Renewable energy is completely impractical and will never be able to supply the energy demands of the United States, or any other industrialized country.
Net
Zero Is Asinine. There are many problems with the UN's net zero mission, primarily
that it is totally impractical. For thousands of years, humans have relied on fossil fuels
for heating, cooking, and transportation. From coal to oil to natural gas, fossil fuels have
played a vital role in humanity's march of progress. Think about it, were it not for fossil
fuels, the vast majority of the products, services, and everyday luxuries we take for granted in
the twenty-first century would simply not exist. Make no mistake, the advent of fossil fuels
has undeniably been a boon for humanity. Tragically, the UN and their climate alarmist
cronies ignore the enormous benefits that fossil fuels have blessed upon humanity. Rather,
they solely focus on framing fossil fuels as a scourge that must be eliminated or else the entire
world will become uninhabitable.
The Editor says...
Ironically, the proposed solutions are more likely to make the world uninhabitable,
which may be their goal.
Net
Zero Is Asinine. Over the past few decades, the UN, the mainstream media, academia,
Hollywood, and governments all over the world have peddled similar talking points regarding the
existential threat of climate change. But the facts tell a very different story. In
truth, the world is not on the verge of an environmental collapse. Weather events like
tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, etc. are not becoming more frequent nor deadlier. Sea rise
is not a dangerous threat and all the glaciers have not melted. Wildfires are not increasing
in intensity and neither are heatwaves. The UN does not want you to be aware of these facts
because they directly undercut the core of their alarmist message and therefore undermine the
supposed urgency for net zero. Moreover, the UN is adamantly opposed to developing nations
utilizing fossil fuels so that they can become economically competitive while drastically reducing
the abject poverty that still exists in far too many countries. If the continued use of
fossil fuels poses no imminent threat to humanity, why is the UN so gung-ho about net zero?
Perhaps the answer is money. The sheer cost of transitioning the world from fossil fuels to
renewable energy and achieving net zero is estimated to cost about $75 trillion, according to
Goldman Sachs.
Biden-Harris
Admin Races To Dish Out $25 Billion for Green Energy Before Trump Takes Office, Sparking Fraud
Fears. The Biden administration is in a hurry to finalize more than a dozen green
energy loans worth more than $25 billion before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in
mid-January — a frantic effort that lawmakers and industry officials are warning could
lead to fraud and abuse of taxpayer money. Through the Department of Energy's Loan Programs
Office, the administration is working to finalize a total of 16 pending loans worth a total of
$25.1 billion, a Washington Free Beacon analysis found. Those loans figure to be
in serious jeopardy — Trump repeatedly vowed to "terminate" green energy spending on the
campaign trail — and, in recent weeks, Biden officials have picked up the pace
finalizing pending commitments. Over the last two months, the Loan Programs Office closed on
seven loans worth $5.9 billion, including two that were closed after the election. Those
two loans went to EV battery component plants in Michigan and New York. By comparison, the
office closed on five loans worth $6.5 billion during the prior 27 months.
Climate
Changes Nothing in the Real World. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency
most recent projections, if the world is able to generate a high growth rate between now and 2050,
energy demand will increase by 56%. Increased use of renewables will contribute to this
increase, but not replace the fossil fuels which will continue to be the foundation of the world
economy. Even coal, the main target for transition, will be up by 18%. Natural gas will
be up 69%. Indeed, all energy sources will be needed to generate high growth, with the mix
reflecting practical matters of reliability, affordability, and security more than fear of climate
change. Economic growth is still the higher priority, with a rapid expansion of nuclear
power as a much more practical, non-emitting source than wind or solar. COP29 was hailed as
the "finance summit" where the international struggle would be over who would pay for "loss and
damage" from climate change and the transition to clean energy. [...] Politicians know that despite
decades of alarmist rhetoric crying "wolf" at each storm cloud, taxpayers are not up to paying to
fight climate change, and even less willing to suffer reduced living standards.
What
Net Zero Means: Rationing, Blackouts and Travel Restrictions. Earlier this week
the Labour backbencher and Chairman of the U.K. Parliament's Energy Committee Bill Esterson noted
that people will have to adjust their habits to meet Net Zero emission goals for 2030. Such
honesty, emerging as it does from the Parliament of Net Zero nodding donkeys, is to be
applauded. As far as it goes. Try a 30% reduction in energy demand. After 2030,
consider that all beef, lamb and dairy will be banned and "replaced by new diets". Then there
is a massive 45% cut in most common building materials such as cement, along with a similar
reduction in road freight traffic. The attack on farming will be remorseless with fertiliser
restriction halving "direct emission" from the soil. To sum up: widespread rationing and
blackouts along with food, holiday and travel restrictions, all within about 60 months.
Look at what they fund and write and whom they consult, not what they say, is the best advice to
counter all the whoppers that are being told about Net Zero.
The
Disastrous Economics of Trying to Power an Electrical Grid With 100% Intermittent
Renewables. The effort to increase the percentage of electricity generated by
intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar inevitably brings about large increases in the
actual price of electricity that must be paid by consumers. The price increases grow and
accelerate as the percentage of electricity generated from the intermittent renewables increases
toward 100 percent. These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of
fuel for wind and solar generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the
seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup and
storage — things that are not needed at all in conventional fossil-fuel-based
systems. And it is not only from modeling that we know that such cost increases would be
inevitable. We also have actual and growing experience from those few jurisdictions that have
attempted to generate more and more of their electricity from these renewables. This
empirical experience proves the truth of the rising consumer price proposition.
Utility
Companies Are Not on Our Side. When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning
to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies
strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. [...] As the 21st
century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change. Under the
banner of combatting global warming, utilities were at first encouraged and then coerced into
adopting plans and policies aimed at achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide. The aim
of providing reliable, affordable power — the rationale for the electric utilities'
monopolies in the first place — was supplanted by a controversial and partisan political
goal. Initially, as states began to push renewable energy mandates, utilities fought back,
arguing that prematurely closing reliable power plants, primarily coal-fueled, would increase
energy costs, compromise grid reliability, and leave them with millions of dollars in stranded
assets. Politicians addressed those concerns with subsidies and tax credits for renewable power.
Confected
emergencies and the new world order. [Scroll down] Without a climate
emergency, would we have tolerated the willful and catastrophic destruction of an energy system
capable of producing abundant, affordable energy, with no detailed and costed plan for its
replacement? Would we have tolerated having our energy made first unaffordable, and then
unavailable? Would we have tolerated the enslavement of children in developing countries to
mine the colossal quantities of resources required to sustain luxury beliefs in developed
ones? Would we have tolerated closure of our airports, the suspension of our shipping, the
removal from our economy of meat, steel, cement, concrete, mortar, and the halving of the output of
our farms? Would we have tolerated the war on our cars, or our coerced confinement to
"20 minute walking distance" zones around our homes? Would we have tolerated a return to
the squalor and life expectancy of pre-industrial per-capita energy levels?
An
Australian renewable energy dream is over after a fortnight of blackouts. Broken
Hill's two-week experiment in fossil fuel-free living ended at 8.41 pm local time on Thursday when
its connection to the East Coast grid was finally restored. Transgrid issued a press release
thanking the community for their patience and announced that the emergency diesel generators it had
trucked in would remain in place. Three years ago, Transgrid boasted that the Outback town
could run on a renewable energy microgrid if the line to the outside world went down. It was
so confident that it sought permission from the Australian Energy Regulator to de-commission the
two diesel generators installed in the early 1980s. The AER said no, a decision criticised as
"really silly and perverse" by Chris Bowen, who held it up as an example of the antiquated energy
market thinking he intended to fix.
Democrats
Are In Deep Trouble. Occasionally a Democrat will say publicly what the party really
believes, that Americans live too well, and we must reduce our standard of living in order to emit
less carbon dioxide. This view is manifested in efforts to suppress oil and gas production
and subsidize and mandate expensive renewables. But the Democrats can't admit that their goal
is to make gasoline unaffordable, so when elections roll around they release the strategic
petroleum reserve to drive the price down. The bottom line is that Democrats can yammer
endlessly about the climate, but they can't run on a platform of unaffordable energy.
Ed
Miliband's £296 billion clean energy bill doesn't add up. Energy Secretary
Ed Miliband loves making videos and posting them on X. Having promised during the election to save
households £300 a year by creating a Net Zero electricity network by 2030, he did it again on
Tuesday, saying he had just been given the "expert verdict on our clean power mission", confirming
that "clean power by 2030 is not only achievable but can lead to cheaper and more secure
electricity" while generating "wealth" and thousands of new jobs. Under close analysis, these
bold claims are starting to fall apart. UnHerd has already pointed out that the expert
verdict to which Miliband referred, a report from the National Energy System Operator (NESO), says
achieving this goal would require investment in "clean" energy of well over £40 billion
each year — around four times the sum invested in the period 2020-24, a total of between
£260 and £296 billion.
Researchers
say Arkansas may have 19M tons of lithium critical for battery power. A new study led
by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found a large amount of lithium reserves in southwestern
Arkansas that could help meet rising demand for lithium in electric vehicle car batteries.
USGS worked with the Arkansas Department of Energy and the Environment's Office of the State
Geologist to examine a geological unit known as the Smackover Formation to determine the amount of
lithium in brines that are co-produced during oil and gas exploration. The study estimated
that there are between 5 million and 19 million tons of lithium reserves present in the
formation. While that estimate was of the amount of lithium in place and didn't assess how
much of that is technically recoverable, if the reserves can be recovered commercially, the low-end
estimate of 5 million tons would be enough to meet the world's projected 2030 demand for
lithium batteries in electric vehicles nine times over.
The Editor says...
[#1] Lithium is not an energy source. Use extreme caution before investing in Arkansas lithim. Or Arkansas anything.
[#2] Lithium mined in Arkansas cannot be produced at a price that will compete with Lithium mined by ten-year-old slaves in Africa
or China.
The
'green' scam of the century: 'Renewables' increase fossil fuel demands. In the
transition to so-called clean and green electricity, critical minerals and metals bring new
challenges to electricity security. Solar plants, wind farms, and EVs generally require more
minerals to build than their fossil fuel-based counterparts. A typical electric car requires
six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times
more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010, the average amount of minerals
needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of wind and
solar renewables in new investments has risen. Our electricity is increasingly dependent on
rare earth minerals and metals mined for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries under
atrocious slave labor and environmental conditions in other countries that the DOE and bureaucrats
ignore. China controls a stranglehold of 80% of the global supply monopoly on rare earth
minerals and metals, with the Congo in Africa a 90% source of vital cobalt.
Researchers
say Arkansas may have 19M tons of lithium critical for battery power. A new study led
by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found a large amount of lithium reserves in southwestern
Arkansas that could help meet rising demand for lithium in electric vehicle car batteries.
USGS worked with the Arkansas Department of Energy and the Environment's Office of the State
Geologist to examine a geological unit known as the Smackover Formation to determine the amount of
lithium in brines that are co-produced during oil and gas exploration. The study estimated
that there are between 5 million and 19 million tons of lithium reserves present in the
formation. While that estimate was of the amount of lithium in place and didn't assess how
much of that is technically recoverable, if the reserves can be recovered commercially, the low-end
estimate of 5 million tons would be enough to meet the world's projected 2030 demand for
lithium batteries in electric vehicles nine times over.
Our
Current Government Is No Longer Constitutional. A recent Wall Street Journal
editorial tells us that notwithstanding the proven sheer impracticality of it, the new greenhouse
gas emissions rules that the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated require that
battery-powered and plug-in hybrid vehicles constitute 32% of new automobile sales by 2027, and 71%
by 2032. Never mind that EVs are vastly inferior to gasoline-powered vehicles and extremely
dangerous because they catch fire in minor accidents. Still, coal, gas, and nuclear are out,
and wind and solar are in. The hills are alive with solar and wind farms, but what do they
plan for when the sun's not shining and the wind's not blowing? Where can you find a charging
station when you need one, how long will it take to charge your EV, and how far can you drive
before you next charge? Since one terrorist with a .22 rifle can take out a substation, we
might want to contemplate life without electricity.
Google,
Amazon, give up on national grid, ignore renewables, and buy their own nuclear plants.
Two weeks ago it was Microsoft reviving Three Mile Island's nuclear plant. Now Google is
buying seven small modular reactors, and Amazon is spending $500 million USD on part of a
nuclear energy company. Too bad for the deplorables who get stuck with the expensive
wind-solar-battery clunker spaghetti-grid forced on them by the arts graduates in Parliament.
An AI datacentre needs all the same thing a human city does — cheap gigawatts,
24 hours a day. The number-nerd men with money have all decided the cheapest reliable
answer to running their AI data center cities, while pretending to fix the weather, is nuclear
power. (Coal, of course, is cheaper which is why China uses so much, but it's against the
religion). The unwashed masses won't get that choice, of course, to sign up with whatever
generator they want. Only the uber rich get that kind of luck. Every one of these tech
giants could have poured that money into wind farms and gardens of solar panels, backed up with
acres of batteries and ten thousand miles of high voltage towers, pumped hydro, and synchronous
condenser flywheels. But none of them want to pour in their own billions anymore, despite the
social credit points bonanza and the bragging rights that would bring.
Gridscale
Batteries and Fire Risk. Large numbers of battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are
being installed around the world, and particularly in the UK, often alongside solar farms or at the
landfalls of offshore windfarm export cables, but sometimes as standalone facilities. These
are rapidly increasing in scale. Although BESSs are extremely expensive, their operators
still expect to make money, buying cheap when electricity is in oversupply and market prices fall,
and selling it back when prices soar at times of high demand. The round trip of charging and
discharging involves an energy loss of between 10 and 20 percent but still turns a handsome
profit. BESSs are being installed in high numbers, usually on agricultural land, and,
particularly in England, close to concentrations of housing. However, batteries are large and
unstable concentrations of energy and thus their presence near human habitation brings major risks,
particularly from fire.
The
flaw at the heart of Ed Miliband's net zero plan. Not a day passes without the
implications of Ed Miliband's dash to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 becoming
increasingly calamitous for the environment. The Energy Secretary has lifted the moratorium
on building onshore wind farms, which will see more spring up around the country. He has
given the go-ahead for giant solar schemes on farmland, overturning previous planning
refusals. And he is shortly to give the green light to a network of pylons to bring offshore
wind power to the towns and cities of the South East. These will scar hundreds of miles of
countryside from Norfolk to London. Residents in East Anglia have urged the National Grid to
put the required cabling underground or along the sea bed to protect the landscape. They have
been told this is too expensive and would add to energy bills. Yet a study published by a
former subsidiary of the National Grid into the East Anglia project says that if the date was
pushed back to 2034 then an underground cabling system would be £600 million
cheaper. The deadline to decarbonise the grid was brought forward by Mr Miliband to a point
that many experts believe is unachievable. A few years will make no discernible difference to
global carbon emissions yet will have a major impact on the English countryside.
Net
Zero is becoming synonymous with economic suicide. If any two commodities were
central to the industrial revolution, they were coal and steel. Britain pioneered the mass
production of both, launching a worldwide transformation that multiplied living standards many
times over. And now, ironically, it looks as if, in an almost Maoist pursuit of global
leadership in achieving Net Zero, we will be the first major developed country to close them both
down. There is just one catch. In reality, that is economic suicide — and time is
running out to do anything about it. It has, in fairness, a certain symbolic symmetry to it,
although even Sally Rooney's editor might turn it down as being a little too cheesy. The UK
is now leading the world in shutting the industries that it pioneered, and which powered the modern
world. On Monday, we closed the last remaining coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar,
ending 142 years of using the fossil fuel for energy: the world's first coal-fired power
station, in Holborn Viaduct, was built in 1882 by none other than Thomas Edison to bring light to
the streets of the capital.
I've
seen how Ed Miliband's net zero dream turns into a nightmare. It will destroy
Britain. [A] fire at a giant solar farm in East Anglia is raging out of control after
a lithium-ion battery is believed to have failed, causing an explosion. [...] The explosion at the
solar farm, which was bitterly opposed by local residents but went ahead after gaining approval
from Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is believed to have
damaged the integrity of neighbouring containers. This led to an alarming chain reaction
known as "thermal runway." [...] When Mr Miliband rushed through the approval of the solar farm
last year, boasting that it took him just three days to approve three of these giant solar farms
across the UK, West Suffolk's Conservative MP, Nick Timothy, said he thought the decision was
"quite disgraceful and quite arrogant". However, Mr Miliband said: "Solar power is crucial to
achieving net zero, providing an abundant source of cleaner, cheaper energy... This is the speed
we're working at to achieve energy independence, cut bills for families and kickstart green
economic growth."
Renewable
Energy Price check. The late great P.J. O'Rourke once wrote, in The Atlantic in
April 2002, that: "Beyond a certain point complexity is fraud... when someone creates a system
in which you can't tell whether or not you're being fooled, you're being fooled." Which brings us
to wind energy and its complicated contractual arrangements with modern electricity grids.
It's not just a simple matter of bidding on contracts and supplying power when needed. No,
it's become a mare's nest of renewables mandates, portfolio standards, feed-in-tariffs,
first-to-the-grid rules, dispatch, curtailment, hype, blame and losses that somehow no one
saw coming. And yes, you're being fooled.
Why
There Will Never Be A Zero Emissions Electricity System Powered Mainly By Wind And Sun.
"Net Zero" — That's the two-word slogan that has been adopted as the official goal of
every virtuous state or country for decarbonizing its energy system. The "net" part is
backhanded recognition that some parts of the energy system (like maybe air travel or steelmaking)
may never be fully de-carbonized. Thus some kind of offsets or indulgences may need to be
accepted to claim achievement of the goal. But the "net" thing is not for the easy parts of
decarbonization. And by the easy parts, I mean the generation of electricity, and the
powering of anything that can be run on electricity or batteries. In electrifiable parts of
the energy system, there is to be no tolerance for "net"; only "zero emissions" will do. The
official line is that zero emissions electricity is easy and cheap because it can be provided by
the wind and sun. The official line is wrong. As the build-out of these wind and solar
generation systems continues to progress, it has become increasingly obvious that there will never
be a zero-emissions electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun.
The cost of power for industrial businesses has jumped 124 [percent] in just five
years, according to the Government's figures, catapulting the UK to the top of international league
tables. It is now about 50 [percent] more expensive than in Germany and France, and four
times as expensive as in the US. The figures will fuel concerns about the future of UK industry
amid warnings that high energy prices are crippling domestic manufacturers. They underline
the challenge facing Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who wants industrial businesses to switch
away from gas to electricity-powered processes.
The Editor says...
[#1] Where will all that electricity come from (on a long winter night, when there's no wind),
and [2] what reason does the government have to avoid the use of natural gas?
The
answer, my friends, sure ain't blowin' in the wind. You may have noticed (with some
alarm) that UK electricity generation is to be fully decarbonised by 2030, which means we have to
quadruple offshore wind from 15 to 60 gigawatts (GW), double onshore from 15 to 30 GW, and triple
solar power to 40 GW. These are, they admit, hugely ambitious targets. They are in fact
not only ambitious but run counter to everything we know about our weather and the orbit of the
earth. Our weather? Our orbit? Here's why. In winter peak electricity
demand occurs around 7-9 am and 4-6 pm. Last winter was milder than average, so peak
demand was in the range 40-45 GW. By 2030 this could rise to 60 GW, based on a cautious
30 percent increase as we gradually change to heat pumps and electric cars. (Maybe.)
There would be little or no solar available at these times from November to March because the northern
hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, making it rise late and set early. Peak-time electricity would
therefore depend on our remaining nuclear input by 2030 of a miserable 3 GW, about 2 GW from
biomass (burning wood — how green is that?) and the remaining 55 GW from wind and our
European neighbours. Currently we are borrowing anything up to 6 GW from them.
The Editor says...
All of these machinations are being undertaken for the purpose of eliminating carbon dioxide
emissions. When the wind stops in the middle of the night, and there's not enough nuclear
energy to go around, your lights will dim, and then go off for some number of hours or days.
At that point, you won't have the slightest concern about carbon dioxide emissions. You'll be
more concerned with survival. And while you're burning paperback books in the fireplace, keep
in mind that the lights are on in India and China, because they have no reservations about burning
coal, or oil, or natural gas, or whatever works.
Call
It Greenflation — And Kamala Wants More Of It. For families struggling to
make ends meet, Kamala Harris claims she has a plan to lower energy costs. What she will
deliver is more pain. Just ask anyone paying energy bills in a state her party
controls. On Harris' campaign website, she pays lip service to reducing energy costs, but
then rattles off a long list of plans to tackle the "climate crisis." We already know you can't
have one with the other. At a congressional hearing last week, members of the House Budget
Committee heard from witnesses about how Biden-Harris policies have fueled today's energy
crisis. One of the witnesses, Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation, presented
lawmakers with a chart that deserves to be seen by anyone and everyone paying utility bills.
The Editor says...
There is no climate crisis. There is no reason to avoid carbon dioxide emissions. The
climate is not affected by legislation. The global warming / climate change hoax is based
entirely on fear, media sensationalism, and flawed computer models.
The
Catastrophic Costs of Government-Dictated Green Energy. All the energy related
problems we have experienced in recent years, which have been a lot: high gasoline prices,
higher heating bills, higher electricity bills, and unreliable electricity, which is a huge problem
we need to talk much more about, are the result of government-dictated green energy. And its
very simple. When you shackle the most cost effective and scalable source of energy, fossil
fuels, and you subsidize unreliable solar and wind, that wouldn't otherwise be competitive, energy
necessarily becomes more expensive, less reliable and less secure. So again, it's very
simple. Unfortunately the current administration and many others are engaged in a denial
campaign blaming our energy problems on everything but their own policies.
Ed
Miliband's Net Zero agenda will leave Britain in the dark. As the days get colder and
the nights get darker, how worried should the UK be about losing power? While the Labour
government boasts about making the country a 'clean energy superpower' with the help of renewables,
the public is receiving an altogether different message. Energy companies are starting to let
on that all is not quite well. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) is currently
delivering leaflets to remind people to sign up to the Priority Services Register, a UK-wide
service which lets your power company know you might need extra help during a power outage.
SSEN promises to grant free help to those who are disabled, chronically ill, live with children
under five or have 'any mental-health condition'. It will proactively 'contact you in advance if
your electricity needs to be switched off to carry out essential maintenance'. This will allow
people to plan ahead to 'charge your electric vehicle or prepare flasks for hot drinks'. [...]
Still, for SSEN to put out a leaflet like this now suggests it knows something that we don't.
Has
the Electricity Reality Check Arrived? For several years the discussion around the
future of the electrical grid was about how inexpensive it will be and how "out of political favor"
resources would be moved off the grid in favor of politically favored ones without creating any
disruptions or reliability challenges. And just like that, the story has changed —
dramatically. Why? First, load growth — and a substantial amount of it is
expected in the short term. The second is the pace of dispatchable generation retirements,
without replacement generation with similar performance characteristics. The third is
consistent and increasing warnings coming from reliability organizations and grid operators that a
crisis is coming and coming quickly if system planning does not improve.
The
climate scaremongers: Another £12 billion down the Net Zero drain. Ed
Miliband hardly seems to be out of the news at the moment in his quest to destroy the
economy. Recently he abandoned the North Sea oil and gas industry to the mercy of Greenpeace
and activist left-wing judges when his Department for Energy Security and Net Zero announced they
would not be defending previous decisions to award licences to the massive new Rosebank and Jackdaw
fields off the coast of Scotland, which are being challenged in court by Greenpeace.
Unsurprisingly, given the uncertain regulatory framework and Labour's determination to tax the
industry into oblivion, the industry trade body Offshore Energies UK has warned that new investment
would be driven away from the UK, leading to loss of GDP along with billions of tax revenue.
A few days later Miliband announced that instead he would hand billions to the renewable sector in
the latest Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction, AR6. There have been conflicting accounts of how
much this would cost bill payers. The Telegraph reckons £150 per household, whereas the
renewable lobbyists Carbon Brief ludicrously claimed bills would be reduced! Neither cared to
offer proof of their calculations.
Net
Zero Is a Zero. Our government, and a number of other Western governments, are
committed to a goal of "net zero." That is, our countries will add nothing further to the level of
CO2 in the atmosphere. Any emissions of CO2 (e.g., breathing) will be balanced by absorption
of CO2 by, e.g., plants. Various dates are specified in these aspirational statements, none
of them realistic. And of course, the world's main sources of atmospheric CO2 (China and
India now account for most of the world's CO2 emissions) have no intention of cutting their CO2
emissions, let alone cutting them to net zero. But suppose we did it. Suppose we spent
countless trillions, destroyed our electric grid and reduced our standard of living to a
pre-industrial level. How much would an American "net zero" affect global temperatures?
Royal
Society understates cost of Net Zero by half a trillion pounds. A key report
published under the auspices of the Royal Society understated the cost of building a Net Zero
electricity grid by half a trillion pounds, according to Net Zero Watch, in a post published today
on its website. According to Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford, the error revolves
around how the costs of building wind and solar farms and other equipment will change over the next
25 years. The Royal Society has used Whitehall estimates of the costs for 2040 but has
applied them from the start of the build period.
The
Green New Deal could make electricity 28 times more expensive. Wind and solar
require a lot of battery backup and we use a tremendous amount of electricity so the cost of all
these batteries is many trillions of dollars. Here is the basic derivation. It is kept
simple and the numbers are all rounded off so they can be remembered. (The U.S. Energy Department
should have done a detailed analysis long ago.) [Details omitted for brevity.] In short
everyone's electricity bill will be 14 times greater than today if wind and solar replace
today's fossil fuel powered generation under the Green New Deal. This will be true of
industrial and commercial consumers as well which will drive up the cost of virtually all goods and
services. This impact is truly inflationary. But this does include the electrification
of transportation and gas heat which are also part of the Green New Deal. Electrification is
often estimated to roughly double the amount of electricity generated.
Study:
Most 'climate' policies don't help reduce emissions. Only a small percentage of
climate policies instituted globally have actually resulted in any significant emissions
reductions, according to a study published earlier in August in Science, a respected scientific
publication. The new study, titled "Climate policies that achieved major emission
reductions: Global evidence from two decades," used artificial intelligence to assess 1,500
different climate policies pursued across 41 nations between 1998 and 2022, aiming to determine
which types of policies have prompted significant emissions cuts. The study's analysis found
that only 63 of these policies constituted "successful policy interventions," meaning that just 4%
of the measures evaluated in the study's sample effectively reduced emissions. [Tweet]
Looming
'Clean' Energy Disasters Off Our Coasts. It's becoming increasingly obvious that
these supposed alternatives won't work — especially as AI, EVs, data centers,
government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries, double or
triple electricity generation demands. Intermittent electricity cannot power modern
nations. Wind and solar cannot produce thousands of essential products that require
petrochemical feed stocks. These energy sources are not clean, green, renewable or
sustainable. They endanger wildlife. A recent mishap off the Nantucket, Massachusetts
coast underscores yet another reason why hundreds or thousands of monstrous wind turbines cannot be
permitted in America's coastal waters. Shards, chunks and finally the rest of a turbine blade
fell into the ocean. One blade ... from a 62-turbine project that's only three-fourths
completed ... broken by its own weight, not by a storm. And yet beaches had to be closed amid
peak tourist season, while crews picked up pieces of fiberglass-resin-plastic-foam blades, and
boats dodged big pieces floating in the water.
High
electricity bills are the result of government-dictated green energy schemes.
Electricity rates have risen 47% faster than the CPI the last 12 months, and nearly 24%
overall since the Biden-Harris administration began. As Americans struggle with rising summer
electricity bills, it's important to know that this struggle was 100% unnecessary and 100%
preventable. High electricity bills are the result of government-dictated
schemes — such as the recent IRA — to build massive, wasteful, unreliable
solar and wind infrastructure. As bad as higher electricity prices seem, they are actually
far worse, since we are also paying huge IRA subsidies through taxes and inflation that don't
appear on our utility bills. Because solar and wind can go near zero at any given time, they
don't replace reliable power plants — they add to the cost of reliable power
plants. That's why electricity prices have gone up even as the cost of natural gas, our
leading source of electricity, has gone way down.
New
Zealand's Net Zero green energy disaster is a terrible warning. New Zealand has
serious problems with its power supply. There are three underlying reasons: the weather, a
flawed electricity market and a drive for 'net zero'. Sixty-five per cent of New Zealand's
electricity is provided by hydropower, and the remainder by geothermal, gas, coal, wind and some
solar. Though hydropower is often seen as the one form of renewable energy which is not
plagued by intermittency of supply, it sadly isn't true. In a dry year, hydro's ability to
deliver falls away, and we lose about 10 percent of our generation. In the past, we
always tried to have the hydro reservoirs and coal stockpile full by the end of summer to guard
against this possibility. When we switched to an electricity market, this was
forgotten. This year, we failed to refill the reservoirs, and levels are now unusually
low. We are muddling along for the moment, but this is a difficult position from which to
recover and there are likely to be blackouts at some point in the future.
Coming
Clean on Clean Energy: It's a Dirty Business. Hidden behind the solar panels,
wind turbines, and EV batteries are some dirty secrets that get swept under the rug and ignored by
climate enthusiasts. Fossil fuels are constantly put under a microscope and condemned as an
evil destructive polluter; green energy is typically put on a pedestal. Green energy,
however, is not as perfect and wonderful as we are made to believe. Yet, we are putting a lot
of trust into these energy sources, without considering their ramifications. [...] One of the
biggest issues involved with these forms is the extraction and manufacturing processes of various
critical minerals that are required for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries. Many
underdeveloped nations, where there's an abundance of minerals, are at risk. The operations
and procedures not only overtake land but contaminate surrounding soil and water sources. In
the worst cases, this work is accomplished through slave labor.
Don't
blame the climate for unreliable power, blame climate policies that shut down reliable
power. In recent summers it's become commonplace for Americans to experience
electricity shortages, with calls to use less electricity and the frequent threat of brownouts or
blackouts. This is an embarrassment, and it was totally preventable. Anti-fossil-fuel
politicians will blame our grid's reliability problems on "climate change," which is supposedly
making it too hot for a grid to operate. This is absurd; countries with much hotter
temperatures than ours, like Singapore, are easily able to have a reliable grid. The real
cause of reliable problems is the obvious: government-dictated "green energy" policies that
punish reliable fossil fuels and nuclear, while privileging unreliable solar and wind. Since
at any given time solar and wind can go near zero, using them to replace reliable power doesn't
work. E.g., during February 2021's winter storm, TX solar and wind were totally out to
lunch — but they'd taken tens of $billions that could have gone to reliable, resilient power.
Labour's
energy policy is economically and environmentally illiterate. I recently visited the
offices of Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce. In the heart of the energy capital of
Europe, ostensibly they should have much to be confident about. Surrounded by companies
developing the new energy technologies; home to one of the highest-skilled workforces in the world;
on the edge of an oil and gas basin at the time of a boom in oil and gas production (earlier this
year US oil and gas production smashed records, while surging prices saw producers across the world
report record profits), Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland should be booming. However,
on my visit I was shown a quite terrifying graph illustrating the industry's confidence in the UK
Continental Shelf (UKCS) versus confidence in oil and gas worldwide. Whereas for the last
20 years, net confidence in the UKCS has largely mirrored that in the global industry, over the
past two years there has been a clear divergence, with confidence plummeting here as it grows overseas.
We
Will Get Fooled Again. What will America be like if we inaugurate President
Harris? The manic drive towards a green future based on the false premise that fossil fuels
are causing devastating climate change will mean less reliable and more expensive energy.
There will be an all-out push to get rid of the combustion engine, and electricity production will
go from coal/natural gas/nuclear to wind/solar/waves. The latter are far more expensive, much
less reliable, and do not have nearly the capacity for all of the electrical needs of the American
populace. In Europe, they at least categorize natural gas as "green." Otherwise, they
have shut down many of their nuclear facilities, and the electricity price has increased by
hundreds of percent in some of the more developed countries. There will be less energy
available, it will be less reliable, and it will be far more expensive.
Net
Zero Mining Boom Fuels Destruction of Rainforests and Coral Reefs. Swathes of
rainforest and coral reefs are being destroyed by a nickel mining boom in Indonesia sparked by the
Net Zero race to transition away from fossil fuels. [...] Of course, modern civilisation is built
on industry so we mustn't be overly precious about the natural world. But such extensive
mining and industrial activities connected with the drive to Net Zero gives the lie to the
oft-repeated claim that battery and electric technologies are 'green' and 'good for the planet'.
The intense environmental destruction also highlights the double standards of those who make a
big fuss about rainforest and coral reef degradation when they think they can blame 'greenhouse
gases', but go very quiet when 'green' technologies are to blame.
Women's
Issues' and the 2024 Election. [Scroll down] Now, turn to the
Biden-Harris regime's war on forms of energy that work (and its associated policy of propping up
forms of energy that don't work at all). While raising taxes to subsidize windmills and solar
panels that will never — never — be cost-effective in their energy
production, the Biden-Harris regime (with the full support of the Democrat caucuses in Congress and
the bureaucracy) has directly caused a doubling of the cost of gasoline and diesel, while
simultaneously contributing to the degradation of the electric grid. Women buy gasoline for
their cars; women need power in their wall outlets for air conditioning, light, and
appliances. Women are the doctors, nurses, or patients in hospitals and clinics that suffer
when the power grid goes down because Democrat party insistence on windmills and solar panels has
caused yet another blackout. Women are the mothers in maternity wards, or the patients in
nursing homes, whose very lives are jeopardized by these power failures. And since women are
so often single mothers, responsible for the health and safety of their children, when the
refrigerator goes out and food is spoiled, that's an extra burden on their suffering families.
Evidence
Mounts that Green Tech Is Wiping Out Species. I and other Heartland Institute
scholars have written before about the bird, bat, and marine mammals that industrial wind is
killing around the world. The Heartland Institute has also written concerning industrial
solar's threat to desert species, including the endangered desert tortoise, and also to
birds. Those are species directly killed by the technologies as they function. New
research indicates the indirect harmful impact of "green energy" on animal species may be even
greater than the direct deaths from the technologies when operating. A study published in the
journal Current Biology by a team of researchers from the University of Sheffield and Cambridge
University finds the world's pursuit of net zero carbon dioxide emissions, in large part through
the expansion of industrial wind, solar, and battery power (the latter for transportation and
backup electric power), is threatening thousands of species indirectly, through the mining and
infrastructure required to construct, install, and make green technologies operational.
How
is Nickel for EV Batteries Smelted in Indonesia? With Coal. Indonesia is
building several new coal-fired power plants for industrial users, despite its stated commitment to
start phasing out coal and transition to clean energy, according to a new report. These
so-called captive coal plants will have a combined capacity of 13 gigawatts, accounting for more
than two-thirds of the 18.8 GW of new coal power in the pipeline. Most of the plants will
feed the nickel, cobalt and aluminum smelters that the government is promoting in an effort to turn
Indonesia into a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries. Critics say the
building spree goes against both these green technology aspirations and Indonesia's own climate
commitments, but regulatory and funding loopholes mean the government can freely build more new
captive coal plants.
This article includes misinformation about global warming — in the first sentence. Loopholes
allow multilateral development banks to fund captive coal in Indonesia: Report.
Publicly funded multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank might finance a wave of
"captive" coal expansion in climate-vulnerable countries vulnerable to climate change, which will
speed up global warming. A new report reveals that the World Bank's private sector arm, the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), has indirectly financed at least one captive coal project
on Indonesia's Obi Island via its financial intermediary client, Hana Bank Indonesia. [...]
Nickel, whose processing in Indonesia is often powered by captive coal, is a key element in the
batteries that power EVs and energy storage systems. Captive coal also often powers other
metals such as steel and aluminum, which are key resources for renewable energy projects, including
solar and wind power.
A
Waste of Energy. The man newly in charge of Britain's energy supplies, by the name of
Ed Miliband, had decided that exploration and licensing of gas and oil reserves in the North Sea
will henceforth not be permitted. At the same time, thousands of acres of productive farmland
will be given over to wind farms and solar panels, though Britain often produces more electricity
by wind than it can use — or, more importantly, store. Moreover, the wind does not
always blow and the sun does not always shine very brightly, as visitors to its shores have often
remarked, so that Britain would need at least four times as many solar panels as sunnier climes to
produce any given amount of electricity other than the most minimal. There is absolutely no
prospect that it can do entirely without gas and oil in the near future, so it will have to
continue to import them. It already has some of the most expensive energy in the world,
putting its industry (such as remains) at a disadvantage. Furthermore, the effect on global
climate change, assuming the theory of greenhouse gases being responsible for it is a hundred
percent correct, would be negligible even if, per impossibile, Britain abandoned all use of
fossil fuel, because the country emits only 1 percent of global greenhouse gases anyway.
The annual increase alone in emissions of countries such as China and India is far greater
than the British total.
Big
batteries bring big problems. Solar generators won't run on moon-beams —
they fade out as the sun goes down and stop whenever clouds block the sun. This happens at
least once every day. But then at mid-day on most days, millions of solar panels pour so much
electricity into the grid that the price plummets and no one makes any money. Turbine
generators are also intermittent — they stop whenever there is too little, or too much
wind. In a wide flat land like Australia, wind droughts may affect huge areas for days at a
time. This often happens when a mass of cold air moves over Australia, winds drop and power
demand rises in the cold weather. All of this makes our power grid more variable, more
fragile and more volatile. What do we do if we have a cloudy windless week? Our green
energy bureaucrats have the solution to green power failures — "Big Batteries".
The
dangerous delusion of Biden and World Leaders of transition to 'just electricity'.
Since all hospitals, airports, communication systems, militaries, planes, trains, and vehicles are
based on products that did not exist before the 1800s and are now made from fossil fuels, today's
policymakers are incapable of sharing a plan to support a supply chain for the products and fuels
demanded by today's materialistic society and economy as America tries to reduce its dependency on
crude oil. The elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that crude oil is the
foundation of our materialistic society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by
the 8 billion on this planet, of which only one billion existed less than 200 years ago
How
to Keep the Lights On. Americans have rightfully come to expect reliable electricity
and the grid has made this possible. Yet some legislators are valuing other goals above
maintaining reliability. Predictably, reliability has begun to suffer. Legislators at
all levels of government should respect the nine principles for electrical grid soundness
identified in this paper. In so doing, they will be helping to ensure the long-term efficacy
of all parts of the American Bulk Power System. This system is comprised of the three
separate interconnections in the US: the Western, Eastern, and Texas interconnections.
Avoiding blackouts and other reliability issues should be the highest priority of lawmakers when it
comes to electricity because the human cost of blackouts is incredibly high.
The
Green No Deal. Given how much renewable energy has been promoted, dressed up,
coddled, favored and subsidized over the last decade or two, it would be understandable to believe
that a green transition is well under way. But don't be fooled by the foolish. Oil and
gas are still king. [...] Overall global spending on green energy (which in this case includes
nuclear — and always should) in 2024 will exceed $2 trillion, twice the
$1 trillion in expenditures on fossil fuels. Given all of this, it would be reasonable
to believe that we're in the midst of a great green revolution in which conventional energy sources
are being sidelined. But we're not. Take a look at this chart from Robert Bryce, an
energy author and journalist whose work becomes more indispensable by the day. [Chart]
Despite more than $4 trillion in global spending on just wind and solar from 2004 to 2022,
hydrocarbon consumption grew 3.4 times faster.
Battery
Baloney, Hydrogen Hype, and Green Fairy Tales. At the same time as Australia
struggles to generate enough reliable power for today, governments keep welcoming more migrants,
more tourists, more foreign students, and planning yet more stadiums, games, and circuses.
All of this generates more emissions and is incompatible with their demand for net zero
emissions. Unlike Europe, the Americas, and Asia, Australia has no extension cords to
neighbors with reliable power from nuclear, hydro, coal or gas — we are on our
own. Australia has abundant resources of coal and uranium — we mine and export
these energy minerals. But Mr. Chris Bowen, our Minister for Blackouts, says we may not
use our own coal and uranium to generate future electricity here. Someone needs to tell him
that no country in the world relies solely on wind, solar, and pumped hydro. Germany tried
but soon found they needed French nuclear, Scandinavian hydro, imported gas, and at least 20
coal-fired German power plants are being resurrected or extended past their closing dates to ensure
Germans have enough energy to get through the winter.
The
true cost of Labour's net zero plans is slowly being revealed — and the sums are
staggering. Sir Keir Starmer has promised that a new Labour government would
decarbonise the UK's electricity system by 2030 and would, at the same time, reduce average energy
bills by up to £300 or roughly 20 percent of their current level. We know that
senior politicians and lawyers see visions that not granted to mere mortals. But is there any
connection between this vision and reality? Accelerating the current decarbonisation strategy
would imply building about 35 GW of new offshore wind plants, 10 GW of new onshore wind plants, and
55 GW of new solar capacity in six years. As context, between 2009 and 2023 the UK built 14 GW
of offshore wind, 12 GW of onshore wind, and 16 GW of solar plants. The vision implies
building new plants at rates between two and six times what was achieved in the last 15 years.
Where would the skills, other resources and finance come from? Recent experience tells us that
crash programmes of this kind incur costs that are anything from 50 percent to 100 percent
higher than "normal" costs. Since Britain is not alone is trying to build lots of new wind and
solar plants in next five years, it is a certainty that the costs will be much higher than claimed.
The big renewable energy lie.
Always be suspicious of an expert report that appears to serve a crude ideological purpose.
Always be on the lookout for the big lie dressed up in the language of science. On
May 22, the CSIRO's latest GenCost report was released. It claimed that large-scale wind
and solar are the lowest-cost electricity generation technologies, significantly under-cutting
nuclear power alternatives. Chris Bowen was quick to seize on this: 'Our reliable renewables
plan is backed by experts to deliver the lowest cost energy,' he said, on the day of its
release. Debate on the GenCost report has focused on its treatment of nuclear power.
But commentators have missed a fatal flaw in the report's methodology. Its reliance on a cost
metric (the so-called Levelised Cost of Electricity or LCOE) that, by its authors' own admission,
is no 'substitute' for 'more realistic' ways to analyse electricity generation costs, including
cash flow analysis. Buried on page 64 of the report, this gives the game away.
LCOE is an accounting metric, not an economic one.
Hydrocarbons
are growing faster than alt-energy. The new Statistical Review, released last
Thursday, shows, yet again, that despite the hype, subsidies, and mandates, wind and solar energy
aren't keeping pace with the growth in hydrocarbons. Global hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions
hit record highs in 2023, with hydrocarbon consumption up 1.5% to 504 exajoules (EJ). That
increase was "driven by coal, up 1.6%, [and] oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels [per day]
for the first time." Global natural gas demand was flat, mainly due to stunning declines in
Europe. Gas demand in the U.K. fell by 10%. It also fell by 11% in Spain, 10% in Italy,
and 11% in France. Soaring electricity demand was, yet again, the big story in 2023.
Global power generation increased by 2.5% to 29,924 terawatt-hours. About 32% of that juice
(9,456 TWh) was generated in China, where electricity production surged by nearly 7%. The U.S.
came in a distant second in power generated, with 4,494 TWh. Domestic power production
dropped by about 1% last year. Power generation in India also increased by about 7% last year
to a record 1,958 TWh, 75% of which came from coal-fired power plants.
