On 24 October, I was honored to moderate a great roundtable in Berlin with three European energy experts, sponsored by Der Divan Kulturehaus. SUGGESTION: While listening, open up that speaker’s file below. You’ll find Ben Aris’ data-slides on Russian price-cap failings, Andriy Kobolyev’s proposal to tax Moscow’s oil & Morten Frisch’s slides on EU renewable shortcomings & continued oil and gas needs.
Continue readingPosted in Berlin, Climate Change, Ehergiewende, Energiewende, Energy and Environment, Energy and Geopolitics, Energy and Geostrategy, Energy crisis, energy war, EU gas, Euroepen Union, gas crisis, gazprom, geopolitics, Nord Stream 2, Oil supply, Putin, Renewables, Renewables, Resource conflicts, Russia, Sanctions, Ukraine, Ukraine, Uncategorized
Tagged Energy, Energy crisis, energy prices, gas crisis, geopolitics, Germany, oil price cap, Renewables, Russia, Sanctions, Ukraine, Ukraine war, USA
Re: Urgente Pedido de Entrevista Periodística – Corresponsales Clarín y La Nación – Argentina
De Maria E… … Fri, Apr 29, 11:50 PM
Dr. O ´Donnell, … Estas son las preguntas para la entrevista del domingo:
1¿Alemania tiene otra posibilidad que no sea seguir comprando el gas ruso? ¿Cuáles serían sus otras opciones?
Repuesta: Antes que nada, muchas gracias por esta oportunidad de hablar con su audiencia argentina.
Pues, debo señalar que hay dos problemas diferentes: el suministro de petróleo ruso a Alemania y Europa y el suministro de gas ruso a Alemania y Europa. Me preguntas por el gas. El gas es mucho más difícil para Europa y para Alemania que el petróleo Hay dos casos: una reducción gradual o parcial de gas o un corte inmediato.
Un corte gradual se puede manejar bastante bien. Ahora Putin está tratando de dividir y conquistar Europa cortando el suministro de gas a Polonia y Bulgaria.
Un recorte inmediato, ya sea por parte de Putin o debido a las sanciones de la UE, crearía una gran crisis energética en Europa. Sin embargo, es importante entender que, al final, Putin está en una posición mucho más débil.
Si Putin corta todos los suministros de gas a Europa, ahora no hay suficiente gas en el mercado mundial para compensar. Pero Occidente, y especialmente EE. UU., la administración Biden, se ha estado preparando para esto al menos dos meses antes de que Putin invadiera Ucrania, incluso antes de que Europa creyera las advertencias de EE. UU. de que Putin atacaría Ucrania.
Continue readingPosted in Berlin, Climate Change, Ehergiewende, Energiewende, Energy and Geopolitics, Energy and Geostrategy, EU gas, Euroepen Union, gas crisis, Gazprom, gazprom, geopolitics, Germany, Global Oil Market, international relations, Iran, Iran nuclear, Iran sanctions, Latin America, Nord Stream, oil, Oil Crisis, Oil prices, Oil supply, Poland, Putin, Russia, Sanctions, The USA, Ukraine, Ukraine, Uncategorized
Tagged Buenos Aires, Energy, geopolitics, Germany, oil sector, Putin, Radio Clarin, Russia, Sanctions, Ukraine, United States, War
Here’s my extended interview in Kyiv with two great Kosatka.Media journalists [Read in UA, RU]
18 NOVEMBER 2021 — AUTHOR YAROSLAV MARKIN, TETIANA HUZENKO In 2021, the energy sector of Ukraine faced myriad threats related to the completion of Nord Stream 2, increasing gas prices and coal shortage just before the heating season. At the same time, green trends require decarbonizing the industry and developing the hydrogen direction.
Kosatka.Media discussed what direction is better for Ukraine, whether it should wait for the protection against Nord Stream 2, and where global green trends could take us, with Dr. Thomas W. O’Donnell, international expert and senior energy and geopolitics analyst at GlobalBarrel.com, who participated in the Ukraine Gas Investment Congress held in late October in Kyiv.
In the long run, we want to have a world that’s not dependent on hydrocarbons. The worst hydrocarbon is lignite and brown coal. And that’s what people s\should concentrate on eliminating. Natural gas in fact is a great way to eliminate coal.
