by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:
The key economic variable distinguishing between nations is the average electricity prices for industrial users (manufacturers, regardless of size), because industrial users — the most crucial determinants of a nation’s future economic success — are huge users of energy, especially of electricity (regardless whether from oil, gas, coal, nuclear, solar, or otherwise). Low cost of electricity tends strongly toward a good economic future; high cost of electricity tends strongly toward a bad economic future. Furthermore, the prices of electricity vary enormously between nations — and this means enormously different likelihoods of future economic success or failure for the various nations.
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On 5 November 2024, the Financial Times headlined “Taiwan’s soaring energy prices and growing outages hit chipmaker TSMC. Industry loses competitiveness as government struggles to afford cheap-power incentives”, and presented a chart showing “2023 average electricity prices for industrial users ($ per MWh)” listing, in order, from the costliest to the cheapest:
UK 420
Germany 266
Italy 250
France 238
Japan 170
Brazil 160
Turkey 138
Mexico 125
S. Korea 120
Thailand 117
India 105
Taiwan 102
Argentina 94
U.S. 85
Canada 74
Indonesia 67
Russia 63
China 60
The FT article opened:
Taiwan’s laboured energy transition is straining its industry, with sudden electricity price jumps and growing outage risks affecting companies including Asia’s biggest — the semiconductor giant TSMC.
Following a series of price increases, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company now expects to pay more for power in its home country than anywhere else. The world’s largest chipmaker operates plants in the US and Japan and is building one in Germany.
“Basically, the price has doubled in the past few years. So next year, we think that [the] electricity price for us in Taiwan will be the highest in all the regions that we operate,” Wendell Huang, chief financial officer, told investors last month. …
Subsidising those … has become untenable, as a surge in global fossil fuel prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a lack of ample alternative power sources has saddled state-owned utility Taiwan Power Company with spiralling losses. Taipei has had to raise electricity prices four times since 2022.
On January 1st, Alexander Mercouris, who is perhaps unexcelled as an intelligence analyst, headlined “EU prepares to launch energy war [against its two members that are opposed to the EU’s war against Russia]” and said that all of the EU except for Hungary and Slovakia are committing economic suicide by intensifying yet further their war against Russia, especially their efforts to create a new iron curtain prohibiting any further imports of energy from Russia. Until recently, Russia had been overwhelmingly Europe’s lowest-cost and largest energy-producer, mainly via pipelined natural gas, which fueled mainly the EU’s companies that generate electricity. European (including the UK) manufacturers relied mainly upon Russia in order to avoid being globally uncompetitive (which they have now become). So, Europe’s new iron curtain is eliminating what had been the chief engine of these nations’ economies.
