The Ukraine to Become EU’s Hydrogen valley

There is a fascinating solution in the works for the simmering controversial pipeline project North Stream 2. Poland is against it, as it historically dislikes any form of cooperation between its two mighty neighbors Germany and Russia. The Ukraine is also against NS2, but for different reasons, because it fears to lose out on a lot of transfer fees for transporting Russian fossil fuel to Europe over its soil via huge pipelines:

Yours faithfully once stood personally under such an impressive pipeline near Poltava.

Nevertheless, a way out of this dilemma is offering itself on a silver platter: how about using the existing pipeline, connecting the Ukraine and the EU for transport of hydrogen, produced on Ukrainian soil and territorial Black Sea waters?

Nine western European countries, among them Italy, Spain and the UK, are cooperating in a scheme to set up a pan-European dedicated transport infrastructure, called the European Hydrogen Backbone. The Ukraine would love to join and become a major European hydrogen province and upgrade the existing fossil fuel pipeline infrastructure, that could be obsolete soon due to NS2 coming online, to be able to carry hydrogen and transport it into the European Hydrogen Backbone.

To be continued.

[ec.europa.eu] – Ukraine Hydrogen Valley
[upstreamonline.com] – Ukraine ready for pipeline switch to fuel Europe’s hydrogen drive
[gasunie.nl] – Gas infrastructure companies present European Hydrogen Backbone

European Hydrogen Backbone (Gasunie)

HBO Chernobyl

Donald Sadoway

[wikipedia.org] – Donald Sadoway

He is a noted expert on batteries and has done significant research on how to improve the performance and longevity of portable power sources. In parallel, he is an expert on the extraction of metals from their ores and the inventor of molten oxide electrolysis, which has the potential to produce crude steel without the use of carbon reductant thereby totally eliminating greenhouse gas emissions… As a researcher, Sadoway has focused on environmental ways to extract metals from their ores, as well as producing more efficient batteries. His research has often been driven by the desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving quality and lowering costs. He is the co-inventor of a solid polymer electrolyte. This material, used in his “sLimcell” has the capability of allowing batteries to offer twice as much power per kilogram as is possible in current lithium ion batteries…. In August 2006, a team that he led demonstrated the feasibility of extracting iron from its ore through molten oxide electrolysis. When powered exclusively by renewable electricity, this technique has the potential to eliminate the carbon dioxide emissions that are generated through traditional methods… In 2009, Sadoway disclosed the liquid metal battery comprising liquid layers of magnesium and antimony separated by a layer of molten salt[8] that could be used for stationary energy storage. Research on this concept was being funded by ARPA-E and the French energy company Total S.A. Experimental data showed a 69% DC-to-DC storage efficiency with good storage capacity and relatively low leakage current (self discharge). In 2010, with funding from Bill Gates and Total S.A., Sadoway and two others, David Bradwell and Luis Ortiz, co-founded a company called the Liquid Metal Battery Corporation (now Ambri) in order to scale up and commercialize the technology.

790 GW Renewable Energy Potential SE-Europe

The report underscores that SEE possesses vast technical renewable energy potential – equal to some 740 GW.” This renewable energy potential is dominated by wind and solar. “The region’s wind energy (532 GW) and solar PV (120 GW) potential is largely untapped, and 127 GW of this overall renewable energy potential could be implemented in a cost-competitive way today.”

[irena.org] – Cost-competitive renewable power generation: Potential across South East Europe (pdf 124p)
[cleantechnica.com] – 790 Gigawatts of Cost-Cutting Renewable Energy Potential in South East Europe

Ukraine Shut Off From Gas

Max. temperatures Ukraine, November 25, 2015: 3 degrees Celcius = 37 degrees Fahrenheit

Russia has decided to halt gas deliveries to Ukraine. Reason: Ukraine is too far behind with its payments. But the recent sabotage of electricity cables into Crimea could also play a role.

Poor Ukrainians. In their cold homes they now have a lot of time to contemplate if that Euro-Maidan circus was really worth it. Russia has gas, Europe doesn’t. And Nuland-USA is only interested in Ukraine in as much it can be used to generate conflict with Russia, just like Poland in 1939 was used by the US to generate conflict with Germany. Perhaps you Ukrainians can keep yourselves warm by waving the EU-flag in your freezing living room.

Alternatively you could of course make a U-turn and kick Porky out of office and make up with Russia again. You can still associate with Europe, Mother Russia won’t mind, as long as NATO is kept out. Oh and Crimea is gone for ever.

Ukrainian gas reserves, slightly less than 400 m3/capita

[spiegel.de] – Gazprom: Russland stoppt Gasversorgung der Ukraine
[bloomberg.com] – Russia Halts Natural Gas Supplies to Ukraine as Payments End

More on Turk Stream

The announcement by Vladimir Putin to cancel the construction of South-Stream has sent shock waves across the internet commentariat.

