UK Fires-Up Coal Power Plants as European Gas Shortages Worsen
“Englands green and pleasant Land” has been disturbed by the firing-up of a dirty old coal power plant this week, as failing renewables, poor planning, and drastically reduced gas supplies are crippling the nation’s electricity needs.
As the BBC puts it: “still autumn weather has meant wind farms have not generated as much power as normal, while soaring prices have made it too costly to rely on gas.” And as a result, and denting the government’s commitment to completely phase out coal power by 2024, the UK’s National Grid asked EDF to fire-up the West Burton A power plant to cope with demand.
But what demand…? We’re in early September…? The weather is fine, and temperatures are comfortable — the implications for the upcoming winter, which is predicted to be brutal by the way (more on that below), appear dire.
Europe as a whole is in the same boat — the gas supply crunch is now impacting homes and businesses across the continent, with failing renewables boosting the use of fossil fuel-fired generation here, too. This in turn has driven the price of coal up more than 70% this year, and has also sent the cost of polluting in Europe to the highest-ever levels, according to bloomberg.com.
Rising gas prices are also fueling inflation and are threatening to stall economic recoveries as energy-intensive industries from fertilizer to steel may need to curb output. This is a serious concern for the health of the global economy, and it could-well prove the catalyst for the “mother of all crashes” that Michael Burry (of “Big Short” fame) sees coming.
“The problem hasn’t even started yet,” said Julien Hoarau, the head of EnergyScan, the analytics unit of French utility Engie SA.
“Europe will face a very tight winter.”
Russia isn’t exactly helping the situation, limiting flows at a time when Asia (namely China) is scooping up cargoes of liquefied natural gas that would otherwise be headed to Europe. Oh, and speaking of our Communist Party pals: China is buying up the world’s grain, and now gas.
China is owning the politically-correct West, yet our “leaders” are more concerned with pop-topics like vaccine passports, wind farms, and transgenderism than addressing the increasing volume of power flowing to the east (Russia’s gas flowing to China is a good analogy). Depressingly, the West is led by ideologically hamstrung dolts, devoid of backbones — and it will be our downfall… actually the UN IPCC
