Scottish independence would affect the world

And as others have noted, (see: "Why the world should care about Scottish independence"), the UK without Scotland would tip away from Labour toward the Conservative Party; and the UK without Scotland would make Britain more of a Euro-skeptic and less likely to vote "Aye" on a proposed referendum for EU membership.

Scottish Independence Would Shake Up the Global System

September 9, 2014 | Stratfor

Polls released today showed for the first time that a majority -- an extremely small majority, but a majority nonetheless -- of Scots favor independence, although other polls suggest the no camp remains in the lead. A poll is not the election, which will be held Sept. 18, but it is still a warning that something extraordinary might happen very soon. The political union between Scotland and England might be abolished after 300 years. The implications of this are enormous and generally ignored.

Obviously, this raises a host of question about how such a divorce might take place, whether the expected time frame -- divorce by 2016 -- will be adhered to, and how state property might be divided. It also raises the question of Scottish foreign policy. Will Scotland remain in NATO? Will it have membership in the European Union? Will it continue to use the pound sterling, and if not, how will it roll out its own currency?

These are important questions, but far more important issues will follow. One of the principles of the postwar world was the inviolability of Europe's borders. Border disputes were the origin of centuries of war, and so Europe's borders were frozen after World War II to avoid discussion. This may have left some people of one nationality on the wrong side of a border, but this was accepted since the risk of opening the door to border redefinition was considered far greater than any discomforts stemming from the borders that were locked in place.

This principle has been weakened since the end of the Cold War. Still, though the disintegration of the Soviet Union created fully independent states, these were recognized republics within the context of the Soviet Union. One could argue that this did not in fact represent border change. Later, the "Velvet Divorce" of Czechoslovakia into Czech and Slovak successor countries represented another shift, but in a country that had only existed since the end of World War I. The separation of Kosovo from Serbia was a more radical shift but was justified by claims of Serbian oppression. Though each shift weakened the principle of inviolable borders, each came with an asterisk -- that is, each had an aspect that stopped it from being the definitive case.

Scotland separating from England, by contrast, can't be minimized. If that centuries-old union can be revised, then anything can be revised. Scottish separatists' reason for splitting is that they are a separate nation, that each nation has the right to its own state and the right to determine its own destiny, and that they no longer choose to be in union. But if they have the right to determine this, why shouldn't others in Europe enjoy the same right?

For example, modern Spain is an amalgam of regions. One, the Catalan region -- which contains Barcelona -- has a strong separatist movement. If Scotland can leave the United Kingdom, then why shouldn't Catalonia be allowed to leave Spain? Farther east, the Treaty of Trianon gave Romania and then-Czechoslovakia large portions of Hungary along with the Hungarians living there. Why shouldn't Hungarians living in those territories have the right to rejoin Hungary? Meanwhile, if French-speaking Belgians and Dutch-speaking Belgians wish to part ways and return their two regions to their respective countries of origin, why should they not be allowed to? And why shouldn't the eastern part of Ukraine be allowed to secede and join Russia?

Raising the stakes, this is an issue that goes far beyond Europe. There are seemingly innumerable separatist movements in India, China, Africa and so forth. If Scotland has the right to leave the nation-state it is part of and form a new one based on ethnic identity, why can't anyone follow suit? And if anyone can do it, but they are blocked by the state they wish to leave, is resorting to violence in pursuit of independence legitimate?

The Scottish issue -- the claim that the Scots are a separate nation and that all nations have a right to self-determination -- simply cannot be asterisked. Having this happen in the heart of Western Europe would set a clear precedent that would expand geographically and conceptually. It would legitimize similar movements globally and force a reconsideration of what a nation is. Ultimately, a nation would be whatever the majority says it is.

It is doubtful that the Scottish precedent could be contained in Europe. And it is hard to imagine how this precedent might not lead to conflict somewhere, not in the British Isles but somewhere where the existing state would be less inclined to grant the right of self-determination to a separatist movement.

Of course, the separatists in Scotland may well lose, sentiment might change in the post-election negotiations, and so on. But if England and Scotland divorce, the right to separate will become an integral part of international custom -- and it will arouse other movements.

Krugman: EU voters smarter than EU elites

Krugman aptly points out that austerity in Europe over the past 2 years hasn't worked.  It hasn't encouraged investors to invest or EU consumers to spend; nor has austerity lowered crisis countries' public borrowing costs.  Indeed, Ireland, the champion of European austerity, has higher borrowing costs than Spain and Italy!

Let's compare Europe to the U.S., which is projected to have between 2-3 percent GDP growth this year, depending whom you ask.  Meanwhile the IMF projects that Europe as a whole will grow 0.2 percent this year, and "emerging Europe," the countries less hard-hit by the crisis, will grow only 1.9 percent.  Austerity cases like Italy and Spain have fallen back into recession.

The U.S. has avoided austerity and thus repeat recession; it's growing slowly but steadily.  And yet U.S. conservatives want America to emulate Europe, even now after all the evidence is in.  Why? Why do they want us to copy failure?

Those Revolting Europeans

By Paul Krugman

May 6, 2012 | New York Times

URL:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/krugman-those-revolting-europeans.html?_r=1

Bloomberg: The future now: End to energy scarcity?

Can't believe I missed this article. Read it. It's amazing. Europeans (and Texans !?!) are realizing the benefits of free wind energy today, not in some far-off utopian future. The energy companies are paying people to leave their lights on; and at times they don't know what price to charge because supply outstrips demand.

We are seeing the revolution in renewable energy happen right now. It's upon us. We are talking about, for all intents and purposes, free energy that will never run out. And the power companies are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to profit from it. Well let them try! They enjoyed big government subsidies to build their wind farms and hydroelectric plants, and now... the energy at times is so abundant it costs almost nothing!

