Will the Biden-AOC energy policies do to Americans what the UK’s climate obsession is doing to Britons?
Paul Driessen
Virginia issued a Clean Economy Act; Other states have implemented similar laws. AOC requests a national Green New Deal; President Biden is imposing a passing executive order. The UK is determined to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions; The European Union is pursuing a Green Deal.
All these policies cause energy prices to skyrocket, eliminate jobs and Killing. Instead of reducing their emissions, they simply move them overseas, where they combine with massive air and water pollution, habitat destruction and destruction of wildlife – as China and other nations Others burn more coal, oil and gas each year, to improve people’s living standards … and to extract and process raw materials for the wind turbines, solar panels and battery modules they use. production for climate-affected countries.
The end result: Progress towards a global Net Zero is zero – worse, zero – and all the lost jobs, rising poverty, falling living standards and adjusted deaths are nothing. .
President Biden wants to produce electricity without hydrocarbons by 2035 and eliminate all exploit and use fossil fuels by 2050. That means no petrol or diesel cars; no natural gas to power factories or to heat, warm water and cook in homes, hospitals and businesses; no petrochemical raw materials for fertilizers, plastics, pharmaceuticals and thousands of other everyday essential products.
All US energy will be powered by wind, solar and batteries – millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of battery modules, spread across the continental United States and along its coasts. Petrochemicals will come from crops grown on millions of acres of former wildlife habitat.
To advance this harsh agenda, the Biden Team canceled pipelines, leases, and permits; pressure banks to stop lending money for drilling; and enacted regulations that delay and increase costs for fossil fuel projects – and make it easier for industrial-scale wind and solar installers to obtain permits. Prices for energy, transportation, food, services and used cars skyrocketed. Inflation and consumer prices hit 40-year highs.
Henry Hub’s price of natural gas doubled from $2.61 per mcf (thousand cubic feet or million BTU) in November 2020 to $5.51 in October 2021, before falling to $4. $.75 in January 2022, as soaring global prices spur US state and private drilling, cracking, and production of the lands. Regular gasoline averaged $2.17 a gallon nationally in 2020 — but hit $3.39/gal ($4.38 in California) in the same time frame.
When Americans fret and worry about unnecessarily high prices – and wonder what the future might hold – they can look to the UK and EU (a) to calculate their blessings for relative low prices today, and (b) to think about how continued climate-centric policies might impact Americans’ livelihoods and living standards.
Britain and mainland Europe have embraced a wind and solar future, shutting down nuclear and coal power plants, and banning burning trillions of cubic feet natural gas under their feet, while output in the North Sea continues to decline. They have reaped the whirlwind from those callously ineffective policies.
(It is shining and ironic that Finance of Russian institutions various US, UK and European Union anti-disinformation campaigns, fundraising through a Bermuda law firm, a shell firm, and the Sea Transformation Fund for the Sierra Club , Climate Action Network and others.)
The vaunted British and European wind turbines have been producing electricity at a staggering 14% of capacity – delivering power three hours a day, one day a week, four days a month, for short periods of time, at completely unpredictable times. Their winter solar energy is also sporadic and unpredictable. No modern society can function on such energy.
Huge gaps have been filled by gas production and coal burning, with most of the gas coming from Russia and the US. But Asia also wants gas, and Russia is playing Ukraine/Nord Stream 2 pipeline politics with its gas, tightening supply as demand soars. UK and EU gas and electricity prices for homes and businesses are in the stratosphere – next year ten times The price of the Biden Era that Americans are paying.
Luckily for homes and businesses, the UK’s Office for Gas & Electric Markets (Ofgem) regulates how much utility companies can charge. But that often means keeping energy prices for homes, hospitals, schools and businesses far below the actual cost of utilities – with predictable results.
Experts say the average annual household bill of £1,277 ($1,755) could rise to £1,865 ($2,530) when the current price cap is lifted in April 2022 – for homes and apartments that are much smaller than their American counterparts, in much less climates with much more severe summer and winter temperatures than in the United States. Annual bills can exceed £2,000 ($2,715) or more at Ofgem’s August review.
National Energy Action says this could leave more than 6 million UK households (nearly a quarter of all) into “fuel poverty” – unable to provide adequate heat. and often have to choose between heating or eating, even when the indoor temperature is cold, their health and life are at risk.
For families wanting a solid budget, the average 12-month fixed-term contract for a typical household currently costs close to £2,500 ($3,430). But the UK’s second-largest energy supplier’s most recent fixed-rate offer is close to £4,200 ($5,750)! That’s because the cost of electricity and natural gas is expected to continue to rise — and because utility companies must pay wind turbine operators “limited payments” to shut down turbines anytime soon. whenever they generate more electricity than the grid needs and can absorb!
Pre-month natural gas prices at the Dutch hub TTF (a European standard for trading gas) recently hit €93.3 ($107) per megawatt-hour. That’s $31 an mcf – more six times Henry Hub prices January 2022. Just a month earlier, Europe’s first-ever gas price hit 61 USD per mcf!
No wonder 30 UK energy supplier goes bankrupt late 2021 – leaving homes and businesses scrambling to find new suppliers, with heating and cooking prices skyrocketing. When utilities can’t charge customers anywhere close to operating costs, they get frustrated.
No wonder 2/3 of UK tenants struggle to pay their energy bills, and 400,000 more UK households there was a risk of losing gas and electricity suppliers before Christmas last year. People are “really appalled” about the rising cost of energy. Excess winter energy poverty death cost capable of setting new records.
The standard of living and health in the UK and Europe is likely to get much worse. In addition to the frenzied energy costs, wages and environmental management costs are much higher than in Asia. Companies and industries that produce ceramics, steel, aluminum, automobiles, and other energy-intensive industries are finding it difficult to compete. Production, employment, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are shifting to Asia.
Climate and energy politics, combined with stiff global demand, make Europe’s energy prices unlikely to fall. And while the EU recently voted to define natural gas and nuclear power as “sustainable”, buying affordable gas and building new nuclear plants will take years and struggles. step by step. Total blackouts could become as common as in California.
British politician “Railways at the cost of energy” and argues about trimming them in the margins, says journalist Madeline Grant, perhaps by reducing VAT by 5% on energy or 25% green social allowance on electricity bills. But they “dare not to question green policies” that raise energy prices, end up taking no action, and then a new slap.”pollution tax“On gas and diesel powered vehicles.
Britain and Europe need to mine and break their huge shale deposits. After shutting down the older nuclear plants, they had to start building small modular reactors. The rest of the developed world needs to do the same – and not just because China, India and the rest of the developing world don’t want to give up fossil fuels and rely on wind power. and the sun is not to be trusted, but to save jobs and lives.
Otherwise, Britain’s past Christmas will be Europe’s and America’s Christmas future, forever. Scrooge learned from Marley. Will Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, the AOC and so many of them learn from the facts?
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
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