Unforgivable
ignorance at the heart of Net Zero. [Scroll down] For instance, one of our
more serious newspapers put up three objections: wind and solar are more expensive, not cheaper;
insufficient cash is available for scaling up generation; and the record of nationalised industries
is very poor. That has completely missed by far the most serious flaw, and is at the same
time the unforgivable ignorance at the core of all Net Zero politics. The author of the piece
knows nothing of meteorology and is assuming that the wind will always blow and the sun will always
shine. But 2030 will meteorologically be no different from other years, during which the sun
will as usual set at night, contributing nothing in winter to the solar panels for the peak evening
energy demands. The wind will blow sometimes as gales, other times as a gentle breeze, and
occasionally not at all.
While
Biden admin pushes construction of more battery facilities, battery fires pose deadly
risks. Last month, a fire at a battery facility in a San Diego suburb led to
evacuations and a shelter-in-place order at a nearby prison. Now, fire officials with Cal
Fire San Diego say the fire could take weeks to put out, a local Fox affiliate reported.
Since wind and solar energy only produce electricity under the right weather conditions, green
energy proponents are hoping that battery facilities will solve the intermittency problem.
Though storing energy from batteries is extremely expensive, the Biden administration is providing
funds to build more storage systems. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects
that the amount of battery storage capacity planned or operating in the United States will double
to 30 gigawatts by the end of 2024. In most cases, battery facilities store only a few
hours of electricity.
Behold
the Monster You Created. [Scroll down] Well, my friends. You
miscalculated. [...] You supported "green energy," not because you really believed the end-is-nigh
sidewalk prophets outside the Davos fleshpots but because it was trendy and hip and got you
accolades at your neighborhood's fair trade coffee shop. But you have since discovered that
8th-century technology cannot power your 21st-century needs and also that the nations who pollute
worse than we do aren't making the same sacrifices (nor, you may have noticed, do those Davos elites).
The
world is using more oil, coal and gas than ever before and will use more. Net Zero is
dead. A recent flurry of forecasts offers us a range of different views on what's
happening to the global demand for, and use of, crude oil. One thing seems to be clear,
however: the chances of net zero carbon emissions in the near term — ie, by
2050 — are basically zero. The year so far has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride
in this realm of uncertainty, with projections and forecasts more volatile than the market
itself. Crude prices have remained relatively strong despite various occurrences across
Europe and the Middle East that would have resulted in major upsets in decades past. One
major point of consensus related to global oil demand growth is the expectation that it will
continue to be robust, driven by a combination of factors including economic recovery, increased
travel, and surging industrial activity in non-OECD nations.
Practically nothing can be gained from "Net Zero" restrictions. Net
Zero Averted Temperature Increase. Many people are surprised by how little warming
would be averted from adoption of net zero policies. For example, if the United States
achieved net zero emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2050, only a few hundredths of a degree
Celsius of warming would be averted. This could barely be detected by our best instruments.
The fundamental reason is that warming by atmospheric carbon dioxide is heavily "saturated," with each
additional ton of atmospheric carbon dioxide producing less warming than the previous ton. Using
feedback-free estimates of the warming by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and observed rates
of increase, we estimate that if the United States (U.S.) eliminated net CO2 emissions by the year 2050,
this would avert a warming of 0.0084°C (0.015°F), which is below our ability to accurately
measure. If the entire world forced net zero CO2 emissions by the year 2050, a warming of only
0.070°C (0.13°F) would be averted.
The Editor says...
Any actions taken by the United States to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are completely futile as long as
China and India are burning hydrocarbons as fast as they can, as as long as volcanos frequently erupt,
and as long as cows and termites and swamps also make CO2.
Windless
nights make net zero impossible. It is very simple. The cost of storing
electricity is so huge it makes getting through a single windless night under a net zero wind,
solar, and storage plan economically impossible. This is especially true of cold nights where
blackouts can be deadly. I recently made a legislative proposal to Pennsylvania along these
lines so let's use them as our example, keeping in mind that this is true everywhere.
Pennsylvania peaks at around 30,000 MW so let's consider a windless night with a constant need of
just 20,000 MW. There should be lots of these, especially in winter. Cold snaps are typically
due to windless high pressure systems of arctic air with lots of overnight radiative cooling.
In the world of solar, "nights" are 16 hours or more long since solar systems just generate a
lot of energy for 8 hours a day. It is likely less in a Pennsylvania winter where it is
dark at 4 pm. So, to get through the night we need to have stored at least 20,000 MW
times 16 hours or 320,000 MWh of juice. For simplicity, we ignore all sorts of technical
details that would make this number larger, like input-output losses.
The
Climate Crisis Narrative is Dead. In an op/ed at the Wall Street Journal titled "The
Climate Crisis Fades Out," former Obama climate advisor and author Steven Koonin says one reason
why the prevailing climate alarm rhetoric is failing to move voters lies in the reality that "the
energy transition's purported climate benefits are distant, vague and uncertain while the costs and
disruption of rapid decarbonization are immediate and substantial. The world has many more
urgent needs, including the provision of reliable and affordable energy to all." Noting that the
preferred, rent-seeking "solutions" to climate change offered by the ruling class aren't really
solutions at all — a theme I've written about for several years now — Koonin
posits that we should be happy that the "crisis" narrative is failing and fading as it goes through
what he refers to as the "issues-attention cycle." As a result of this focus on these
non-solutions, global emissions have continued to rise in this century. Fossil fuels still
provide roughly 80% of primary energy now despite more than $12 trillion in renewable energy
investments in just the past 9 years.
Climate
Alarmism is the existential threat to humanity. First and foremost, climate alarmists
are hellbent on ending the use of affordable and reliable energy in the form of fossil fuels.
This alone is a horrendous stance that puts millions of lives at risk. [...] Second, climate
alarmists demand that the world immediately transitions to so-called renewable energy and achieve
net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. The problem is that renewable energy from solar panels and
wind farms is too expensive, unreliable, and not nearly scalable. If the world were to shun
fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar, the amount of energy available to use would plummet.
This would result in devastation across many fronts.
Wind
and Solar Resource Availability Fatal Flaw. The takeaway point is that there are
already electric grid resource adequacy issues in the existing system during extreme weather
events. I am most concerned about the future grid that relies on weather impacted
resources. Even though Texas has substantial wind and solar resources their presence did not
contribute meaningfully to this Texas blackout. Instead, it was the failure of many
components of the traditional generating and transmission systems to be sufficiently hardened to
extreme cold. In the future the weather dependent grid will cause similar problems more
frequently and, as I will show, may not be able to prevent a catastrophic blackout. My
primary concern is the feasibility for the New York Climate Act implementation plan. [O]r more
appropriately the lack of a proper feasibility analysis, that addresses the worst-case wind and
solar energy resource drought.
'Net
Zero' Exposed as a Total Sham — Just Look at Which Company Ranks No. 1. How farcical
are so-called net zero rankings — the lists that determine which companies purportedly
are doing the most to cut back on emissions? Consider this: Atop the 2024 Forbes Net
Zero Leaders is a company whose very name is synonymous with smoke, tar, addiction, environmental
hazards and death. The list, according to Forbes, is meant to "identify companies making the
largest strides in offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions." [Advertisement] "Companies'
initiatives often go beyond reducing not only their own carbon emissions but also those of its
power suppliers, vendors and customers," the outlet said upon revealing the list last week.
"Firms were considered in the context of their industry and the location of business operations, as
the challenges for oil and gas producers are vastly different than those for banks or hotel
chains," it said.
Increasing
copper production for green energy is not just difficult — it's impossible, study
says. Proponents of the transition to so-called green energy argue that the
technology to eliminate the use of fossil fuels already exists and it's just a matter of scaling it
up to meet demand. That sounds simple enough. Putting aside the impact to energy costs
and other challenges of this proposed transition, analyses of what is technically and financially
possible in developing the resources needed for this plan show that the energy transition in the
timescales that proponents demand is not just difficult. It's impossible. A new study
by the University of Michigan concludes that it is "not possible" to mine enough copper to keep up
with current U.S. climate policy aiming to transition the electricity grid and transportation
sector to run on renewable energy. The study looked at 120 years of data from global
copper mining companies and compared that to the amount of copper that would be needed for the U.S.
to transition to electric vehicles and run the electricity grid on wind and solar.
The
Many Problems With Batteries. As a source of energy information for many global and
U.S. policymakers, International Energy Agency (IEA) reports speak with great authority. In
its report released in April, Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions, the agency charts out a path
for massive growth in battery energy storage consistent with the goal of 'Net Zero' by 2050.
Batteries provide an essential lynchpin in plans to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions in the
Net Zero vision. The dramatic global expansion of in-battery energy storage over the coming
decades is deemed necessary to facilitate the growth of wind and solar power and electrified
transportation, all essential elements in the 'Energy Transition.' The fact that batteries are
critical to the energy system of the future is treated as a given. Data from the past decade
showing rising investments and lower costs for batteries are commonly offered as proof of past
market success and future market viability. Projections anticipate sharp and sustained
increases in global battery energy storage capacity over the next decades. It is an open
question whether transforming the global market for battery energy storage by 2050 will influence
other parts of the energy system.
The
Green Energy Wall Can't Arrive Quickly Enough. We are fast approaching something I
have called the "Green Energy Wall." The "Wall" consists of some combination of real-world
obstacles, partly cost and partly physics, that will inevitably end the quest for emissions-free
"net zero" electricity generation well before the goal of zero emissions is reached. [...] What we
don't know is how the hitting of the Wall will manifest itself: Widespread and frequent
blackouts? Regular, enforced load-shedding brown-outs? Tripling or quadrupling of
electricity prices? A political uprising as people realize that they have been duped by
scammers claiming that an energy transition would be easy and cheap? Or perhaps it will be
all of the above.
The
Disastrous Economics of Trying to Power an Electrical Grid With 100% Intermittent
Renewables. The effort to increase the percentage of electricity generated by
intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar inevitably brings about large increases in the
actual price of electricity that must be paid by consumers. The price increases grow and
accelerate as the percentage of electricity generated from the intermittent renewables increases
toward 100 percent. These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of
fuel for wind and solar generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the
seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup
and storage — things that are not needed at all in conventional fossil-fuel-based
systems. And it is not only from modeling that we know that such cost increases would be
inevitable. We also have actual and growing experience from those few jurisdictions that have
attempted to generate more and more of their electricity from these renewables.
Why
'Cheap' Wind & Solar Power Claims Never Stack Up. Like any ideological cult, wind and
solar acolytes bury troublesome facts and replace them with oodles of helpful fiction. Start
with the supposed cost of the electricity occasionally generated by wind turbines and solar
panels. The usual trick is to invent some model said to capture the unique benefits of
running on sunshine and breezes. The model ignores critical variables (such as sunshine and
wind and wear and tear on turbines and deterioration of panels) thereby overstating output and
understating the actual cost of generation.
German
Minister admits ruinous home heating ordinances were merely a "test". Climate
policies have long been a source of annoyance and exasperation, but they really began to terrify me
for the first time with last year's proposed changes to the Gebäudeenergiegesetz, or the
Building Energy Act (GEG). The technocratic wing of the Greens, under Economics Minister Robert
Habeck, proposed to mandate that all new heating systems installed after 2024 in Germany use no
less than 65% renewable energy. In its original form, the law amounted to a de facto mandate
to install heat pumps, and it would've entailed catastrophic renovation costs for the owners of
many older buildings. The law proved so controversial that even some of the establishment
press broke ranks to criticise it; in the end, Habeck had to sacrifice his powerful state secretary
Patrick Graichen, and the legislation passed in modified but still pretty terrible form, laden with
a wealth of complex subsidies and exceptions.
What
has Biden accomplished in his presidency? Devastation. Biden and his sycophants
in the media sing his praises on a daily basis, pretending he has been an effective
president. In fact, all he has accomplished is desecration on every level. [...] The
administration and its propagandists in the media pretend that wind and solar are viable.
They are not. They can only provide 4% of what is needed. EVs are proving to be a
disaster as well. There are not now, nor will there likely be any time soon, enough
electricity to charge the EVs the left demands we buy. Green energy is a pipe dream and/or a
plot to keep us imprisoned in 15 minute cities, no cars allowed. That is their ultimate
plan: We will own nothing and like it. They want travel restricted for all but
themselves, the self-appointed elites. They are working on restricting meat, for us, but not
for them, of course.
What
Is The Most Pernicious Example Of "Misinformation" Currently Circulating?
"Misinformation" — It has been one of the most-used buzzwords of the past few
years. The "misinformation" label has been applied by advocates on both sides of the
political divide in the attempt to discredit their opponents. Numerous assertions that have
dominated the news cycle for months or even years have ultimately proven to be completely false,
that is, "misinformation." [...] Here is my candidate: the assertion that the cheapest way to
generate electricity today is with wind and solar generators. So why do I say that the
assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most
pernicious of misinformation currently out there? Here are my three reasons: (1) the
assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously, (2) it is the basis for the misallocation
of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the
world, and (3) it is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone's
intelligence, yet rarely challenged.
12
reasons why I don't believe there's a climate emergency. [#6] I have looked
into the implications of net zero. It is incredibly expensive. It will vastly reduce
living standards and hinder economic growth. I don't think that's a good thing. I know
that economic growth has led to higher living standards, which has made people both safer and more
environmentally aware.
[#7] Net zero will also lead to significant diminishment of personal freedom, and
it even threatens democracy, as people are told they MUST do certain things and they must not do other
things, and they may even be restricted in speaking out on climate matters.
[#8] What will be the worst things that will happen if the doomsayers are
correct? A rise in temperature? Where? Siberia? Singapore?
Stockholm? What is the ideal temperature? For how long? Will this utopia be
forever maintained? I'm suspicious of utopias; the communists sought utopias.
Debunking
the Cheap Renewables Myth. Last week, I decided to write a Twitter/X post to
summarise how much we are paying for renewables. It got far more traction than I anticipated,
so I thought it would be helpful to convert it and extend it a little to make a bonus article on
Substack that can act as a succinct response to all those who still insist on claiming renewables
are cheap. In the UK, renewables are subsidised by three different schemes.
Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs) fund mostly solar power. The latest report for 2022-23 shows the
scheme cost over £1.7 [billion] and average total payment was ~£193/MWh, about 3X the
current cost of gas-fired power at around £65/MWh (see Figure A). [Not shown here.]
Contracts for Difference (CfDs) fund a range of technologies, but most of the subsidy goes to
offshore wind. Latest data from the LCCC shows the subsidy per MWh fell dramatically during
the energy crisis, but is now back at £95/MWh for offshore wind, £73/MWh onshore and
£60/MWh for solar. April 2024 was a record month for overall subsidies with
£268 [million] paid out with average strike prices at £146/MWh for offshore wind,
£113/MWh for onshore and £110/MWh for solar power (See Figure B).
What
Energy Transition? The press, and many politicians, constantly assure us that the
world is in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to "green" energy, which means wind
turbines, solar panels, and mostly fictitious batteries. [...] No such transition is taking place
in the U.S.; on the contrary, last year natural gas-fired electricity generation increased
9.5 times as much as wind and solar combined: [Illustration] But that's nothing!
The U.S. is rich enough to waste absurd amounts of money on pitifully inadequate wind and solar
developments. Less developed countries can't afford to be that stupid. Thus it is coal
that contributes the most CO2 to the atmosphere. But when it comes to coal, the U.S. is
irrelevant: [Illustration] Worldwide, governments are spending absurd amounts of money to
subsidize wind and solar, and that doesn't even count the mandates that are the most insidious form
of subsidy. Nevertheless, fossil fuel use is increasing 3.4 times as fast as "green"
energy. Why? Because fossil fuels are vastly better: cheaper, more reliable, and
far more energy-intensive: [...]
Every
household should be forced to have a smart meter, says British Gas boss. The chief
executive of British Gas' owner Centrica has said every household should be forced to have a smart
energy meter to help hit net zero targets, despite widespread resistance to the devices.
Chris O'Shea has urged ministers to make it "mandatory" to have a smart meter in order to help hit
the government's target of getting the devices into 100 [percent] of homes. Mr O'Shea, chief
executive of Centrica, told MPs on the Commons energy select committee: "We think that in order to
have the proper smart grid that's required to keep costs low in the future, everybody should have a
smart meter. "One of the things we should consider as to whether this is a voluntary
programme, or whether it should be mandatory."
Puerto
Rico's Net-Zero Plans Would Raise Costs, Induce Blackouts. We all know from
hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico that energy resilience is vital. That's why it's surprising
that, by law, 40% of the island's electricity must come from renewables by 2025, 60% by 2040, and
100% by 2050. Yet wind and solar are not resilient technologies. They're also more
expensive than fossil fuels, raising electricity prices for residents. Moreover, these costs
wouldn't reduce warming. Even if Puerto Rico used no fossil fuels at all, starting now, this
would make a difference of only 0.003 degrees Celsius in 2100, according to government
models. A recent U.S. Department of Energy-funded report proposed three paths to renewable
energy by 2050. But the paths aren't practical. The proposal underestimates resilience
needed for renewable infrastructure against the severe hurricanes that regularly devastate Puerto
Rico. The resiliency analysis does not fully address the considerable costs of reinforcing
and repairing vulnerable wind turbines and solar panels.
Data
Centers Hiding In 'Spy Country' Northern Virginia Will Need Reactor's Worth Of Power.
Since the beginning of the digital age, most of the world's internet data has flowed through
massive data centers in Northern Virginia. The area is known as "Data Center Alley" because
it's home to the world's largest concentration of data centers. Some call the area 'spy
country' because of the number of data centers used by the Central Intelligence Agency and other
intelligence agencies. Given the exponential proliferation of smartphones, streaming
services, smart devices, and now generative artificial intelligence, the power demanded by data
centers in Northern Virginia will need nuclear reactors worth of power, if not much more, according
to utility Dominion Energy. On Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Bob Blue told investors on a
company earnings call that "economic growth, electrification, and accelerating data center
expansion" is boosting power demand across the area.
You'd better hope it does. North
Sea oil drilling to continue for a decade after net zero deadline. Oil drilling in
the North Sea is to continue for up to a decade beyond Britain's net zero deadline after dozens of
new licences were granted to fossil fuel companies. Officials have approved 31 licences for
oil and gas drilling in a move that will extend production until as late as 2060, about
20 years longer than previously expected. It means that drilling is likely to continue
for years after the Government's 2050 net zero target, at which point a combination of green power
and carbon capture techniques are intended to prevent any additional emissions of CO2. The
licences, along with 51 others issued since October, will allow offshore operators to extract
fossil fuels equivalent to 600 million extra barrels of oil. The controversial
announcement, by the Government's North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), will delight UK offshore
operators as existing oil and gas fields dry up. However, it infuriated environmentalists who
want the UK to block all fossil fuels.
How
Many Billions of People Would Die Under Net Zero? BBC oddball Chris Packham has hit
back at claims reported on Neil Oliver's GB News show that half the world's population could die if
Net Zero was implemented in full. [...] This would appear to be the same Chris Packham who told the
Telegraph in October 2010 that there were too many humans on the planet, and "we need
to do something about it". In 2020, he informed the Daily Mail that "quite frankly"
smallpox, measles, mumps and malaria were there "to regulate our population". Over his
broadcast career, untroubled by Ofcom interest, Packham has claimed mass extinctions of all life on
Earth unless humans stop burning hydrocarbons. Of course there are those who point out that
these popular mass extinctions only seem to exist in computer models. Hydrocarbons, meanwhile,
have led to unprecedented prosperity and health, unimaginable to previous generations, across many
parts of a planet that now supports a sustainable population of humans numbering eight billion.
All-Electric
Storage. The US Administration has established a goal of transitioning all energy end
uses in the economy to electric end uses by 2050. This would be a massive undertaking, requiring
the application of currently non-existent technology, particularly in industrial and transportation
end uses. The US currently consumes approximately 4,200 TWH of electricity each year
with a generation fleet of approximately 1,200 GW. The transition to all-electric
everything would require an increase in electric generation to approximately 13,000 TWH from a
storage supported predominantly intermittent generation fleet of approximately 6,000 GW with a
capacity factor of approximately 30%, depending on the mix of wind and solar in the generation
fleet. A recent paper, summarized by its primary author, concludes that a predominantly
intermittent renewable powered electric grid would require storage equal to approximately 25% of
annual generation to assure reliability. Thus, the US all-electric everything grid would
require electricity storage capacity of approximately 3,300 TWH.
Washing away the
Climate Lunatics. For a long time, it was a political free lunch: everybody loves
the environment, and the climate change issue was very skillfully transformed by the left into an
assault on the capitalist system from a new angle in the name of saving the planet. As long
as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully
disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow in collective self-praise for doing the healthy and
environmentally responsible thing. The burden of subsidized wind and solar farms didn't
appear on peoples' energy bills, though eventually they were placed on the back of the
taxpayer. Now, however, net zero policies are directly eating into the earnings and savings
of the public and in most of Europe, the taxpayer rebellion is exploding, and the advantages of
democracy are being reaffirmed as elected governments scamper to the rear, explaining that there
has been a misunderstanding.
Texas
Official Says Biden Admin Green Power Initiative Could Cause 'Significant' Environmental
Damage. A Republican official in Texas is opposing the Biden administration's effort
to bring offshore wind to the coast of the Lone Star state due in part to concerns that the
technology could have negative environmental impacts. Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham
filed comments with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on Monday expressing her
opposition to the agency's plans to hold a 410,000-acre offshore wind lease sale near Texas in the
Gulf of Mexico. Buckingham expressed her worry that offshore wind, a key green technology
underpinning the Biden administration's climate agenda, will cause unnecessary ecological damage
while posing other economic and logistical concerns about the plan. "As of now, I see a number
of significant concerns — economic, practical, and environmental — that must
be addressed before a prospective wind lessee is permitted to cross state-owned submerged land,"
Buckingham wrote in her Monday letter, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Renewable
energy is too expensive to make "green hydrogen". Only 18 months ago the
Australian government gave $14 million dollars to Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest to figure out if his
team could build a 500MW electrolyser to make hydrogen gas on an island near Brisbane. It was
going to be a glorious Australian green-techno future, the largest hydrogen plant in the world, but
it's missed three deadlines in the last three months to greenlight the project. Instead the
Australian company is going overseas. As Nick Cater points out this part of the
made-in-Australia renewable superpower is going to be made-in-Arizona because they still have cheap
electricity — a miraculous 7.5c a kilowatt hour!
California
Sets New Rule for Chevron, Gas Price Is Expected to Rise. In a recent interview,
energy expert Ronald Stein discussed California's shifting energy landscape and the challenges of
transitioning away from fossil fuels. As a former engineer and author on energy issues,
Mr. Stein provided insightful perspective on the complex trade-offs involved. California
has made reducing oil production and dependence on foreign imports a priority. However,
Mr. Stein notes this has unintended consequences, like lost revenue for cities and increased
costs passed onto consumers. While aiming to curb emissions, Mr. Stein argues the
state's policies may simply outsource them elsewhere through increased imports. When it comes
to renewable energy, Mr. Stein acknowledged the role of wind and solar but highlighted their
limitations compared to fossil fuels. As electricity alone cannot replace the vast array of
products derived from oil, a total transition away from oil may not be realistic given society's
material demands.
The
Climate-Alarmist Movement Has A Big PR Problem On Its Hands. The whole "net-zero by
2050" narrative that cranked up in earnest in early 2021 has now become a public relations problem
for the climate-alarm movement, according to a senior official at the United Nations. Chris
Stark, the outgoing chief executive of the UN's Climate Change Committee (CCC), said as reported by
the Guardian: "Net zero has definitely become a slogan that I feel occasionally is now
unhelpful, because it's so associated with the campaigns against it. That wasn't something I
expected." As seems to always be the case among the globalist sponsors of this
government-subsidized rush to saddle the world with unreliable power grids and short-range electric
cars, the conversation among the leaders of the movement immediately moves not to perhaps
reconsidering the approach to address public concerns, but to rejiggering the narrative.
National
Grid Resorts to Propaganda. Ten days ago, the Guardian ran an article paid for by the
National Grid that purports to debunk the "myths swirling around clean energy and upgrading the
grid". [...] The first "myth" is that "clean energy is too expensive" which is also encapsulated in
the caption to the lead image which claims, "solar and wind energy are now the most affordable
sources of energy." The Guardian article uses a report from the Rocky Mountain Institute
(RMI), produced in conjunction with the Bezos Earth Fund to claim that "solar and wind energy are
now the most affordable sources of new electricity in 82% of the world" and uses the Government's
Generation Costs report to claim that new solar projects will cost only £41/MWh. It
compares this to the claimed cost of gas-fired power stations at £114/MWh. There are
several problems with Newkey-Burden's approach. First, even if the RMI report is true, which
is doubtful, it does not focus on the UK. Energy costs in the rest of the world are only of
secondary importance.
'Climate'
Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing. The other day, I caught the news that the
Scottish government (Scottish National Party and the Greens in coalition), with undisguised
anguish, had [announced] its 2030 target of reducing emissions by 75 percent compared with the
baseline of 1990. The Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the government on these
matters, said the measures that would be needed to achieve the target by the end of the decade were
"beyond what is credible." Hmm? Getting base-load power from windmills is obviously
harder than it looks. Chris Stark, the chief executive of the CCC, reportedly said that the
target was "too stretching" and there was no plan in place to get anywhere close to hitting it.
A
diesel in the shed. [Scroll down] Green energy has a union that works to
rules. If winds are too strong or too weak, they down tools and the turbines go silent.
And their mates running the solar panels won't work at night and also produce nothing on cloudy
days. If we try to fill the gaps with battery power, where do we get the electricity to
recharge the batteries and pump the hydro water back up the hill to keep the lights on?
Tasmania and South Australia are the greenest states of Australia. SA demolished their last
coal-fired power station with glee and Tasmanian Greens even oppose hydro and wind power.
Tasmanians get their electricity mainly from hydro assets created long ago by their more productive
ancestors. When a long drought caused a shortage of hydro-energy they became reliant for up
to 40% of their electricity needs on the Bass-link undersea cable bringing electricity from
reliable coal-fired stations in Victoria and NSW. However the overloaded Bass Link cable failed,
and an old gas-powered station was brought back into service to keep the lights on (importing gas
from Victoria). Subsequently Tasmanian politicians hurriedly put 150 diesel generators in their sheds.
Smart
meters could soon cost you a whole lot more. What remarkable power climate change has
to turn the usual rules of fairness on their head. The poor pay the taxes and the wealthy get
subsidised. It has happened with electric cars, where well-off early adopters were handed
grants of £4,000 to buy a new vehicle — as well as being excused fuel duty and
road tax, essentially freeing them from having to make any contribution to the upkeep of
roads. It has happened with heat pumps — whose owners have enjoyed years of
subsidies, the latest manifestation of which is £7,500 in upfront grants. The next
phase will be even more painful for the poor and even more rewarding for the wealthy. The
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has put forward proposals to equip smart meters and
electric appliances with technology to allow Uber-style surge pricing for electricity, where the
price of power will vary on a half-hourly basis. Under the new system, there would be little
warning of when prices would change, unlike the Economy 7 tariff, which has been around for decades
and offers consumers cheaper electricity at night. The reason for the new system is the
intermittency of wind and solar, which the government and the green energy industry in general have
failed to solve.
Backlash
against wind and solar projects is real, it's global and it's growing. All around the
world, big solar and wind projects are being rejected. From rural England to the Osage Nation
in Oklahoma, local communities are telling alt-energy developers to take their projects and put
them where the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. As I have documented in the
Renewable Rejection Database, there have been at least 639 rejections or restrictions of wind or
solar projects in the U.S. alone since 2015. Why are so many communities objecting? The
answer is simple: landowners and homeowners want to preserve the integrity of their
neighborhoods. They don't want their landscapes and views destroyed by oceans of solar panels
and forests 600-foot-high wind turbines. They are also rightly concerned about the diminution
of their property values and the noise pollution that comes with these projects.
How
Green Energy [and] EVs Actually Endanger America. Consider some inescapable
self-inflicted scenarios from hell that government "experts" never warned you about regarding
utopian visions of carbon-free vehicles powered by friendly breezes and sunbeams. So, imagine
it's one of those warm, beautiful days when the first news breaks about a big hurricane or tropical
storm heading your way. You immediately begin thinking about stocking up on food supplies
that don't require refrigeration and charging up your electric plug-in to get out of town in a
hurry if necessary[,] just like, it seems, everyone else is doing. Or maybe, with no warning,
"poof," all power goes off because the grid is down for suspicious reasons no one fully
understands or can inform you about. As it turns out, a foreign adversary cyberattack
precludes either of those previous options, plus an added problem. Along with knocking out
all power transformers, the malign hackers also took remote control of both autonomous and
operator-controlled electric vehicles, jamming exit highways with colossal human and metal crash
wreckage. In both cases, it's already too late.
Biggest
Corporate Welfare Scam of All Time. President Joe Biden keeps lecturing corporate
America to "pay your fair share" of taxes. It turns out he's right that some companies really
are getting away scot-free from paying taxes. But it isn't Big Tech companies in Silicon
Valley or the Wall Street financial company "fat cats" or big banks or Walmart. They pay
billions in taxes. The culprits here are the very companies that Biden is in bed with: green
energy firms. It turns out that despite all the promises over the past decade about how
renewable energy is the future of power production in America, by far the biggest tax dodgers in
the country are the wind and solar power industries. Over the past several decades, the green
energy lobby — what I call the climate-change-industrial complex — isn't
paying its fair share. That's because the vast majority of these companies pay nearly ZERO
income taxes. But they wade in rivers of federal direct and indirect subsidies that keep
these zombie companies alive.
The
Pushback Against Financial Institutions That Advance ESG. Wind and solar
energy — requiring more land, and fraught with disposal and pollution
problems — have proved far less efficient and reliable than traditional energy
production methods. Besides, they create new problems — including threats to the
environment — that we are only now becoming aware of. A few weeks ago, the failure
of solar farms was brought into sharp relief when a large-scale solar facility near Houston was
battered in a hailstorm. A similar event occurred in West Texas in 2019, causing damages of
$70-$80 million. Wind turbines — of which there are 70,000 in the
U.S. — could be a "huge threat to the entire biodiversity," according to Dr. Ursula
Bellut-Staeck, who has since 2015 been studying the deleterious effects of low-frequency sound
(infrasound) emitted by wind turbines. Besides affecting microcirculation and endothelial cells,
she says, infrasound causes dizziness, headaches, ear pressure, sleep disorders, and cardiac arrhythmia,
and affects concentration and memory. As all organisms react to infrasound, wind turbines pose
a threat to the whole ecosystem. This runs against the very goals of the green agenda.
Fact-Checking
Wind and Solar Claims: Climate Expert Makes Case for 'Realism'. Wind, solar,
and electric vehicles aren't the clean energy accomplishments that many claim, climatologist David
Legates says. "The lithium ... all of the rare earth minerals that are necessary for the
batteries, that are necessary for the solar panels, that are necessary for the wind turbines ...
are called rare earths," Legates explains on "The Daily Signal Podcast." These rare earth
minerals are acquired through strip mining, he says, a process that involves putting large chunks
of earth into a solution. Once the minerals are extracted, what is left is a "toxic sludge lake."
Fact-Checking
Wind and Solar Claims: Climate Expert Makes Case for 'Realism'. Wind, solar,
and electric vehicles aren't the clean energy accomplishments that many claim, climatologist David
Legates says. "The lithium ... all of the rare earth minerals that are necessary for the
batteries, that are necessary for the solar panels, that are necessary for the wind turbines ...
are called rare earths," Legates explains on "The Daily Signal Podcast." These rare earth
minerals are acquired through strip mining, he says, a process that involves putting large chunks
of earth into a solution. Once the minerals are extracted, what is left is a "toxic sludge
lake." The process of strip mining changes the environment, adds Legates, a visiting fellow who
serves on the Science Advisory Committee for the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The
Heritage Foundation. Legates, also a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, is the
author of a Heritage paper on rising sea levels.
Corruption
Is Treason. [T]he creation of the batteries needed to come even close to the demand,
once gas-powered vehicles are outlawed, is much more dangerous to the planet than the current
system using oil, gas and coal. They rely on the ability to recycle lithium from used
batteries to justify their mining scheme, but they never mention that we can't even recycle plastic
bottles, much less batteries. They also never mention the cost per horse power achieved,
electric vs gasoline or diesel or how much more it takes to generate a kilowatt hour that then must
be stored in batteries. They don't have to worry about any of their predictions coming true,
because it's the oil, gas and coal industries they're trying to destroy. No one can give me a
satisfactory reason for it, except that electric vehicles are a lot more expensive, a lot fewer
people would be able to afford it, which drives them into public transportation and depletes their
disposable incomes to where they are forced into some form of public housing. Again, it's not
the issue of clean energy, it's the issue of control. When you realize the level of stupidity
that goes into these decisions, you realize it has nothing to do with the subject at hand. It
all simply comes down to corruption of government to control people.
Nobody
is buying into the net zero madness. Are consumers really ready for the magnitude of
changes necessary for a green transition? Already, the vast ambition of net zero envisages
most people switching their gas central heating to electricity and their petrol cars to bicycles
and electric cars. The ultimate challenge will be the wholesale conversion of electricity
from coal, oil and gas to renewables — all without a satisfying answer to the question
of what to do when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. So far, governments have
concentrated on doing what should be the easier areas of transition. They have considerable
influence and control over energy markets, and have increased their interventions in them.
We've seen more subsidies, tax breaks, windfall taxes, regulations, managed prices and bans than
ever in the quest to tip electricity generation towards wind and solar power away from fossil
fuels. The energy industry has consented, or at least acquiesced, to these changes.
Going
electric requires electricity. Who knew? Lo and behold, when you push people to
electrify everything in their lives — cars, cookers, heating systems — while
bribing them to go all-electric with lavish government subsidies, it turns out they use more
electricity. Who would have thought? I guess this is why we need all those brainiac
experts to analyse the ultra-complicated technical details of environmental policy. One such
expert worries in the [New York] Times: 'The numbers we're seeing are pretty crazy.'
America's paper of record warns that in the past year the nation's utilities have nearly doubled
their estimates of how much more power they'll need to provide in the next five years, during which
an extra California's worth of demand will be dumped on the US grid.
Labour's
net zero plans 'will cost £116 billion'. Labour's plans to reach net zero
will cost £116 billion, new analysis has revealed. Sir Keir Starmer's pledge to
decarbonise Britain's electricity grid by 2030 will require more than £15.5 billion
additional investment per year until the start of the next decade. This is more than double
needed over the same period to achieve net zero power by 2035, the Government's current
target. Analysis by Aurora Energy Research, founded by academics from the University of
Oxford, for Policy Exchange, found that decarbonising the UK's power grid by 2030 would cost
£116 billion over the next 11 years. Even if such sums were available,
analysts concluded, the supply chain constraints, skills shortages and lead times involved make
achieving the 2030 goal "infeasible".
Hey,
Why'd It Go Dark? Canadians have apparently resigned themselves to the fact that the
people who run our country could create a sand shortage in Saudi Arabia or an ice shortage in
Greenland[.] No country on Earth has had better luck, from geography to resources to a
peaceful history founded in constitutional liberty. And, famously, ample rivers for
hydroelectric dams, some of the world's biggest oil and gas reserves and a well-established nuclear
industry using homegrown CANDU reactors. And now we face
self-inflicted electricity shortages. It can't have been easy. But given enough
politicians and zealots, anything can turn from a dream into a nightmare.
Net Zero
Emergency Power. Many electricity customers in all customer classes have fossil
fueled emergency or standby generators which they use to power some or all of their electrical
loads in the event of a grid power outage. For some commercial customers, such as hospitals,
standby power systems are essential to assure the safety of patients such as those undergoing
surgical procedures. For some industrial customers, such as those who operate continuous
processes, standby generators are required to avoid loss of product in process or to avoid damage
to equipment. For many other customers, emergency or standby generators are used to avoid the
inconvenience of power outages. The net zero energy economy would require elimination of
these on-site fossil fueled generators since they are too small to justify implementation of carbon
capture and storage systems to eliminate CO2 emissions. In some cases, on-site generation
could be replaced by electricity storage systems, charged either by the grid or by on-site solar
and/or wind generation.
Transition?
What Transition? Second, perhaps the most extraordinary fact about energy is that the
much-ballyhooed "transition" from fossil fuels to wind and solar simply isn't happening, despite
government mandates and massive subsidies. In fact, it is rapid growth in use of fossil fuels
that powers the world's economy: [...] The bottom line is that a transition from reliable and
affordable fossil fuels to unreliable and prohibitively expensive weather-dependent sources of
energy would be a human disaster, and therefore, it isn't going to happen. Ever.
Leftists may whine and gnash their teeth, and for now they may reap enormous amounts of ill-gotten
money from "green" interests. But what they want, or more likely pretend to want, isn't
possible, and it won't happen.
Three
energy realities that renewable advocates can't answer. [#1] Renewables can't survive
on their own. The renewable energy industry is a subsidy-based industry, as wind and solar
are largely dependent on lucrative state and federal subsidies. However, renewable advocates
justify these perpetual subsidies by claiming thermal generators receive more subsidies than wind
and solar. This assertion is not based on reality, especially when considering subsidies paid
per megawatt-hour (MWh) of energy produced. The figures used to justify the claim above don't
just account for direct subsidies made to each energy source — they also include made-up
figures that account for so-called unaddressed externalities that renewable advocates believe
should be charged to thermal power plants that emit CO2. Some of these costs may be legitimate,
but by definition, they aren't subsidies. [...] A subsidy is a direct payment to an industry.
It is not the absence of make-believe externality costs or penalties, but the heavily-quoted
$7 trillion value for global fossil fuel subsidies from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
consists almost entirely of these made-up figures.
We
must end the Net Zero delusion before it's too late. Political obituaries will not be
kind to Theresa May. But there is one unwritten law of modern British politics the former
prime minister understood: you can be wrong on climate change, provided you are wrong in the right
way. Whisper that net zero by 2050 will have deleterious social and economic costs, and
accusations of "denialism" will swiftly follow. Yet warn that the "house is on fire" and the
end time is at hand, and you'll probably be given a book deal. Not only did May commit the UK
to the 2050 target, but in the years since she has doggedly called for the Government to move
faster. Last year, just months before we became the first economy to halve emissions since
1990, she claimed we were "falling behind". Such attitudes are commonplace — and
it will only get worse. Pity the prime minister in charge in 2033, when the sixth "Carbon
Budget" kicks in, or in 2035, when electricity will apparently be fully decarbonised. A gulf
now lies between the wishful thinking of the political class and economic reality, yet still the
discourse is dominated by doomsday language and a worrying desire to silence dissent.
Massive
New England Renewable Transmission Line Plan Scrapped After Project Deemed "Not Viable".
A massive $2 billion energy transmission line through New England has been scrapped after the
company undertaking the project deemed it "non-viable." "National Grid thanks the dozens of
route communities and regional partners who engaged with us and supported this project," said the
electrical utility company. "We will continue to pursue paths to building much-needed
transmission capacity for the region and for our customers and communities." The transmission
line, the so-called Twin State Clean Energy Link, was planned to be a 211-mile-long line through
Vermont and New Hampshire, connecting New England to renewable energy sources — wind,
solar, and hydro — in Canada. The transmission line would have functioned
two-ways, allowing New England to purchase clean energy from Canada, and also allow New England to
sell energy into Canada, depending on market conditions.
Britain
risks losing out to Germany in £16 billion net zero scheme. The developer
behind a flagship £16 [billion] cable that will link Moroccan solar and wind farms to
British homes has threatened to instead send electricity to Germany. Planning documents
published on the European transmission system operator's website show that Xlinks, the company
behind the project, has floated Germany as another end destination for its proposed undersea
cable. The move will ramp up pressure on the UK Government to throw its weight behind the
project, which could prove critical for hitting net zero targets. Xlinks is planning to build
a vast solar and wind farm in Morocco equipped with batteries. The project is forecast to
provide enough power for seven million British families.
The Renewable
Scam. Political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. notes, "It's quite intuitive for people to
understand that there's a lot of power in solar energy. We feel the wind. The idea that
you can get something for nothing, people find enormously appealing." Especially in California,
where politicians now require all new homes to have solar panels, all new cars sold in 2035 to be
zero-emission, and all the state's electricity to come from carbon-free resources by 2045.
They're getting results, but not good ones: California's cost of electricity increased three
times faster than in the rest of America. People in Washington State pay about 11 cents
per kilowatt-hour. In Oregon, 13 cents. In California, now almost
30 cents. Do they at least get reliable energy for that? No. The big problem
with wind and solar power, of course, is that they don't work when the wind doesn't blow or the sun
doesn't shine. Sometimes that happens when people most want heat or AC. Increased use of
"renewables" is why blackouts are more common in California.
Mandate
for Leadership. [Scroll down to page 363] Access to affordable, reliable, and
abundant energy is vital to America's economy, national security, and quality of life. Yet
ideologically driven government policies have thrust the United States into a new energy crisis
just a few short years after America's energy renaissance, which began in the first decade of the
2000s, transformed the United States from a net energy importer (oil and natural gas) to energy
independence and then energy dominance. Americans now face energy scarcity, an electric grid
that is less reliable, and artificial shortages of natural gas and oil despite massive reserves
within the United States — all of which has led to higher prices that burden both the
American people and the economy. The new energy crisis is caused not by a lack of resources,
but by extreme "green" policies. Under the rubrics of "combating climate change" and "ESG"
(environmental, social, and governance), the Biden Administration, Congress, and various states, as
well as Wall Street investors, international corporations, and progressive special-interest groups,
are changing America's energy landscape. These ideologically driven policies are also
directing huge amounts of money to favored interests and making America dependent on adversaries
like China for energy.
Net-zero
targets have hamstrung British prosperity. Britain's 'net-zero economy' is booming,
creating more better-paid jobs than any other sector, but it is all being put at risk by the
government's reversal on policies on electric vehicles and heat pumps. That, at any rate, is
what the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit
(ECIU) wants us to believe. In a report this week, these groups claim that the net-zero
target has spawned an industry worth £74 billion, up 9 per cent in just a year. It
has created 765,000 jobs which are 1.6 times as productive as the average UK job and which
offer average wages of £44,600, compared with £35,400 for the rest of the
economy. Yet, 'at a time when the US and EU are ramping up investment and tax breaks in the
pursuit of clean industries setting up shop on their soil, the UK has been chopping and changing',
with 'mixed signals, policy U-turns and contradictory political rhetoric' discouraging
investment. In other words, never mind about such trifles as the 2,500 jobs to be lost at
Port Talbot as the blast furnaces are closed, taking with them Britain's remaining capacity for
primary steel-making — there are better-paid green jobs out there for anyone who wants
them. This analysis falls at the first hurdle.
