For one, Germany -- against the advice of former President Donald Trump -- signed a deal with Russia, the country the NATO ally is supposed to be defending the European continent against, to have Moscow supply nearly all of its natural gas. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is being built as we speak, and once it's online, Moscow will literally control nearly all Germans' thermostats during the country's icy winter months.
Meanwhile, Germans are getting less and less energy from reliable fossil fuel-burning plants and more of it from wind and solar power, both of which are far more expensive and entirely reliant on the weather -- all because their leaders believe cattle methane and SUVs are destroying the planet.
And now as winter approaches, the price of energy is skyrocketing, in part because what remains of fossil-fuel-generating power plants are running out of fossil fuels to burn for power generation, according to Bloomberg News:
The global energy crunch forced a German electricity producer to halt a power plant after it ran out of coal.
Steag GmbH closed its Bergkamen-A plant in the western part of the country this week due to shortages of hard coal, it said by email. The closure is the first sign that Europe may need to count on mild and windy weather to keep the lights on as the continent faces shortages of natural gas and coal is unlikely to come to rescue.
Energy prices are soaring from the U.S. to Europe and Asia as economies rebound from a pandemic-induced lull and people return to the office. The shortage is so acute that China ordered its state-owned companies to secure supplies at all costs and Europe is burning more of its already depleted stocks of the dirtiest of fossil fuel, a move that may complicate climate talks next month.
“We are short of hard coal,” said Daniel Muhlenfeld, a spokesman for Steag. “There is a strong demand for coal per se and secondly, there is a strong demand for transport by barge. And since Bergkamen has no rail connection, there are no logistical alternatives available here.
“We are dealing with a double bottleneck.” Muhlenfeld said. “This is not a specific problem for Steag but a common problem for nearly all owners of hard coal-based power plants these days.”
The plant was halted four times in September for as long as six days due to shortages; other plants are experiencing similar shortages as well. And when there are shortages for a product in high demand, the result is much higher prices. In fact, prices for German energy have not been this high since the collapse days following the end of the country's World War I loss.
What's more, Germany isn't the only European country suffering shortages -- as winter approaches. And of course, all of this is playing into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has turned his country's oil-and-gas sector loose to produce as Trump did, which ended up making America energy independent for the first time in decades, now reversed thanks to the economy-killing policies of the Marxists running Joe Biden's regime.
Still, Germany and other European nations continue down the 'renewable energy' path because their leaders are true believers in the Church of Climate Change, though it will be decades -- and many cold winters -- before the transition away from cheaper and far more plentiful fossil fuels is even remotely possible.
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