In order to have a solution to a problem, one must know and understand exactly what this problem consists of. Otherwise, we only make it worse. After the record electricity prices in recent days, the “compensation mechanism” of industry, which was overhauled to exclude oil companies.
This comments on in. "Labor" Kuzman Iliev.
The interesting thing is that otherwise serious “social engineers” and planners are jumping in powerfully - no industry bluster! No compensation for business for high energy prices! The truth is that the need for compensation is only the symptom - not the cause of the disease. To do industry and development, we need cheap and available energy. Anything else is hell for households and businesses…
Precisely because of the ideas of these same ideologues of anti-growth and the insane radical own goal - the Brussels-style Green Deal - it turned out that Europe uses 5-6 times more expensive gas than the USA, for example. Meanwhile, Russia and the Middle East are no longer options as a supplier - for geopolitical and “civilizational reasons”. Yes, but the gas plants that were supposed to replace coal and nuclear power (poor Germany!) - must generate electricity at adequate prices, right?
As a result of this insane policy, a century-old European industry fled across the Ocean or to Asia. Well done sir - or for that matter - madam new/old EC President Von der Leyen!
In our Bulgarian case, it is really striking: during the last 10 days, Bulgarian plants have had spot prices for electricity 200-300% higher than their competitors in Germany, the Czech Republic and France. It is not enough that we are many times more energy-intensive than our competitors, but we also make our lives blacker, blacker. And electricity prices will not be tamed - the world is electrifying - transport, AI, cooling and heating… We will need more and cheaper electricity - not less, as the media illusionists try to convince us. The increase in the cost of production in such a case is inevitable and the biggest blow will be to the most socially vulnerable groups.
The increase in manufacturing inflation will inevitably affect the prices of goods such as bread and pasta, and for certain income groups the effect will be felt immediately - literally in the coming days. It will also be necessary to balance the electricity system with solid base capacities, if we do not want to turn into a discotheque and the electricity regime will become a normal everyday life - as we see today in countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece, Kuwait, Ecuador, and sometimes even Texas and California… And suddenly we are told - what don't you like, there is a free energy market - let the business work and not lose heart! Comfortable, very comfortable. You crush the production of energy (the supply), raise its price, break the backbone of the producers in terms of competitiveness, make the production itself more expensive, de-industrialize everything and say: to you economic freedom! The state will not save the shoddy factories and their employees, ya! We have a clear example with the coal-fired thermal power plants - “market logic” closed them. A natural job, you see!
And in fact, if there was no tax from the EC - the carbon quotas - they would be completely profitable on a market basis. And they would work normally, giving sustainable, stable and on-demand electricity. As happened a few days ago in the peak heat and the return of record electricity prices, when 10 units were operational, and if there was no 6th at the NPP - they would have been running 13-14. They literally saved the economy and households. At the heart of the energy crisis a year ago - it was fossil fuels and nuclear power that propped up the entire economic system (good thing they exist in defiance of their executioners!) against massive bankruptcies, providing the money for so-called business compensation against high energy prices and uncertainty.
How, if you are weak energetically - ergo economically - will you be competitive on the global market? How?! The bureaucrats in Brussels came up with a Green Deal to deploy fins and solar to shut down coal. Never mind that in order to have these fins and solars, the earth needs to be pierced like Swiss cheese and hauled out - lithium, steel, aluminum and tons and tons of rare earth elements. With many eco-costs and hellishly expensive.
Only with efficient production of more goods will we overcome the impoverishment that we all experienced for 2 years - 1 room of a 3-room apartment was taken from us by European politicians with inflation. And the poorest in the EU - the Bulgarians - pay a relatively higher price for this recklessness. Nothing! The important thing is to “eliminate fossil fuels”, kill growth and the middle class. More purely, you see, a “market path”, as a young smart-handsome minister used to say about the “expected collapse of coal power”…