Net
Zero is a National Security Threat and Must Be Abandoned, Former Security Minister
Warns. Decarbonising the steel and electricity industry in pursuit of Net Zero
represents a real and present danger to national security and must be abandoned, a former Security
Minister has warned. Writing in a foreword to a new paper from campaign group Net Zero Watch,
Sir Gerald Howarth, Minister for International Security Strategy under David Cameron, said:
["]Our adversaries are watching us like hawks, so let us leave them in no doubt: we are
rearming and rebuilding, and Net Zero is firmly on hold.["] Professor Gwythian Prins,
a defence expert and one of the paper's authors, agrees that with the recent deterioration of the
world's security situation, "luxury beliefs" such as Net Zero must be jettisoned as a matter of
urgency: ["]This is the moment when the music stops. The Port Talbot closure
harshly exposes the costs of luxury 'green' beliefs. We cannot be dependent on imports for
the full range of necessary steels to rebuild our arsenals — the Navy first and
foremost — and, most ridiculously, we cannot depend for them on our global antagonists.["]
Europe's
consensus on climate is crumbling. At stake in the European elections in June this
year will be everything that defines the modern EU: a large volume of net zero legislation, a
values-based foreign policy and ever more intrusive business regulation. Polls suggest the
centrist majority that has supported these policies is growing slimmer. Ursula von der Leyen
has been the quintessential representative of that majority. Born in Brussels, German by
nationality, proposed by France, she was the perfect candidate for European Commission president in
late 2019. Now she is seeking a second term. Whether she will succeed will depend to a
large extent on whether the centrist four-party coalition that supported her in 2019 will
hold. All over Europe, we are now seeing a backlash against the kind of policies the Von der
Leyen Commission represents.
If
Climate Change is Knocking Down Power Pylons, Why Build More Renewables? If storms
are getting worse, how can fragile renewable energy infrastructure survive the superstorms of the
future? [...] Fragile, weather dependent renewable energy systems are not fit for purpose, and will
never be fit for purpose. They don't make sense today, and they would make even less sense in
a future filled with climate superstorms. Don't think for a moment I take the claim of future
superstorms seriously, why should the current crop of alarmist climate predictions be any different
to the previous 30 years+ of failed climate predictions? But Professor Dargaville's
advocacy of renewable energy does not make sense, even in the context of his own claimed position
on future climate disruption.
Blackouts,
Here We Come. People around the world are increasingly realizing that "green" energy
is actually black — as in blackouts. [...] It is extraordinary that no one in any
country has actually tried, seriously, to figure out how to power a modern economy with
intermittent and absurdly expensive wind and solar power. We are simply cruising toward
disaster with inept and even senile politicians at the helm. [...] A "smart meter" is one that will
adjust the temperature in your house, or otherwise reduce your use of electricity, when the utility
can't produce enough electricity to meet demand. In other words, the plan is for us to get
poorer through electricity rationing.
The
UK is much closer to blackouts than anyone dares to admit. Of all the problems with
electric cars, perhaps the least expected was the revelation that some home charging points provide
a potential point of weakness for malign foreign powers to interfere with our National Grid. [...]
But do we really need a foreign power to crash our electricity grid when we are quite capable of
inflicting it on ourselves? We are heading for a big electricity crunch as it is.
Whoever wins the general election, the next government will be committed to decarbonising the
National Grid — by 2035 in the case of the Conservatives and by 2030 in the case of
Labour. That means either closing all the gas power stations or fitting them with carbon
capture and storage technology — which does not yet exist on scale in Britain and whose
costs are likely to be massive. At the same time every single one of our existing nuclear power
stations is currently due to reach the end of its life by 2035. If Hinkley C is delayed
much beyond its latest estimated completion, we could end up with no nuclear at all. That
could leave us trying to power the country pretty much with intermittent wind and solar energy
alone — and this at a time when politicians want millions more of us to be driving
electric cars and heating our homes with heat pumps, thus substantially increasing demand.
Wind
and Solar Are No Solution. Our electricity is mainly produced using fossil fuels,
with some hydroelectric (dams) and some nuclear. Wind and solar are supposed to take the
place of fossil fuels. Right now, when the wind does not blow nor the sun shine, the slack is
taken up using coal and natural gas. To be available when needed, these sources of
electricity are kept idling. But under such conditions, they use almost as much fuel and
produce almost as much carbon dioxide, so you have gained little. When these resources are
eliminated, we will have to depend on huge batteries. In some places, during the winter,
there may be week after week with cloudy weather, with rain and snow. (Where we live in North
Idaho, we have had only one week of clear weather in three months.) It would be impossible to
build a battery large enough to power a city for a day, let alone for a week, or a month.
Wind machines last only a few years. Some burn up or break apart. And the sound of the
turbine has been a health problem for some people and for whales. Bats and many birds are
killed by wind machines. (Many of these birds are considered threatened, so this is a threat
to their survival.) Plus, there is the fact that when it is really cold, the wind sometimes
does not blow.
Canada's
New Democratic Party introduces bill that would prescribe jail terms for speaking well of fossil
fuels. An NDP bill is seeking to criminalize the "promotion" of fossil fuels, and
prescribe jail time even for Canadians who say scientifically true things such as how burning
natural gas is cleaner than burning coal. C-372, also known as the Fossil Fuel Advertising
Act, was tabled Monday as a private member's bill by Charlie Angus, the MP for Timmins-James Bay
and a longtime member of the NDP caucus. "Today, I am proud to rise and introduce a bill that would
make illegal false advertising by the oil and gas industry," Angus announced in the House of Commons.
Dispelling
the Cult Claim — "Wind and Solar are Lower Cost Generation than Natural
Gas". Intrigued by the many eco-warriors touting how wind and solar are cheaper
generation sources then natural gas I decided to use Scott Luft's (Cold Air) compilation of data
for 2023 to calculate on a "simple" basis what each generation source actually cost us
ratepayers/taxpayers to see if the claims made were even close to the truth. Below is a small
sampling of what the claims were and who made them! Please note that four of them are
registered "charities" and one is from the Federal Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change!
New
Report: Coal, Natural Gas Saved the Grid In January Winter Storm. January
Winter Storm Demonstrates Importance of Coal and Other Fossil Fuels February 2024 Energy
Ventures Analysis (EVA) has prepared a report on the performance of different electricity
resources — coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, oil, wind, and solar — during
the January 13-21 winter storm. The report focuses on the five most-impacted regions of
the country — Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Midcontinent Independent
System Operator (MISO), PJM Interconnection (PJM), Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and the southeastern
U.S. — and compares the performance of resources in early January before the storm with
their performance during the peak of the storm when electricity demand spiked.
Time
to Retire the Term "Renewable Energy" from Serious Discussions and Policy Directives.
The first part of this series discussed some of the shortcomings of the renewable/nonrenewable
dichotomy. Renewable generation resources are not necessarily sustainable or environmentally
sound and non-renewable options can be clean and highly sustainable. For example, you will
find many ardent environmentalist groups strongly opposed to "renewable" biomass generation.
Similarly, more and more environmentalists are dropping their objections to "nonrenewable" nuclear
power. For those who are concerned with the health of the planet as well as those who want to
use the earth for human flourishing the renewable/nonrenewable dichotomy is losing relevance.
Referring generally to "renewable" and "nonrenewable" resources or structuring policy to favor
renewable does more harm than good as we face the complicate challenges ahead in maintain an
adequate electric power supply in an environmentally responsible manner.
Are
the wheels coming off Net Zero? It's a similar story in Methil on the south Fife
coast, where thriving yards once building oil and gas platforms now lie empty of nothing but
puddles and old rust. Instead, China manufactures our wind turbines using low-cost,
coal-fired energy, contributing to their 31% of global co2 emissions, while the Scots apply to
become Amazon delivery drivers. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Boris Johnson all
promised a green jobs revolution. Our uni-party Labour and Conservative governments must be
so proud of creating tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs, even if they're in the wrong
country. Martin Sheen in his new TV series The Way blames Westminster for the closure
of Port Talbot, but it's like blaming the puppet for the puppeteer's action. It's Net Zero
that demands the closure of all industry, with the UK intent upon leading the way. One look
at northern Europe dismantling its civilisation is certainly setting the example of exactly what
not to do.
Our
Crazy Cousins North Of The Border. If there ever were a sign that Canada has gone
cuckoo, it has to be a bill introduced in Parliament that would censor speech about fossil
fuel. No, we're not joking, though we hope the bill's author is. We fear, however, he
isn't. One Charlie Angus, a New Democratic Party member of the House of Commons from
Timmins — James Bay in Ontario, has brought before that chamber Bill C-372. It
clearly states that "it is prohibited for a person to promote a fossil fuel, a fossil fuel-related
brand element or the production of a fossil fuel except as authorized by the provisions of this Act
or of the regulations." Under the legislation, it is further "prohibited for a person to
promote a fossil fuel or the production of a fossil fuel ... in a manner that states or suggests
that a fossil fuel or the practices of a producer or of the fossil fuel industry would lead to
positive outcomes in relation to the environment, the health of Canadians, reconciliation with
Indigenous peoples or the Canadian or global economy; or ... by using terms, expressions, logos,
symbols or illustrations that are prohibited by the regulations." Does "nuts" adequately
describe the thinking behind this bill?
The
Invasive Species That Is Renewable Energy. The ruling class' obsession with building
a carbon dioxide-free world has blinded it to material facts. The Al Gores and Gavin Newsoms
and John Kerrys of the West believe they only have to bark orders and seize other people's money
and their green dreams will be realized. When are they going to understand their wishes are
not everyone else's command? There are many examples of the ruling class' failure to
recognize its limitations in regard to energy. The electric vehicle backlash comes to
mind. So do the many green "investments" that have turned out to be financial holes of a
different color. For this commentary, though, we're focusing on the breakdown of the
renewable infrastructure buildout. The hard truth is that people don't want wind and solar
farms overtaking their communities and chewing up rural land. The resistance is so forceful
that a number of counties have banned the projects inside their borders.
Globalist
Elites Are Getting Battered In Their War On Fossil Fuels. It is rapidly starting to
feel like our globalist elites might find it useful to plan a funeral for their dream of a forced,
heavily-subsidized "energy transition" from fossil fuels to their preferred rent-seeking clients in
the wind, solar and electric vehicle (EV) industries. As nations the world over become
increasingly overwhelmed with mountains of unsustainable debt, the signs of a looming transition
trainwreck are swirling all around us. The wind industry is approaching collapse as big
developers like Orsted, BP and Equinor cancel or delay offshore projects, taking massive
write-downs in the process. Delivery contracts negotiated just a few years ago are cancelled
as a matter of course now, with demands for much higher renegotiated rates that will drive up
already outrageous utility bills to new levels, even as wind industry propagandists continue
parroting their false notion that wind is somehow a cheap energy source. Obviously, it isn't
cheap at all, which helps explain why USA Today reported recently that fully 15% of U.S. county
governments have moved to ban wind, solar, or both forms of development in their jurisdictions.
The
True Costs of Net Zero Are Becoming Impossible to Hide. In the latest green fiasco,
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak created a quota system that would require manufacturers to sell more
heat pumps to households. Instead of meekly complying with the regulation as happens with
Biden administration EPA announcements, manufacturers let consumers know they would have to pay up
whether they installed the heat pumps or not. Manufacturers correctly dubbed the scheme a
"boiler tax" and consumer outrage killed the regulation. [...] In the US, manufacturers have yet to
stand up to idiotic Biden regulations, mostly because they have received tax incentives that hide
the true costs. But the actual costs are difficult to hide now that subsidies won't hide the
true cost. So Biden's schemes are unraveling.
The
High Cost of 100 Percent Electric Home Heating. The complete electrification
of residential heating combined with Colorado Governor Jared Polis's goal of a 100 percent
renewable electricity grid by 2040 would cost Coloradans up to $620.7 billion through 2050.
Residential home heating electrification alone would cost approximately $302 billion through
2050. Colorado electricity customers (residential, commercial, and industrial) would see their
average monthly electricity bills increase to $797 through 2050. They would peak at an average
of $1,143 in 2040. The typical Colorado household would see their average monthly electricity
bills increase to an average of $566 through 2050, and they would reach as high as an average of
$856 in 2040. To meet Colorado's present-day electricity demand as well as the additional demand
created by electrifying home heating with only wind, solar, existing hydropower, and batteries, the
state would need to install twelve times the generation capacity currently on the grid.
The
real purpose of Net Zero: impoverishment, enslavement and depopulation. Niall McCrae,
of this parish, has written a unique, timely and important book on the so-called climate crisis.
Green in Tooth and Claw: the Misanthropic Mission Climate Alarm is not another treatise
filled with graphs and tables of scientific data to refute the notion of anthropogenic global
warming. Instead, the author analyses the dogma through a cultural lens, with some harrowing
conclusions for humanity if it does not wake up in time to resist. [...] However, the majority of
citizens remain asleep to the dystopian design, believing the relentless propaganda of runaway
climate change, the deadliness of carbon dioxide (a gas essential to life) and the need to curtail
every aspect of their quality of life. More promisingly, a slow but steady awakening is
evident. Trust in governments and bought media is plummeting. For this reason,
draconian interventions to curb freedom of speech and independent media channels are a priority for
the powers-that-be.
Rolling
Blackouts in Hawaii Offer a Case Study For Michigan. Rolling blackouts in the Aloha
State presage things to come in Michigan. Michigan's new net-zero and "100% clean energy"
policies mirror Hawaii's "goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045." These energy plans are
causing both states to rely on more weather-dependent wind and solar, which means that reliability
issues are becoming more pronounced. On Jan. 8 and 9, heavy rains hit much of the island
of Oahu. News releases from Hawaiian Electric, the island's main electric utility, explained
that during the storm two large generating units at the Waiau Power Plant had gone offline.
In an email, company officials said that water damaged a control system at one plant. The
system at a second plant "tripped after a tie-in to the grid was damaged, likely by weather."
That was unfortunate timing, for as the utility noted, it had also recently taken several
generation units offline for scheduled maintenance.
Can
Wind & Solar Energy Expand 50-100 Times? In the most recent "Conference of the
Parties," otherwise known as the United Nations extravaganza that convenes every few years for
world leaders to discuss the climate crisis, several goals were publicly proclaimed. Notable
were the goals to triple production of renewable energy by 2030 and triple production of nuclear
energy by 2050. Against the backdrop of current global energy production by fuel type, and as
quantified in Part One, against a goal of increasing total energy production from 600 exajoules in
2022 to at least 1,000 exajoules by 2050, where does COP 28's goals put the world's energy
economy? How much will production of renewable energy have to increase? To answer this
question, it is necessary to recognize and account for the fact that most renewable energy takes
the form of electricity, generated through wind, solar, or geothermal sources. And when
measuring how much the base of renewables installed so far will contribute to the target of 1,000
exajoules of energy production per year in order to realize — best-case
scenario — 800 exajoules of energy services, the data reported in the Statistical Review
of Global Energy is profoundly misleading.
BP
[is being] urged to scale back its green agenda: Investor blasts oil giant's 'irrational'
climate targets. An activist investor has urged BP to ditch its green strategy and
continue to cash in on oil and gas. Bluebell Capital Partners wrote to the energy giant's
chairman Helge Lund with concerns about how the FTSE 100 energy giant is run. The
London-based hedge fund blasted BP's green transition plan as 'irrational' and said the strategy
has depressed its share price. Investors are concerned that BP is underperforming compared
with rival Shell and US energy giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Shell has scaled back its net
zero transition strategy under the leadership of chief executive Wael Sawan. And American
energy firms have doubled down on oil and gas production.
California
Solar Companies Hit The Skids After Receiving Huge Handouts From Biden, Dems.
Numerous rooftop solar panel companies in California are staring down bankruptcy despite the
industry's receipt of generous state and federal subsidies. For many years, the state has
generously subsidized the rooftop solar industry to the annual tune of up to $6 billion in
order to spur green energy development, a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities
Commission (CPUC), the state's utility regulator, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Now
that state subsidy dollars are starting to dry up, rooftop solar companies in California are
struggling mightily, with one insurance company estimating that about 75% of the affected companies
in the state are at high risk for collapse, according to pv magazine USA. Despite the state's
rooftop solar industry receiving subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe
Biden's signature bill that includes $370 billion in green energy spending, rooftop solar
firms across California are struggling to stay afloat.
Civilization
depends on 1 billion gasoline oil-fueled combustion engines. There are over
1 billion gasoline-fueled combustion engines in cars, trucks, motorcycles, agricultural and
garden machines, boats, snowmobiles, airplanes, power pumps, back-up and emergency electricity
generators. The final wave of globalization after WWII was due to High-compression,
non-sparking, internal-combustion and Gas Turbines. These engines can never be 100% efficient
(Carnot's Theorem) because heat and friction cut their efficiency in half or more. At best,
well-maintained modern engines reach 32% efficiency, but those in typical everyday use are only
20-25% efficient. [...] Trains are at least 3 times as efficient as trucks energy-wise and
move about 40% of cargo in the USA, a third of grain, two-thirds of all coal with extremely
reliable, durable (up to 6 years before an overhaul is needed), and efficient diesel-electric
engines. The infrastructure cost of new railways versus highways is far far less —
about $1-2 million per kilometer of railroad versus $9-10 million per kilometer of
highway. Each train can represent several hundred large trucks.
A
remarkable coincidence. Four national institutions have failed to model the 2050
energy system correctly, and all of them in ways that lead to understatement of the costs of Net
Zero. Over the weekend, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the Climate Change
Committee has got its energy system modelling wrong. The revelation was made by Sir
Christopher Llewellyn Smith, the lead author of the recent Royal Society report on electricity
storage, in remarks made at a seminar at Oxford. According to Sir Christopher, the Climate
Change Committee's estimates of the costs of Net Zero are fundamentally flawed because they have
only modelled isolated years. As he pointed out in the seminar, low-wind years can happen
back to back, which means that the Climate Change Committee need twice as much storage capacity as
they thought. As a result, they have underestimated the costs. However, the Sunday
Telegraph didn't mention that it's not just the Climate Change Committee that has made this
mistake. In the same seminar, Sir Christopher pointed out that the National Infrastructure
Commission has done the same thing, despite being warned of the problem of clusters of low-wind
years. So they too will have underestimated the costs.
Nut
Zero. It's a bad policy, but the reasoning is simple enough to understand. ["]More
than 140 countries, including the biggest polluters — China, the United States, India
and the European Union — have set a net-zero target, covering about 88% of global
emissions. More than 9,000 companies, over 1000 cities, more than 1000 educational
institutions, and over 600 financial institutions have joined the Race to Zero, pledging to take
rigorous, immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030.["] This policy goal
is truly insane, and everybody promoting it is as well. And, as the Telegraph reports,
they are incredibly careless as well, playing with human lives and prosperity without thinking
anything they do through to their logical conclusions. Their obsession with Net Zero
overrides the most basic level of prudence one would expect from world leaders.
The Editor says...
[#1] The countries that the U.N. calls "the biggest polluters" are also the most productive, prosperous, and
industrious countries in the world. [#2] When the U.N. speaks about "global emissions," they
don't say what is being emitted, or why the emissions are harmful. They are talking about emissions of
carbon dioxide, which are inevitable in almost any industrial process, such as the
generation of electricity, and the CO2 thus emitted is beneficial, not harmful. [#3] The
slogan, "Race to Zero," should set off an alarm in your head immediately. Any time there is a
big rush to implement a government (or U.N.) program, the only reason for the hurry is deception.
They want you to pay for their half-baked ideas before the word gets around that the project is
completely futile and unnecessary. For more examples,
see What's the Rush?
Electric
cars and heat pumps seem destined to make us freeze. Resilience is the
long-forgotten element of net zero — and not just for electric vehicles. We are
being sold a future where almost everything will be powered by electricity — without
much thought being put into what happens if the grid fails. At the moment, if the power goes
down as it did in my house for several hours the other week, I can still light a fire, I can still
drive, I can still make telephone calls, because for now I still have a phone line which doesn't
require broadband. But in future I may not be able to do any of those things. A power
cut lasting more than a few hours will be a very serious matter for communities, which face being
totally cut off, shivering. Air source heat pumps seem especially vulnerable to these issues,
with claims that efficiency drops in cold weather. In a future where we are trying to use
heat pumps to keep us warm, cold weather might well deliver a double whammy: we will need more
power because the heat pump will be working overtime at a lower rate of efficiency, and yet the
supply of renewable power could dip, in some weather conditions to disastrous lows. There is
no point in telling us we've got to get to net zero if you can't tell us how we cope when we reach
sub-zero. Yes, it does get cold sometimes, in spite of global warming, and we need to keep
society running when it does.
UN
Secretary-General Demands End to 'Fossil Fuel,' Claims It's 'Inevitable'. The United
Nations (UN) Secretary-General demands a total phase out of fossil fuels — to stop a
"climate crisis" that doesn't actually exist. How dare you own a car despite the fact there's
weather, you cretinous serf! Speaking at the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Davos 2024
conference, António Guterres condescendingly lectured about his favorite topic (when he's not
supporting Palestinian jihadis against Israel): the alleged crisis of climate change.
Because climate alarmists have only been dead wrong for 50+ years, so we know they're right
this time. "2023 went down as the hottest year on record," Guterres lied. "But it could be
one of the coolest years [of] the future." From there he started to bash fossil fuels. "The
media has recently reported that U.S. fossil fuel industry has launched yet another multi-million
dollar campaign to kneecap progress and keep the oil and gas flowing indefinitely," Guterres
gloomily noted. "Let me be very clear again. The phase-out of fossil fuels is essential
and inevitable. No amount of... scare tactics will change that. Let's hope it doesn't
come too late."
2024
Promises the Expansion of the Green Energy Scam. In 2011, Angela Merkel announced
that Germany would shut down all 17 of its nuclear reactors. Last year, the last three were
shuttered. In 1990 Germany generated 25% of its electricity from nuclear; now it's finally
zero. And it shows. While harassing citizens to conserve energy, Germany has gone from
a net exporter of energy to a net importer. In addition, in 2010, German GDP growth was ahead
of every single nation in the EU and double the average. By 2022, it was half the EU average
and, over the next six years, it's predicted to be dead last in the EU and behind only Belarus and
war torn Russia and Ukraine on the continent. This is all in pursuit of the goal of cutting
CO2 emissions 65% below the 1990 level by 2030.
Dictatorial
Control, From Covid to Climate. Team Biden's endless torrent of dictatorial executive
orders, regulatory mandates, and twisted legal reinterpretations for electricity generation,
vehicles, appliances, agriculture, housing, and other matters are already impacting our industries,
livelihoods, living standards, and basic rights and freedoms. These diktats are designed to
force us to convert everything we now operate with coal, gasoline, diesel or natural gas to
electric models. The United States will soon need 3 [to] 4 times more electricity than
today — and still more to power the AI revolution. But the same bureaucrats are
shutting down coal, gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric generators — ensuring that
electricity will be in short supply, generated primarily by weather-dependent wind turbines and
solar panels, backed up by massive grid-scale battery systems, and thus unavailable or unaffordable
during the coldest and hottest days, when electric heat or air conditioning becomes a matter of
life or death.
Are
'green' agendas carrying governors to political cliffs? Calling climate change "a
socialist lie," self-described libertarian Javier Milei surprised some Argentinians by beating the
incumbent president substantially, "fueling concerns that South America's second-largest economy
will backtrack on climate promises." However, Argentinians' concerns about raging inflation and
economic stagnation trumped climate change. In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom won
parliamentary elections, replacing a government that sought to kill off large segments of Dutch
agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The winning party's manifesto declares, "We
have been made to fear climate change for decades. ... We must stop being afraid." In addition
to political fallout, economic troubles in green energy abound. Ford and General Motors have
cut investments into poorly selling electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Siemens Energy, a wind
turbine manufacturer, reports multibillion dollar losses. Green projects are regularly
falling by the wayside.
There's
no justification for green energy subsidies and mandates. If renewable energy,
efficiency improvements, and net zero targets really made companies more productive and profitable,
then we wouldn't need subsidies or mandates. Companies would implement these climate-friendly
practices of their own accord to increase their profits. But if renewable energy and other
climate-friendly practices do not improve companies' productivity and profitability, then they are
costly burdens undertaken for external global benefits. But even in this case, subsidies and
mandates are destructive and wasteful ways of getting companies to adopt costly climate mitigation
technologies and practices.
Electricity
Prices Are Soaring: It's Time to Hold the "Energy Transition" Accountable.
Electricity prices in the United States are skyrocketing, with all-sectors electricity rates
reaching new all-time highs in 2022 and 2023, but wind and solar advocates like to pretend that
these energy sources are not responsible for the rising electricity costs paid by American families
and businesses. However, recent reports from Regulatory Research Associates (RRA), a division
of S&P Global Commodity Insights, evaluating requests from electric companies to raise their prices
(known as rate cases) clearly show that rising electricity prices are largely being driven by
spending billions of dollars on wind turbines, solar panels, natural gas plants, and new
transmission lines in pursuit of the so-called "energy transition." Our deeper-dive into the
eight-largest rate increase requests, as identified by RRA, reaffirms these findings by quoting
directly from rate cases filed with state regulators, debunking the idea that wind and solar aren't
causing electricity rates to rise, once and for all.
Green
Energy Waste Overlooked In Climate Agenda. The amount of waste piling up from solar
panels and wind turbine blades can be measured in tons. And the industry is just getting
started. Almost all spent solar panels in the United States end up in landfills, and many
first- and second-generation panels are already tapping out, well ahead of their anticipated
30-year lifespan. Added to that will be an estimated 9.8 million metric tons of dead
panels to deal with between 2030 and 2060, according to a study published in Science Direct.
Tossing a solar panel into a U.S. landfill currently costs about $1, maybe $2. To recycle that
same panel, the cost balloons to $20 to $30, according to an estimate reported by PV
Magazine. Wind turbine parts present a similar challenge, with thousands of blades having
already found their way into dumps and fields in Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Iowa.
Africans
Might 'Know It's Christmas' If They Weren't Slaves To 'Green' Energy. With the
Christmas season ending and radio stations returning to their regular selection of music, one song
I most certainly will not miss is that painful British tune "Do They Know It's Christmas." Written
nearly 40 years ago by a group of British musicians to raise money for victims of Ethiopia's
famine, the song is best remembered as the leading prompt for millions worldwide to change the
station — a truly terrible, annoying, sanctimonious song despite its noble intentions
and purported support for a worthy cause. Resulting mostly from the tribal chaos of the
country's decade-long civil war, the Ethiopian famine affected roughly 8 million people.
What saved the nation was fossil fuels. Yes, the generosity of Western nations helped.
America alone donated nearly 800,000 metric tons of food worth over $400 million in 1984. Our
surplus yields resulted from better farm equipment, irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides.
Electricity
[is] Becoming Less Reliable. "Electrify everything." That is one of the many
unrealistic goals of the Climate Panic fanatics. Get rid of those ICE cars, your gas stoves,
natural gas furnaces, coal and gas plants, and anything else that relies on fossil fuels.
Renewable energy will replace it all. Just wait and see. [Tweet] Not so fast, says the
North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). There is a serious problem with this idea:
our electricity generation capacity and grid cannot carry the load, and the result will be a dramatic
decrease in the reliability of electricity. Everything will rely on electricity, and electricity
production and delivery won't be able to meet the demand.
Coming
Soon: Planned Electricity Shortage, Widespread Blackouts. NERC is a nonprofit
organization that oversees the reliability and security of the North American bulk power
system. It uses a results-based approach. After conducting their ten-year assessment,
NERC sent a grim warning of our energy future. We face a serious electricity shortage
beginning in the next few years that will exist for years to come. This isn't news. It
has been clear for some time that the elimination of fossil fuels before there is an adequate power
supply to take its place will endanger the safety and security of Americans. It is also
obvious that this has been engineered to happen this way. The people planning a lack of
supply ahead of replacement electricity sources are smart. They know what they're
doing. Their policies will destroy our national security and will endanger the lives of our
people. It will seriously damage our wealth as a nation.
Telegraph
Column: Without Fossil Fuels 'Six Billion People Would Die Within a Year'. A
British businessman recently pointed out an obvious truth that climate change activists do not want
to hear: There are no readily available replacements for the replacements for the resources
that feed the earth. Former Visiting Fellow at Oxford's Nuffield College Neil Record took the
leftist environmentalist group Just Stop Oil up on their signature proposition and examined how the
world would fare without fossil fuels in a Dec. 19 column for The Telegraph. The
"nightmarish scenario" Record envisions demonstrates just how much humanity depends on coal, oil
and gas for a wide variety of basic needs. Record made his disturbing conclusion early on:
"But what would happen if we literally just stopped oil tomorrow and did without the natural
resources on which the world, its economies and populations depend? The answer: most likely
six billion people would die within a year."
Duke
Energy Removes Chinese Batteries From Marine Base Amid Lawmakers' Security Concerns.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and more than two dozen other Republican lawmakers sent a letter
to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this month, demanding the removal of a Duke
Energy-supplied Chinese battery installation at the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, North
Carolina, and demanding an investigation into whether similar installations have been placed on
other bases. The batteries, which were removed, were manufactured by a Chinese Communist
Party-supported company, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world's largest
battery manufacturer. Duke Energy won the $22 million contract to construct Camp
Lejeune's microgrid, complete with five megawatts of natural gas and an 11-megawatt battery storage
system. The installation integrated the base's existing solar array with the abilities to
start up without an external power source, to receive prompt updates on the power needs of the
base, and to remove itself from the region's power grid if necessary.
Secession
Without Secession. We don't have to live like this. We don't have to suffer,
because those in Washington want us to. They don't offer anything like what they take and
they're getting much more tyrannical with their demands. One is their push to go electric,
which means that we're actually being told we have to starve to death and freeze to death.
Electricity is, especially now, the least reliable resource we have. The whole grid can go
down in a second and never come back. But they want to take away our small generators.
Why? Because it means we might survive a grid-down environment and they don't want that to
happen. They want us to use things like wind generators and solar panels that are more
unreliable than coal, gas or nuclear powered electric generation and in a few years, the wind
generators will fail and we won't be able to repair them, because our industrial base and
transportation base will have been destroyed from lack of reliable electric generation.
Computers can't work in that environment, industry can't work in that environment, even small
business can't work, trucking can't rely on electric vehicles, that's all nonsense.
Boom
Boom: Out Go the Lights! Ruling like the dictator whom he says Donald Trump
aspires to be, President Joe Biden has decreed restrictions, if not prohibitions, on gas stoves,
gas furnaces, gasoline-powered cars and trucks, and other products. Congress has passed no
such laws for Biden to sign. Instead, he has acted unilaterally, as despots do. [...]
Biden's "Climate!" guru, John Kerry, attended the just-concluded COP28 global-warming hoe-down in
Dubai. Some of its 80,000 participants got delayed en route, as their private jets bogged
down as 17 inches of snow closed Munich's airport. Kerry soldiered forth and soon
declared that "There shouldn't be any more coal power plants permitted anywhere in the world."
He added: "I do not understand how adults who are in a position of responsibility can be avoiding
responsibility for taking away those things that are killing people on a daily basis." When coal
took a break from its homicides du jour, it also yielded 19.7% of U.S. electricity in 2022,
according to Biden's own Energy Information Administration. Biden's Environmental Protection
Agency unveiled edicts on Dec. 2 that would clamp down on methane emissions from new and
existing oil and gas wells. Methane and natural gas are essentially interchangeable.
So, this bid to reduce 58 million tons of methane through 2038 is a barely disguised billy
club to beat down the natural gas industry. Never mind that, last year, 39.9% of U.S.
electricity came from natural gas.
The
Black Lie at the Heart of Net Zero Energy Fantasies. The black lie at the heart of
Net Zero energy fantasies is that there are workable back-ups for intermittent wind and
solar. Apart from oil and gas, there are none. Once politicians remove them from the
mix — if elected, the British Labour party plans this in barely
60 months — the old and the infirm will shiver and die when a windless electricity
grid produces negligible amounts of crucial power. Exaggeration? Not really. [...]
There can be no excuse for what Lord Frost describes as "high status" opinions on Net Zero.
The lack of 'green' back-up for intermittent power is becoming obvious to all but the most
blinkered and boneheaded. But a wilful refusal to confront the issue is the current default
'settled' position. If the grid collapses in a few years' time, the politicians and all their
trusted messengers in the media will have a great deal of explaining to do. As the frozen
bodies pile up, their trite, pseudoscientific, 'saving the planet' political slogans will be found
somewhat wanting. The idea that we can power most of our energy from the wind and the sun has
been kept afloat by the promise of massive battery storage. There can be no further excuse
for peddling this delusion.
Blue
States Are Stripping Rural Counties Of Ability To Prevent Green Energy Takeover Of Their
Communities. Several blue states have deprived rural counties of the ability to
reject the massive green energy projects that corporations want to site in their communities, while
green industrial interests and environmentalist groups have poured money into state capitals.
Michigan, California, New York and Illinois have all passed legislation that consolidates authority
over land use issues and rules with state-level bureaucrats at the expense of local governments
that could have altered their own zoning codes to stem the tide of industrial green projects like
solar and wind farms. These policies deprive rural residents in these states of their freedom
and local autonomy, while also benefiting the corporate interests that line the pockets of the
states' Democratic governors, state policy experts and lawmakers told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
From
Now To 2100 Emission Reduction Policy Costs Greatly Exceed Any Net Benefit From Averted
Warming. A new comprehensive analysis (Tol, 2023) weighs the cost-benefit of meeting
Paris Accord emission policy targets to keep global warming in check, or under 2°C. The
analysis reveals that even in the best case scenarios (that assume emission reduction policies
fully meet their avoided-warming targets), as well as in the worst case scenarios (that assume
"constant vulnerability" to global-warming-induced climate disasters and widespread economic
austerity), the tens of trillions of USD costs associated with moving away from fossil fuel
consumption to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 (4.8% of GDP) still outweigh the net benefit losses
(3.0% of GDP) in 2100.
Climate
Advocacy: Incompetence Or Intentional Fraud? From euronews.green we have a
piece from November 12 with the headline "Powered by wind and water: The Canary Island
proving it is possible to run on renewables." The byline is Lauren Crosby Mendicott.
Ms. Mendicott announces the exciting news that one of Spain's Canary Islands, El Hierro, has
recently reported that it ran its electricity system entirely on wind and water power for 28
consecutive days. [...] And yet, despite having such a rare near-perfect site for a large pumped
hydro storage facility, the El Hierro system does not have nearly the energy storage needed to
provide full-time electricity from the wind/storage system. It would need to multiply its
storage capacity by at least an order of magnitude to come close to 100% electricity from this
system. Meanwhile, most of its electricity comes from a backup diesel generator —
a fact nowhere mentioned in Ms. Mendicott's piece. So, is the piece mere incompetence,
or intentional fraud? Several factors would seem to give strong support to the inference of
intentional fraud — failure to mention the diesel backup at all; failure to mention the
number of hours in each recent year where the diesel backup had to be called into activity to keep
the lights on, and whether that number of hours was trending up or down; [...]
Can't
We Phase Out Climate Change Instead? It is time to phase out the climate
crisis. Tone it down. Make it believable. Listen to, don't cancel, scientists who
want to present another side of the debate. The constant barrage of climate alarmism causes
fatigue in public opinion. The dire predictions, "hockey stick" graphs, and "population bomb"
datelines that fail to deliver an apocalypse rightly cause great skepticism. Blaming every
freak weather storm, natural disaster, or even sociopolitical crisis on climate change destroys the
credibility of "the science" that should seek empirical evidence, not political agendas. A
phase-out or even a gradual phase-down of the eco-rhetoric and its accompanying climate summits
would be a welcome relief for a public tired of being told inconvenient untruths.
While
WH Admits We Still Need Oil & Gas, UK Says You Can Stop Breathing Now. Another fly in
the ointment of the Greens is the fact that developing nations are finding their own voices, and
are using them to protest being kept in developmental poverty by the whims and eco-fascists of
richer, fossil-fuel driven societies. Let there be no transition away, the message from
Africa says, until we have transitioned ourselves into what we have the right to become with our
own resources. Your kumbayahs and solar cells won't drive a tractor. [Tweet] Even John
Kerry has to fly home eventually. And then reality intrudes. In the afterglow of the
Dubai conference, the White House was forced to admit, well, yeah — whatever we signed
at the party, we still need oil and gas because we're just not ramped up with all the cool stuff yet.
U.N.
Climate-Summit Nations Agree to 'Transition Away from Fossil Fuels,' Triple Green-Energy Infrastructure
by 2030. For the first time in the nearly 30-year history of the United Nations summit on
climate change, all nations gathered unanimously agreed to a resolution that called for "transitioning
away from fossil fuels" and committed member states to tripling existing green-energy infrastructure by
2030. The nearly 200 member countries gathered at the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai agreed to
transition away from fossil fuels "in a just, orderly and equitable manner" before entirely eliminating
carbon emissions by 2050. While previous U.N. climate agreements committed member states to work toward
slowing global warming, the deal announced Wednesday was the first to include an explicit commitment to
do away with "fossil fuels." As part of an effort to stop global temperatures from rising
another 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next decade, member states agreed to triple their existing green
energy infrastructure, including solar panels and wind turbines, by 2030.
Newsom's
California Is Showing Us What The Green Energy Transition Looks Like — And It Isn't
Pretty. California has long pushed the envelope when it comes to environmental
regulation, whether in land-use, emissions, harmful substance disclosures, renewable energy
requirements and more. The state offers a preview of where the climate agenda will take
us. Earlier this year the California legislature passed, and Governor Newsom signed, laws
requiring new emissions reporting requirements for businesses with sales of over $1 billion
operating in the state. These onerous reporting requirements add to the dozens of other
costly environmental regulations such as banning the sale of vehicles with internal combustion
engines and requiring solar panels on all new houses. But these regulations make California a
worse place to live, especially for the poor. They are not costless and the bill is coming
due. These environmental regulations make everything more expensive, from housing to
electricity to food to transportation.
The
Totalitarian Three-Step. More and more scientists are finding the nerve to speak out
against the climate hoax, but they're decades behind the climate-industrial complex that is making
trillions of dollars from "green" energy like solar and wind farms.
But it's becoming clear even to the environmentalist Kool-Aid drinkers that those "renewables"
won't come close to replacing the cheap and reliable fossil fuels that drive the world's
economy. Eliminating meat and dairy and crippling agriculture will result in the mass
starvation of millions of people. Again, who would want those results? Only the
globalist elites at the UN, the World Economic Forum, the Club of Rome, et al — many of
whom are U.S. politicians, industrial magnates and Big Tech oligarchs — whose globalist
fantasies are based on Malthusian ideas of "sustainable" levels of world population being limited
to one billion people. They know that only a world government with unrestricted power can
achieve what they call the "peaceful elimination" of over 7 billion people, so they see Agenda
2030, the WEF's Great Reset, et al, as the paths to achieve that global power and control.
Those globalists use their three-step process in every area of life to bring about the ruination of
the U.S. and the western democracies that are the major barriers to their dreams. That's the
true goal behind all their supposed "solutions."
Saying
The Quiet Part About This Utopian Green Energy Transition Out Loud. One of the
ongoing tensions embedded throughout the years of efforts by mainly Western governments to
subsidize their desired energy transition into existence has been the tension between these desires
of the ruling class versus the demands of the global energy market. Past efforts by
governments in the West or any other part of the world to intercede in energy markets to produce
desired outcomes have pretty much always resulted in epic failures and energy crises, and the
prospects for this current multi-trillion-dollar charade do not appear to be shaping up
any differently.
Most
Deserving Of A Lump Of Coal. We're fully aware of the drawbacks of burning coal to
produce energy. It's far from a perfect energy source. But unlike solar and wind, which
for the climatistas are effectively the only acceptable alternatives to coal and natural gas, it is
1) economical, and it 2) produces energy when it's dark, when it's cloudy, and when the wind isn't
blowing, both of which are necessary components of prosperity. These are important points
either lost on, or ignored by, climate activists, who are willing, and in many cases eager, to curb
prosperity and condemn the West to a pre-modern existence.
The
Green Energy Wall Gradually Coming Into Focus. A couple of years ago I began writing
about the the upcoming "Renewable Energy Wall," for example in this piece from December 2021 titled
"Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall?" I called
for readers to place their bets as to which among various jurisdictions would be the first to
recognize that it could never achieve the net zero goal. But what would be the aspects of
reality that would put an end to further renewable development? Would it be the soaring
costs? Or perhaps the spreading blackouts? Or maybe the voters wising up? Or
maybe other things that nobody had yet guessed? Over the past few weeks and months, several
parts of the coming Green Energy Wall have started to come into focus. The two factors that
are emerging most significantly at this early stage are (1) voters starting to catch on,
and (2) the inability of wind and solar developers to deliver projects at costs that are at
all workable for consumers.
Another
Critical Thinker Reaches the Obvious Conclusion: Intermittant Renewables Cannot Work on their
Own. Let me welcome to the small and elite club of critical thinkers on the supposed
energy transition a guy named Balázs Fekete. Fekete, with several co-authors, has
recently (September 18) succeeded in getting an article published in a journal called Frontiers
of Environmental Science, with the title "Storage requirements to mitigate intermittent renewable
energy sources: analysis for the US Northeast." Fekete then followed up by publishing on
November 14 at Judith Curry's Climate, Etc. blog a lengthy post summarizing the article,
titled "Net-Zero Targets: Sustainable Future or CO2 Obsession Driven Dead-end?" As with
the previous competent analyses of energy storage requirements needed to back up intermittent
renewable generation that have been featured on this blog and in my energy storage Report, there is
nothing complicated about the Fekete, et al., analysis. The authors call it "a
modified surplus/deficit calculation [as] taught to water engineers to size reservoirs for meeting
water demand when the water resources vary." When there is surplus production you add it
to storage, and when there is a deficit you subtract; and then you sum over a year (or two, or ten)
to calculate how much storage you need. It's all basic arithmetic. What could be simpler?
You will not be surprised that the conclusion is "CO2 obsession driven dead-end."
It's
time to scrap Net Zero. The cost of decarbonisation is rising all the time. The
Treasury will lose huge amounts of revenue from fuel duties when we are all whizzing around in
electric cars. And rising interest rates mean governments can no longer pay for everything
with cheap debt. Still, never mind. The OECD has a clever wheeze for meeting the cost
of Net Zero: scrapping the triple lock on pensions. We'd be better off scrapping Net Zero
instead — and giving our pensioners the lockdown thank-you they deserve. The
Paris-based grouping of the world's leading economies has been taking a close look at Britain's
public finances, and it makes for dismal reading. With low growth, an aging population, and
lots of expensive commitments, it has come to a stark conclusion. The numbers don't
add up. Taxes have already been pushed to the limit, there is little sign of extra
growth, and existing plans for reducing carbon emissions imply both extra spending and lower
revenue, and all at a time when the costs of existing debt and fresh borrowing are soaring.
