Europe’s ongoing wind drought (and corresponding wind power output collapse) is a wake-up call for anyone vaguely concerned about energy supplies.
Starting in September last year and running for weeks on end, total collapses in wind power output across Western Europe and the UK, forced a wholesale rethink of the maniacal reliance upon wind and solar.
The French President announced that its 56 existing nuclear power will be kept running ad infinitum, rather than mothballed as planned, and determined to add 14 next-generation plants to be built ASAP.
Both the Germans and the Brits were forced to quietly fire up their ‘ageing’ coal-fired power plants to prevent total collapses of their power grids. Oh, the embarrassment!
But, with every perfectly predictable policy-driven disaster comes the opportunity for considered reflection and, for the wise, the chance to recalibrate; to scrap the policies that delivered to disaster and replace them with the ones that have served us, so very well, for more than a century.
That is to say, a return to reliable and affordable electricity delivered by coal, gas and nuclear power plants, 24×7, whatever the weather.
The Australian’s Economics Editor, Judith Sloan takes a look at the, by now, very obvious causes and consequences of the world’s power pricing and supply calamity.
