Europe Turns to Coal Again, Raising Alarms on Climate

It is' good enough for China then it's good enough for Europe...

but wait they signed Kyoto they cant do that!


I guess the truth comes out that they could give a shit about that worthless piece of paper they signed!

But of course hurricane Katrina and rita hit the usa cause we did not sign Kyoto! This was according to some assinine German politician!

Clever....post a link to a subscriber site.

From the context of the posts it would seem to me that Europe has decided that because their KYOTO HOAX failed they will have to be competitive to survive.

Just in case anybody else had a problem connecting to that link, here's an editorial I read recently on a similar slant.

Basically, and to quote Kermit the Frog, "It's Not Easy Being Green" (for reasons you wouldn't immediately think of).

Do Germans Fear Global Warming More Than the Russians?

Sunday, Apr 20, 2008 - 12:05 AM

By WILLIAM YEATMAN
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON Seventeen years ago, post-Soviet Russia was a geopolitical doormat, too poor and weak to exert much influence beyond its borders. This month, at an international summit in Romania, Russia intimidated Western Europe into scuttling a proposal for NATO expansion. Historically, only war has caused rapid, profound shifts in the European balance of power.

Russia's rise, however, has a less malignant, if more bizarre, origin: German environmentalism.

Two decades of the world's most stringent environmental regulations have made Germany, Europe's largest economy, increasingly energy dependent on Russia, the world's largest exporter of natural gas. That's how Russian President Vladimir Putin persuaded a coalition of West European nations to oppose a proposal that would have expanded NATO, despite the fact that Russia isn't even a member of the trans-Atlantic military alliance.

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Germany's electricity sector enjoyed energy independence, thanks to extensive coal reserves and a large nuclear industry. In the time since, coal and nuclear power have fallen afoul of the environmental movement, their regulatory burden has increased, and they have gone into decline.

Coal has been targeted because its combustion releases the most greenhouse gas of any fossil fuel and Germany is a global leader in the rush to "do something" about climate change. In 1995, it passed sweeping emissions reductions into law, and the German legislature adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. In this regulatory environment, investment in new coal-fired power plants is unthinkable.

Nuclear power emits zero greenhouse gas, but most environmentalists oppose it because the waste it produces is difficult to store. In 2000, they prevailed upon the German government to issue a moratorium on new nuclear power plants. By 2022, nuclear will have been phased out.

Coal and nuclear power may have become unfashionable, but Germans still needed electricity. Like every nation, Germany aspires to economic growth, which requires ever more energy.

Natural gas was well positioned to pick up the slack left by coal and nuclear. It's cleaner than coal, yet less expensive than solar or wind power, so it has become the fuel of choice for power generation in Germany. Since 1990, natural gas' share of the German electricity market has more than doubled, from 7 percent to 16 percent.

In fact, Germany could have supplied much of its own natural gas needs with domestic reserves from the northwestern state of Niedersachsen, home to 9 trillion cubic feet of gas. However, this energy is off-limits because environmental regulations have curtailed the complete exploration and development of the area.

Instead, Germany has met its growing demand with natural gas imports from Gazprom, a state-owned enterprise that has a legal monopoly on all natural gas exports from Russia. Imports have skyrocketed since the Cold War, and Russia now supplies more than 40 percent of German gas consumption.

German demand for Russian gas is likely to continue to increase as a result of the European Union's new climate plan, which will provide a big economic incentive to close down older coal-fired power plants rather than maintain them. Gazprom is positioning itself to meet growing German demand by building the Northern Pipeline, which will link Russian gas directly to Central European markets.

Of course, economic power translates seamlessly into political power; accordingly, German diplomacy reflects an increasing awareness of Russia's needs and wants. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first head of state to pay a visit to Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev. And at the Romanian summit last week, German diplomats took an early lead in orchestrating opposition to President Bush's proposal for NATO expansion.

The German public understands the dangers of energy dependence on Russia. It's no secret that Gazprom can be the Kremlin's cudgel. Last October, Gazprom warned it would cut gas supplies to the Ukraine after a pro-Russia candidate lost a major election. To be sure, Gazprom had legitimate issues with the Ukraine over past debts, but these problems had been simmering for months, so the timing of the warning was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled threat.

Perhaps Germans fear Russia more than rising temperatures. A national debate has started on energy security, and there has even been talk of a coal revival in Germany, irrespective of the impact on climate change. In the end, the German people will have to decide what they are willing to sacrifice for a cleaner environment. After all, there's no such thing as a free lunch."

Here's a link that works though.

Coal’d Truth: European Power Gets Dirtier

I think that's what Stemmer was wanting to talk about.