Tuesday Open Thread

A quadrupling of EU energy prices is crippling energy intensive industries, but the EU sees this as a reason to invest in more renewables.

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

European silicon output shrinking, metal smelters closing as electricity prices quadruple, trade body warns

Probably something to tackle before those chip fabs are built, eh?

Agam Shah Sat 22 Jan 2022  // 09:38 UTC 

Soaring electricity prices have derailed manufacturing involving silicon and non-ferrous metals in Europe, politicians were warned this week.

Eurometaux, a European metals association, urged action [PDF] from the EU, fearing the region could experience spikes in electricity prices for the next decade if nothing is done to control the situation.

The power crisis has already curtailed production and shut down facilities in silicon and metals industries across EU nations. “After a quadrupling of electricity prices, over half of the EU’s aluminium and zinc smelters are today operating at reduced capacity or have temporarily closed, together with a significant reduction in silicon output,” Eurometaux said.

Silicon provider Elkem, headquartered in Norway, also noted [PDF] that silicon prices in Europe reached all-time highs in October and November. That was partially driven by market factors including prices of silicon going up in China and a potential power crisis in Brazil, where the company has production facilities.

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Europe’s ambitious chip fabrication plans may not go as planned without some action by the authorities to prevent disruptive electricity price hikes.

“Metals including aluminium, copper, nickel, zinc, and silicon are all significantly more electricity-intensive to produce than other materials and are priced globally as commodities,” Eurometaux added.

The Russian problem

During her address to the World Economic Forum, von der Leyen urged public and private investments in renewable energy: the EU is trying to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner sources.

That said, Europe is in an energy crisis right now for various messy reasons. The bottom line is that it’s running low on natural gas supplies, and prices of gas and electricity in the bloc have soared. Toward the end of last year, Russia’s state-owned Gazprom reduced its natural gas deliveries to Europe, and said this was in line with the long-term contracts it had with buyers in Europe.

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“Fundamentally, today’s gas crisis must serve to accelerate the transition to clean energy,” von der Leyen said.

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Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/22/eu_silicon_metals/

The EU seems to see the Russian gas supply crisis as evidence of Russia playing geopolitics with their energy supplies, but the truth is the EU are victims of the poor choices of their leaders.

The EU is suffering because they didn’t pre-order enough gas from Russia, they gambled the spot price of gas would fall, and lost badly. Thanks to Russia’s interconnector with China, Europe is effectively in a bidding war with China, and China so far is willing to spend more money.

China also suffered an energy crisis last year, thanks to incompetent green directives from Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, so Russia tripled their electricity supply to China to make up the Chinese shortfall. Chinese demand for energy IMO is the most likely cause of the pressure on EU gas prices. The EU leadership and energy traders clearly did not see this coming.

If the EU had enough domestic gas supplies they could have shrugged off the Russian gas supply crisis, or even participated in profiting from China’s energy crisis, by supplying energy to China through Russian gas pipelines.

But thanks to renewable energy fanatics like Ursula von der Leyen, the EU has turned its back on fracking and developing meaningful domestic energy supplies in favour of fantasy renewable energy schemes.

The USA is helping Europe with record US gas exports to the EU to try to make up the Russian shortfall. But European import prices are still sky high compared to US wholesale gas prices.

Biden quietly reversed his ban on federal fossil fuel extraction leasing last year, in response to spiking US domestic energy prices. US prices appear to have more or less stabilised, though wholesale US gas prices are still significantly higher than last year’s price. The relatively benign US gas price may be precarious. China is substantially ramping up LNG import capacity, which could put more pressure on global supplies.

If President Biden’s hostility to fossil fuel extraction again puts pressure on the domestic supply of US natural gas, US domestic natural gas users could end up in a bidding war with European and Chinese importers, just like Europe is currently in a bidding war with China. The European energy crisis could spread to the USA.

The EU could also have avoided this crisis by being less greedy, and pre-ordering enough gas from Russia at an affordable price to cover their domestic needs when the price was low. Instead they chose to gamble and lost badly, with the quality of life of ordinary European citizens, and the fortunes of energy intensive European industries.

The people of Europe are paying a heavy price for the incompetence of their leaders.

