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** Belgium's Energy Suicide? ([link removed])
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by Drieu Godefridi • December 15, 2022 at 5:00 am
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* Security of energy supply seems, for some officials, to be an abstract concept. It is anything but. In practice, when energy security is not guaranteed, it means blackouts and an explosion in energy costs, as well as, for many, having to choose between "heat or eat".
* When energy costs become insane -- even higher than neighboring countries -- industrial companies stops investing. Then they stop maintaining the existing productive apparatus. In the end, they leave the country.
* Since the invasion of Ukraine, Belgium is the only Western country that has shut down a fully operational nuclear reactor... The closure of a second nuclear reactor, under exactly the same conditions, and without the slightest operational alternative, is planned for the beginning of 2023.
* Most of the major environmentalist organizations have been actively supported and financed by the Russian Federation, with Russia hoping that if they could discourage the West from developing energy sources, the West would turn to Russia for energy imports -- as it did. This financial support did not have to be direct: it was enough to create "environmental foundations", headed by the leaders of the major environmental organizations, and massively financed by Moscow.
* The current Belgian Minister of Energy... was a 50% partner in the law firm BLIXT, which represented, in Belgium, the interests of Russia's state-controlled Gazprom, the country's main energy company.
* Voters have eyes to see their dwindling bank accounts and their 17-degree living rooms in the winter. Belgian voters see the winter bristling with looming blackouts, leading to darkness and cold. They also see unemployment and the accelerated disappearance of their savings.
* There is an overwhelming majority in the Chamber to repeal the 2003 law on the destruction of Belgian civil nuclear power. The repeal would allow the government to enter into serious negotiations with ENGIE-Electrabel for the extension of the entire Belgian nuclear power system. The government could then decide whether or not to allocate massive investments in the construction of new nuclear reactors, after the example of what has recently been approved in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
* Is it not high time for a new parliamentary majority, supported by an overwhelming majority of the Belgian population, to accept the responsibility to avoid returning to "the cold and the dark"?

Belgium's energy situation is dramatic. Security of energy supply seems, for some officials, to be an abstract concept. It is anything but. In practice, when energy security is not guaranteed, it means blackouts and an explosion in energy costs, as well as, for many, having to choose between "heat or eat". Pictured: The Doel nuclear plant in the Port of Antwerp, Belgium. (Photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images)

Belgium's situation is dramatic. While our neighbors have taken and are taking measures to cushion the energy crisis, maintain their budgetary health and guarantee their energy supply, Belgium is in a situation of clear and obvious failure on all three counts. I will only deal here with the energy misery, which is entirely avoidable and caused by the anti-nuclear tendencies of two environmentalist political parties, Ecolo and The Greens.

Security of energy supply seems, for some officials, to be an abstract concept. It is anything but. In practice, when energy security is not guaranteed, it means load-shedding, blackouts and an explosion in energy costs, as well as, for many, having to choose between "heat or eat".

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