Europe’s Green Policies are a Recipe for Financial Ruin

September 28, 2021

American elites typically like to believe that anything from Europe is avant-garde, and should be emulated. Unfortunately, the same is true of the elites pushing the Green New Deal, who wish the United States would impose policies more like Europe. But a quick look around Europe shows that these policies are a disaster.

In the Wall Street Journal, Allysia Finley writes on how Europe’s obsession with eliminating fossil fuels is leading to energy price spikes and shortages. Finley writes:

European countries have spent trillions of dollars subsidizing renewables, which last year for the first time exceeded fossil fuels as a share of electricity production.

But renewables don’t provide reliable power around the clock, and wind power this summer has waned across Europe and in the U.K., forcing them to turn to gas and coal for backup power. Yet demand for these fossil fuels is also surging across Asia and South America, where drought has crimped hydropower…

Europe has become ever more dependent on Russia—the world’s second largest gas producer, after the U.S.—for energy because the U.K. and Germany have banned hydraulic fracturing, letting their rich gas shale resources go to waste. Meantime, the Netherlands is shutting down Europe’s biggest gas field.

In summary, European countries have been working collectively to eliminate fossil fuels – and this has led to them collectively facing an energy disaster. As Finley notes,

In short, all of Europe’s green chickens are coming home to roost. Several U.K. retail electricity providers have collapsed in recent weeks because of the surging price of gas. Energy experts warn that some German power suppliers are in danger of going insolvent. Germany’s electricity prices, which were already the highest in Europe because of heavy reliance on renewables, have more than doubled since February.

Now, those championing the Green New Deal want to take the same policies that have led to ruin in Europe, and bring them here. As Power The Future has previously reported, the Democrat’s reconciliation package has tens of billions of dollars in funding to prop up unreliable renewables and attempt to move our energy policies away from affordable and reliable fossil fuels. But as Finley writes, we already know how this will play out.

Europe offers a portent of the havoc to come under the Biden administration’s policies that aim to shut down fossil-fuel production and power the U.S. grid exclusively with renewables. Democrats won’t succeed in banishing fossil fuels. Instead the U.S., like Europe, will need more gas and coal to back up renewables, and the U.S. will become dependent on adversaries like Russia for energy.

To those who don’t know better, European policies may seem trendy, but they are really a recipe for financial ruin. This administration and Congress should take note.