"Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum“”, an old saying not corroded by the wear and tear of time. Perhaps because there is really something diabolical, in Europe, that repeats itself cyclically?
The facts remain: in 2021-22 there was an explosion in gas prices and therefore in power, given that electricity in marginal terms, i.e. the last resource that can be activated to produce it, is gas. Therefore, gas rises and the price of electricity also rises.
In addition, there is the price of CO2 to be integrated into the cost , a political price, imposed by politics as an addition, in the cup, to justify investments green. Today this CO2 component amounts, at least in Italy, to approximately (almeno) something like €30-40/MWh, on a wholesale price of around €100-110/MWh.
In reality this does not include all the costs green: in fact, energy is made up of a gas price, which translates into an electricity price by applying CO2, to which, however, transport and imbalance must be added, plus other components (for example the tax on the marketing of gas, an absurd tax) which we leave out in this dissertation.
Taking the wholesale power component as 100, but without charges (the A3, the “socialized” renewable cost, is to be added to the wholesale cost), it must be added – depending on customer supply voltage – also a transport component that is worth, let's say, €30 to €50/MWh, just to give you an idea.
And then unfortunately no one evaluates the cost of imbalance, the result of renewable programming, which affects the pockets of users: in fact, based on the priority of dispatching the said renewable sources (...), which affects the pockets of the system as a burden, the cost also increases to guarantee the stability of the system (...). This honor is all the higher the greater the risk of not being able to program said renewable sources, especially in the presence of a stock exchange that is still based on the crazy System Marginal Price and not on the most moderate Pay as Bid (see LINK).
We have seen a practical example in Spain, blackouts due to the excess of renewables, which will lead to the preparation of systems of back-up, pumping or other, paid by the system in fact as an imbalance charge (…).
In short, energy remains a bloodbath, in terms of cost, also because it is structured immense to lower prices, but to keep them reasonably high.
See: https://x.com/mittdolcino/status/1917924972867076579
An enlightening article in Corriere della Sera from a few weeks ago pointed out that zero energy prices in some hours are not a good message. That is, instead of saying "good that industries are supplied at low prices" the speech is the opposite, that is, with low prices there is no more investment in renewables.
I hope you understand: the goal is not to lower prices, but to invest in renewables ANYWAY!
Maybe because the elite invests its savings in large wind and photovoltaic fields? That is, politics and Don Rodrigo as puppeteers?
We understand each other.
*****
It should be read in this context Berlin's decision (decision difficult to find in newspaper headlines, sigh, you have to look for it with a lantern) to deliberately choose to make the EU population commit suicide by reducing the minimum gas storage: first, everything is done to eliminate wood-burning fireplaces; then, they are forced to switch to electric; then, they make the price of gas explode and therefore of electricity, which is very sensitive to a possible shortage because it is difficult to store. Et voilà…. And finally, they reduce gas storage, to 80%.
The official reason is to save a few billion euros [an excuse, ed.], without considering that historically the cost of the guarantee can easily be assumed by the State, i.e. by the EU, with so-called "strategic" storage quotas (in Italy), just wanting it (obviously you don't want it, you prefer the crisis)
In fact, I would like to point out that in 2021 the same mistake was made: not filling the storage facilities. Consider that the legislative decree of 1 March 2022, n. 17, had already set the minimum filling quantity for Italian storage facilities at 90%. Much earlier, over twenty years ago, legislative decree n. 164/2000, in art. 12 paragraph 11-ter had already established that a quota of storage must be compulsorily reserved for the strategic reserve, equal to a certain volume calculated from year to year by the MiTE.
Today, however, things are going the other way.
Precisely after the Spanish blackout, caused by the intrinsic problem of insufficient energy storage, such as pumping for example, in the face of ever-increasing renewables.
In short, all it takes is a cold winter, not necessarily cold, and, thanks to renewables, perhaps with a lot of snow, i.e. with high cloud cover that prevents photovoltaic production, and the system goes into crisis.
We can therefore state with reasonable certainty that this measure will cause an energy price crisis that could instead be easily avoided by maintaining the storage level at 90%.
If you don't believe these words, here is the data to support them, below.
COMMENT: YES! The graph above shows it: even in the presence of an exit from the COVID crisis, with the expectation of high consumption, the northern EU did NOT fill its storages (Italy on average filled them quite a lot, even if it is not visible here), with the tragic results that we all remember, the price of the German futures on electricity, forward, the following year, even touched €1000/MWh, from around €30-40/MWh in 2020 and 2019.
This move by the EU is so crazy that one can imagine it involves a plan, that's for sure.
In short, the EU is aiming to trigger a carbon-neutral price crisis that is a carbon copy of the one in 2021/22.
Let's imagine the driver, in the benign hypothesis, is to renew the North Stream, to the German advantage (and not Italian, if you think badly, but probably right).
More likely, they want to trigger popular discontent in Europe against Russia, which is no longer supplying gas to Europe after the Nord Stream blew up. Without telling us, however, that it was European countries that blew it up, not Moscow… (…)(Do they really want to push you into a war against Moscow, eventually, due to unsustainable gas prices, blaming the Russians???)
We are telling you all this while Italy can also save itself from the planned collapse, given that it has storage among the largest in Europe, the second in absolute terms, but absolutely the first, for several times, as combined in terms of storage volume on national consumption and absolute value, as well as potential injection into the grid, it could save itself by cutting off the corridors with the rest of Europe, as France has threatened to do several times with electricity (remember that Italy's long-term power contracts with France derive from ENEL's investments in the reactor Superphenix of the times, an Italian invention that proved so successful that it was the basis of all new reactors (liquid metal cooling).
It's a pity that the EU has "armored" its security by drawing on Italian stocks by treaty. That is, avoiding the rise in its gas prices thanks to investments made by Italian families with tariffs, over the decades.
An unspeakable incorrectness.
Apart from denouncing the above scandal, we can do nothing else. If not to add that, unlike the system-innovating USA with the Trump team (which is changing obscene behaviors that until yesterday were consolidated, let's say), we see no political will to free ourselves from a rotten system, centered on the EU, that is, on the interests of the old European colonial powers, a system that aims to enslave the middle class for the benefit of an increasingly unpresentable caste.
So we stop here, simply anticipating what will happen next year, with the incomplete filling of gas storage, at the behest of traitorous politics.
Then let it not be said that we did not know what would happen. Here everything is explained, it will remain for posterity.
MD
