Global Energy Crisis

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An energy crisis is gripping the world, with potentially grave consequences​


Energy is so hard to come by right now that some provinces in China are rationing electricity, Europeans are paying sky-high prices for liquefied natural gas, power plants in India are on the verge of running out of coal, and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States stood at $3.25 on Friday — up from $1.72 in April.

The central chimneys at the coal-fired NTPC Ltd. Dadri Power Plant in Uttar Pradesh, India. The country, which relies on coal for about 70 percent of electricity generation, has already seen signs of power shortages.
© Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg News The central chimneys at the coal-fired NTPC Ltd. Dadri Power Plant in Uttar Pradesh, India. The country, which relies on coal for about 70 percent of electricity generation, has already seen signs of power shortages.
As the global economy recovers and global leaders prepare to gather for a landmark conference on climate change, the sudden energy crunch hitting the world is threatening already stressed supply chains, stirring geopolitical tensions and raising questions about whether the world is ready for the green energy revolution when it’s having trouble powering itself right now.


The economic recovery from the pandemic recession lies behind the crisis, coming after a year of retrenchment in coal, oil and gas extraction. Other factors include an unusually cold winter in Europe that drained reserves, a series of hurricanes that forced shutdowns of Gulf oil refineries, a turn for the worse in relations between China and Australia that led Beijing to stop importing coal from Down Under, and a protracted calm spell over the North Sea that has sharply curtailed the output of electricity-generating wind turbines.

“It radiates from one energy market to another,” said Daniel Yergin, author of “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.”

“Governments are scrambling to get subsidies in place to avoid a tremendous political backlash,” Yergin said. “There’s a pervasive anxiety about what may or may not happen this winter, because of something we have no control over, which is the weather.”

As global leaders prepare to gather in Glasgow, Scotland, at the end of the month for a climate conference, advocates for renewable energy say the crisis shows the need to move further away from coal, gas and oil as prices for those commodities spike. Their critics contend just the opposite — that wind and solar have been tested and came up lacking. Analysts also worry that the shortages and high prices worldwide will severely crimp the economic recovery.

In the United States, which as an energy producer has been spared the worst consequences of the crisis even as gasoline prices have hit their highest mark since 2014, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested Wednesday that the Biden administration might sell off part of the country’s Strategic Oil Reserve or ban exports of crude oil.

Energy analysts warned that such moves could be self-defeating, and on Thursday the department backpedaled.

“DOE continues to monitor global energy market supply and will work with our agency partners to determine if and when actions are needed,” a department statement said. “All tools in the Tool Box are always under consideration to protect the American people. Consistent with what the secretary said, there is no immediate plan to take those actions at this time.”

The grid’s big looming problem: Getting power to where it’s needed
One leader who appears to see an opportunity in the crisis is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose vast energy reserves the country often taps as leverage during times of energy stress. On Wednesday, Putin suggested that Russia’s European customers could solve their problem if they imported more Russian gas.

Analysts doubt it would make much of a difference right away, because at the moment Russia does not have a great deal to spare, but Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that even a small additional amount of exported gas could dampen what Moscow characterizes as a speculative frenzy in Europe.

Tension in Europe

This seemingly minor nudge comes against the background of sharp disagreements within the European Union over a response to the crisis. Leaders are looking to the E.U. as either scapegoat or savior, with some premiers asking the bloc for a standardized solution to the crisis and others blaming the price hikes on its sweeping policies to combat climate change and reduce emissions.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has friendly relations with Putin, said Wednesday that the E.U. was partly to fault for the increases and that the bloc “must change its policy.” That same day, E.U. climate chief Frans Timmermans said those who blame the bloc’s Green Deal are doing so for “ideological reasons” and that the transition away from fossil fuels will help end price crises, not exacerbate them.

“The wrong response to this would be to slow down the transition to renewable energy,” Timmermans said at a meeting of environmental ministers. “The right response is to keep the momentum and perhaps even look for ways to increase the momentum.”

