The energy crisis in the European Union manifests itself due to a lack of energy, as production facilities do not have raw materials, which leads to rising prices. The market is poorly organized, even if the model proved to be effective in peacetime. In the current situation, when Russia started a warm war against Ukraine and an energy war against the EU, it is shown that the adopted model is no longer reliable for such a critical situation.

Regarding the external environment of the European Union, I explained (in a previous article here) that the Russian Federation behaves like an empire, but not resorting to brute force of weapons, but to hybrid aggression, the components of which are economy, energy, information and cyber. The European Union, as the main “beneficiary”, did not react in any way to the traps set, making itself vulnerable through the position of reconciliation, good understanding and appeasement of “business as usual”. A brief overview of the map of macroeconomic risks of the country was enough:

Fig. 1: Country risk map (source: visualcapitalist.com)

The big problem is that decision-makers in the EU have acted with disdain at the domestic level as well.

There is no doubt that environmental issues and global warming are issues that should only be considered after asking questions from academic researchers and energy professionals, with a moderate ear from environmental activists. But it seems that Brussels is conquered by them.

In the 1980s, Soviet influence agencies and Russian money organized environmental activists to politically destabilize the West. It is possible that these connections have been preserved, since the European far-right is also sponsored by the Kremlin. We will consider measures to exclude nuclear and coal energy from the energy balance of Germany and the transition to Russian gas. But we should not rule out the fact that these NGOs were captured by the Chinese, because the big winner of the decarbonization policy so far has been China.

Standardization conditions, which are required from all EU states, cannot be applied. A gradual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions was proposed. They are formed during the burning of fossil fuels: during the transportation of oil derivatives, during the production of electricity and/or thermal energy, gas, coal and oil derivatives. There was even a question about replacing the nuclear one. Substitutes for these fuels have been proposed: solar and wind, regardless of biomass, agrobiomass or municipal solid waste.

The standardization of EU member states’ energy sectors did not take geography into account: energy demand looks different in southern countries, where the sun produces many more hours of energy per day, than in northern countries. In addition, there are many more windy days on the coast of the Atlantic, North or Baltic seas than in the Hungarian desert or on the Black Sea coast. Each country has a different mix of energy resources. We know that Poland and Germany benefit from large coal deposits, that Norway and Romania have gas resources. Most European countries do not have significant primary energy resources. Also, in one sense it is the history and architecture of German industry, but in another it is similar to Spain or the former communist countries. Hence the design of energy transport systems, systems that are not designed to support the intermittency of renewables that I mentioned.

Money allocated through the Green Deal or Fit for 55, the main programs through which the EU hopes to free itself from energy dependence on the Russian Federation, has led to even greater dependence on the metals and rare earth monopoly, which China controls more than 80% of. It is true that renewable generation capacity is cheaper per megawatt, but it is not clear why this is not calculated per megawatt produced. We know that the power factor, a kind of efficiency that takes into account the time of operation, is much lower for renewables than for nuclear or fossil fuels, so actually the megawatt investment in renewables is actually several times greater.

As renewable energy sources provide electricity intermittently, production shortfalls are covered by coal, gas and nuclear power generation capacity. Nuclear power plants cannot be switched on and off for a short time. (Romanian) coal-fired and gas-fired power plants have long start-stop times, from several days to several hours. This fact means that we have much more coal or gas consumption due to these starts and stops dictated by how the wind blows or how the sun shines. Added to all this is the fact that repeatedly switching on and off the installation shortens its service life.

An interesting discussion was initiated by Mr. Kostiantyn Kranganu about the “necessity” of introducing renewable energy sources into the energy system in order to reduce CO2 emissions here. I will quote only one quote: “To replace 1 square meter of a gas power plant, 140 m.² of solar panels, 370 m² of onshore wind turbines, about 3000 m² reservoir or 6000 m² biomass”.

The European Union has imposed “green hydrogen”, that is, hydrogen that is produced as a result of the electrolysis of electricity from renewable sources. No one made economic calculations of yield and profitability. To the solar “output” of 10 to 20% or wind of 25 to 40%, we add the outputs of hydrogen production (85%), transportation and storage (not calculated), and retransformation of hydrogen into energy (between 35 and 50%). We achieve a small final output, that is, a huge energy price.

Energy systems were designed (many years ago) so that backup generation capacity (coal, gas, nuclear) covers average consumption. It was believed that the peaks of consumption (daily – evening, annual – winter) fall on hydropower.

Today, the energy system has different rules. The rules are dictated by the “market”, “marginal price”. That is, the low price is sold first, and the last price is the highest. In translation: energy produced from RES is the first to be sold, the highest price was for coal, and since Russian gas was closed, it is gas. We see that this is not quite the case: if electricity from gas or coal costs 200 euros, why is it sometimes sold for four times more? The answer is more nuanced, but the main reason is that there is not always free production capacity, so demand cannot be met. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro