Europe’s Current Energy Crisis Was Predictable — And Was Predicted
Headlines are highlighting Europe’s energy challenges at present, with extremely high natural gas prices shocking consumers and corporations. But this was entirely predictable, and in fact was predicted. The real problem was the pivot to natural gas as a bridge fuel, and too much focus on building efficiency instead of fuel switching.
Historic natural gas price fluctuations courtesy US EIA
This US data shows a clear picture that has implications globally. The fracking and shale oil boom of the 1990s to 2010s led to a period of unnatural stability in natural gas prices, and at a historically low level. The fracking companies started bankrupting in 2019 because their debt-fueled business model and race for the bottom was unsustainable. The COVID crisis put more pressure on them with globally reduced demand for both oil and gas, so more went under or significantly diminished operations. A few European countries banned fracking entirely, given its significant negative externalities of methane leakage, aquifer pollution, microquakes and general pollution.
Then the Saudi-Russian price war put a nail in the coffin of the unconventional extraction industry, targeted high-priced producers globally. That meant unconventional oil extraction was under the gun, and a great deal of natural gas comes from shale oil fields in many regions.
As a result, the ability to turn the natural gas supply up when demand increases has radically diminished around the world. It’s no longer effectively something with an infinite supply that can be turned up in weeks at most.
Over the same period, the world built a lot of natural gas plants to displace coal, a partial good as natural gas generation has lower emissions than coal, something that is somewhat challenged by methane leakage. Some, like Texas, restructured their electrical generation around the assumption of just-in-time extraction and delivery of natural gas, and they froze in the dark in February of 2021 as a result.
Europe is facing the another facet of the same challenge that Texas did eight months ago. It’s consuming 33% more natural gas annually than it did in 1990, after a short-lived decline in the early 2000s.
EU natural gas consumption 1990-2020 courtesy EU
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Natural gas is now returning to its mid-2000s habit of being a fluctuating price resource, with both greater month-to-month variance and even greater seasonal variance. All economies and facilities that have made strategic business decisions based on the false assumption of low prices and price stability of natural gas are paying the price this year. Given the growing chorus of concern about methane leakage from natural gas and shale oil extraction sites over the past decade, and given the clear reality of the climate crisis, this isn’t a surprise.
It also adds another nail in the coffin of “blue” hydrogen as a future energy source, even as the oil and gas industry works really hard to dismantle the coffin. Most hydrogen from natural gas schemes assume cheap natural gas and stable prices, not significant demand competition for a limited resource. Already unaffordable with fictitious CCS, all governments should be looking at 2021’s natural gas price shocks and reliability failures and pivoting away from “blue” hydrogen, regardless of fossil fuel industry lobbying and tax revenues.
The answer to these challenges are clear as well. Governments focused on natural gas as a bridge fuel and building efficiency programs should have been focused on renewables and fuel-switching to a much greater degree. Wind and solar have no seasonal spikes in price, and managing intermittency is a matter of overbuilding cheap renewables, more transmission, and grid storage, all of which are clearly understood and modeled.
Building efficiency is good, but fuel-switching to eliminate gas furnaces and leaky high-GWP air conditioners by replacing them with modern heat pumps with low-GWP refrigerants with COPs of 3-4 avoids a lot more of the root causes of the problems we are facing. Low cost variance wind and solar supplying high-efficiency electric heat pumps is a long overdue policy.
This change in natural gas from a constantly low-priced commodity available in as big amounts as demanded was masked by lower demand during COVID as buildings sat empty through the winter of 2020-2021 and electrical consumption was down. However, as people returned to work or school in September and October of 2021, and the weather cooled, the completely predictable has occurred.
Heating demand and electrical demand has increased, demand for gas has increased, and supply of gas is effectively capped at a low level. Supply and demand being what they are, gas prices have shot up. This isn’t rocket science, this isn’t Kahneman and Tversky Nobel Prize-winning thinking on the psychology of how decisions are actually made, this is basic economics. Supply capped, demand up, price up.
I was predicting this in the first quarter of 2020 as an obvious outcome, and wasn’t alone in seeing it. The implications of fracking bankruptcies, COVID, and the Saudi-Russian price war should have been clear to anyone looking at the space. McKinsey had a report out late last year making much the same points, although they were doing it for different reasons than I am, as they happily work with oil and gas companies and countries to help them sell more fossil fuels more profitably, not something I choose to do.
Will policymakers see the writing on the wall clearly? Certainly Texas will refuse to accept the lessons of 2021, but that doesn’t mean the US as a whole will. Brussels and the European parliaments should be rethinking their power grids and hydrogen pipe dreams, and refocusing on actual solutions to the climate crisis. Canada should be backing away from its blue-tainted hydrogen policy, and pivoting to one that’s actually green.
