Free Republic

It's a great time to be a candlemaker in Germany. "Candle demand is very strong right now," says Stefan Thomann, Technical Director of the European Candle Manufacturers Association. The candle boom began during the pandemic, after the government imposed lockdowns and Germans began spending a lot more time at home. The industry expected the boom to end once the nation opened back up, Thomann says. "But then the war (in Ukraine) started." Prior to Russia's invasion, Germany was getting more than half of its natural gas from Russia. It was Russia's biggest natural gas customer in the European Union, and...

They never had a chance. Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training. Now, they were piled onto the tops of overcrowded armored vehicles, lumbering through fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from a half-century ago and virtually nothing to...

A state commission today approved plans to phase out fossil fuel-burning furnaces beginning as soon as 2025 as part of New York’s aggressive program to address climate change. The plan adopted today by the state Climate Action Council requires energy-efficient electric heat pumps or other non-combustion heating systems in every new home built in 2025 or thereafter. For existing homes, residents whose fossil fuel-burning heating units give out after 2030 will have to replace them with a zero-emission system. Those are just two of the many policies in a 445-page plan adopted today by the state Climate Action Council, a...

A giant aquarium containing a million litres of water in the lobby of the Radisson Blu in Berlin has burst, flooding the hotel and nearby streets. The "AquaDom" - home to 1,500 fish - is 15.85m high (52 ft) and was described as the largest free-standing cylindrical aquarium in the world. Two people were injured by falling glass after the blast. Police said there had been "incredible" damage. Video showed an empty tank with water pouring into the hotel lobby. Guests have been moved out of the hotel following the incident at 05:50 (04:50 GMT). A spokesman for Berlin's fire...

The Swiss government announced its plan to deal with expected energy shortfalls this winter, and it sounds like a lot of fun — provided you’re a shut-in who likes reading by candlelight under multiple blankets. The alpine country — one of the wealthiest in the world — will severely restrict electric vehicles from its roads, according to a Daily Mail report. If the country runs out of power, EVs won’t be allowed out for anything but “essential” travel. But the restrictions don’t end there. The contingency plan calls for three levels of energy rationing. Under the least extreme, most buildings...

Russia's attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure amount to genocide, a top Ukrainian official says. Strikes on key facilities targeted "the full Ukrainian nation" and were an effort to force Kyiv to surrender, the prosecutor-general told the BBC. The term genocide refers to an effort to wipe out a group of people. Russia denies having any such aim. Millions of people across Ukraine are facing power cuts in freezing weather, following sustained Russian attacks. Efforts are ongoing to reconnect homes cut off from electricity. Officials say Kherson has now been fully resupplied, following the city's recapture by Ukrainian troops earlier this...

European natural gas inventories fell by -40 BCF over past week. EU nat gas storage 95% full. Current inventories at 3637 BCF.

Update from Ukraine | The new Hot Spot on the frontlines in Ukraine | Fighting Was Reportedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO69VH5ZqUM Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ Military maps & Comment here: https://militaryland.net/ Invasion Day 272 – Summary November 22, 2022 Jerome News The summary of the situation of Russian re-invasion to Ukraine covering the last 48 hours, as of 22nd November 2022 – 22:00 (Kyiv time). Briefly: The vicinity of Bakhmut remains the hottest point, but Russian forces are unable to gain a momentum here, or anywhere else. Snow covered most parts of Ukraine, turned fields and dirt roads into a...

Ukraine Evacuates Civilians as Temperatures Drop Ukraine is bracing for a brutal winter as Russian missile strikes have damaged nearly half of the country’s electrical grid, according to Kyiv, potentially leaving millions of people without heating while temperatures plummet.As many as 10 million Ukrainians do not have power as a result of Russia’s bombardment, Ukrainian officials have warned, while rolling blackouts and water supply shortages have become commonplace across the country. In recently liberated Kherson, some people are now collecting wood for heat in lieu of a stable power supply.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany is postponing politically sensitive decisions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector until 2023 amid strong opposition from one governing party to the idea of a universal speed limit, officials said Monday. The libertarian Free Democratic Party, which controls the Transport Ministry, has long blocked the introduction mandatory speed limits seen in most of Germany’s neighbors. Experts say that limiting speeds on highways to 120 kilometers per hour (74.5 mph) would save 2.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. A limit of 100 kmh (62 mph) would more than double the savings,...

