Energy News Beat

California’s EV mandate faces failure as sales lag, power shortages persist, and budget deficits undermine its unrealistic green goals.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate is set to fail, as sales of EVs even in his deep-blue state lag far behind the level necessary to reach 100% of the passenger vehicle market by 2035, as he decreed in 2020. [emphasis, links added]

As Breitbart News reported, California experienced an electricity crisis in early September 2020 when there was an acute shortage of power during a heat wave.

Newsom told the state that it needed to “sober up” about green energy.

Nevertheless, just a few weeks later, in late September 2020, Newsom announced that he wanted to ban the sale of gasoline-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. In 2022, the state finalized the regulations for the gas vehicle ban.

But market reality has intervened, as consumer demand has lagged far behind Newsom’s goals. Drivers balk at the cost of EVs — even with state and federal tax [subsidies] — and fear being stuck on the road in an electricity shortage.

Indeed, in late summer 2022, the state advised owners of EVs not to charge their cars in the afternoon and early evening due to electricity shortages.

The message was: you cannot charge the car that we are going to force you to drive.

As a result of lagging demand, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday, that Newsom’s EV mandate is falling short:

The headwinds are fueling fresh doubts about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mandate that all new cars sold in California by 2035 be zero-emission vehicles. The first big test for the governor’s edict comes next year, when 35% of new vehicles sold must be zero-emission, up from 26.4% now. To hit that mark, EV sales would have to skyrocket 33%.

“I have not seen a forecast by anyone that that number is achievable,” Toyota North America Chief Operating Officer Jack Hollis said on a conference call with reporters last month. “Demand is not there.”

…

After years of strong gains, EV sales growth is flattening out. For the first three quarters of 2024, ZEV [zero-emission vehicles] sales in California totaled 338,853 vehicles. That represents growth of less than 1% over the same period last year.

Newsom said last month that California would bring back its tax rebate for EVs if President-elect Trump ends federal EV rebates and mandates.

However, the state is already struggling with massive budget deficits, and the legislature would have to cut funding to other programs to pay for EVs.

Newsom also hinted that he would exclude Tesla from the program, perhaps because CEO Elon Musk is working with Trump. However, Teslas are the most popular EVs.

Read rest at Breitbart

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The post Gov. Newsom’s EV Mandate Set To Fail As Sales Lag, Power Shortages Persist appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Biden admin is racing to spend big bucks on green heavy-duty vehicles, including electric school buses, before Trump returns to power.

The lame-duck Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is moving to spend $735 million on green heavy-duty vehicles, including hundreds of millions on green school buses, in its final days. [emphasis, links added]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be carrying out the spending deluge to help purchase more than 2,400 zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles with funding coming from President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the agency announced.

About 70% of the cash will be used to further the adoption of green school buses, and the Biden EPA is moving to shovel money out the door to fund its favored programs ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s official return to power in January.

“To tackle the climate crisis, we have to slash pollution from every sector, including heavy-duty transportation,” John Podesta, one of the most powerful climate advisers in the Biden administration, said of the funding. “Today’s awards from the EPA will create good-paying jobs, make our communities healthier, and protect our planet.”

Beyond school buses, the funding can also cover battery-powered trucks, emergency vehicles, trash haulers, school buses, transit buses, utility vehicles, and more, according to the EPA.

Most of the vehicles covered by the funding will be battery-powered, though some may also be powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The IRA funding for green heavy-duty vehicles complements a $3 billion clean school bus program established by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the Biden EPA’s regulations designed to significantly increase the share of zero-emissions heavy-duty vehicles on the road over the next decade.

Recipients of the funding announced Wednesday include Boston Public Schools, which is receiving about $35 million to pay for 125 new electric school buses, and Saint Louis Public Schools, which the EPA awarded about $10 million [for] 30 new zero-emissions buses to transport students, according to the agency.

The incoming Trump administration is poised to significantly cut back the Biden administration’s spending on green initiatives upon taking power next month.

Accordingly, the Biden administration is reportedly hustling to disseminate billions of dollars through its various green programs before they run out of time and their successors can get the chance to shut off the cash spigot.