Energy analysts argue that Europe moved too quickly away from fossil-fueled power, before ensuring that sufficient renewable sources could take up the slack in an emergency. Caught halfway in a transition that should take decades, they say, Europe is now scrambling to find coal and gas to burn in its remaining traditional plants.

As winter approaches, European fuel stocks are at a relative low point.

Colonial shutdown shows how Americans pay the price of efficiency
An important factor is the new Nordstream 2 pipeline, which connects Russia and Germany by way of the Baltic Sea but has yet to go into operation. Russian officials have urged Germany to speed up its regulatory approval, suggesting that it would provide a long-term solution to the country’s energy problems.


Video: Glen: U.K. Energy Crisis Deepening (Bloomberg)



But politicians from Germany’s Greens, the environmentally conscious party currently in discussions to become part of a new coalition government following elections in late September, have accused Russia of manipulating the price of gas to create a sense of urgency around the pipeline.

If the Russian energy giant Gazprom does not adhere to regulatory requirements without “any ifs or buts” it is “a further indication that power politics is being pursued with gas,” Oliver Krischer, deputy head of the Greens parliamentary group, told German outlet RND on Wednesday.

And those regulatory hurdles might not be overcome before cold weather sets in, Klaus-Dieter Maubach, the chief executive of Uniper, Germany’s largest gas importer, told reporters in Düsseldorf last week. “It will probably not be able to help us out this winter.”

The new pipeline enables Russia to send gas to the West while bypassing Ukraine, and officials in Kyiv have long seen it as a weapon aimed at them. They argue that once the pipeline is in operation, Moscow will use gas as a cudgel to force European countries to do its bidding. But closer to home, they worry that with Ukraine no longer a transit country for Russian gas, Kyiv will lose one of its few levers of influence over Moscow — and that this poses the danger that the Kremlin could escalate the seven-year-old war in Ukraine’s east.

“The Kremlin is doing this on purpose,” Yuriy Vitrenko, head of Ukraine’s energy company Naftogaz, wrote on Facebook in regard to bypassing Ukraine. “It’s not even saber rattling — it’s the obvious use of gas as a weapon.”

Engineers raise alarms over the risk of major explosions at LNG plants
Exiting the pandemic

When the coronavirus pandemic first swept the world in early 2020, gas reserves were abundant and the price was at rock bottom. But production of both gas and oil was sharply curtailed as economies shattered, and reserves were eaten up by the unusually cold weather in Europe last winter.

The energy crisis first emerged in China, the world’s manufacturer, as global demand for its products suddenly and unexpectedly shot upward this year. Coal stocks were low, and an unofficial Chinese ban on Australian lignite meant they couldn’t quickly be replenished. Power companies turned to the spot market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) instead, and its price soared.

In Asia, the spot price, measured in a million British thermal units, went from less than $5 in September 2020 to more than $56 this October.

As a result curbs on power consumption have been implemented across two-thirds of China, disrupting factory production and daily life.

Some factories have shut down altogether. China’s power cuts will further disrupt international supply chains already stretched by the pandemic. Factories have had to reduce production at a time when they are usually ramping up for the December holiday season.

In Guangdong, China’s most populous province, authorities have banned the use of elevators in office buildings for the third floor and below, encouraged residents to use natural light as much as possible, and asked for air conditioners to be adjusted to higher temperatures. Beijing and Shanghai canceled annual light shows during the Golden Week holiday that spanned the first week of October.

The energy shortage has been exacerbated by continued severe weather. In northern Shanxi province, 27 coal mines were closed last week due to flooding. In China’s southern Yunnan province, hydropower has been crimped for much of the year by drought — much as it has in California.

China’s chief economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, warned last week that curbs on power usage will remain into next year.

A similar power crunch is unfolding in India, which saw a glut of electricity supply earlier this year when a devastating coronavirus surge left factories idle and streets empty. Since then, economic activity in the world’s second fastest-growing major economy — and its thirst for electricity — have bounced back faster than expected.

Now, India is staring at the reverse prospect: power shortages and potential blackouts hitting its rebounding manufacturing sector and households during the festive season beginning this month.