In the short term I'm sure they'll successfully lobby the government to spend more money to improve electricity transmission grids so that they can sell their excess energy to markets not served by wind or hydroelectric and make a profit. But just imagine when everybody is using wind, hydroelectric, solar, and other renewables wherever they are feasible. What happens when there are no more technologically backwards, fossil-fuel dependent regions or countries to sell their excess power to?

Dare I say it?... Utopia. An end to scarcity. Economics turned on its head.

It's an exciting time to be alive to see changes like this happening.

Windmill Boom Cuts Electricity Prices in Europe

By Jeremy van Loon

April 23, 2010 | Bloomberg

On windy nights in northern Germany, consumers are paid to keep the lights on.

Twice this year, the nation's 21,000 wind turbines pumped out so much power that utilities reduced customer bills for using the surplus electricity. Since the first rebate came with little fanfare at 5 a.m. one October day in 2008, payments have risen as high as 500.02 euros ($665) a megawatt-hour, about as much as a small factory or 1,000 homes use in 60 minutes.

The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers. Electricity-network managers have even ordered windmills offline at times to trim supplies. That hurts profit for wind-farm operators, said Christian Kjaer, head of the European Wind Energy Association, which represents RWE AG of Germany, Spain's Iberdrola SA and Dong Energy A/S of Denmark.

"We're seeing that wind energy lowers prices, which is great for the consumers," Kjaer said at his group's conference in Warsaw this week. "We as producers have to acknowledge that this means operating the existing plant fewer hours a year, and this has an effect on investors" and profit.

After years of getting government incentives to install windmills, operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe's biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years, according to a study this week by Poeyry, a Helsinki-based industry consultant.

Wind Capacity

Germany has doubled capacity to generate power from wind since 2002 and has turbines producing about 7.5 percent of the nation's electricity, according to the German Wind Energy Association. That compares with 4.8 percent for the European Union and about 1 percent in the U.S. The turbines operate about a third of the time and are idle in calm weather.

"Wind is playing an important role in spot-price volatility because it's very difficult to predict when more power is coming on line," said Ruxandra Haradau-Doeser, an analyst at Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt.

The erratic nature of weather makes it difficult for utilities to estimate by how much wind power pushes down revenue they earn from competing energy sources such as natural gas. A spokeswoman at Bilbao, Spain-based Iberdrola, the world's largest wind-power operator, declined to estimate.

Spanish power prices fell an annual 26 percent in the first quarter because of the surge in supplies from wind and hydroelectric production, the Spanish wind-industry trade group said in a statement yesterday on its Web site.

Negative Prices

RWE, Germany's second-largest utility, minimizes the risks of having to pay consumers to use power by using a "broad" range of different generation technologies in different markets, a spokesman for the company said. Rebates, or negative prices, do not have a big negative effect on the company, he said.

"Negative electricity prices happen when supply outstrips demand and we literally don't know where to put it," Peter Smits, head of central Europe at Swiss power-equipment maker ABB Ltd., said in an interview on April 20 in Hanover. "We will see this happen more often in the future."

One solution is more investment in transmission systems to move power from northern Germany wind farms to heavy industry in the south, he said. "Power transmission is the bottleneck."

Power trading needs to be expanded further, Kjaer said. Tying European markets together, already done among France, the Netherlands and Belgium, lets temporary surpluses flow toward electricity-poor zones. Germany plans to join them on Sept. 7.

Price Volatility

Trading more electricity across markets reduces price volatility, spreading any excess capacity from wind and solar power plants across a broader area, he said.

Storing electricity may be another fix. In Scandinavia, Danish wind power is used to pump water into Norwegian and Swedish reservoirs and later released to drive hydroelectric plants when the wind is not blowing.

Nord Pool, the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.-owned Scandinavian power bourse, last year took steps to encourage generators to limit production by implementing a minimum price. The most generators would pay users to take their power is 200 euros per megawatt hour if there is excess electricity from too much wind.

The measures are meant to "increase the effectiveness of the market forcing power generators to consider reducing their electricity generation or having to pay for delivering electricity," the company said on its Web site.

Wind's impact on prices results from its "low marginal costs," which pushes more expensive technologies including natural gas and coal out of the market, the Poeyry study said. Fossil-fuel burning relies on fuel, which can boost the price of electricity from those sources.

Negative Power Prices

Texas had so-called negative power prices in the first half of 2008 because wind turbines in the western part of the state weren't adequately linked with more populated regions in the east, according to the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas.

Until there's more integration and better transmission grids, prices probably will fluctuate, leading to negative prices, in which payment to consumers is reflected as a discount on their monthly bills.

That hasn't yet stopped the expansion of wind power. Britain now has wind turbines with the capacity to generate 1 gigawatt of power offshore, enough for 653,000 homes, the industry group RenewableUK said today.

China WindPower Group Ltd., Iberdrola and Duke Energy Corp. will lead development of an estimated $65 billion of wind farms, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Around the world, the potential output of electricity from wind is already 157.9 gigawatts, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, a Brussels-based industry group.

Projects in Danger?

"I haven't yet seen that negative pricing is a danger to new projects," said Andrew Garrad, chief executive officer of GL Garrad Hassan, a wind consulting company. "We do need to get the right market mechanisms in place" to better integrate wind power into energy grids.

Wind power is as cheap as electricity made from burning coal on windy days, and those lower costs drive down power prices. In parts of Texas, some utilities are using wind power because it's the cheapest form of energy, said Garrad.

China is the most attractive nation for developing wind energy, followed by the U.S. and Germany, Ernst & Young said yesterday in a study. The consultant surveyed factors such as unexploited energy resources, power rates, taxes and financing.