Read rest at Daily Caller

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Lithium-ion batteries powering green tech pose health and environmental risks due to PFAS, flame retardants, and harmful chemicals in production and disposal.

Lithium-ion batteries are a linchpin of the clean energy transition. They power electric vehicles and allow us to harness wind and solar power even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. [emphasis, links added]

They are also used widely in electronics most of us use daily, from smartphones to earbuds. Demand is anticipated to grow exponentially over the next decade.

Unfortunately, lithium-ion batteries themselves aren’t so clean. Even aside from much-discussed environmental issues with lithium and cobalt mining, these batteries are manufactured with harmful chemicals that end up in our environment, homes, and bodies.

One of the most concerning chemical classes is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, nicknamed “forever chemicals” due to their extreme persistence in the environment.

PFAS are associated with cancer, decreased fertility, endocrine disruption, immune system harm, adverse developmental effects, and other serious health problems.

Some newer PFAS first claimed to be safe have been determined later to be harmful to our health.

Despite this, PFAS is used in batteries as electrolytes and in battery components as binders or separators. And PFAS can leach from batteries during manufacturing, use, and disposal or recycling.

Indeed, recent peer-reviewed research led by scientists at Texas Tech University and Duke University confirms that the use of PFAS in lithium-ion batteries is leading to significant air and water pollution.

Another growing problem is the use of harmful flame retardants in the plastic enclosures around batteries.

Because the fire risks of this technology are very real, flammability standards are being implemented that aim to reduce them. Although most of these standards do not specifically require flame retardants, they are usually the least expensive and easiest way to meet flammability tests.

Notably, there is no proven fire-safety benefit in adding flame retardants to enclosures in real-world scenarios.

Flame-retarded plastic is unlikely to slow or stop highly energetic lithium-ion battery fires and can make such fires more toxic and dangerous.

In addition to a lack of proven effectiveness, flame retardants are known to pose serious health risks, including cancer, neurological harm, and reproductive issues.

Flame retardants can migrate from products with batteries during use, contaminating homes, workplaces, and the broader environment.

At the end of their useful life, flame-retarded plastics can contaminate the recycling stream and impede the circular economy.

They can end up in black plastic soup spoons and our soup, according to a recent study led by the organization Toxic-Free Future.

Their disposal, either by burning or in landfills, leads to toxic emissions and can be harmful to the global environment and human health.

The good news is that many of these chemical uses are replaceable.

Read rest at Forbes

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The post Lithium-Ion Batteries Powering Clean Tech Pose Serious Health And Environmental Risks appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

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Rosneft will reportedly supply nearly 500,000 barrels of oil per day to Indian private refiner Reliance

The post Russia and India strike largest-ever energy deal – Reuters appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

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Moldova’s parliament voted early on Friday (13 December) to impose a national state of emergency for 60 days starting on 16 December due to an expected cut-off of Russian gas supplies from 1 January.

Fifty-six members in the 101-seat chamber backed the measure in the vote just after midnight following Prime Minister Dorin Recean’s call for approval to ensure Moldova’s separatist Transdniestria region secured the gas it needed.

It was a vote, he said, to end “gas blackmail” from Moscow.

Declaring a state of emergency allows the government to respond rapidly and curb energy exports.

Moldova receives Russian natural gas via Ukraine, which has said it will not extend its transit contract with Russian gas giant Gazprom. The contract expires on 31 December.

Recean said Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to leave the population of Transnistria without gas and electricity and hold them hostage. Moscow is doing this to destabilise the situation in Moldova.”

It was up to parliament, Recean said, to approve the state of emergency so that “this winter must be the last in the country’s history when we can be subject to energy blackmail”.

Failing to provide gas to Transnistria, the government said in a statement, “will lead to a humanitarian crisis… and will also create risks for the stability of the electricity sector of Moldova”.

Moldova receives about 2 billion cubic metres of gas per year from Russia. Since 2022, Transdniestria and the central government have agreed that all Russian gas received by Moldova flows to Transnistria.

