Could we be next?

Almost two years ago, I wrote a blog post that had an very similar title:

A Cautionary Tale:  Britain Faces Massive Blackouts Due To Green Politics

So I read with interest this article at Watts Up With That?

Britain Faces Energy Crisis, Engineers Warn – Green Isn't Working

Energy bills will soar as green policies shut coal-fired power stations and cause an “electricity supply crisis”, experts say. Prices will be forced up as the UK has to import more power, according to a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers today.

Craig Woodhouse, The Sun, 26 January 2016

Also reported in the guardian, Engineers warn of looming UK energy gap:

Phasing-out of coal and nuclear reactors without alternatives will combine to create a supply crunch in a decade’s time, report predicts.

The UK is facing an unprecedented “energy gap” in a decade’s time, according to engineers, with demand for electricity likely to outstrip supply by more than 40%, which could lead to black outs .

New policies to stop unabated coal-fired power generation by 2025, and the phasing out of ageing nuclear reactors without plans in place to build a new fleet of gas-fired electricity plants, will combine to create a supply crunch, according to a new study.

“Under current [government] policy, it is almost impossible for UK electricity demand to be met by 2025,” said Jenifer Baxter , head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), which published the report, entitled Engineering the UK’s Electricity Gap, on Tuesday.

As many as 30 new gas-fired power stations are likely to be needed to make up the supply deficit, according to the report, but these are not being built. Reforms to the electricity market brought in under the previous coalition government are also not helping to encourage construction.

Plans to encourage energy efficiency by the general public have been scrapped, as have plans for carbon capture and storage. Demand for electricity continues to rise, as nuclear power plants and coal-fired power plants are phased out – without the gas-fired plants needed to replace them. Apparently, they are also phasing out subsidies for renewable energy. And while shale gas is something that is being explored in Great Britain, so far nothing has been produced. Something has to give.

This was linked in my post almost two years ago. On March 19, 2014, from the Financial Times:

George Osborne in his Budget speech on Wednesday talked, correctly, about US industrial energy costs being half those of the UK. The situation has deteriorated rapidly over the past five years. His proposed response is worth quoting directly:

“We need to cut our energy costs. We’re going to do this by investing in new sources of energy: new nuclear power, renewables, and a shale gas revolution.”

This must be a speechwriter’s joke. A line written in where the content bears absolutely no relationship to reality. New nuclear at £92.50 a megawatt hour will double the current wholesale price of electricity. New offshore wind on the Department of Energy & Climate Change’s own figures, which many feel are too low, will cost more than £120/Mwhr. These are not secret figures. They are well known in the Treasury, as is the risk of generating capacity failing to meet demand. There was no mention of that little problem.

I said then, and repeat now, that as we in the United States examine our energy options, which have never been better, with which – for the first time in decades – our nation can become energy independent, we are faced with an EPA that is out of control, and activists that seem to be bent on the destruction of our economy, while living in a fantasy of their own  making.

What has happened, and is happening, in the UK is a cautionary tale that should be examined and studied.

ft.com continues:

Developing our own resources – safely and under good regulatory control – makes every sort of sense. Shale cannot solve all our immediate energy policy challenges but it can underpin a diverse, balanced energy economy. US energy costs are half those in the UK because a shale gas revolution has changed the economics of energy supply. In the absence of shale gas in places such as the UK that gap will widen.

Imagine if your energy costs were twice what they are now.  That is what you would be paying in Britain.  Now.  If it were not for shale exploration (hydraulic fracking), which drove the cost of natural gas down drastically in our country, we might be.

We are still fighting the EPA. This is what they have in store for us.

And then I read “stuff” like this. Remember the Paris Climate Agreement?

How The Paris Climate Agreement Super-Charges The Clean Air Act

Last December in Paris, the U.S. committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent compared to 2005 levels by 2025. That target appears more than achievable given a variety of existing policies, including congressionally-approved incentives for renewable energy, national fuel economy standards, and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which requires states to develop plans to cut carbon pollution and existing power plants.

Some commentators in the U.S. have, however, predicted that ongoing progress in the U.S. — especially our ability to keep ratcheting down our greenhouse gas target over time — will be stymied by a lack of sufficient administrative authority combined with a Congress that refuses to take climate change seriously. Indeed, last month, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “To Achieve Paris Climate Goals, U.S. Will Need New Laws.”

That headline is wrong, according to the new legal analysis by a collection of leading legal scholars. Their analysis, “Legal Pathways to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under Section 115 of the Clean Air Act,” finds that rather than setting an unattainable goal that needs new laws from Congress, the Paris agreement “provides a strong basis for invoking a powerful tool available” today under the federal Clean Air Act.

Specifically, the unused “International Air Pollution” provisions of the Clean Air Act, which are contained in Section 115 of the act, have been unlocked by the Paris Agreement, providing the EPA the authority to effectively and efficiently call for needed pollution reductions.

I swear, the EPA, aided and abetted by the current administration, will take this country, and us along with it, into poverty and economic stagnation, if they can.  They are a strange mix of bureaucratic oppression and Keystone Kop-like screw ups.