But the usual suspects are blaming renewables for Europe’s current problems, just as they falsely blamed renewables for Texas’ problems earlier this year. Those voices are being amplified by the usual suspects, and policymakers are susceptible to hearing what they want to hear just as much as anyone. It’s a fight for reality, and sadly, the truth travels much more slowly than lies.
The lessons of 2021 are deep, rich, and far-reaching. But the pockets of the fossil fuel companies fighting for their lives, if not the lives of their children or their employees’ children, or the children of the world, are deep, rich, and far-reaching as well. As I’ve been writing about hydrogen regularly for the past years, pointing out the failures of assumptions about demand and supply, a regular refrain has been that while I’m clearly correct in what I’m saying, my analysis and the points of others such as Paul Martin, Mark Jacobson, and Robert Howarth, among many others, will be drowned in a flood of oil-soaked lobbying.
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Environment
Tesla’s Robyn Denholm made 5x more than next best-paid chair, a role Musk said was usefuless
Robyn Denholm, Tesla’s chairwoman, made five times more money than the next best-paid board chair, a role Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk said was useless.
In 2018, Musk settled with the SEC for falsely claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, he was forced to resign as chair of Tesla’s board.
Musk basically handpicked Robyn Denholm to become the new chair, which he then called a useless “honorific” titled:
“Chairman’ is an honorific, not executive role, which means it’s not needed to run Tesla. Will retire that title at Tesla in 3 years.”
Denholm made a lot of money in this useless honorific role.
She has made over $530 million, almost entirely through stock option compensation, since becoming Tesla’s chairperson.
Most of her stock sales happened over the last year:
The New York Times released a new report looking into Denholm’s compensation and found that she was paid about 5 times more than the next best-paid nonexecutive chair.
Tesla paid its chair about 5 times more than UnitedHealth’s:
The nonexecutive chair with the next-highest profit from selling shares in the company he oversees was Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group. Mr. Hemsley has earned more than $100 million from the sale of UnitedHealth shares since November 2018, though he received all of that stock while he was chief executive of the health care company.
To Musk’s point about the role being honorific, it’s not clear what Denholm accomplished during her time as chair.
She and the rest of Tesla’s board oversee Tesla’s executive management, led by Musk, but Musk has been allowed to do whatever he wants for years.
They have backed his every move, granted him a $55 billion CEO compensation package, and remained silent when he threatened Tesla shareholders that he would not develop AI products at Tesla unless given a larger, more controlling share of the company, or decided to fire Tesla’s entire charging team to make an example out of the head of the team.
Most recently, they have not addressed the protests at Tesla stores and product boycotts, which are attributed to Musk’s involvement in politics, angering a significant portion of the population and Tesla’s consumer base.
Only recently was there a report suggesting the board floated the idea of replacing Musk to gain leverage in forcing him to spend more time at Tesla. Even then, the board quickly denied the report, which only claimed that they were doing their jobs in planning the CEO succession.
Electrek’s Take
Based on Musk’s comment, Denholm was paid half a billion dollars to do nothing. That’s literally all that was required of her after replacing Musk as chair of the board: nothing.
Musk is in charge. She is just an “honorific” figurehead that is required to back his every move.
Just as Tesla’s then-third-largest individual shareholder, after Musk, Leo KoGuan, told Electrek last year, when he couldn’t get his concerns about Musk heard by the board, Tesla is “a family business masquerading as a public company.”
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Environment
UrbanLink nearly doubles order of REGENT electric seagliders to transport over 4M passengers a year
Less than a year after announcing an order for 27 electric seaglider planes from REGENT Craft, advanced air mobility (AAM) specialist UrbanLink has nearly doubled that order size to support plans for high-frequency commercial flights around the southeastern United States.
While advanced air mobility may be a nascent industry, companies around the globe are continuously gearing up to establish commercial networks that support air taxi travel and other sustainable commercial operations. In the US, particularly Southern Florida, UrbanLink has been making tons of moves to establish itself as a major player in that space when it happens.
UrbanLink has already been working for years to enable zero-emission, end-to-end travel within a 500-mile range by 2028 before expanding that range to 1,000 miles by 2030, beginning with its hub cities of Miami, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The company believes its actions have adequately positioned it to become the first airline in the US to integrate electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft into its fleet. Fellow eVTOL network Archer Aviation is also in the race, so it’s exciting times for commercial air taxi development.
UrbanLink has committed to purchasing from several eVTOL and electric plane developers, including Artemis Sea Crafts, Eviation Aircraft, and Lilium, as we reported back in June 2024. Last fall, the AAM operator announced it was adding more vessels to its growing fleet in South Florida, committing to purchase 27 electric seagliders from REGENT Craft.
