Updates
January 14, 2021: could this turn into a humanitarian crisis?
Original Post
They saw this coming four weeks ago -- back on December 18, 2020: electricity prices jump as winter chill hits Japan. Link here. Electricity prices surged to 59 cents/kilowatt hour -- thirty of thirty-three nuclear reactors off line and prices of LNG skyrocketing.
Fears of Japan blackouts as power prices hit record highs! Cold snap and low LNG supplies leave portions of electricity system with little capacity. Wow, these advanced nations are looking more and more like third-world countries now that they've turned to renewable energy. But I guess that's the price to be paid to save the earth. Link here to Financial Times.
Japanese electricity prices have soared to all-time highs as a cold snap coincides with tight supplies of liquefied natural gas to raise fears of blackouts in parts of the country.
Power companies begged their customers to leave the heating on but turn off other appliances as the electricity system hit 99 per cent of its maximum capacity in western parts of the country on Tuesday.
The spike in energy prices comes just two months before the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster — the aftermath of which pushed Japan into a radical rethink of its energy mix away from nuclear power — and two months after it announced an ambitious plan to become carbon neutral by 2050.
Warnings of potential blackouts come with just three of Japan’s 33 nuclear reactors in operation, leading experts to predict that the current crisis could add an urgency and strength to government efforts to accelerate the restart programme.
A week of unusually severe weather has dumped more than a metre of snow on parts of the country and prompted many households, which are working from home because of Covid-19, to turn up the heating.
Japan scrambles! Link here.
LNG Asian benchmark: link here.
Freezing in Asia: link here.
How's that coal phase-out working out for Japan? Link here.
how long can US prices stay under $3 when Asian prices are above $30?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you asked and not me. This makes absolutely no sense to me. I guess the lack of enough tankers to completely deplete what we have in America would explain it.
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