https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opinion/energy-climate-iran-nuclear.html
A Scary Energy Winter Is Coming. Don’t Blame the Greens.
Oct. 5, 2021
Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
Every so often the tectonic geopolitical plates that hold up the world economy
suddenly shift in ways that can rattle and destabilize everything on the
surface. That’s happening right now in the energy sphere.
Several forces are coming together that could make Vladimir Putin the king of
Europe, enable Iran to thumb its nose at America and build an atomic bomb, and
disrupt European power markets enough that the upcoming U.N. climate conference
in Glasgow could suffer blackouts owing to too little clean energy.
Yes, this is a big one.
Natural gas and coal prices in Europe and Asia just hit their highest levels on
record, oil prices in America hit a seven-year high and U.S. gasoline prices
are up $1 a gallon from last year. If this winter is as bad as some experts
predict — with some in the poor and middle classes unable to heat their homes —
I fear we’ll see a populist backlash to the whole climate/green movement. You
can already smell that coming in Britain.
I am a fan of the financial newsletter Blain’s Morning Porridge, written by a
smart, irreverent market strategist in London, Bill Blain. Last Thursday he
bluntly summed up the energy situation for the U.K. and Europe this way:
This winter — people are going to die of cold. As the price of energy goes
higher, the costs will fall disproportionately upon the poorest in society.
Income inequalities will be dramatically exposed as the most vulnerable in
society face a stark choice: heat or eat. … This winter the U.K. is likely to
be on its knees, begging energy from wherever it’s available. Europe will be in
as much trouble. The Middle East will be charging whatever they can get away
with, and the capacity to deliver is limited. … And Vladimir Putin can’t wait.
… He will invite each European leader to plead their case individually,
menacingly asking each leader why he should open the gas taps to their nation
specifically. … Make no mistake, this winter is going to be shocking. Be aware.
How did we get here? In truth, it’s a good-news-bad-news story.
The good news is that every major economy has signed onto reducing its carbon
footprint by phasing out dirtier fuels like coal to heat homes and to power
industries. The bad news is that most nations are doing it in totally
uncoordinated ways, from the top down, and before the market has produced
sufficient clean renewables like wind, solar and hydro.
If you don’t have enough renewables but you want to go green, the next best
thing is natural gas, which emits about half as much C0₂ as coal (as long as
methane is not released in the extraction process). But there is not enough of
this transition fuel to go around. So, everyone is scrambling to get more,
which is why the European Union’s biggest pipeline gas supplier — Russia — is
now in the catbird seat and prices are skyrocketing along with blackouts.
As Bloomberg Businessweek reported on Sept. 27, when it comes to natural gas,
“inventories at European storage facilities are at historically low levels for
this time of year. Pipeline flows from Russia and Norway have been limited.
That’s worrying as calmer weather has reduced output from wind turbines, while
Europe’s aging nuclear plants are being phased out or are more prone to outages
— making gas even more necessary. No wonder European gas prices surged by
almost 500 percent in the past year and are trading near record.”
But it’s not just Europe. This energy crunch could pinch ceramics, steel,
aluminum, glass and cement suppliers in China, the story added, while it
presents households in Brazil with eye-popping power bills because low river
water flows have slashed hydropower output. And pandemic-related supply chain
problems for coal are making the problem worse.
Editors’ Picks
It’s Time to Stop Paying for a VPN
Oct. 6, 2021
You Got Lost and Had to Be Rescued. Should You Pay?
Oct. 6, 2021
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Maria Callas
Oct. 6, 2021
Setting Sail on the Winding Waterways of California’s Delta
Oct. 3, 2021
David Sedaris Shows Us How His Mind Works
Oct. 5, 2021
How the Clique Books Taught Me to Hate Other Girls and Myself
Oct. 5, 2021
Alessandro Nivola Put His Foot Down and Won the ‘Many Saints’ Role Anyway
Oct. 3, 2021
How YoungBoy Never Broke Again Hit No. 1 From Jail: Fans Had His Back
Oct. 5, 2021
What the Kidnapping of Daniel Boone’s Daughter Tells Us About Life on the
Frontier
Oct. 5, 2021
Should I Help My Aging, Ailing Dad Access His Toxic Web Feed?
Oct. 5, 2021
But how did the bad-news side of this story emerge so fast?
Blame Covid-19. First, the pandemic erupted and signaled to every major economy
that we were headed for a deep recession. This sent prices of all kinds of
commodities, including oil and gas, into downward spirals.
This, in turn, led banks to choke off investment in new natural gas capacity
and crude wells after seven years of already declining investments in these
hydrocarbons because of lousy returns.
But the economy snapped back — thanks to government stimulus programs — far
faster than anticipated. And so, too, did demand for energy. But this industry
does not ramp up quickly. So, there was not enough natural gas, let alone
renewables, to fill in the gap.
America has enough oil and natural gas to meet its own needs for now, but its
ability to export liquefied natural gas to help others is limited, especially
when every utility in Europe and Asia is trying to meet newly minted
environmental, social and governance standards for clean energy and therefore
is desperate to import natural gas.
When every country jumps in at once, the price goes crazy. Or the lights go out.
Don’t get me wrong. I am as green as ever. But I’m not a nice green. I am a
mean green. Achieving the scale of clean energy that we need requires not only
wind, solar and hydro, but also a carbon tax in every major industrial economy,
nuclear power and natural gas as a bridge. If you oppose all those, you’re not
serious about what scientists tell us needs to be done right now — put in place
enough noncarbon-emitting fuels to manage the destructive aspects of climate
change that have become unavoidable, so we can avoid those that would be
unmanageable.
Sadly, in an overreaction to the Fukushima nuclear accident, Germany decided in
2011 to phase out all of its nuclear power by 2022 — nuclear power stations
that in the year 2000 generated 29.5 percent of Germany’s power generation mix.
All of that has to be replaced by wind, solar, hydro and natural gas, and there
is just not enough now.
As Bill Gates points out in his smart book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,”
the only way to reach our climate targets is to shift production of all the big
heavy industries, like steel, cement and automobiles, as well as how we heat
our homes and power our cars, to electricity generated from clean energy. Safe
and affordable nuclear power has to be part of our mix because, Gates argues,
“it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a
day.”
Meanwhile, though, this energy crisis is coinciding with the stalemate in the
talks between the U.S. and Iran about restoring the nuclear deal that Donald
Trump recklessly tore up in 2018 — without any alternative plan to curb Iran’s
nuclear program. To pressure us, Iran has resumed enriching uranium to levels
such that U.S. officials now believe it could be only a few months, or less,
away from having enough fissile material for a single bomb.
It would take much longer for Iran to build a warhead and delivery system, but
some U.S. officials believe that Iran just wants to make itself a threshold
nuclear power, like Japan, where it would stay just a few turns of the screw
away from actually having a bomb. This would give it all the deterrence it
needs. Both Israel and America have vowed not to let Iran get that close to the
doorstep of a nuclear weapon. Alas, we are entering crunchtime.
But what if the U.S. or Israel feels it has to strike Iran’s nuclear program in
the middle of what could be the worst energy winter since 1973? And what if
Iran responds by firing at U.S. or Western oil tankers in the Persian Gulf,
where Qatar, the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, resides?
Oil and gas prices will go into the stratosphere. So, Iran suddenly has new
leverage: Hit us and you bankrupt the world.
If I can figure that out, the Iranians can.
Little darling — it’s gonna be a long, cold, crazy winter.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d
like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some
tips. And here’s our email: letters@xxxxxxxxxxx.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion)
and Instagram.
