Europe Is No Longer Worried About Global Warming: Switching To Coal In Lieu Of Natural Gas

This is a most interesting article. Industry leaders are focused on investment opportunities, in this case, coal vs natural gas. But the Oil and Gas Journal editors missed the bigger story; perhaps they will reference it in an editorial.

Faux environmentalists in the US are focused on global warming, and missing these stories, like the one linked above. This is from Europe; the article suggests it is not as bad in Asia, but my hunch is that it is still an issue --> a switch to cheap coal.

This is a hard article to read; I doubt faux environmentalists will get through to the end of the article.

Expensive, oil-indexed-priced natural gas in Europe is struggling to compete with plentiful coal and subsidized renewables.
....  Europe in 2011 was alone among the world’s gas-market regions in seeing a decline in natural gas demand. .... in fact it was lower than in 2009, the year following the start of the global financial crisis.

That drop in 2011 was due not only to milder winter weather but also to high commodity prices and lower regional gross domestic product. Removing weather from the equation, she called the last 10 years in European gas demand a “lost decade.”

And 2012 is looking no better: Natural gas demand for the first 7 months of 2012 fell by 3%. Since 2011, she said, high-priced gas can no longer compete with coal, especially increased cheap supplies from the US. Those supplies in turn are being driven out by record-low US gas prices.

Wow, in Europe, "high-priced gas can no longer compete with coal." I'm not sure what is meant in the last linked paragraph above "... especially increased cheap supplies from the US." What cheap supplies, coal or natural gas? I assume coal.

Regardless, the financial crisis has trumped ideology: Europe is no longer focused on global warming.

The US is going to go it alone. Trying to turn back the global warming clock on its own. 

[Note: this use of "lost decade" is different than my use of "Lost Decade," but that's a different post for a different time. See tag at bottom of blog for "Lost Decade" and "Second Lost Decade."]