With the recent rise in the price of natural gas in Europe to five times where it was earlier this year, expect to see many more Europeans, including Brits, plunged into “energy poverty” — too poor to pay their utility bills on time and/or keep their homes adequately warm.
Why is not hard to grasp: from Greece to Great Britain and everywhere in between, the European electricity grid is increasingly de-linked from reliable, affordable fossil fuels and hooked up to more expensive and intermittent wind and solar projects.
When wind and solar are not available, Europeans and others end up chasing the same supplies of oil, natural gas and coal, pushing their prices dramatically higher. Canadians should pay attention.
What Europeans are already enduring and will suffer through again this winter will only intensify thanks to government efforts at COP26 this week to mandate an even faster “phaseout” of fossil fuels. But existing policies were causing substantial energy poverty in Europe even before the price spike this autumn.
For the rest of this column: https://financialpost.com/opinion/renewables-are-making-europe-energy-poor