Power plants have failed to secure coal shipments and are reluctant to buy imports now because of the high price, according to Indian officials who have been urging utilities to purchase what they need. The country’s Central Electricity Authority warned Tuesday that nearly half of India’s coal power plants — 63 out of 135 — have two days or less of coal supplies, while stocks have been exhausted at 17 facilities.

Rahul Tongia, an expert on energy and sustainability at the Brookings Institution, said the coal shortage was likely to extend for five months and the Indian government would soon face difficult choices. Already, Indian aluminum producers have complained about power shortages bringing smelters to a halt.

“Are you going to shut down power for a bunch of people, a.k.a. voters? Or are you going to shut down industry?” Tongia said. “My money,” he said, is on a government decision that “they will not depress industry because it’s so critical in a post-covid recovery.”

In India, a country that has come under mounting international pressure and criticism for its refusal to commit to carbon emissions reduction targets, some officials and analysts have argued that the coal shortage has highlighted the enduring importance of a dirty but essential energy source. Even as India embarks on an ambitious project to deploy 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, its officials have talked up the necessity of accelerating, rather than slashing, coal production.

As coal supplies dwindled last month, India’s coal ministry chastised executives at Coal India, the state-owned company that is the world’s largest coal miner by output, for not meeting production targets and reiterated India’s target of mining 700 million tons of coal this year and 1 billion tons by 2024.

Karthik Ganesan, a researcher at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, an independent think tank that advises the government, urged Indian officials not to overreact to what he called a short-term shortage of coal due to weather and poor planning by power companies.

“This situation in itself is not an indicator of any long-term threats to coal availability and doesn’t need a policy response that augments mining or opens up new areas for mining,” he said. “This crisis shouldn’t result in us getting on a higher coal-use path.”

What would it take to put all our electric lines underground to prevent outages?
In Europe, where energy prices are hitting record levels, leaders are acutely aware of the potential for instability that comes with soaring costs.

Desperate to avoid a repeat of the “yellow vests” protest movement that was sparked in 2018 amid rising fuel prices and a proposed gas tax, the French government last month announced a “price shield” that will block further increases to the price of gas and electricity.

In Spain, the government has also approved emergency measures, seeking to help poor families pay their electricity bills and curbing what Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described as “extraordinary profits” of energy companies.

The crisis “is hurting our citizens and in particular the most vulnerable households, weakening competitiveness and adding to inflationary pressure,” European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson told the European Parliament on Wednesday. “If left unchecked, it risks compromising Europe’s recovery as it takes hold.”

In the United Kingdom, shortages at the pump have led to long lines for gasoline, as well as high prices. Fuel companies have said they lack enough delivery drivers, because a significant number came from other European countries and went home after Britain left the E.U.

Eva Dou, Loveday Morris in Berlin, Gerry Shih in New Delhi, Reis Thebault in Brussels, and David L. Stern in Kyiv contributed to this report.
 
WaPo/MSNBC has a comprehensive discussion already started.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/n...of-him-calling-homosexuality-filth/ar-AAPixdD
The Washington Post
Follow

An energy crisis is gripping the world, with potentially grave consequences​


Energy is so hard to come by right now that some provinces in China are rationing electricity, Europeans are paying sky-high prices for liquefied natural gas, power plants in India are on the verge of running out of coal, and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States stood at $3.25 on Friday — up from $1.72 in April.
Didn't Texas ration electricity not that long ago? Running out of coal? Is this a bad thing? A gallon of gasoline was $3 before the pandemic dropped it to insanely low prices.

The sky is falling!!!
 
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Didn't Texas ration electricity not that long ago? Running out of coal? Is this a bad thing? A gallon of gasoline was $3 before the pandemic dropped it to insanely low prices.

The sky is falling!!!
From reading the article, and a few others, my understanding is that the crisis is affecting mainly China, India and parts of Europe at this time. The US, despite the **** ups in Texas last winter, does not yet seem too affected, although that may change over the coming months. I don't think the Earth will ever run out of coal. But despite the critical need for it in China and India, natural gas would be preferable as less environmentally damaging, if it were available.
 
