Europe’s Green Future Is Cold and Dark

Relying on clean energy sources such as wind and solar while ignoring energy security has proven disastrous for Europe

Steam rises from cooling towers of the Neurath coal-fired power plant as wind turbines spin over a field of rapeseed near Bedburg, Germany, on May 05, 2022. Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Commentary

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, European Union nations are scrambling to source fossil fuels to run their factories and heat their homes this winter. They vigorously boycotted Russian natural gas and levied sanctions, you’ll recall, as a way of punishing Russia for its evil warring ways.

The Thrill of Virtue Signaling

The virtuous thrill of that moral spasm lasted for a few weeks at most. Then the EU, and especially Germany, suddenly remembered that their economies—really, their very lives—depend on replacing the natural gas that they stopped buying from Moscow. At the time of the invasion in late February, Germany relied on Russia for 50 percent of its energy supplies.

The sanctions and boycott-driven shortages, as well as the war, of course, drove energy prices higher. That resulted in Europeans paying much more for much less energy, while Russia about doubled its revenues from the previous year, selling half as much.

Steam leaves a cooling tower of the Lichterfelde gas-fired power plant in Berlin on March 30, 2022. Michael Sohn/AP Photo

Russia Comes Out on Top

What’s more, the EU is still buying natural gas from Russia via China, which has been selling the gas they get from Russia on the cheap back to the Europeans at premium prices. It’s a win-win for Russia and China and a lose-lose for the EU. Fortunately, Norway, Algeria, and the United States are also providing Europe with natural gas, helping to shore up reserves. And in the not-too-distant future, Europe will also be buying liquified natural gas from Israel.

That doesn’t mean that Europe’s energy problems are solved. Energy experts and suppliers are predicting an even worse winter for Europe the year after this upcoming winter. That could well be the case; a lot can happen between now and then. Some even think Europe’s energy crisis could last several years. We’ll have to wait and see.

A Mindset of Arrogance

But the bigger picture is the utter lack of realistic thinking in Brussels and Berlin. The Europeans, and especially Germany, made the catastrophic mistake of assuming that Russia needed access to European markets and finance more than Europe needed Russian gas, and therefore Russia would not dare disrupt the flow of critical energy to Europe.

European energy strategists (or more likely, their political leaders) could not have been more wrong.

The first take away from this colossal miscalculation is that it’s not a one-off. Rather, it’s indicative of an endemic lack of foresight coupled with the aspirational delusions that plague the woke, green leftists who have been running Europe for the past several years, and anywhere else they may be lurking about.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during an extraordinary session to present a Green Deal plan, at the European Parliament in Brussels on Dec. 11, 2019. Reuters/Francois Lenoir

“The policy, called the Energiewende, is rooted in Germany’s naturalistic and romantic tradition, reflected in the rise of the Green Party and, more recently, in public opposition to nuclear electricity generation,” Vaclav Smil wrote in 2020 for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ IEEE Spectrum.

Even France, which relies on 56 nuclear power stations, has taken more than two dozen plants offline for deferred maintenance, meaning the French people will also endure a cold winter. There is not a reasonable answer as to why Paris would allow so many of its nuclear power plants to fall into such disrepair, unless the goal is to destabilize the French economy, society, and neighboring nations that rely on the French selling them excess electricity as they’ve done for years.

The sheer stupidity and/or arrogance (one often accompanies the other) of Europe’s top policy planners for refusing to diversify or maintain critical energy supplies years ago is breathtaking. Failing to understand that energy is a top national security factor, and that you don’t give your historical adversary the opportunity to threaten your existence by withholding it, is inexcusable.

A Policy of Madness

However, the same can and should be said about just how vulnerable the Europeans have made themselves by relying on fickle “green” energy sources such as wind and solar power, neither of which can come even close to replacing natural gas and other fossil fuels such as coal for energy generation. Germany is the poster child for such madness, having renounced both coal and nuclear energy with nothing but Russian gas to fill the gap.

With the advent of the war, the Europeans are acquiring an education in power politics—all puns intended—and the costs of ignoring reality in favor of a contrived morality that elevates the false science of climate change over the well-being of almost half a billion people.

In light of the very tenuous nature of their energy security, is Germany considering returning to nuclear power?

No. Even as it’s discovering that decommissioning nuclear power plants in favor of Russian natural gas has a steep cost, German leadership remains anti-nuclear.

West’s Adversaries Go All-In on Nuclear and Fossil Fuels

Meanwhile, Russia and China, the West’s top global adversaries, are going all in on fossil fuels, more than offsetting any climate benefits that might be derived from the EU’s green dream.

China, for instance, certainly talks up green energy; meanwhile, they’re building over 50 percent of the world’s new coal-based power plants. Construction of nuclear power plants in Asia is booming.

There is a lesson to be learned here that doesn’t fit the green narrative, because it’s based in reality. Nations that have unfettered access to cheap, plentiful, and reliable power have an enormous geopolitical advantage over those that have abandoned such energy sources for unreliable green energy technologies.

Do European leaders understand this?

Perhaps so, even if it’s slowly dawning on them. They’re finding out, for example, that the virtue that supposedly comes with shunning fossil fuels or nuclear energy is, at best, ephemeral. Furthermore, they’re about to understand that their virtue signaling means little to those who will soon be freezing in their apartments across the EU.

Incidentally, Germany has decided to dismantle a wind farm to restart a coal mine. Does that mean that they’re seeing the real world?

Wind turbines in the Baltic Sea offshore wind farm near Zingst, Germany, on April 29, 2011. Joern Pollex/Getty Images

Or is it just political tokenism to appease conservatives rather than a shift in a policy that guarantees energy dependence and weakness?

It is more likely the latter than the former.

Freezing Is a Hollow Virtue

As winter descends upon a Europe that somehow can’t figure out how to keep its citizens warm  as it seeks ever higher virtuous forms of energy, from wind farms to electric vehicles, it may well profit the EU leadership to ask itself a few questions.

For example, where is the virtue in forcing your people to choose between heating and eating this winter?

Where is the virtue in leaving all of Europe at the mercy of its geopolitical adversaries’ goodwill?

Where is the virtue in promoting the widespread adoption of electric vehicles when there isn’t enough lithium in the world to do so and mining it severely damages the environment?

Where is the virtue in using fossil fuels to power electric vehicles or causing blackouts in doing so?

For that matter, where is the virtue in the use of lithium, which is mined by millions of slaves, many of them children?

The central problem behind Europe’s devout faith in a green future is the triumph of ideology over reality.

If the trend away from nuclear energy, clean natural gas, and oil continues, the future of Europe looks rather cold.

And dark.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.