Renewable energy’s Nord Stream moment already happened Friday,...

	Renewable energy’s Nord Stream moment already happened

Friday, 26 July 2024

By Nick Hubble Editor, Strategic Intelligence Australia

[4 minread]

In this Issue: A power cable fit for shutting down Singapore Energy security has many possible meanings Much like the Communist Party of the old now-defunct Soviet Union, the insiders share power...

Dear Reader,

Good news, everyone. Australian sunshine is setto power Singapore after all. The 2671-mile subsea power cable connecting thetwo is approved. It’ll be the world’s longest. At least, it could be…

In fact, the internet is full of projectspromising they’ll be ‘the longest subsea cable’ one day. Power transmissionacross the oceans is big business these days. A bit like Nord Stream 2 wasonce. Before it got blown up…

But wasn’t the SunCable project abandoned onlyjust last year?

Well, SunCable went into administration. Theformer leaders went into a carbon sucking venture called Fugu instead. But theSunCable venture is now backed by billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’ GrokVentures.

A very merry go round this climate changebusiness, isn’t it? Entrepreneurs shuffle from one imaginary project toanother.

But I reckon the cable business is the biggestboondoggle yet. It’s not just Nemo who will be getting lost in a maze ofelectrical cables. Two weeks ago, we considered what a renewable energy gridwould look like. The headline was a bit of a giveaway: Enough Power Lines to Cover the Earth Like a Skin Disease.

But the environmentalists are notsatisfied with defacing the surface of our planet in the name of renewables.Nor digging up our subterranean environment with their mind bogglingly largemines. They want to go subsea too.

There’s just one big problem I’d like to pointout. You might even remember what it is…

Who’s going to cut the ribbon on this one?

Back in 2018, then President Trump warnedGermany of energy dependence on Russia. Nord Stream 2 was a geopoliticalmistake, he said. And he was ridiculed by the audience – the United Nations.

But just three years later, the Germans cameknocking for American gas at any price. Russia had invaded Ukraine. And thenthe new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline got blown up by…we still don’t know who.

And so the Germans had to pay up, big time. Theyspent almost as much on energy crisis policies as the pandemic!

It was a big enough opportunity to knock evenPresident Biden out of his green dream delusions. He sold the Europeans the gasthey needed. And turned America into a gas exporting superpower.

My question is whether the Western world mightbe making much the same mistake again with renewables. In a surprisinglysimilar way, too.

You could call it a “submarine energy war”,because that makes it sound exciting.

Renewable energy systems rely on vulnerablesub-sea power cables

The energy transition requires enough highvoltage cables to make an AC/DC tribute band nervous. Interconnectors betweencountries and different parts of countries. Not to mention connecting offshorewind farms.

These are often submarine cables to avoid usingup scenic land, just as Nord Stream 2 was submerged to avoid Ukraine.

My worry is obvious, right? If we aretransitioning to an energy system that relies on subsea cables, are we makingthe same mistake as the Germans were with Nord Stream 2 in 2018?

This is of course terribly conspiratorial. NordStream 2 was just an exception. It’s not like submarine cables are beingclandestinely cut around the world.

Well, funny you should mention that…

In 2022, High North News reported this:

‘The sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the BalticSea earlier this week may shed new light on two recent incidents in theNorwegian Arctic involving the cutting of communication cables.’

BBC News in March:

‘Several undersea communications cables in the Red Sea have beencut, affecting 25% of data traffic flowing between Asia and Europe, a telecomscompany and a US official say.’

Bloomberg has published a new long-winded pieceof mystery journalism about a ‘12-ton section of cable’ that went ‘missing’ offthe coast of Norway. It took them ages to figure out what had gone wrong,because checking in on a sub-sea cable is mighty expensive and difficult, evenfor the Norwegians.

The snip list goes on. Mostly, it’s telecomscables that get cut. The Internet Society Pulse: ‘According to the UnitedNations, 150 to 200 subsea cable faults occur annually. Fishing and shippingactivities account for nearly two-thirds of the total’.

The thing is, some of the cable cuttingincidents involve Russian fishing vessels that don’t seem interested in fish...

It’s enough to make Bloomberg ask, ‘Is RussiaWaging War Under the Seas?’ in a new video. Apparently, analysts allege ‘a wider pattern of Russiansabotage’.

Why the Russians would sabotage their ability tointerfere in other people’s elections is a mystery. Why they would want tosabotage their geopolitical enemies’ electricity systems is not.

Why we would give them such an easy target isthe real question we need to ask ourselves. And Singapore might want to hurryup. Or they’ll discover their clean green power source is really just a way forsomeone to pull the plug on their entire country without getting caught…

Don’t worry, though. It’s not like SunCable willpass through the Strait of Malacca, where around 94,000 ships pass throughevery year carrying around 30% of all traded goods globally. Good luck spottingyour saboteur in that.

If someone can get away with damaging NordStream 2, I’m guessing they can get away with damaging subsea power cables. Andif this seems to happen all the time without mysteries being solved, I suspectthey can get away with it twice over.

Energy security has many meanings

The issue here is the same one we’ve beenhighlighting for years now. And in all sorts of different ways.

The energy infrastructure needed to makerenewables look viable undermines their viability. You can now add energysecurity, in the geopolitical sense, to the long list.

In a way, all this is really just a businessopportunity. Fixing and inspecting subsea cables is very expensive.