by Michael
Europe is facing an extremely cold winter that will be filled with power shortages, blackouts and absurdly high electricity bills. Across the continent, ordinary people can see what’s coming, and many of them begin to panic. Demand for wood-burning stoves is off the charts, and many Europeans are hoarding wood and other materials to burn in their existing wood-burning stoves during the cold months. We are truly in unprecedented territory, and things are about to start getting really crazy.
If you live in Europe and haven’t bought a wood stove yet, it’s probably too late to get one for the start of winter.
It is reported that any stoves ordered now could take “months to deliver”, and wood pellet prices have almost doubled…
Up to 70% of European heating comes from natural gas and electricity, and with deliveries to Russia drastically reduced, wood – already used by some 40 million people for heating – has become a commodity .
Wood pellet prices have nearly doubled to €600 a tonne in France, and there are signs of panic buying for the world’s most basic fuel. Hungary even banned pellet exports, and Romania capped firewood prices for six months. Meanwhile, wood stoves can now take months to be delivered.
Because wood and wood pellets are so expensive, some people in Europe are considering “other options” that would have been unthinkable before.
For example, we’re told that some Europeans are actually contacting local chimney sweeps to inquire about burning horse poo in their stoves…
The inexperience is also evident in Germany, where the country’s chimney sweep association is dealing with a flood of requests to connect new and old stoves, and customers ask about burning horse manure and other obscure fuels.
If you were cold enough, would you burn horse poo to keep warm?
Under normal conditions, no rational person would do such a thing.
But at this point, Europeans can see that they may not be able to rely on their national power grids this winter.
In fact, a senior EU official is openly warning that power shortages could lead to widespread blackouts in the coming months…
The European Union could suffer blackouts this winter as the continent faces an ongoing energy crisis amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Brussels is preparing for worst-case scenarios, according to EU crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarčič.
Asked in an interview published by German media network RND on Tuesday whether EU countries would need disaster aid due to the energy crisis, Lenarčič replied: “Yes, it is very possible.”
Unfortunately, this is true even in Germany.
The Germans have the largest economy in the EU by a wide margin, but their leaders publicly acknowledge that Germany “may run out of gas” sometime in late winter…
German Federal Economy Minister Robert Habeck expressed concern about the looming energy crisis this winter, telling German media that the situation was extremely tense and there was a possibility that Germany you may run out of gas.
Habeck spoke on Friday, calling on Germans to reduce their natural gas consumption before this winter, a day after the German government launched a new price reduction program to help Germans with rising costs of energy
And whoever bombed the NordStream pipeline system made sure Russia couldn’t come to the rescue by providing much-needed natural gas at a critical time.
The Germans desperately need to cut back if rationing is to be avoided, but here we are just weeks away from very cold weather and that is not happening yet…
The head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which would be in charge of gas rationing in the event of a supply emergency, repeated a week ago his warning that consumption was too high.
“We will struggle to avoid a gas emergency this winter without saving at least 20% in private households, businesses and industry,” Klaus Mueller of the Bundesnetzagentur told Reuters.
“The situation can become very serious if we do not significantly reduce our gas consumption.” added.
The situation in the UK is also quite serious.
Last week, a warning that British people could face three-hour blackouts this winter made headlines around the world…
Households could experience a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if Vladimir Putin shuts off gas supplies from Russia and Britain suffers a cold snap, National Grid has warned.
Such an event would mean that consumers in different parts of the country would be given a day’s notice of three-hour blocks of time during which their power would be cut, in order to reduce overall consumption by 5%.
What would you do if the power went out for three hours on one of the coldest days of the year?
You might want to think about it.
Here in the United States, it seems unlikely that we’ll face an energy shortage this winter, but heating costs will definitely rise to record highs as energy prices continue to rise across the planet.
And we definitely don’t want prices to go up any more, because roughly 20 million Americans are already behind on their electric bills…
At least 20 million households (or about 1 in 6 American households) are behind on their electricity bills as rising electricity prices trigger what is said to be the worst crisis in the late payments for utilities, according to Bloomberg, citing data from National Energy. Association of Assistance Directors (Neada).
Neada said electricity prices had risen significantly since 2020 after a decade of stagnation. The sharp increase has resulted in billions of dollars in overdue electricity bills.
The biggest energy crisis of any of our lifetimes is here, and it’s setting the stage for the kind of historic economic collapse of epic proportions that so many prominent voices have warned was coming.
The price of energy has already risen so much that some large European manufacturers have already been forced to close their operations.
If energy costs make it impossible to operate profitably, the only logical thing to do is to close up shop until energy costs drop again.
But they won’t be going down again anytime soon.
Europe really is entering a new “Dark Age”, and right now there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
