The EU’s green energy vote

“Many observers also believed that demand for oil had peaked in 2019 and would quickly be replaced by renewables. Depressed demand during Covid lockdowns seemed to validate that assessment. An energy transition was thought to be well on its way, facilitated by a wide range of government policies.

Yet that perception ran up against reality. Demand for oil and gas bounced back as lockdowns ended and economies rebounded. The global energy supply couldn’t keep up, owing in large part to underinvestment in conventional energy sources…

And so nations that previously paid little attention to energy security have been forced to search urgently for reliable alternative supplies. Europe is reupping its already ambitious commitment to wind and solar, but it seems to recognize that those additions at scale take some time and solve only part of the problem. A transition to renewable energy and electric cars won’t happen without energy security, which, at least for the next several decades, necessitates access to a diverse and reliable array of energy sources…

The global mismatch between demand and available supply for oil and natural gas is precarious. It will likely get worse over the next few months as Mr. Putin steps up his energy war, China’s demand increases as it comes out of Covid shut-ins, the dislocations in the global-supply system increase, and the tight balance between supply and demand tightens even further.”

“Natural gas has long been described as a “bridge fuel,” because it has the potential to reduce dependence on or displace entirely conventional fossil fuels that produce far more greenhouse gas emissions. This one-time waste product that was routinely burned off has become a staple of the global energy diet as a result of new extraction technologies. The environmental results of this revolution are measurable. “Since 2010, coal-to-gas switching has saved around 500 million tons of CO2,” the International Energy Agency confirms, “an effect equivalent to putting an extra 200 million EVs running on zero-carbon electricity on the road over the same period.”

The fact that natural gas produces fewer emissions and can therefore serve as a “bridge” to a greener future frustrates green activists to no end. We might attribute this hostility to zeal for the cause of environmental preservation if they weren’t just as gung-ho in their efforts to anathematize turbine-generated power produced by steam heat resulting from a controlled fission reaction. The activist class’s failure to make prudent and empirical distinctions between these two energy sources allowed the E.U. to lump them together—first, as unclean fuels and, now, as sources of “green” energy…

The fragile construct that allowed the Continent to pretend it wasn’t dependent on fossil fuels melted away upon first contact with the Hobbesian reality of geopolitics.”