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Nordstream explosion. Twitter Forsvaret, Danish Defence.
By Jo Nova
It was an act of terrorism that revolved around energy, but it’s also about free speech and the media. It’s a red-pill moment, and it was released on a blog, not in “the news”. Journalism lives — but it has moved.
Seymour Hersh is the same writer that broke the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib scandal. The veteran reporter won a Pulitzer prize and has an insider source and many details on his new substack blog. He claims The United States deliberately blew up the Nordstream pipes with help from Norway. The explosives were planted by divers in June under the cover of tine BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise. They were triggered by a sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane on Sept 26th, last year.
The WhiteHouse has flatly denied it, calling it “utterly false”, but the US always had the means, the motive and the opportunity, and we all remember the day when Joe Biden made the open threat “: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. … We will bring an end to it.” It turns out behind […]
By Jo Nova
Zion Lights
If we don’t teach our children how to spot cults and con artists they might grow into adults who lie on roads, tie themselves to cranes, and throw soup on a Van Gogh. Those who benefit from Climate “action” are exploiting mentally ill people.
A lady with the unlikely name of Zion Lights was once a spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion but quit and is now speaking out about their brainwashing, destructive behaviour, and the way they never seemed to want to solve climate change.
“The whole thing was a masterclass on how to manipulate emotions”, she says. She was told to “cry on TV” and bring her children to protests. Fellow activists there were so brainwashed some were sure they were going to die before thirty, and the leader of the movement, Roger Hallam offered them salvation, preyed on their guilt, compared himself to Gandhi and MLK and called himself a prophet. But was rude to followers, wouldn’t listen, and really didn’t care about “the people” at all. Ultimately, while he talked about armageddon, “he did nothing to prevent it” she said.
The hypocrisy finally got to her. Ms Lights wanted to talk […]
By Jo Nova
The government of Italy is planning to build new nuclear power plants. And if it happens, it marks an astonishing turnaround.
This was the Garigliano Nuclear Power plant in Italy in 1970. They already had the solution to it all, energy wars, Vladimir Putin, and fantasy “climate control” fifty years ago.
How much have we lost? Photo: Demaag
But Italy abandoned nuclear energy thirty years ago. It’s the only major European country to have stopped using nuclear power. (Though Germany is trying to).
Italy had four nuclear plants in the early 1980s but after the Chernobyl accident, they held a referendum on nuclear power, and the voters didn’t want it anymore, so they closed the last two reactors by 1990, (back in the days when voting made a difference). Furthermore, Italy held another referendum in 2011, and 94% of the voters rejected it again, which shows how desperate the situation must be now if an opinion poll like that has shifted so far in 11 years?
The thing is, Italy only makes 25% of its energy itself, and so it is suddenly very attuned to “geopolitical risk”.
Pierre Goselin at NoTricksZone found a news piece […]
Blistering high prices flow through the interconnectors too.
The energy price cap in the UK is now predicted to reach the £6,552 in April. Pretty soon only the Royal family will be able to afford electricity. If this continues, inflation in the UK may hit 18% by January.
As Javier Blas says: Day-ahead electricity prices in Europe are eye-watering, with lots of countries setting record highs for today. Notable to see the Nordics close to €400 per MWh, and Germany at €600. Before 2020, anything above €75-100 was considered expensive
It doesn’t matter who has the wind turbines, and who has the coal or nuclear power, everyone connected to junk generators gets expensive electricity. Denmark has more “free” wind power than nearly anywhere in the world but they are still paying €600+.
@JavierBlas
Meanwhile the German Energy Minister has decided he really should close the last three nuclear plants. Apparently it would only save 4% of their total gas bills, he says, not the 15% they need — like turning down a jerry can of fuel because it won’t fill the whole tank. I guess he’s not the one having cold showers.
Imagine how different […]
While all the rats are jumping off the Unreliable Wreck, Australia is leaping onto it. Every country that uses electrical-generators for magical Global Climate Control has expensive electricity. They’ve lost industries, jobs and sovereign power as well as hot showers.
Our energy prices are already a train-wreck, but Super-Albo is here to take that failure and double it. While Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, China, India, Hungary, Greece and the United Kingdom are all ramping up their coal, we’re going to use less to fend off the floods and hold back the tide. It’s pretty much just down to us and our friends, those crazy Canuks and the cockoo-Kiwi’s to save the world. All doing the climate voo-doo.
Magical pagan symbols and messages
The term “action” doesn’t mean any actual activity — apart from lots of paperwork:
Albanese told parliament: “Passing this legislation sends a great message to the people of Australia that we are taking real action on climate change.”
