Irina Slav on energy

3 days ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

Global investment in the energy transition exceeded $2 trillion last year, we learned in January this year. Four months later, we learned that the European Union alone will need another $2.6 trillion in grid investment by 2050. The joke could’ve ended here but of course it didn’t. Because we’ll have to spend some money on cybersecurity as well, and when I say “some” I mean “a lot”, as usual.

4 days ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

“Government policies will shut all petrochemicals in Europe. All our major competitors are planning for withdrawal from Europe as government has failed to act time after time.”The stark warning comes from a letter, penned by the CEO of British energy and chemicals company Ineos, one of the few remaining masochistic players in the UK section of the North Sea. The letter is from late February and things have not got better since then — for the UK or Europe. In fact, they have got worse.

1 week ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. One of my fondest early childhood memories was my dad telling me bedtime stories. My fondest of these fondest memories is one night when he was telling me “Little Red Riding Hood” and, being tired after a full day’s work, related how “Little Red Riding Hood slid down into the crusher.”My dad was a mining engineer. His specialty was beneficiation. He taught probably thousands of young engineers over close to four decades.

1 week ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

As we all know, the European Union is a union of sovereign, democratic states where freedom of speech is sacred and so is freedom of decision-making because of that sovereign part. It should come as no surprise at all, then, that the central EU government is trying to ban Slovakia and Hungary from buying Russian gas. In fact, the idea is to ban everyone in the EU from buying Russian gas — because it won’t happen voluntarily.

1 week ago | irinaslav.substack.com | Irina Slav

The price tag of Europe’s transition just went up by a trillion dollars. Actually, it went up by several trillion dollars. In a normal world, this would put a final end to the “clean and affordable” song but we all know this is not going to happen, right? What is going to happen is more waste of money — and failure to ensure the Iberian blackout doesn’t happen again.