Today, UrbanLink and REGENT announced an expansion of their existing partnership in which the former has upped its purchase order to 47 electric seagliders.
UrbanLink ups seaglider order to support FL, Puerto Rico
REGENT Craft and UrbanLink shared details of the expanded partnership this morning, in hopes of establishing Florida as the bona fide leader in sustainable coastal aerial mobility.
Per the company, the nearly doubling of the existing order for REGENT’s Viceroy electric seagliders will support a more rapid rollout of UrbanLink’s aerial operations between the southern Florida and Puerto Rico regions. REGENT co-founder and CEO Billy Thalheimer spoke about the expanded seaglider order:
UrbanLink’s expanded order is a clear vote of confidence in REGENT’s seaglider technology and is testament to our continued timely execution certification and product development milestones. Together, we’re building a more convenient and connected future for coastal communities.
As the map above shows, electric sea glider travel can cut the travel time from Miami to West Palm Beach by nearly 75%. This single route represents a growing demand for convenient and more sustainable alternatives for short-haul travel in the US, and UrbanLink hopes to provide that to Florida visitors and beyond.
For example, the company shared that it anticipates that its seaglider operations in Miami alone could provide more sustainable travel options to up to 4.3 million passengers per year when commercial operations begin. UrbanLink founder and chairman Ed Wegel also spoke:
We’re proud to expand our partnership with REGENT and bring this revolutionary technology to more passengers traveling high-demand routes across Florida and Puerto Rico. This partnership propels Florida to the forefront of global innovation in advanced, all-electric mobility.
REGENT’s full-scale Viceroy electric seaglider prototype is currently in the process of successful sea trials en route to certification from the US Coast Guard. These 12-passenger vessels can reach up to 180 mph and travel up to 180 miles on a single charge.
First deliveries of the Viceroy seagliders to UrbanLink are expected to begin sometime in 2027.
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It’s official. Toyota is finally launching a new EV in the US. The C-HR will return in what’s expected to be an affordable electric SUV. Here’s our first look at the 2026 Toyota C-HR, a surprisingly stylish EV with nearly 300 miles of range.
Meet the 2026 Toyota C-HR electric SUV for the US
Who could forget the original Toyota C-HR? The funky-looking compact SUV was priced under $25,000 but was discontinued in 2022 to make way for the more efficient Corolla Cross hybrid.
The C-HR will make a comeback in the US as a fully electric SUV with nearly 300 miles of range. After revealing the electric SUV in Europe earlier this year, Toyota confirmed on Wednesday that the C-HR will, in fact, arrive in the US.
Outside of a “+” added at the end of the name (C-HR+), the US and European versions look nearly identical. The electric version is a drastic upgrade over the retired gas-powered model.
Toyota gave it a stylish new look with an updated design closer to its new Corolla and Crown. The smaller SUV features Toyota’s “hammerhead front end” with slim LED headlights and distinct character lines.
The C-HR EV is 177.9″ long, 73.6″ wide, and 63.8″ tall, or about the size of the Kia Niro EV (174″ long, 72″ wide, and 62″ tall). It’s also a bit smaller than the bZ4X SUV, Toyota’s first EV, at 185″ long, 73″ wide, and 65″ tall.
Powered by a 74.7 kWh battery, Toyota expects the 2026 C-HR will get up to 290 miles of driving range. It will also be equipped with an NACS port to access Tesla’s Supercharger network. Using DC fast charging, the electric SUV can recharge from 10% to 80% in about 30 minutes.
The 2026 C-HR will come with standard AWD with up to 338 hp. Toyota said the added power is good for a 0 to 60 mph sprint in around 5 seconds.
Stylish new design inside and out
Toyota’s new EV will be available in SE and XSE trim with “great interior features.” These include a 14″ touchscreen infotainment system with Toyota Audio Multimedia system (with Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support), a digital driver display, wireless phone chargers, and the Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 system.
Other standard features include a power liftgate, low-profile roof rails, and rain-sensing wipers. You can also choose from 18″ or 20″ wheels and several different paint colors.
The XSE model gains 20″ gun metal finished wheels, SofTex and synthetic suede-trimmed seats, a Digital Rearview Mirror with HomeLink, a Panoramic view Monitor, and more.
Toyota will offer the 2026 C-HR in fully electric (EV), Hybrid, Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV), and Fuel Cell powertrain options. The new electric SUV is expected to arrive at dealerships across the US in 2026.
The new C-HR debut comes just a day after Toyota revealed its new bZ electric SUV for the US. Toyota is dropping the “bZ4X” name and giving it some significant upgrades, including more range (now up to 314 miles), a built-in NACS port, and more.
Although Toyota has yet to reveal prices, since the C-HR is smaller than the bZ4X, it’s expected to start at around $35,000.
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