It's easy to pivot to "the aftermath of war", but plenty, PLENTY of people and organizations pointed out that reliance on imported energy, especially from Russia, was not a great idea.
It would be a good idea if it was treated as an additional channel, not the main source of energy you build your economy on. It was cheap for a reason.
I was in no position to make any decisions related to energy politics (except voting), and energy politics isn't my strong suit either, but I always thought that the "mutual dependency" sounded like a good argument against a war; much better than MAD or other militaristic options. But, unlike policy makers, I didn't grasp the extend of the dependency on gas in our country.
Though not preparing a backup plan after the first invasion in 2014 was a bad decision. Little hindsight needed here.
People have been making these kinds of excuses about trading autonomy for short-term profits for at least a century.[0]
At the end of the day all that matters is that a nation is self-sufficient in the essentials and participates in the global economy that augment that self-sufficiency without damaging it. Anything else is hubris because you're just doomed to repeat history, and it's outright greed because the people making the decisions aren't the ones going to bear the brunt when they inevitably fail.
Except that for most European countries, full self-sufficiency is simply not possible, especially without sacrificing many other aspects of prosperity (not to mention climate issues).
So talking about this is interesting "huehuehuhue" farting, but not a very realistic political strategy.
I think mutual dependency is a good argument, except when one side has a much more valuable asset than the other side. In this case, Russia clearly had the most leverage in the situation. Energy independence may not be realistic for much of Europe, but avoiding a single point of failure / a dominant single supplier seems like it probably would have been wise.
It’s also that these interdependencies guarantee peace to some extent. The current dynamic is the most dangerous since WWII, much more complex than the Cold War actually.
The cold war was horrifyingly dangerous, with flights of nuclear-armed bombers routinely scrambling. Dr. Strangelove wasn't fiction: even a single rogue or confused crew could easily have started a world war. The current dynamic is also terrible, but both sides seem pretty determined to avoid a nuclear conflict (which is the main existential risk here, since Russia no longer seems likely to invade other European countries.)
The interdependencies don't guarantee peace; though they may increase the cost of war. Time and time again we've seen it, and we continue to surprised pikachu each time it happens.
You perhaps could generate some hypothetical interdependencies that would preclude war, but it may also argue for all-out "seize the other country" war, too.
I don't know how reliant the US is, but consider that if you buy a solar panel or a wind turbine from China, it produces energy for 10-25 years before needing replacement.
Gas, coal, wood pellets, etc. You buy them, you burn them, they're gone. You need new supplies tomorrow.
Turbine manufacturers are predominantly Danish (Vestas), German, (Siemens), USA (GE) and Spain (Iberdrola.) I don't have much of a problem with being dependent on energy cooperation from countries that happen to be my military allies.
Moreover, turbine part transportation is such a logistical challenge that manufacturers are always trying to set up assembly facilities near their customers. All four of those companies are shopping for factory space in the American Midwest for that reason.
Batteries and solar panels are impossible to really monopolize. Yes, Lithium comes from a constrained list of places, but for grid-linked power storage you don't need lithium. Space and weight are not as big a concern for stationary installed facilities, so you have lots of other options.
I actually went back and looked at US Presidents warning Europe about this.
Trump famously did and the Germans laughed at him for it.
Obama and Biden (both as VP and now as President) did.
Even as far back as George Bush: he warned them, although it was presented more as a trade matter since it would have been beneficial for the energy industry and this was pre-fracking revolution.
It has been a choir of warnings for decades, but the hubris of European technocrats wouldn't let them see reality.
Well, we can wag our fingers at Europe for engaging with Russia, but North America did the same with China.
And for Europe, it's not simply hubris though. There's multiple things at work. When the United States or Canada says to Europe: Don't buy energy from Russia, what Europeans legitimately heard was: Buy energy (at more cost and logistical challenge) from us instead.
Meanwhile Canada especially -- but likely the US as well -- was very much focused on building infrastructure for trade with the Pacific Rim, not Europe. So what other choice did Europe realistically have anyways?
