Bruinkool en steenkool sterk in opmars

Een Pyrrusoverwinning voor de milieubeweging. 

Hoe vaak horen we niet dat we in een transitiefase van fossiele naar duurzame energie verkeren? De EU heeft (had?) 'decarbonisering' hoog op haar prioriteitenlijstje staan. De werkelijkheid is anders. Bruinkool en steenkool zijn weer sterk in opmars.

Beleid heeft vaak onbedoelde neveneffecten. Dat geldt sterk voor de Duitse Energiewende, en in het bijzonder de sluiting van de nucleaire centrales na Fukushima, die Duitsland meer in plaats van minder afhankelijk van fossiele brandstoffen hebben gemaakt. Dat was nu ook weer niet de bedoeling van de milieubeweging, die altijd sterk heeft aangedrongen op dit beleid. Het blijkt een Pyrrusoverwinning te zijn geweest. 

Onder de titel, 'Germany out in the coal', schreef Ezra Levant voor de Toronto Sun: 

Greenpeace may have been founded in Canada and its global headquarters are now in Holland, but the jewel in its crown is Germany. It’s their biggest source of fundraising. And politically, it’s been one of the most successful jurisdictions in terms of getting Green politicians into actual positions of power, including in the cabinet of ruling governments.

And the consequence of Greenpeace’s dominance of Germany is the construction of the first new coal-fired power plant there since 2005. In fact, over the next two years Germany will build 10 new power plants for hard coal. And then there’s the boom in lignite — soft, brown coal with a larger pollution footprint. Europe is in a coal frenzy, building power plants and opening up new mines, practically every month.

It might sound odd that a boom in German coal is the result of Greenpeace’s political success.

Coal has a much higher carbon footprint — for those who are worried about the theory of man-made global warming — than natural gas does. And both have a higher carbon footprint than nuclear power does (it has no greenhouse gas emissions). And even global warming skeptics acknowledge that coal has some real pollution, too, like sulphur and smog.

But that’s the thing. After an earthquake and tsunami in 2011 wrecked Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor, Germany’s Greens pressured their own country into announcing the shutdown all of German nuclear power plants by 2022.

Clean, zero-emission, safe, reliable power — just gone.

Substituting natural gas might seem like an alternative — that’s the fastest-growing source of power in the United States, because of the fracking boom — but Greenpeace is against that technology, too. That leaves Germany (and the rest of Europe) at the mercy of Russia’s Kremlin-controlled Gazprom, which sets artificially high natural gas prices, and even occasionally cuts off shipments — as it has done twice, to Ukraine, in the dead of winter — as a political punishment.

With Greenpeace successfully forcing the shutdown of nuclear power, and keeping out fracking for gas, what’s left? The daydream of wind turbines? The fantasy of solar power? Neither are reliable in all weather. But, more to the point, neither are affordable. Germany is Europe’s last remaining industrial powerhouse. But not for long if its electricity costs are double or triple what their competitors pay. ...

Lees verder hier.

Onder de titel, 'Oops: Europe’s rising and renewable-driven energy prices are causing a coal resurgence', schreef Erika Johnsen voor 'Hot Air' over hetzelfde thema:

Question: What happens when you forcibly implement an overly ambitious plan to overhaul your entire energy infrastructure by ridding yourself of both nuclear power and coal, instituting on outright ban on hydraulic fracturing and hence natural-gas exploration, and relentlessly subsidize politically preferred forms of so-called “green” energy that investors and consumers aren’t choosing to use of their own volition?

Answer, via Bloomberg:

Across the continent’s mining belt, from Germany to Poland and the Czech Republic, utilities such as Vattenfall AB, CEZ AS and PGE SA are expanding open-pit mines that produce lignite. The moist, brown form of the fossil fuel packs less energy and more carbon than more frequently burned hard coal.

The projects go against the grain of European Union rules limiting emissions and pushing cleaner energy. Alarmed at power prices about double U.S. levels, policy makers are allowing the expansion of coal mines that were scaled back in the past two decades, stirring a backlash in the targeted communities.

“It’s absurd,” said Petra Roesch, mayor of Proschim, a 700-year-old village southeast of Berlin that would be uprooted by Vattenfall’s mine expansion. “Germany wants to transition toward renewable energy, and we’re being deprived of our land.”

Lignite demand worldwide is forecast to rise as much as 5.4 percent by 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. At the same time, it estimates consumption must fall 10 percent over that period to achieve goals endorsed by EU and world leaders to hold global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. ...

It’s no coincidence that Germany has some of the highest rates of renewable generation as well as some of the highest energy prices in the developed world. Their and several other European countries’ ambitions to self-revolutionize their energy sectors turned out to be a recipe for the precise disaster that they were conscientiously looking to avoid — i.e., more coal. This is what happens when you let big-government delusions of “green” grandeur commandeer policy, and the Obama administration seems determined not to learn that universal lesson. Environmentalists and Obama-admin apologists will argue all day long that the administration’s forthcoming rules to regulation emissions in both new and existing coal plants are simply leading a trend that’s happening anyway with the advent of natural gas, but should natural gas or general electricity prices start to significantly rise, it’s possible that coal would once again become an attractive energy choice, as it is in Europe — but the Obama administration is deliberately preempting that possibility. Fortunately, we’re in the midst of a bona fide energy boom that has been heavily dependent on hydraulic fracturing, but the Obama administration isn’t doing too much to actively rule out “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices from our future.

Lees verder hier.

Tja, groen wensdenken wil nog wel eens afketsen op de rauwe werkelijkheid.
 

Laatste nieuws

De Akademik Shokalskiy en de Chinese en Australische ijsbrekers, die haar te hulp zijn geschoten, hebben zich zelfstandig weten te bevrijden uit het ijs waarin zij vastzaten, conform de verwachtingen van Antony Watts. Zie hier. Zij hebben geen assistentie meer nodig.

Met de kennis van nu blijkt de hele reddingsoperatie niet nodig te zijn geweest. Maar ja, dat is wijsheid achteraf.

Voor mijn eerdere DDS–bijdragen zie hier.