If you have read books, you likely have read Sherlock Holmes or Dickens stories, because they are both well written and very popular. If you think about the air quality in London, England it was described as foggy, but it reality it was a mixture of coal burning ashes and fog, at the time England used coal to burn for heat. The ashes went up the chimney into the atmosphere and caused air pollution. Cities such as LA and Beijing because of their bowl structures or due to the mountains around the city also face atmosphere problems as the pollution is caught in the bowl till the wind blows the dirty air away. As a society we have been living with coal for a long time and for a long time it was less expensive to burn coal to generate electricity. Politicians may say we all should go green, but then reality has a way of reaching up its head.

In an article by Kate Abnett of Reuters, the European Union countries have the strongest desire to go green and not burn coal or fossil fuels for energy consumption. It is a noble goal and EU energy ministers meet of a regular basis in Luxembourg to reduce coal consumption.

At the meeting, the issue of Poland came forth. Poland generates 70% of its power from coal. Poland is beside Ukraine and the EU is helping Ukraine. The EU used to have 40% of its power generation from gas coming from Russia, it has been replaced with gas coming from the US and Norway. After stopping oil and gas from Russia, electric bills for individual and business users went up, since then they have dropped a bit, but as much as the energy ministers want to have no coal, there is political reality and the targets to stop using coal will be extended.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, politicians often times have aspirational goals and that is a very good thing, however to move from what exists to what could be better takes time. If you own shares in energy companies, although they are dependent on supply and demand, the reality is no government is going to stop the oil and gas industry from doing their jobs to maintain energy security. As a shareholder that is good to remember, although some of the subsidies that have grown up with the industry maybe slowed in the future, till reality says bring them back. An example is the Oakland A’s major league baseball team is moving to Las Vegas, they need to build a new stadium and government subsidies were asked for, debated and eventually agreed to.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.