I'm mad at hell at successive Canadian governments (what I'm most familiar with) who prioritized trade with China (or bulk exports to the US without value add). At the expense of the domestic market/infrastructure, at the expense of developing renewables, and at the expense of our European allies. Insanely short term thinking. An LNG facility on the St Lawrence would be real nice right now. Instead a massive LNG facility is being built for coastal British Columbia, and pipeline infrastructure being set up for that. Wrong coast it turns out because China will be perfectly happy to import from Russia instead. But again, all eyes on China, despite the risks that entailed, which are similar to the risks that western Europe had with Russia.
I have to admit that the ending took me by surprise. I was expecting “…but the Europeans got tired of them calling wolf”.
Those pipelines were shipping gas to Europe literally for decades. Countries like Ukraine, Belarus or Poland were making handsome money from the transit fees too.
Things are looking pretty brutal in southern Sweden for the coming winter. I have some acquaintances who are on thermal and who usually get pretty steep bills in December and January and they ain't just looking at a 7% increase that's for sure...
In the UK, we had a 57% increase in energy bills from July, and we're now looking at another 80% increase from October which is terrifying for a lot of us.
If you are renting, you are perfectly entitled to change energy suppliers and/or have meters removed or upgraded. Your landlord has no say in it. (For one thing, the meter belongs to the energy company!).
The only exception to this is if you are renting a room in a HMO that uses a common energy supply for all rooms, or if you landlord pays your energy bills.
Indoor bicycles are about £100 from decathlon.
/serious.
I can see a lot of financial problems ahead but equally(?) a lot of people not just sitting on their arses doing sfa.
Shopping centres will benefit from extra traffic, but may not necessarily get the cash. People may just wander...
I'm working on my W22 strategies now. More home (low key 90/10) exercise, more outside walks, family get togethers (share a house), stodgy energy-food, more blankets, bed early.....
Why would that go up (significantly)? Seems like geothermal would be pretty resistant? IE, the cost to run things like pumps should still be a fraction of the cost to heat using gas.
From what I've understood once you go below a certain temperature you can no longer pump and start heating using electricity instead. Which gets expensive as fuck. I have several friends in this situation. Sounds like something you'd think about in a country that gets cold every winter but I don't know. One explanation I've heard is that they didn't use to drill as deep as they do nowadays (I think most of my friends had their installed in the 90's) or something.
A friend drilled a new hole 5 years ago with a modern pump attached, with water carrier, still draws more power than we do for our 2 air pumps (cheap variants).
Well, what does "on thermal" mean? I interpret it as going into geothermal sources of heat, where the groundwater is already heated. (IE, the groundwater is something like 100+ degrees F, or 45+ degrees C.)
Firewood was in short supply and hard to find this winter and spring because of high power prices, imagine what will happen this coming winter with prices 5X-10X.
There's sellers that are already out of stock. Firewood needs to dry for months before use, and like everything else when there's high demand there will be high prices.
Yeah, regardless. I pay $0.11/kWh so I was just utterly gobsmacked at the cost of electricity in Northern Europe. And most of our electricity generation is nuclear.
I still don’t get why countries such as the Netherlands and Germany started to subsidise fossil fuels by reducing the taxes on them. They claimed this was to help poor people. However, rich people benefit more since they typically have a car and a bigger one.
Every good a poor person buys is shipped by fuel though?
Edit: And the rich are more likely to be able to afford electric vehicles and appliances
_and_ they of course are more likely to be able to take a hit to their finances and an upsurge in costs.
The difference between going to the movies less and having to weigh getting all the food you need or all the toiletries you need is obviously quite large.
There's no doubt they help the poor a _little bit_ .
The question is whether there exist alternative solutions that help the poor a lot more by not wasting so much helping the rich (or especially in this case - those buying and selling fossil fuels, industries we'd prefer to be slowing down rather than encouraging with tax breaks).
Eg if the same money "spent" on this tax break had instead been a invested in raising the minimum income tax ceiling, benefits, and pensions (by equivalent amounts), it would presumably have gotten more money into the pockets of those most hurt by fuel inflation, which was the claimed goal of the change, but done less to benefit the fossil fuel industry and those who don't really need tax breaks.
