Energiewende! A Fantastically Silly Global Phenomena

 

Lol, I get a kick out of this……  I used the German slogan for the energy transition pushed by the greens because … well it looks cool, and much of push has come from and been embraced by Europe, though, clearly not exclusively. 

All around the globe the green nuts have pushed for renewables.  And, they’ve gained massive investments.  Europe has adopted a subsidy approach.  Countries like the U.S. and Australia have taken to punishing traditional electric generation sources, most specifically, coal. 

As Europe has found out, the more one adopts renewables, the more one relies on the traditional sources of energy generation.  Now, Europe is in a slightly different position than the U.S.  In the U.S., we’ve recently found so much natural gas, that we can easily and cheaply back up our silly wind and solar energy with gas generation.  Europe gets much of their gas from Russia.  But, Russia isn’t always friendly with their gas.  In the past, they’ve attempted to use Europe’s dependence on their gas to coerce Europe in diplomatic issues. 

So, any idjit can guess what happens next.  But, in case some green nut or Obama supporter gets lost and finds themselves on this page, I’ll try to type slow so they can understand.  Countries like the U.S. and Australia have punished coal energy generation.  So, this leaves a whole bunch of black and brown soft rocks laying about in and on our ground.  Domestic demand has fizzled, so these silly rocks aren’t worth that much.  But, other places around the world seem to enjoy these rocks for some peculiar reason. 

So, the result is that the places around the world buy these rocks from the countries who doesn’t want to use them anymore.  Australia’s coal seems to go to China, the U.S.’ goes to Europe.

Europe. The Netherlands (11 million short tons) and United Kingdom (7 million short tons) ranked in the top 10 destinations for both U.S. metallurgical coal exports and steam coal exports. Germany (5 million short tons), France (4 million short tons), and Belgium (3 million short tons) ranked among the top 10 U.S. steam coal destinations, while Italy (6 million short tons) and Ukraine (5 million short tons) ranked among the top 10 U.S. metallurgical coal destinations.

Read more here.  We also see that even though Australia is exporting coal to Asian countries, the U.S. exports have even picked up in that area as well. 

So, I wonder if we can get some Leftist economic guru to contemplate the meaning of this.  We should also bring in a green nut to consult.  I’m betting neither one will be able to comprehend any of this. 

When one considers what is necessary to mine and then transport all of this coal over seas, much of it only to be burnt in an electric generation coal plant, an accounting of what was gained by all of this stupidity is in order.  I’m wondering if some industrious person has the time to demonstrate how much atmospheric CO2 was increased by the leftarded advocacy?  It isn’t that I care about atmospheric CO2, but I’d love to use it to laugh at them.  OTOH, if some leftist Obama supporter get’s hold of this information, we’d likely see some headline like “COAL COMPANIES OFF SHORING COAL TO CHINA!!!!  Bain rumored have bought stock in company that buys stock in coal companies which export coal!!!”

A note, back about 5-6 years ago, coal was thought to only be economical for electric generation in the U.S. if the transport of coal wasn’t some great distance.  Some places could use it to generate electricity at 2¢/kWh.