Pranav - Dunkelflaute
Europe is leading the transition to green energy, and poor things, they’re getting absolutely belted for it. Consider this: Germany had a few days of bad weather, and that collapsed the Norwegian government!
So Germany gets a lot of its electricity from solar and wind energy. They used to have a bunch of nuclear reactors, but they freaked out about the possibility of a nuclear accident and shut them all down — and then went heavy on other renewables.
But here’s the issue: every once in a while, Germany sees a series of dark, cloudy days when the wind sits still. They call them ‘dunkelflaute’ or “dark, windless time”. During those days, you get neither solar nor wind energy. And what do you do if that’s how you get half your energy? Well, I guess you just rue your shit luck. And maybe fire up all your old gas-based power plants once again.
So, last December, Germany had a horrible dunkelflaute. Of course, its neighbouring countries saw bad weather too, which meant there was already a stress on prices. But Germany’s excessive reliance on intermittent renewables became the cherry on the shit-cake. Electricity prices sky-rocketed — to over 14 times the average. Many industries shut down temporarily because keeping their factories open was too expensive.
But this isn’t just a German story — it’s a European story. See, Europe’s gone and connected a lot of their grid together. And that means electricity shortages in one part of Europe infect the rest of Europe. So when Germany suddenly saw a shortage of electricity, prices shot up everywhere from Norway to the Netherlands, all at once.
Now, you might remember that half of Europe absolutely despises Europe these days. And a lot of that’s because of stuff like this. See, the rest of Europe is a lot more happy with nuclear power than Germany. And when Germany shuts down all its reliable power sources, and suddenly can’t deal with its intermittency issues, they think they’re subsidising its stupid experiments.
Consider Norway, for instance. They don't buy into a lot of EU ideas. They aren't even an EU member --- they've just signed up for all its single market schemes. But at times like this, that backfires. Their electricity supply --- dominated by the far less volatile hydroelectricity --- suddenly gets diverted to the rest of Europe. Noway’s energy minister described this price spike as “an absolutely shit situation”.
You know what isn't political popular in times like this? New European energy directives.
Europe's trying to pull its member countries, kicking-and-screaming, to the green transition. You know, the kind of stuff that's marketed as "strengthening regional cooperation towards clean energy goals". Only, Norway has largely relied on green electricity for the better part of a century, and it doesn't care much for new-fangled European rules. Especially when those could, for instance, force Norwegian companies to buy certificates to prove they're using green energy, spending millions of Euros on something they've been doing for decades.
For the last few years, the country had been run by a coalition between parties to the left and centre of its political spectrum. The two don't really like each other --- the Centre party is suspicious of Europe, and thinks the Left is too willing to do its bidding. The adoption of EU energy rules became one such sticking point. And after weeks of chaos, late this January, they withdrew from the ruling coalition. The backdrop to all this, of course, was Germany's dunkelflaute.
The green transition is hard for many reasons. But a big one, I reckon, is that you need to get the politics right. There's a very narrow band of political signalling that can actually get people to give up their own self-interest for the greater good of the world. People won't do it if they think you're haughty, and they certainly won't if they think you're an idiot. Europe, to many people, looks like a but of both.
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