Or to go more extreme you could add an untaxed fuel ration (there is a shortage after all), paid for by higher taxes on extreme usage, thus reducing overuse and increasing affordability at the same time. But that's practically communism, so can't possibly be done (to be fair, it'd be very expensive to implement, so not sure it's a serious suggestion).
To be fair, this is exactly what the TFA suggests:
> Policymakers have mostly responded to the shock with broad-based price-suppressing measures, including subsidies, tax reductions, and price controls.
> Going forward, the policy emphasis should shift rapidly towards allowing price signals to operate more freely and providing income relief to the vulnerable.
Because of democracy. There's little car-driving voters hate more than higher fuel prices. And unfortunately car-driving voters are a majority of voters, so everyone else is forced by the government to subsidize them.
Because in a capitalist society, democracy is a means of settling disputes among the ruling classes. The system favors the wealthy because the wealthy control the system.
Shoulda woulda coulda aside, what does this mean going forward? For people who can't afford fuel - what will happen? Will they just not heat their home? Stock up on some proper animal hair clothing and blankets? What about their plumbing, frozen pipes?
>Most governments are providing some sort of monetary help
This is not a case of "government can cap the bills" or "government can provide subsidies to help pay for higher bills" or, even, "government can ration electricity". Setting aside the inflationary and other side effects of doing so, *SUBSIDIES DON'T MATTER IF THERE IS NO SUPPLY*.
I think it’s clear what is meant by the title. In case it’s not to you then “aftermath” refers to: aftermath of the start of the war and the accompanying sanctions and ongoing global realignment.
Time for another round of quantitative easing, easy money, the whole government bonds -> central banks -> private banks routine, perhaps? The banks can then extend loans to power users at low rates, so they can pay the higher energy fees?
Of course that's nonsense, but that's been the response of central banks to crises over the past decade (see Nomi Prins, Collusion). The problem is that there isn't enough physical gas to go around, and conjuring money out of a hat won't fix that problem.
The most obvious solution to Europe's energy woes is to build out energy systems that don't rely on any imports (uranium ore from Niger to feed French nuclear reactors is as much of a long-term supply problem as gas and oil from Russia or LNG tankers from the USA). That means solar/wind/storage has to become the dominant energy system, and that's the general trend:
> "Solar panels and wind turbines are now a common sight across the EU, which in large part is due to increased market activity. The cost of solar power production has for instance decreased by 75% between 2009 and 2018, and in 2014, onshore wind became cheaper than coal, gas and nuclear. In 2019, EU power production from wind and solar power overtook coal for the first time – meaning that they have become as competitive, or even cheaper, than fossil fuels in most places."
Note that central banks could put their efforts towards renewable investment instead of private banking deals, which would speed this transition up...
> That means solar/wind/storage has to become the dominant energy system, and that's the general trend:
Solar and batteries require mining rare earth elements which also present similar supply chain and ecological concerns. Without storage wind and solar simply cannot meet reliability and demand expectations.
The problem has many more complicating factors then most people are willing to discuss.
Monocrystalline silicon panels (by far the best option on the market today) do not require rare earth elements (the lanthanides), period. Iron-phosphate-lithium batteries do not require them, and nor do wind turbines. There are also a variety of utility-scale storage solutions, none of which require rare earth elements.
For more accurate information on renewables, I'd recommend:
>Time for another round of quantitative easing, easy money, the whole government bonds -> central banks -> private banks routine, perhaps? The banks can then extend loans to power users at low rates, so they can pay the higher energy fees?
>Of course that's nonsense
Setting aside the inflationary and other side effects of doing so, this is not a case of "government can cap the bills" or "government can provide subsidies to help pay for higher bills" or, even, "government can ration electricity". *SUBSIDIES DON'T MATTER IF THERE IS NO SUPPLY*.
So many people in /r/europe (and their sycophants elsewhere) are in denial. Check out this /r/ireland thread. <https://np.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/x1mbq9/small_busine...> Normally this sort of post—image with accompanying story of person/small business required to pay huge costs to giant company—is the closest thing to karma bait. There would be an endless stream of replies blaming big business/greedy companies/capitalism/etc., etc.
But not this time. Yes, there are some such comments, but also a striking number coming up with all sorts of "explanations" (all wrong, as far as I can tell) for why the bill is actually the restaurant's fault.
