Voltaire said that “common sense is not so common. “Nowhere is this saying more applicable than in the context of the European Union’s energy policies. These policies have been applied most vigorously in Germany – Europe’s trading powerhouse – since the adoption of the Energiewende. The regulations and mandates followed are hostile to fossil fuels and nuclear power. Energiewende (German for “power shift”) refers to the ongoing energy transition towards an imagined long-term low-carbon, environmentally friendly, reliable and power source economy.
On Friday, Pierre L. Gosselin published an article that asked very seriously: “The more ‘green’ Germany becomes, the bloodier its economy becomes. How much can an economy bleed before it dies?With all the economic pessimism that has plagued the country over the past year, there are signs that voices explaining why might be emerging and injecting a not unusual sense into power politics in Germany and Europe in general.
Joseph C. Sternberg of the Wall Street Journal suggests that European governments should probably be informed in front of their American counterparts of the common sense of bad energy policy and the economic difficulties it inevitably causes: “You know you stumbled in the mirror when European politicians start to seem more practical than American politicians on climate policy. Well, here we are, Alice: Europeans are embracing the net-zero craze faster than their American peers.
German commercial output peaked in November 2017 and by the end of last year had fallen to a point last noticed in 2006, outside of the global monetary recession and Covid-19 years. Its business sector contracted by about 14% in the six years ending in December 2023. It’s no wonder that a wave of headlines greeted the announcement of Germany’s official recession experiment last year:
The Economist (August 2023): “Gerguyy Europe having health problems again?
Forbes (October 2023): “Gerguyy is the ‘sick man of Europe’: what’s wrong with the euro”
Bloomberg (January 2024): “Last year, Germany was literally a man in poor health”
German commercial production construction.
Since the beginning of last year, the German economy has done so for five consecutive quarters on an annualized basis. Germany’s energy policy has placed fuel and electricity costs among the highest in the world. Germany’s Federal Statistical Office reported in November that the number of years-long insolvency filings had continued to rise to double digits since June; The number of bankruptcies has increased by more than a third since August.
The energy-intensive advertising industries, in which small and medium-sized companies participate, as well as giants such as BASF, have been hit the hardest, as high energy costs cause large sectors of the German productive sector to lose competitiveness. The policy goals of “net zero” go beyond Germany. Industrial capacity is decimated in Europe.
An increasing number of European production corporations are on the verge of leaving their doors or are moving to countries with less expensive energy resources, such as China and the United States. Europe’s energy crisis worsened with the final blow resulting from the loss of reasonable vegetable fuel following the imposition of Western sanctions. on Russia after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Germany’s – and by extension Europe’s – powerful economic expansion since the 1960s has been based on the reasonable source of Russian herbal fuel.
The price caps of phasing out the use of fossil fuels and the sale of intermittent, climate-dependent renewable energy technologies over the past decade have been masked and disseminated through hidden prices and fiscal transfers to hardliners. But over time, net-zero climate policies have become increasingly unbearable for citizens, as they go beyond the electric power sector to cover agriculture, transport, homes and buildings.
Since the summer of 2023, the European Green Deal has been on regulatory pause, as EU governments face a “green light” opposing environmental policies. In the face of energy and cost-of-living crises, farmers, consumers and business teams are beginning to resent the high prices of the proliferation of environmental regulations across the continent. Nowhere is this sense of grievance more evident than in the plight of European farmers, as farmers’ protests have intensified across the continent since they began in the Netherlands in October 2019.
The most recent example of a green reaction comes from Scotland. Prime Minister Humza Yousaf felt compelled to resign last week when the Green Party threatened to vote on a no-confidence motion against Yousaf’s coalition government. Scottish Green Party co-leader Patrick Harvie said things had “come to a head”. period” after the Scottish Government abandoned its target to reduce greenhouse gases by 75% by 2030. The prime minister admitted last month that his government had abandoned its policy promises to reduce greenhouse gases. Scotland’s carbon emissions by 75% by 2030 after experts warned this was unattainable.
According to the European Council on Foreign Relations’ election forecasts published in January, the June 2024 elections are likely to see a primary shift to the right in many countries, with populist parties winning votes and seats across the EU, and centre-left and green parties. The parties lose. The forecast predicted that “anti-European populists would probably win the number of votes in nine member states (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia) and come in second or third place. “”in nine other countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden).
It is now largely evident that European governments have suspended or cancelled many environmental regulations and regulations in reaction to the populist backlash against the radical climate policies pursued over the past two decades.
But, on the other side of the Atlantic, pressure from across the U. S. government for competitive net-zero policies ceases, as the White House renews “discussions about the option of signaling a national climate emergency. “On April 25, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed regulations that will “effectively force coal-fired plants to shut down and ban new natural gas-fired plants” through 2032.
Conversely, U. S. corporations seem to have noticed a shift in their view of the Biden administration’s climate policy. In his annual letter to shareholders last month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in reference to the recent cancellation of export permits for LNG projects: “Projects have been delayed mainly for political reasons: to appease those who say that fuel is bad and that oil and fuel projects deserve to simply be stopped. This is not only false, but also incredibly naïve. “
This is a genuine shift for Dimon who, in his last annual letter to shareholders, warned that the U. S. government and climate-conscious corporations would likely have to capture citizens’ personal assets to implement climate initiatives. He said that “governments, businesses, companies and non-governmental organizations” would possibly want to invoke a “prominent area” to secure “adequate investments on a fairly temporary basis for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives. “
Common-sense energy policy customers in Europe and the United States are now counting on the effects of the elections in those two countries, in June and November respectively. For a deindustrializing Europe, this might be a little late, but for a much more physically powerful U. S. economy, it might be just in time before genuine damage is done.
A community. Lots of voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.
Our network aims to connect other people through open and thoughtful conversations. We need our readers to share their perspectives and exchange ideas and facts in one space.
To do so, please comply with the posting regulations in our site’s terms of use. We’ve summarized some of those key regulations below. Simply put, civilian.
Your message will be rejected if we notice that it appears to contain:
User accounts will be blocked if we become aware that users are participating in:
So how can you become a user?
Thank you for reading our Community Standards. Read the full list of publishing regulations discovered in our site’s terms of use.