So much for noble priorities

The European Union earlier this year made a big deal of its RePowerEU plan that would see massive investments in renewables. The United States administration last year made a big deal of its infrastructure bill that featured billions earmarked for renewable energy. Now, both are desperately looking for more of the things they wanted gone — fossil fuels.

I still haven’t decided if it’s ironic or farcical how things are turning out, especially in the last few days when the masks really fell with a clang.

EU gas buyers are scrambling to secure long-term delivery contracts with U.S. producers, emissions be damned. Oil buyers are guzzling Russian fuels ahead of the oil embargo.

Coal plants are being restarted in Europe to make up for lower gas deliveries from Russia and the lives of nuclear plants are being extended, everywhere but in Germany, of course. Germany has a problem with nuclear energy. It’s been there for decades.

And President Biden is travelling to Saudi Arabia but not to talk about more oil, definitely not.

Funnily enough, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic continue to talk about the energy transition although the talk increasingly sounds like a scratched record. Look at this press briefing with Energy Secretary Granholm, for example.

All the talk about clean energy being the only way forward certainly seem to be evidence that Granholm has an excellent rota memory but not much else. I especially liked her praise for refiners who have turned their refineries into biofuel production facilities… a day before she met with refiners to ask them to boost oil refining capacity.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the EC’s President is calling on people to reduce their thermostats by 2 degrees, apparently forgetting we are in summer now, not in winter, and if we’re talking about energy savings, we should be turning thermostats up. Again, it smacks of an automatic repetition of an idea that has pretty much lost its meaning.

The UN’s Antonio Guterres, the man who heroically insults whole industries, said in a tweet that “The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity & a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels - especially coal - and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition. Renewables are the peace plan of the 21st century,” but apparently forgot to criticise Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Netherlands for ramping up coal generation.

Whether this is a case of hypocrisy or idiocy is something that remains to be established by people more qualified than me. What has become clear is that it’s all well and good, and transitional until the light flickers.

Once the risk of an actual blackout makes itself felt, it’s over with the ambitious wind and solar projects because, shockingly, it still takes time to build a solar farm or a wind park and this time appears to be longer than the delivery of a coal cargo. Who could have known?

That’s why Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Netherlands are restarting their coal plants. That’s why E.ON’s chief executive is calling for increasing domestic natural gas production, even though the man admitted it won’t exactly replace lost Russian supply. And that’s why there’s more talk about energy conservation instead of wind and solar.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to cause second-hand embarrassment, this time doing it in the Middle East. Not only did the White House fail spectacularly in denying he was going to Saudi Arabia for oil but now there seems to be worry that he will be betraying his foreign policy line as well, “Committing American lives to defend these Arab dictatorships”, per this opinion column.

The day when I’ll openly talk about international politics has not yet come but it’s safe to say that this is a spectacular U-turn on Biden’s promises, which included “making the Saudis the pariah that they are.” Ah, to be a fly on the wall during that meeting with the Crown Prince… Or not, because there’s only so much second-hand embarrassment one can take.

Noble intentions and commitments are crumbling to dust left and right, and I don’t mean the political spectrum. I like to say that reality has the habit of reasserting itself sooner or later but this time this reassertion has come especially ruthlessly. I’m getting the feeling that the people ruling most of Europe and the United States can hardly catch their breath. So much is happening so quickly and they are ill-equipped to handle it.

I realise bashing the EU and the Biden administration is something I have been doing quite a lot of, and now is the time for me to say that I am not without sympathy for the people who make hard decisions.

It must be torture to see real life being so different from what you imagined it to be. It must be hard to learn, for example, that solar panels do not come into being spontaneously. Or that wind speeds matter for wind power generation. Or — something that they are about to learn, I suppose — greater demand for coal will push the price of coal up, not down, especially if you shun one of the world’s biggest — and conveniently close, by the way — exporters.

I remember how crestfallen I was when, decades ago, I learned that vitamin C was, in fact, spelled “vitamin C” and not “vitaminsee”. It was, and still is, one of the greatest embarrassments of my life.

Seeing your noble clean energy ambitions crash and burn — only for the short term, of course, but still — must be ten times as embarrassing. It’s not something you’d readily admit was happening. In fact, they don’t need to admit anything. It’s pretty obvious already that the transition is being put on hold. Only for a few years, of course. Just until we build enough solar and wind.