Life in Renewableland

And now a few words from Renewableland. You know it well. It’s the place where climate change activists live and love. It’s the place where fossil fuels are a distant memory and where energy needs are happily fulfilled by solar and wind power.

Think of the great Angela Merkel, who brilliantly shut down her country’s nuclear power plants, the better to cause electricity prices to spike and to make Germany rely on coal burning plants in Austria and Hungary--not to mention being dependent on Russian natural gas. For that Merkel is an international hero. Joe Biden wants to replace all fossil fuels with renewables within a couple of decades.

It all goes back to the Paris Climate Accords. You remember when President Trump walked away from the agreement, the better to safeguard American energy.

How are things working out for those countries that adhere to its conditions? Well, they are suffering from energy price inflation and an energy shortage. The Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning:

Electricity prices in the U.K. this week jumped to a record £354 ($490) per megawatt hour, a 700% increase from the 2010 to 2020 average. Germany’s electricity benchmark has doubled this year. Last month’s 12.3% increase was the largest since 1974 and contributed to the highest inflation reading since 1993. Other economies are experiencing similar spikes.

Europe’s anti-carbon policies have created a fossil-fuel shortage. Governments have heavily subsidized renewables like wind and solar and shut down coal plants to meet their commitments under the Paris climate accord. But wind power this summer has flagged, so countries are scrambling to import more fossil fuels to power their grids.

European natural-gas spot prices have increased five-fold in the last year. Some energy providers are burning cheaper coal, but its prices have tripled. Rising fossil-fuel consumption has caused demand and prices for carbon permits under the Continent’s cap-and-trade scheme to surge, which has pushed electricity prices even higher.

Well, back home in the USA, things are not quite as bad, but they are certainly not very good. You see American states and municipalities are all-in with fossil fuels.

Americans are already feeling the pain of rising energy prices. Electricity and utility gas prices were up 5.2% and 21.1%, respectively, over the last 12 months in August. Higher energy costs are bleeding into inflation. Some analysts predict that gas prices could double this winter if U.S. production doesn’t increase and global demand remains high.

So, it’s lose/lose. Prices skyrocket, emissions increase, and we have less energy to fuel the modern economy:

Europe is showing the folly of trying to purge CO2 from the economy. No matter how heavily subsidized, renewables can’t replace fossil fuels in a modern economy. Households and businesses get stuck with higher energy bills even as CO2 emissions increase. Europe’s problems are a warning to the U.S., if only Democrats would heed it.