Transnistria is home to a power plant fuelled by Russian gas that is a vital plank of the breakaway region’s economy and also provides most of the power for government-controlled areas of Moldova.

Transnistria, which has no international recognition, declared its own economic state of emergency on Tuesday.

Recean said the transit issue through Ukraine was an “artificial problem” as Russian gas could move along other routes.

Moldova has said an alternative route to Transnistria could be to ship Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline to Turkey and then through Bulgaria and Romania.

The supplies, however, could be under question as Gazprom in talks linked continued deliveries via alternative routes to its demands that Moldova pay a debt on past supplies, which according to Russian calculations stands at $709 million.

Moreover, Bulgaria recently warned that it will stop the transit of Russian gas unless Gazprom finds a new way to pay following the imposition of US sanctions on Gazprombank.

Source: Euractiv.com

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Energy News Beat

The agency said in its weekly report, citing shipping data provided by Bloomberg Finance, that the total capacity of these 27 LNG vessels is 102 Bcf.

This compares to 26 shipments and 98 Bcf in the week ending December 4.

According to data from S&P Global Commodity Insights, average natural gas deliveries to US LNG export terminals decreased 0.3 Bcf/d from last week to 14.2 Bcf/d.

Natural gas deliveries to terminals in South Louisiana decreased by 4 percent (0.3 Bcf/d) to 8.4 Bcf/d, while natural gas deliveries to terminals in South Texas increased by 0.4 percent (less than 0.1 Bcf/d) to 4.6 Bcf/d.

The agency said natural gas deliveries to terminals outside the Gulf Coast were unchanged at 1.2 Bcf/d.

During the week under review, Cheniere’s Sabine Pass plant shipped eight LNG cargoes, and the company’s Corpus Christi facility sent three shipments.

The Freeport LNG terminal, Sempra Infrastructure’s Cameron LNG terminal, and the Cove Point terminal each shipped four cargoes.

The Elba Island facility also sent one cargo between December 5 and December 11.

According to the agency, the Henry Hub spot price rose 28 cents from $2.83 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) last Wednesday to $3.11/MMBtu this Wednesday.

The price of the January 2025 NYMEX contract increased 34 cents, from $3.043/MMBtu last Wednesday to $3.378/MMBtu this Wednesday.

Also, the price of the 12-month strip averaging January 2025 through December 2025 futures contracts rose 12 cents to $3.282/MMBtu.

The agency said that international natural gas futures decreased this report week.

Bloomberg Finance reported that average front-month futures prices for LNG cargoes in East Asia decreased 2 cents to a weekly average of $15.04/MMBtu.

Natural gas futures for delivery at the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) in the Netherlands decreased 71 cents to a weekly average of $14.11/MMBtu.

The agency said that in the same week last year (week ending December 13, 2023), the prices were $15.77/MMBtu in East Asia and $11.73/MMBtu at TTF.

Source: Lngprime.com

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The post US weekly LNG exports reach 27 cargoes appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

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London-based Watson Farley & Williams (WFW), who advised Honduras-based Genesis Energias on the chartering of Knutsen’s LNG carrier Bilbao Knutsen, revealed the deal in a statement on Thursday.

WFW said the 2004-built LNG carrier shall be used as an LNG floating storage unit for the loading, storage, and discharging of LNG as part of the Genesis Energias LNG-to-power project in Honduras.

According to the law firm, South Korea’s HD Hyundai Marine Solution, a subsidiary of HD Hyundai Group, will convert the LNG carrier into an FSU.

In August, HD Hyundai Marine Solution announced a contract for one FSU conversion worth $30 million, saying the client is a European shipping company.

HD Hyundai Marine Solution plans to complete the contract by the first half of 2025.

WFW said Genesis will import LNG internationally through the LNG terminal it is currently constructing in Puerto Cortes on Honduras’ Caribbean coast using the FSU for the onward transmission of LNG to the Brassavola thermal power plant.

“The project is envisioned to help Honduras switch away from fossil fuels for power generation to cleaner energy, reducing both the country’s production costs and boosting industrial development in the area,” it said.

WFW did not provide further details.

Honduras currently does not have LNG import facilities, according to GIIGNL data.

