The US Congress has voted in favor of a new sanctions law, much of which focuses on Russia's growing gas influence in Europe. All companies providing "goods, services, technology, information or support" to Russian export pipelines will be sanctioned. The law contains a direct commitment from Washington to prevent the construction of Nord Stream 2 and to diversify the EU energy market.
After the approval of the law by Congress, Donald Trump, in fact, has no choice. This means that the law will be signed and will enter into force in the very near future, which in itself is not surprising. As it seemed initially, the reaction of old Europe (primarily Germany) to Washington's legislative initiative was surprising.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern accused the United States of openly lobbying the interests of its own business and a desire to oust Russian gas suppliers from the European market. The EU reserved the right to impose sanctions on Washington if new anti-Russian sanctions are not agreed with European partners.
The domestic media started talking about the sudden awakening of the political subjectivity of Europe. In principle, everything is correct. But the unawakened subjectivity of Europe became the most surprising circumstance of this history. What is truly amazing is the reason for the sudden European insight.
Looking at the news feed, they quickly found the reason for such a sharp reaction in Europe to the new US law. Five European energy companies (Shell, OMV, Engie, Uniper and Wintershall) in June transferred to the implementation of Nord Stream 2 a fifth of their planned total investment of 4.75 billion euros. However, the real cause of the conflict is much deeper, both in time and in essence.
In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted, which later turned into the Kyoto Protocol, successfully buried not without the participation of the United States. But the idea of combating global warming by introducing a global tax on producing and oil-producing countries did not die, it was transformed into the Paris Agreement, which was ratified last year.
In the global media space, the Paris Agreement was presented as a victory of common sense over the greed of capitalism. No one was embarrassed by the fact that if common sense settled somewhere, then greed should also have its own corner. If we transfer all the metallurgy of Europe to environmentally friendly smelting in electric furnaces of metal blanks, then somewhere someone has to smelt them from ore in open-hearth furnaces using coal and gas.
This was the time when the society was diligently instilled in the idea of the existence of some kind of post-industrial (independent of industry) economy. How it is being suggested today that with the help of digital technologies it is possible to create a new economic reality and become world leaders. The question of what are you going to digitize in the absence of the engineering, aviation, automotive and shipbuilding industries, no one asks.
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All these pseudo-economic concepts were based on globalization (world division of labor). The manufacturing sector has practically completely moved to Asia for cheap labor (export of poverty). Extraction of useful hydrocarbon (they are also harmful) minerals is geographically concentrated in resource countries. At the same time, the conditional united West was assigned the role of the office center of the world economy, where everyone goes to work in white collars, admires the blue (no smog) sky, breathes pure oxygen and eats organic food.
Today, 80% of US GDP consists of services and sales, but these are not services within the American economy. These are world banking operations, this is the world stock market, these are patents and royalties, this is project documentation and the intellectual part of the cost of American and European iPhones, Dolchegabans, Luivitons and Japanese Toyota / Nisans, sold all over the world, made in China.
The same (post-industrial) concepts were dictated by the Paris Agreement, the main meaning of which was to improve not the abstract world ecology, but the ecology of a concrete "office center". The agreement introduced a tax on industrialized countries in favor of post-industrial ones. It was planned that in 2020 the CO2 emission quota will be 10 euros per ton, in 2030 - 35 euros / t, and in 2050 - 100 euros / t.
Ecology is an expensive thing, therefore, the rich countries of the West had to deal with the creation of an ecological paradise based on alternative energy, and those who need money most of all had to pay for it. Already at 35 € / t, coal energy becomes unprofitable without additional systems for capturing and storing carbon at thermal power plants, and at 100 € wind and solar energy start to make a profit in comparison with gas.
Without the Paris Agreement, everything is exactly the opposite. Today in Germany and Denmark, where the maximum number of wind turbines and solar panels is located, electricity costs 29.5 and 30.4 eurocents per kWh. And in Bulgaria and Hungary, where electricity is obtained by old man's methods using nuclear power plants and gas thermal power plants, 9.6 and 11.5 euro cents.
The Paris Agreement could be implemented only if the previous project of globalization was preserved, where the resource and producing countries strictly followed the instructions and orders of the "office center". However, the role of ordinary performers for the percentage of profit established by the general manager ceased to suit resource and producing countries. It immediately became clear that a post-industrial and digital economy cannot exist on its own, without an accountable energy and industry.
This is what Donald Trump is about with his "Make America Great Again". And that is why the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement, burying it, like the Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the global reformatting of the energy sector has left the EU in a broken trough, that is, with a high share of inefficient energy on its balance sheet. Europe turned out to be the only region that believed in the tale of a clear sky overhead.
In 2000, alternative energy (sun, wind, ocean, biomass) accounted for only 4% of the fuel and energy balance of Europe. Gas accounted for 16.9%, coal - 24.4%, nuclear power plants - 22.6%, hydropower - 20.7%, and oil - 11.4%. In 2015, the EU's energy balance changed beyond recognition. All sectors fell (oil - to a record 3.7%), except for two: gas rose to 21.1%, and alternative sources from 4 to 29%.
Over the past 10 years (2005-2015), domestic gas production in the EU (including Norway with its slight growth) has fallen by 31%, and gas imports have also declined all this time. The resulting deficit was covered by an increase in energy efficiency (reduction of losses) and alternative sources (counting on future subsidies). And here you are, hello Donald, New Year! Goodbye Paris Protocol.
Long-term contracts for the supply of Russian gas to Europe will expire in 2019. Europe strangled South Stream with its own hands. Cheap LNG proved to be expensive. The Turkish version of the gas pipeline slows down, and it is not a fact that it will take place at all. You can't put much on the fate of Erdogan, like the fate of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The US will do everything to complete the failed coup in Turkey. Comrades from across the ocean are sitting on the Ukrainian valve, and the head of Gazprom, Miller, has repeatedly stated that after 2019 there will be no gas supplies to Europe via this route. An American law with sanctions against Nord Stream 2 is also on its way. Well, how can you not show subjectivity here?
However, the European collision in this story is far from the most curious turn. A special piquancy to the plot is given by the fact that all this time the United States did not even think about any ecology, continuing to rapidly increase domestic production of hydrocarbons. From 2000 to 2015, the share of nuclear and hydropower in the US fuel balance decreased from 14.5 to 6%, with oil, gas and coal filling the rest.
Immediately after the 2008 crisis, it became obvious that the single project of globalization was parallelized: the USA (West) went its own way; China, Russia, India (Asia) to their own. In such a situation, it was necessary to prepare not for the role of a world manager, but for industrial and energy self-sufficiency. From 2009 to 2014 alone, the growth of oil production in the United States was 61%, and gas production - 25%. At the same time, the share of whatever, but certainly not environmentally friendly "shale" (oil and gas) in the national production increased from 1/10 to 1/3. The same circumstance caused the "Arab Spring" (a series of coups and wars in the Middle East).
Continental Europe today faces a difficult choice. Once again, fully and completely rely on your ally for energy security and ultimately become a US vassal. Or to come to an agreement with the "opponents" (China and India will follow Russia, and there it is a stone's throw to Iran) and increase the military-political turbulence in the world.
The choice is historical, each time ending in a big war. There is no doubt that the United States will go to the end; they have nowhere to retreat. For Russia, the retreat will mean the final disintegration and physical departure into historical oblivion. And for China, I will lose all political ambitions and the status of a "hot" shop of the world economy with harmful production and a fixed income.
So global warming is over. Winter Is Coming.
Leonid Krutakov