Washington Calls Out Europe's Energy Fantasy
Europe’s goal to pursue a net-zero agenda is depriving citizens of reliable and affordable energy in a choice made by politicians, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says.
Years ago, Western Europe, as well as the Biden administration, chose one side of a fork in the road which deprives consumers of choice, Secretary Wright said this week in a keynote address at the Three Seas Business Forum in Warsaw, Poland.
The energy transition policies imposed by the UK government and the European Union (EU) institutions have reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but Europe accounts for just 8% of global emissions anyway, said Wright, the founder and former CEO of fracking services company Liberty Energy.
The “top-down imposition of mandates for the energy system” actually impoverishes the countries choosing to pursue net-zero emissions. It’s unlikely to spread globally because it has created “two highly undesirable factors”—deindustrialization and more expensive energy for consumers and businesses, the top U.S. energy official told the audience in Poland.
“This top-down imposition of enforced “climate policies” is justified as necessary to save the world from climate change,” Wright said.
“But I can say that climate alarmism has clearly reduced energy freedom, and, hence, prosperity and national security across Western Europe.”
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“The previous U.S. administration worked hard to move the United States onto that same fork. The fork with mandated, top-down, expensive, unreliable energy that would drive de-industrialization of America,” Wright noted.
The U.S. official reiterated that climate change is a real physical phenomenon, but climate change isn’t even close to being the world’s most urgent problem.
“Today, folks struggling to pay their bills while aspiring to live highly energized lifestyles like you and I is a far bigger global challenge than climate change. Energy access is far too important to get wrong.”
In many energy-consuming economies, energy affordability and reliability have taken precedence over sustainability since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Major emerging economies such as China and India continue to rely on coal for power generation, despite China being the undisputed leader in renewable energy installations, too.
China and India have been sustaining global coal demand growth this decade. They even plan additional coal-fired capacity to support their respective renewables booms with 24/7 baseload power and avoid power crunches or blackouts like the ones they suffered in the early 2020s.
In Europe, some countries are considering boosting nuclear power generation – or, in Italy’s case, a return to nuclear after 40 years – for reliable zero-carbon energy, except Germany, the biggest economy, which shut down all its nuclear power plants two years ago.
Europe’s net-zero targets and rush to bet on renewable energy in the wake of the 2022 energy crisis have backfired, with energy costs for industry four to five times higher than in the United States, which can count on cheap and abundant domestic natural gas.
Deindustrialization in Europe has been taking place since the energy price spike three years ago, eroding what little competitive advantage it had over Chinese and U.S. manufacturing.
The net-zero agenda is not the only culprit—geographical and geological realities are that Europe depends on imports for the natural gas it consumes. Before 2022, it was Russian pipeline gas, now it’s (mostly American) LNG.
The EU Green Deal and the more recent Clean Industrial Deal from earlier this year aim to boost Europe’s competitiveness while decarbonizing at the same time. Competitiveness cannot be achieved when costs are several times higher than those of competitors, while following the climate policies to the letter doesn’t reduce these costs.
Emissions reductions and decarbonization aren’t happening overnight.
Secretary Wright told the Three Seas Business Forum in Poland that “It turns out to be very hard to transform energy systems. Decarbonization will likely take generations. Only time and innovation will deliver the low-carbon affordable, reliable secure energy that will gain widespread adoption.”
Wright called on Central Europe to choose energy freedom and join the U.S. on “Team Energy Freedom and prosperity for citizens.”
The U.S. official also reiterated the Trump Administration’s view that “The two biggest “climate solutions” in the coming decades are the same as they were in the last two decades, natural gas and nuclear, for the simple reason that they work. They supply affordable, reliable, secure energy.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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