Why they are in so much denial, I don't know. Do they really think that if they don't acknowledge that energy bills across Ireland, the UK, and the continent are skyrocketing, maybe it will all go away? Or do they (given the Ukraine flag in the posted tweet's profile) think that if they publicly acknowledge that it's happening, doing so will contribute to Putin's victory and Ukraine's defeat?
This situation is infuriating to me as a Swede. We use basically no natural gas or oil for heating or power production, and right now we're exporting 3.8 GW to other countries, showing that we have a power surplus equaling several nuclear reactors. A few days ago I heard that we where the largest power exporter in Europe.
Even so, our power prices are through the roof because the price is set by the high export prices. We're paying approximately 5X-10X what we're used to because of the extremely poor energy policies in other countries. Nevermind being dependent on Russia, which has been a terror state killing politicians and journalists for decades, they should have invested heavily in energy efficiency and switching from fossil fuels years ago. Now we're paying the price for their idiocy.
Not that our government is perfect either, they've given large US companies like Microsoft and Amazon tax cuts on power to get them to build datacenters.
Perhaps it would soften the blow if one doesn’t think of the present problems as paying for the idiocy of others, but rather as helping fellow Europeans through a potentially long, cold winter. Or helping Ukraine fight for democracy, for freedom, for Europe.
I don’t think that in the EU we’ve fully exhausted the benefits of virtue and moral grandstanding, it’s too early to give up or be upset. And Sweden always had a claim at being a moral super-power.
Helping others solve their own problems doesn't keep your home warm, or food affordable. This isn't about helping Ukraine, it's about dealing with the aftermath of closing nuclear power, building not one but two natural gas pipelines to Russia, not prioritizing energy efficiency like insulation and heat pumps, and so on. Even before Putin went full crazy climate change was supposed to be a serious crisis.
Edit: I forgot an important point. I don't have anything against exporting power to our neighbors. My issue is that we have to pay the expensive power prices set by the expensive export. Our power hasn't suddenly become 5X-10X more expensive to produce, if we could keep our usual price and sell the surplus to other countries at the prices they want to pay I wouldn't mind it.
> Even before Putin went full crazy climate change was supposed to be a serious crisis
This.
I am guilty too. I know there really isn't much I can do to "help" except to accelerate my home energy efficiency plans, which will free up some small amount of gas for export this winter.
But why do I need to accelerate my plans? I made them last year. Why did it take an invasion halfway around the world to get me moving?
To be fair to Germany, only there can one import Russian gas at scale, take out all the genocide and terrorism using very precise custom designed filters and export it back to Poland or Ukraine as freedom gas.
Germany did end up getting a rather bad rap though, which is why I think Russia decided to help out by cutting gas deliveries.
Yes, especially because we already have four different price zones. Power is still relatively cheap in northern Sweden and out of control in the southern part. The reason for the zones are said to be because of limited transfer capability from the big hydro power plants from north to south, adding a fifth zone for export would seem to be the reasonable solution.
I am in the US and bought my current house from an older couple who could not keep up with the costs of having it, utilities definitely being a part of it. I do not know Swedish, but Google translate calls the house in the story you linked "a villa", which sounds to me like a rather upscale place. Make what you want out of it. As far as I can see this particular situation has nothing to do with socialism.
The link numbered 2 starts with this in Google translate: "Already in February, the Granholm couple from Öland noticed that electricity prices were skyrocketing. Even though they were only open for a few days that month, they received an electricity bill of SEK 30,000." What kind of successful pizza business is open only for a few days a month? Doesn't this make you suspicious about electricity being the biggest cause of the closure, and not just the final kick to the already dying business?
It has everything to do with socialism, because the state is the main beneficiary when electricity is tripple taxed (Taxed on buy, sale (double) and transport) and are making billions while people are becoming homeless (requiring welfare to survive). If you also remove businesses that drive tax to pay for welfare, who's then going to pay for everything?
They where open during times when electricity cost was at the lowest and yes, of course such hours would never work, it just drives in the point even more, restaurants are unsustainable at high energy costs. Keep in mind that low-pay jobs are non-existent in Sweden due to high lowest-salary regulations, a huge difference from US.
