Energetically committing economic and societal suicide?

(Monday to Thursday blog)

The EU saves the world!

Last week the glorious People’s Undemocratic Republic of the European Union (aka the EUSSR) confirmed its plan to cut CO2 emissions by 55% (compared to their 1990 levels) by 2030.

“Hooray!” I hear you all shout, “Well done EU! Well done Ursula Fond of Lying! Yipee, the wonderful EU is going to save the world from catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW)”

What about the cost?

I’m sorry to dampen your EU-nthusiasm on a rather miserable Monday morning, but what we’re seeing is total madness – economic and societal suicide.

Let’s take Germany, for example. Within the EU, Germany plans to be a leader in the use of supposedly ‘renewable’ energy and will produce 80% of its energy from renewable sources by 2050. “Hooray for Germany!”

At $0.38 per kwh (kilowatt hour) Germany has probably the highest energy cost in the developed world. To put this into context the UK price is over 30% lower at $0.26 per kwh and the USA is around 60% lower at $0.15 per kwh.  Even in Germany’s neighbour, unfortunate Poland which tends to get invaded by the Krauts every now and then, energy costs are much lower than Krautland. Energy costs in Poland are $0.19 per kwh – half the cost paid by Merkel’s planet-saving citizens.

But the situation is even worse when we look at two of Germany’s main industrial competitors – China and India. The cost of energy in China and India is $0.08 per kwh – 80% below the cost in Germany.

Why is Germany’s energy cost so high? Firstly because after the Fukishima tsunami disaster, Merkel took the decision to close down German’s nuclear industry. I guess Merkel forgot to look at a map. If she had, she would have noticed that Japan consists of islands while Germany is mostly land-locked. Moreover, Japan is sitting on top of a seismically active part of the Earth while Germany is seismically rather stable and probably hasn’t had a tsunami in the last 500 million years.

But the main reason that Germany’s energy costs are so high is Germany’s rush into using much more expensive supposedly ‘renewable’ energy sources. Solar and wind-farm energy is about 7 to 10 times as expensive as a fossil fuel source such as natural gas. And, of course, as the wind and sun are unreliable, you also need to pay for back-up fossil fuel energy production for days when there’s too little or too much wind or when there’s insufficient sun

Where are the jobs?

What does all this mean? It means that energy-intensive industries will continue to flood out of high energy cost countries as they increase their use of ludicrously expensive but unreliable supposedly ‘renewable’ energy and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost.

But its not only energy-intensive jobs that will be lost. I’ve just bought a ‘German’ running treadmill. The basic parts are made in Germany, then packaged up and sent to Taiwan for assembly, then shipped back to Europe. And the Italian motorbike manufacturer Ducatti makes kits for its motorbikes in Italy (I believe), then ships these to its factory in Rayong (Thailand) where they’re assembled into motorbikes and then sent to Europe, the US and Asia. There are probably thousands more companies with similar energy-guzzling supply chains destroying EU jobs.

The greeny activists and politicians will claim that their policies have created hundreds of thousands of so-called ‘green jobs’. But an analysis of renewable energy production in Spain showed that for every ‘green job’ created by the rush into renewables, 2.2 jobs were lost elsewhere in the economy due to higher energy costs.

Ooops. I doubt our rulers or the mainstream media will mention that.

Moreover, each ‘green job’ created in Spain cost taxpayers about $720,000 for solar energy jobs and around $1,250,000 for each wind energy job.

Reducing CO2 emissions?

As Western companies move ever more jobs to low energy cost countries, the West will de-industrialise further, CO2 emissions in the West will fall and ecoloon activists, self-righteous politicians and obsequious journalists will declare their policies of CO2 reduction a huge success and that they’ve saved the world. Nobody, especially not the mainstream media, will mention that all that has happened is that CO2 emissions have been moved out of the EU and NOT reduced and that millions of jobs in the West have been lost.

Time to tell the truth?

The West’s economic and societal suicide might be worth it if there really was a ‘climate crisis’. But the climate is doing just fine in spite of what the BBC and climate activists and mainstream media and politicians claim, the polar bears are thriving in spite of what the BBC and climate activists and mainstream media and politicians claim and CO2 emissions are at a 500 million year low point and have absolutely no influence on the climate at all in spite of what the BBC and climate activists and mainstream media and politicians claim.

Somebody ought to write a book about this farce/tragedy (delete as appropriate).

Oh, wait a minute, there is somebody writing a book about this. It’s me!