Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

It's upsetting that so many here want to take a genuine (and very scary) international crisis and use it to flog their own personal peeves.

Needless to say, "German energy policy of the last two decades" and "Let's Invade Ukraine and Blackmail Europe!" are different decisions, and subject to different analysis. You can have reasonable opinions about both, but if your opposition to Russian adventurism and brinksmanship[1] is grounded only on your support for the German nuclear industry, I think you're not helping the discourse.

[1] It's looking increasingly likely that they blew up Nordstream, which is dangerously close to an act of war against other nuclear powers.

This place started to think in memes I feel. Every issue comes with the automated arguments, the same ones every time. If the topic is energy someone must write the "they shouldn't have closed those Nuclear power plants, silly environmentalist".

Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state and they are having energy issues too, because as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods.

Maybe there's no simple answer for energy issues and countries don't simply build or close down power plants over single issue? Maybe it wasn't done just to please some tree huggers?

Maybe someone in Germany could have had crunched the numbers too and see the risks? Maybe some politicians were too close to fossil fuel money? Maybe it was considered as a way to keep the relationship with Russia profitable for Russia and encourage Russia to build good relationships with their primary customer? Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA? Maybe they wanted to reduce their footing in Africa by not relying for them in Uranium production? Maybe it make more economical sense to use the non-nuclear solutions?

Just maybe it wasn't a single issue decision even if it didn't play out as hoped? Europe is acutely aware of its tight energy situation, that's why they have been regulating the efficiency since decades, it's not coincidence that in Europe everything is very energy efficient. They squeezed it to the point where faster water heaters and more powerful vacuums were presented as Brexit benefits.

Oh, I'm so fed up by this culture war.

This headline is awful. There's nothing specific to "mobile networks" in this news at all. They're saying that there's a potential energy crisis and that it might impact phones.

...which is also just plain ridiculous! Phone service is a critical piece of infrastructure and in almost all markets subject to special treatment and provided with redundant power mechanisms.

Lots of things may break this winter. Phones won't be one of them.

Not trying to argue with you, just trying to understand as someone from a neighboring country — could you elaborate a bit more about what happened with the Conservative Party undermining the green energy effort? And how close would Germany realistically have been to being completely self-sufficient by now if that didn’t happen?

Why would they do that, what’s their motivation?