No
Amount Of Subsidies Will Ever Make A Wind/Solar Electricity System Economically
Feasible. Let's consider the latest from Germany. According to Statista here,
Germany consumed 511.59 TWh of electricity in 2021 (latest year given, although the numbers have
recently changed very little from year to year). Divide by 8760 (number of hours in a year) and you
learn that Germany's average usage of electricity is 58.3 GW. So, can you just build 58.3 GW of
wind and solar generators to supply Germany with electricity? Absolutely not. In fact,
Germany already has way more wind and solar electricity generation capacity than the 58.3 GW, but
can't come anywhere near getting all its electricity from those sources. As of June 2023
Germany had 59.3 GW of generation capacity from wind turbines alone, and (as of end 2022) another
67.4 GW of generation capacity from solar panels. The total of the two is 126.7 GW —
which would supply more than double Germany's usage at noon on a sunny and breezy
June 21. But, according to Clean Energy Wire here, through the first three quarters of 2023, the
percent of its electricity that Germany got from wind and solar was only 52%. Capacity seemingly
sufficient to supply double the usage in fact only supplies half. That's because the supply
does not come at the same time as the demand, and the wind/solar generation system provides no
mechanism to shift the supply to a time to meet the demand.
As
'Green Energy' Fails, a New 'Emergency' Arises. The U.S. is fast catching up with
Germany in the sweepstakes for the most green-mad nation, as Biden's direct subsidies, loan
guarantees, tax favors, and green mandates likely exceed $1 trillion in total cost this
decade. But already it is running into trouble. One of his largest green slush funds is
having trouble spending all the billions, and the projects it has funded are likely to yield the
same results as Biden's favorite green energy project under the Obama Administration's previous
slush fund: Solyndra. Car buyers aren't rushing to embrace electric vehicles (that are
slated to be mandatory for everyone in a decade), car makers are cutting EV production and
canceling planned battery manufacturing plants. Offshore solar wind power projects are being
abandoned, and onshore wind projects are facing mounting opposition from the public. Fanciful
claims that renewable energy is cheaper than conventional energy are belied by soaring utility
rates in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Canadian
Green Electricity Push Blocked by Alberta. Alberta has invoked the Sovereignty Act to
set limits on the exercise of federal power. But the federal government claims there is no
legal basis for their actions. [...] Alberta is lucky to have a straight speaking premier like
Danielle Smith. [Video clip]
Arab
oil sheikhs make bank at UN's COP28 greenie global warming conference. In the age of
'green growth' and 'save the planet' what's an Arab oil sheikh's best friend for petroleum product
deals? Try a virtue-signalling global greenie gathering. [...] Green energy is so wasteful
it typically requires extra backup to ensure a reliable supply of power and that's where the oil
sheikhs can be helpful. Natural gas is useful, too, as it's critically needed to fuel all the
electric-car charging stations of the new green economies emerging. Fact is, the greenie
world is full of such hypocrisies, and this deal cutting isn't the only stuff going on. There
are the Solyndras, with their vast waste of taxpayer dollars, there is the fake science on global
warming that is constantly getting exposed as fraudulent and there are the plumes and clouds of
carbon emissions that come of just jetting into these summits on private jets by these
elites. What a scam the greenie agenda is. This deal cutting by Big Oil is just the
latest of it.
Biden's
Clean Energy Scam Fund. Buried in all the trillions of dollars of Biden's stimulus
bills is a reboot of the Obama-era fund that poured billions into failed Green Tech companies that
left Obama cronies infinitely richer and the rest of us substantially poorer. You remember,
right? In Obama's stimulus package, $80 billion was set aside to squander on people who
could talk a good game about transforming energy, and who just happened to be politically
connected. It was a nice scam for them, infuriated people like you and me, and provided some
minor dark humor to people who are so cynical that they just expect everything that happens in
government to be a scam. Out of this, we got Solyndra, Fisker Automotive, A123 battery, and
a lot of companies that never became household names, but left a lot of scammers
wealthy. Well, Biden is good at one and only one thing: being corrupt, he took Obama's
$80 billion and quintupled the size of the "loan" fund to a massive $400 billion, and
according to [Kimberly] Strassel the loan fund is indeed a well-oiled machine for distributing
taxpayer cash to politically-connected friends of the president's team.
Rush
of the Net Zero lemmings. Australia's ALP/Green government and their media mates are
using subsidies, taxes, and propaganda in a suicidal attempt to move the whole country to 82%
"renewable" energy by 2030 and "Net Zero Emissions by 2050." Canny Aussies are buying diesel
generators. [...] [The government has] a fanciful plan to replace our gas and diesel cars, trucks,
dozers, and tractors with fleets of yet-to-be-built battery- or hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Where are the fast-refueling stations for them all? And who has counted the extra emissions
to mine and refine the metals for batteries, electric motors, turbines, and power lines? And
where will we get the extra electricity for overnight recharging of battery-powered vehicles as
coal generators close, the sun sets, and the wind drops? (They have discovered the answer in
ever-green California: electric-powered trucks are being recharged with diesel generators.)
Energy
Subsidies: [I]f renewable energy is supposedly cheap, why does it take such huge
subsidies to produce it? We are in the midst of a crisis of cost of supposedly renewable
energy. Projects are being abandoned or not even started, as companies demand even higher
subsidies and electricity rates. Renewable energy is phenomenally expensive, even before grid
and storage costs are taken into account. Consumers and taxpayers are being burdened with an
unnecessary expense for no good reason other than whacked climate hysteria.
They
Razed Paradise And Put Up A Solar Farm. We've been told with clockwork regularity
that in order to prevent a baked planet, we have to generate our electricity through renewable
sources, primarily wind and solar. Set aside for now the legitimate questions about the
reliability and cost of both and consider this: Do we even have enough room for the equipment
necessary to produce enough power to meet the demand? Both wind and solar power are voracious
land hogs. Wind or solar can need 90 to 100 times more acreage than a natural gas plant to
generate the same amount of electricity. And let's not forget the large swaths of land that
will have to be appropriated, and in heavily forested areas clear cut, to build transmission lines
that connect solar and wind farms to distribution lines. Yes, there is a lot of open land in
this country on which to build wind and solar projects. But don't think the NIMBYs are going
to let the renewables sites just roll over without not just a fight but a war.
Green
Bloodbath: Major Industries Closing Down As German Energy Prices Soar. Firstly
Blackout News reports how Germany's electricity price is three time higher than it is in USA: [...]
There are no optimistic economic signals in sight. Energy prices, inflation and catastrophic
economic policies are rapidly sinking the German economic battleship and prosperity.
British
steelmaking won't survive Net Zero. Lo and behold, the real cost of Net Zero.
Last weekend, roughly 400 workers from the steelworks in Port Talbot, Wales marched in protest
against the prospect of up to 3,000 redundancies. Earlier this year, Tata Steel, the Indian
owner of the Port Talbot factory, struck a deal with the UK government — it would
receive £500million for switching to 'greener' methods of steel production. And that
means redundancies. Port Talbot's two low-productivity, high-CO2 emissions blast furnaces are
to be switched for a high-productivity, low-CO2 electric arc furnace (EAF). With this transition,
3,000 of the plant's 4,000 jobs may become obsolete. The picture is similar over at Tata's
rival, British Steel. The Chinese-owned British Steel has begged for £600million of
government support to replace its two blast furnaces at Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire with EAFs.
British Steel, which is currently haemorrhaging around £30million a month, will shed perhaps
2,000 of the 3,200 jobs at Scunthorpe. Both Tata and British Steel have justified their
redundancies in terms of reaching Net Zero by 2050. And while it's true that the Port Talbot plant
is the UK's biggest single carbon emitter, this needs to be put into perspective. Replacing
the blast furnaces in Port Talbot would cut UK carbon emissions by just 1.5 percent. Given
that Britain emits just one per cent of global CO2 each year, an EAF at Port Talbot would reduce
the world's CO2 quotient by a grand total of 0.01 percent.
The
curious schemes to minimise the emission of certain atmospheric gases by restructuring our energy
supply and thereby our entire civilisation. As the insanity of the pandemic era
recedes, I find myself writing more and more about climate politics. [...] Climatism attracts my
interest above all for its many, many parallels with pandemicism. Both are internationally
directed political programmes deeply rooted in professional academic research and scientific
institutions. They depend on an extensive network of NGOs, think tanks and philanthropic
enterprises, which feed prewritten interventions to the political arm. They are both
fundamentally technocratic projects, seeking to leverage a mythologised Science to silence
dissenting views and to marginalise popular sentiment, and they both depend on highly complex
models to justify their irrational restrictions. Both also use apocalyptic fears as a means
of corralling public opinion and coordinating the vast managerial state apparatus. There is
also one very crucial difference: Pandemicism addresses itself to epidemiological phenomena
that work on a timescale from weeks to years, while climatism concerns itself with epochal trends
that will unfold (or not) on the scale of generations and centuries.
Do
You Want Electrical Vehicles And Solar Panels Made By Child Slaves And Forced Laborers?
The next time Joe Biden or any politician pushes electrical vehicles or solar panels, ask them where
they stand on slavery because the elements that run electrical vehicle batteries and the minerals that
go into the creation of solar panels could be made off the sweat and tears of slave laborers as young
as six years of age. Everyone in the climate change world and anti-human trafficking arena knows
this but the climate changers may be banking on the average person not knowing this. When state
legislators claim they are working for clean energy, it is best to ask how they are going to achieve
that and how are they going to prevent an increase in slavery to achieve their clean energy goals.
Michigan is shooting to reach 100% clean energy by 2040, but now, Michigan House Republicans are
proposing to stop the funding of any projects that involves child slaves and forced laborers mining
for the minerals to assemble the solar panels and electrical vehicles battery parts.
Net
Zero Is A "Suicide Pact". There are many existential threats today but human-induced
climate change is not one of them, in spite of what Western leaders and the mainstream media keep
telling us. Members of the scientific community are still struggling to fully understand the
scientific complexities of CO2-induced climate change (Assumption #1). However, the second
assumption offers a simpler approach to obtain compelling evidence discrediting the net-zero
agenda. This approach involves an awareness of the planet's inventory of carbon in fossil
fuels (coal, oil, & natural gas) and an understanding of the mechanisms by which oceans store most
of the planet's bio-available CO2. Such an understanding reveals that our emissions have an
insignificant impact on the total CO2 content of the atmosphere. Accordingly, our carbon
emissions will not cause a climate crisis.
Green
Dreams Going Up In Smoke. "Green" energy companies and electric vehicle manufacturers
rely on governments to force consumers to buy their products, like it or not. But there is a
limit to how much of a decline in their standard of living voters are willing to accept for the
sake of "green" mythology. Blackouts have already begun (not to mention skyrocketing
electricity prices), and as blackouts become more widespread, voters are going to punish the
politicians who lied to them about "green" energy. Let's hope that happens before tens of
billions more dollars are poured into the coffers of the cynical "green" industries.
The
Wind is Always Blowing Somewhere Fallacy. I have followed the Climate Act since it
was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan, and have written
over 350 articles about New York's net-zero transition. I have devoted a lot of time to the
Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate
Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm
than good by increasing costs unacceptably, threatening electric system reliability, and causing
significant unintended environmental impacts. [...] The Climate Act established a New York "Net
Zero" target (85% reduction and 15% offset of emissions) by 2050. It includes an interim 2030
reduction target of a 40% reduction by 2030 and a requirement that all electricity generated be
"zero-emissions" by 2040. The Climate Action Council is responsible for preparing the Scoping Plan
that outlines how to "achieve the State's bold clean energy and climate agenda." In brief, that
plan is to electrify everything possible using zero-emissions electricity.
National
Grid to spend up to £19 [billion] to 'rewire' Britain for net zero. National Grid
is to spend up to £19 [billion] on new pylons and transmission systems across the countryside as
it "rewires the nation" for the net zero era, the company has said. John Pettigrew, National
Grid's chief executive, said the money would be spent upgrading and expanding the UK's creaking
power transmission system to ensure it is ready for the surge in demand as the country shifts to
net zero. National Grid predicts its wires will carry up to 80 [percent] of the total
energy used by UK households by 2050, compared with just 20 [perent] now. The huge increase
will come as gas for heating homes and petrol or diesel for transport will be almost entirely replaced
by electricity. Networks of new cables are needed to power the heat pumps destined to replace
Britain's 25 million domestic gas boilers and the electric vehicles that will replace the
32 million petrol and diesel vehicles on Britain's roads. National Grid plans to spend
£3 [billion] on infrastructure by 2026 and will spend billions more as its programme of investment
accelerates in the years up to 2050.
The Editor says...
Without the combustion of hydrocarbons, and in a country that abhors nuclear energy, where is all that
electricity going to come from? Plan for that first. The only way to live in a
world without carbon dioxide emissions is to live in a world without people. But only
if is is also a world without animals, volcanos, oceans, termites, decaying vegetation, etc.
So,
How's That 'Historic Investment In Clean Energy' Paying Off? Anyone following the
news might be confused by recent talk of offshore wind projects in trouble, automakers pulling back
on EV production, and now multi-billion-dollar bailouts for the green-energy industry. How
could that be, since President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats rammed through $370 billion in
"clean" energy subsidies a little more than a year ago? When Biden signed the criminally
misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" in August 2022, he boasted that it was "the most aggressive
action ever — ever, ever, ever — in confronting the climate crisis and
strengthening our economic — our energy security." So-called green-energy
companies, not surprisingly, were ecstatic. "Americans can now rest assured that our leaders
have acted to lower costs, strengthen American energy independence, and create hundreds of
thousands of well-paid jobs, all while combatting the damaging impacts of climate change," George
Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, a solar developer, said at the time.
A
horror story for climate zealots. Jack London wrote one of the most unsettling and
frightening stories ever told. It's called "To Build a Fire." It's a half-hour read, and
it doesn't have ghosts, werewolves, or possessed dolls. "To Build a Fire" is a horror story where
the only thing that is going wrong is the subject of the story's lack of imagination. He is a
man who has forgotten how to be afraid of the cold. He doesn't imagine just how many degrees
of frost he is facing. Everything he does is a mistake. Every time he tries to make
things better, they get worse. And it all was 100% preventable. [...] It's a lot like the
illusion climate zealots have that getting rid of carbon somehow means that they get to keep
civilization. They don't get to keep it if they get what they want. If wind and solar
were enough to power industrial civilization, the Dutch would have had our civilization back in the
1500s. Zero carbon means zero industrial civilization. It means 7 billion people starve
to death. It means we have forgotten to fear the cold.
Carbon
Dioxide: Vital Plant Food. [Scroll down] It is bad enough that many
of these programs have been built on a false foundation. In truth, many of them have not been
really beneficial. Large solar farms are built in the desert, but in just a few years, the
projects have failed. Wind turbines wear out, catch fire, and break down totally. They
presently cannot be recycled and must be buried. The only parts that can be recycled are in
the generator. One city bought several electric buses but in just a short time quit using
them as impractical. Electric vehicles may be practical to drive from home to office and back
again, but they are not practical on long trips. It is necessary to stop every few hours and
charge the batteries, and sometimes it is difficult to find a proper charging station. Those
who have lived near the coast have seen their cars flooded with sea water, then their cars caught
fire as their batteries shorted out. Not only that, but the driving range is radically
reduced when driving in summer (air-conditioning) or winter (heater).
Consequences
of American Communism. In typical communist fashion, the federal government's
intervention into private-sector businesses by mandates for solar and wind energy along with
industrial mandates to build a pre-determined amount of electric vehicles (EV) are bringing those
industries to the brink of ruin. Ford has lost billions trying to comply. The grid
cannot provide enough power to run the country as it is and demanding that solar and wind make up
for the shortfall is utter stupidity. No one wants to buy the EVs Biden declared as necessary
and many insurance companies are recognizing that they can't afford to insure them at any cost,
because they might spontaneously catch fire and/or explode or their $20,000 batteries might fail
after a minor fender-bender. Being forced to insure them might bring the auto insurance
industry to bankruptcy. How long before the federal government further demonstrates
communistic tendencies and mandates that people buy them, either through direct orders or by
outlawing gasoline-powered autos? All unconstitutional, all illegal, but we've seen what
weight that carries with an outlaw government.
Net
Zero's Dirty Secret: Child Labor in Congo's Mines. There are many dirty little
secrets of "net zero" goals, but perhaps the worst one is the massive child labor in Congo's
mines. Children are enslaved and overworked so that self-righteous leftists can drive
Teslas. The "climate crisis" is a total scam, as is "green energy," which is actually toxic
for the environment. The batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) are also very toxic to make and
dispose of. In fact, "Driving Electric" stated in 2020 that cobalt is necessary for all EV
and plug-in hybrid car batteries. "Around 60% of the world's cobalt comes from mines in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the metal is sometimes dug out by hand in unregulated
conditions, often by child labourers," the website admitted. According to "Ethical Consumer"
in 2022, the percentage is even higher: "70% of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic
Republic of Congo." Unfortunately, child labor is a massive problem in the Congo.
The
Great 'Green Energy Transition' That Wasn't. Energy expert Robert Bryce estimates
that Ford has lost $62,000 for each EV it has rolled off the assembly line. That's hardly a
road to profitability. Meanwhile, the news is even worse for wind and solar power. The
Wall Street Journal reported last week that "clean energy" investment funds are tanking, with some
down as much as 70% in recent months. Solar has been one of the worst-performing industry
stocks this year. This collapse is happening right when Exxon and Chevron have engineered a
combined $110 billion blockbuster acquisitions to expand oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin
in Texas, one of the biggest oil fields in the world. This year, they both reported their
largest profits ever.
California
increasingly shutting off wind, solar farms due to lack of power lines. California's
buildout of wind and solar farms is exceeding the ability of its grid to handle all the electricity
during periods of high production and low demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration
reported Monday that curtailments, which is when wind and solar farms are deliberately shut down,
increased to peak levels in 2023. The California Independent System Operator, which operates
the electricity grid for much of the state, has steadily curtailed the amount of electricity from
wind and solar farms that flows through its system. The decreases appear to be situational,
not a steady process, and are the result of the state not having enough power lines to carry all
the electricity produced by wind and solar farms, the EIA report stated.
The
public still isn't being told the full truth about net zero. When Theresa May ushered
in the legally binding 2050 deadline for net zero, she did so seemingly on a whim. Those were
the last days of her administration, and there was relatively little debate about how any of this
transition might be delivered. In her new autobiography, "The Abuse of Power", the former
prime minister says this was one of her crowning achievements in No. 10. And why not? The
deadline, at the time, was 31 years in the future. There was no trade-off to make —
not one she would have to deal with, anyway. The green revolution seemed to be characterised only
by promise: of cheaper energy, of greener jobs, and of a cleaner environment. It hasn't even
been five years, yet that blindly optimistic view of net-zero is already being challenged. Last
month's renewables auction — where no bids were put in to build new offshore wind —
gave pause not just to the wind industry, but to everyone invested in the net-zero transition.
Living
Off-Grid Has Shown Me That Modern Society Cannot Function on Renewable Energy. When
we moved to our farm on the coast in Victoria Australia over 20 years ago our mains power was
delivered by a single wire earth return (SWER) power line and we were the second to last house
connected to it. This was just after the misguided privatisation of the power grid delivered
this lifeline of civilised existence into the greedy hands of 'competing' power companies.
The previously state owned 'Gold Plated' system now had to turn a profit for investors so
preventative maintenance services were cut. We began to experience power outages, these were
usually brief but occurred at least weekly. They would sometimes extend for hours and more
than once for more than a day. With rainwater tanks and an electric pressure supply we
couldn't fill a kettle or flush a toilet. [...] It was a few years before we were fully
independent of mains power.
Aussie
Energy & Climate Minister: Don't Expect 3.4GW of New Renewables to Provide Grid
Stability. [Chris] Bowen is the minister who in February this year vehemently
rejected suggestions his renewable heavy policies might lead to blackouts. What a shame
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is so anti-nuclear. In June last year Bowen
explained people who think nuclear is better than renewable are "dangerously ignorant". Modern
zero carbon nuclear plants generally run like clockwork, delivering predictable, dispatchable
electricity 24×7, 365 days per year. 3.4 GW of reliable nuclear capacity
would have contributed significantly to Australia's grid stability this summer, and barring a transmission
line failure, would likely have all but eliminated the risk of a summer blackout. Instead we have
3.4 GW of additional useless renewables, which even the minister responsible admits can't be
relied upon to improve grid stability.
The myth of
affordable green energy is over. The pervasive narrative about offshore wind in
recent years has been that costs are falling and that wind power is cheap. But scratch below
the surface and you find that things are not quite so rosy. Turbine manufacturers have been
losing money hand over fist in recent years. Collectively over the past five years the top
four turbine producers outside China have lost almost US$7 billion — and over
US$5 billion in 2022 alone. Last year the chief executive of turbine-maker Vestas said
that the company lost eight per cent on every turbine sold. Some of these losses are down to
warranty issues — this means the turbines have not performed as expected requiring the
manufacturers to compensate windfarm developers and rectify problems. Privately this is
attributed to the pressure for ever larger windmills which are harder to get right. Insiders
now suggest that the growth in capacity per turbine has peaked, at least for the time being.
New
Government Investment in Electric Grids Is Not Enough. As part of President Biden's
Investing in America agenda, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Wednesday a $3.46 billion
investment for 58 projects across 44 states to strengthen electric grid resilience and reliability
across the country. [...] The investment in updating and improving the nation's power grid comes as
a newly released International Energy Agency (IEA) report claims that "clean" energy technologies
such as solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles are overwhelming the electric grid,
which is currently receiving little attention.
Europe
Notices That Its Power Grid Can't Keep Up Under Green Energy. In many parts of the
world, nations are noticing some of the growing pains associated with trying to do away with fossil
fuels and rely increasingly on "green energy" such as solar and wind power. We're seeing the
same effects in the United States. One of the main obstacles is the inability of aging power
grids to not only provide enough energy to keep the world moving but to accept the newer forms of
energy being provided. The International Energy Agency in Europe is sounding the alarm,
warning that rolling blackouts are once again becoming a very real risk if adjustments are not
made. And in the northern hemisphere, having this happen just as winter is approaching is
something of a worst-case scenario.
Blue
state delivers crippling blow to green energy development, jeopardizing Biden's climate
goals. New York's state government rejected requests from a group of offshore wind
energy developers who asked to renegotiate existing contracts amid rising prices and
inflation. The New York State Public Service Commission (NYSPSC), the state's main regulator
that oversees electric, gas and water utilities, issued the decision late last week, saying it
would "preserve the robust competitive bidding process that provides critically needed renewable
energy resources to New York." The energy developers had requested billions of dollars in
additional taxpayer funding for four proposed offshore wind projects and 86 onshore green energy
projects. "The requested amendments to the contracts would have provided adjustments outside
the competitive procurement process; such relief is fundamentally inconsistent with long-standing
Commission policy," Commission Chair Rory Christian said in a statement.
The
Net Zero Ship [is] Starting To Sink. Investors are ditching renewable energy faster
than any other funds on record. Reuters reports that renewable energy funds suffered a net
outflow of $1.4 billion in the July to September 2023 quarter. LSEG Lipper data shows this to
be the largest-ever quarterly outflow. There was also a 23 percent decline from the end of
June of the total assets under management in the sector — now valued at $65.4 billion.
The S&P Global Clean Energy Index is also down by 30 percent this year with most of the decline occurring
since July. This Index comprises major solar and wind power companies and other renewables-related
businesses. Yet in contrast, the S&P 500 Energy Index, which is oil and gas-heavy, has increased
slightly this year.
Accomplishing
Net-Zero Means Misery, Totalitarianism, and Miracle Technology. [A recent] article,
"The green energy net-zero plan will require a command economy," written by Michael Kelly, Emeritus
Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, drills down into the numbers involved-in
cost and in power generation — considering mass electrification of the United States, as
a case study. To reach net-zero, Kelly argues, transportation, industrial, and domestic heat
will all need to be electrified, and the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity
"will have been greatly expanded in order to cope with the first two projects, and will have ceased
to use fossil fuels." He points out that steel production currently cannot be done with only
electric power, that most houses will need to be rewired for higher electrical current, and that
houses will need to be insulated better to make heat pumps effective. After calculating the
impossibility of building enough battery storage for wind and solar, Kelly concludes that "a
net-zero grid with a large proportion of renewables simply cannot be built." This is partially
because huge amounts of steel and concrete will be needed, which cannot be made using electric power.
The
Seven Dirty Secrets of Solar Energy. Four headlines struck me, over my morning
coffee, this week. They are headlines that I think will change forever our understanding of
energy sources. [...] All four headlines are courtesy of the E.U.'s disastrous missteps in
solar — and successes in nuclear. The disasters are the result of what I call "the
seven dirty secrets of solar." Germany has led the way down this dark path, with a failed
32-year, quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar experiment, funded by taxpayers, which has left the country
ranking among the worst polluters and highest electric bills in Europe, now also burning more brown
coal for its grid than ever before, at 40% and climbing, with only 9% contributed by solar.
Germany is fast losing its leading role in energy initiatives to the nuclear successes in France
(70% nuclear) and Sweden (40% nuclear).
Opinion:
Canada will soon be alone and ignored in its climate obsession. In its fervour to
achieve net zero emissions the federal government is increasingly isolated internationally, while
its influence on other countries has vanished as, through incompetence and worse, it has tarnished
Canada's brand as a country to emulate. As Mike Tyson once said, "Everybody has a plan until
they get punched in the face." The European Union had a plan to reach net zero by 2050 but its
member states have now been hit by a severe energy crisis and are backing off in response to
popular discontent. In a "brave new approach to politics" designed to stave off electoral
defeat next year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reversed course and approved development of a
giant offshore oil and gas field. And he delayed signing off on green policies that would
have imposed "unacceptable costs" — calculated to be five times their economic
benefits — borne disproportionately by blue-collar workers.
The
dangerous delusion of a global transition to "just electricity". It's shocking that
the public has bought into the current rhetoric "lock, stock, and barrel" to stop the use of fossil
fuels, which simulates the resurrection of the 1978 mass murder-suicide of religious cult members
of the Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, Jonestown, Guyana[.] In September 2023, 45 years
after the Jim Jones tragedy in Jonestown, President Biden used his executive power to establish the
American Climate Corps, which will employ and train 20,000 young people in the work of climate
resilience without fossil fuels. When this author watches the TV coverage of protesters, both
politicians and teenagers, carrying signs to stop the use of fossil fuels, what he sees on those
posters is: rid the world of airports, jets, ships, space programs, and stop social media,
and the production of cellphones, computers, and porcelain toilets that are dependent on the
derivatives manufactured from crude oil!! Shockingly, very few parents, teachers, students,
politicians, and those in the media have any clues or understanding about the basis of the products
in our daily lives!
Investors
Dump Renewable Energy Funds At A Record Pace. Global renewable energy funds saw
record outflows of money in the third quarter of 2023 as stocks of wind and solar developers and
suppliers crashed amid rising costs, higher interest rates, and supply-chain challenges.
Renewable energy exchange traded funds (ETFs), tracking the performance of clean energy companies,
suffered a total of $1.4 billion of outflows in the third quarter, the highest outflows of any
previous quarter, according to data from LSEG Lipper cited by Reuters. The record outflows
between July and September only partially offset net inflows of $3.36 billion for the first
half of 2023, the data showed.
The
Energy Transition is Social Vandalism. At no point in human history has a political
decision been made by a relatively few elite to replace cheap, efficient forms of energy like
fossil fuels with inferior and more expensive technologies like solar and wind. You cannot
run public services on an energy source that is consuming taxes instead of paying them.
However, the current so-called transition is being forced upon the masses by politicians and
through diktats and vast handouts (of our money). Taxes are being squandered, special interests
enriched and citizens saddled with expensive and unreliable energy supplies and diminished living
standards. Virtually everything we have — roads, buildings, cars, TVs, clothes,
computers, aircraft, agriculture, education systems, healthcare systems, military
capabilities — exist thanks to fossil fuels. Their continued use and nuclear
power's further development promise to improve the lives of billions. Yet, the long, upward
climb of humankind — propelled through natural incentives and governed by economics and
physical laws — is being horrifyingly short-circuited by the misguided and self-interested.
No,
Wind Power is Not Cheaper Than Gas. Advocates of Net Zero policies repeatedly
reassure the public that they are advancing cheap, green energy with the promise of vast numbers of
lucrative green jobs and world leadership for the U.K. in selected green technologies.
Unfortunately for the hard pressed British electorate, 'cheap, green energy' is nothing more than
an empty political slogan arrived at by a dishonest sleight of hand. Specifically, the
politicians simply ignore the true costs of the 'cheap, green energy' which soon becomes very
expensive when factoring in all costs.
Everywhere,
there's a growing public revolt against net zero. The headlong rush to net zero
carbon emissions by 2050, pursued for so long by democratic governments across the globe regardless
of cost, has finally hit the buffers of voter resistance. Mainstream politicians of the left,
right and centre still mouth their consensual net zero platitudes but they are rowing back from the
policies required to achieve it at some speed, not least here in Britain. It has at last
dawned on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that a population already reeling from a vicious cost of
living crisis does not need to be lumbered by the extra burden of the expensive and intrusive green
agenda of a political elite which will not itself suffer any hardship from it.
Germany
Fires Up Coal Power Plants for Winter to "Save Gas". The German Government on
Wednesday approved putting coal power plants back online from October until the end of March 2024
to address scarce natural gas this winter and avoid shortages, Reuters reports. Following
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a drop in Russian gas imports to Germany, Berlin reactivated
coal-fired power plants and extended their lifespans, with a total output of 1.9 gigawatt hours
generated last winter. The Government said it will make proposals by next summer on how to
'offset' the increased carbon dioxide emissions the plants will generate this winter.
Odd
doings afoot in the German energy sector. Things are getting really interesting in
Deutschland on the energy front as winter rapidly approaches. One of my favorite Bond
villains — German Vice-Chancellor and Green party guru Robert Habeck — who
also happens to be one of the chief architects/enforcers of his country's insane forced march to
NetZero, may have been caught cooking the carbon books in his fevered rush to shut down Germany's 3
remaining, fully operational nuclear plants. If you'll remember, in spite of renewables not
meeting either benchmark generation promises or cost savings for everyday Germans, Chancellor Olaf
Schotz's government, at the full-throated urging of Habeck's ruling party, shut down the only
reliable — and cheap — energy sources the country had left in April. [...]
Part of the Green/Habeck justification for plowing ahead was "dirty" and dangerous nuclear power
had to give way to renewables, even though everyone else's numbers and statistics told the exact
opposite story.
Germany
Brings Back Mothballed Coal Plants to Help Keep Lights On. Germany will bring several
mothballed coal plants back to the market this winter to ensure that Europe's largest economy can
keep the lights on when demand peaks. An order to allow the renewed activation of units
belonging to RWE AG and LEAG was passed by the cabinet on Wednesday, according to an economy
ministry release. TheThe move should help save gas and prevent supply shortages in the
upcoming heating season, it said. [Paywall]
The
Green Energy Subsidy Lie. Environmentalists have long complained about oil and gas
industry subsidies. But we don't hear from them regarding the subsidies paid out for
politically favored renewable energy programs, even though the supposedly green sources are dining
sumptuously on taxpayers' dollars. In fact, renewables are more heavily subsidized than the
fossil fuels, and it would be difficult if not impossible for them to exist without the
support. From 2016 to 2022, "energy-specific subsidies and support" totaled $183.3 billion,
according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report. While "wind and solar
power account for about 21% of domestic electricity production," they nevertheless took in "a
staggering $83.8 billion in subsidies, by far the largest share compared to any other
category," says Fox News. The EIA says that over that period, "nearly half (46%) of federal
energy subsidies were associated with renewable energy," with "federal support for renewable energy
of all types" more than doubling, from $7.4 billion in fiscal 2016 to $15.6 billion in fiscal 2022.
Six
Ways Renewables Increase Electricity Bills. A new paper from the Net Zero Watch
demonstrates conclusively renewables increase electricity bills — indeed, it is almost
impossible that adding a new windfarm to the grid would ever reduce consumer prices. The
author of the paper, Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford, outlines a series of effects that a
new windfarm will have on bills, showing that in each case households will take a financial hit.
Slouching
Towards 1984. [Scroll down] Leftists seek to decarbonize the worldwide
energy system — thus intentionally destroying a highly effective, proven, and safe
energy production and distribution system that has lifted millions around the world out of
poverty. This system was refined and incrementally improved over time. The Left wants
to replace this system with technologies that are neither currently effective, proven, nor safe and
although inchoate are expected to emerge fully formed — meaning that once implemented
technological advancement will be more difficult and expensive. The U.S. already spends
billions in order to end up further behind where we are now from an energy, industrial output and
standard of living perspective. The planners are talking about required reductions in energy
consumption, automotive miles traveled, airplane miles traveled and consumption of energy intensive
foodstuffs — thus destroying our wealth and reducing the quality of life.
Giant
utility rejects net zero power, big fight follows. Dominion Energy, Virginia's big
electric utility, is telling the State it does not foresee complying with the 2045 net zero power
target in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The preferred option in Dominion's latest
Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) retires no fossil-fueled power generators, other than the few old
ones that are already in the process of retirement. In fact, it adds a lot more fossil
juice. Up front in the IRP, Dominion puts it this way: "Due to an increasing load forecast,
and the need for dispatchable generation, the Alternative Plans show additional natural gas-fired
resources and preserve existing carbon-emitting units beyond statutory retirement deadlines
established in the VCEA. The law explicitly authorizes the Company to petition the SCC for relief
from these requirements on the basis that the unit retirements would threaten the reliability or
security of electric service to customers." So, in effect, this is a notice to Virginia's
utility regulator, the State Corporation Commission (SCC), that Dominion is prepared to petition
for permission to not comply with the net zero power generation mandate in the VCEA.
Is the
Left Happy That They Got Their Wish? The Left has waged a war on fossil fuels for
decades. But once in power it has cancelled critical pipelines, restricted federal oil and
gas leases, hectored oil and gas lenders, shut down entire oil fields, and issued arbitrary
deadlines when internal combustion engines are to be banned, and clean burning natural gas
appliances to be phased out. And the result of turning the nation "green"? Gasoline
prices spiked to all-time highs, hurting most the poor and minorities, the supposed political base
of the Democratic Party. When elections near, only then does a panicked Left begin draining
the strategic petroleum reserve, while begging illiberal regimes abroad to pump more oil that they
we will not — in a desperate effort to lower gas and diesel prices, at least temporarily
until elections are over. Bicoastal wealthy elites lecture down to Americans about the
existential crisis of "climate change" and the radical revolutions necessary to "transition" (a
favorite, multipurpose woke word) to solar, wind, and battery power.
The
Impossibility Of Net Zero [is] Finally Being Exposed. Rishi Sunak could not have done
less to correct the Net Zero mess. But what he has done is a good thing. And it
includes setting a trap for the eco-catastrophists. The more they howl and wail, the more
they will expose their utter contempt for ordinary people. Rishi Sunak's 'watering down' of
certain Net Zero targets is the first time that the green policy agenda has had ANY scrutiny of any
consequence, despite many failures, starting with the ruinously expensive Renewable Obligation,
extending into the totally failed CfDs that allowed wind farm developers to lie to achieve planning
consent over rival generators and technologies. Not one part of the green policy agenda has
lived up to any promise to deliver good to the British public.
Mining
for electric-powering minerals has left 23 million people exposed to toxic waste.
Tens of millions of people — more than live in the entire state of Florida —
are now exposed to toxic water runoff from metal mining, a new study has found. The report
lays bare the devastating impacts that can follow a reckless transition to 'green' energy,
compounding the ecological damage wrought by over 150 years of drilling and mining for fossil
fuels. The researchers found that 23 million people worldwide, as well as 5.72 million in
livestock, over 16 million acres of irrigated farmland and over 297,800 miles worth of rivers have
been contaminated by mining's toxic byproducts seeping into the water.
Has
the penny finally dropped about Net Zero? You'd think the queen had just died again,
judging from some of the howls of anguish coming out of Westminster right now. Last night's
news that prime minister Rishi Sunak is set to water down some of Britain's Net Zero policies has
been branded a 'moment of shame' for the nation by former cabinet minister Zac Goldsmith.
Apparently, it will be remembered as 'the moment the UK turned its back on the world and future
generations'. Worse still, the entire planet will now be put 'on life support', according to
COP26 president Alok Sharma. Former environment minister Chris Skidmore is so incensed that
he has openly mooted trying to bring down the government. Perhaps it's no surprise that the
green establishment is so rattled. Sunak's intervention is undeniably significant. The
prime minister has taken aim at a decades-long consensus at the top of UK politics that says
tackling climate change must come before all else.
Rolling
Out the Red Carpet for the Red Chinese. Last Thursday Illinois Governor Pritzker
signed a deal to give Gotion Incorporated, a Chinese company, $536 million in tax incentives to
open an electrical vehicle battery-assembly plant in Manteno, Illinois. Gov. Pritzker
has been trying to attract electrical vehicle battery manufacturers for a few years to prove his
progressive bona fides on green energy. It's not been easy. To help attract business,
in 2021 Pritzker signed into law new tax credits for EV businesses which Crains Chicago Business
said were "massive incentives" that may be the "largest ever in the state's history." But
10 months later, Illinois was still 0 for 18 in attracting EV battery plants: "Even Rivian,
which assembles electric-powered trucks in downstate Normal, chose Georgia for its first battery plant."
'We've
cut carbon emissions by decimating working-class communities': the leader of the GMB union on the
folly of net zero. Last week there should have been a great victory for the British
turbine industry. Auctions were held for offshore wind power, asking companies to bid for the
right to supply electricity at £44 per megawatt hour — a third of the price
offered eight years ago. The government and the renewables lobby hoped that a successful
auction would show that wind power could compete with fossil fuels. Instead, developers
worried that they couldn't turn a profit on the amount they would be paid for energy. There
wasn't a single bid. 'It was very embarrassing,' says Gary Smith, leader of the GMB union.
'Whitehall told us wind was getting cheaper and cheaper. Now there will be no bids for the
next round of licences because the wind industry can't afford to put up the projects.' The
auction flop was humiliating not only for the government but also for Sir Keir Starmer, who has
said he wants a net-zero carbon electricity system by 2030, along with no more licences for North
Sea oil- and gas-drilling. Starmer's 2030 deadline is 'impossible', says Smith. 'I don't
even worry about it. It cannot be done.' No amount of enthusiasm can overcome these
particular hurdles. 'The National Grid can't get [undersea] cables. There are four
suppliers of cables in the globe, they're all booked out to 2030.'
But what if the weather is really hot or cold, and there is no wind? Turn
on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads. Families will be urged to
turn on heat pumps when the wind is blowing and charge their electric cars at night under net zero
plans to save energy. Ministers are pressing ahead with new legislation that could see
families made to adopt "smart" appliances to ease pressure on the grid. Tory MPs are opposing
the proposals, contained in the contentious Energy Bill which will come back before the Commons on
Tuesday. The Government insisted it was "in no way asking people to ration electricity" and
that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.
The
hidden energy crisis. Energy and climate change are complicated. Credible scientists
challenge whether there is a climate crisis. The three U.S. electric grids are old and at
capacity, and many power plants are outdated. California is one example of the problem.
New plants have not been brought online due to environmentalists and demonization by politicians;
some have even been targeted for shutdown. Renewable energy has been identified as having
benefits and can supply up to 35% of energy demand but is unreliable since it requires wind, sun,
or flowing water. It also creates energy storage and environmental issues. The Biden
administration and Governor Gavin Newsom in California have embarked on plans to eliminate the use
of gas and replace all transportation vehicles, garden tools, stoves, dryers' etc. using electrical
energy. This approach will place an overwhelming timeline and demand on existing energy
resources. It will require a huge investment in new power plants, including the potential of
nuclear. This investment will create significant upward pressure on the cost of energy and
create blackouts from poor planning.
What
Will Happen When the Grid Goes Down. Unfortunately, we take almost ALL aspects of our
modern life for granted. That our Apple watch wakes us up, that the coffee starts by itself,
that the lights go on when we throw the switch, that water comes out of the tap when we open the
faucet, that the shower is hot, that the hair dryer nicely dries our hair, that the TV goes on to
show us the latest news, that our phone warns us of a pending storm headed our way, that the food
in the refrigerator is cold, that the burner on the stove heats up to cook some eggs, that the
microwave quickly warms up some leftovers, that the dishwasher cleans up all our dirtied dishes,
that the garage door opener lifts our heavy garage doors, that the car starts and then transports
us on our way to work, that traffic lights change at appropriate times, that we can negotiate a
maze of connections with numerous other similarly transported citizens, in a safe, efficient way,
etc., etc. And that's only the first few hours of the day. When the Grid goes
down — and it likely will soon — NONE of this will happen! Every one of
the sample matters I listed above, is based on electricity. More specifically they are based
on reliable, plentiful, low-cost electricity — i.e., precisely what the US Grid has been
efficiently supplying for some 100 years.
Don't
believe the renewables myth. Wind and solar are not cheap. Politicians
everywhere are repeating the mantra that renewable energy is cheap, and we need to use it instead
of gas (currently expensive in and near Europe) to bring down energy costs for households. [...]
The Inflation Reduction Act has been designed to make this a reality. Lots of investment in
lovely green energy and green jobs. This sounds wonderful. Unfortunately, renewables
are not cheap. [...] Originally, subsidies were paid because the technology for producing renewable
electricity was immature meaning upfront costs were exceptionally high, but after more than 20 years
of subsidies, this is no longer the case. Today, electricity prices are still determined for the
most part by the cost of fossil fuels, so renewable electricity can be sold at much higher prices than
the short term cost of production (which is next to nothing). But even then, renewables still
require subsidies. In fact, subsidies are growing.
Former
CEO Who Made Bad Green Energy Bets [is] Now Doling Out Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars To Green
Projects. David Crane, NRG Energy's former CEO who abruptly resigned in December 2015
after making a series of green investments that failed to pan out, is now working for the Biden
administration to manage billions of taxpayer dollars designated for green energy projects.
During Crane's tenure at NRG, his large investments in green energy projects yielded poor returns
for investors and devastated the firm's stock price, prompting his resignation from the company,
according to The Wall Street Journal. Crane now serves as the DOE's undersecretary for
infrastructure, where he is tasked with shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars from the
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the bipartisan infrastructure law to subsidize hydrogen energy,
carbon capture and other green technologies, according to E&E News. Additionally, Crane will
be responsible for overseeing DOE loans designed to subsidize battery factories. Crane
believes that countering climate change stands as the "moral imperative of our time," according to
the White House.
Germany
on Track to Miss Climate Goals Despite $500 Billion Plus Green Spending Spree.
Germany is on track to fall short of its ambitious long-term climate change goals despite its plans
to have spent more than $500 billion to reach them, according to Reuters. The German
government is primed to miss its targets of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030
and reaching net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, according to Reuters. The German
government will have spent by 2025 the equivalent of at least $580 billion toward achieving the
goals that it is now forecasted to miss, according to Bloomberg.
Massive
Riots, Renewable Resentments. The warnings about the landscape-destroying sprawl of
wind and solar energy have been coming for nearly two decades. The warnings have come from
some of the world's most prominent scientists, government agencies, and energy analysts.
Unfortunately, those warnings were ignored. And now, all over the world, rural people are
reacting with fury at the encroachment of large wind and solar projects on their homes and
neighborhoods. The backlash has been ongoing for years and can be seen from the Golan Heights
to Oahu. Of course, the backlash against the energy sprawl that frequently comes with
large-scale renewable projects doesn't fit the narrative being pushed by climate activists,
anti-industry NGOs, and their myriad allies at legacy media outlets. Despite the dearth of
honest reporting from outlets like the New York Times and National Public Radio, the backlash is
irrefutable, it's growing, and it's happening on multiple continents. In June, thousands of
Druze residents in the Golan Heights rioted to stop the installation of a large wind project on
their traditional lands.
