Winter is coming — and it’s not looking pretty. A confluence of events is threatening to create the perfect storm that could see an unusually cold winter coupled with prohibitively high home heating costs, in an economy already facing significant inflationary challenges.
Europe has been in the grips of an energy crisis for much of the summer, with the loosening of COVID restrictions combined with shortages of supply and low levels of inventory driving natural gas prices six times higher than they were a year ago.
The problem has been exacerbated by the push to replace fossil-fuel generation with renewable energy sources.
Wind production has been down throughout Europe this year, and it got worse at the end of August, when the wind stopped blowing in the North Sea, causing wind generation in the United Kingdom, which last year accounted for around 25 percent of the country’s power, to drop off significantly.
The resulting increase in the prices of oil, natural gas, coal, and carbon credits has caused British electricity prices to increase sevenfold year over year.
High prices in Europe and Asia are causing manufacturers to decrease production and exacerbating global shipping and supply chain problems that are leading to shortages of consumer goods worldwide.
Energy shortages in Europe are also beginning to affect the agriculture industry, threatening to increase food prices, which are already seeing high inflationary pressures.
North America is in a better position than Europe or Asia, with the benchmark Henry Hub natural gas price trading at around $6 per million British thermal units, compared to over $30 overseas.
But rising natural gas prices due to what is expected to be an unusually cold winter, combined with higher demand for oil driven by increased air travel and some power generators switching from gas to oil, risks precipitating an energy crisis here at home.
The problem is expected to be particularly acute in jurisdictions — such as California, New England (and Canada) — where stringent environmental regulations, the shuttering of coal-fired power plants, and carbon pricing schemes have made the once cheap and reliable electricity generated from fossil fuels prohibitively expensive.
New England suffers from a lack of pipeline capacity and usually relies on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports when the weather gets cold. This year, it will be competing with European and Asian customers, which has driven up natural gas futures in the region.
And California, somewhat ironically, has seen a reduction in its green energy output due to problems ostensibly caused by climate change, as droughts have curtailed hydroelectric generation and smoke from wildfires have blocked out the sun, causing it to rely more heavily on gas-fired generators.
Canadians are also feeling the brunt of high gas prices. At the beginning of the month, FortisBC, the largest natural gas distributor in British Columbia, raised its prices by nine percent, and Manitoba Hydro customers saw rates increase between 8.7 and 19 percent. Enbridge Gas, which heats three-quarters of Ontario’s homes, also upped its prices.
If there’s one thing most Canadians can count on it’s a cold winter, but the Weather Network is predicting that this year, Ontario and Quebec, the two most populous provinces, will see winter arrive earlier than it has in a generation.
And it will be even more brutal if Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is successful in her bid to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, which transports nearly half of Central Canada’s oil and gas supply.
Despite running through the Straits of Mackinac without incident since 1953, Whitmer revoked the easement allowing the line to traverse the body of water connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and ordered Enbridge to shut it down last spring, citing the potential for an oil spill.
The Calgary-based company refused and took it to court, which forced the parties into mediation.
Last month, Michigan said it would no longer continue with the talks, which prompted the federal government to invoke the dispute-resolution mechanism in the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty between Canada and the United States.
It will at least buy some time, hopefully enough to get Central Canada through the winter without losing a large portion of its energy supplies.
Regardless, if Line 5 is eventually forced to shut down, Canada will need a backup plan, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past decade, it’s that Canadians couldn’t build a new pipeline if our lives depended on it (and given the potential for those “eastern bastards” to freeze in the dark, one could argue that they do).
And herein lies the problem.
Ten years ago, Canada looked well-positioned to become an energy superpower. But over the preceding decade, numerous private-sector proposals to build LNG terminals off the coast of B.C., as well as pipelines connecting Alberta to the West Coast, the United States, and Eastern Canada have all been stymied by petty jurisdictional disputes and politicians who cave to the interests of radical environmentalists.
Canada has the 17th-largest proven natural gas reserves in the world, but the number of new wells completed annually in Western Canada dropped from over 12,000 in 2008 to 820 in 2016, and Alberta’s natural gas production has decreased by about 25 percent since 2007.
Part of the decline is due to the fact that large, easily accessible sources of gas have already been produced (which surely isn’t helped by reduced investment in the industry).
But it is also attributable to a reduction in Alberta’s natural gas exports, which dropped by over 40 percent between 2007 and 2014, due to increased shale gas production in the U.S. and a lack of LNG export facilities.
Meanwhile, gas on Alberta’s AECO index is selling for 55 percent less than at the Henry Hub terminal in Louisiana. The oil industry faces similar issues due to pipeline constraints.
Now we have the worst of both worlds: despite the lofty rhetoric espoused by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other world leaders about climate change, demand for oil and gas has only increased over time (aside from an expected dip during the pandemic), yet Canada does not have the infrastructure necessary to take full advantage of it.
Had we built the pipelines and LNG terminals necessary to get our energy resources to markets in the U.S., Asia, and even Europe, the impact of higher prices for energy and consumer goods would have been offset by a corresponding boom in the energy sector.
Instead, this winter, we will all be forced to be cold, miserable — and poorer.
Read more at National Post
I would think that they would all be hoping for global warming to take effect this winter, if it really existed. To show their lack of wisdom, it would seem logical that if global warming were real and caused by people burning carbon based materials for heat that as the planet warmed there would be less need for burning fuel for heat and so less carbon emitted into the atmosphere which would lower the global temperatures which would bring the need for burning more carbon based materials. Of course as the Bible says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom so I suppose we can not expect any viable remedies from these people. Only chaos, confusion, and hate.
The situation is no better in Australia. The country has enormous reserves of high quality coal and uranium, but because it’s not politically correct to build new HELE coal fired power stations and its actually against the law to have nuclear power, the country is on a slow path to disaster in around 10 years.
That is of course unless common sense prevails soon. The Energy Minister must feel like the little boy and the leaking dyke. He’s building two gas fired power stations to keep the lights on after more old coal burners are closed, however while that’s in the short distance, in the current plan, there are many more wind and solar farms being built.
It’s fascinating to see the common problem that exists within many countries experiencing electricity shortages and that is renewable generators sucking investment out of base load generation.
This can’t go on because I would think the most ardent supporter of climate change and renewable power generation will realise that it is highly likely we’ll be in the dark after the sun goes down in the foreseeable future. The added problem is our power generating output isn’t high enough to prevent what happened to Texas last winter.
The big test could come this summer. If Australia experiences a typically hot Aussie summer and all the air conditioners are turned on, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne could experience blackouts simply because of lack of supply.
Cutting off Fossil Fuels over a total fabricated crisis of Global Warming/Climate Change is going to lead to disaster
This will lead to a huge conflict.. and the greens will not like the outcome.