Max Colchester

The cheap energy seems like, according to economists, it could still be decades away if it ever comes.

There are green jobs.

There are people putting up wind turbines all over Germany and the UK, putting up solar panels on people's roofs.

At the same time, you have job destruction.

So net-net, some studies suggest it'll be a wash or there'll be maybe even fewer jobs in future during this transition.

So whereas the renewables in the US and China are also being added in large volumes, they're being added on top.

But in Europe, there was this effort to do a transition, to switch one for the other.

And that has created energy shortages.

which is what is driving the higher prices.

One alternative would be to focus on places in Europe where the renewable energies make sense economically, because there are places where they do.

In Spain, which has got these high plateaus with lots of wind and lots of sun, it seems as though that might be an economical place to use renewable power widely, and even maybe to funnel, pipe that power up into Central Europe.

And in the Nordic countries as well, the calculation is better for renewables because they have hydropower.

And that's more of a steady source of energy, which is what industrial businesses need.

The problem with solar and wind is that they're volatile.

You have to store them.

And the overall cost for the system is probably higher.

So you need extra power capacity.

You need extra grid.

You need extra power lines.

And you need storage, which is expensive.