The deaths of thousands of people cannot be regarded as good news, so I apologise for the title to the article, which seemed apposite purely in the context of the general point I am seeking to make in this little series of three articles – namely, the mainstream media are not interested in anything which distracts from an alarmist narrative.

Over the last few days the usual suspects (basically the Daily Sceptic website, the Spectator and GB News) have picked up on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the responses made by the ONS to these requests, with regard to covid deaths in the UK. So far as I am aware, the mainstream media have not gone anywhere near this story.

Deaths from COVID-19 with no other underlying causes

This is the title to the page on the ONS websiteⁱ from as long ago as 16^th December 2021, in response to a FOIA request, which asked quite simply:

Please can you advise on deaths purely from covid with no other underlying causes.

The response by the ONS referred the questioner to an exisiting ONS database (Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Walesⁱⁱ) but nevertheless went on to provide a breakdown of the information requested, as follows:

Please see below for death registrations for 2020 and 2021 (provisional) that were due to COVID-19 and were recorded without any pre-existing conditions, England and Wales.

2020:9400 (0-64: 1549 / 65 and over: 7851)

2021 Q1: 6483 (0-64: 1560/ 65 and over: 4923)

2021 Q2: 346 (0-64: 153/ 65 and over: 193)

2021 Q3: 1142 (0-64: 512/ 65 and over: 630)

In other words, just 17,371 people died of Covid in England and Wales up to the end of September 2021 where COVID-19 was the only cause of death recorded on the death certificate. This contrasts dramatically with other official figures for covid deaths over the same timescale – 148,536 where covid was mentioned as a cause of death somewhere on the death certificate; 126,384 deaths within 28 days of a positive covid test; and 117,247 excess deaths, as recorded by the ONS.

COVID-19 deaths and autopsies Feb 2020 to Dec 2021

This is the title to the ONS pageⁱⁱⁱ dealing with its response to another FOIA request, with the information made public a week ago, on 17^th January 2022. This request was slightly more involved:

Please supply deaths caused solely by covid 19, where covid is the only cause of death listed on the death certificate, broken down by age group and gender between feb 2020 up to and including dec 2021.

Please supply the number of autopsies carried out on those where covid was the only cause stated.

As regards the second part of the request, the ONS replied: “We do not hold analysis on the number of post-mortems completed.”

As for the first part of the request, they replied with a table detailing the “Number of deaths where COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate, 1 February 2020 to 31 December 2021, by sex and age group, England and Wales”.

Although I note that this information also relates to England and Wales only, omitting Scotland and Northern Ireland, nevertheless the figure staggered me: 6,183.

Not surprisingly, the deaths listed in these figures were heavily skewed towards the elderly, with 520 men and 971 women in the age group 90+ comprising 24.1% of the total. 470 men and 533 women were in the age group 85-89, and they comprised another 16.2% of the total. 492 men and 402 women were in the age group 80-84, comprising another 14.5% or thereabouts, so that those aged 80 and over represented 54.8% of all covid deaths in England and Wales to the end of 2021 where Covid-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate.

8 deaths fell into this category for the age group 0-24, and 103 for the age group 25-39.

Conclusion

First of all, every one of those deaths is an individual tragedy, and I do not make light of the numbers.

Secondly, it would be all too easy to make an inferential leap that would almost certainly be unjustified, to the effect that something like 90% of “covid deaths” were not “covid deaths” at all. In each case where the deceased had comorbidities and/or other causes were mentioned on the death certificate, it may well be the case that covid-19 was a real contributory factor in their demise, inasmuch as the underlying health condition might not have led to death without the additional impact of covid-19 on their bodily systems. There is much that the blunt statistics simply do not tell us.

Thirdly, however, this information does suggest that the official statistics suggesting that covid-19 has killed anywhere between 150,000 and 175,000 people in the UK to date may well be considerably over-stated. At the very least, these information releases suggest the need for detailed investigation, and it is to be hoped that any official inquiry into Covid-19 in the UK will delve into these matters.

Finally, why have the mainstream media shown absolutely no interest in the revelation of this extraordinary information?

Endnotes

i https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfromcovid19withnootherunderlyingcauses

ii https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/preexistingconditionsofpeoplewhodiedduetocovid19englandandwales

iii https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/covid19deathsandautopsiesfeb2020todec2021