The
Power Of Power Density. In an August 7 article, New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman claimed that "technological progress in renewable energy has made it possible to envisage
major reductions in emissions at little or no cost in terms of economic growth and living
standards." [...] None of the claims in Krugman's August 7 column are new. For years,
academics from elite universities, climate activists, leaders of the anti-industry industry, and
legacy media outlets (and the New York Times in particular) have been peddling shopworn
claims about "all-gain-no-pain" renewables. You've no doubt heard them: renewables are
cheap and getting cheaper, wind and solar energy are the future, and the main reason that
conservatives and knuckle-dragging rural landowners are opposing massive renewable projects all
across America is that they don't understand "science." That's the spin. Here's the
reality: the conspiracy against wind and solar is one of basic math and simple physics.
It's not conservatives who are wrong on "science," it's liberals like Krugman and his myriad allies
in the climate claque who refuse to recognize (or even discuss) the physical limits on our energy
and power networks.
One
Simple Energy Question Devastates 'Net-Zero' Pipe Dreams. Which is more
environmentally friendly — an energy source that uses one unit of land to produce one
unit of electricity, or a source that uses 100 units of land to produce one unit of
electricity? The answer should be obvious. Nevertheless, "green" energy advocates call
for a huge expansion of wind, solar and other renewables that use vast amounts of land to replace
traditional power plants that use comparatively small amounts of land. Vaclav Smil, professor
emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada, extensively analyzed the power density of
alternative sources used to generate electricity. He defined power density as the average
flow of electricity generated per square meter of horizontal surface (land or sea area). Estimating
power density is complex. Smil included plant area, storage yards, mining sites, agricultural fields,
pipelines and transportation, and other associated land and sea areas in his analysis.
Green
Tasmania, the "Battery of Australia", Runs Out of Electricity. The Aussie state of
Tasmania frequently promotes itself as the battery of the nation. But they often struggle to
supply their own energy needs, so I don't think anyone takes their battery claim too seriously.
This problem is entirely self inflicted. The State of Tasmania only has a population of around
half a million people, so a small nuclear reactor in conjunction with their existing hydro systems
would pretty much fix all their problems, and maintain their status as a low CO2 emission state.
Nearby South Australia with its massive Uranium reserves could supply all Tasmania's nuclear fuel needs
indefinitely. Sadly the moribund Australian political establishment is utterly fixated on
renewables. They will continue to inflict their ignorant energy fantasies on ordinary people,
and make excuses for their failures, until voters wake up and elect politicians who can implement
common sense solutions to people's problems.
Environmentalists'
Broken Toys. We've recently written quite a bit about electric vehicles' many
flaws — the reasons to hate them, their evil nature, the entire EV con. But
they're not the only green plaything that's being exposed for the debacle they are. Windmills
are just as troubled. "All over the world, rural people are reacting with fury at the
encroachment of large wind and solar projects on their homes and neighborhoods," writes energy
author Robert Bryce. Last month, "thousands of Druze residents in the Golan Heights," says
Bryce, "rioted to stop the installation of a large wind project on their traditional lands." Before
that, a wind project in Colombia was "canceled after it met fierce opposition from the indigenous
Wayuu communities." Bryce noted last week that over the last 10 days in the U.S., "local
governments in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa have rejected or restricted wind and solar projects."
According to his database, that makes 574 rejections or restrictions of solar and wind projects in
less than a decade. Most of them, 407, have been wind projects.
EPA
Tries to Destroy the Grid. The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a new
rule limiting CO2 emissions from fossil fuel-fired (coal and natural gas) power plants. As
you might expect, given the ideological bent of EPA, the rule is a Trojan horse, the real purpose
of which is to induce the nation's coal plants and some natural gas power generation to shut down
under the increasing weight of federal regulations. Center of the American Experiment is sounding
the alarm on EPA's rule. [...] EPA's power plant regulations will devastate ordinary people —
those who rely on electricity and want affordable transportation — while enriching a
handful of well-connected industries that have curried the favor of the current administration.
EPA
vs. the Grid, Part 2. I wrote here about the EPA's proposed new CO2 regulations on
power plants that would devastate the electrical grid. This public comment, drafted by
American Experiment's Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling and filed on Tuesday, explains why the rule is so
destructive. It will mandate a grid that is heavily dependent on solar and wind
installations, and therefore subject to devastating blackouts. If the EPA set out to disrupt
our economy and make our lives miserable, and sometimes dangerous — if the rule goes
into effect, people will die — it could hardly do a better job. It is remarkable
that the EPA seeks to enact its wide-ranging regulations without ever having conducted the
reliability analysis that was carried out by Orr and Rolling. This is a classic case of a
vast government bureaucracy and highly-paid consultants on one side, doing the bidding of "green"
lobbyists by obfuscating the facts. While on the other side, there are two guys. But
two guys with expertise and the honesty to evaluate the consequences of a proposal based on
science, not financial gain. The public comment that Orr and Rolling drafted at the request
of the State of North Dakota is likely to play a major role in litigation challenging the proposed
rule, which may end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
What?
Biden Sold America's Oil Reserve to China. On and after January 20, 2021, [Joe] Biden
has issued punitive, increasingly restrictive executive orders, regulations, and expensive
legislation — passed by single-party government — intended to shut down big
parts of the US fossil fuel industry. Not satisfied to shut down supply, the federal
government has — with and without legislation — methodically perverted the
demand side of the curve, too. After making gas and heating oil prohibitively expensive, they
penalized makers of automobiles and countless gas-powered household appliances. Specifically,
they have punished makers of gas powered engines, cars, trucks, boats, lawnmowers, hammered the
energy, construction, transportation, and farm sectors, then turned to appliances, aiming to outlaw
everything from gas and wood stoves to refrigerators and water heaters. The Democrat idea,
fueled by activists, is to mandate everything by fiat. The Soviets dealt this way, Chinese
still do. Biden's "make it all electric" mandate sees wind turbines and solar panels covering
the Earth, powering the grid, now 80 percent fossil and nuclear. By magic, wind and sun will
run it all.
The
World Now Wasting $1 Trillion Or More Per Year Investing In Useless "Renewables". The
world is currently filled with government-, corporate-, and billionaire-funded organizations
advocating for a transformation of the energy system to "clean" and "abundant" renewables. In
my post a week ago, I described the International Energy Agency — a consortium of
governments (now 40+ of them, including all the major ones) originally formed in the 70s to combat
the OPEC oil embargo of the time, but since transformed into a "a center of advocacy for
elimination of fossil fuels from the world's energy supply." For today, here's another one
you may or may not have heard of — the Energy Institute. EI is a London-based
advocacy organization set up under the UK charity laws. It appears to receive its funding
largely from corporations and wealthy individuals.
Renewable
energy isn't as cheap as advertised — so far. It's true that wind, solar
and other renewables generated two-fifths of the UK's electricity last year —
out-stripping gas. But "cheap" renewables, far from cutting consumer energy bills, are
pushing prices up. Renewables still depend heavily not only on subsidies, but also a large
fleet of gas power stations on standby — which must be fired up on days when the wind
isn't blowing and the sun doesn't shine. Such "intermittent" periods can last weeks,
especially during winter, when energy demand is high. But having gas-fired stations on
standby to facilitate more renewables is hugely expensive — as the sky-high fixed costs
of being able to produce energy at short notice must be found from smaller revenues. Even on
days when it is sunny and windy, UK electricity prices are driven by the marginal cost of
generation — that is, the spot price of gas. The shift to renewables inflates this
marginal cost, pushing up household bills too — whatever we're told about "low cost"
renewable energy.
How
Green Energy Helps Fund Taliban Islamic Terrorists. We have been reporting on how
green energy is being used to fund the Communist Chinese. There is one primary reason and its
named is lithium. Lithium is a key mineral used to creating green energy and powers all
electric vehicles. [...] According to the World Economic Forum in January 2023 the largest
producers of lithium are: #1 Australia 52%, #2 Chile 25%, #3 China 13%,
#4 Argentina 6%, #5 Brazil 1%, #6 Zimbabwe 1%, #7 Portugal 1%, #8 The
United States 1% and lastly the rest of the world with 0.1%
Will
the European Union Devolve into a Group of Third-World Countries?
[Scroll down] Today, energy costs in the U.K. have trebled from just two years ago, and
rampant inflation throughout the E.U. is at a level not seen since the 1970s. The price
advantage manufacturers once enjoyed in international markets is gone, in the process smashing the
continent's once-harmonious labor relations as unions throughout the E.U. in every economic sector
from transportation to manufacturing to health care strike for higher wages to offset higher energy
and food costs. As global trade cools, Europe's heavy reliance on exports — which
account for about 50% of eurozone GDP versus 10% for the U.S. — is becoming a
weakness. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the problems the E.U. faces. Coal
mines have been closed, coal-fired power plants have been shuttered, and it will take years,
perhaps decades, to turn things around. In the interim, the E.U. runs the risk of devolving
into a third-world power, both economically and militarily. It did not have to be this
way. If the populace and political leaders in the E.U. had not allowed themselves to be
fooled by the pseudoscience that underpins the fraudulent global warming hypothesis, their standard
of living would not have been destroyed.
How
Germany's Green Energy Transition Led to Dependence on Imported, Fossil Fuel-Based Energy.
Governments around the West are currently scrambling toward adopting more and more renewable,
environmentally healthy energy sources — with the notable and regrettable exception of
nuclear energy — and to set a path for a world of zero emissions in the coming
decades. There is no doubt that the goal of reaching a greener and cleaner future is laudable
and something conservatives and free marketeers should support. But the top-down,
heavy-handed approach by governments is the wrong one and has already caused havoc. Let's
look to Germany as an example. Europe's largest economy hastily implemented its
Energiewende, that is, its transition to green energy, a little more than over a decade
ago. It was done hastily since it was a sudden decision made by the country's
then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, who irrationally decided after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power
plant disaster that it was time to get rid of nuclear. Thus, the Energiewende toward a
cleaner future started by abandoning what is perhaps one of the best energy sources for getting us
to that future.
The
ultimate debunking of "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels." Myth: Solar
and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels. Truth: Solar and wind are only cheaper than fossil
fuels in at most a small fraction of situations. For the overwhelming majority of the world's
energy needs, solar and wind are either completely unable to replace fossil fuels or far more expensive.
• Observe that "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually invoked, not to
encourage competition but to justify coercive government policies to punish fossil fuel use and favor solar and wind.
• Observe that the same people claiming "solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels"
moved heaven and earth to demand at minimum hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies under the "Inflation
Reduction Act" for these supposedly "cheaper forms of energy."
• On its face, justifying favoritism toward solar and wind by invoking their cheapness
is highly suspicious. If they're cheaper, why do they need coercive policies to throttle their fossil-fueled
competitors (e.g., opposing fossil fuel investment, production, and pipelines) and reward solar and wind?
Budgets
blown: Wind [is] not exactly the net bargain they advertised. The wind and sun are
free, we were and are told. One only has to wire something up that transmits the harnessed
power and everyone will rejoice we did so. We're still hearing that now — cast
your ears towards the painful pleadings of advocates for offshore wind farms in California.
The onshore ones they have have been working out so well for CA consumers, no? "Oh, if we
only get umptyphrats amount more turbines, everything will work out!" It's all
[nonsense], as I noted in a June post about Gavin Newsom already scrambling to lock on external
sources of energy to keep power flowing to his state this summer. His plans, by the way, will
be put to the test this coming week, cuz it's going to be hot. CA residents' electric bills
will reflect all those savings from renewables. The U.K. Labour party is
stubbornly pursuing even more wind, even as years of wind driven energy price hikes belie the
promises made during their forced transition to Gaia Green renewables.
Will
Someone Please Wake Me From This Nightmare? Biden has made it clear that he supports
going to zero carbon emissions which would eliminate all use of coal, and fossil fuels.
Natural gas is used to make fertilizer, which is very important to agriculture. And, over
6,000 things that we use on a daily basis are made from oil. Wind and solar will never take
the place of coal-fired, or natural gas-fired energy generation. Electric cars will soon be a
national disaster because they are useless during a time of disaster with no electricity
available. It is not possible to build batteries large enough to carry a city during times
when the sun does not shine or the wind blow.
Replacing
Coal Power with Wind and Solar Increases Net CO2 Emissions. Advocates of wind and
solar power confidently assert that using it to replace a coal-fired power plant will abate all the
CO2 formerly emitted by the coal station, because unreliables do not emit CO2. Not
quite. To keep the lights on when we need them, wind and solar requires backup from flexible
sources, such as natural gas, that can react quickly when the Sun rises or sets, or when the wind
drops or blows a gale. This thermal backup emits CO2. Worse, when thermal stations are
on standby, known in the trade as rotating reserve, they burn fuel without feeding any power to the
grid and, when needed, they must be suddenly ramped up to full load capacity, thus emitting far
more in the process than when running permanently at full load. Their emissions must thus be
subtracted from the reductions achieved by decommissioned coal-fired capacity. Why would
anyone bother with wind and solar power? The fastest way to reduce grid emissions is to
switch from coal-fired to gas-fired generation without using unreliables at all.
The
Energy Transition Isn't. In 2004, hydrocarbons provided 86% of global primary
energy. The balance came from hydro, nuclear, and biomass. By 2022, hydrocarbons' share
of global primary energy had dropped by four percentage points, to 82%, wind and solar made up 5%,
and the balance came from hydro, nuclear, and biomass. But in absolute terms, hydrocarbon
consumption grew by 110 exajoules, (EJ), while wind and solar grew by just 32 EJ. Thus, the
growth in hydrocarbon use over that time frame was 3.4 times faster than what was seen in wind
and solar. And here's the key point: hydrocarbons are prevailing despite staggering
amounts of spending on wind and solar. According to a January report by Bloomberg New Energy
Finance, some $6.7 trillion was spent on alt-energy globally between 2004 and 2022, with the
vast majority of that, some $4.8 trillion spent on renewables. And the vast majority of
that $4.8 trillion — about $4.1 trillion — was spent on wind and solar.
Sweden
Shocks Europe: Abandons 'Unstable' Green Energy Agenda, Returns to Nuclear Power.
Sweden just dealt a severe blow to the globalist climate agenda by scraping its green energy
targets. In a statement announcing the new policy in the Swedish Parliament, Finance Minister
Elisabeth Svantesson warned that the Scandinavian nation needs "a stable energy system."
Svantesson said wind and solar power are too "unstable" to meet the nation's energy
requirements. Instead, she said, the Swedish government is shifting back to nuclear power and
has scrapped its goal of a "100 percent renewable energy" supply to meet the nation's energy
requirement, as reported by Slay.
Sweden
Dumps Climate Agenda, Scraps Green Energy Targets. Sweden has just dealt a severe
blow to the globalist climate agenda by scraping [sic] its green energy targets. In a
statement announcing the new policy in the Swedish Parliament, Finance Minister Elisabeth
Svantesson warned that the Scandinavian nation needs "a stable energy system." Svantesson
asserted that wind and solar power are too "unstable" to meet the nation's energy
requirements. Instead, the Swedish Government is shifting back to nuclear power and has
ditched its targets for a "100% renewable energy" supply. The move is a major blow to
unreliable and inefficient technology.
Energy
Provider Warns of Impending 'Crisis,' 'Blackout Conditions' Driven By Biden Plans.
The U.S. faces an "impending energy crisis" as the Biden administration pursues a transition away
from fossil fuels, an electricity cooperative warned Wednesday. Moon Lake Electric
Association, which serves parts of Utah and Colorado, accused President Joe Biden of being
"unrealistic" in his emissions reductions goals, according to Deseret News. "It's unrealistic
and it's too ambitious," CEO Yankton Johnson reportedly said. "They need to pull back on the
throttle, pump the brake and think about what they're going to do to individuals." Johnson's
comments came after the Biden administration announced billions in investments for green
energy. The president seeks to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035, net-zero
emissions in the economy by 2050 and 50 percent of new vehicle sales being electric by 2030,
according to the White House.
Net
zero? Evidence says it's a 'green mirage'. The fundamental assumption
underlying the IEA's net zero roadmap is that the superiority of alternatives to
hydrocarbons — principally wind and solar (nuclear barely gets a look in) —
will cause demand for coal, oil, and natural gas to wither away. Nonetheless, progressive
groups seized the IEA's report to justify — indeed, to require — a ban on
investment in new oil and gas projects. Climate Action 100+, a group of 700 investors with
over $68 trillion in assets under management, hailed the report as a "watershed moment" and
highlighted the call from the "relatively conservative IEA" for an immediate end to new investment
in fossil fuel extraction.
Sweden
Ditches Renewable Energy Targets. The Swedish Government has ditched its targets for
"100% renewable energy" supply amid a shift back to nuclear power in the latest blow for the
unreliable and inefficient technology. Announcing the new policy in the Swedish Parliament,
the Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said: "This creates the conditions for nuclear
power. We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need a stable
energy system." Environmental campaign group Net Zero Watch has welcomed the move, saying the
Swedish decision is "an important step in the right direction, implicitly acknowledging the low
quality of unstable wind and solar, and is part of a general collapse of confidence in the
renewable energy agenda pioneered in the Nordic countries and in Germany".
Ramping
up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can't solve our energy problem.
Many people believe that installing more wind turbines and solar panels and manufacturing more
electric vehicles can solve our energy problem, but I don't agree with them. These devices,
plus the batteries, charging stations, transmission lines and many other structures necessary to
make them work represent a high level of complexity. A relatively low level of
complexity, such as the complexity embodied in a new hydroelectric dam, can sometimes be used to
solve energy problems, but we cannot expect ever-higher levels of complexity to always be achievable.
South
Africa's grid is dissolving — climate activists hit hardest. I ran across
this article in Climate Change News decrying the fact that the coal lobby in South Africa is
fighting against shutting down the coal industry and replacing it with renewables. It's a
tale filled with evil carbon villains. [...] If only the mean, nasty coal people would let the
activists work their magic, all would be rainbows and sunshine and butterflies fluttering in the
breeze. Sad, really, that such mean people are so powerful. [Tweet] Of course, the
story ignores one minor point: South Africa's power grid is collapsing, with electricity shut
off to residents for 8-13 hours a day. The problems that most South Africans face these days
has nothing to do with carbon "pollution;" it is the fact that they are forced to use candles to
light their homes and watch their food rot for lack of refrigeration. That the coal lobby has
any political power at all is a miracle in South Africa. The country is falling apart before
our eyes, becoming a failed state after decades of being one of the only functioning countries on
the continent. The power company? Apparently not as well functioning as the coal lobby,
perhaps because it is run by the government which is a socialist mess.
The Green
New Deal is full of holes, with AOC leading the charge to fall into them. When first
elected AOC didn't know the three branches of government, but proved her qualifications by speaking
propaganda and leading people to fall into holes. Of what holes am I speaking? The
first three we need to examine are the size of 307, 267 and 900 football fields, respectively.
These humongous holes are located at the Bayan Obo mine in China, which is the world's biggest rare
earth element (REE) mine. REEs are used in everything from iPhones to EVs to LED lights to wind
turbines. The low abundance REEs in the earth's soil are fundamentally necessary for all "green
new energy." The waste-to-yield ratio in mining REEs is 2000:1, which is 13 times more than
mining copper. Each EV auto battery involves digging up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust.
Time
To Buy Stock In Candle Companies. The green energy "revolution" is taking us backward,
to an era in which there won't be enough electricity to meet the demand. Members of the House
Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security were told last week to expect "potentially
catastrophic consequences" due to dispatchable generating sources being retired "far too quickly"
in the race to replace those sources — natural gas, coal and nuclear, which are available
on demand — with renewables, primarily wind and solar. Federal Energy Regulatory
Commissioner Mark C. Christie told the congressmen that lawmakers' and activists' obsession (our
characterization) with green energy threatens "our ability to keep the lights on." Though
obvious to us all, it's important to continually point out that wind can't produce electricity
when it doesn't blow and solar can't generate power when it's dark (or the sun is screened out
by smoke from forest fires that are caused by man's refusal to properly manage forests, not
his emissions of carbon dioxide).
'Clean
energy' is just another government money-funneling scam. [The] Treasury Department
proposes rules explaining how clean-energy developers can sell credits to companies[.] They
know they have to produce some sort of energy to replace it, and they falsely call these sources
renewable and clean energy to mislead the public that they are reliable and great for the
environment. Then the Democrats send massive amounts of money to companies that produce wind
energy, solar power, clean hydrogen, and batteries. (Lithium is a highly flammable pollutant, so
why do they claim it is clean?) They loaded up the falsely named Inflation Reduction Act with
money for these supposed green energy companies who pretend they can control temperatures and the
climate. They also have loaded up bills with tax credits for these companies. But a
problem has arisen that these green companies don't make profits, so they don't pay taxes.
Green
industrialization greatly increases CO2 emissions. Despite calling for rapid
reduction in CO2 emissions, the left is rushing green industrialization which will dramatically
increase emissions for the foreseeable future. This obvious absurdity has yet to be
admitted. On the one hand, there is growing literature on the enormous material requirements
required for building huge numbers of wind and solar power generating systems. Then the
growing realization that gas-fired backup will keep renewable power generation CO2 emissions high.
[...] Combining these two factors means CO2 emissions should rise, not fall, as green
industrialization proceeds. Both factors are ignored, but both are big. The energy
transition increases emissions. It is that simple.
The
Big Green Energy Lie. We're constantly told that renewable energy will be abundant
and dispatchable enough such that we can close down nuclear, coal, and gas power plants. And
then Germany comes along to admit the nonsense, in this pair of headlines just three months apart:
[Illustration omitted for simplicity.] The second great green lie is that renewable energy will
be cheaper. Well: [Illustration]
The
Corruption of Climate Science. It is no exaggeration that every major institution in
America has now committed itself to the elimination of affordable and abundant energy. If it
isn't stopped, this commitment, motivated by misguided concern for the planet but also by a lust
for power and money and enabled by moral cowardice and intellectual negligence, will destroy
Western civilization. [...] Energy is the foundation of everything — prosperity,
freedom, upward mobility, national wealth, individual economic independence, functional water and
transportation infrastructure, commercial-scale agriculture, mining, and industry. Without
energy, it all goes dark. And "renewables" are not even remotely capable of replacing oil,
gas, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric power. It's impossible. The only people who think
renewables are capable of replacing conventional energy are either uninformed, innumerate, or
corrupt. Period.
Ready
for Socialized Electric Power? Ever hear of the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA)?
Sounds great, doesn't it? Yet, like "The Inflation Reduction Act" (the largest climate
legislation in government history), its title has very little to do with its actual purpose.
Its true objective is to empower the state (in this case New York) "to provide clean energy if the
private sector fails to." Still sounds great! There is, however, one little catch:
the private sector has until 2030 to provide clean energy. We all know that, given today's
technology, the private sector isn't going to meet this requirement — which means that
the second little catch will kick in: the moving of power utilities out of private hands into
publicly owned facilities.
The
Disastrous Economics of Trying to Power an Electrical Grid With 100% Intermittent
Renewables. The effort to increase the percentage of electricity generated by
intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar inevitably brings about large increases in the
actual price of electricity that must be paid by consumers. The price increases grow and
accelerate as the percentage of electricity generated from the intermittent renewables increases
toward 100 percent. These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of fuel
for wind and solar generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the
seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup and
storage — things that are not needed at all in conventional fossil-fuel-based
systems. And it is not only from modeling that we know that such cost increases would be
inevitable. We also have actual and growing experience from those few jurisdictions that have
attempted to generate more and more of their electricity from these renewables. This
empirical experience proves the truth of the rising consumer price proposition.
Dealing
with the Upcoming Climate Failure Blame Garme. What do we do about the climate
madness? That's the issue that Lord Frost addressed in a recent speech to the Global Warming
Policy Foundation in Britain. Short answer: not much, not yet. But there is hope.
Frost reckons that the governments in Europe are "beginning to get cold feet" on their climate
agendas[.] ["]I actually sense our own Government is beginning to realise that the
economics are more doubtful than the Net Zero proponents argue. If, as some commentators say,
our Prime Minister is beginning to get worried by the costs of Net Zero, we can only welcome
that.["] Then he notes that support for Net Zero policy is starting to fall with
"incipient questioning of Net Zero measures across Europe" as climate change policies start to bite.
Net
Zero Grid Batteries Alone Would Bankrupt America. Achieving "net zero" carbon dioxide
emissions will be painless, they assure us. Costs will be so low that you'll need a
magnifying glass to see them. Governments merely have to enact mandates and provide
subsidies, and the transformation to "clean" energy will just happen. Almost like in a fairy
tale. Here in the real world, however, we would need literally millions of weather-dependent
wind turbines, billions of equally unreliable solar panels, millions of half-ton battery modules
for vehicles, billions more modules to back up intermittent electricity generation, millions of
transformers, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines. All these
technologies must be manufactured from metals, minerals, and petroleum extracted from the
Earth, via mining on scales unprecedented in human history.
The wind
and solar power myth has finally been exposed. Many governments in the Western world
have committed to "net zero" emissions of carbon in the near future. The US and UK both say
they will deliver by 2050. It's widely believed that wind and solar power can achieve this.
This belief has led the US and British governments, among others, to promote and heavily subsidise
wind and solar. These plans have a single, fatal flaw: they are reliant on the pipe-dream
that there is some affordable way to store surplus electricity at scale. In the real world a
wind farm's output often drops below 10 per cent of its rated "capacity" for days at a time.
Solar power disappears completely every night and drops by 50 percent or more during cloudy days.
"Capacity" being a largely meaningless figure for a wind or solar plant, about 3000 megawatts (MW)
of wind and solar capacity is needed to replace a 1000 MW conventional power station in terms of
energy over time: and in fact, as we shall see, the conventional power station or something very
like it will still be needed frequently once the wind and solar are online. The governments
of countries with a considerable amount of wind and solar generation have developed an expectation
that they can simply continue to build more until net zero is achieved.
Conservation is not an energy source. Finally,
a Solution to the Problem of Intermittent Power Generation - the "Virtual Power Plant".
As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar
sources is that they are intermittent. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. And
sometimes they don't work for days on end. The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time
for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter. This poses a
huge problem for central planners' dreams of "net zero" electricity. Try to solve the problem
with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you're talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of
dollars. Not to worry. Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy
solution to the problem of intermittency. Have you heard of it? It's the "Virtual Power
Plant." [...] [T]he Virtual Power Plant is exactly what you undoubtedly already suspect it to be:
another new level of Orwellian doubletalk. "Virtual Power Plant" turns out to be another term for
pointless enforced sacrifice in service to the climate cult. If you have been paying attention,
you probably have already noticed that this "Virtual Power Plant" thing is the latest talking point
of the central planners.
Lord
Frost warns: Hurtling towards net zero at any cost will be a mistake. With 800,000
British car-making jobs on the line because we're not making enough batteries for electric
vehicles, leading motor manufacturers are demanding renegotiated trade rules with the EU to give us
more time to catch up. Lord Frost, Britain's chief negotiator for Brexit from 2019 to 2021,
is clear where the fault is. "The underlying problem is that we're rushing at electrification
of cars far too fast for the technologies we've got," he insists. "What it shows is that the
expectation we had in the trade agreement when we negotiated it was that things would have moved by
2024, and that is not true." Vauxhall's parent company, Stellantis, told MPs earlier this week
that it would be unable to keep a commitment to make electric vehicles in the UK without changes to
the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU.
Exxon
Crushes Progressive Dreams That "Net Zero" Has Any Chance By 2050. In a world of
suffocating snowflakery, ESG hypocrisy and, well... Tranheuser Busch, a corporation telling the
truth without fear of reprisals from the Open Society-funded virtue signaling cabal is rarer than
an mRNA-injected, genetically engineered hen's teeth. And yet that's what the company hated
by every progressive, Exxon Mobil, did this week when it became the first corporation to denounce
the insidious and laughable claims that "net zero" is even a remote possibility by 2050. The
US supermajor pushed back against investors pressing the company to report on the risks to its
business from restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and potential environmental disasters when
in a reply to proxy advisor Glass Lewis, Exxon said the prospect of the world achieving net-zero carbon
dioxide emissions by 2050 is remote and should not be further evaluated in its financial statements.
Unreliable
Green Energy Has the World Running Back to Coal and Nuclear. Tokyo's move away from
nuclear energy was entirely because of the unwarranted fears surrounding the technology.
However, once it was understood that Fukushima was more of a natural disaster than a fundamental
technological failure, the country began to reverse its nuclear retrenchment and is now fully on
track with an ambitious plan to use power reactors. Historically, much of Japan's electricity
needs have been met by fossil fuels, especially coal. Then, in the late 2000s, like most
developed economies of Europe and North America, Japan was confronted by pressures to reduce coal
use to address a purported climate emergency. However, Japan now realizes that it can
continue to use coal using state-of-art technology, which reduces pollution significantly. In
its coverage of a new clean-coal plant backed by $384 million of public funds, Nikkei Asia reports
that the country's initiatives are bearing fruit and providing much needed electricity.
Biden's
$11b 'rural electrification' plan is 'a money laundering scheme for the green agenda'.
Morano on Biden spending $11 billion for solar & wind in rural America: "This is literally
a money laundering scheme for the green agenda. That's all this is. $11 billion to
do more solar and wind which isn't going to produce energy. At best, it's going to make a few
makeshift government jobs that expire when the money for the solar and wind mandates runs out.
We've already been through this with Obama administration when Solyndra was booming business until
it wasn't when the money ran out. And so they're going to make their grids less reliable,
more prone to blackouts. This is truly nuts."
New
York has "No Plan B" for the power plants they're shutting down. Two weeks ago, the
New York State legislature and the state's looney tunes chief executive, Governor Kathy Hochul, got
together to hammer out a final budget deal for the year. With everything else that goes on
during those sorts of negotiations, they still found time to screw the citizens of the state over
royally in the name of "climate change." [...] The power plants that take the edge off of the peak
times/events when loads are heaviest — literally called "peakers" — are being
shut down or driven into intentional disrepair by the state of New York in concert with the EPA.
[...] There are examples in the article of peakers that have had applications denied for upgrades
for pollution and emission controls, which, in effect, is going to cause them to shut down.
Precisely the plan. [...] And remember — all the "clean" energy went offline when they
forced their nuclear plants to shut down, so they brought these "dirty" fuels on themselves.
Power
mad: President Biden set a target for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by
2030 — 7 years from now. He has set a target for net zero — no
greenhouse gas emissions in the US — by 2050. That goal is to be met by electrifying
everything. That is why there is a war on natural gas, not just coal. Natural gas is
clean, and while it produces much less CO2 than coal, it still emits some. That is also why
Biden wants to electrify cars. And heat. And everything. Biden claims that all
this is possible [...] through using "renewable" sources of electricity. Whatever you think
about the viability of renewables — the solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines are
not renewable, remember — there is a hitch. You can't actually install them very fast.
Benign
Weather Could Cause Blackouts in States With Green Grids, Officials Warn. It's a warm
summer night in Texas, and as the sun goes down, the wind eases to a calm breeze. There's
nothing extreme about the weather, but the pleasant conditions could present a big problem for the
state's green power grid. Texas is one of many states that have seen fossil fuel plants close
in favor of green power generation alternatives, such as wind and solar. But those
alternatives are less reliable than their gas and coal counterparts — wind turbines need
strong gusts to generate power at full capacity, and solar panels don't work at night. As a
result, state and federal officials are warning residents in Texas and elsewhere that high summer
temperatures, combined with low winds at night, could bring power blackouts.
How
Greening the Economy Will Destroy America. Brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon
controllers want to "green" the economy. They use the phony "climate change" hoax, aka
"global warming," as the excuse to do this. Their plans will destroy America's economy, which
is dependent on fossil fuels. They talk a lot about helping the poor and arouse people to
hate the rich. But destroying our country's economy won't help the poor. Brain-dead
Biden's proposed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is supposed to give us cheap "green" energy.
But it will in fact impose limitless costs. As fossil-fuel expert Alex Epstein points out, "We
were told that the IRA would give us cheap 'green' energy for 'only' $400 billion in subsidies.
In reality, the IRA has a limitless price tag due to its 1) limitless number of years,
2) limitless dollars per year, 3) limitless harm to our grid.
Green Energy
Is Stuck at a Financial Red Light. After years of uncertainty, last year's Inflation
Reduction Act finally gave America's renewable-energy industry a long, green signal. Now the
economy is blocking the road. The wind and solar industries have always suffered from the
short-term nature of subsidies, with federal tax credits often extended in nail-biting one-year
increments. Last year's climate bill changed that, giving the industry subsidies that last at
least a decade. But just as policy winds blow in their favor, two critical growth drivers —
interest rates and equipment costs — are moving in the wrong direction.
The
Great 2021 Texas Blackouts: A Case Study of Electrical Grid Failure. The blame for
the Texas blackouts includes the failure of wind, solar, and electrical gas generation,
insufficient reserve electrical generation capacity, an electrical grid that was not interconnected
to other grids, and electrical utilities being unprepared. Republican governor Rick Perry
promoted solar and wind electrical generation while discouraging coal electrical generation
(through regulations and financial discouragement). As a result, the 2021 winter storm reduced
solar and wind generation, and the electrical gas generators were improperly winterized, resulting
in a loss of electrical power. The only remedy for the lack of electrical supply was
blackouts. Had coal or nuclear power been available, blackouts would have been avoided.
Texas utilities needed more reserve electrical generation capacity. It was not just the
winter storm of 2021 that caused the blackouts. Texas utilities are now projecting brownouts
this summer, when electrical demand will exceed electrical supply.
Net
Zero grid batteries alone would bankrupt America. Senate Budget Committee Chairman
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) cites "the climate crisis" at almost every opportunity. President
Biden calls it a greater threat than nuclear war. They and their allies champion
"carbon-free" electricity generation by 2035 and nearly fossil-fuel-free energy by 2050.
Achieving "net zero" carbon dioxide emissions will be painless, they assure us. Costs will be
so low you'll need a magnifying glass to see them. Governments merely have to enact mandates,
provide subsidies, and the transformation to "clean" energy will just happen. Almost like in
a fairy tale. Here in the real world, however, we would need literally millions of
weather-dependent wind turbines, billions of equally unreliable solar panels, millions of half-ton
battery modules for vehicles, billions more modules to back up intermittent electricity generation,
millions of transformers, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines.
If
fossil fuels are destructive, renewable alternatives are maybe even more so. In the
rollicking world of net-zero policy-making and initiatives, Canada aims to be a global
leader. The country's bankers, mining executives, auto companies, electricity producers and
political leaders have merged into a unified machine around the idea that a new green economy can
be achieved via a just transition to a global energy system free of carbon emissions. [...]
["]There is no energy transition without critical minerals: no batteries, no electric cars, no wind
turbines and no solar panels. The sun provides raw energy, but electricity flows through
copper. Wind turbines need manganese, platinum and rare earth magnets. Nuclear power
requires uranium. Electric vehicles require batteries made with lithium, cobalt and nickel
and magnets. Indium and tellurium are integral to solar panel manufacturing."
Renewable
energy growth brings mounting waste challenge. Driven primarily by wind and solar
power, renewable energy sources surpassed coal for electricity generation in the United States last
year, marking a significant milestone. However, as the industry expands, a new problem
emerges: what to do with the mounting waste generated by worn-out solar panels and wind turbine
blades. More than 90% of discarded solar panels end up in landfills. By 2030, the
retired panels are estimated to cover an area equivalent to about 3,000 football fields. But
the panels, primarily composed of glass and aluminum, contain valuable and reusable materials.
Green
New Deal Appeasement Leads Nowhere. It is frustrating to watch people who should know
better, including politicians, state regulators, and even leaders of traditional energy companies,
play along with the green energy transition. Any day now, I expect a modern-day Neville
Chamberlain to say that in the war on carbon, it is peace for our time. The rationale offered
is that cooperating with the Net Zero agenda will buy some time for traditional energy
producers. I understand that there is pressure concerning quarterly financial disclosures,
but appeasement will only end one way. The time is coming when your upcoming quarterly
financial reports will be your last. Efforts to go along to get along will not be enough.
The
Great Green Dream is a fantasy. Then there is the legendary energy and systems
theorist Vaclav Smil. An emeritus at the University of Manitoba and author of more than 40
books on energy, environment and industry, Smil has declared the "rapid-speed transformation
narratives" in the renewables field to be so full of "magic prescriptions" that they are "the
academic equivalents of science fiction. ... Heavy doses of wishful thinking are commingled with a
few solid facts" ... "We are dealing with people who, despite receiving relevant education, refuse
to acknowledge basic physical [and] mathematical facts," he explained. "That a global
decarbonization is impossible by 2030 or 2040 is beyond any reasonable dispute."
Why
"Net Zero" Is Not a Rational U.S. Energy Policy. Despite Germany's last-ditch attempt
at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with
its "net zero" emissions agenda. In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions
would be staggering — $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 — as
would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide
production. The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in
developing countries will continue to increase as those countries' focus is economic growth for
their citizens, not permanent economic misery to "save" the climate.
A Texas-Sized Energy
Fiasco. Renewable subsidies have distorted and destabilized the Texas electric grid,
which resulted in a week-long power outage during the February 2021 freeze. To prevent more
blackouts, Republicans in the Lone Star State now plan to subsidize gas power plants. The
Texas Senate last week passed putative energy reforms to "level the playing field," as Lt. Gov. Dan
Patrick put it. Texans will now spend tens of billions of dollars to bolster natural-gas plants
that provide reliable power but can't make money because of competition from subsidized renewable
energy. Federal tax credits have encouraged an oversupply of wind power, which Lone Star State
Republicans assisted last decade by charging rate payers $7 billion to build thousands of miles
of transmission lines from West Texas and the Panhandle to big cities.
Kerry:
Green Energy Will Be More Competitive if We Raise Prices of Oil, Gas. On Friday's
broadcast of MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry
stated that wind and solar power will become "far more price competitive than oil and gas" if oil
and gas companies see their costs rise because they "have to spend huge amounts of money for carbon
capture and storage and utilization." Kerry said, "I would say to you, Andrea, that, frankly,
I'm surprised, pleasantly, on the positive side, by the amount of things that are just taking
hold. We see remarkable progress on batteries and battery storage. We're seeing the
price of wind and solar coming down still, even as the technology is getting better, and it's going
to be far more price competitive than oil and gas if they have to spend huge amounts of money for
carbon capture and storage and utilization. We don't know the answer to some of those
questions now. [...]"
Happy
Earth Day: 'Green' Energy Is Toxic, Inefficient, and Unprofitable. First, it's
literally impossible to produce the amount of energy and electricity society currently uses with
"green" energy. That's why climate propagandists like World Economic Forum tell people to get
used to being poorer. But also, much of that "green" energy is actually terrible for the
environment. Solar panels and wind turbines have killed billions of birds, and offshore wind
turbines can be deadly for whales. And those "green" electric vehicles (EV)? Not only is
electricity largely produced from non-green sources (particularly coal and natural gas), but EV
batteries, which have to be replaced every few years, are very toxic to dispose of. The
"mining, manufacturing, and disposal of [EV] batteries threatens to be a major environmental
concern in the coming years." Solar panels and wind turbines also generate lots of toxic waste.
America's
Coming Energy Crisis. President Joe Biden and the apocalyptic climate cult within the
Democrat party believe that climate change is the greatest threat to the country. That's
right, the greatest threat is not nuclear war, not unlimited unlawful immigration, not inflation,
or out-of-control spending. Instead, it's the slow warming of the atmosphere, which they
believe is caused solely by burning fossil fuels. In 2021, Biden signed an executive order
that decreed that all federal contracts for goods and services to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
Some states and businesses are following Biden's lead. California and six other states intend
to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. California also wants to ban the sale of
gas-powered water heaters and furnaces by 2030. Now the Environmental Protection Agency has
piled on. The agency is proposing vehicle pollution limits for 2032 that are so strict that
they will force roughly two thirds of new vehicles sold to be electric. This may sound
glorious to climate warriors, but they have no idea what they are getting us into.
Germany
bids farewell to its last nuclear plants, eyes hydrogen future. For 35 years, the
Emsland nuclear power plant in northwestern Germany has reliably provided millions of homes with
electricity and many with well-paid jobs in what was once an agricultural backwater. Now, it
and the country's two other remaining nuclear plants are being shut down. Germany long ago
decided to phase out both fossil fuels and nuclear power over concerns that neither is a
sustainable source of energy.
The Editor says...
I just have a few questions. Why is nuclear power not sustainable? For that matter,
why are all "fossil fuels" suddenly perceived as unsustainable? The people who say natural gas is
unsustainable are the same people who are opposed to fracking. The people who say petroleum is
unsustainable are the same people who are opposed to drilling in Alaska. What country has used up
all of its coal? What makes anyone think windmills and solar panels and firewood are sustainable?
Elon's
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Battery Math. [Scroll down] Tesla's
top people are claiming that over the next 20 years or so, the countries of the world can install
30.5 terawatts of weather-dependent generation capacity. That's a bold claim given that it
took the U.S. more than a century to reach our current generation capacity of about 1.2 terawatts,
which includes all the power plants in the country, including nuclear, solar, hydro, wind, coal,
gas, biomass, and oil. But the number that jumped off the screen when I read the Master Plan
was this one: 240. That's the number of terawatt-hours (TWh) of battery storage the authors of
the report say will be needed to make the jump to weather-dependent renewables. [...] Tesla
currently has 5 Gigafactories. Thus, Tesla's current battery storage output is, in rough
terms, 250 GWh per year. Now recall that the Master Plan requires 240 TWh, which is 240,000
GWh. Therefore, as can be seen in the graphic directly above, producing 240,000 GWh of
battery capacity would require the output of all of Tesla's existing Gigafactories for the next
960 years.
Not Zero, or even close.
The Biden Administration has set a goal of achieving Net Zero US annual CO2 emissions by 2050.
To accomplish this goal, the Administration has decreed that all coal-fired electric generation
would cease by 2030; and, that all natural gas fueled electric generation would cease by 2035.
The Administration has also decreed that all new vehicles sold in the US after 2035 would be
electric vehicles. There is also an effort underway to end the use of natural gas for
applications other than electric generation, including virtually all residential, commercial and
industrial end uses. Incentives have been put in place for EVs and electric appliances and
equipment, as well as for wind and solar generation and electricity storage. Achieving the
Administration's goals would result in a US energy economy based solely on electricity, generated
by a mixture of renewable generation sources including hydro, biomass, geothermal, wind, solar and
possibly some nuclear generation.
Biden's
green energy push heightens national security concerns. Anew report published by the
Institute for Energy Research is the latest in a series of warnings that President Joe Biden's
green energy policies put America's national security in "real jeopardy." The reported
published last week argues Biden's push the U.S. away from fossil fuels and toward so-called
renewable energy makes the country "far more dependent" on imports from China than it's ever been
on the Middle East for oil imports. America's dependence is in large part the result of China
have much of the rare earth metals and other mined elements such as cobalt and lithium[.]