From reading the article, and a few others, my understanding is that the crisis is affecting mainly China, India and parts of Europe at this time. The US, despite the **** ups in Texas last winter, does not yet seem too affected, although that may change over the coming months. I don't think the Earth will ever run out of coal. But despite the critical need for it in China and India, natural gas would be preferable as less environmentally damaging, if it were available.
Solar (unsubsidized) is by far the cheapest source of energy. Should be the case for India and China alike based on their proximity to the equator.
 
Solar (unsubsidized) is by far the cheapest source of energy. Should be the case for India and China alike based on their proximity to the equator.
Many of India's coal mines have been flooded by the monsoons. The price of imported coal has more than tripled.

 
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more nukes, more solar - all the other sources are a waste of time or too damaging to the environment.

edit: Also, we need to ban any cryptocurrency that consumes energy above a certain threshold. Bitcoin is disgustingly energy gluttonous.
 
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more nukes, more solar - all the other sources are a waste of time or too damaging to the environment.

edit: Also, we need to ban any cryptocurrency that consumes energy above a certain threshold. Bitcoin is disgustingly energy gluttonous.
There are something like 21 provinces in China in which many factories and homes are without electrical power right now. Supposedly numerous ships from Australia, previously embargoed by the CCP, have now been permitted to unload their coal. Like it or not, fossil fuel will be needed for the foreseeable future.
 
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There are something like 21 provinces in China in which many factories and homes are without electrical power right now. Supposedly numerous ships from Australia, previously embargoed by the CCP, have now been permitted to unload their coal. Like it or not, fossil fuel will be needed for the foreseeable future.
You know what doesn't require continual shipment and transportation of raw materials to keep the lights on? Solar.
 
The Chinese did not say "Like it or not, fossil fuel will be needed for the foreseeable future."
How do you explain how the Chinese got into their current predicament? Do you think they can get out of it by solar powering their steel mills?
 
How do you explain how the Chinese got into their current predicament? Do you think they can get out of it by solar powering their steel mills?
Still non-responsive.

 
Need more advanced nuke plants, and a lot more distributed solar. I agree with Elon on this one. Wind...eh, not as big of a fan.
Look, just because it blew your favorite hat away...
 
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The petrol station next to my office has jacked up diesel to €2.149/l, and petrol to €2.079/l. It was €1.799 for both last Monday!

This is ahead of emergency excise duty cuts for diesel (15c/l) and petrol (20c/l) at midnight. The sooner we cut our dependence on this crap, the better, but I'm sure our NIMBY plague will thrown in as many roadblocks as possible, because gods forbid some wind turbines dot the landscape, never mind a nuclear plant.
 
Extremely dire warning of summer energy shortage with cascading supply chain effects in the US midwest and beyond. Please refute.

 
In the US, hints of a simultaneous shortage of oil, gas and electricity - particularly in the midwest.

