I am not quite clear on why Russia would want to encourage green energy in Europe. Wouldn’t this cut into their oil sales? In fact, I imagine Europe will push much faster into developing their non oil energy resources with this Russian “encouragement.” Biden is promising liquid natural gas (LGN) from the US. A good friend had bought a lot of gas shares and then the bottom fell out of the market. He recently reported the shares he still has have doubled. This conflict will also encourage green energy in the US. Fortunately, I can afford slightly higher gas prices, and I realize how important it is to conserve our oil resources for their future industrial uses. There are so many essential goods made from petroleum, and we need to think about our grandchildren and their grandchildren. I recently did an information dive into solar cells. I did not know we were mining high grade quartz in NC, shipping it to Chine for manufacture into cheap solar panels, and then shipping them back to the US. US solar is produced in Ohio using local cadmium telluride. Nice to know panels will be produced here by our workers and not in China possiblly by slave labor.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/14/a-new-player-appears-in-american-thin-film-cadmium-telluride-solar-module-manufacturing/#comment-174377 [Trump’s “bring jobs home” bearing fruit.]
The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia will certainly continue because of vast religious differences. The fight between Shia and Sunni Islam are about as great as the fight between Catholicism and Protestantism that Europe suffered centuries ago in various areas. Their relations were certainely not improved by the terrible disaster a few years ago in SA during the annual haj celebrated in Mecca. Over 400 Iranian clerics were crushed in a stampede caused by SA’s poor management of their universal cultural event. It certianly is in Russia’s interest to cultivate Iran, after all, they are another country with warm water ports.
It is nice to see anti totalitarian Putitn FReepers congregating for intelligent examination of this serious international crisis. There are so many different aspects to this crisis, many of which are known to very few, and certainly not examined in depth by the MSM, or twitter and facebook.
I’m very eagerly reading your discussions. Previously, I was being pretty aggressive with the Putin supporters who are the most extreme, or folks who believe the wildest conspiracies, as opposed to seeing the simple reality of the war.
Of course Putin wants resources and those include people and land, strategic position, Black Sea access, oil,gas,wheat- and strategic oil and gas pipelines which run through Ukraine.
Germany was producing and burning its own coal supplies to generate power.
The Green Energy push led to Germany shutting down some of their coal fired power plants, switching instead to solar/wind plus Natural Gas fired power plants that are "greener" than "dirty coal."
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210419-the-end-of-the-worlds-capital-of-brown-coal
Who supplies Natural Gas to Germany?
“I am not quite clear on why Russia would want to encourage green energy in Europe. Wouldn’t this cut into their oil sales?”
Russia was putting money into the “green” movement to get wealthy countries to NOT produce oil and natural gas. The push to renewable energy, if you study it for any length of time, will not create an economy free from fossil fuels.
Renewables have the big problem that the energy is very dispersed, not concentrated. That is why we use hydroelectric, coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
The only highly concentrated “green” energy is geothermal and hot dry rock. Geothermal is used in areas where water and hot rocks are available. Hot dry rock is still in the experimental stage.
Solar is good for producing additional power, especially if put on top of large buildings such as warehouses, factories, shopping centers, etc. because then no additional land has to be used. Solar farms are a non-starter for many areas as the value of land for farming crops is far greater than for solar farming.
Nonetheless fossil fuels have to be used in production of fertilizer, chemical feed stock, metals, plastics, etc. There is no substitute.
The United States has plenty of energy available whether coal, gas, petroleum, solar, hydroelectric, nuclear, etc. There should be no energy crisis in this country. The crisis is with our government.
Europe went “green” and even, in Germany, planned to shut down their nuclear plants. To make up the difference they bought gas from Russia.
Russia needs to maintain an enormous energy presence because that is its main source of foreign revenue. Independent provinces in eastern Ukraine populated by ethnic Russians would likely use Russian companies to develop their oil and gas resources. That could be the driving force behind Russia’s initial insistence that the breakaway areas be recognized as independent countries (recognition of independence was a stated Russian goal).
Trump warned Euros about their heavy reliance on Russia for their energy. They laughed at him. Then they got a POTUS they liked better. And now look at the results.