[spiegel.de] – Neue Konzernstrategie: Gazprom wendet sich von Europa ab
Gazprom chairman Miller has said that no new pipelines to Europe will be built and that Europe needs to arrange itself with Turkey. Gazprom has abandoned its old business model of concentrating on supplying to end consumers on the European market. From now on Europeans should take responsibility for their own pipelines. Miller accuses the EU commission for this change of course and openly admits that Turkey can use its future control of gas flows to Europe for ‘geopolitical power poker’. Miller clearly wants to rub it in. Miller confirms that the aim of the new pipeline to Turkey will be to completely sideline the Ukraine as transit country. Biggest loser will be Bulgaria. As a consequence of obeying the demands of John McCain, Bulgaria looses 6000 jobs, access to gas and transit fees, that will all go to Turkey. In the end all transit through Ukraine is planned to stop, meaning that the smaller pipeline through Ukraine and Romania to Bulgaria will cease to transport gas as well (see map above). It is obvious that this farce did not do much good for EU prestige in Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Croatia and Serbia, to put it mildly.

Editor: usually Russians don’t bluff and stick to their words, unlike the Europeans, who have been enjoying relatively easy prosperity for too long. It is unlikely that the decision not to built South Stream is going to be reversed any time soon and perhaps even never.

[spiegel.de] – Westliche South-Stream-Partner überrumpelt vom Projekt-Stopp
Clear signs that the European partners of Russia, involved in the construction of South Stream, were taken by surprise by the Russian decision to no longer let itself be humiliated by Brussels. Nobody was consulted in advance. Not the German company Wintershall, who stated that it was confused about the behavior of the EU commission and that it was unable to discern a clear course of the commission, nor the Dutch offshore company Allseas, that was to construct the pipeline.

Editor: it is not difficult to discern the true course of the EU commission: Washington said no to the pipeline and that what is it, end of story. The corrupt cretins from Brussels do not represent the best interests of the European public but those of Washington and Wallstreet only. It is time for that to stop, to face the true enemy of Europe and deal them a blow at the right moment.

[source]

[journal-neo.org] – William Engdahl, Putin Pipeline Moves and EU stupidity
Engdahl summarizes Putin’s attitude: he wanted to construct the pipeline, the EU refused, so the pipeline is not going to be built. Engdahl states the obvious, namely that the EU is the loser and not Russia and that Washington is the real culprit, combined with Europe’s cowardliness.

Editor: Europe’s true feelings became quickly apparent when within a few days time Juncker, Hollande and now Gabriel all espressed their wish that the pipeline should be build. They implicitly admitted that they had overplayed their hand. Too late. All the pipelines through Ukraine are going to be phased out, leaving all of South-Eastern Europe at the mercy of Russia and Turkey.

The West snatched Ukraine from the sphere of influence of Russia (for as long as it lasts) but Russia snatched Turkey from the sphere of influence of the West by this genial pipeline move. It won’t be long until it will become clear even to Brussels who gained and who lost. Ukraine is a useless corrupt economic black hole. Turkey in contrast is the coming power in the Middle East and will soon expand its tentacles over Saudi-Arabia and the rest of the Arabian oil provinces, thanks to ISIS. It is likely that Turkey will gradually gravitate towards the East and sooner or later become member of SCO. That would mean that Europe will be completely dependent for its fossil fuel on and consequently at the mercy of the SCO-alliance, thanks to the satanic Americans and their world domination schemes, who pushed us Europeans into a useless Ukraine adventure at the cost of a catastrophic deterioration of our geo-strategic position.

There is only one way out of this mess and that is to for France and Germany to break with Washington and become member of SCO and tell the Americans to leave Europe.

[source]

Terrible lack of grandeur and charisma. Juncker, Merkel and Hollande failed to lead Europe into independence from the US

Postcards From Pripyat, Chernobyl

Drone pictures of the abandoned city of Pripjat, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

[rt.com]

William Engdahl On the Recent Gas Deal

Paul Craig Roberts on Russian-Ukraine Gas Deal

PCR sees Russia as a loser of the deal, because Russia is not guaranteed to be paid, so it can be forced to cut gas deliveries to Ukraine in the middle of the winter, making it vulnerable to anti-Russian western propaganda and demonization.

Russian-Ukrainian Gas Compromise

It was the last deed of Günther Oettinger as EU energy commissioner, when he mediated an agreement between Russia and Ukraine concerning Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine during the coming winter. Deal details:

• Price $378 until 31.12.2014 and $365 afterwards
• Debt servicing: $1,45B before the end of next week and $1.64B before the end of this year. Gazprom chef Miller had demanded $5B.

Russia had insisted that the EU would guarantee Ukrainian payments after the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine. After all, according to Putin: “in Russia it is customary for the gentleman to pay for the diner when he invites a lady to a restaurant”.

As a result, Russian energy deliveries to the EU seem to be ensured for the coming winter, as there is no need for Ukraine to illegally tap from the transit-pipelines to keep its citizens from freezing. There is some hope that the agreement could contribute to a general atmosphere of detente between the EU and Russia. The agreement is very good for Ukraine and good for the EU and Russia and bad for the US, whose interest it is to keep the EU and Russia as divided as possible.

[spiegel.de]