Europe Is Meeting Carbon Reductions by Killing Citizens and Destroying Industry

The elderly suffer the most from the high cost of green electricity. Source: Unknown 

 

  For years I have been warning that Europe’s carbon reduction is going to result in an unmitigated disaster. That day has come. The death toll is skyrocketing in Europe. Forty thousand elderly and poor actually died in 2014, at least half because their power was turned off or they just kept their homes cold because they couldn’t afford the electricity. The culprit; energy poverty. Energy poverty is created when the cost of energy exceeds 10 percent of the household income for heat alone. That doesn’t include lights, refrigerator, washer and dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, television, computer, or anything else–just home heating, just in the months when it’s required. That has forced many of the poor and elderly have to decide whether to eat or be warm.

  Professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s Department of Health’s chief medical officer, said “Excess deaths are not just deaths of those who would have died anyway in the next few weeks or months due to illness or old age. There is strong evidence some of these deaths are indeed “extra” and are related to cold temperatures, living in cold homes as well as infectious diseases such as influenza.”

  Germany’s Focus wrote: “In 2014 Europe suffered about 40,000 winter deaths because millions of people were unable to pay for their electric bills – the so-called energy poverty currently impacts about ten percent of all Europeans. In the past 8 years the price of electricity in Europe has climbed by an average of 42 percent.” (bold original) In Bulgaria people see half of their income gobbled up by energy costs alone. In Spain 28 percent of the citizens live in “energy poverty”. In Germany 7 million households are considered to be living in “energy poverty”.

A comparison of electricity costs from developed nations worldwide. Note that the US has the lowest rate in this comparison, which should make it highly competitive. However, China subsidizes its heavy industry making it the largest steel and aluminum manufacture in the world. 

 

  Overall, Focus reports that ten percent of Europe now lives in energy poverty. Environmentalists have made coal and nuclear power into evil words in Europe, just as they have in the US. In Germany, however, Chancellor Angela Merkel was pressured by environmentalists to shutter all nuclear plants following the Fukushima meltdown in Japan. At the time 35 percent of German power came from these nuclear plants. By 2016 it had been slashed to about 14 percent. It will be phased out entirely by 2022. Energy is becoming a luxury in Europe.

  The production of green energy is grossly inefficient. The Internet news source Handelblatt notes that “The inefficiency is shocking: the renewable energy produced by €25 billion ($28.5 billion) in electricity-bill surcharges this year will only be worth €3.6 billion ($4.3 billion) on the market, according to the economics ministry.” That means people and companies will be charged €25 billion ($28.5 billion) in electrical surcharges that would only cost €3.6 billion ($4.3 billion) using fossil fuels and nuclear. Because of the incredible inefficiency of green power, E.ON and RWE, German’s biggest electrical producers, have to keep their fossil fuel and nuclear power plants going to instantly fill in the loss of green power when the sun goes behind a cloud or the wind stops blowing. Environmentalists know this, but they don’t care as long as they get their coveted green energy.

  The transition to green energy has been devastating. Handelblatt reports that 32,000 jobs have been lost in just two utilities; E.ON and RWE. Thousands more have been lost in the supply chain. Together, both companies have lost 76 percent of their stock value. Of course, local communities supporting the utilities have also been decimated. All at the holy alter of green energy.

Heavy industry is being destroyed in Europe because of the high cost of green electricity. Source: edie.net.

 

  The catastrophe has not been confined to Germany and mainland Europe. England suffered a major shock when England’s largest steel producer, Tata Steel, announced it was selling its entire production facility in Port Talbot. While the lousy economy and cheap Chinese steel account for some of the losses the company faces, the increased electricity costs also plays a big role. The increase in electricity tariffs and alternative energy charges for energy intensive industries is now £390 million ($555 million) annually and climbing.

  These energy intensive industries provide about 600,000 jobs and £52 billion ($74 billion) to England’s economy. England’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is working to provide its energy intensive industry an exemption from tariffs and add-on energy renewable costs. So far no plan as to how to make up the economic losses to the government by the exemption has been revealed.

  That, however, may be the least of the government’s concerns. There has been a quiet, but steady investment migration of industry from Europe to other nations like the US where energy is still cheap. The loss of industry will eventually gut the economy of Europe. But the socialists and greenies in Europe really do believe that green energy will eventually pay for itself, ushering in an era of utopia. Additionally, if the huge death toll of the elderly and poor continues because of energy poverty, the current government may be the victim of a voter revolt.

  Environmentalists are not the friend of people. They suffer from some sort of psychosis that blinds them to the enormous destruction they are causing. It is becoming obvious to anyone who has eyes. What they are doing is utterly evil. The enormous political clout they have in the Western World must be neutralized before they send us back to the dark ages.

 

Michael Coffman, Ph.D.