"Therein lies the danger," the report reads. "The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls almost the
entire global supply chain." In addition, the report states, the People's Republic of China not
only has a monopoly on the mineral elements Biden wants, but the Communist country also "either
directly owns or in some way controls" the majority of the mines that produce the elements.
Trying
To Head Off New York's Total Self-Destruction. I guess it's fair to say at this point
that we do have an "energy crisis" in New York, but the key word is "home-made." Everything about
energy in New York that could remotely be called a "crisis" is entirely the creation of our
politicians. There is no rational reason why energy policy should even be a significant
political issue in New York. We have a perfectly good, functional energy system. By far
the larger part of it — the non-electrified part, including nearly all transportation,
industry, agriculture, and home heat outside the large cities — came into being through
private initiative and works with little to no input or interference from politicians and
bureaucrats. [...] Then our politicians got the idea that there was an imperative to address and
solve "climate change" through the device of a politically-directed total re-do of the energy
system into something that has never previously been tried nor proven to work. [...] Suddenly, we
are on a crash program to get rid of all fossil fuels, electrify everything, and depend completely
on the wind and sun for the generation of our energy.
The
Energy Transition Is a Delusion Indeed. The "energy transition" continues to receive
thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing
to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The
"energy transition" is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy
inexpensive, reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment, toward such
unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are expensive, unreliable,
and deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction,
land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a broader context
large and inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in
environmental protection. But the Beltway being what it is, the fantasists are impervious to
reality, until the massive costs and dislocations and absurdities become impossible to ignore.
(Witness, for example, California.) Even as they backtrack on their confident assertions that a
modern economy can be powered with the energy equivalent of pixie dust, they argue that the
emerging problems are little more than growing pains attendant upon short run rigidities, and all
will be well given some more time, more subsidies, and more magical thinking.
Untransformed. Electricity
prices are soaring. But prices for the hardware needed to deliver electricity to homes and
businesses are increasing faster than the price of the juice itself. That means consumers
will be paying even higher electricity prices in the years ahead. As can be seen in the
graphic [not shown here], the inflation rate for utility products over the past two years has been
2.6 times higher than what has been seen in the economy as a whole. But the problems in the
utility product sector go beyond cost. Transformer manufacturers can't keep up with booming
demand and lead times for some transformers are being measured in years. Furthermore, a
proposed federal efficiency rule for distribution transformers could result in even higher prices,
longer lead times, and decreased grid reliability, all at the same time climate activists and
dark-money NGOs are pushing efforts to "electrify everything."
Germans
Have Given Up On "Green" Energy. Not the German government, which continues on a
collision course with reality. But Germans have figured out that the green dream is turning
into a nightmare. [...] The question is what will be left of Germany's economy when the green dream
is finally abandoned.
Net
zero is a disastrous solution to a nonexistent problem. It is true that, since the
industrial revolution, when we began to use fossil fuels — first coal, then oil and
gas — as our source of energy, this has led to a steady, albeit gradual, increase in the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The know-nothings (notably but by no means
exclusively the BBC) customarily refer to this as pollution. In reality, it is the very
reverse: so far from carbon dioxide being pollution, it is the stuff of life. It is the
food of plants, and without plants there would be little animal life and no human life. The
principal effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to stimulate plant growth, known
as the fertilisation effect. Careful studies have shown that the planet is indeed becoming
greener thanks to increased CO2. And yet we're told that we need to prevent any further
increase in CO2 in order to become 'green'. A secondary effect of increased CO2 in the
Earth's atmosphere is to warm the planet slightly. This is no bad thing: many more people die
each year from cold-related illnesses than from heat-related ones. And the warming is very
slight indeed. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an offshoot of the
United Nations, the Earth is warming at a rate of at most one-sixth of a degree per decade, a
barely perceptible amount. And of course we don't experience the mean global temperature
anyway: we experience the temperature in our own neck of the woods, which varies enormously.
Seize
property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief. The chief executive of
JP Morgan has suggested that governments should seize private land to build wind and solar farms in
order to meet net zero targets. Jamie Dimon, the longstanding boss of the Wall Street titan
who donates to the Democratic Party, said green energy projects must be fast-tracked as the window
for averting the most costly impacts of global climate change is closing. In his annual
shareholder letter, Mr Dimon said: "Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment
to be done in any kind of timely way. "We may even need to evoke eminent domain —
we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline
initiatives."
The Editor says...
There is no rapidly-closing window. Global warming, at the rate of one degree per century, is not
a cause for alarm, and even if new laws could stop the weather from changing — which is
impossible — land seizures for new solar panels and windmills wouldn't be justifiable,
nor would they be of any benefit in the long run.
The green
foods time bomb. Green propagandists continue to inflict lethal damage to our electricity
industry here in Australia — and it has become unreliable and expensive. City food
supplies cannot survive without reliable refrigeration at every level, from farms to retail stores.
Thus, unreliable green power supplies will produce unreliable food supplies. Their intrusive green
energy infrastructure is also nibbling away at our grasslands and farms, thus reducing their capacity to
produce food. Less recognized is the damage green propagandists are doing to our health and our
food supply by attacking animal foods, and promoting grains, vegetables, seeds, and fake foods for humans.
A simple
reason why net zero is impossible. Renewables cannot be made reliable with storage so
their penetration must be constrained and managed. The North American Reliability Corporation
(NERC) must develop Reliability Standards to ensure that the reckless growth of renewables does not
destabilize the grid. Grid scale storage at the scale needed to replace fossil fuels with
wind and solar is impossibly expensive. Even assuming fantastic price reductions, analysis
shows the cost of the required battery storage still nearly equals the $23 trillion annual
American GDP. The likely cost would be many times GDP. Clearly this is economically impossible.
Despite this impossibility, present government policies and utility practices are driving toward massive
grid penetration by renewables. This reckless drive must be properly constrained and managed,
in order to protect reliability. American grid reliability must be maintained.
Greens
refuse to discuss recycling renewables and restoring mining locations to pristine condition.
The reality is that all the mineral products and metals needed to make wind turbines, solar panels, and
EV batteries are mined and processed in places like Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Bolivia, and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, mostly under Chinese control. Decommissioning and restoration of those mining
landscapes back to their original pristine condition is not in the cards in developing countries.
Recycling of worn-out turbine blades, solar panels, and EV batteries, in wealthy countries is also not
in the cards. The sites for the mining of materials required to build wind, solar, and EV batteries
are under minimal to nonexistent labor, wage, environmental, reclamation, and worker health and safety
regulations. The mere extraction of those exotic minerals presents social challenges, human rights
abuses, and environmental degradation's worldwide, but are of no significance to the wealthy countries
benefiting from those "green" materials.
Renewables
are not Sustainable. Both Government and Opposition want us to decarbonise our
electricity system and spend even more billions on renewable wind and solar technologies.
They justify this on the grounds of low CO2 emissions, even though the supposed low costs have been
shown to be a fantasy. However, CO2 is not the only yardstick by which we should measure the
sustainability or desirability of energy technologies. We should also look at energy return
on investment, land usage, mineral requirements and overall mortality. This analysis shows
that the energy return on energy invested in wind, solar and biomass falls below that required to
run a modern economy. Indeed, bioenergy with carbon capture (BECCS) is probably a net energy
sink. If we cannot even maintain, let alone increase living standards using these
technologies, then we are consigning our children to a future of deprivation. This alone is
sufficient grounds to end further subsidy and investment in these technologies.
Holding the
right people responsible for the global energy crisis. The cause of Europe's energy
insecurity, which has rendered it impotent against Putin, is simple: When you restrict domestic
fossil fuel production on the false promise of replacement by unreliable solar and wind, you become
dangerously dependent on foreign production. Europe's vulnerability to Russia was completely
preventable. Europe and its allies have all the natural gas, coal, and uranium they need to
produce low-cost, reliable heat and electricity for generations to come. But anti-fossil
fuel, anti-nuclear policies have neutered Europe. For the last 2 decades Europe has destroyed
its ability to produce and import energy from fossil fuels and nuclear — on the promise
that unreliable solar and wind could replace them. But after trillions in subsidies, it's
clear that they have failed. One major cause of Europe's current energy impotence is its
numerous bans on the greatest natural gas producing technology ever invented: fracking.
Fracking has been banned by France, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and the UK.
Biden:
Worse than Jimmy Carter. U.S. energy costs spiked prior to the Ukraine conflict,
aggravated by Biden's anti-oil rhetoric and reckless spending follies. Yet the Times admits
the push toward renewable energy is still dependent on finite resources, and on fossil fuels
themselves — that is how "strategic materials" are mined, processed, and
transported. All so-called renewable energy is completely dependent on availability of oil or
other energy sources for its manufacture. The creation of enough solar panels (manufactured
from coal and oil) to power the electric grid would devour more natural resources than the world
possesses. It is a bootstrapping scheme, more akin to a perpetual motion machination than
sound environmental policy. And yet this fantasy of energy "independent" from the energy used
to create renewable alternatives persists: [...] This is an impossible fantasy, plunging the nation
into mind-boggling debt, dependency on foreign powers, and an avoidance of effective environmental
stewardship. Manufacturing EVs and solar panels pollutes the planet: the same old industrial
toxins are packaged into shiny virtue-signaling cars that eventually join combustion engines in landfills.
American
Towns Don't Want To Be Big Cities' 'Green Energy' Graveyards. While the coronavirus
recession has sapped demand for energy and put fracking companies on the ropes — with
hundreds of bankruptcies declared so far — the renewables that would replace oil and
coal are facing a growing challenge that will last long after the pandemic: The resistance of
rural communities to mammoth solar or wind farms that can power cities. From New York to
California, local opposition is thwarting wind and solar projects seen as essential to
transitioning from fossil fuels. Many opponents support renewable energy in theory and
express concern about climate change. And many landowners have partnered with environmental
groups to block or delay natural gas pipelines designed to run through their property.
Renewables: the more
you have, the more you pay for backups. Cold, still weather in the UK this week triggered high
demand for electricity at a time when wind turbines were idling. That forced National Grid to use a
back-up coal(opens a new window)-generation plant for the first time this winter. Depending on Mother
Nature for electricity means accepting her inconsistencies. Back-up is required, and keeping it
available has a cost. In the US, electricity demand is on average 15 percent higher during July
than January according to the US Energy Information Agency. In the much cooler UK, a government
study during 2012-2013 revealed that demand rose 36 percent in the winter.
The
Economic Case for Net Zero Is Zero. Implementing net zero will depress the global
economy more than the atmospheric warming that the campaign against carbon dioxide emissions is
supposed to prevent, according to a comparison of research by recognized experts. In other
words, abandoning efforts to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels likely would
make virtually everybody richer. [...] According to the data, the cost of implementing net zero
would range from seven to 10 percent of GDP by 2050, while the cost of abandoning net zero
would be but a fraction of that — 0.5 to four percent of GDP from a temperature increase
of 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. The difference is measured in many trillions of
dollars. Moreover, the higher cost of net zero is compounded by being incurred 50 years
earlier than the predicted effect of warming. "When we step back and look at predictions for
warming and GDP growth (gross domestic product), we must consider that the more wealth we create,
the better people can withstand severe weather or whatever climate impacts there might be," says
Dr. Schernikau. Neither McKinsey nor Wood Mackenzie acknowledges in its report that it
would be more harmful to the global economy to implement net zero than to allow the projected
warming to occur.
Challenging
"Net Zero" with Science. Governments around the globe are taking actions to implement
fossil fuel-free or "Net Zero" energy systems without a thorough examination of the scientific
basis for doing so. This paper undertakes that examination by reviewing the scientific
support (or lack thereof) that has been used to justify this transition to Net Zero. No
atempt is made to address the significant economic, societal or environmental consequences of a
near-total reliance on renewable energy and the required batery-backup that is necessary to
transition to a fossil fuel free future. Two of the paper's authors — Drs.
William Happer and Richard Lindzen, professors emeriti at Princeton University and Massachusets
Institute of Technology, respectively — have spent decades studying and writing about
the physics of Earth's atmosphere. The third, Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist of more than
40 years, has spent much of the last decade writing and speaking about the interplay of
geology, history and climate. The authors find that Net Zero — the global movement
to eliminate fossil fuels and its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases — to be
scientifically invalid and a threat to the lives of billions of people.
Guess which state is a
national leader in green energy. I can't say that I realized this before today and
maybe you didn't either but it turns out Texas is one of the nation's leaders in both solar and
wind energy production. This is from a NY Times opinion piece titled "Clean Energy
Is Suddenly Less Polarizing Than You Think" which is about where some of the money from the
Inflation Reduction Act will be going. ["]Between the signing of the I.R.A. and Jan.
31, announcements of the largest clean-energy investments have been in Georgia and Idaho, followed
by Tennessee, then Michigan, then South Carolina and Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, Nevada
and Arizona. Between now and 2027, Texas is expected to add almost twice as much solar
capacity as California. In expected development, Ohio, Nevada, Indiana and Florida rank
third, fourth, fifth and sixth.["]
America's
$100 billion climate change flop. For at least the last 20 years, politicians in
Washington, at the behest of green energy groups, have spent some $100 billion of taxpayer money
to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. [...] We are the furthest thing from being
climate change alarmists, but when you spend $100 billion of taxpayer money and achieve absolutely
nothing, President Joe Biden and his green allies should be arrested for criminal fraud. Where
did all the money go? Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental
and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but no results. Green energy
companies have milked taxpayers of tens of billions more, even as wind and solar only produce about
12% of our energy. Is this the greatest ripoff of U.S. taxpayers in history?
Germans
double down on cold and dark. German chancellor Olaf Scholz sure fits the
stereotypical stubborn Deutschlander. In the face of everything and all the pain Germany's
forced transition to renewables has cost his country, he is bound and determined to bullrush into
an even more expensive and unstable future. These starry-eyed globalists are also willing to
talk a Green game out of one side of their mouths while saying something entirely different from
the other side at the same time. For instance, I can see the environmental brownie point
accrual in shutting down your nuclear reactors — activists hate the things.
Yay! You make Greta happy in her heart! Maybe she takes a picture with you and no
scowl. But, when you don't have enough reliable power on hand already, it's prohibitively
expensive for your citizens to use, but ghastly to live without? Maybe you should take a
pause, ja?
Ireland
Suffers Man-made Electricity Emergency. Ireland's growing electricity demand and the planned
shutting down of aging gas-fired power stations have led to the need for backup generators to help
keep the lights on across the Emerald Isle for at least the next few winters. The Telegraph
reported that "mobile turbines, described as 'effectively jet engines', are set to be installed in
areas including Dublin and nearby County Meath." The generators were ordered by Environment
Minister Eamon Ryan last year as a "last resort" due to the expected energy shortfall. That
energy shortfall intensified as the war in Ukraine led to fuel supply issues, and as domestic
fossil-fuel energy generation is being sunset to achieve clean-energy goals, the island has become
more reliant on gas imports. In October, Minister of State Ossian Smyth called the situation
"an electricity emergency," while Darren O'Rourke, an Assembly delegate, called it "a national
scandal." O'Rourke is right, as government-instituted and -enforced climate-change policies
are scandalous, designed to bring us all under one-government rule, as outlined in the United
Nations Agenda 2030.
'Clean
energy' projection — 86 million pounds of turbine blades to enter landfills each
year. Of all the ridiculous notions pushed by the left, demands for "green" energy
remain one of the most irritating, for several reasons: First off, there is the reality that
the "green" agenda is just communism by another name, even though the useful idiots really do
believe it's about conserving and preserving the environment. Funny enough, I recently read
an interview piece over at The Guardian, titled, "A greener Marx? Kohei Saito on
connecting communism with the climate crisis". Saito, a "degrowth communist" and an academic,
believes Karl Marx's lesser-known ideas on the environment are the answer to the current climate
"crisis." The man whose ideas helped to inspire 20th century governments to kill more than
100 million people? Um, no thanks!
Just Call
it What it Is. Every American taxpayer is now a shareholder in the destruction of the
fossil fuel and nuclear industries to make way for inefficient renewable sources. The utopian
goals of net zero carbon emissions and an all-electric society are absurd when one considers the
means by which electricity, a secondary source of energy, is produced. Madcap policy measures
to decarbonize American-made electricity don't amount to a hill of beans for eighty-five percent of
the industrialized world soiling a planet that will nevertheless continue to warm for hundreds of
years. Trillion-dollar climate bills adding to inflation and taxation will do little more than
break the backs of American consumers, forcing many into lifelong dependency on socialist subsidies.
How
Biden's 'Green Energy Economy' is Benefiting Left-Wing Billionaires. President Joe
Biden's taxpayer-funded push to build a "clean energy economy" is benefiting the left's most
prominent billionaire megadonors, including Bill Gates and Laurene Powell Jobs, a Washington
Free Beacon analysis found. Biden's Energy Department has in the last two months
announced nearly $3 billion in loans to two electric battery companies, Redwood Materials and
Ioneer, which are backed by seed funding from Gates, Jobs, and other left-wing billionaires.
Now those billionaires, who have poured millions into the effort to win Democrats power in
Washington, are likely set to see a handsome profit from their initial investment. Ioneer,
for example, won a $700 million loan from Biden and saw its stock price increase by
33 percent after the announcement. Biden's Energy Department is funding Redwood and
Ioneer through its Loan Programs Office, which is no stranger to controversy. Under former
president Barack Obama, the office approved a $529 million loan to electric car manufacturer
Fisker, which declared bankruptcy in 2013 and was subsequently sold to China.
The Great Green
Energy Transition Is Impossible. First, my background: I have degrees in computer
science, applied mathematics, and system engineering. I retired from the Caltech Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, after 53 years, in 2020. [...] Several months ago, I asked California State
Senator Anthony Portantino's office — and California Assemblywoman Laura Friedman's
office, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Lynn Barger's office, and Congressman Adam Schiff's
office, and Senator Dianne Feinstein's office, and Senator Alex Padilla's office, and Energy
Secretary Jennifer Granholm's office — for a report of a comprehensive quantitative
system-engineering life-cycle analysis of an all-renewable energy system. Nobody sent a
report. I suspect it doesn't exist. But nobody was polite enough to reply "Sorry, we
don't have such a report." What I mean by comprehensive life-cycle analysis is one that
includes minerals, metals, concrete, other materials, transportation, construction, operation,
maintenance, safety, decommissioning, destruction, recycling, disposal, energy return on energy
invested, energy payback period, financial payback period, and overall environmental effects.
Operation requires methods for generators to synchronize voltage, frequency, and phase with the
grid, and storage for when the weather doesn't cooperate with demand. Because I received no
such report I started doing some research. I haven't put together a comprehensive analysis of
my own, but I have found or developed a few pieces.
Why the intermittency
problem can't be solved. That problem is that, with wind dominating the grid, for
anyone looking to make money in the lulls, the economics look grim. There are two major kinds
of lull that need to be filled. The first is a dunkelflaute, a lull in the winter, when solar
is generating little or nothing. We get a dunkelflaute most years, and sometimes more than
one. They can last from 1-3 weeks. The second is the long summer lull, with low wind
generation right through the summer month, although perhaps with occasional windy interruptions.
This happens every year of course, and a large amount of energy needs to be stored to cover the gap:
perhaps as much as 50 days' demand.
Adequate Storage
for Renewable Energy is Not Possible. In Grid-Scale Storage of Renewable Energy:
The Impossible Dream, Energy Matters (November 20, 2017), Euan Mearns used a full year of
data from England and Scotland, with one hour resolution, to calculate that to have firm power, it
would be necessary to have 390 watt hours of storage per watt of average demand. In Is 100
Percent Renewable Energy Possible? (May 25, 2018), Norman Rogers performed a similar
calculation for Texas and concluded that 400 watt hours would be necessary. [...] Activists
insist that an all-electric United States energy economy would have average demand of about 1.7 TWe.
Assume California average generating conditions from 2015 through 2022 apply to the entire nation, and
therefore 2876 watt hours of storage per watt of average demand is adequate (this is optimistic).
The total cost for Tesla PowerWall 2 storage units, not including installation, with 2876 x 1.7 terawatts
= 4.89 quadrillion watt hours' capacity would be 4.89 quadrillion x $0.543 = $2.66 quadrillion, or about
133 times total US 2018 GDP (about $20 trillion). Assuming batteries last ten years (the Tesla
warranty period), the cost per year would be 13.3 times total US 2018 GDP. The cost for each of America's
128 million households would be about $2,075,000 per month. This analysis assumes 100% battery charge and
discharge efficiency. They're closer to 90% (81% round-trip), so the necessary capacity and cost would be about
25% more.
Grids
Can't Handle All the Solar and Wind Dems Want to Hook Up. Our electric grids were
shaky to begin with. They cover vast distances and are not being properly maintained.
But then the Democrats come in with the brilliant idea of spending hundreds of billions on erratic
and unreliable wind and solar which then delivers power erratically and puts a further strain on
the grids. As the money gets shoveled out the door, unworkable and unfeasible green energy
projects go out the door. And the grids can't handle them.
Soaring
Energy Costs Lead to Rationing of Vegetables in U.K.. While it is prudent to remind everyone how fortunate
we are to have Florida, California and Mexico for North American vegetable supplies, i.e., no dramatic supply shortages,
the energy price pressure being applied by Biden policy will lead to even higher consumer prices for all row crops.
18 months ago (Oct 2021), CTH first strongly recommended restarting victory gardens at home. The same
recommendation only strengthens.
Minneapolis
Fed President Neel Kashkari Admits Goal is to Shrink Economy to Meet Decreased Energy Supplies.
Apparently, the interview took place a few weeks ago (it's new to me), but the admissions within it are quite
remarkable. The CNBC discussion surrounds inflation and the federal reserve raising interest rates.
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is talking about the jobs report, inflation and the intention of the federal
reserve to continue raising interest rates until they achieve 2% inflation, regardless of consequence. Kashkari
doesn't hedge on the latter issue of consequence; he affirms with absolute guarantee the fed will keep raising rates
until the economy shrinks enough such that 2% inflation is achieved. However, watch what happens when Joe Kernan
takes that outlook and overlays "supply side" energy policy. [Video clip]
The
Left Is Willing to Bankrupt America for Climate Change. American socialists are eager to prove Churchill
right. Their preferred stalking horse in their pursuit of egalitarian misery is the specter of a climate
apocalypse. Since the apocalypse, in their telling, is gonna be, well, apocalyptic, that means the defense against
it must be just as all-embracing. And just as the defense against the real Nazi apocalypse bankrupted the British
Empire, so, too, they are content to bankrupt America in the pursuit of a cause they believe has equal urgency.
But there is no confidence among climate fanatics that the battle can ever be won without the surrender of abundance.
The further down the road we get to electrification, the more apparent it is that it will not solve the problem of
how to get enough energy without harming the planet.
Everything
that needs electricity is made with oil. The few wealthy countries pursuing the generation of electricity
from wind turbines and solar panels while simultaneously moving to rid the world of fossil fuels have short memories of
petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less
than two hundred years. Renewables may be able to generate intermittent electricity form breezes and sunshine, but they
cannot replace what is manufactured from fossil fuels, that are demanded by lifestyles and economies around the world.
Efforts to cease the use of crude oil will be the greatest threat to civilization, not climate change, and lead the world to
an era of guaranteed extreme shortages like we had in the decarbonized world in the 1800's without fossil fuel products.
This pursuit of renewables without fossil fuels can only lead us back to shorter life spans, diseases, malnutrition, and
weather-related deaths resulting from the elimination of the products from fossil fuels that are now benefiting society.
The
Final Nail in The Coffin Of "Renewable" Energy. Industries large and small are going to the wall at a
record rate, wrecked by the endless hikes in electricity prices whose root cause is the enforced and pointless
shuttering of long-amortized and perfectly viable coal-fired power stations that used to produce electricity at only $30
per MWh, and their replacement with wind and solar subsidy farms producing intermittent and unreliable electrical power
at anything up to $11,500 per MWh. What is more, this disastrous industrial and economic collapse has been
deliberately precipitated by a once-Conservative "government" that has long abandoned the no-nonsense economic realism
and free-market ideals of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Curiously, though, the crazed infliction of
pig-ugly, wildlife-wrecking, landscape-lacerating windmills on the British people is not reducing our electricity-driven
CO2 emissions. More and more windmills and solar panels are industrializing and destroying our formerly green and
pleasant land.
New
geological study proves that the green energy movement is impossible to achieve. The renewable energy
fantasy goal is achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Carpet-bombing propaganda has convinced the public to
accept the extravagant claim that technology currently exists to reach net zero carbon emissions. Like carnival
barkers, the net-zero fanatics say renewable energy is affordable, sustainable, scalable, and not an economy
wrecker. The goal is to create a first-generation green power grid relying on wind turbine farms, solar array
farms, and power storage battery banks replacing fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. In addition, the new power
grid would power a global fleet of electric vehicles that would replace the internal combustion engine. Western
society has taken one hundred fifty years of progress to achieve a fantastically complex energy system using the dense
source of cheap hydrocarbon energy, the master resource. Yet, the net-zero devotees believe the complex energy
system can be dismantled with minimal disruption and replaced with a low-density renewable energy grid that is
intermittent and nonscalable, in less than thirty years.
Wind
Farms Don't Just Hurt The Environment And Boost China, They're Ugly As Sin. Hoosier Daniel Lee recently
noted the policy choice to limit natural gas and coal, combined with mandates for low-energy wind and solar, is making
the Midwest energy grid significantly more expensive and unreliable. [...] It's a pattern happening across the United
States. In early 2022, New York's power grid operator predicted increasing blackouts as environmentalist
regulations cut supply and the state shuts down power plants. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned
the West and Midwest should expect to see the same thing for the same reasons. In fall 2022, New England's power
grid operator told customers to expect blackouts if cold weather became severe, because of natural gas shortages. [...]
In short, the United States is following California and Europe into disastrous energy policies that lead to frequent
blackouts and brownouts, and people cutting down forests to warm themselves in frigid winters. Apparently, it
needs to be noted that people regularly die when the power goes out, especially the sick, young, and elderly.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and emergency services depend on reliable power.
How
long will 'climate change' trump other green and progressive causes? The Wall Street Journal reviewed a
heartbreaking account of children and adults in the Congo exploited to work in the cobalt mines of Congo, in a book
titled Cobalt Red, by Siddharth Kara. [...] The euphemism artisanal mining — "that is, human digging
and toting by manual, brute force rather than using trucks and backhoes" — is used to describe the primitive
technology employed at these Congo mines. [...] Child labor under horrible conditions? Sorry, you can't make an
omelet without breaking some eggs, and besides, they'd die from climate change faster than us because they're such a hot
country already. So, relax, they're getting a good deal. The wholesale slaughter of birds by
windmills? Sorry about that, especially those eagles. But my cause is more important than yours. You
see, we're all going to die if I don't get my way. What about the whales washing up on the beaches of New Jersey
and New York coincidentally exposed to offshore wind power developments? The list goes on and on. Lots
of toxic substances are needed for the hardware replacing hydrocarbon-based oil, coal and gas, or as I like to call it,
organic energy.
Jiggery-Pokery
Wokery. The woke love to destroy whatever they touch — culture, infrastructure, social
cohesion, rational thought. To be woke is to embrace chaos and injury as a philosophy. From an
anthropological perspective, wokeism is fascinating because its practitioners believe they are creative freethinkers
while they act as lobotomized sheep. Whatever the woke wizards posing as priests tell their needy followers, the
woke herds accept as truth. [...] Hydrocarbon energies are bad for the environment, but mining for the rare earth
elements needed for electric vehicle batteries, covering endless hectares of land with solar panels, and dotting the
skyline with giant fan blades that routinely kill flocks of birds are all environmentally friendly. Fair wages are
essential, yet African and Chinese slave labor should be ignored. Using coal and natural gas is dastardly, yet
recharging electric vehicles with power generated from coal and natural gas is ingenious. Extreme cold kills far
more people than extreme heat, yet we must obsess over global warming. The cycles of the sun, the rotation of
Earth's magnetic core, ocean currents, geothermal activity, and the shifting magnetosphere all directly alter the
Earth's climate, but man alone must be held responsible for changes in the weather.
Al
Jazeera: We are "greening" ourselves to extinction. Greens are waking up that many of their corporate and
political friends are greedy unscrupulous profiteers, who have no intention of genuinely attempting to reduce CO2 emissions.
Relying on wind power means Britons must get used to cutting
energy use, says National Grid. Households will be paid to cut their electricity use at certain times more
often in future as Britain relies on wind power as part of the push to net zero, National Grid has signalled.
Craig Dyke, head of national control at the electricity system operator, said it "strongly believes" in consumers
becoming more flexible about when they use electricity as the energy system is overhauled. It comes as households
are paid to reduce electricity usage between 5pm and 6pm tonight as National Grid deploys its new scheme to help avert
blackouts for the first time outside of testing. Asked if similar schemes could become a "feature of British life"
and be used regularly, Mr Dyke told the BBC: It's something we strongly believe in. As we take that step
whereby people are far more engaged in the energy they use, and as we drive towards that net zero position with people
moving to electric vehicles and taking up heat pumps, for example, consumer engagement around this is key.
The
Dangerous Fantasy of Scotland's Net Zero Energy Transition. Suppose that Scotland's CO2 emissions fell
tomorrow to zero, i.e., that, at midnight, the country ceased to exist. Then according to the "Model for the
Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change" (MAGICC), based on the latest IPCC climate models, the reduction in
the Earth's temperature in 2100 would be... undetectable. Motivated by the moral necessity and urgency of this
goal, the Scottish Government is proposing a novel energy policy — its "Energy Strategy and Just Transition
Plan". This article reviews its major themes and their implications, and considers briefly the probability of
success of the Scottish Government implementing it.
Future Grid: Really? Wind and
solar generation operate intermittently, and their output fluctuates continuously when they are operating. The
grid is currently required to accept this intermittent, fluctuating output on a priority basis and to smooth the output
and dispatch alternative sources of generation when the intermittent generator output declines or ceases as the result
of time of day or weather conditions. This requirement imposes predictable but uncontrollable costs on the grid
and on the conventional generation capacity which supplies the grid during periods of low/no intermittent
generation. As the grid expands in line with the Administration's "all-electric everything" goal and the capacity
of fossil-fueled conventional generation declines as the result of federal mandates and the unfavorable economics of
reduced operating hours, there will be a growing need for increased electricity storage capacity and for "Dispatchable
Emissions-Free Resources" (DEFR). Unfortunately, the long-duration storage which would be required to support the
grid through multi-day renewable energy "droughts" is not currently available and the DEFR remain undefined.
Wind
and solar energy 'flatlines' in frigid state at worst time. A new report from the Independence Institute
has revealed how fossil fuels saved Colorado's grid. "Coloradans might want to begin brushing up on their
German. At least enough to be familiar with the word Dunkelflaute, which roughly translates to 'dark
doldrums.' The term describes a weather pattern of low wind and limited sunlight that makes generating electricity
from renewables nearly impossible," the report said. The event is common in Europe during the winter —
"hence the German name." And just recently it created a "devastating spike in gas prices in the U.K. while forcing
Germany to supply nearly half of its electricity needs from coal," the institute reported.
Speed
Is No Issue Unless It's About How Fast Our Liberty Is Being Lost. Government, unfortunately, rarely admits
to or learns from its mistakes and often seems determined to repeat them in updated form. Sometimes, it descends
into the bizarre, as when New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that "buildings are the largest source of emissions in our
state" and that's why she's "proposing a plan to end the sale of any new fossil-fuel-powered heating equipment by
2030." It's probably safe to extrapolate that the bulk of the heating equipment required under her scheme would be
powered by electricity and that the electricity will be generated by solar, wind and/or hydro. Keep that point in
mind. Governor Hochul's push for increased use of electricity comes not long after she "called for major
regulatory action that will require all new passenger cars, pick-up trucks and SUVs sold in New York State to be
zero-emission by 2035. Governor Hochul has also proposed that all school buses be zero-emission by that the same
year," according to a press release from her office. Those "zero-emissions" vehicles obviously would be powered by
electricity from the same sources and over the same distribution system as would her proposed heating equipment.
Pakistan
suffers major power outage after grid failure. Millions of people were without electricity as Pakistan
experienced a nationwide power outage on Monday due to a "reduced frequency" in the national grid, according to a
statement from the energy ministry. The power cuts affected all major cities, including Karachi, Lahore and
Islamabad. It may take up to 12 hours to fully restore power, Pakistan's power minister said.
The Editor says...
Really? Twelve hours sounds highly optimistic, in my opinion. If the breaker panel in my house failed,
it would take longer than 12 hours to get it fixed. The power grid for an entire country could take
quite a while to fix, depending on what went wrong.
JPMorgan
Chase CEO Warns Against Halt to Gas Use on CNBC; Musk Agrees. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon dealt
leftists a dose of energy infrastructure reality on CNBC's Squawk Box Thursday [1/19/2023]. While leftists are
busy calling for Americans to chuck their gas stoves off a cliff in the name of climate change, Dimon quipped, "We need
oil and gas," when Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen asked him whether stakeholders will increase pressure on companies to
pursue Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies. Dimon said it would take "50 years" to transition
away from oil and gas completely. "It's a hundred million barrels a day that are used to heat, fuel, [and] feed
people." Dimon's comments are simply common sense. Anyone with a watt of common sense realizes that an
entire nation cannot merely switch its method of energy production and consumption overnight.
We will destroy the earth
in the name of "Green Energy". [Threat reader] MiningWatch Canada is estimating that "[Three] billion
tons of mined metals and minerals will be needed to power the energy transition" — a "massive" increase
especially for six critical minerals: lithium, graphite, copper, cobalt, nickel and rare earth minerals[.] [...] Mining
requires the extraction of solid ores, often after removing vast amounts of overlying rock. Then the ore must be
processed, creating an enormous quantity of waste — about 100 billion tonnes a year, more than any other
human-made waste stream. Purifying a single tonne of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic meters of
water, which then becomes polluted with acids and heavy metals. On top of that, imagine the destruction and energy
required to obtain these essential metals:
18,740 pounds of purified rock to produce 2.2 pounds of vanadium
35,275 pounds of ore for 2.2 pounds of cerium
110,230 pounds of rock for 2.2 pounds of gallium
2,645,550 pounds of ore to get 2.2 pounds of lutecium
Also staggering amounts of ore are needed for other metals. By 2035, demand is expected to double for germanium;
quadruple for tantalum; and quintuple for palladium. The scandium market could increase nine-fold, and the cobalt
market by a factor of 24.
Environmentalism
will be the ruin of Germany. To add insult to injury, in 2022, even Germany's much-vaunted environmental
goals have been missed. If Germany's green zealots thought that sacrificing industry would be good for the planet,
they were wrong. Coal, one of the most polluting energy sources of all, provided a vital lifeline in 2022, with
Germany's coal power output increasing by 20 percent on the previous year. Nevertheless, it seems there are no
limits to German madness. Despite Germany's reliance on coal this year, economy minister Robert Habeck has
recently announced that Germany will now give up coal entirely by 2030 — eight years earlier than
originally planned. This move comes just as Germany's elites are pushing for more heat pumps to replace gas
boilers for home heating and for electric vehicles to replace petrol cars. Both of these will require even more
electricity to be produced, yet the German government seems determined to produce less. All of this is a recipe
for economic disaster — in Europe's most important economy. Could a hostile power have designed a
policy more devastating to the fundamentals of the German economy than that of the current government? Probably
not. In the short term, the only way the government's proposals make any sense is if Germany is planning to go
back to using Russian gas. That might explain the German government's reluctance to more effectively support Ukraine.
'No
scientific basis': MIT-trained physicist slams climate alarmism in new paper. [An] indictment of the Net
Zero political project has been made by one of the world's leading nuclear physicists. In a recently published
science paper, Dr. Wallace Manheimer said it would be the end of modern civilization. Writing about wind and
solar power he argued it would be especially tragic "when not only will this new infrastructure fail, but will cost
trillions, trash large portions of the environment, and be entirely unnecessary." The stakes, he added, "are
enormous." Manheimer holds a physics PhD from MIT and has had a 50-year career in nuclear research, including work
at the Plasma Physics Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. He has published over 150 science
papers. In his view, there is "certainly no scientific basis" for expecting a climate crisis from too much carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere in the next century or so. He argues that there is no reason why civilization cannot
advance using both fossil fuel power and nuclear power, gradually shifting to more nuclear power. There is of
course a growing body of opinion that points out that the Emperor has no clothes when it comes to all the fashionable
green technologies. Electric cars, wind and solar power, hydrogen, battery storage, heat pumps — all
have massive disadvantages, and are incapable of replacing existing systems without devastating consequences.
Big
solar goes Big Bust: Largest solar plant in the world dies before it can be built. But it's a win for the
rare Typhonium plant, and possibly also for millions of crabs around Indonesia who might have been hypnotized by
undersea cables like the ones near the UK are. And who knows what that cable would have done electromagnetically
for turtles, dugongs, whales and dolphins? Where are the Greens when giant experimental industrial parks span
5,000 km of wilderness? Today the massive Sun Cable project collapsed into voluntary administration four
years after promising to build the world's largest solar power plant in the Northern Territory. Sun Cable was a
$35 billion project supposedly to collect those sacred green electrons on a 12,000 hectare "farm" in Australia (120
square kilometers) and send them to Singapore via an 800 km land cable and then a 4,200 km undersea
cable. It was theoretically going to be nine times bigger than the largest solar plant in the world, and use a
cable 6 times longer than the longest one ever built. So this was ambition-on-steroids, and had economies of
scale up the kazoo, and possibly as much sunlight as any place on Earth, but it was still obscenely uneconomic and expensive.
The Editor says...
[#1] I haven't looked into this (yet), but I suspect that 90 percent of the electric power in
this country is consumed within about 100 miles of the place it was generated. Long-distance power
transmission is common, but it's not economically feasible unless the power source is unusually large and reliable
(e.g., Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam) and the demand is great. [#2] It would be a great understatement to say
this Australian project was ambitious. The longest undersea power cable in the world is the North Sea Link, which
is 450 miles long. The Australian project would have shattered this record by almost six-to-one, which should
have been a warning to investors that it was never going to happen.
The
"electrification" of our economy is a scam. Climate change communists keep talking about electrifying our
economy because it is the only way to conceivably get to zero or near zero carbon emissions. [...] Now I have no
problem, in principle, with reducing the carbon footprint of the economy, as long as it can be done with inexpensive,
abundant, and reliable power sources that perform the job as well or better than fossil fuels. And that is the
promise that is made by the advocates of electrifying our economy. Perhaps someday that dream can be achieved, but
that day is way way off in the future. In the here and now a fossil fuel-free future isn't even a pipe
dream. It's a nightmare.
Welcome
to New Yorkifornia. [Scroll down] Haven't there been enough rolling disasters for years already
in California for them to take a time out? Europe's crisis means nothing? The fact that the Carolinas had
their first winter blackouts EVER this year, because why? North Carolina's state-mandated clean energy plan, and
the huge population shift combined with the electrification of home heating. That not one soul planned in advance
to add capacity to the grid for. They are making the exact same mistake here. Nowhere in the mumbo
jumbo about justice and diversity is a peep about expanded capacity to handle the tremendous additional demands all this
new beneficial electrification is going to gobble up. Especially when solar panels are covered in 4 feet of
snow and the wind isn't blowing. Here goes New York, plunging merrily into the heat pump abyss — in a
state where it gets cold, and they get snow measured in feet. All winter long.
Nuclear
Power, Not Wind & Solar, Keeps The Lights and Heat On In France. European countries are facing acute
energy shortages this winter after curtailing their own fossil fuel resources and going all-in on wind and solar
power. European countries are putting together their playbooks on how shortages will be controlled. In
France, up to 40 percent of its people will not be impacted by power outages due to the fact that they might be
connected to a priority line. [...] The rolling blackouts could impact up to 60 percent of the French population as
sensitive sites, such as hospitals, police stations, gendarmeries, and fire stations will not have their power turned
off as well as some industrial sites. An area already hit will not be hit twice in a row and none of the more-than
3,800 high-risk patients who depend on at-home medical equipment will be impacted. France, however, banned short
domestic flights, but the government is allowing elites to use their private jets.
Wind
& Solar Are Making Us All Worse Off. Deprive a well-fed Westerner of energy for more than a few hours and
you'll get their attention. The reliable and affordable power supplies that we've taken for granted were built up
over a century. A raft of suicidal energy policies introduced in the last 20 years will have them destroyed before
this decade is out. Blind ignorance is just one of the reasons that rent-seekers and their political enablers have
been able to pull this off, profiteering handsomely along the way.
Green
energy failed to meet power demand when it was most needed. Renewable energy was unable to generate
sufficient power to meet elevated energy demand during Christmas Eve snowstorms that pummeled the northeastern U.S. and
Texas. Although wind turbines, solar panels and other forms of green energy have been consistently touted by the
Biden administration as reliable alternatives to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, renewables accounted for a
small percentage of grids' power output after snowstorms and a "bomb cyclone" nearly caused power outages in New England
and Texas. Grid operators in both areas were forced to burn oil, a fuel that is significantly less efficient than
natural gas, to avoid power outages as renewable energy sources were stymied by the harsh weather.
Brace
yourself for mountains of pain and misery under Gov. Hochul's zero-emissions fantasy plan. With the
start of the new year, New Yorkers are set to have their worlds turned upside down — and all for a fanciful
green-dream plan that comes with sky-high costs and mountains of other pain yet is almost certain to fail, and won't
even do much good if successful. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers triggered the nightmare back in 2019
with their delusional Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, setting wholly unrealistic "mandatory" milestones
to force the state off fossil-fuel energy and dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions. Gov. Kathy Hochul
eagerly picked up the ball, and in December, a panel stacked with rubber-stampers pushed through a plan they
preposterously claim will enable the state to meet those goals. Hochul's agencies will now spit out
specific rules and regulations based on the plan. It's pure delusion.
Environmentalists
Are Killing People. Cold weather is hazardous to your health. In modern times, citizens of developed
countries have neutralized the dangers of winter with affordable heating. But those days may be coming to an end.
[...] Expensive energy equals more sickness and death. And this is totally avoidable. Responsibility lies
with the anti-human environmental movement.
Big Growth
in Electric Heat Set Stage For Blackouts in US South. The states hit hardest by blackouts in last week's
winter storm have significantly increased reliance on heating homes with electricity over the last decade, putting more
strain on the power grid when temperatures plummet. The number of households using electric heat in Tennessee,
North Carolina and South Carolina increased by about 20% from 2009 to 2020, according to government data that survey a
sample of households. The generating capacity of power plants in the region, meanwhile, has remained relativity
flat and increasingly dependent on natural gas.
The Editor says...
The earth-worshiping hippies demand that we stay away from coal and natural gas. Firewood requires
dead trees. There is only one other feasible heat source, and that's electricity.
The New-Normaling of Blackouts.
On Christmas Eve, 2022, in North Carolina, something happened that had never happened before in living memory.
