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

Some world leaders just can’t get it into their heads that the wind doesn’t blow on demand, and the sun by definition is daytime only and subject to cloud cover. This has all been said frequently enough, but never seems to hit home in terms of credible energy policies. Ignoring the obvious, they insist that removing reliable power generation is the only way to go, in pursuit of their absurd ‘net zero’ climate targets. An energy crisis in early October doesn’t bode well for the approaching northern hemisphere winter.
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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, says the Washington Post (via MSN).

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.
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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.

Full article here.