Exit, pursued by a bear

It's truly remarkable how badly the whole energy sector was managed in the past 16 years of Angela Merkel and her conservative-lead coalitions. It's not about nuclear or no nuclear really, Germany started out with a strong wind and solar industry and has lost all of it to China over the past decade. New wind turbines and (importantly) new power lines connecting the wind-heavy north to the power hungry south have been continuously delayed by nimby politics, also mostly pushed by conservative parties. Meanwhile the coal and nuclear industry got huge compensation payments and issuing new debt to finance investments was basically made unconstitutional by the horrible "Schuldenbremse" legislation. How bad can you fuck up country and still be seen mostly positive in the world??

Europe is going to be ruined by this conflict. Most people (understandably) focus on gas price in residential heating terms, but the real damage will be to European (especially German) manufacturing and the costs that now need to go up throughout the supply chain now that Russian gas supply is restricted.<p>Any widget made in Europe - already losing in cost competition with East Asia - will now become even more expensive to make. It takes circa 10 years for nuclear reactor from plan-to-grid, and that is on the basis *with&amp; the available workforce to do it, which of course Europe doesn&#x27;t have any more.<p>Mass purchase of the Hualong One reactor might be a solution if the Chinese can make them fast enough. Either that, or dig up some more coal and burn that for the next decade or two, so goodbye climate change goals. It&#x27;s an absolute mess, pain has started to percolate now, but will reverberate for years

Is it Russia stopping exports to the EU or the EU deciding to stop buying gas from Russia? To me it seems like they are simply taking decisions against their citizens best interests.

Alarmist much? People won&#x27;t freeze to death with less gas. But they might have to put on an extra layer inside. Or get an electrical space heater and burn more coal (thank the &quot;ecologists&quot;).<p>The numbers worry, but as the article says, 1&#x2F;3 of deliveries is from Europe itself. If people need do with that, it&#x27;s bad, but not catastrophic.

Big win for the US and China.<p>Europe and Russia are both getting destroyed economically.<p>I’d imagine that Europe will be looking to quickly bring around “peace” in Ukraine, much to Ukraine’s detriment starting Q1 2024

I have just finished reading &quot;the end of the world is just the beginning&quot; by Peter Zeihan, which was released just as Russia invaded Ukraine.<p>In it, the author argues that the end of global trade and energy has arrived, and that the endless economical growth of the past ~ 70 years will never return.<p>It&#x27;s scary how much the war in Ukraine seems to be triggering exactly those phenomena the book talks about. Energy crisis, food crisis, economical downturns.<p>Observing how the world changes with this war (and also how covid completely fucked our globalized supply chain) it&#x27;s clear to me how brittle globalization and capitalism actually is.<p>The coming 10-20 years will be hella interesting.

Russia is pausing gas supply to scare everyone and guarantee better negotiating conditions for the end of the war. I find it surprising how little discussion there is of what those terms might be, or what would the West accept as a reasonable outcome. In Germany especially, there is censorship around this topic like never before.