The Global Energy Crisis -- 2021

Updates

October 14, 2021: India's coal crisis worsens as top coal miner halts supply to industrial users. Link to Tsvetana Paraskova. 

Updates Without Blog Links

October 18, 2021: early freeze across China adds to the nation's energy crisis. Link here.

Original Post

First of all, the "global energy crisis" is not global. It is a crisis for the UK, Europe, and Asia. There is no energy crisis in the US and there will not be.

The cause of the 2021 UK, European, Asian energy crisis all leads back to coal. 

That's it.

 Once one accepts that, everything else fits.

This has been added as a "big story" at The Big Stories linked at the sidebar at the right.

Commentary, October 13, 2021

• The energy crisis of 2021 defined by:
  

• soaring natural gas prices in Asia, UK, and Europe
• failure of energy providers across the UK
• brownouts and blackouts in China
  
• concern there will be "enough" natural gas in those regions to get through the 2021 - 2022 winter

The perception by some:

• this global energy crisis literally happened overnight
• started sometime in the summer of 2021, reaching a fever pitch in the autumn of 2021,
• anxiety for winter, 2021, increasing
• the crisis is the production of electricity, not transportation fuel
• in other words, "keeping the lights on" and/or "the risk of folks literally freezing to death this winter in these regions due to lack of energy" is the crisis I'm referring to
  

The question is:

• what precipitated the crisis?
• I am not looking for a long narrative
• I am looking for a 30-second elevator speech with one or two graphs

The 30-second elevator speech, in one word:

• coal

But, what precipitated inadequate coal?

Background:

• Americans are American-centric; they look at the US, not looking at the global picture;
• worldwide, the number one source for electricity is coal;
• pre-Fukushima:
• plan A: phase out coal; backstop with nuclear energy; no plan B
• post-Fukushima:
• coal had been phased out in Europe and the UK
• India: I don't have the data; hunch: India had not Plan B if a shortage of coal developed; basically a coal-based energy economy
• China: wanted to phase out coal due to air pollution; gained global respect by saying it would cut coal use to meet CO2 emissions standards; the latter was an absolute lie;
• US: well down the road to phasing out coal
• 2011 - 2016: both the US and Australia start cutting coal exports;
• natural gas was the transition source of energy; glut of natural gas reassured folks things would work out
• 2016 - 2020: with energy demands increasing again, both Australia and the US responded with increased coal exports
• US gradually shut down "all" coal exports -- when did this happen? why?
  
• US was likely the swing producer for global coal; when environmentalists shut down coal (Hillary campaign), Australia had the reserves but not not the infrastructure to make up the difference
• during this period,
• India's demand for coal did not decrease
• China was building hundreds or more coal producing plants 
• nuclear was long "dead" as Plan B
  
• bottom line: pre-Covid, increasing global coal demand not noted by western economies
• 2020: the year of the plague; global economy slowed appreciably; coal supply / demand in balance, but precarious
• 2021: coming out of pandemic, global energy needs accelerated; not an issue for North America for myriad reasons
• India/China: of the two, China was the problem; economy accelerated; with coal becoming an issue (US exports, Australian exports; political spat between China and Australia), and natural gas seemingly plentiful and relatively cheap, China maxed its coal consumption but made up shortfalls with natural gas
• the global deficit in coal which began in 2011 - 2016, accelerated in 2016 - 2020; the Covid-19 lock down slowed things down for awhile
• when the economy opened up, there simply was not enough coal

Energy crisis of 2021:

• precipitated by, or set in motion, by the 2016 US presidential campaign which ended the US coal industry.

Pushback: the pushback I will get on this -- "well this is obvious. There's nothing new here. Everyone knows it goes back to coal (and nuclear energy." My response: if it's so obvious: why did it happen? Okay, better, if it's so obvious why are there so few articles being written about this -- the "coal angle"?

Graphics:

In the first graphic, note the "area under the curve." Huge coal export deficit had developed by 2016.

*******************************

Wind: "wind is not blowing" is a bunch of malarkey. A study shows that the impact of lack of wind on gas deficit has been limited. Large nuclear and coal closures have rather made the European system far less flexible, limiting its ability to switch away from gas, when needed or to allow for gas markets rebalancing. -- October 13, 1:19 p.m. CT, link here. 

UK: two more supplier collapse. Link here. And here. BP-backed Pure Planet and specialist Colorado Energy brings total of failures to twelve since August, 2021. And here. How's that renewable energy working out for BP. From July 13, 2021:

BP bets the farm on renewable energy and EV charging. Link here. 

Now, from the linked article today;

Pure Planet, which was 24 per cent owned by BP, supplied gas and electricity to around 235,000 customers, while Colorado Energy had an estimated 15,000 customers. 

Pure Planet blamed record wholesale prices and the UK’s energy price cap for its collapse. 

India: link here --