Thanks Peter
An interesting article.
Wynn
On Mon, Jun 27, 2022 at 1:09 PM Peter Aylen <peter.aylen@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I wondered what others opinion is on this.
The West’s own myopia led us to this energy crisis
Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail. June 24.22
The Group of Seven summit that begins Sunday in Germany will be all about
fossil fuels amid a global energy crisis unseen in nearly five decades. The
G7 leaders will talk a lot about the need to ramp up production of oil and
gas in order to address energy shortages, and rates of inflation, that are
making the 2020s look a lot like the 1970s.
Once again, war has served as the catalyst for a crisis whose underlying
causes have to do with the complacency of Western governments in the face
of shifting geopolitical dynamics. The Arab oil embargo against countries
that supported Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War caught the world
flat-footed. Unfortunately, the painful lessons of that era had been
forgotten or dismissed in favour of the West’s “clean-energy” orthodoxy by
the time Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
In the years leading up to the invasion, Western European politicians
allowed their countries to become increasingly dependent on Russian natural
gas because they considered it the lesser of two evils. The alternative was
importing North American liquefied natural gas (LNG) derived from hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking. Besides, they insisted, it was only a matter of
time before abundant wind and solar power, and electric cars, would
eliminate the need for all fossil fuels.
Policy-makers in Canada made much the same call. At one time, more than a
dozen proposals for LNG export terminals were on the drawing board in this
country. Instead of incentivizing their construction in the name of
exporting LNG to favour a transition away from much-dirtier coal in China
and Europe, and reducing energy dependence on authoritarian and
undemocratic regimes, Ottawa erected additional barriers to their
realization. The result is that only one such project is now under
construction, and it still faces major hurdles before it is up and running.
Well, guess what? Europe’s scramble to displace Russian gas has led U.S.
LNG producers to divert their limited supplies from China to Europe.
Beijing has responded by replacing gas with coal, ordering the country’s
coal mines to ramp up production of the fossil fuel that already supplied
60 per cent of China’s electricity before the invasion of Ukraine. China
has also moved to import more low-quality coal from Indonesia and Mongolia,
meaning it needs to burn more of the stuff just to produce the same amount
of electricity that came from using higher-quality thermal coal.
Germany, meanwhile, is poised to ration power and restart idled coal
plants as Russia cuts off its supply of natural gas. Russia blames the
60-per-cent reduction in gas flowing to Germany via the Nord Stream 1
pipeline on Western sanctions that prevent the return of a turbine under
repair by the Canadian unit of Siemens Energy. But German economy minister
Robert Habeck rejects that excuse, saying Russia is squeezing its gas
supply “as a weapon against Germany.”
U.S. President Joe Biden, who as a White House candidate vowed to make
Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state, is set to visit that country next month to
appeal to leaders there to increase oil production to help drive down crude
prices that have sent the cost of gasoline to more than US$5 a gallon at
the pump. Such grovelling might have been partially avoided had former
president Barack Obama, under whom Mr. Biden served as vice-president, not
vetoed the Keystone pipeline in 2015.
This week, Mr. Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, pooh-poohed the
idea of resuscitating Keystone in case, you know, this energy crisis goes
on for a while. “I don’t see it as a short-term measure to address the
current situation,” she said after meeting in Toronto with Finance Minister
Chrystia Freeland, who insisted she had raised the matter privately with
her U.S. counterpart. “And longer term, we remain committed to our
climate-change objectives.”
Except that, in focusing too narrowly on those objectives, the West has
allowed Mr. Putin and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to
wield too much power over the global energy market.
It would be a mistake to assume this current crisis is a temporary setback
in the midst of a transition to non-carbon-emitting energy sources that is
already under way. Rather, it may be a taste of what’s to come unless the
West puts energy security on an equal footing with global warming. Allowing
thugs and autocrats to hold the West hostage should not be the price to pay
for cutting global carbon emissions.
Surging fossil fuel prices have filled Russia’s coffers, allowing
President Vladimir Putin to claim that sanctions against his country have
backfired. “Gloomy predictions about Russia’s economy didn’t come true,” he
said last week. “European countries dealt a blow to their own economy all
on their own.”
That comment is only partly true. But that it has any truth at all is a
testament to the West’s energy myopia.
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