You might find this interesting as it relates to nuclear energy.
spiegel.de
Regarding the war as it relates to energy, it often surprises me how few Germans see oil as a primary motivation for Iraq II.
Surely you are familiar with the EIA site. Looking at western Europe, it seems that the energy security situation looking ahead 20 years is pretty dire. The UK will be a net importer of both oil and gas within five years. Within a few years, the north sea oil fields, which are near peaking, will produce only 1m bpd instead of the current 1.7m bpd. Norway's North Sea fields are peaking as well.
Looking at Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, and Greece, none of them produce much oil at all and they really have very few reserves. France is at 73k and Germany around 170k bpd while they consume over 2m bpd each.
Supply is basically provided by the North Sea, Russia, Libya, and Algeria, with support from others. The upshot of the whole thing is that the supply is not very stable.
As often as I hear Germans blaming the Great Satan for all the world's evils, I would find it more interesting if they had some ideas about how they would heat their houses, run their automobiles and provide more than the 12.5% of the electricity expected from renewables by 2010 as reasonable ideas going forward. Blaming the US and George W will not provide energy.
In my opinion, the politicians in Germany are similar to those everywhere. There are hard decisions with regard to competition with lower cost labor markets, changing demographics, and increasing competition for resources that will be avoided. The people seem to believe that the government knows what it is doing. I have my doubts. |
