Big Bad "Energy Producers"

I find it amazing how quickly large international organisations are turning into what is effectively temples of a faith. That would be the green faith and the organisation that most recently caught my eye was the International Energy Agency.

The IEA’s head has been at it again, “it” being playing the blame game about the European gas crunch and making sure nobody says a word against renewables. Bloomberg cited Birol this week as saying that besides extreme weather events and supply outages, the blame for the European energy crunch was “…I want to underline this -- some of the deliberate policies of energy producers.”

Since it is rather unlikely Birol was referring to Norway, the target of the accusation has to have been Russia, yet again. But this is just habitual anti-Russia rhetoric that’s become more or less a question of good manners in Europe. More importantly, Birol made a point of noting it was “wrong” to suggest any link between renewable energy and the energy crunch. Yes, again. And again he failed to provide any explanation as to why it was “wrong”. Chances are, for the same reason that suggesting to a monotheistic person their God might not be as flawless as they believe is frowned upon in those circles.

The world’s two largest wind turbine producers must be apostates, then, because both dared blame low wind speeds for lower electricity output from their wind parks across Europe, which would hurt their 2021 profits. Vestas has slashed its 2021 outlook twice already. Orsted maintained its outlook but did say that “Additional burdens resulted from below-average wind conditions at onshore wind farm locations in Northern and Central Europe.” Perhaps if it was up to Mr. Birol, the executive suit of Orsted would be encouraged to self-flagellate and never again speak like that.

Tasteless sarcasm aside, however, deliberately overlooking the flaws of renewable energy is a problem. And it is a big problem: Bloomberg reported recently this winter could see blackouts in some parts of Europe. This would be the more developed Western Europe, too, because Eastern Europe still has a lot of coal plants, a lot of apostates who don’t care where their electricity comes from as long as it’s there, and local supply, too.

It seems wind drought is a big concern. Right now, according to electricityMap, wind speeds are great and all countries with considerable wind capacity are enjoying the result even if those wind speeds are not good enough for them to utilise all their available capacity. But one thing that the IEA’s Birol would probably like to sanction if he had the power is the mention of the fickle nature of the weather. It could always change. With it, wind and solar output changes, too. Currently, Europe is producing near zero solar power for seasonal reasons.

So, on the one hand, according to the head of the IEA, renewable power has nothing to do with the the energy crunch in Europe but on the other Russia is bad because it’s not sending more natural gas — a fossil fuel — to energy-starved Europe, which is energy starved because it didn’t load enough gas in its storage caverns during the summer, which is again Russia’s fault because Gazprom manages a lot of these caverns. If it sounds a little unhinged that’s because it is.

Blaming Russia for everything has become a knee-jerk reaction in EU and related circles and not only there. Yet after a certain time of repeating the same adage the accusations begin to look a little unreliable and even infantile. Why would a country — or a union of countries — in its right mind rely to such an extent for its energy needs on someone it sees as an enemy ? Why not find alternatives? Why not find them while the going was good? Because apparently the EU chose to bet on wind and solar. And it also made the mistake of betting on the spot market.

“The temptation is to blame Russia for manipulating or, as some say, weaponizing the supply of gas to Europe. But didn’t Europe know what would happen? Russia isn’t known as a benevolent nation”, wrote Llewellyn King for Forbes this week.

“If Russia is to blame — which prima facie appears to be the case, as Europe gets fully half its natural gas from Russia — then the Europeans are to blame too. The gas buyers of Europe and their political masters bet that Russia needed their market more than they needed Russia’s gas.”

If this was indeed the case, then it has to have been the stupidest bet ever made by people with only a casual grasp of Russia’s energy strategy and an overblown sense of self-importance. Neither of these two factors is conducive to making smart moves when securing the energy needs of a political and economic union that spans most of a continent. What they are conducive to is making mistakes and now Europe seems to be reaping the benefits of these mistakes. But no one mention the premature buildup of wind and solar capacity. It’s wrong.

This premature buildup was one mistake. Wind parks and solar farms were being built without an essential component: storage. Yet storage is costly. It would have compromised the narrative that wind and solar are much cheaper than fossil fuels. Another mistake was effectively dropping plans for alternative sources of natural gas. Sure, there has been tonnes of talk about gas from Azerbaijan and from North Africa but talk is where it has mostly stayed while Europe rushed to build wind parks and solar farms.

In the meantime, Russian gas was already available and abundant, so those self-important decision makers continued relying on it in growing quantities while they tirelessly slapped sanction after sanction on Moscow, repeatedly accused it of waging a propaganda war on the union and basically signalled in no uncertain terms they wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Russia at all. Except, that is, importing gas from it, no doubt with a dainty wince at the stink of enemy-produced fossil fuels.

As a result of these decisions, now parts of Europe that haven’t heard the word blackout in a local context in decades are facing precisely that. The prices of electricity are skyrocketing, households in the world’s best welfare states are struggling to pay their bills and this is only the start of winter. But remember, none of this has anything to do with renewable power.