Europe

Europe’s pivot away from traditional power sources without a proper contingency plan may be putting the continent at risk of a severe energy crisis, warns an energy executive.

The rich West wants to stop using coal while the poor East depends on it. Germany is caught in the middle. The future of the EU may turn on this issue, because East-West tensions are already great.

Schulz just wants “more power.” He is after all, a former President of the European Parliament.

America’s energy revolution can be the key to its competitiveness. This has OPEC and Europe worried.

The amount of money flowing into European green energy from governments and the private sector collapsed from $132 billion in 2011 to $58 billion last year.

Wind and solar power nearly fried Germany’s power grid, but the disaster was prevented when the German government paid consumers to use electricity.

Europe’s plans to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by switching from conventional oil to biofuels actually ended up increasing emissions.

James Rust, taking a note from Peter Glover’s article about Russian energy imperialism, suggests the U.S. should step up its own energy production and liberalize our oil and gas export laws to provide Europe with the means to thwart Russia’s bold geopolitical strategy. Of course, the Europeans might do well to reverse their own anti-energy-production policies. The key is to remember that fossil fuels production is a manufacturing process that drives economic growth.

A few years ago, Germany was “fully committed” to the EU’s goal of ending fossil fuel use. It was building lots of wind turbines, and even some solar farms despite its often-cloudy skies. After the tsunami, Prime Minister Angela Merckel announced Germany would phase out its nuclear plants quickly, implying more power from renewables.