The Genesis Energias website does not provide further information about the planned LNG-to-power project.

In 2021, the 138,000-cbm LNG carrier Bilbao Knutsen suffered damage after colliding with another tanker offshore the Port of Huelva in Spain.

The LNG carrier, which was serving Shell under a long-term charter at the time, collided with product tanker STI Pimlico about 2.5 miles off the Huelva port.

Spain’s Izar delivered Bilbao Knutsen to Knutsen in 2004.

The vessel has a steam turbine propulsion and GTT NO96 containment tech.

Source: Lngprime.com

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The post Knutsen to provide FSU for LNG-to-power project in Honduras appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

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Data from the Directorate General of Customs shows that the country received 19.72 million tonnes of LNG during the period.

This is up by 8.1 percent year-on-year compared to 18.24 million mt in January-November last year.

The data shows that most of these LNG supplies came from Australia (7.32 million mt), Qatar (5.19 million mt), and the US (2.13 million mt).

Taiwan paid $10.84 billion for LNG imports in January-November this year, down from $11.35 billion during the same period last year, the data shows.

In November, Taiwan’s LNG terminals received 1.80 million mt, and Taiwan paid $1.05 billion for these imports.

This compares to 1.62 million mt and $973 million in November 2023, the data shows.

In 2023, Taiwan imported 20.08 million mt, a slight increase compared to 19.95 million mt in 2023, according to the data.

This stability is the result of the shift of the power generation mix towards more renewables but also less coal and the phase-out of nuclear power generation planned for 2025, GIIGNL said.

Taiwan currently imports LNG via two terminals operated by state-owned CPC.

CPC operates the Yung-An LNG terminal with a capacity of 10.5 mtpa and the Taichung LNG import terminal with a capacity of 6 mtpa, according to GIIGNL data.

The firm is also expanding its Taichung LNG terminal

In addition, CPC is also working on the Guantang LNG terminal and the Zhouji LNG terminal.

This year, QatarEnergy and CPC signed a 27-year sale and purchase deal for the supply of LNG from Qatar’s North Field East (NFE) expansion project. CPC will also take a stake in the NFE project.

CPC also signed a 10-year deal to buy LNG from Australian LNG player Woodside.

Source: Lngprime.com

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19 Metros below 2022 peaks: Austin -22%, San Francisco -10%, Phoenix -9%, San Antonio -8%, Denver -7%, Salt Lake City -6%, Sacramento -6%, Portland -6%, Dallas -6%, Seattle -5%, Honolulu -5%…

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The dynamics in the housing market are now sort of messy: The lowest demand for existing homes since 1995 has led to rapidly rising active listings, as buyers are on strike because prices are too high. Homebuilders have been building single-family houses at breakneck speed, creating the biggest pile of unsold completed houses since 2009, and they’re throwing around massive incentives, including mortgage-rate buydowns, to move the inventory.

Mortgage rates, which have risen on renewed inflation fears since the Fed started cutting rates, are back to the old normal, before the era of QE started in 2008, and Fannie Mae’s CEO said that people should get used to them. To top it off, renting a nice single-family house is now far cheaper than buying an equivalent house after the mindboggling spike in home prices and the now old-normal mortgage rates.

So, prices in many major metropolitan areas, even in San Diego and Los Angles, have started to sag.

Price declines from prior month:

Prices of single-family houses, condos, and co-ops fell in November from October in all 33 of the large metros here.

Some declines are seasonal, or at least in part. But many markets here haven’t had a distinct seasonality in two decades, and therefore their declines cannot be seasonal. Seasonal price changes must happen in a similar way in the same months every year, or they’re not seasonal.

By Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the top month-to-month price declines with drops of -0.3% or bigger:

1. Austin, TX: -1.1%
2. Tampa, FL: -0.9%
3. Dallas, TX: -0.8%
4. San Antonio, TX: -0.8%
5. Milwaukee, WI: -0.7%
6. Tucson, AZ: -0.7%
7. Atlanta, GA: -0.7%
8. Miami, FL: -0.6%
9. Houston, TX: -0.6%
10. Orlando, FL: -0.6%
11. Raleigh, NC: -0.5%
12. Denver, CO: -0.5%
13. Columbus, OH: -0.5%
14. Phoenix, AZ: -0.5%
15. Boston, MA: -0.4%
16. Charlotte, NC: -0.4%
17. Urban Honolulu, HI: -0.4
18. San Francisco, CA: -0.3%
19. San Diego, CA: -0.3%
20. Sacramento, CA: -0.3%
21. Kansas City, MO: -0.3%
22. Nashville, TN: -0.3%
23. Chicago, IL: -0.3%
24. Minneapolis, MN: -0.3%
25. Seattle, WA: -0.3%

Down from their 2022 peaks: 

Home prices in 19 of the 33 MSAs here were down from their respective peaks in mid-2022, so about two-and-a-half years ago, two of them by the double digits: Austin and San Francisco:

1. Austin: -22.0%
2. San Francisco: -10.2%
3. Phoenix: -8.8%
4. San Antonio: -8.3%
5. Denver: -7.4%
6. Sacramento: -6.3%
7. Salt Lake City: -5.8%
8. Portland: -5.6%
9. Dallas: -5.8%
10. Seattle: -5.2%
11. Honolulu: -4.8%
12. Tampa: -3.7%
13. Raleigh: -3.4%
14. Jacksonville: -3.3
15. Nashville: -3.2%
16. Houston: -3.1%
17. Las Vegas: -2.4%
18. San Jose: -2.3%
19. Minneapolis: -2.1%

No New highs in November: 

No MSA here of the 33 MSAs made a new high in November. Even prices in the New York City metro dipped for the first time, after the huge run-up. That was the last man standing.

The 30 Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America.

All data here is from the “raw” mid-tier Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), released today. The ZHVI is based on millions of data points in Zillow’s “Database of All Homes,” including from public records (tax data), MLS, brokerages, local Realtor Associations, real-estate agents, and households across the US. It includes pricing data for off-market deals and for-sale-by-owner deals. Zillow’s Database of All Homes also has sales-pairs data.

We started The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America series in 2017 to document visually metro-by-metro the surge in home prices fueled by the Fed’s years of interest rate repression and QE. But since 2022, the Fed changed course, mortgage rates have risen, and the Fed has shed $2.1 trillion in assets under its QT program. And so metro-by-metro, and little by little, and sometimes by not so little, housing markets are changing direction.

To qualify for this list, it must be one of the largest MSAs by population, and must have had a ZHVI of over $300,000 at the peak. The metros of New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, etc. don’t qualify for this list because their ZHVI has never reached $300,000, despite massive runups of home prices in recent years.

The charts look absurd because the housing market has become absurd.

Austin MSA, Home Prices
From Jun 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-22.0%	-1.1%	-3.4%	158%

Prices in Austin have dropped to the lowest level since April 2021.

San Francisco MSA, Home Prices
From May 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-10.2%	-0.3%	2.0%	291%

Phoenix MSA, Home Prices
From Jun 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-8.8%	-0.5%	-0.4%	221%

San Antonio MSA, Home Prices
From Jul 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-8.3%	-0.8%	-2.4%	148.6%

Prices in San Antonio have dropped to the lowest level since February 2022

Denver MSA, Home Prices
From Jun 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-7.4%	-0.5%	0.7%	212%

Sacramento MSA, Home Prices
From July 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-6.3%	-0.3%	1.9%	246.3%

Salt Lake City MSA, Home Prices
From July 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-5.8%	0.0%	2.1%	214%

Portland MSA, Home Prices
From May 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-5.6%	-0.2%	1.4%	218%

Dallas-Fort Worth MSA, Home Prices
From Jun 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-5.8%	-0.8%	-0.5%	193%

Seattle MSA, Home Prices
From May 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-5.2%	-0.3%	4.7%	238%

Honolulu, Home Prices
From Jun 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-4.8%	-0.4%	0.6%	280%

Raleigh MSA, Home Prices
From July 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-3.4%	-0.5%	0.9%	158%

Tampa MSA, Home Prices
From Jul 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-3.3%	-0.6%	-0.7%	212%