In the uk here,. I'm lucky that I don't have to often check my bank account to see the balance. But boy, I am not looking forward to the winter, the government is paralysed and doesn't seem to be doing anything, when the new PM start I don't expect things to get resolved. When I moved house I didn't even have any supplier options as no one was taking new customers, I didn't even get asked how I'd like to pay, I'm straight-up paying for the full usage each month. I have no idea how those on lower incomes are going to cope.
Oh and I really think the government should just ride roughshod over local authorities and allow wind turbines, solar etc to just get built with minimum fuss. Hell I'd even say the government should own nuclear power stations and just have someone run them.
81 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadThough not preparing a backup plan after the first invasion in 2014 was a bad decision. Little hindsight needed here.
At the end of the day all that matters is that a nation is self-sufficient in the essentials and participates in the global economy that augment that self-sufficiency without damaging it. Anything else is hubris because you're just doomed to repeat history, and it's outright greed because the people making the decisions aren't the ones going to bear the brunt when they inevitably fail.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS74746206720140627
So talking about this is interesting "huehuehuhue" farting, but not a very realistic political strategy.
You perhaps could generate some hypothetical interdependencies that would preclude war, but it may also argue for all-out "seize the other country" war, too.
For renewable energies in the U.S., would the U.S. be considered reliant on places like China for the batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, etc?
We'd only be dependent on expanding energy if the manufacturing of key components was happening outside the US.
Expanding your energy supply is nowhere near as important as maintaining 50% of your total energy supply (EU fossil fuels).
US energy consumption has been close to flat for 20 years.
Gas, coal, wood pellets, etc. You buy them, you burn them, they're gone. You need new supplies tomorrow.
Moreover, turbine part transportation is such a logistical challenge that manufacturers are always trying to set up assembly facilities near their customers. All four of those companies are shopping for factory space in the American Midwest for that reason.
Batteries and solar panels are impossible to really monopolize. Yes, Lithium comes from a constrained list of places, but for grid-linked power storage you don't need lithium. Space and weight are not as big a concern for stationary installed facilities, so you have lots of other options.
Parts are assembled where you mentioned which crucial parts sourced.
Trump famously did and the Germans laughed at him for it.
Obama and Biden (both as VP and now as President) did.
Even as far back as George Bush: he warned them, although it was presented more as a trade matter since it would have been beneficial for the energy industry and this was pre-fracking revolution.
It has been a choir of warnings for decades, but the hubris of European technocrats wouldn't let them see reality.
And for Europe, it's not simply hubris though. There's multiple things at work. When the United States or Canada says to Europe: Don't buy energy from Russia, what Europeans legitimately heard was: Buy energy (at more cost and logistical challenge) from us instead.
Meanwhile Canada especially -- but likely the US as well -- was very much focused on building infrastructure for trade with the Pacific Rim, not Europe. So what other choice did Europe realistically have anyways?
I'm mad at hell at successive Canadian governments (what I'm most familiar with) who prioritized trade with China (or bulk exports to the US without value add). At the expense of the domestic market/infrastructure, at the expense of developing renewables, and at the expense of our European allies. Insanely short term thinking. An LNG facility on the St Lawrence would be real nice right now. Instead a massive LNG facility is being built for coastal British Columbia, and pipeline infrastructure being set up for that. Wrong coast it turns out because China will be perfectly happy to import from Russia instead. But again, all eyes on China, despite the risks that entailed, which are similar to the risks that western Europe had with Russia.
Those pipelines were shipping gas to Europe literally for decades. Countries like Ukraine, Belarus or Poland were making handsome money from the transit fees too.
It doesn't make it a wise choice to have no backup for Russian gas, but I'm sure the industry lobby to keep the cheap gas was very strong.
I use very, very little gas. Currently my standing charge is about 4 times the cost of the (tiny amount of) gas I use, at least.
To avoid the gas standing charge I'd have to remove the meter, physically. Not my property, can't do it. So I have to pay. Funny system.
If you are renting, you are perfectly entitled to change energy suppliers and/or have meters removed or upgraded. Your landlord has no say in it. (For one thing, the meter belongs to the energy company!).