People across the state were alerted by their power company, Duke Energy, that there would be rolling blackouts in the
aftermath of a severe (but "not exceedingly rare") winter wind storm. At least 12 other states received
similar and previously unheard-of warnings. Before, rolling blackouts were a California problem, then they also
became a Texas problem. Blackouts are spreading faster than even Imperial College London modelers would find
believable. Duke was still warning North Carolina customers of potential blackouts two days later on Monday the
26th, when people would be returning to work. At this point there was nothing unusual at all in the weather,
except that it was colder than normal. The only thing unusual was Duke's warning, in combination with its thanking
customers for conserving enough energy to avoid blackouts on Christmas Day. It already seems as if people are
being conditioned to expect talk of rolling blackouts whenever the weather outside seems frightful.
After
[the] Christmas cold spell, [it is] time for red states to wake up from [the] green energy scam. What's
the modus operandi of our dystopian government? Creating a needless deadly crisis, blocking the effective way for
dealing with it thereafter, and foisting upon the world instead a dangerous and ineffective way of dealing with
it. That might sound a lot like COVID, but it's largely what officials have been planning for a long time
with energy, and now that the population is primed for lockdowns, disruptions, and total authoritarian control as a
result of COVID, that is what they plan to do with our energy grid. All for a lie. This was the coldest
Christmas in a half-century in much of the U.S., with many localities setting records, including those not accustomed to
the cold like Tallahassee, Florida. Many of us are disgusted at those limiting our natural energy in favor of
novel, ineffective energy, thereby causing a doubling or even tripling of home heating bills. But we must also
realize that if they had their way, we'd have no heating in our homes at all. Just like the supposed source
of COVID and how to deal with it were lies, our energy crisis is wholly contrived and built upon the lie of global
warming. Typically, you would have to make sure we are 100% correct about the "science" behind such irrevocable
economic and societal changes before committing civilization suicide by destroying the only reliable sources of energy
we have. But in a post-"Great Reset" world, this is par for the course. In fact, the science behind global
warming is just as flimsy as the science behind lockdowns, masks, and mRNA shots.
It
is Time to Talk About "Capacity Factors". In electricity generation, capacity factor, utilization, and
load factor are not the same. A lot of confusion exists in the press and certainly in politics, and even
amongst "energy experts", about using the term "capacity factor". It may be excused, since the distinction made in
this article became only relevant with the penetration of variable "renewable" energy, such as wind and solar, in our
energy systems.
• Worldwide average solar natural capacity factor (CF) reaches about ~11-13%. Best locations
in California, Australia, South Africa, Sahara may have above 25%, but are rare.
• Worldwide average wind natural capacity factors (CF) reach about ~21-24%. Best off-shore
locations in Northern Europe may reach above 40%. Most of Asia and Africa have hardly any usable wind and the average CF
would be below 15%, except for small areas on parts of the coasts of South Africa and Vietnam.
Natural capacity factors in Europe tend to be higher for wind than for solar. Wind installations in Northern Europe may reach
an average of over 30% (higher for more expensive offshore, lower onshore), but less than 15% in India and less than 8% in Indonesia.
To All The Green Energy Screamers.
The facts are:
[#1] In the winter the time of worst possible load for any electrical based heat system is before the sun
contributes anything in the early morning and overnight hours. The lowest temperatures occur then and thus the highest
heating load demand occurs then too, particularly when that "not yet helping" time overlaps when people are not sleeping. [...]
[#2] Wind and solar are unreliable. It is often very cold when there is neither available.
Further, high levels of wind are outside of the operating parameters of windmills too, so at a certain point they must
feather and shut down lest they be destroyed. Winter always coincides the worst heating demand with no solar at all
because the sun is not shining when the coldest temperatures occur, thus the solar benefit available to the grid in such
circumstances is always zero and should be counted as zero in every single case when it comes to winter capacity during maximum
load periods. This in turn means solar can never form the backbone of an electrical grid in the winter months [...]
[#3] Natural gas, nuclear and coal all do not care about how cold it is. You might have to
de-ice the augur on the coal plant to keep it operational but as long as those plants have fuel they make electricity[.]
Guess
What: Electricity Isn't Free. One of my favorite indicators of ignorance are the people who buy
personalized license plates, or affix stickers, for their electric cars that say "Emission Free." Even if you
ignore the enormous environmental impacts associated with manufacturing an electric car (which are significantly higher
than a gasoline-powered car), if you live in a state that generates a lot of its electricity from coal, you are
essentially driving a coal-powered car. The next most ignorant view is that at least you don't have to buy
expensive gasoline! People seem to forget that electricity isn't free, from whatever source.
Fossil
Fuels Keep Us Warm and Secure During Winter Months. As a historic bomb cyclone ravages much of the country,
this extreme weather event has killed at least 20 people and put travel at a standstill. And it doesn't
help those in distress — or without power — feel secure when many in the media fear monger about
climate change correlating with winter weather. More reassuringly, however, conditions aren't worse.
Why? Continued reliance on fossil fuels keeps us warm and provides energy security. Much to the Biden
administration's dismay, net zero policies will make extreme winter events difficult to weather.
Climate
Alarmism Behind Christmas Energy Shortages. This Christmas eve, the 65 million Americans who live in
between Illinois and New Jersey may be wishing that Santa puts a lump or two of coal in their stockings. That's
because the operators of the PJM electricity grid have declared a rare, system-wide emergency, urging customers to
reduce their use of electricity. "PJM is asking consumers to reduce their use of electricity, if health permits,
between the hours of 4 a.m. on December 24, 2022 and 10 a.m. on December 25, 2022," it wrote in a
statement. Say goodbye to your Christmas lights. "Electricity customers can take simple electricity
conservation steps such as... Turning off non-essential electric lights." Nearly 7,000 customers in Pennsylvania
"have no choice but to follow PJM Interconnection's request to use less electricity," reports a local newspaper.
Rollin',
rollin', rollin' blackouts in...Tennessee?! Isn't the TVA supposed to be one of the 8 Wonders of the
World? Or at least delivering reliable electrical power as if it were. And they DID promise they'd be
ready. [Tweet] [...] The second thing to consider is, again, the fact that the TVA is owned by the federal
government. It puts them under extraordinary pressure to go along with whatever the latest "thing" is as far as
the clean/renewable energy push goes, and it seems this is where it's starting to trip them up. They're shooting
for "net zero" emissions by 2050. Be it 7° or 107°, that should chill every customer's heart.
Climate
Follies in the Developing World. Growth requires energy, and rapid growth requires abundant energy.
But Namibia's per capita energy consumption rate is about 30 million kilojoules per person per year, roughly
one-tenth of that in the U.S. Domestic energy production — about 90 percent of it from hydroelectric dams
on the rivers bordering the country — can meet only about one-fourth of present demand. The rest must
be imported, which costs money, hinders economic development, and holds the country hostage to political turmoil in
South Africa and Zimbabwe, its largest energy suppliers. Namibia can expand its domestic energy sector.
Fossil fuels account for only 6 percent of Namibia's total energy consumption, all of which must be imported. Off
Namibia's southern coast, however, lie enough reserves of natural gas to power its economy for roughly two centuries at
the present energy-consumption rate. Exploration in the eastern part of the country has identified promising oil
deposits. Accounting for fracking would probably increase estimates of proven reserves. Such economic
development is unlikely, however, as long as the country follows green imperatives. Namibia is a signatory to both
the Kyoto Accords and the Paris Agreements, which oblige participants to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
Renewable
Power's Big Mistake Was a Promise to Always Get Cheaper. Renewable-energy producers have long touted the
promise of cheap electricity, an assurance that's helped them eat into the dominance of fossil fuels. But the
pledge has gone too far, according to the world's biggest wind-turbine maker. Manufacturers such as Vestas Wind
Systems A/S are seeing losses pile up as orders collapse at a time when they should be capitalizing on the turmoil in
natural-gas markets. To blame — at least in part — is the industry's insistence that clean
electricity can only get cheaper, according to Henrik Andersen, chief executive officer of the Danish wind giant.
The
coming crash of the Climate Cult. The Queensland premier has a $62-billion green plan to close all coal
power stations, cover the countryside with wind/solar clutter, plan whole cities of battery charging stations, build the
"world's biggest" pumped-hydro batteries (net consumers of electricity), and become a world leader in "green
hydrogen" (huge consumers of electricity and water). Soon after the last coal power plant is demolished, in a
snap of still, cold, cloudy weather, the lights will go out, electric trains will stop, and battery-powered food
deliveries to the cities will falter. There will be uproar in Parliaments, and all Green/Teal/ALP governments will
fall. The media will blame "climate change." Energy Realists will take over. They will immediately place
orders for dozens of modular nuclear power plants.
Destroyed
ecosystems, drug payments, and child slavery are the legacies of the 'renewable' energy industry. Data
comparing wildlife deaths between the "clean" energy industry and the "dirty" energy industry found that "greenies have
a lot of bird blood on their hands" — windmills and solar panels kill significantly more birds (many of them
endangered) than oil spills. A few days back, I came across a report detailing a peer-reviewed study which found
that offshore wind farms can have a "substantial" impact" on the coastal systems in which they're built. But now,
there's a new and more troubling secret festering within the industry, one of forced labor, child slavery, and payments
of alcohol and drugs.
Evidence
grows of forced labour and slavery in production of solar panels, wind turbines. The Australian clean
energy industry has warned of growing evidence linking renewable energy supply chains to modern slavery, and urged
companies and governments to act to eliminate it. A report by the Clean Energy Council, representing renewable
energy companies and solar installers, has called for more local renewable energy production and manufacturing and a
"certificate of origin" scheme to counter concerns about slave labour in mineral extraction and manufacturing in China,
Africa and South America. Released on Tuesday, the paper said slavery in all supply chains was a global
problem. But Australia is on a trajectory towards generating the vast majority of its electricity from solar,
wind, hydro and batteries by 2030 and needs to play an active role in addressing it in renewable energy industries.
The
Swiss Prepare to Spend the Winter Bored, Cold, and Trapped at Home. The Swiss government announced its
plan to deal with expected energy shortfalls this winter, and it sounds like a lot of fun — provided you're a
shut-in who likes reading by candlelight under multiple blankets. The alpine country — one of the
wealthiest in the world — will severely restrict electric vehicles from its roads, according to a Daily Mail
report. If the country runs out of power, EVs won't be allowed out for anything but "essential" travel. But
the restrictions don't end there. The contingency plan calls for three levels of energy rationing. Under the
least extreme, most buildings would be limited to 20[°]C (68[°]F) and "people will be asked to limit their
washing machines to a maximum of 40[°]C [104[°]F]." Under the mid-tier, retail stores could find their hours reduced by two each shopping day, many buildings would have their heat limited to 19[°]C (66[°]F), and nightclubs
wouldn't be allowed any heat at all — although given the other restrictions, that point might be moot.
Sports stadiums? Closed. Movie theaters, too.
Costs
of Wind and Solar Energy Are Skyrocketing. Advocates of wind and solar energy have argued that the cost of
those energy sources would decline over time as they are more widely adopted. That never made any sense, and it
has not proved true. In fact, the cost of both wind and solar energy is destined to continue rising sharply as the
massive quantities of materials they require become more expensive as a result of increasing demand, driven by
ill-advised (the politest adjective I can think of) government mandates and subsidies. In fact, the cost of
electricity generated by wind and solar is already skyrocketing. My colleague Isaac Orr reproduced this chart at
American Experiment. It shows the average cost of wind and solar energy as contracted for in Power Purchase
Agreements with utilities from 2019 through early 2022. It should be noted that these are subsidized
prices, not the full cost if you include the portion that is paid by taxpayers.
The
Disastrous Economics of Trying to Power an Electrical Grid With 100% Intermittent Renewables. The effort
to increase the percentage of electricity generated by intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar inevitably
brings about large increases in the actual price of electricity that must be paid by consumers. The price
increases grow and accelerate as the percentage of electricity generated from the intermittent renewables increases
toward 100 percent. These statements may seem counterintuitive, given that the cost of fuel for wind and solar
generation is zero. However, simple modeling shows the reason for the seemingly counterintuitive outcome: the
need for large and increasing amounts of costly backup and storage — things that are not needed at all in
conventional fossil-fuel-based systems. And it is not only from modeling that we know that such cost increases
would be inevitable. We also have actual and growing experience from those few jurisdictions that have attempted
to generate more and more of their electricity from these renewables.
Renewable
Energy: Intermittency Has Consequences. A major problem with solar and wind-powered energy is
intermittency. The sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. This is a problem that could
be largely resolved by storage technology efficient and scalable enough to cope with intermittency (although I suspect
that some backup will always be required, which is why nuclear power will have to be a part of our energy mix for a
very, very long time). Unfortunately, that storage technology does not yet appear to exist, not that that has
bothered the central planners who continue to plough billions into solar and wind without, seemingly, being too worried
that these energy sources are not yet ready for the role that has been assigned to them. That some of these
billions might be better spent elsewhere does not seem to worry our planners overmuch either.
The EPA vs. the grid.
A reliable grid is foundational to our quality of life. Our lives depend on ultra-reliable electricity for the
refrigerators that preserve our food, the water treatment plants that keep our water drinkable, the air conditioning
that keeps us cool, the factories that produce our goods, etc. Ominously, America's grid is in its most fragile
state in decades. Not only have we witnessed ruinous blackouts in California and Texas, electricity shortages are
now routine throughout the US. The root cause of the reliability crisis is simple: America is shutting down too
many reliable power plants — plants that can be controlled to produce electricity when needed in the exact
quantity needed. And it is attempting to replace them with unreliable solar and wind. Since at any given
time solar and wind can go near zero, using them as replacements for reliable power plants doesn't work. For
example, Texas' February 2021 disaster was caused by solar/wind disappearing and inadequate investment in reliable power
plants and their weatherization.
Brits
are paying the highest electricity bills in the entire world. New research reveals that the UK has the
highest electricity bills. Brits pay more for their power than anywhere else on the planet. A new study
looked at Government data on electricity and gas prices from the past five years to analyse the impact of the worsening
cost of living crisis and discover which countries have had the biggest year-on-year increase in energy prices.
The data, compiled by BOXT, was shared with City A.M. today[.] The UK's energy price cap was recently raised from
28p to 34p per kWh.
Germany
[is] Preparing For Emergency Cash Deliveries, Bank Runs And "Aggressive Discontent" Ahead Of Winter Power
Cuts. While Europe has been keeping a generally optimistic facade ahead of the coming cold winter,
signaling that it has more than enough gas in storage to make up for loss of Russian supply even in a "coldest-case"
scenario, behind the scenes Europe's largest economy is quietly preparing for a worst case scenario which include angry
mobs and bankruns should blackouts prevent the population from accessing cash. As Reuters reports citing four
sources, German authorities have stepped up preparations for emergency cash deliveries in case of a blackout (or rather
blackouts) to keep the economy running, as the nation braces for possible power cuts arising from the war in Ukraine.
Why
green energy is not green at all. All green energy degrades its environment. Take wind power.
Wind turbines steal energy from the atmosphere and must affect local weather. Turbines are always placed on the
highest ground and along ridges to catch more wind. Natural hills already affect local weather by causing more
rain along the ridge and a rain shadow farther downwind. Wind turbines enhance this rain shadow effect by robbing
the wind of its ability to take moisture and rain into the drier interior. Promoting more inland desertification
is not green. Climatists also plan to defend Australia with offshore wind turbines — using bird-slicers
to protect Australia from hang gliders, cruising pelicans, seagulls, eagles, and the occasional albatross. Solar
"farms" prefer large areas of flattish ground. They steal solar energy from all plant life in their solar
shadow. This deprives wild and domestic herbivores of sustenance. Neither kangaroos, cattle, emus, parrots,
nor sheep thrive in solar energy deserts.
$3.8
Trillion of Investment in Renewables Moved Fossil Fuels from 82% to 81% of Overall Energy Consumption in 10
Years. Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global
Investment Research Division): "Here's a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year,
overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at
82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you're talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that
$3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall
energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what's happened with the loss of gas and replacing
it with coal, that number is likely above 82. ... The net of it is clearly we haven't made any progress."
Reliability
is Key to a Successful Energy Transition. Today's reliable energy system includes large electric
generation units of many different fuel types, which are coordinated to balance the amount of electricity used by
consumers. Replacing existing electric generation with new and sometimes intermittent resources, such as solar and
wind energy, requires utilities to carefully manage the pace of the transition and coordination of resource capabilities
to make sure things like your lights, heat, air conditioning and refrigerator are always on. If utilities retire
existing generation before new electric resource capabilities can be adequately coordinated to meet consumer needs, we
will experience a less reliable and less affordable electric system than we have today. Some of these undesirable
and costly situations are currently playing out in other states, such as California and Texas.
What
has all that investment in renewables actually bought us? For decades now we have been inundated with
propaganda that insists we move away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives. The hysteria has been escalating
ever since Al Gore rebranded himself the Global Warming Ambassador at Large with the release of An Inconvenient
Truth. What had been a constant but relatively muted refrain from the Left became a unstoppable roar that has only
increased in volume. We have been treated to lectures about biofuels from switchgrass (remember that —
never happened), the new hydrogen future (never happened), solar, wind, and unicorn farts all powering the future.
We are called to save the sinking islands (they are fine), save the polar bears (they are plentiful), and stop the
hurricanes from killing us all (deaths from weather events have been declining for decades). We are warned of the
apocalypse, inconvenienced and enraged by activists who pour out milk, throw soup at art, glue themselves to every
available surface, and scream constantly about "science" as if having tantrums is how science is done.
Blackouts:
another dark consequence of Net Zero. The way he announced it spoke volumes. On Monday, John
Pettigrew, head of the National Grid, warned that Britain could face blackouts when the weather turns 'really, really
cold' this winter. If energy supply fails to meet household demand, blackouts would have to be imposed between 4pm
and 7pm on the 'deepest, darkest evenings' of January and February, he said. So we may be reaching for our candles
on winter evenings next year. This would be a bleak midwinter indeed. Tellingly, Pettigrew casually let slip
this bombshell at the 'Energy Transition Summit', a plush business event hosted by the Financial Times. The
summit, as its name suggests, aims to help usher in a transition to an apparent idyll of renewable electricity and
emissions-free energy. In our brave new Net Zero world, this is exactly the kind of announcement we will have to
start getting used to. After all, the immediate trigger for the National Grid's blackout warnings may be the
current global energy crisis. But the grid has form in wanting to impose energy rationing on the masses.
Indeed, rationing is a feature, not a bug of the Net Zero policy.
The Green Energy
Profiteering Scam. Sure, going "green" has been lucrative for some, but can that lucre last? That is
the magical thing about hydrocarbon regulations and carbon credit requirements. Should the government's preferred
"green" vendors need more wealth, then politicians can simply ratchet up the energy pain for everyone else. The
fewer hydrocarbons that companies and citizens are "allowed" to consume, the more money they will be willing to pay for
"credits." Through self-dealing mandates, governments create artificially appreciating "green" assets. The sky is
the limit! Or rather, is it not the total confiscation of one's wealth and the fruits of one's labor that is the
inevitable end point here? Should ordinary people not be able to abandon their consumption of hydrocarbons as
easily as government agents demand, they will simply have to go without automobiles, modern technologies, ordinary
comforts, air conditioning, or even heat.
New
England facing natural gas shortages, rolling blackouts this winter. Winter is on the way here in the
northeast, as I was reminded when the local weatherman told me that it might snow here this week. In the middle of
October. But the annoyance of potentially having to break out the snow shovels before Halloween has arrived is
small potatoes compared to what may be coming in a couple of months. Power grid operator ISO New England issued a
warning to consumers this week about the effects that a particularly cold winter (as is being projected) could have on
heating and electrical power consumption limits. The northeast relies heavily on natural gas for home and business
heating needs. But many of the power plants in the region also run on natural gas.
The Editor says...
Which political party opposes drilling, fracking, pipelines, and methane emissions? Which political party has been claiming
for the last 30 years that the world is heating up at a dangerous rate? Which political party opposes the use of
petroleum and coal because of an irrational fear of carbon dioxide? When you're freezing this winter, that's the political
party you should blame.
Left-wing
environmentalists in Germany now pray for warm winter amid coming energy shortage, skyrocketing prices.
The one thing you can count on when it comes to the left is hypocrisy and boatloads of it. For years, Western
environmentalists have screamed about 'warming winters' signaling the end of the planet, thanks to 'human-caused climate
change' — which, by the way, and regardless of what 'official agencies' say, is only a theory, and an
unproven theory at that. Nowhere have their shouts of warm winter doom and gloom been so shrill than in Germany,
where lunatic leftism appears to be a citizenship requirement these days. For the past decade especially, 'green
energy' pushes have led the country to begin shuttering coal and natural gas plants and even zero-emission nuclear power
stations in favor of highly unreliable "renewable" energy like wind and solar. Not only are these technologies
overrated, the ability for Germany to produce energy from wind and solar is severely limited like it is everywhere else
on the planet. Plus, in addition to being unreliable (no wind and no sun equals little-to-no electricity
production), natural gas and other fossil fuels are far cheaper and, with today's technology, burn much cleaner than
they did at the turn of the current century.
Energy
Inflation Isn't An Accident, It's A Planned Demolition. The West is experiencing its third energy
crisis. The first, in 1973, was caused by the near-quintupling of the price of crude oil by Gulf oil producers in
response to America's support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Their action brought an end to what the French
call the trente glorieuses — the unprecedented post-World War II economic expansion. The second
occurred at the end of the 1970s, when Iran's Islamic revolution led to a more than doubling of oil prices. This
again inflicted great economic hardship, but the policy response was far better. Inflation was purged at the cost
of deep recession. Energy markets were permitted to function. High oil prices induced substitution effects,
particularly in the power sector, and stimulated increased supply. In the space of nine months, the oil price
cratered from $30 a barrel in November 1985 to $10 a barrel in July 1986. It's no wonder that the economic expansion
that started under Ronald Reagan had such long legs. This time is different. The third energy crisis was not
sparked by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies or by Iranian ayatollahs. It was self-inflicted, a foreseeable outcome
of policy choices made by the West: Germany's disastrous Energiewende that empowered Vladimir Putin to launch an energy
war against Europe; Britain's self-regarding and self-destructive policy of "powering past coal" and its decision to ban
fracking; and, as Joseph Toomey shows in a recent powerful essay, President Biden's war on the American oil and gas industry.
Energy
Inflation Was by Design. Like Obama before him, Biden promised that the public would readily embrace his
Green New Deal and that it would reduce energy prices, create millions of new high-paying jobs, boost economic growth,
enhance energy security, stabilize the electric grid, reduce energy dependency, and help save the planet. Rather
than achieving any of its stated goals, Obama's plan was characterized by high prices, Solyndra-style megaflops,
increasing grid instability, rent-seeking, soaring public debt, destabilizing subsidies, further offshoring of green
energy components, substandard economic growth rates, growing social division, and precious little in the way of green
energy job creation. The same will happen for Biden.
Electric Mania.
[Scroll down] This distinction between renewable and nonrenewable is a fallacy as surely as it was a fallacy that
electrical currents could bring a dead person back to life. How do we capture wind or solar energy? We must
produce other things, like wind turbines and solar panels. Are these clean? No. The dirty
secret of wind energy and solar production is that the actual wind energy rotors and the solar panels are made of
material that, at the end of its useful life, is literally ground up and put into a landfill. I'm going to talk
mainly about wind turbines, but keep in mind that everything I say is also applicable to solar panels. By 2030,
the United States is expected to see as much as one million total tons of solar panel waste. By 2050, the United
States is expected to have the second largest number of end-of-life panels in the world, with as many as an estimated 10
million total tons of panels. What is going to happen to all that waste, much of it toxic? Wind turbines
typically contain more than 8,000 different components. One such component are magnets made from neodymium and
dysprosium; rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China. Extracting REs is an energy intensive and
heavily polluting process, which makes a mockery of "clean energy" all by itself.
The Coming
Green Electricity Nightmare. [Scroll down] To cite just one example, just those 2,500 wind turbines
for New York electricity (30,000 megawatts) would require nearly 110,000 tons of copper — which would require
mining, crushing, processing and refining 25 million tons of copper ore ... after removing some 40 million tons of
overlying rock to reach the ore bodies. Multiply that times 50 states — and the entire
world — plus transmission lines. How many processing plants and factories would be needed? How
much fossil fuel power to run those massive operations? How many thousands of square miles of toxic waste pits all
over world under zero to minimal environmental standards, workplace safety standards, child and slave labor rules?
How many dead birds, bats, and endangered and other species would be killed off all across the USA and
world — from mineral extraction activities, wind turbine blades, solar panels blanketing thousands of square
miles of wildlife habitats, and transmission lines impacting still more land? How many will survive hurricanes
like Ian or Andrew? Where will we dump the green energy trash? Not only do the luminaries and activists
ignore these issues and refuse to address them. They actively suppress, cancel, censor and deplatform any
questions and discussions about them.
The Thinnest
Veneer of Civilization. [Scroll down] Europeans arrogantly lectured the world that they no longer
need traditional fuels. So, they shut down nuclear power plants. They stopped drilling for oil and
gas. And they banned coal. What followed was a dystopian nightmare. Europeans will burn dirty wood
this winter as their civilization reverts from postmodern abundance to premodern survival. The Biden
Administration ossified oil fields. It canceled new federal oil and gas leases. It stopped pipeline
construction and hectored investors to shun fossil fuels. When scarcity naturally followed, fuel prices
soared. The middle class has now mortgaged its upward mobility to ensure that they might afford gasoline,
heating oil, and skyrocketing electricity.
Global
warming pseudoscience is poised to wreck the US economy. In 2021, 60% of the electricity produced in the
U.S. came from fossil fuel-powered plants, 20% from nuclear plants, and 20% from renewable energy sources. Wind
and solar energy production in 2021 accounted for 13% of the total electrical energy output. [...] It is not possible to
replace the 60% of electric power production in the U.S. by 2030 with alternative energy sources. Such a mandate
would require a rapid increase in wind and solar plant construction and operation, and fossil fuel generation would
still be required to serve as a back-up when renewable energy sources fail. Those fossil fuel plants that remained
in operation would be required to purchase carbon credits to offset emissions to achieve 100% carbon-free operations.
But CO2 emissions will not be reduced by buying carbon credits. [...] It is the height of naïvité to think our
economic competitors in the world like China and India will wreck their economies based on a fraudulent global warming hypothesis.
Lesotho's
$15-billion energy pipedream. A $15-billion wind farm project that would have given Lesotho bragging
rights to Africa's largest renewable energy project, slashed electricity prices and created thousands of jobs has
vanished from the country's planned projects, leaving behind unanswered questions and politicians who don't remember the
details. The project was designed to increase the local energy production from 73 MW to 6[,]073 MW, and would have
meant the southern African country could stop importing expensive electricity from South Africa and Mozambique.
All traces of the project, which was conceived by the South African firm Harrison & White Investments and intended to be
constructed in Mokhotlong district, have vanished. Politicians do not seem to have any explanation for this, or
any knowledge that the government had a stake in the company earmarked for its construction.
California
is learning that solar doesn't work without battery storage. California got through the biggest heat wave
of the year without having to order any blackout but only just barely. Gov. Newsom is praising the state's
shift to renewable energy as if avoiding the blackouts is proof that the shift to renewables is working. [...] We
actually did have blackouts in some places on the hottest days but those were ordered by the power companies not the
state. I wonder to what extent those outages helped the state's independent regulator avoid ordering rolling
blackouts. In any case, everyone agrees we came really close. Wednesday the Washington Post published a
story arguing that the real lesson Newsom and others should have learned from barely avoiding blackouts this summer is
that solar without battery storage really doesn't work very well.
Running
the World into the Ground. [Scroll down] On the economic front, European leaders have, like Biden in
the U.S., succumbed to the delusional World Economic Forum. In a mad rush to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels,
European economies are going into the winter without adequate energy supplies. The poor citizens of the continent
are being told to anticipate blackouts and food shortages. They are about to discover that without fossil fuels,
their way of life is going to hell. What recourse do we voters have against the irresponsibility of political
leaders who are obsessed with the lure of power? Is it too late to stop them?
Tesla
Battery Catches Fire in California Causing Shelter-In-Place Advisory Due to Toxic Smoke. A Tesla Megapack
battery caught fire at PG&E's Elkhorn Battery Storage facility in Monterey County, California. A shelter-in-place
advisory was in place for 12 hours due to fears of toxic smoke from the fire caused by Elon Musk's battery system, with
county officials announcing that even though the fire was "fully controlled" by 7:00 p.m. PT, "smoke may still
occur in the area for several days." KSBW Action News 8 reports that a Tesla Megapack battery caught fire at the
local utility company PG&E's Elkhorn Battery Storage facility in Monterey County, California. The fire reported
started at around 1:30 a.m. on September 20 according to the comm manager for PG&E, Jeff Smith. No injuries were
reported at the time.
Green
Energy Transition Hits the Wall. I think that we fossil-fuel fans can see light at the end of the tunnel
as the global government green energy transition experiences a head-on collision with reality. I wish it didn't
have to be this way, but really, it's the only way to tell the climatatistas that their God is Dead. Facts and
logic won't do it. Instead, the believers must experience decadence and nihilism and dead bodies floating down the
Rhine and know, in their eternal recurrence, that their climate god isn't going to save them. It's Not Funny, but
the prospect of a cold winter without Russian gas in Europe seems to be the one thing that the Klausi babies and the
Greta Thunbergs and the gubmint-funded scientists didn't think about in planning their glorious Great Leap Forward to
the green energy transition.
Germany
is committing national suicide. The German government decided last week to temporarily halt the
phasing-out of two nuclear power plants. This is an attempt to secure Germany's energy supplies after Russia
effectively turned off its gas exports to Germany. But there is much more the German government could do if it was
serious about shoring up its energy security. It could, for example, overturn its 2017 ban on fracking. As a
2016 government report shows, Germany sits on shale-gas deposits of more than two trillion cubic metres —
20 times its annual gas consumption. Fracking could realistically cover 10 percent of Germany's gas needs per
year. Even more encouragingly, the report shows that fracking in Germany could be done without harming public
health or the environment. Fracking could therefore help to provide a long-term solution to the deepening energy
crisis. Germany is staring into the abyss thanks to the energy crisis. German heavy industry may even have
to cut back on production in order to cope with soaring energy costs. Steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal has already
announced it is to shut down blast furnaces in some of its plants.
Europe's Energy Crisis.
Europe is facing a growing energy crisis. Individuals and industries are being battered by rising energy
costs. On August 31, Russia shut down the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline to Germany for initially what was supposed to
be 72 hours, but followed by an announcement of "technical difficulties" that would prevent a resumption. [...] The
reality, however, is that this situation did not develop overnight and will not be fixed overnight. Despite
European politicians blaming all this on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the root
causes go deeper. The EU made a commitment to sustainability and so-called green energy years ago. Germany,
Austria, Italy and the Netherlands are now reportedly going back to coal-fired plants to save on natural gas
usage. Experts in Germany say the coalition government is "trying to buy time with coal so that it can come up
with a more sustainable long-term solution." In January, Germany closed half of its six remaining nuclear power
plants despite rising energy costs. Germany's lofty sustainable climate goals did not include plans on how to
replace the energy that was being provided by its safe, clean and reliable nuclear power plants. Instead, to
achieve its climate utopia, Germany decided that it would become more dependent on Russian gas, that consumers willingly
would pay higher prices, and that it could turn to power from far less reliable wind and solar energy. This
fantasy became the model across the EU, and the EU has no one else to blame for the results.
You
Won't Believe Who's Giving Up on Green Energy. Green energy is the pipe-dream of coastal elitists,
billion-dollar grifters, Big Government idolizers, idle urbanites, and just plain malinformed people who think
electricity comes out of the wall. But one of those coastal elites has finally had enough, saying now that "U.S.
energy policy today has to be the arsenal of democracy" and the "engine of economic growth" that will some day make
possible a "transition to a low-carbon economy." It only took seven months of brutal warfare financed by Russian
oil profits made possible by Presidentish Joe Biden's war on domestic energy production, but Thomas Friedman has joined
Donald Trump and Sarah Palin in the "Drill, Baby, Drill!" fan club.
A Mostly Wind-
and Solar-Powered U.S. Economy Is a Dangerous Fantasy. When President Biden and other advocates of wind
and solar generation speak, they appear to believe that the challenge posed is just a matter of currently having too
much fossil fuel generation and not enough wind and solar; and therefore, accomplishing the transition to "net zero"
will be a simple matter of building sufficient wind and solar facilities and having those facilities replace the current
ones that use the fossil fuels. They are completely wrong about that. The proposed transition to "net zero"
via wind and solar power is not only not easy, but is a total fantasy. It likely cannot occur at all without
dramatically undermining our economy, lifestyle and security, and it certainly cannot occur at anything remotely
approaching reasonable cost. At some point, the ongoing forced transition... will crash and burn. [I]t doesn't
matter whether you build a million wind turbines and solar panels, or a billion, or a trillion. On a calm night,
they will still produce nothing, and will require full back-up from some other source.
Exposing
the Fantasy of Wind and Solar Power to Fuel America's Economy. Simply stated, all evidence so far
indicates that the increase in CO2 and the increase in temperature are not harmful for us or for nature, making the
climate hysteria surrounding the topic totally unjustified. Furthermore, the cure — getting rid of
fossil fuels and replacing them with wind and solar before they are ready for prime time — will be far worse
than the disease itself, climate change.
End Of Renewables
Craze Is Near. The global energy crisis appears to have strengthened the resolve of Western political
leaders to not just continue but accelerate the transition toward green energy. Last month, U.S. President Joe
Biden signed legislation that aims to spend $370 billion on wind, solar, electric cars and other forms of green
tech. California legislators and regulators recently decided to spend $54 billion on clean tech, restrict oil and
gas drilling, and ban the sale of internal combustion cars by 2035. And the President of the European Commission
affirmed yesterday the European Union's "massive investments in renewables" because "they are cheap, they are
home-grown, they make us independent." But appearances can be deceiving. In truth, the energy crisis is
rapidly exposing the limits of renewables and the need for fossil fuels. Recognizing the political threat of high
gasoline prices, Biden has released so much petroleum from the public's Strategic Petroleum Reserves that they are at
their lowest level in nearly 30 years. Six days after California regulators banned the sale of internal combustion
engines, the state's grid operator urged residents to not charge their electric vehicles from 4 pm to 9 pm for fear of
blackouts. And European governments will spend over $50 billion this winter on new and refurbished coal and
natural gas supplies and equipment.
Electricity Emergency.
A reliable grid is a foundation of our quality of life. Our lives depend on ultra-reliable electricity for the
refrigerators that preserve our food, the water treatment plants that keep our water drinkable, the air conditioning
that keeps us cool, the factories that produce our goods, etc. Ominously, our grid is in an increasingly fragile
state. Not only have we recently had statewide blackouts in California (2020) and Texas (2021), this summer
shortages are occurring all around the US. [...] The root cause of our grid's reliability problems is simple: America is
shutting down too many reliable power plants — plants that can be controlled to produce electricity when
needed in the exact quantity needed. And it is attempting to replace them with unreliable solar and wind.
Since at any given time solar and wind can go near zero, using them as replacements for reliable power plants doesn't work.
Why the Energy Transition Will Fail.
Even if you're never hit by a 7-ton blade falling from the night sky, alternative energy will fail you. Regardless
of facts or feelings about the climate, there are reasons why wind and solar power are not replacing fossil fuels.
Wind and solar are also no substitute for nuclear power. [Tweet] The government of California can issue as many
proclamations and prohibitions as it wants against gasoline-powered vehicles. No doubt the Biden administration
will enjoy spending the ocean of tax dollars now earmarked for low-intensity energy sources. But reality will
stubbornly remain. In a new report due out next week from the Manhattan Institute, Mark Mills takes on the
"dangerous delusion" of a global energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels. Surveying energy
markets and public policy around the world, Mr. Mills asks readers to "consider that years of hypertrophied rhetoric
and trillions of dollars of spending and subsidies on a transition have not significantly changed the energy landscape."
"The
Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe". Simply put: Europe's self-inflicted energy crisis is a lot worse
than it looks. European nations are scrambling to backstop consumers from having to pay electricity rates that
could increase tenfold or more — if the electricity is available in sufficient quantity at all. What
this means is massive government bailouts for energy suppliers. Britain's new prime minister Liz Truss plans to
freeze consumer energy costs for two years, at a likely cost to the government of perhaps $200 billion, because
utilities face bankruptcy if they can't pass along higher fuel costs. The bill for continental Europe, and
especially Germany, which may have to shutter even more of its heavy industry, is sure to be much higher —
perhaps reaching $2 trillion over the coming year. An energy-triggered financial crisis could begin even before
the leaves turn and drop from the trees this fall.
California's
Net-Zero Energy Model Is Already A Disaster — So Why Should The Rest Of The U.S. Copy It?
Americans are now being told that California's crazy energy policies would be a good model for the rest of the
nation. Have these people seen what's going on there? California's plan to ban all gasoline-powered vehicles
by 2035 and replace them with electric vehicles "could be" a model for the rest of the nation, Energy Secretary Jennifer
Granholm recently said. She didn't mean that as a warning, but you should know: It is one.
"I think California really is leaning in. And of course, the federal government has a goal of — the
president has announced — by 2030 that half of the vehicles in the U.S., the new ones sold would be electric,"
Granholm added. Get that? She's saying the federal government, already trying to destroy the auto industry and
ruin the oil industry through insane regulations and restrictions that have pushed energy costs to prohibitive levels,
hasn't gone far enough.
How to solve our electricity
crisis. [Threat reader] America's grid is in decline and about to get far worse due to policies that
1) reward unreliable electricity, 2) prematurely shut down coal plants, 3) criminalize nuclear, and 4) force EV
use. Here's what's happening and how to fix it. [...] The root cause of our grid's reliability problems is simple: America
is shutting down too many reliable power plants — plants that can be controlled to produce electricity when needed in
the exact quantity needed. And it is attempting to replace them with unreliable solar and wind. Since at any given time
solar and wind can go near zero, using them as replacements for reliable power plants doesn't work. For example, TX's February
2021 disaster was caused by solar/wind disappearing and inadequate investment in reliable power plants and their weatherization.
Return of the
Ice Age. To Europe, anyway. Years of horrible decisions by European leaders have come home to roost,
as Europeans now worry about how to heat their homes this winter. Reliance on a geopolitical enemy for much of
their energy turned out to be a mistake, as Russia has now shut off gas supplies. Who could have predicted
it? Other than anyone with a modicum of common sense? Which Europe's governing class has lacked for many
years. The continent's leaders are panicking and preparing to ration energy: [...] European countries are
voluntarily turning themselves into third-world nations. Will any politicians pay the price for this
disaster? Don't bet on it.
The U.S. also needs a sane policy for immigration, law enforcement, energy production, and election security. The U.S. Needs a Safe, Sane Energy
Policy. Western democracies are under assault by a Russia determined to bring the United States and its
allies to their knees. It is time our response was nuclear. As in nuclear power. Improvements in
nuclear power have now reportedly made it a safer source of energy, providing an additional source of power free from
the posturing blackmail of leaders such as Putin. [...] The French are not content to sit in the cold this winter.
In recognition that wind and solar cannot possibly replace lost Russian natural gas, their response has been to restart
their nuclear reactors. They seek a clean, reliable source of power that is indifferent to Putin's energy war on
the West. That is not to say nuclear will replace fossil fuels or its "green" alternatives, solar and wind.
Aircraft engines may one day run on hydrogen, but the scores of aircraft now in the air at any given hour will rely on
fossil fuels for years to come.
The
"Green Revolution" Is Impossible. Liberals tell us that we are in the midst of a transition from fossil
fuels to wind and solar energy. The reality is that no such transition is taking place, nor will it. This
video by Professor Simon Michaux, who doesn't take issue with global warming hype, explains one of several reasons why
this is true: the mineral requirements of a wind- and solar-based energy system can't possibly be met. [...] Another
point that is often overlooked is that mining companies exploit the lowest-cost minerals first — those that
are most plentiful and easiest to extract. If demand increases exponentially, then much more expensive sources
will be brought into play. This means that the cost of basic minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt and so on will
skyrocket as demand increases, perhaps by orders of magnitude. I don't think anyone has even attempted to assess
the full cost of a "green" energy system when those price increases are taken into account.
Not
Even Keeping 1 Nuclear Plant Can Save California From Its Green Energy Nightmare. California has waged a
decades-long war against sanity — and the laws of physics — in the name of saving the planet by
dumping tons of intermittent renewables onto the grid. Well, after years of wrecking the grid and raising energy
costs, sanity seems to have prevailed. California lawmakers last week approved legislation, backed by
Gov. Gavin Newsom, to extend the operational life of its last remaining nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon.
The $1.4 billion decision may seem costly, but it's a steal compared to rolling blackouts.
Energy
Crisis: One in Four Britons Will Not Turn On Heating Over Winter Months — Poll. Just
under one in four Britons will leave their heating off over the winter as the price of energy surges, polling
has suggested. Polling released on Monday has suggested that just under one in four Britons will not
turn on their heating due to the rising price of energy. It is the latest statistic showing how much
Britain's population is struggling under the myriad economic crises facing them, with one union boss recently
hinting at the possibility of street riots over how dire things are for many in the country.
Brits
brace for record, crippling energy prices. Americans are already far too familiar
with spiraling energy costs and rolling blackouts in areas where the energy grid is being pushed to
the brink. Now the people of Great Britain are bracing for their own negative and potentially
deadly experiences of a similar nature. Because of the socialist bent of their government,
energy companies must adhere to government caps on the price of utilities, but those caps are about
to be raised significantly. And the coming increase won't be the last one, either, since
another increase is scheduled to follow on the heels of this one in January. [...] Translated into
American currency, British residents are currently paying on average $2,320 per year. That's
a 54% increase since January of 2022. After the new cap kicks in, the rate will go up to $4,247 in
October. By February the price will reach $4,718 annually. These are not insignificant
increases. They represent a huge change in the average household's budget.
Germany's
painful lesson for US climate warriors on the dangers of going green. [German
leaders] last week said they now plan to keep the country's last three nuclear plants running, at
least temporarily, to avoid having to divert natural gas for electricity. That pauses a
years-long march away from nuclear power that's backed by much of the German public (even though
nuclear-energy production emits virtually no greenhouse gases). The government's also looking
to restart 16 mothballed coal-burning power plants. That's right: coal — one of
the dirtiest fossil fuels and largest sources of carbon emissions. So much for leading on
clean energy. Germany had little choice: After Russia cut its gas exports by 80% and
threatened to end them altogether — punishment for Berlin's support for
Ukraine — Germany (along with much of the rest of the continent) faces the prospect of a
truly bitter winter, with inadequate supplies of gas and other fuels to see it through. Its
energy regulator says gas consumption must fall 20% to avoid shortfalls, and the government's
already begun imposing limits.
The Editor says...
When very cold weather comes to town, not one resident is going to care how dirty the coal is, or what
happens to the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, as long as the power stays on.
Wind
Turbines Are Destroying the Planet. New York, along with other states, is moving
forward with massive wind turbine projects. The push for "9,000 megawatts of offshore wind
energy" comes at a high price, not only for families who are left dependent on expensive and
unreliable energy, but for the planet. Wind turbines require massive amounts of rare earths
for their generators and motors. A single wind turbine eats up tons of rare earth
metals. Rare earth mining carried out in China is horrifyingly destructive to people and the
environment. One story described radioactive lakes, high cancer rates and villagers whose
"teeth began to fall out" and "hair turned white at unusually young ages". "Children were
born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed."
