There have been logistics issues getting coal to the plants. It feels like energy production followed the manufacturing motto of "just in time" instead of stockpiling the input coal. This lack of resilience was unnecessary.
I am not aware cial, usually shipped in bulk and very easily stored, was ever delivered JIT. But whatever, JIT was already the reason why the chip supply from Asia to overseas car factories was disrupted, at least according to certain people without the slightest clue of how JIT works. Or supply chains in general...
>>>Russia appears to believe that cutting off gas to Europe will end European support for Ukraine, and therefore has an obvious incentive to cut it off. Russia has incentives to make this look like it isn’t Russia’s fault Russia had already done the former by basically "turning off the tap", and already argued it wasn't their fault because they were willing to supply gas to Europe as long as Europe paid in Russian ru…
One possible explanation is that Putin wants to prevent a possible rival from winning over oligarchs by promising to make agreement with the eu. Many oligarchs are losing a lot of money on this war and it is likely that a coup that replaces him with a more friendly leader could ease up the sanctions. Without the gas leverage this option is less likely. There are clear signs that Putin is very paranoid of being replac…
Several of the Russians I talk to think Igor Sechin is the one maneuvering for a palace coup. There's been a lot of "close Putin allies" who have died since the war started. Sechin runs Rosneft, so if anyone is positioned to "turn the gas back on" it might be him. If he was shopping around the idea "let's get rid of Putin, turn the gas on, and get back to printing money again"....Putin blowing up the pipeline as a necessary evil to kneecap Sechin......that sounds possible.
In fact, in the 1970s, the German Green Party proposed replacing nuclear with more coal power plants. They were anti-nuclear first, the whole CO2 thing only ever started to get traction with them when they won their first Atomausstieg and needed a new topic to terrorise children into next-generation voters with.
What was a bigger issue in 70s, 80s and 90s? Nuclear power, Chernobyl just happened as did the Pershing deployment, the Ozone layer or climate change? To answer the question, climate cjange only recently got the traction it deserves. Assuming you believe global warming is an actual problem, and not just something evil Greens and environmentalists are scaring our youth with.
Oh, I believe both. Things can both be a real problem to be tackled and the basis for ultimately useless fear-mongering. Usually, the evil Greens focus on the latter.
Honest question. How did you get to the logical conclusion that Russia is the most likely party that bombed Nordstream?
I would say Ukraine destroyed it. They are, at this moment, the only ones with a benefit in having Europe unable to received Russian gas any more. It's either Ukraine or the US which has popcorn in the microwave at this war by proxy which bleeds Russia of resources down to nothing. My 2c
Indeed, they will just black out together with everything else. They are generally not on separate distribution circuits. They do have some limited backup power though.
The ones I was helping deploy usually had generators as backup because the requirements from the government was that emergency call infrastructure works when power goes out. I can see smaller network operators save money on backups, but major monopolies usually don't have a choice in this manner. So I wonder which regions don't do that?
As far as I know the Netherlands doesn't. But I don't work in that industry.