Instead of a message, Australians were hoping to get a $275-a-year cut in their electricity bills.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is sending a message to Australia — and they are saying: We Want Your Fossil […]
This is Fall of Rome type stuff — everything is coming undone
National rolling blackouts have been occurring for days in South Africa and are forecast to continue for another week at least. One engineer warns they are just a step away from a total blackout and says it will be very difficult to reawaken the entire system. Traffic lights are failing, trains are stopping, and mobiles phones, ATMs and fuel pumps may not work. With unemployment at a shocking 35% already, the million dollar losses from blackouts make for a dark feedback loop.
The immediate cause is strikes for wage claims and terrible maintenance leading to major power outages lasting as long as nine hours. But Green targets and activism only makes it worse because there’s no interest in maintaining plants properly which are planned for closure. South Africa runs mostly on old coal plants, and one of the largest plants is closing (supposedly) as soon as September. And the wind and solar power they have often isn’t helping with the peak loads either.
There is vandalism from every direction. At the bottom end, apparently up to half the people in Soweto are not even paying for electricity […]
Marcus Wong Wongm
Effectively — the AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) is the taxpayer funded advertising agency for the Renewables Industry. The point of the latest AEMO super-report, apparently, is to get Australian taxpayers or consumers to foot the bill for the high voltage lines that the unreliable industry desperately needs but can’t pay for itself.
The AEMO has declared we need to rush to cough up $12.7 billion to build new interconnectors in Australia. That’s $500 from every man woman and child and let’s call it what it is, a Gift Card for the Renewables Industry. The net benefit of all that money will be to allow wind and solar industrial plants to connect their unreliable product to the grid we already have, and to the storage products that we still have to pay for, and all so that their green electrons will make the weather 0.0 degrees cooler in a hundred years. Australians alive today will pay now and basically get nothing but views of more criss-crossy-steel-wires and spires, and more wind towers too. Sing Hallelujah.
The 104 page Blueprint imagines all kinds of scenarios except for an actual free market, true competition, consumer […]
Last month UK Ministers were warned that six million households could enjoy blackouts for dinner this winter. To try to stave off disaster, the UK Business Secretary has already written to the owners of the last three remaining coal fired power plants to ask them to stay running through winter. This is despite them being set to close in September.
Given the dire shortage of cheap energy, another plan is to pay British households up to £6 for each kilowatt-hour they don’t use at peak time. While a normal kilowatt-hour would cost 28p, the blistering premium price shows how desperate the National Grid planners must be. The last thing they want is everyone to come home, turn on the oven and washing machine and plug in their scooters and EV’s at 6pm.
So now possibly in a grand experiment, as well as trying to control the weather with windmills, millions of families may try to reschedule body clocks somehow, eating later, doing laundry later, watching the melatonin-destroying blue-screens-of-insomnia after 10pm and running the drier while they sleep. Maybe it won’t be so bad, or maybe people will be more sleep deprived and less productive, fatter, or crash their cars on […]
In an emergency everyone wants coal
Just like that — Europe is hitting the panic button. Thank the Russians for demanding rubles for their gas and threatening supply. Not only has Germany decided to rescue old coal plants, but so has Austria, which had gone blissfully “coal free” two years ago. How long did that fairytale last? In the Netherlands coal power plants were forced for years to run at only 35% capacity by government ruling, but now, suddenly, full tilt is fine. Sweden and Denmark have both issued an “early warning” to flag potential energy shortages.
In Poland, energy prices are so expensive that three weeks ago the government told people to go and collect wood from forests to keep their homes warm. Last week they the government said it would pay a large part of the cost of buying three tons of coal for each household. It’s that bad.
Much of the EU rely on Russian gas for about 40% of their supplies. The Austrians have storage sites for gas so large they can hold an entire years worth, but they are only 39% full and they want to double that before November.
Germany is now calling this […]
It’s the day before the election and all through the house, electricity bills are doubling…
The price rises are so extraordinary one retailer is asking their customers to leave “in the next 24 hours”.
Across Australia small power suppliers are sending emails to customers right now warning them that their rates are going up next week by eye-watering amounts. Wholesale electricity prices were at a record high in April this year, and it hasn’t improved in May. Prices are hitting $200-$300 per megawatt hour, not as a peak, but as a 24 hour average. In South Australia two days ago, the average for the full day was $1,141. Futures contracts are rapidly taking off and these rises are starting to flow through to customers. Already, the small retailers are bleeding cash, just as they did in the UK, and if wholesale prices don’t come back to Earth soon, they will go out of business.
Reader Brett in South Australia shared an email from Discover Energy. As of next week the standard peak rate will rise from 39 cent per kilowatt hour to 70 cents. Off peak rates rise from 27 to 46. He also adds, “My brother lives in NSW […]
It’s almost like China’s climate action was just window dressing. It seems to be unraveling…
China’s National Carbon Trading Scheme was supposed to go into full operation later this month, but now it’s been cut back by two-thirds. Instead of burdening 6,000 companies it will only afflict 2,000. And only a week ago, the Chinese government suddenly axed solar and wind subsidies, with the cuts starting just six weeks from now. Oilprice calls it “a crushing blow for wind and solar”. In a devastating move, there are even demands that solar plants have to sell electricity at the same price as coal power. The cruelty!
