Stark contrasts: UK faces rolling three hour blackouts, while Norway has cheap electricity and “too many profits”

By Jo Nova

Just to recap: Energy prices are so wildly high in Europe — thanks to a quest to alter the planetary climate — that 70% of fertilizer plants have already shut down, half the aluminum and zinc smelters have closed, and glass-makers and tilers who survived both world wars may go out of business. German homes are reduced to being wood fired (if they can find the firewood). Meanwhile someone very naughty set off explosions on the Nordstream gas pipes from Russia, and since a third of all UK gas comes from an underwater pipe to Norway now suddenly people are very nervous about that. Before most of this unfolded, UK consumer confidence was at minus 44 — the lowest ebb ever recorded since 1974 when people started recording these things. Now it’s even lower (minus 49).  As many as one in four people in the UK were saying they won’t heat their homes in winter. It’s the most dramatic fall in European energy since the late Middle Ages. Luckily, at least the UK and Germany both have some old coal plants they haven’t blown up.

To make things more exciting, last week, after the underwater bombs went off, Joe Biden said he’d help European allies with gas, but this week, he’s thinking about banning US exports of gas and oil. Well, the US midterm elections are coming.

UK electricity prices:

 

And it was all so easily avoidable, completely unnecessary, and we won’t let any of them forget.

Rolling three hour blackouts for the UK this winter?

Households could experience a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if Vladimir Putin shuts off gas supplies from Russia and Britain experiences a cold snap, National Grid has warned.

Such an event would mean consumers in different parts of the country being notified a day in advance of three-hour blocks of time during which their power would be cut off, in an effort to reduce total consumption by 5%.

Apparently the King has to approve these “rota disconnections” and the privy council would advise him. Which takes British monarchical symbolism to its peak really. I mean what would happen if he said “No”?

Even though the UK didn’t get much gas from Russia, the market prices “flowed” right through:

Meanwhile the EU experiment is tearing at the edges

There is a bun fight developing over who gets the scarce energy, and at what price. Some nations are paying 7 Euros per Megawatt hour tomorrow, some will pay 270.

The Germans and the Greens want the collectivist solution. But nations willing to use their own fossil fuels have cheap electricity and are getting rich.

The nations caught in the middle resent having to pay for the German Energiewende grand experiment, but they also resent paying the Norwegians.

EU fumes as US, Norway energy profits put solidarity to the test

Euroactiv

As the USA and Norway reap unprecedented profits from surging energy prices, EU countries are complaining more loudly and are preparing to send the European Commission forward to negotiate a better deal, voluntarily or not.

The European energy crisis has caused energy prices to spike. While Russia, the cause of the crisis, was one of the largest beneficiaries, EU allies, primarily the USA and Norway, are reaping extreme windfall profits as they fill the gap Russia left behind.

“In an energy crisis of such magnitude, the solutions are to be found together in the spirit of solidarity,” commented Renew Europe MEP Nicolae Ștefănuță.

Those who have fossil fuels have too many profits:

Norway, now the EU’s largest supplier of fossil fuels, is profiting immensely from Russia’s actions and subsequent energy price spike. Norwegian officials say they have a difficult time with such windfall profits.

“There are times when it is not fun to make money, and this is one of them,” said Norwegian petroleum and energy minister Terje Aasland in March.

The Norwegian Greens say that the governments excuse that these profits are good for the pension fund “is lame”:

“We cannot go on being war profiteers, which is becoming more shameful by the day,” he added. Norway, a small European country, “is as dependent on peace, stability and prosperity on the continent as any other country,” Johansen noted.

..the Greens want the extra fossil fuel profits to go into a solidarity fund to be used to aid Ukraine and Europe’s energy poor.

The Norwegian Greens call their own government “War Profiteers” for looking after their senior citizens. They say they want peace, but don’t realize that energy insecurity is a weapon of war.