America’s energy crisis is getting worse by the day, and U.S. consumers are about to face a triple threat: simultaneous shortages of electricity, oil, and gas. The recent closure of key power plants is leaving the country without enough generation capacity ahead of the summer. At this point, rolling blackouts are already a certain fate. On top of that, national reserves of oil and gas have hit dangerously low levels, and this means Americans are not only going to pay a heavy price but also scramble to get adequate supplies of energy in the coming weeks. On the very same day that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a report warning the U.S. electric grid doesn’t have enough generation capacity and that blackouts are expected to occur all across the country this summer, an important clean energy power plant was shut down in Michigan. The Palisades Power Plant, an 811-megawatt nuclear facility was deactivated due to a mechanical problem, leaving the Midwest without critical energy supplies and at risk of “energy emergencies during peak summer conditions,” according to NERC. Palisades was located very close to the area served by the Mid-continent Independent System Operator (MISO), the region that NERC identified as being particularly short on energy supplies. NERC noted the MISO region has 3,200 megawatts less generation capacity this summer than it did last year. In contrast, consumer demand is expected to increase by a considerable margin over the next few weeks, which led NERC to warn that “extreme temperatures, higher generation outages, or low wind conditions” will mean that the Midwest is highly susceptible to “load-shedding to maintain system reliability” — the industry’s preferred term to describe rolling blackouts. At the moment, around 25 percent of the country’s nuclear plants are at risk of shutting down due to economic reasons, according to the DOE. Palisades was just the first one to go on a long list of planned closures. Since 2013, 12 commercial reactors have been closed — including in New York, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Iowa — and none have opened. At least seven more have announced closure plans in the next three years, including Diablo Canyon, the last remaining nuclear power plant in California. The closure of such plants is also going to result in higher electricity costs because generators are forced to burn more natural gas to produce more power to meet the demand, and right now gas prices are absolutely soaring. According to CNBC’s Kelly Evans the energy crisis will keep getting worse: “It’s hard to see how energy prices get back to “normal” anytime soon, and the risk of bigger price spikes and worse supply problems looms very large this summer,” Evans noted. But it’s not only the coming power shortages that will impact consumers this summer. Fatih Birol the head of the International Energy Agency has warned that the energy crisis now underway will be far more “severe and longer-lasting than the oil price shocks of the 1970s,” since it's applying pressure on three separate fronts. "Back then it was just about oil," he said. "Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis simultaneously." In short, the closure of key power plants will increase carbon emissions, reduce energy affordability, and hurt the resilience and reliability of America’s electric grid. And the lack of enough fuel reserves may result in serious disruptions that may paralyze the U.S. economy. America is facing the worst energy crisis in the modern era, and the government is whistling past the graveyard. Wise leaders would be doing everything possible to expand energy capacity, ensure reserves, and strengthen infrastructure. Alas, we do not have wise leaders. What we will have instead is soaring energy bills, absurd prices at the pump, broken supply chains, and devastating shortages in every corner of the nation.
In Europe, price of natural gas is said to be 80 times higher than two years ago.

 
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Europe contemplates its alternatives as the current era of natural gas and nuclear energy comes to a close. Spend enough money and time and US LNG could be a queasy solution. Coal is looking like the safest bet for years to come.

 
Europe contemplates its alternatives as the current era of natural gas and nuclear energy comes to a close. Spend enough money and time and US LNG could be a queasy solution. Coal is looking like the safest bet for years to come.


A queasy solution...? 🤢
Do you mean quasi?
 
A queasy solution...? 🤢
Do you mean quasi?
No. I do mean queasy, as in nervous and worried.

LNG would be a great solution. But it can take years and much expenditure to install the German infrastructure needed to receive, gasify and distribute the LNG. Also the main suppler would be the US. And our principal LNG refinery for European deliveries just exploded a few weeks ago and won't be repaired for months. And our president constantly reiterates his vow to eliminate fossil fuel. Consequently, investment in fossil fuel production and refining in the US has been diminishing and will likely continue to do so.
 
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No. I do mean queasy, as in nervous and worried.

LNG would be a great solution. But it can take years and much expenditure to install the German infrastructure needed to receive, gasify and distribute the LNG. Also the principle suppler would be the US. And our principal LNG refinery for European deliveries just exploded a few weeks ago and won't be repaired for months. And our president constantly reiterates his vow to eliminate fossil fuel. Consequently, investment in fossil fuel production and refining in the US has been diminishing and will likely continue to do so.
Now this is an open debate with literally everything. But mining Lithium itself did more damage than 100% of cars being built or are still being driven today. We have dug up half of the earth in the name of saving it. Makes complete sense. Also during out protests against fuel burning we will use molotov cocktails that use petrol to burn down stores and fuel stations because that makes complete sense saving the earth from pollution. And then I will post about this on social media using my phone that the earth was destroyed for and our atmosphere covered in metal junk will send a signal to my phone that has posted my message to redacted so we can now go outside a persons house and burn a cross outside their house
 
Half of France's nuclear reactors is currently out of operation due to extended maintenance, corrosion etc. Now 5 of its nuclear power plants have to reduce their production due to the heatwave. This contributes to the very high power prices early next week: around 600 €/MWh.

CNBC reports France is now having to import electricity.
 
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