It’s actually an improvement for Ukraine, not only because of global warming, because of CO2, but also for the health of the people since natural gas does not produce environmental pollution. So, increasing the use of natural gas (or also nuclear energy) in a country like Ukraine is to the benefit of the environment and to the people’s health.
However, Ukraine is not a typical European country, it is a country that unfortunately is at war. In such a situation, it has found an intelligent way to access natural gas, which is virtual reverse flow.
Continue readingPosted in Climate Change, Energiewende, Energy and Environment, Energy and Geopolitics, Energy and Geostrategy, Environment, EU gas, Euroepen Union, gas crisis, Gazprom, gazprom, geopolitics, hydrogen, Nord Stream, Nord Stream 2, Nuclear power, Oil prices, Resource conflicts, Russia, Ukraine, Uncategorized
Tagged Energy, gas crisis, Gazprom, hydrogen, Naftogaz, Nord Stream, Nord Stream 2, nuclear enery, Nuclear power, Putin, Russia, Ukraine
Video In Arabic – Audio above has English interpreter’s and my voice in English.
Posted in AlJazeera, Alternative energy, Climate Change, Economic Crisis, Ehergiewende, Energiewende, Energy and Environment, Energy and Geopolitics, EU gas, Euroepen Union, Gazprom, Germany, Nord Stream 2, Nuclear power, Renewables, Renewables, Resource conflicts, Russia, shale gas, Ukraine, Uncategorized
Tagged al jazeera, Energy, gas crisis, gas storage, Gazprom, geopolitics, Germany, natural gas, nuclear energy, Putin, Russia, wind energy, windmills
I was quite happy with the answer of IEA (International Energy Agency*) director, Dr. Fadi Birol, to two critical questions I posed, first on how the European Commission should include nuclear power in its “green financing taxonomy,” and secondly, against German over-reliance on variable renewables (I termed this “renewable fundamentalism”) which I said produces high “organizational entropy,” that is, unworkable and unaffordable, completely “reinvented” so-called “smart grids” with “grid scale stage” whose technology is not sufficiently developed all to cope with the problem of unavoidable wind and solar energy fluctuations, which become more massive as the percentage of installed renewables increases. This is a significant contribution to Germany’s (and the EU’s) present crises of energy supply and price security. (The video above is set to start at my two questions.)
Continue readingPosted in Alternative energy, Climate Change, Ehergiewende, Energiewende, Energiewende, Energy and Environment, Environment, EU gas, Euroepen Union, German Green Party, Germany, Nuclear power, Poland, Renewables, Renewables, The USA, Three Seas, Uncategorized
Tagged Energiewende, Energy, Fadi BIrol, Germany, iea, Nuclear, Poland, Renewables, Three Seas Initiative, United States
I recorded this last Fall, 2020, during Corona lockdown, to give an overview of my course for prospective students.
I’ve taught this course twice per year since 2016 – save this past year’s Corona shutdown. This is a longish video summary of 12 class sessions. It should give a good sense of my critical assessment of the German model of “Energiewende” – a policy of “100% renewables and no nuclear.” I analyze this model as a set back to the German and global fights to reduce CO2 emissions. Why?
Most succulently: If climate change is the huge problem the German Green Party says it is (and it is), if it really requires a “war on carbon emissions;” then why shut Germany’s nuclear fleet? These 17 (!) nuclear plants produced approximately as much carbon-free electricity as all the solar and wind Germany has so far installed. Obviously this is NOT a war on carbon, it is a war on carbon AND nuclear, with BOTH targeted at the same level of alarm.
At bottom, this “100% renewables with no nuclear” policy, the “Energiewende“, is a romantic, unscientific program to which Merkel surrendered within 48 hours after the report of the Fukushima failure due to a monster sunami having hit this nuclear facility on the Japanese coast.
This precipitous “atomic exit,” in my estimation, marked complete victory of Green populism over science-driven policy in Germany. This German model soon attained hegemony worldwide. However, it is now being seriously questioned by climate activists, as Germany has failed to meet its CO2 reduction and renewable generation targets at home, while its price of electricity is the world’s high-test amongst large industrialized countries. As I mention in the video, the Eighth Independent Monitors Report on the progress of the Energiewende made the rather alarming assessment that it will be impossible to ever supply Germany’s domestic market with electricity supplied by domestic renewable sources. Interestingly, this assessment has not been a point of discussion in the present German national election campaigning.
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The Global Barrel 