If the Germans don’t know about losing energy bets, nobody does. Old Vlad better listen up.
Putin has gambled away gas leverage, says German vice-chancellor – Robert Habeck says ‘half of our eggs were in the basket of Putin’ but Germany is now recovering capacity.
Vladimir Putin has gambled away his gas leverage over Europe, Germany’s vice-chancellor has claimed as he sounded a note of cautious optimism over his country’s energy supplies during a visit to Norway.
They’re all too yellow to admit that none of this will deliver enough energy in their lifetimes, if ever at all.
Germany and Norway reach blue hydrogen agreement – Germany’s RWE and Norway’s Equinor have agreed to supply Germany with low-emissions hydrogen fuel. The long-term plan is to provide 100% cleanly sourced green hydrogen.
What is blue hydrogen? For years, the prospect of clean hydrogen fuel — which emits mostly water vapor when burned — has excited those hoping to abandon fossil fuels.
However, the production of completely clean “green” hydrogen, which is separated from water with power generated by clean renewables such as solar and wind, is not currently viable at a large scale.
The alternative “blue” hydrogen, which is produced by burning gas, remains a cheaper option and aims to capture and store more than 95% of emissions.
So? Is that a crime or something, officer?
Police in Germany chase Tesla for 15 minutes after driver turns on autopilot and ‘goes to sleep’ – Traffic officers in Bavaria say they attempted to pull over the vehicle for a traffic check but it failed to stop, despite police repeatedly sounding their horn.
If the Bundeswehr had any, that is.
German defense minister lambasted over NYE Ukraine message – German media has mocked a “tone-deaf” video put out by Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht. She was slammed for discussing the war in Ukraine as people set off fireworks.
“The speech about the war with New Year’s Eve firecrackers in the background only crowns her series of embarrassments.”
7% may be what the finance minister sees but 11% (at least) is what everybody gets.
Germany’s finance minister sees 2023 inflation at 7% – Germany’s finance minister expects inflation in Europe’s biggest economy to drop to 7% this year and to continue falling in 2024 and beyond, but believes high energy prices will become the new normal.
And defense for free (from Dire Straits, sort of).
Our German Ally: Tanking.
Putin has given any number of reasons (all of them nonsense) to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. One of them was that Russia was “threatened” by NATO’s expansion. That is, to put it mildly, unconvincing. Russia’s grumbling about Ukrainian independence dates back to the Yeltsin era, long before (the special case of the vanished East Germany aside) NATO had expanded to include any countries in the former Soviet bloc.
A more convincing explanation (so far as the Kremlin’s attitude to NATO was concerned) was that Putin had seen the alliance’s weakness and concluded that it would present Moscow with no problems in the event that Russia took back control over its neighbor. An important reason why the Kremlin might have seen things that way was the position of Germany, a supposedly key member of NATO, but one that had a distinctly, uh, nuanced view of what membership of the alliance meant.
One obvious sign of that was the country’s neglect of its armed forces throughout Angela Merkel’s dismal chancellorship.
Now that the COVID pandemic is finally over.
Germany: New Year’s Eve fireworks for sale again after ban – People in Germany will be allowed to legally purchase fireworks to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They had been banned for the past two years to avoid injuries that could overburden hospitals during the COVID pandemic.
Hundreds of thousands of young people start smoking.
Cigarette boom in Germany – Last year, the proportion of smokers among 14- to 17-year-olds almost doubled, a new study reveals. Health Minister Lauterbach is horrified.
Observing Hermann 