empowering China with cheap hydrocarbons from Russia, which used to go to the EU, and
– dragging down EU economies by forcing them to pay much higher prices for alternative sources of hydrocarbons from other countries.
If one of the rationales for blowing up Nord Stream was to force a faster pace of “transitioning” to wind and solar, then the actual consequences look set to be rolling power blackouts caused by increasing over-reliance on intermittent wind and solar and a reduction in reliable hydrocarbons and nuclear.
===================
“Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said today that Russia “will not let the West blow up gas pipelines again”, and said that
● Moscow would no longer rely on the West as an energy partner.
Moscow has suggested that Western countries were responsible for the blasts that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines in September, an assertion they have dismissed, and has called for an international investigation.”