The gig is up on sustainable energy, even for the staunchest of supporters. Before the discussion begins on those who are having to scramble to get ready for winter, China and India are laughing. They are expanding coal mining and coal power plants and are the worlds largest polluters. Still, the weenies who bought the (money laundering) Global Warming story are going to pay the most this winter.

Update: China building more coal plants

Despite the fanfare surrounding wind and solar, the world’s dependency on fossil fuels is increasing. Last week, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said that the world is now “transitioning to coal.”

Saad al-Kaabi, Energy Minister of Qatar, says, “Many countries particularly in Europe which had been strong advocates of green energy and carbon-free future have made a sudden and sharp U-turn. Today, coal burning is once again on the rise reaching its highest levels since 2014.”

They are right. Global coal demand will reach an historic high in 2022, similar to 2013’s record levels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “Global coal consumption is forecast to rise by 0.7 percent in 2022 to 8 billion tons…. Coal consumption in the European Union is expected to rise by seven percent in 2022 on top of last year’s 14 percent jump.”

Coal will continue to be a sought-after energy source as “rising gas prices after 2030 will make existing coal-fired generation more economic,” the IEA says. Global energy demand will grow by 47 percent from now through 2050, and oil is expected to be the major source of energy.

Analysts are projecting “a huge gas-to-coal fuel transition in power and industrial sectors” of Europe. Yes, not gas to renewables, but gas to coal. In fact, the European Union’s coal consumption grew 16 percent year-on-year for the first half of 2022. European countries imported 7.9 million tons of thermal coal in June, more than doubling year-on-year. Annual coal imports are expected to reach 100 million tons by the end of the year, the highest since 2017.

Even in the most developed economies of the West like Germany and the UK, fossil fuels continue to dominate as the only dependable source of energy. Germany is set to become the third highest importer of Indonesian coal in 2023, ranked just below coal-guzzling China and India.

AP says, “Coal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war.” Rather than wind or solar, it is coal that is keeping the lights on in Europe.

Source: WUWT

Germany just found out they’ve been lied to.

So the Greens lied to us about the nuclear power plant issue!

The Greens assured us again and again that it would not make sense to continue operating the nuclear power plants. We would have “no electricity problem,” said Economics Minister Robert Habeck, Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and Green Party leader Ricarda Lang, like a mantra. But that was a lie that was spread against the advice of experts: This is proven by 166 documents from the environment and economics ministries, which environment minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) had to hand over to the Die Welt am Sonntag and the Cicero on application [both are behind a paywall].

Explosive: Robert Habeck and his Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection refused to hand over the documents, which they are legally obliged to do! He wanted to cover up what Welt was able to prove anyway: the Greens lied to us in the nuclear debate — and neutralized experts who wanted to tell the truth.

The files show how Habeck and company put their crude anti-nuclear ideology above the security of supply in Germany: Against the advice of their own experts. Experts in Habeck’s ministry “obviously” considered the continued operation of the remaining nuclear power plants to be the right, sensible decision — Habeck ignored them. Just like the Ministry of the Environment, which apparently let a letter from the BMWK [Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection] experts go straight into the wastepaper basket, ignoring the words of the experts as well. When the head of the “Society for Reactor Safety”, which is close to the ministry, criticized the phase-out of nuclear power, he was quickly muzzled by State Secretary for the Environment Christian Kühn (Green Party) and was no longer allowed to comment.

From The Gates of Vienna

And now a Wind Farm in Germany is Being Dismantled to Expand Coal Mine

Vietnam’s U-Turn on Coal Reflects Inevitable Energy Reality

By Vijay Jayaraj

Ever since signing the Paris climate agreement, Vietnam has shown interest in reducing its dependency on fossil fuels, introducing in recent years a slew of measures to cut consumption.

However, in what is considered to be a major U-turn, Vietnam’s government announced last month that it will increase coal imports for the next 13 years.

Critics of fossil fuels, including most mainstream media, are out of sync with the world’s energy realities. They are consistently premature in their celebrations of the emission-reduction promises of developing nations like Vietnam only to see commitments yield to the need to meet growing energy demand with coal, oil and natural gas. Even developed economies like Germany and the UK have ditched — or suspended — grandiose plans for “carbon-free” utopias to fend off social unrest or economic collapse.

In a new strategy drafted to develop the coal sector, Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade says that it will increase annual coal imports to as much as 83 million tons during 2025-35.

This decision is a marked departure from ambitious emission-reduction plans that the country seemed keen to embrace, thus delivering another blow to the international campaign against fossil fuels.

Vietnam’s consumption of coal has increased rapidly in the last decade largely to generate electricity — from 27.8 million tons in 2011 to 38.77 million tons in 2015 and 53.52 million tons in 2021. Demand for coal is projected to peak at 125-127 million tons in 2030, mainly due to growing needs in power generation and in the cement, metallurgy and chemical industries.

For countries like Vietnam, there is no option but to increase fossil fuel consumption in the coming decades. Coal, oil, and gas together represent the most affordable, dependable, and abundant source of energy. In fact, a majority of the world’s primary energy comes from these fuels.

The favored technologies of climate alarmists — wind and solar —  cannot meet energy needs of large populations. What little electricity they do produce is intermittent and expensive. So, developing countries cannot reduce fossil fuel consumption without a significant compromise in power reliability and economic growth. The consequences of energy shortages due to the anti-fossil fuel stance is greater in developing countries where poverty is still rampant.

Coal consumption correlates closely to Vietnam’s growth in gross domestic product (GDP). The doubling of consumption between 2011-21 tracks with a steady increase in the rate of growth over the same period.

#NBADJT

Also, it must suck that Trump said this would happen if they relied on Russian oil.