Nashville MSA, Home Prices
From July 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-3.2%	-0.3%	1.3%	217%

Houston MSA, Home Prices
From Jul 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-3.1%	-0.6%	0.4%	151%

San Jose MSA, Home Prices
From May 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-2.3%	0.3%	7.5%	337%

Las Vegas MSA, Home Prices
From June 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-2.4%	-0.1%	5.2%	179%

Minneapolis MSA, Home Prices
From May 2022 peak	MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-2.1%	-0.3%	1.7%	157%

Charlotte MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.4%	1.5%	170%

San Diego MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.3%	3.9%	334%

Los Angeles MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.2%	4.5%	330%

Orlando MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.6%	0.0%	236.5%

Milwaukee MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.7%	4.8%	143.9%

Washington D.C. MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.1%	4.1%	215%

Baltimore MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.2%	3.1%	174%

Miami MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.6%	1.4%	331.0%

Atlanta MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.7%	0.6%	162%

Kansas City MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.3%	3.2%	176%

Columbus MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.5%	3.3%	153%

Boston MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.4%	4.6%	225%

Chicago MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.3%	5.0%	112%

Philadelphia MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.2%	4.5%	201%

New York MSA, Home Prices
MoM	YoY	Since 2000
-0.1%	7.0%	212%

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The post The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America, November Update: Prices Drop in All 33 Big Metros, Most in Austin, Tampa, Dallas, San Antonio appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Norway’s ruling party and the opposition party leading in the polls ahead of next year’s election plan to campaign for cutting off an interconnector with Denmark and renegotiate electricity interconnections with the EU and the UK as Norwegian power prices have soared to multi-year highs.

While not a part of the European Union, Norway is a key EU partner and is party to many EU single market initiatives, including in electricity interconnection.

But unlike most of the EU countries, Norway has abundant hydro resources and doesn’t rely on imported natural gas for power generation. In fact, it is Western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer.

Hydropower accounts for 90% of Norwegian power generation, while the remaining around 10% of the electricity supply in Norway comes from wind power.

So when EU power prices jump, as they did again in the past few weeks, they spillover into Norway, which exports electricity via these interconnectors.

Due to the recent spikes in Norwegian power prices, politicians in Norway are seeking to alleviate consumer concerns. Many are critical of the interconnectors, saying that Norway should only export electricity only when it has made certain that its domestic power prices are low, the Financial Times reports.

The ruling center-left Labour party will campaign ahead of the September 2025 general election for cutting off interconnectors to Denmark in 2026.

The Progress party, a right-wing party, which is currently predicted to crush the Labour party in the election, is also seeking to cut off the Denmark interconnection and to renegotiate the power exchange agreements with the UK, as well as with EU member Germany. This would ease what politicians told FT “the price infection” that Norway catches from the EU.

Hydropower accounts for 90% of Norwegian power generation, while the remaining around 10% of the electricity supply in Norway comes from wind power.

So when EU power prices jump, as they did again in the past few weeks, they spillover into Norway, which exports electricity via these interconnectors.

Due to the recent spikes in Norwegian power prices, politicians in Norway are seeking to alleviate consumer concerns. Many are critical of the interconnectors, saying that Norway should only export electricity only when it has made certain that its domestic power prices are low, the Financial Times reports.

The ruling center-left Labour party will campaign ahead of the September 2025 general election for cutting off interconnectors to Denmark in 2026.

The Progress party, a right-wing party, which is currently predicted to crush the Labour party in the election, is also seeking to cut off the Denmark interconnection and to renegotiate the power exchange agreements with the UK, as well as with EU member Germany. This would ease what politicians told FT “the price infection” that Norway catches from the EU.

Case in point: electricity rates in Norway hit record-highs this week, despite full hydro reservoirs and no cold snap, per the Norwegian standards of a ‘cold snap’. The electricity generated in Norway was needed in Germany and Denmark where low wind speeds tightened power supply margins and sent power prices spiking again.

As summed up by Norway’s Energy Minister Terje Aasland for FT,

“It’s an absolutely shit situation.”

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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