Waging War on Energy is Waging War on People

by Leen Weijers

Leen Weijers is the VP of Engineering at Liberty Oilfield Services. He has published extensively on Linkedin and I have found his work to be well worth considering. This article makes some simple points that deserve recounting on other platforms. Here is the link to the following article:

Putin bombs Ukrainian power systems to leverage civilian pain into military power. He understands that people need energy to thrive and survive. Sadly, most European leaders don’t get this simple fact of life.

The Economist published an article a few weeks ago about Putin’s use of energy as a weapon. The article describes a more indirect way in which he is wielding this weapon. It builds a simple relationship between how many extra people die in Europe during the cold of winter as a function of lower winter temperatures and higher consumer prices for electricity. The Economist holds Putin responsible for the recent rise in European electricity prices, and therefore responsible for the excess deaths this will likely cause this winter.

However, Putin has not been alone in waging a war on energy. Over the last 15 years, western politicians have vilified fossil fuels and have been forcing an energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Despite spending €billions on renewables, an energy transition is absent. What is evident, though, is that energy and electricity prices in many coutries in Europe have been on the rise long before Putin’s war on Ukraine, mostly due to the unreliable nature of renewables and the full backup power they require. 

By extension of The Economist’s claim, western politicians should take responsibility for excess cold deaths due to the higher electricity prices caused by their policies.

A Model for Cold Deaths in Europe

As Bjorn Lomborg often states, cold deaths are a much bigger problem than deaths associated with heat. For example, in the US and Canada, the number of deaths caused by excessive heat is 40 times lower than the number of deaths caused by excessive cold. The Economist concurs that in Europe “..between December and February, 21% more Europeans die per week than from June to August.”

The Economist’s model takes many parameters into account in a statistical model to predict excessive winter deaths in Europe. It’s model “…forecasts deaths based on weather, demography, influenza, energy efficiency, incomes, government spending and electricity costs, which are closely correlated to prices for a wide variety of heating fuels.”

The bottom line is that two parameters matter most in their excess cold deaths model, partly because they have significant variability – winter temperatures and electricity cost. 

As you can see in a graph from the Economist’s article, winter temperatures have a much more significant effect in southern Europe than in northern Europe. For example, in Portugal, weekly winter deaths increase from 20% to 50% over summer deaths when average winter temperatures drop from 12 °C (54 °F) to 9 °C (48 °F). In Finland there is no sensitivity of excess winter deaths to average winter temperature.

The graph below from the Economist’s article shows a forecast of weekly 2022-2023 winter deaths for various temperature scenarios, given the recent 78% increase in electricity prices and 144% increase in natural gas prices (2022 prices as compared to average 2000 – 2019 prices). In the harshest temperature case, peak weekly deaths increase from 220 to 260 deaths per million people, or 335,000 extra deaths for the entire winter.

As per The Economist, “the model finds that a 10% rise in electricity prices is associated with a 0.6% increase in deaths, though this number is greater in cold weeks and smaller in mild ones.”

For the average winter temperature scenario, and with electricity prices near their current levels, around 147,000 more people (4.8% more than average) would die in a typical winter than as compared to a scenario where those costs returned to the 2015 – 2019 average.” This implies the following model sensitivity: every 10% rise in electricity prices is associated with a 0.6% increase in excess winter cold deaths (18,000 extra winter deaths for every 10% electricity price rise).

Electricity Prices on the Rise Due to Addition of Renewables

Now, let’s evaluate the impact of higher electricity prices in Europe before Putin invaded Ukraine. 

Germany has been the poster child of renewable builds over the last 15 years. As a consequence of lower reliability of German wind and solar, overall electricity prices have been on the rise. In the graph below you can see German electricity price history: a 70% price increase over 15 years before Russia’s Ukraine war.

Most of this rise in the average electricity price is a renewables surcharge that every German consumer must pay. 

But the rise in electricity prices is more widespread than to just Germany. As shown in the graph below, there appears to be a good correlation between a country’s electricity prices and installed wind and solar capacity. In the graph below we have plotted electricity prices for March 2022 versus the per-capita sum of installed wind and solar capacity. Clearly, in countries like Germany and Denmark, where installed renewable capacity is highest, electricity prices are about three times higher than in many eastern European countries that have almost no renewables. 

Depending on what we would call the base price, electricity prices in Germany have increased between 50% (due to the renewables surcharge) and 200% (as compared to other European countries and the USA). This 200% increase extends to countries like Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In other European countries like Italy, UK, Spain, and Portugal, electricity prices are roughly double what they are compared to countries without significant renewables capacity.

Extending The Economist's relationship between electricity prices and excess winter deaths, the impact of the higher electricity prices is that there are between 3% and 12% more excess winter deaths in Europe. That’s a hundred thousand people or more dying earlier than they normally would for an average-temperature European winter.

Whenever you say “A”, you have to say “B”. That’s an old Dutch proverb about consequences. If Putin is responsible for higher expected winter deaths among European citizens due to higher electricity prices, then European politicians, decision makers and thought leaders should also be held responsible for the consequences of adding ever more unreliable renewable power to the grid. Their decisions shorten the lives of the energy poor in Europe.

If Putin is responsible for higher expected winter deaths among European citizens due to higher electricity prices, then European politicians, decision makers and thought leaders should also be held responsible for the consequences of adding ever more unreliable renewable power to the grid. Their decisions shorten the lives of the energy poor in Europe. hashtag#energy hashtag#climatechange hashtag#renewables hashtag#power hashtag#europe