Deeply desperate times

Plus personal note at the end

Europe is in a severe drought. Water levels in big rivers are critically low, which is hitting nuclear and coal generation. What better time for a certain type of people to point the finger at nuclear and coal as unreliable. Because of the weather.

The Danube is in especially bad shape. The water level is so low, Hungary was this close (a hair’s breadth) to shutting down its only nuclear power plant. Romania turned off a reactor at Cernavoda and started blasting the riverbed to divert the flow to the nuclear power plant.

Our own Kozloduy is doing fine but the operator is on high alert. In a nice twist, the water level in the Danube stopped dropping and began improving before Hungary had to switch off the power plant that generates over 40% of the country’s electricity.

Elsewhere, Poland’s had to reduce generation at a coal power plant because of dangerously low water levels at the local river that the plant uses for cooling purposes. And how did Euronews frame that? Glad you asked.

How Europe’s drought exposes ‘weakness of fossil fuels’ as Poland forced to shut down coal plants, it wrote today and I must apologise for writing on Wednesday that Bloomberg had pushed the limits to suspension of disbelief into hitherto unknown territory. Euronews just one-upped Bloomberg, claiming that coal and gas are vulnerable to weather phenomena — as opposed to, yes, as opposed to, wind and solar.

“[Some Polish environmentalist] Pomian argues that Europe’s latest drought should be a “wake-up call” for Poland and the rest of the continent to transition towards technologies like solar and wind power that require the least amount of water to generate electricity.” I had no idea wind and solar require any water to generate electricity but anyway.

I have to admit a certain admiration for this qualitatively novel degree of word-braiding because this goes beyond spin. An hour ago, I would’ve had trouble believing anyone would tout wind and solar as more weather-resilient than baseload generation of any kind but here we are now, an hour later and the touting is a fact. Baseload uses water? Water levels in rivers are low? Weather-dependent!!! (Sorry for the multiple punctuation)

They didn’t stop with coal and gas, either. This from France24: “Nuclear power is often touted as a solution to global warming. It comes with risks, but creates energy without the same greenhouse gas emissions as coal or gas plants. However, rising temperatures and drought in Europe are creating problems and shutdowns at nuclear power plants.” Subtext: nuclear is weather-dependent!!! (Sorry.)

We saw similar messaging in 2021, when storm Uri froze gas pipelines in Texas, prompting shrieks how unreliable natural gas is, if a random storm could paralyse production and power generation, while vehemently denying the relevance of equally frozen wind turbines and snow-covered solar panels.

From a certain perspective, of course, every form of energy production is weather-dependent. Every human activity is weather-dependent, in fact. There is, however, the little detail of degrees. Certain forms of energy production are a lot more weather-dependent than others and no amount of finger-pointing at the less dependent ones can change that, which concludes today’s “State the Obvious” segment.

Speaking of the weather, the drought in Europe brought a friend with it this summer, namely the devastating wildfires in France and Spain. The UN’s advice? You already know. “Humanity continuing to burn colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas is baking our planet, making these conditions more dangerous, and these mega fires more deadly and destructive,” the UN’s top climate figure Simon Stiell said. Which is not true, as evidenced by the fact that Australia’s wildfires have not got progressively worse since what they called the Black Summer of 2019/20.

“But the solutions are equally clear: all countries must move faster from fossil fuels to renewables and protect people from worsening climate impacts, from wildfires, to megastorms and floods, to droughts hitting food production.”

Because, as we know, panels and turbines don’t burn, they don’t take up precious land that could be used for food production or for just being pretty and ecosystemy, and they are 100% proofed against “megastorms and floods”. Also, if we build more of them, climate change will stop — while boosting energy security, of course. Someone should tell Romania, which has had the audacity to tell Brussels that if it meets its decarbonisation targets, energy security will fly out the window. Brussels disagrees, of course. Maybe Romania could stop its electricity and gas exports to the rest of Europe. Just a thought.

Personal note: Over the past year or so, I’ve shed about a dozen paid subscribers. At first I worried about it, then I started suspecting it’s not just me because Substack is growing so fast, there are many new writers, and people are free to choose what they pay to read.

After reading this Substack by Scott Carney, however, I realised something. I’m doing a lot better than many — a lot. Apparently, without meaning to, I’ve somehow built a gang (I am not using the word community in a serious context, ever) of like-minded people who stick around and are not fed up with all the energy craziness I cover here. For that, I am deeply grateful. I really didn’t expect it.

Separately, Stripe, which processes subscription payments for Substack, informed me recently they will be adding a charge on transactions, which is fine since I can’t do anything about it. But I understand they will be charging subscribers as well (1%), which is sub-optimal, in my opinion, but, once again, there is nothing I can do about this, except keep my subscription rates unchanged, which I absolutely can and will do. Stay (reasonably) sane, everyone. See you on Monday.