China produces three quarters of all the world’s solar panels, having subsidized-the-heck out of the global industry, exploited slave labor and driven the US leaders out of production.
Judging by the Wall St Journal story — in the last two months the paradigm has shifted from Environmental control to Economic priority. Perhaps solar power wasn’t much use for building ballistic missile submarines?
How different things would be if solar was actually cheaper than coal…
No new solar power plant subsidies. Just like that? China to stop subsidies for new solar power stations, onshore wind projects […]
God’s joke on governments that try to control the climate with their electricity grid:
Europe talks itself out of building gas plants in order to stop global warming, then after an extra cold winter, they also run out of gas, and now they have to go back to burning coal.
Spooked investors weren’t funding many gas plants now that the glorious renewable era was here and policy makers were all wearing their Hydrogen badges, and waving their carbon capture wands. In the last year all the geniuses of the European Investment Bank, the IEA, the European Commission were saying “gas is over” and it would be a stranded asset.
One month ago, Nina Chestney was predicting a gas supply crunch:
Gas faces existential crisis in climate wary Europe
May 14, 2021, , Reuters
Europe faces the prospect of higher electricity bills and a supply crunch, as utilities struggle to finance new gas-fired power plants unless they meet tougher emissions criteria imposed by banks pressured to stop financing fossil-fuel projects.
…Gas projects worth some 30 billion euros were cancelled, delayed or indefinitely postponed last year as they struggled to find funding.
The […]
Solar Road, Normandy, France | Credit: KumKum
Would you like to drive slower, add to noise pollution and waste money? Then solar roads are for you:
The world’s first solar road has turned out to be a colossal failure…
Ruqayyah Moynihan and Lidia Montes, Business Insider
Two years after the world’s first solar road — the Normandy road in France — was set up, it’s turned out to be a colossal failure, according to a report by Le Monde. The road has deteriorated to a terrible state, it isn’t producing anywhere near the amount of energy it had previously pledged to, and the traffic it has brought with it is causing noise problems.
The original aim was to produce 790 kWh each day, a quantity that could illuminate a population of between 3,000 and 5,000 inhabitants. But the rate produced stands at only about 50% of the original predicted estimates.
Even rotting leaves and thunderstorms appear to pose a risk in terms of damage to the surface of the road. What’s more, the road is very noisy, which is why the traffic limit had to be lowered to 70 kmh.
Despite costing up […]
Go Coal. Wood-fired electricity produces *more* CO2 for the next hundred years…
h/t NoTricksZone
Any day now the giant tree-eating-machine called Drax will be shifting back to coal as Greens and politicians realize they’ve made a planet killing mistake. Lordy! At the moment, Drax is supposed to be saving the world and making electricity for the UK by burning trees cut down and shipped from the US.
This temple to carbon neutrality happens to be the largest plant in the UK . It generates about 7% of all the megawatts used there. But a new study by Sterman et al, suggests the Drax plan is backfiring badly.
When is carbon neutrality not neutral? When the carbon debt is not paid off in our lifetimes…
Burning forests instead of coal deposits raises CO2, and in so many ways: Wood is a less efficient fuel. Megawatt for megawatt, wood produces more CO2 than coal. In terms of efficiencies, the combustion efficiency of wood is 25% compared to coal at 35%. Processing losses to supply wood are around 27%, while losses to supply coal are 11%. (NEA 2011, IEA 2016, Roder 2015) This is the slow road to carbon neutrality. It takes […]
Today the South Australian government destroyed the smoke stack of the Playford B Plant, one more part of what’s left of the cheapest base-load electricity generators in the state.
For about $8 million a year over three years, they could have kept some coal power going and wouldn’t have needed to spend $400 million on emergency diesel generators they don’t want to use, and over $100 million on a battery that can supply 4% of the state for one hour. They also would’ve paid less than $120 million for two days of electricity last week.
On the upside, they can feel good and pretend to be “world leaders”. Virtue signalling is expensive, eh?
….
The plant employed 185 people, the coal mine 200. Other businesses in the town, who knows? People are leaving.
SA, a star in the race away from being a competitive, powerhouse rich state. Creating wealth and jobs in China.
Last South Australian coal-fired power station demolition nears completion
The Australian, Luke Griffiths:
The concrete and brick structure at the 240MW Playford B power station, named after long-serving South Australian premier Sir Thomas Playford and mothballed in 2012, leaves only […]
UPDATE: MELBOURNE hospitals are enacting emergency procedures to prepare for the potential loss of power. Hospitals are switching off non-essential electrical equipment, including some lights, to minimize energy use. This is a “Code Yellow” alert asking hospitals to check their back up generators are ready. The Victorian Minister insists this is not about the “threat” of blackouts, but because hospitals need to be “good corporate citizens”. Pull the other one. At the very least, this is about reducing electricity bills. h/t Chris in Hervey Bay.