Grid officials warn of strain as the region competes with European countries for shipments of liquefied natural gasNew England power producers are preparing for potential strain on the grid this winter as a surge in natural-gas demand abroad threatens to reduce supplies they need to generate electricity. New England, which relies on natural-gas imports to bridge winter supply gaps, is now competing with European countries for shipments of liquefied natural gas, following Russia’s halt of most pipeline gas to the continent. Severe cold spells in the Northeast could reduce the amount of gas available to generate electricity as more of...

The country’s storage caverns, which equate to roughly three months of demand, are now nearly bursting. Capacity utilization runs just shy of the 95% target well before the government's self-imposed Nov. 1 deadline. “It now looks as though the bloc will get through the coming winter with enough supplies—but only just—buoyed up by the gas reserves it raced to accumulate over the summer,” said Deutsche Bank in a report on Tuesday. European benchmark prices for natural gas have already come down substantially to just €160 per megawatt-hour on Thursday after peaking at around €350 per MWh in late August, when...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday offered to resume gas supplies to Europe through the intact part of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. "The ball is in the EU's court. If they want to, then the taps can be turned on and that's it," he said in a speech at an energy forum in Moscow. Germany, however,,said it would not take Russian gas via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that has become a flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis. Asked if Berlin would rule out the use of Nord Stream 2, German government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said, "Yes."

For months, die-hard environmental activists have camped in the fields and occupied the trees in this tiny farming village in western Germany, hoping that like-minded people from across the country would arrive and help stop the expansion of a nearby open-pit coal mine that threatened to swallow the village and its farms. But the hoped-for surge in protesters never materialized. And last week, the government effectively sealed Lützerath’s fate by announcing that RWE, Germany’s largest energy company, needed the coal under the village — to make up for gas that had stopped flowing in from Russia. The war in Ukraine,...

"The truth is on our side and truth is strength!" Vladimir Putin boomed into a microphone on Red Square last week, after a grand ceremony at which he proclaimed four large chunks of Ukrainian territory to be part of Russia. "Victory will be ours!" But in the real world, things look very different. Even as Russia's president signed his illegal annexation treaties in the Kremlin, Ukrainian forces were advancing inside the areas he had just seized. Hundreds of thousands of men have been fleeing Russia rather than be drafted to fight in an expanding war. And things are going so...

The country has been put on notice that the chances of gas shortages this winter have risen markedly, prompting a contingency plan to prioritise heating. National Grid's Electricity System Operator (ESO) warned that planned three-hour power blackouts could be imposed in some areas, in the "unlikely" event supplies of gas fall short of demand. It revealed the measure in an update on the UK's state of energy readiness for the cold months ahead but it said that the risk of temporary power cuts could be avoided with help from the public. The report showed, under a base case scenario, that...

If Europe was a school student, last week it sat its first exam in Energy Savings 101. It failed. And that doesn’t bode well for much tougher tests to come in January. Despite strong imports of liquefied natural gas to replace Russian shipments, Europe needs to reduce gas consumption — by a lot — if it’s going to make it through the winter. Extra supply won’t be enough. Conservation is absolutely paramount. The exact amount varies from country to country, but on average, the European Commission has suggested a 10%-15% demand reduction. Germany and a few other nations, which in...

A newly launched Ukrainian hotline offering Russian soldiers a chance to surrender — and stay alive — has been fielding thousands of calls from desperate draftees, according to Ukrainian officials. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, said in a recent interview with Voice of America that thousands of enemy troops have reached out to the “I Want to Live” program via phone or online chat to give up their arms. Yusov said the hotline has been receiving offers of surrender at a rate of hundreds a day from soldiers already fighting in...

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/10/03/energy-crisis-europe-told-to-prepare-for-long-cold-winter-ahead/#:~:text=Wrap%20up%20and,out%20of%20gas.

... Russia supplied around 40% of all the gas consumed in the EU in 2021. Germany is especially reliant on this supply of cheap gas. Gas only generates about 15% of the country’s electricity but many rely on it for heating and it is vital to heavy industries such as petrochemicals that use a lot of energy. Drastic measures are now necessary to secure alternative supplies, reduce gas demand and prepare for the possibility of shortages this winter. The EU’s Save Gas for a Safe Winter program aims to reduce overall gas demand by 15% across the bloc this winter...