The only exception to this is if you are renting a room in a HMO that uses a common energy supply for all rooms, or if you landlord pays your energy bills.
https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/private_rentin...
I can see a lot of financial problems ahead but equally(?) a lot of people not just sitting on their arses doing sfa. Shopping centres will benefit from extra traffic, but may not necessarily get the cash. People may just wander...
I'm working on my W22 strategies now. More home (low key 90/10) exercise, more outside walks, family get togethers (share a house), stodgy energy-food, more blankets, bed early.....
Geothermal?
Why would that go up (significantly)? Seems like geothermal would be pretty resistant? IE, the cost to run things like pumps should still be a fraction of the cost to heat using gas.
Update: He drilled 160 meters into mountain.
As opposed to heat pumps, which you described.
If prices rise 5x as is expected, we're looking at ~8000€ for a single month. (1€/KwH x 5)
This house is > 70s, doesn't have a chimney, but we're considering installing a cast-iron wood burner in the house center for this winter.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/minekonomi/a/66p5LQ/ved-rusning-l...
But the consumption is only ~800KwH for August.
Edit: And the rich are more likely to be able to afford electric vehicles and appliances
_and_ they of course are more likely to be able to take a hit to their finances and an upsurge in costs.
The difference between going to the movies less and having to weigh getting all the food you need or all the toiletries you need is obviously quite large.
The question is whether there exist alternative solutions that help the poor a lot more by not wasting so much helping the rich (or especially in this case - those buying and selling fossil fuels, industries we'd prefer to be slowing down rather than encouraging with tax breaks).
Eg if the same money "spent" on this tax break had instead been a invested in raising the minimum income tax ceiling, benefits, and pensions (by equivalent amounts), it would presumably have gotten more money into the pockets of those most hurt by fuel inflation, which was the claimed goal of the change, but done less to benefit the fossil fuel industry and those who don't really need tax breaks.
Or to go more extreme you could add an untaxed fuel ration (there is a shortage after all), paid for by higher taxes on extreme usage, thus reducing overuse and increasing affordability at the same time. But that's practically communism, so can't possibly be done (to be fair, it'd be very expensive to implement, so not sure it's a serious suggestion).
> Policymakers have mostly responded to the shock with broad-based price-suppressing measures, including subsidies, tax reductions, and price controls.
> Going forward, the policy emphasis should shift rapidly towards allowing price signals to operate more freely and providing income relief to the vulnerable.
I'm all for using fuel taxes to subsidize clean energy and electrical cars though
A ton of other reasons where added transport costs add to increased life expenditures. It's not about the private car
The neoliberal coalition partner blocked its extension though, so now ppl are back to paying 60-150€ per month for transit.
- some people will be mostly unaffected;
- others will not be able to heat their houses as much, e.g. they'll only be able to heat up a couple of rooms to a lower temperature than usual;
- a bunch of people will decide to live together (e.g. parents and kids) to save money;
- some will not be able to pay their bills - energy companies will have to decide how to handle this;
- DIY home insulation will become more popular;
- wearing more clothes in winter will become popular again.
The impact on businesses is much harder to predict - I could see a lot of trouble coming in that area too.
This is not a case of "government can cap the bills" or "government can provide subsidies to help pay for higher bills" or, even, "government can ration electricity". Setting aside the inflationary and other side effects of doing so, *SUBSIDIES DON'T MATTER IF THERE IS NO SUPPLY*.
Of course that's nonsense, but that's been the response of central banks to crises over the past decade (see Nomi Prins, Collusion). The problem is that there isn't enough physical gas to go around, and conjuring money out of a hat won't fix that problem.
The most obvious solution to Europe's energy woes is to build out energy systems that don't rely on any imports (uranium ore from Niger to feed French nuclear reactors is as much of a long-term supply problem as gas and oil from Russia or LNG tankers from the USA). That means solar/wind/storage has to become the dominant energy system, and that's the general trend:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/focus-renewable-energy-europe...
> "Solar panels and wind turbines are now a common sight across the EU, which in large part is due to increased market activity. The cost of solar power production has for instance decreased by 75% between 2009 and 2018, and in 2014, onshore wind became cheaper than coal, gas and nuclear. In 2019, EU power production from wind and solar power overtook coal for the first time – meaning that they have become as competitive, or even cheaper, than fossil fuels in most places."
