Winter is coming...

[asthfghl]

...And with it, another crisis of global proportions.

"Since the start of the year, wholesale gas prices in Europe have risen by 250%, the result of a complex cocktail of economic, natural and political forces. Globally, demand for energy has shot up, as China and other major economies bounce back from the pandemic. In Europe, a cold winter and frigid spring depleted gas reserves, while a long spell of still days reduced wind power supply to the grid. Meanwhile, CO2 prices hit a record €62 this month and Russia, a big exporter, has declined to increase gas supplies. Now, across the continent, energy prices are only going in one direction: up." (source)

One thing I don't get, why is everyone suddenly so scared of nuclear? Europe as a result of Germany‘s withdrawal from first nuclear and then coal has a structural deficit in baseload capacity. Gas is a welcome fuel for peak load since CGT plants can be flexibly started up and shut down. To generate base load, it is simply not cost effective, and generates too much CO2 to rach the Paris goals.

European dependency on French nuclear and Eastern European dirty coal will continue as long as Germany doesn‘t address its energy imbalance. How it plans to do that without nuclear remains the question.

As for the UK, the other major European economy currently hit by this gas crisis in a major way, the UK government loves a gamble, whether it be on vaccines, ventilators, nuclear war in the Pacific, or energy prices. This time the problem seems to have come as the over-leveraged UK market disintegrates after a few weeks of price spikes. So in terms of the UK, let's not get carried away with long-term perspective and miss the obvious short-term incompetence of the current UK government. Long term obligations should be backed by long term assets, and in this case they aren't.

But back to Germany. I think Germany, Europe's economic juggernaut, has quite a few questions to answer in this. Because thanks to Germany's traitorous and egoistical energy alliance with Russia, Europe has only 2 options to solve the gas crisis: kneel before Putin or prostrate itself fully before Putin. And I'm saying this as an East European who knows what they're talking about. So which will it be this time?