EU warned of public unrest from ''green energy'' related power price increases | Eastern North Carolina Now

The European Union has launched a crusade to be "carbon neutral" by 2050 and it is already showing up in citizen's electricity bills.  This has led to warnings from groups as diverse as national government leaders and pro-green energy think tanks that Europe faces mass public unrest from both rising power prices and increasing power unreliability.

In the past year, continent wide, power prices have shot upward by an average of 15%, with Spain being hit the hardest because of the way its electric market is organized.  The cost of electricity has already become a major political issue in Spain. Spain's Socialist Deputy Prime Minister told a recent EU conference that the green energy price rise "is obviously creating unrest in our population."  Poland's prime minister has warned that if his country complies with the EU demands, power prices there will increase by 40% next year and keep going up, and that Poland would have to spend two thirds of its GDP annually for decades to meet the EU's carbon demands.

Even the pro-green energy consultancy Berlin-based E3 Analytics told the Financial Times that "if it [green energy transition] starts jeopardizing power reliability and significantly increasing energy prices that people pay, it could lead to significant political pushback."  French economist Jean Pisani-Ferry has warned that the surging power prices could lead to a continent-wide mass public protest movement similar to France's Yellow Vest movement that forced President Macron to cancel unpopular "climate change" measures.

Poland's Prime Minister Morawiecki summed it up, saying "what we have here is the very expensive climate policy of the European Union."

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/09/14/return-of-the-yellow-vests-eu-facing-unrest-as-energy-prices-soar/

What is particularly galling is that  we have something very similar going on right here in North Carolina, House Bill 951, which would prematurely and  permanently shut down six coal fired power plants, force ratepayers to shoulder the unnecessary $5 Billion financial burden of doing so, and shift much of that capacity to expensive and unreliable solar and wind energy.  And we have some idiots in the House "Republican" leadership pushing hard to do it.