Europe Goes Back to Antiquity on Energy, Led by EU Gurus

When the wind first quit blowing during the summer of 2021, European countries like Germany and the UK responded to the problem by restarting mothballed natural gas generating plants as the lowest-emission alternatives to their failed but still virtue signal-worthy wind farms. But as Winter 2021 approached and the gas wasn’t enough, they next resorted to restarting dirtier coal plants and Germany even pledged to keep a couple of its destined-for-retirement nuclear facilities online for a period of time.

Surely, that would get them through winter and then the wind would return in the spring and they would be able to return to retiring all those unsightly fossil fuel plants that do not provide proper virtue signaling opportunities at COP conferences and all would be right with the world again. Problem solved, right?

Sure, you betcha.

But then Putin invaded Ukraine before Winter was even over, and then the wind didn’t return and it was often cloudy so the solar wasn’t working as advertised, either and they had to not only keep those fossil fuels generating, but also decide to go ahead and restart their lignite mining industry as well to power those dirty coal plants.

In Germany, this created the spectacle a few weeks ago of the government allowing a coal mining company to tear down a beautiful wind farm to facilitate its lignite strip-mining operation.

But doing all that takes time, and winter is coming, as they say on Game of Thrones, so the some in Europe have had to next resort to cutting down forests to burn – you guessed it – wood.

Worse, the nations of Europe have captured such a huge portion of the global supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) now that shortages have been created in dozens of Asian, African and South American countries, and those countries are also now resorting to restarting their own coal plants and burning more wood.

And, they have burned the wood to such an extent that the world will, in the 2022, consume an all-time record amount of wood, a technology England thought it had eradicated by switching to coal in the 17th-century, to generate heat and energy.

But of course, the foresightful geniuses at the EU have decided in their infinite desire to signal their green virtues that the cutting of forests to burn wood to generate heat and energy is somehow a “green” technology worthy of virtue signaling. Again, problem solved!

But, things have continued getting worse, not better, despite all the energy policy genius emanating from Europe. Thus it was that that this week we were treated to this story out of Ireland:

This was supposed to be the year Ireland got serious about protecting its bogs but some of those hopes are wafting up in smoke as households burn peat to save on energy bills.

The soaring cost of oil and gas has reinvigorated the ancient practice of cutting and burning turf, a fuel that hurts the environment but can save a family thousands of euros, especially as temperatures drop to freezing.

Earlier this year the government introduced curbs to peat cutting to protect Ireland’s bogs – which are important carbon sinks and sources of biodiversity – but Europe’s energy crisis has boosted what is supposed to be an anachronism. It costs approximately €500 to heat a household with peat for a year versus several thousand euros for more climate-friendly sources of energy.

“People are glad to have turf. It’s like having an oilwell in your own back yard,” said Michael Fitzmaurice, an independent member of parliament and chair of the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association. An average household that relies on peat consumes 10 to 12 tonnes per year, he said. “It’s security of energy.”

That’s right: The Irish are going back to another 17th-century technology, burning peat, for heat. You cannot make this energy poetry up.

Ben Brooksbank / Turf (peat) cutting in Connemara

How long can it be before the Irish government has the brainstorm of declaring the burning of turf, or peat, as a “green” technology since the turf is, after all, “renewable”?

I give it 6 months, tops.

You just can’t make this stuff up, folks. The jokes literally write themselves.

This article originally appeared at Energy Transition Absurdities and is reposted here with the permission of the author.