Note that central banks could put their efforts towards renewable investment instead of private banking deals, which would speed this transition up...
Solar and batteries require mining rare earth elements which also present similar supply chain and ecological concerns. Without storage wind and solar simply cannot meet reliability and demand expectations.
The problem has many more complicating factors then most people are willing to discuss.
For more accurate information on renewables, I'd recommend:
https://www.studyallenergy.com/
>Of course that's nonsense
Setting aside the inflationary and other side effects of doing so, this is not a case of "government can cap the bills" or "government can provide subsidies to help pay for higher bills" or, even, "government can ration electricity". *SUBSIDIES DON'T MATTER IF THERE IS NO SUPPLY*.
So many people in /r/europe (and their sycophants elsewhere) are in denial. Check out this /r/ireland thread. <https://np.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/x1mbq9/small_busine...> Normally this sort of post—image with accompanying story of person/small business required to pay huge costs to giant company—is the closest thing to karma bait. There would be an endless stream of replies blaming big business/greedy companies/capitalism/etc., etc.
But not this time. Yes, there are some such comments, but also a striking number coming up with all sorts of "explanations" (all wrong, as far as I can tell) for why the bill is actually the restaurant's fault.
Why they are in so much denial, I don't know. Do they really think that if they don't acknowledge that energy bills across Ireland, the UK, and the continent are skyrocketing, maybe it will all go away? Or do they (given the Ukraine flag in the posted tweet's profile) think that if they publicly acknowledge that it's happening, doing so will contribute to Putin's victory and Ukraine's defeat?
Even so, our power prices are through the roof because the price is set by the high export prices. We're paying approximately 5X-10X what we're used to because of the extremely poor energy policies in other countries. Nevermind being dependent on Russia, which has been a terror state killing politicians and journalists for decades, they should have invested heavily in energy efficiency and switching from fossil fuels years ago. Now we're paying the price for their idiocy.
Not that our government is perfect either, they've given large US companies like Microsoft and Amazon tax cuts on power to get them to build datacenters.
I don’t think that in the EU we’ve fully exhausted the benefits of virtue and moral grandstanding, it’s too early to give up or be upset. And Sweden always had a claim at being a moral super-power.
Edit: I forgot an important point. I don't have anything against exporting power to our neighbors. My issue is that we have to pay the expensive power prices set by the expensive export. Our power hasn't suddenly become 5X-10X more expensive to produce, if we could keep our usual price and sell the surplus to other countries at the prices they want to pay I wouldn't mind it.
Thanks again Angie!
This.
I am guilty too. I know there really isn't much I can do to "help" except to accelerate my home energy efficiency plans, which will free up some small amount of gas for export this winter.
But why do I need to accelerate my plans? I made them last year. Why did it take an invasion halfway around the world to get me moving?
Germany did end up getting a rather bad rap though, which is why I think Russia decided to help out by cutting gas deliveries.
[0] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/helsingborg/han-flyttar-fr...
And that it's fair that businesses have to shut down? [1][2][3]
[1] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/helsingborg/klippans-bruk-...
[2] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/pizzan-kostar-300-kronor-...
[3] https://www.smp.se/lessebo/lessebo-paper-stoppar-produktione...
This is just the beginning by the way and 4 out of 5 jobs are created by small-medium businesses in Sweden. [4]
https://www.di.se/pressreleaser/2022/06/10/foretagarforbunde...
Socialism is nice until you run out of other peoples money.
The link numbered 2 starts with this in Google translate: "Already in February, the Granholm couple from Öland noticed that electricity prices were skyrocketing. Even though they were only open for a few days that month, they received an electricity bill of SEK 30,000." What kind of successful pizza business is open only for a few days a month? Doesn't this make you suspicious about electricity being the biggest cause of the closure, and not just the final kick to the already dying business?
They where open during times when electricity cost was at the lowest and yes, of course such hours would never work, it just drives in the point even more, restaurants are unsustainable at high energy costs. Keep in mind that low-pay jobs are non-existent in Sweden due to high lowest-salary regulations, a huge difference from US.