Where unemployment is 15% to 25%.......

Their energy costs are rising rapidly, AND their citizen's ability to pay for it is declining at the same time due to austerity measures. You'd think that, due to the collapsing economies, they'd at least see electricity prices stabilize as demand is reduced. Apparently that's not the case.

Screwed coming and going, it seems.

... and the use of both "electricity" and "energy" without clear distinction... I'd guess that fuel costs are a bigger factor than renewables/nuclear.

MORE COAL.

LoL.

It's cheap-ness is why it's Going To Kill Us All(tm)

2012-2013 winter in Europe, like in the US started late, but stayed cold, March in England was the coldest March in 50 years:
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_30/Europes-cold-winter-was-favourable-Gazprom/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/04/were-late-season-snowstorms-and-the-long-cold-winter-caused-by-anthroprogenic-global-warming-or-a-cold-northern-polar-region/

2011-2012 Winter was extremely Cold for Europe:
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/feb/15feb2012a3.html

Ah yes, Bjorn again, the anti-environment environmentalist.

Interesting to see how they got that number. Somehow (unexplained and unsourced) the numbers jump around a bit, all very scary, as the number first introduced is quickly dropped by an order of magnitude to 2700, all victims of the freshly resurected "fuel poverty". Not being quite scary enough, it's pumped back up by extrapolating to all of Europe. Frankly, I've never thought of all "cold" as being created equal and if given a chance I'll take Portugal or Malta over Minnesota cold any day. And if this was true, wouldn't there be a number gradient? And poor Scotland doesn't get a mention.

Regardless, Bjorn is used to kick it to a staggering 1.5 million unnoticed, unknown people, dying somewhere.

For the first number they cite this study:
"Getting the measure of fuel poverty"
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48297/4662-getting-measure-fuel-pov-final-hills-rpt.pdf

It's 237 pages of technocratic goodness commissioned by Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK), and describes how to best adjust social policy, taxes, and social support during the process of reducing GHG and doing it without hurting the poor.

I don't see any mention in it of giving away coal, which relatively few people in the UK use for heat anyway. The don't commonly use electricity for heat either. Anyway, this was the paper that was leveraged into a coal salesman's pamphlet.

This is the source of the 27,000:


EWDs, or Excess Winter Deaths is the statistical difference in seasonal death rate. It says nothing about the cause. It is strongly associated with age over 65. It became an item in the UK in the late 1980's when there were discussions over the connection of all communities and rural areas to the gas mains following increased extraction from the North Sea. But if these excess deaths have been consistent over the last decade, then why hasn't there been a corresponding increase when prices rose? And how is it that any Finns over 65 are still alive?

Here's a good source:
Multiple deprivation and excess winter deaths in Scotland
http://www.shelligoe.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/smgr/dep.pdf



Long story short, this is a housing problem, of limited scope, leveraged to all of Europe, leveraged to all ages, leveraged to all of the poor, with inflated numbers, to sell more coal, which people don't use to keep warm.