See further UPDATES on “The art of blaming coal” at the bottom.
How much fun can you have? The AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) projects that as temperatures hit 42C in Victoria, prices are forecast to rise over 100 fold. The AEMO is furiously busy issuing market notices.
The ABC tells us it is 42C, that Portland Alumina has reduced production, but for an ‘undisclosed price’ (why can’t taxpayers know what they are paying this group, not to produce aluminium today?) Meanwhile the AEMO has put the RERT plan into action: “Under the RERT scheme, AEMO has contracted 884 megawatts of “demand side response” across Victoria, NSW and South Australia.” Translated, […]
Higher electricity costs mean more people turn off their heaters
There’s a big freeze coming to Britain with minus 12C temperatures possible in the next three weeks.
Last year in winter in England there was a remarkable 40% rise in winter deaths
David Archibald emails that last year was a mild winter for Brits, but the death toll rose from the normal 25,000 excess to 34,000 people. Remembering that it’s moderate cold that kills far more people than extreme temperatures. The UK government advises rooms be heated to at least 18C. (I’ve been in a Canberra house where the temperature fell to 11C indoors, and that was in May.) Despite all the newspaper headlines about outside temperatures, the big killer is indoors.
The big killer is indoor temperature and moderately cold, not extremes.
Campaigners demand urgent cuts to power bill after number of winter deaths among the elderly rise by 40%
Pensioner groups are demanding urgent measures to cut the cost of heat and light after official figures revealed a surge in deaths last winter. There were some 34,300 so-called ‘excess’ deaths during the cold months, according to new figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). […]
Flinders Island is in the Bass Strait North of Tasmania.
If there is a heaven for renewables, this island should be it. But instead, even on Flinders Island, renewables aren’t cheaper than diesel generators. This is a dismal reality, yet the ABC promotes it as a fantasy poster-isle, interviewing only vested or “no idea” people, asking no critical questions, doing no counter research and telling us renewables will be “more reliable” and implying they are cheaper too. The ABC is a three-million-dollar-a-day advertising outlet for other government agencies. Instead of serving Australians it appears to be there to help shake down the taxpayer.
ABC renewables hype strikes again: Rhiannon Shine reports Flinders Island as a showcase of the brave new renewables world. Let’s translate that spin and see just how pathetic it is. If anywhere was going to be totally renewable, Flinders Island would be it — a first world island, tiny population, massive subsidies, no access to cheap coal or gas power, government support at every level and placed in a handy wind stream known as “the Roaring Forties”. Yeah! This is one of the last places in the first world (short of Antarctic stations) where renewables […]
Welcome to the world of baby-economics where people think a “negative” price is a sign of success. In Simpletown people are cheering. But in the real world a price signal that’s negative tells us that someone is selling something so awful they have to pay someone to take it away. It’s a burden that must be got rid of, like trash.
Germany set to pay customers for electricity usage as renewable energy generation creates huge power surplus — The Independent
Electrons cannot be created nor destroyed. If you make them, you have to deal with them. Negative pricing is a bad thing, a sign of “junk electricity” — a burden. It’s utter nonsense in a free market.
From the outset, I’m skeptical that anyone is actually paying someone to take electricity. If wind farms were coughing up dollars (euro) to “customers” surely they would just disconnect their spinning thingo from the grid? Who wants to be a shareholder in a company that forgets to lock the turbine, or press the “off” switch, and has to pay customers to take its electronic trash? The truth (whatever it is) will turn out to be some variation of an unfree market. Probably […]
It’s not even close: If South Australia seceded it would have the highest electricity price of any nation on Earth.
Australian Households pay highest power prices in the World, AFR.
South Australian households are paying the highest prices in the world at 47.13¢ per kilowatt hour, more than Germany, Denmark and Italy which heavily tax energy, after the huge increases on July 1, Carbon + Energy Markets’ MarkIntell data service says.
When the eastern states’ National Electricity Market was formed in the late 1990s, Australia had the lowest retail prices in the world along with the United States and Canada, CME director Bruce Mountain said.
The Markintell report graph:
…
Hmm — odd coincidence of Price with Wind Energy Penetration:
Wind energy is “free” but countries with the most wind power are also the most likely to get to the top of the Prize Pool for exorbitant electricity. Wind energy penetration is highest in Denmark (1st), Portugul (8th), Ireland (6th), Spain (11th), Germany (3rd). Conversely, renewable energy penetration is low in places at the tail end of the price curve like Luxemburg 6%, Estonia 15%, Hungary 7%, Lithuania 15.5%. In the low mid price […]
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