Renewable
Energy Is the Corporatist Rat Hole Where Your Taxes Go! The Federal government has already spent well over
$100 billion on renewable credits for electricity production since their enactment three decades ago, and the "Inflation
Reduction Act" will cost taxpayers another $98 billion. The proposed bill is full of incentives for renewable energy
technologies, chief among an extension of wind and solar tax credits significantly increasing subsidies for them, provided
additional criteria are met during construction. It also offers new tax credits for domestic manufacturing of solar
panels and wind turbine parts as well as energy storage projects sited separately from renewable generation facilities.
Wind and solar projects would effectively get an extension on tax credits for production and investment, as would stand-alone
energy storage projects. If Senator Joe Manchin wanted to handicap natural gas and coal generators and force more
retirements, this is certainly a way to do it. The United States would be forcing renewable energy in the same fashion
as Europe has been doing.
Africa
Needs Conventional Fuels, Not Windmills and Solar Panels. The energy and climate goals that Western
governments, the United Nations, and other organizations are pushing on Africa constitute a crippling blow to its
economies. As the least developed region, Africa should unequivocally prioritize economic development. One would
think that amid energy poverty in Africa, Western governments and "development" institutions would prioritize energy security
for African countries over energy transition. African countries must have reliable, abundant, and cheap energy (e.g.,
fossil fuels) to accelerate economic development. Fossil fuels power economies and people's lives. To deny these
countries the possibility of developing with fossil fuels by imposing climate goals that the Western world itself fails to
achieve is hypocritical. And malicious.
A
Democrat President Again Wastes Taxpayer Money On Useless Renewables. [Scroll down] Peter Schweizer, head
of the Government Accountability Institute, reported that 80% of the money spent in Obama's 2009 Recovery Act on green energy
companies went to companies with individual owners who sat on Obama's finance committee for his 2008 presidential
campaign. Given the number of influential donors in Biden's 2020 presidential campaign who have considerable financial
stakes in green energy companies, Schweizer predicts Biden's "Build Back Better" green energy program amounts to nothing more
than "a wealth transfer to Biden's biggest bundlers." By 2015, the Obama administration had used taxpayer funds to
subside solar and other renewable energy in the United States at an average of $39 billion per year over five years, for a
total of nearly $200 billion. This massive investment in renewable energy resulted in less than 1% of additional
electrical generation.
Myanmar
bears cost of green energy. The birds no longer sing, and the herbs no longer grow. The fish no longer
swim in rivers that have turned a murky brown. The animals do not roam, and the cows are sometimes found dead.
The people in this northern Myanmar forest have lost a way of life that goes back generations. But if they complain,
they, too, face the threat of death. This forest is the source of several key metallic elements known as rare earths,
often called the vitamins of the modern world. Rare earths now reach into the lives of almost everyone on the planet,
turning up in everything from hard drives and cellphones to elevators and trains. They are especially vital to the
fast-growing field of green energy, feeding wind turbines and electric car engines. And they end up in the supply
chains of some of the most prominent companies in the world, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Tesla and Apple.
Coal
plants are being kept online to prevent blackouts as green transition falters. Coal-fired power plants in
several states are delaying planned shutdowns in order to avoid blackouts and energy shortages as the delayed development of
renewable energy sources is leaving gaps in states' power grids amid high energy demand. At least six coal plants in
New Mexico and three other states are temporarily halting their retirement as utility providers say import tariffs and other
supply disruptions on solar panels imposed by the U.S. Commerce Department are making it difficult to meet high demand,
according to Reuters. Fossil fuels like coal plants and natural gas are preventing blackouts by filling the gaps in the
grid that are being created by the push to implement green energy nationwide amid President Joe Biden's aggressive energy
transformation plan.
Lights
out, cold showers in Europe. We still see news coverage coming out of Europe issuing "warnings" about a
possible energy crisis, spurred in part by the removal of Russian oil and natural gas from the European market.
Concerns are being raised in the United States that the same thing "might" happen here. But this story is much bigger
than just the Biden energy crisis. And these aren't hypothetical discussions about power grid issues that are complex
and difficult to explain. The reality is that it's already upon us. It's happening right now. In several
European countries, the lights are already being dimmed if not extinguished in places. People are being asked to take
cold showers or, in some places, not having any choice because there is no hot water. And it's all being done in an
effort to squirrel away any amount of energy they can before winter arrives. The President of the European Commission
warned people this week that the time to start conserving and building stockpiles of oil and natural gas was yesterday.
And it's not just going to be Germany and Italy that are suffering. It will be the entire continent.
Green
Fail: Germany to Reconnect First Coal Power Plant to Energy Grid. In a demonstration of the failure of
Germany's pursuit of so-called "green energy" and its policy of relying on Russian gas in the meantime, a coal-fired power
plant will be reconnected to the nation's electricity grid. While the economic powerhouse of Europe — so
called — scrambles to secure energy sources before the winter months, the previously shuttered Mehrum coal power
plant in Lower Saxony will become the first to once again be connected to Germany's grid.
Why
We Lost Trust in the Expert Class. For years, European policymakers had assured the world that the relatively
rapid "transition" to "green" energy was the world's preordained future — regardless of the costs.
Accordingly, many European Union governments followed the advice of green experts. They eagerly shut down coal, natural
gas, and nuclear power plants to transition immediately to "renewable energy." Most citizens were afraid to object that
in cloudy, cold Germany solar panels were not viable methods of electrical generation — especially in comparison
to the country's vast coal deposits and its large, model nuclear power industry. As a result, German government
officials warn that this winter, in 19th-century fashion, families will have to burn wood — the dirtiest of modern
fuels — to endure the cold. And there is further talk of "warm rooms," where like pre-civilizational tribal
people, the elderly will bunch together within a designated heated room to keep alive.
Why Pretend Green Pork Will Stop Climate
Change? Take the Joe Manchin-sponsored climate compromise coming together in the U.S. Senate. Despite
panegyrics in the press, this euphoric proposal amounts to exactly the sort of subsidy regime the National Academy of
Sciences in 2013, after a similar splurge, judged to be a "poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases and achieving
climate-change objectives." One analysis pinpointed in the fewest possible words why: "Alternative energy is not
replacement energy." Such packages are sold on the public's faulty intuition that an erg of green energy consumed is an
erg of fossil energy that stays in the ground. But it does not follow. The most widely celebrated paper in recent
years on the economics of climate change concludes that green-energy subsidies mostly just increase total energy consumption
rather than displace fossil fuels. The impact on CO2 and temperatures is "minuscule," according to Princeton's
José Luis Cruz Álvarez and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg.
"Green" Is
Unsustainable. The administration's "green" energy proposals, like those that have been adopted in Europe, are
leading this country toward an economic, social and strategic disaster. It is hard to think of any set of policies,
adopted by any government at any moment in history, that rival our "green" mania for sheer destructiveness. Although,
that said, Sri Lanka's brief commitment to "sustainability" comes to mind. [...] Blackouts are coming soon, likely to a
neighborhood near you. I would say that the certainty that voters will rebel against blackouts is not a "danger," but
rather the salvation of our civilization. If the Democrats continue with their mad "green" dreams, the inevitable
result is that the day will come when we flip our light switches and nothing happens. Understand: if the Left gets its
way on energy, the question is not "whether." The question is "when."
World
Economic Forum attacks idea of private property, natural rights. The World Economic Forum is pushing for a global
transition away from private ownership of vehicles and other "idle equipment" as part of a "clean energy revolution," itself
part of the Great Reset. In a recently released report, the Swiss-based international lobbying group stated that "transition
from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel." But the
report noted that shortages of these critical metals are likely to make renewable fuel technologies prohibitively expensive.
Germany
darkens cities, turn down thermostats and considers shutting down breweries to deal with energy shortage. Today
Russia announced a bunch of new problems it was allegedly having with the Germany-made machines that pump natural gas through
the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Siemens Energy, the company that built the turbines said it had not received any reports of
damage from Gazprom, the Russian gas company. In other words, Russia is once again lying as an excuse to keep the gas
supply turned nearly off. As I've mentioned before, Germany uses most of its natural gas in the winter for
heating. During the summer the country fills massive underground tanks to prepare for the cold weather but this year
Russia's decision to cut the supply of gas (first by 60% and now by 80% overall) means those tanks are only about 2/3 full.
Americans Want
Oil. The Biden administration tells us that we are in the midst of a rapid transition from fossil fuels to wind
and solar energy, and Pete Buttigieg says he can't understand why so many Americans haven't gotten on the bandwagon.
This author reminds us of what the Biden administration seems to have forgotten, but many Americans understand:
["][W]ithout fossil fuel, nothing separates us from the pre-modern era. For 99% of the world's population, that
era was not a pretty Jane Austen movie. Life was short, painful, diseased, filthy dirty, hungry, and either too hot or
too cold. Most people didn't live past 40 and half of children died before hitting 5. There were only four energy
sources: Human labor, animal labor, and primitive wind and water energy. (Five sources, I guess if you consider the
sun drying laundry on the line.)["] I think we can add that, beginning in the 18th century, there was also steam
power fueled by wood. Steam remains important, of course, but now we boil water using coal, natural gas, or a nuclear
reaction, not wood.
Let's
talk about the weather. There is nothing you eat, use, look at, wear, live in, travel with, or anything else
that isn't completely dependent on fossil fuels. Remove those fossil fuels (without a nuclear substitute) and you are
suddenly returned to life in a wood or dirt shelter, with only the most limited food and clothing, and really nothing
else. Of course, in the transition from our world to that world, expect 80% of the earth's population to die very
quickly from starvation, disease, and violence.
Democrats
Are Now Begging Biden To Act Like A Dictator. Democrats are using the latest heat wave to push Biden to declare
a climate "emergency" so he can bypass the legislative branch. Biden is reportedly considering doing just that.
The left is freaking out because Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., won't sign onto a bill that includes carbon emission mandates
at a time when gasoline prices are way up, inflation is rampant, and the economy is almost certainly in a recession.
Plus, the Supreme Court just tossed an attempt by the EPA to control the nation's power grid in the name of fighting "climate
change." On Monday, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, told reporters "There is probably nothing more important for our
nation and our world than for the United States to drive a bold, energetic transition in its energy economy from fossil fuels
to renewable energy." Merkley said time is of the essence because it's not clear when Democrats will be able to pass a
climate bill.
Wind, Solar And Pipelines
All Fail Germany. Short-term German power prices more than doubled as calm weather and the expected halt of gas
flows on the Nord Stream pipeline crimped supplies. Power for Monday surged to the highest since early March with wind
generation forecast to remain at very low levels for the next few days. There will also be less gas available for power
plants with Nord Stream scheduled to halt on Monday. The surge in prices is yet another blow for millions of homes and
factories in Europe's biggest economy. Like everywhere else in Europe, they are suffering from soaring inflation as
costs for everything from energy and petrol to food are jumping. Germany is working to fill up its gas storage sites
even as the main pipeline from Russia halts for maintenance. But there are fears that flows may not fully return,
prompting the government to pass legislation last week to allow retired coal plants to be reactivated and for gas-fired
generation to be reduced to conserve fuel.
Germany's Energy Catastrophe.
Germany may be the only nation that has based its energy policy on absolution. Germans call it Energiewende
("energy transition"), and they aim to decarbonize their economy and lead the world by replacing their fossil fuel and
nuclear plants with renewable energy. [...] Nord Stream 1 will be out of commission for 10 days due to scheduled maintenance
starting July 11. Putin used maintenance issues as the pretense for the initial drawdown in Nord Stream gas flows,
sparking fears from German leaders that Russia will simply refuse to reopen the pipeline after the maintenance. If
Russia permanently cuts off natural gas exports to Germany, it will likely send the country, the world's fourth-largest
economy, into a severe recession. In response to these pressures, German leaders have considered reopening shuttered
coal plants to shore up their economy and national security. Coal is the dirtiest source of electricity, releasing more
greenhouse gas emissions and deadly air pollution than any other energy.
Green
Energy Threatens Reliability of Texas, US Electric Grids. Texans might be forgiven for thinking they have it
better than the Brits when it comes to keeping the lights on. After all, they live in the energy capital of the
world. However, the destructive nature of renewable energy like that used in Great Britain knows no borders, especially
when American politicians push subsidies and mandates to force us off fossil fuels, threatening not just Texas but the entire
U.S. electric grid. Just a few days after the British were warned they might have to lower their thermostats and delay
their dinners this winter to avoid blackouts, Texans were advised last Monday and Wednesday to conserve energy as summer
temperatures peaked. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid manager for most of Texas, issued a
conservation appeal to Texans and Texas businesses as last week's temperatures were expected to top 105 degrees.
Deutsche
Bank is forecasting that Germans will have to chop wood to stay warm this winter. Last night, Eric Heymann, a
senior economist at Deutsche Bank, released a note discussing options for Germany to manage its current energy crisis.
The three scenarios involve the Russian oil sold and sent to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. In his last
scenario, Heymann discusses what might happen if Russia turns off the pipeline completely, a real possibility given Germany's
support of Ukraine.
Tucker
Carlson's latest on 'green' energy is mandatory viewing. We now have a situation in which Biden has
unchallenged and outsized executive powers and the EPA has unlimited regulatory power (both of which, I can assure you, were
never meant to control America's entire energy supply). The result is that the Democrats are relentlessly clamping down on
our available energy supplies. In a premodern era, energy came from four sources: primitive wind- and water-power,
animal abuse, and slavery (the last of which was not, although I'm sure leftists will deny it, a uniquely American phenomenon.
In the modern era, fossil fuel has allowed humans to break free from these limited and abusive energy systems. Farms
produce a surplus, water is cleaned, medical care is readily available, homes are warm in the winter and cool in the summer,
and so much more. Rather than listing everything that undergirds our world thanks to fossil fuel, I challenge you to
list a single thing in your life that does not rely on fossil fuel for its functionality, manufacture, or transport.
When Governments Do Truly STUPID Things.
Germany is facing an existential crisis of its own making as well. Deciding to go "green/woke" for energy they
foolishly shut down both coal and nuclear generation, relying on Russian gas for that which they couldn't manage to
produce reliably from renewable sources. Renewable sources such as wind and solar are not reliable and never will
be; the only means to prevent shortages is to either back them up with fossil plants (which means you pay twice since the
capacity has to be available when the sun and wind don't show up in sufficient quantity) or wildly overbuild against expected
capacity requirements which is prohibitive for cost reasons, never mind that both solar and wind are entirely dependent on
fossil fuels for the materials, mining and production. Then Germany bought into the war in Ukraine and sanctions, along
with the rest of the EU despite the utter insanity of being dependent on Russian gas, one of the warring nations, flowing
through the other nation that is at war! Backing someone who is at war with your now-primary energy supply
because you shut down all your own stuff isn't very smart. Electrical costs have skyrocketed and this winter brings
the possibility of literally freezing to death.
EU
Parliament Declares Nuclear Power And Natural Gas As "Green" Energy. The leadership of the European Union (EU)
declared that some gas and nuclear power are, in fact, Green energy, a move that will likely stir controversy in the U.S.
Under a move labeled the EU Taxonomy, today's vote reclassified the energy sources as both green and sustainable.
The
revolt against green tyranny has toppled its first government, as farmers' protests spread across Europe. Green
tyranny has finally provoked mass reactions, and the first government has fallen after imposing insane policies that wrecked
the food supply for its people. Both the president and the prime minister of Sri Lanka are resigning in the wake of
massive mobs storming and occupying their residences, burning the PM's private house and refusing to leave the presidential
palace until both men are out of office. [...] Sri Lanka foolishly signed on to the green initiative in farming, going
organic and limiting the importation and use of chemical fertilizers. Food production, including tea, a vital export
earner of foreign exchange, collapsed, and now the government is broke, people are hungry. [...] Farmers in Holland, in open
revolt against government plans to destroy their livelihoods by limiting nitrogen application for fertilizer, are tying up
that country's roads and cities. And the revolt is spreading to Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland.
Do
Democrats have any comprehension of how intentionally destructive their energy policies are? There is all kinds
of nonsense going on now over the issue of global warming that Democrats fawn over. It's an unscientific theory that
has gripped big-money Democrats and their media allies for decades, and what they are trying to do is force this non-science
into every area of society, destructively so. [...] Here are some questions for Biden, Harris, Kerry, AOC, Pelosi, and
Schumer: How will we get all the solar panels and rare Earth minerals for batteries from China without ships and planes
powered by oil? Won't we have trouble building all the roads without asphalt? Where are the electric road graders
and other equipment? What type of tires will go on all the electric cars, trucks, and bicycles since we won't have
rubber? How will we fight wars against China, Russia, Iran, and other adversaries without machines powered by oil since
they won't give theirs up? Won't we lose?
Is
the EU driving the first nails into the Green Energy coffin? One of the most obvious effects of the Green
Energy movement is that it is profoundly regressive insofar as it returns those nations that embrace it to a pre-modern
era. That would be an era that looks pretty in BBC productions but that was, in reality, filthy, disease-ridden, and
both very cold and very dark. A recent European Union vote to classify natural gas and nuclear energy as sustainable
(i.e., "green") energy suggests that, having gotten a glimpse into the abyss, pragmatism is beginning to triumph over the
mindless "green" ideology that has governed the left for so long. Germany, which dominates the EU, is also the nation
that has made the greatest strides in implementing the "green" agenda. The results of abandoning reliable fossil fuel
and replacing it with renewables have been problematic. For some years now, Germany has been facing rolling blackouts
and, in 2021, it decided to teach people how to use flowerpots and candles to provide heat during the winter when the
electricity is gone.
Having
Scoffed at Trump's Warnings, Germany Now Fears Complete Russian Gas Cut-Off. Having mocked and rejected
President Donald Trump's warning about the country's dependence on Russian energy, the German government now fears that
Russia may soon cut off their gas supply. As war rages in Ukraine, Russia has drastically reduced its energy supply to
Germany and other western European countries, forcing Berlin to declared emergency measures to save and ration existing gas
supplies. In the wake of these measures, Germany fears widespread disruption of its economy and industrial
production. "Germany warned that Russia's moves to slash Europe's natural gas supplies risked sparking a collapse in
energy markets, drawing a parallel to the role of Lehman Brothers in triggering the financial crisis," Bloomberg reported
last week.
The
Silliness of Carbon Capture and Sequestration. Beltway nostrums are a dime a dozen, and the climate
problem threat emergency crisis existential threat is tailor-made to elicit hundreds of them. An old one now
receiving increasing attention is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology designed to capture greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions as they are produced as byproducts of such industrial processes as power generation, and then to sequester
them underground in caverns or fossil-fuel reservoirs instead of releasing them into the atmosphere. The basic argument
usually promoted in favor of CCS subsidies begins with the observation that fossil fuels are here to stay regardless of the
propaganda trumpeted by the environmental left about the "clean energy transition." Unconventional energy is "clean" only
if we ignore the attendant heavy metal pollution, wildlife destruction, noise, flicker effects, massive and unsightly land
use, landfill problems, and on and on. And the argument that unconventional energy has become cost-competitive with
fossil fuels is preposterous, which is why the former cannot survive in the market without massive subsidies, guaranteed
market shares, and many other types of policy favoritism.
Fossil
fuels are far better than blackouts. As the world watched, French President Emmanuel Macron explained the
basics of supply and demand in oil markets to President Biden this week. Video of the encounter made it obvious:
Energy experts need to begin loudly restating the basic truth that reliable energy is essential to human health and
well-being. Macron's Energy 101 tutorial with Biden reinforced the reality that the world is grappling with a growing
energy crisis, and the Middle East won't be able to bail out markets. The U.S. would do well to heed this fact.
It should implement protective measures for oil and gas markets, as well as for electricity markets, before it's too
late. And make no mistake, "too late" is bearing down on us. For example, last month a Michigan utility closed an
811-megawatt nuclear plant almost a decade before its operating permit expired. Last week, the Michigan Public Service
Commission took it a step further by approving a request by Consumers Energy, a major utility, to close its last remaining
coal plant by 2025. That's 15 years ahead of schedule. The closure will mean 1,560 megawatts of reliable
capacity lost so the company can meet its wholly voluntary goal of net-zero CO2 emissions by 2040.
Wood-burning
Stoves and Firewood in Short Supply in Germany as Citizens Fear Freezing to Death Due to Gas Shortages. In 2018
during his speech to the UN General Assembly President Donald Trump lodged a warning to Germany about their country's
reliance on Russian energy. The German delegation laughed on camera at the remarks. [...] The Germans aren't laughing
now. In fact, gas prices are so high in Germany today that wood-burning stoves and firewood have become scarce
nationwide. German citizens are loading up on wood to heat their homes next year — just like they did in the
Middle Ages.
Chasing
Utopian Energy: How I Wasted 20 Years of My Life. Utopian energy is an imagined form of energy that's
abundant, reliable, inexpensive, and also clean, renewable, and life-sustaining. But utopian energy is as much a
fantasy as a utopian society. Seeking the fount of perfect energy allows us to pretend there aren't real-world
tradeoffs between, say, banning fossil fuels and helping people in impoverished nations or between using solar and wind power
and conserving natural habitats. For years, I chased utopian energy. I promoted solar, wind, and energy
efficiency because I felt like I was protecting the environment. But I was wrong! [...] I started to realize that I had
accepted as true certain claims about energy and our environment. Now I began to see those claims were false.
For example:
• I used to think solar and wind power were the best ways to reduce CO2 emissions. But
the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions during the past 15 years (over 60%) has come from switching from coal to natural gas.
• I used to think that the world was transitioning to solar, wind, and batteries. This,
too, was false. Trillions of dollars were spent on wind and solar projects over the last 20 years, yet the world's
dependence on fossil fuels declined only 3 percentage points, from 87% to 84%.
• I used to believe nuclear energy was dangerous and nuclear waste was a big problem.
In fact, nuclear is the safest and most reliable way to generate low-emission electricity, and it provides the best
chance of reducing CO2 emissions.
How are those windmills working out? France
working on contingency plans as energy crisis looms. France is working on contingency plans for cuts to Russian
gas flows as top bosses at energy companies urge individuals and businesses to reduce power use. France is less reliant
than some of its neighbours on gas imports from Russia, which account for about 17% of its gas consumption. But
concerns about supply from Russia come as France grapples with already limited electricity generation due to unexpected
maintenance at its aging nuclear reactors, prompting concern over winter shortages.
Energy
crisis making aggressive green agenda look like peacetime luxury. Soaring costs are driving many countries
toward more of the fossil fuels they had sought to phase out, proving the aggressive shift toward green energy to be a luxury
of peacetime. The war in Ukraine caused a spike in oil and natural gas prices, which were already creeping up before
Russia's invasion. Western governments have responded by pledging to spend even more, and faster, on scaling up
renewable energy sources, but at the same time, they have committed to building more gas infrastructure and have sought to
increase power generation from coal to displace gas demand and keep the industry running in the short term.
Renewable
Energy or Reliable Energy — But Not Both. Australia's new ALP Government has gigantic green energy
plans to be funded by electricity consumers and taxpayers. They promise (with a straight face) that Australia's electricity
will be 82% renewable by 2030. They predict 43% reduction in emissions and "on track for net zero by 2050". They
threaten to litter the landscape with 400 community batteries, 85 solar banks and a $20B [million?] expansion of the electricity
grid. This gigantic "green" electricity plan will need at least 150 million Chinese solar panels covering outback
kingdoms of land, plus thousands of bird-slicing metal-hungry wind turbines, plus never-ending roads and powerlines —
not friendly to grass or trees and with no room for native birds, bees, bats or marsupials — not green at all.
Questions the Climate Police
Won't Answer. How much battery storage will be required to handle a worst-case scenario of a solid week when
the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine after we 'transition' to green energy and everybody is supposed heat their
homes and run their cars with electric power? Who has made that calculation and what does it show about how realistic
Biden's green energy 'transition' is? How realistic is it to expect people to eat bugs and seaweed, as the climate
police would have us do, just to save the planet? 'In the future, you will eat bugs and be happy' isn't going to cut
it. By the way, the climate police weren't kidding. They're already feeding bugs to schoolkids in Britain.
How can we trust computer climate models when they all assume different temperature inputs, are wrong about stratospheric
cooling, are bad at predicting rainfall, and can't even model regional climate accurately? And you're telling me these
models know with certainty what the climate will be a hundred years from now for the entire planet? Who are you
kidding? Why is Arctic ice at 30-year high when the planet is supposedly burning up and Al Gore repeated scientists'
claims there wouldn't be any Arctic ice at all by 2013?
Questions the Climate Police
Won't Answer. Why isn't anybody talking about the World Bank study which concluded one hundred percent solar,
wind, and electric battery energy would be "just as destructive to the planet as fossil fuels"? Such a transition would
require unfathomable amounts of copper, lead, zinc, aluminum and iron — not to mention unsustainable quantities of rare earth
minerals — all of which would end up as toxic landfill. This transition would also require impossible amounts of land
for wind and solar power — the size of five South Dakotas, by one estimate. How is any of this green?
Germany's
'Green' Energy Disaster Is A Warning To The United States. As gas hit historic highs, leftists keep arguing
it's a perfect time to transition to a "clean energy" economy. "Now is the moment to double-down, triple-down, and
quadruple-down on clean energy," Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted on Friday, linking to a CNN piece that contends "wind and
solar" have been "bailing out" Texas during its recent heat wave. In the piece we learn that wind, solar, and
nuclear have "powered about 38% of the state's power in 2021, rivaling natural gas at 42%." That's quite the sleight of
hand; [...] Subsidized solar power generates less than 2 percent of Texas' energy during the year. Nuclear power
generates around 10 percent and wind nearly 20. Coal accounts for nearly 15 percent and natural gas for more than
52 percent of electricity generation. It would be far more accurate to say that coal, nuclear, and gas are bailing out
Texas. No nation has anything approaching a clean energy economy. And those that have promised to build one are
all struggling.
Renewables
are going nowhere. The fundamental problem with wind and solar power is that they don't work. Both
generate electricity less than half the time, and this isn't a question of improving technology, it is inherent in obsolete
systems that depend on the weather. As a result, the ballyhooed "green revolution" has fizzled. The Germans,
formerly committed to a "green" makeover, are starting to face reality, even if their politicians aren't quite there yet:
[...] After decades of hype and trillions in wasted ratepayer and taxpayer dollars, wind and solar can't satisfy three percent
of the world's energy needs. Nor can they prevent the blackouts that are inexorably making they way toward our communities.
Shifting
to green energy is currently impossible due to global shortage of batteries and minerals needed for energy
storage. The Biden regime's catering to the far left of his Democrat Party when it comes to their radical
'green' agenda will plunge our country into widespread unemployment and poverty, say most sane economists, because our
first-world economy cannot power itself simply on wind, solar and prayers. But that reality isn't stopping the
president's push — and neither are sky-high gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas prices. That said, what
will stop Biden and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-led 'Green New Deal' brigade is reality: There is no current
way to meet the objectives of moving vast portions of our economy and existence over to wind and solar because the materials
to manufacture the batteries required to store the 'green' energy are impossible to obtain. And what materials we can
get are coming from an enemy nation: China.
Rolling
Blackouts [are] on the Way. In the recent past, California and Texas have suffered blackouts due to inadequate
electricity supply. This year, as the summer heats up, it is the midwestern states served by the Midcontinent
Independent Systems Operator (MISO) that are most likely to see their lights go out. [...] Why are blackouts suddenly
occurring after many decades of reliable energy? Because of profiteering by "green" energy hucksters.
["]MISO may simply not have enough reliable power plants on the grid this summer after 3,200 megawatts (MW) of
reliable power plants, mostly coal and nuclear, retired last year.["] This is a scandal. "Green" energy
liberals have demanded, successfully, that reliable coal and nuclear plants be closed so they can be replaced by wind farms
and solar installations. But those unreliable, intermittent sources can never replace power plants that actually work
24/7. Hence the blackouts that are now beginning, and will become more and more widespread if we continue to rely
increasingly on undependable sources of power.
Dems
"Renewable" Energy Plans Face Battery Shortage As They Run Up Cost Of Reliable Fossil Fuels. One aspect of wind
and solar power that doesn't get mentioned much is that the power generated from these energy sources must be stored in
batteries to be used, as needed, by the public. With no batteries, you get wind machines and bird fryers. So the
green justice plans to convert the entire nation to renewable energy use may fizzle as a result of a potential energy
shortage. [...] When the use of technology is forced, rather than allowed to progress along sensible production, engineering,
and economic timelines, these are the types of issues that can be predicted. That is, unless you are wearing green-colored
glasses... either because you are profiting from the renewable energy mandates or you are a green activist ideologue.
Battery
shortage is affecting U.S. energy, drive to replace fossil fuels with other sources. U.S. renewable energy
developers have delayed or scrapped several big battery projects meant to store electrical power on the grid in recent
months, scuttling plans to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar energy. At least a dozen storage projects meant to
support growing renewable energy supplies have been postponed, canceled or renegotiated as labor and transport bottlenecks,
soaring minerals prices, and competition from the electric vehicle industry crimp supply. [...] The slowdown in utility-scale
battery installations threatens the pace of the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels as the Biden administration seeks to
decarbonize the grid by 2035. The delays could pose a threat to power reliability in states that already depend heavily on
renewable energy like California.
Global
Shift to Renewables Could Cost $120 Trillion: Australian Energy CEO. The world will need to pour
trillions of dollars into the energy sector if it wants to reach the net-zero target, according to the CEO of Australia's
largest electricity operator. Frank Calabria, Managing Director of Origin Energy, which operates Australia's largest
coal-fired power station, has also urged to "bring as much coal supply back into the system as soon as possible." He said
this would aid a "successful transition" to renewables over the longer term and ease pressure on the power price.
Speaking at the Australian Energy conference on June 7, the energy boss described the shift to a renewable economy as a
"multi-decade, large-scale, global transformation that will fundamentally change the way we source, produce, supply,
distribute and use energy." Calabria estimated that such transformation requires A$120 trillion (US$86.25 trillion) to
be invested in the energy sector. Coming on top of this is the investment in additional transmission to connect solar
and wind developments to the major population centres. This process, he noted, will cost A$70 billion
(US$51.30 billion) in Australia only.
The
"Net Zero" Agenda Has Devastating Consequences. Human beings — regardless of race, religion or
culture — like to embrace any belief that is absolute. This is because absolute beliefs are simple, easy to
comprehend, and false positives that offer us a false sense of security. [...] We've many examples throughout history but
let us today consider this one of CO2 emissions which feeds into "renewables" and a "sustainable" future. Never in the
history of man have we transitioned from a more dense energy form to a less dense one. The reason is simple. It
is [backward]. If we look at any time we've transitioned from a less energy dense form to a more energy dense one we
see a number of things.
• Higher productivity
• Lowered inflation (the two going hand in hand)
• Rising standards of living
It stands to reason that by doing the opposite we're likely to see the following:
• Lower productivity
• Increased inflation
• Falling standard of living
The great renewables ripoff.
Back in March, the Energy and Climate Information Unit, a think tank funded by green billionaires, made a great deal of noise
about so-called "negative subsidies" paid out under the Contracts for Difference Scheme. With market prices for
electricity having soared, generators in the scheme found that they were having to pay back large sums of money into the
scheme, rather than taking money from it as they normally do. The sums involved are not insignificant. The net
repayment into the scheme was £133 million in the final quarter of 2021, and the ECIU declared, somewhat breathlessly,
that consumers have benefited to the tune of £660million by April 2023. One small (well, rather large actually)
problem with this claim was that the beneficiaries of these repayments were actually the electricity suppliers. That's
because the CfD scheme only dictates that the money gets that far: there is no mechanism in the legislation to return it
to consumers.
Beware:
100% green energy could destroy the planet. The untold story about "green energy" is that it can't possibly be
scaled up to provide anywhere near the energy to replace fossil fuels. (Unless we are headed back to the stone ages,
which is what some of the "de-growth" advocates favor). Right now, the United States gets 70% of its energy from fossil
fuels. To go to zero over the next 20 years would be economically catastrophic and cost tens of millions of jobs.
With gas prices at nearly double their price back from when Trump left office and inflation up from 1.5% to 8% in just
15 months, we are already experiencing the economic damage from the green energy crusaders. But we also have to ask
whether green energy is even good for the environment. Some environmentalists are pointing to a little-noticed study by
the World Bank showing that moving toward 100% solar, wind, and electric battery energy would be "just as destructive to the
planet as fossil fuels."
Biden
Administration Declare National Emergency for Clean Energy Production. Joe Biden shut down domestic energy
development, cancelled pipelines, cancelled leases, retracted the ability to drill in ANWAR (Alaska), and triggered massive
new regulatory approaches from the Commerce, Interior and Energy departments. The resulting increases in oil, natural
gas, gasoline, electricity and energy costs overall — which became fuel on the furnace of inflation, have now
created the energy crisis that Joe Biden is declaring a national emergency to solve. Biden himself has no idea
what is happening; he is simply following the instructions of the policy operators who are in control of the
administration. It is the people in the circles of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and the climate change activists
within the DC bureaucracy that are executing the nuts-and-bolts shifts. They tell Biden what to do, and he cluelessly
does it. We are the people who end up paying the price for their effort.
Australian
voters have set themselves up for a green nightmare. Australians took a great green gamble in the recent
election. Green millionaires and other left-wing activists supported slick campaigns promoting a gaggle of well-off
women who won six seats in the leafy green suburbs. Being rich blue-bloods with dark green policies, they adopted
teal-colored uniforms. [...] This Teal-Green-ALP lurch to the left promises a disorderly rush into green energy. Their
aim is to cover this huge continent with solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines, access roads, giant batteries, and
national parks. Offshore wind turbines will start sprouting, but no new coal development will be approved. The new P.M.
wants to make Australia a "renewable energy super power" and "Get-Up" wants to "protect indigenous communities from fracking."
Green
Energy Chickens Coming Home to Roost. This year will graphically demonstrate the malign consequences of the
misguided efforts to replace cheap, reliable fossil fuel energy with unreliable, inefficient "renewable" energy like wind and
solar. Never in history has a civilization willfully embarked on destroying its material foundations, based solely on a
hypothesis rather than scientifically established fact. The first red flag alerting us to this feckless policy appeared
during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Much of Europe — the most aggressive nations in replacing fossil fuels
with wind turbines and solar panels — has grown dependent on Russian exports to make up for the energy lost from
shutting down nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Since directly helping Ukraine by fighting is politically
impossible, sanctions were imposed on Russia's oil and gas industries. But sanctions severe enough to concentrate
Putin's mind carried a political cost as well as an economic one. So Europe is still buying Russian energy, postponing
tougher sanctions until the end of the year.
NEC
Director Brian Deese Defends Policy as U.S. Economy Transitions Away from Oil and Gas to Windmills and Solar
Power. Anytime you hear the code-word "transition", what the explainers mean is the change from traditional
oil, gas and fossil fuels to renewable energy and the Green New Deal. The phrase "economic transition" is used to
explain the economic collapse of Main Street that will happen during the switch. [...] National Economic Council Director
Brian Deese, aka the U.S. version of Baghdad Bob, appears before several audiences today in an effort to use as many words as
possible to explain the "transition," without actually explaining the "transition." Why? Because they don't want the
average person to know what the "transition" is all about. Because if the average person knew what this "transition" is
all about, then they might realize all of these massive increases in price are being done intentionally.
The
Day the Electricity Died. [Scroll down] First, we need to understand a little bit about how electric
grids work. They cannot store electricity without a battery. Batteries are scarce and expensive. Electric
demand must be met with electricity generation, always. If supply cannot keep up with demand, the utility will shut
down electricity for some or many. For nearly a week, Texas utilities were unable to meet demand. They shut down
the electric grid. Five million people lost power, and from 250 to 700 died. If an electric grid breaks, all the
people it serves will be without electricity for weeks or months. Nonetheless, Progressives favor energy policies that
will make grid failures more frequent, widespread, and prolonged. They want to close coal plants without enough
full-time power ready to take their place. They seem unconcerned about reliability. They want coal plants torn
down even if we have to keep paying them — like selling your car to get a newer one while you still owe lots on
the first.
'Recipe
For Blackouts': Millions Of Americans Face Power Outages Thanks To Green Energy Transition. Consumers
nationwide are facing a summer of blackouts as utility companies and local governments continue to push a rapid transition to
renewable energy. Independent operators of major regional electric grids serving tens of millions of Americans have
recently warned that as temperatures rise this summer, they may have to resort to scheduled blackouts and other emergency
measures to prevent significant wide-scale impacts. For several years, states have unveiled laws mandating a green
transition and prohibiting fossil fuel infrastructure, forcing U.S. energy providers to plan renewable energy infrastructure
upgrades worth hundreds of billions of dollars. "You're doing everything you can to increase the demand for electricity
while constraining supply," Jonathan Lesser, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has experience in the utility industry,
told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. "Well, that's a recipe for blackouts. Simple as that."
Green
Energy Industry Is In For A Rude Awakening. Leading renewable energy groups, large solar and wind companies and
politicians have supported lavish subsidies and credits for green tech. In the U.S., Democrats have pushed for an
additional $100 billion in renewable energy subsidies over the next decade as part of the Build Back Better Act. "The
whole thing has been sort of a government created industry, from the get go," Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for
Energy Research, told the DCNF in an interview. [...] "The media hasn't covered the cost of nickel, cobalt, aluminum,
manganese or lithium," Kish told the DCNF. "Lithium batteries, for example — if you want to call gasoline the
fuel of internal combustion engines, lithium is the fuel of electric vehicles." [...] "Put very simply, all the world's cell
production combined represents well under 10% of what we will need in 10 years," RJ Scaringe, Rivian's CEO, told reporters in
April, according to the WSJ. "Meaning, 90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist." Kish noted that the price of
lithium has risen 1,000% over the last two years.
Greenpeace's
Dream Of A Solar-Powered Village Fell Apart In Just A Few Years. Eco-activist group Greenpeace brought solar
power to Dharnai, India, in 2014, constructing a green micro-grid it said would make the tiny village "energy independent"
and a model for the rest of the country to follow. Eight years later, reports indicate the solar micro-grid is not only
defunct, but being used as a cattle shed. The Dharnai venture is only one of many failed attempts by environmental
groups, like Greenpeace, to "green" the developing world, according to one of its co-founders. "It's the same thing
that's happened a lot across Africa: goody two-shoes comes in and builds them a small solar facility," CO2 Coalition Director
Patrick Moore, who co-founded Greenpeace in the 1970s, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. "Then, pretty soon the
battery wears out and it just doesn't get repaired and they don't know what to do because they don't have any expertise,"
said Moore, who departed Greenpeace in the 1980s after he said the group lost touch with its original purpose. "There's
plenty of those stories."
'Green' Energy Doesn't Save Money,
It's 4 to 6 Times More Expensive. President Joe Biden keeps claiming that wind and solar energy are going to
save money for consumers. But more government subsidies to "renewable energy" is a key feature of the White House
anti-inflation strategy recently announced by Biden. He probably got that idea from John Kerry, the administration's
climate czar, who recently claimed that "solar and wind are less expensive than coal or oil or gas." Pete Buttigieg, the
Biden Transportation secretary, makes the same claims about the thousands of dollars that motorists can save if they buy
electric cars. This couldn't be more wrong. Proponents of "green" energy boondoggles are often masters at playing
with the numbers, because that is the only way that wind and solar electricity generation make any sense. Advocates
such as Kerry love to focus on the low operating costs of solar and wind since they don't require constant purchases of
fuel. Ignoring the relatively short lifespan of solar and wind components, as well as the high initial investment, can
make it appear as though solar and wind operate at lower costs than fossil fuels or nuclear power.
Can
California Really Achieve 85% Carbon-Free Electricity By 2030? In the contest to be the most virtuous of all
the states on the "carbon-free" electricity metric, the race is on between California and New York. In 2018 California
enacted a bill going by the name "SB100," which set a mandatory target of 60% of electricity from "renewables" by 2030 (and
100% by 2045). Not to be outdone, New York responded by enacting its "Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act" in
2019, setting its own statutory targets of 70% of electricity from renewables by 2030 (and 100% by 2040). So is any of
this real? Or is it just so much posturing to show conformity with current fashions, all of which will be forgotten by
the time the now-seemingly-distant deadlines approach? As to New York, I have had multiple posts explaining how the
supposedly mandatory goals are completely unrealistic as to both feasibility and cost, and how the people charged with
achieving the goals have no idea what they are doing. Is California any less clueless?
Stark Raving Green.
2050: That's the deadline that President Joe Biden has set to decarbonize the U.S. power sector and supposedly save the
planet from man-made climate catastrophe. In issuing his December executive order prioritizing a "Clean Energy
Economy," Eco-Joe pledged you, the American taxpayer, to spend billions in the next three decades to achieve net-zero carbon
emissions "across federal operations" by mid-century. Blue-state governors and some power companies hail the proposals
as ground-breaking, according to the International Business Times. However, Biden is facing hostility from Republicans
and coal-producing states, who are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Supreme Court about whether
the administration has authority to implement the scheme. What few are talking about is how unfeasible the plans
actually are.
California's
electrical grid has an EV problem. California energy officials issued a sobering warning this month, telling
residents to brace for potential blackouts as the state's energy grid faces capacity constraints heading into the summer
months. And since the state has committed to phase out all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 — well ahead of
federal targets — the additional load from electric vehicle (EV) charging could add more strain to the electric
grid. "Let's say we were to have a substantial number of [electric] vehicles charging at home as everybody dreams," Ram
Rajagopal, an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, who authored a recent study
looking at the strain electric vehicle adoption is expected to place on the power grid, told Yahoo Finance. "Today's
grid may not be able to support it. It all boils down to: Are you charging during the time solar power is on?"
The Editor says...
Here's the bottom line, if you haven't figured it out already: If you rely on solar panels, you can't drive an
electric car in the winter, when the days are short. If you rely on windmills, you can't charge an electric car at
night, when the wind all but ceases. You can't charge your electric car at the same time that you and everybody else in
town wants to use electric appliances; that is, right after you get home from work. At last, when the time is right,
you'll need a few hours to get the car fully charged. Compare this to the time it takes to fill up the gas tank on a
gas engine automobile. "Renewable energy" and electric cars are incompatible.
A
climate change class action lawsuit. The UN IPCC and associated green activist groups; Federal, state, and
local entities; universities; foundations; non-profit groups; and many corporations argue that the world will be destroyed
without policies designed to turn on their heads the current energy system and American economy. However, the green
agenda that is designed to eradicate fossil fuels will inflict enormous economic damage on America's ordinary citizens and
overall economy — and will do the same to other countries as well. This is true even though the "climate
change" models have never been fully and objectively vetted, so there is no solid evidence to justify these upheavals.
Nevertheless, American Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency and, indeed, almost every federal agency and
their federally funded cohorts in many state agencies are committed to decarbonization. This is true for a commitment
that they admit that they do not know how to implement, as to which they cannot ascertain the final cost, and they're unable
to determined the overall consequences of their policies.
The
People Promising Us "Net Zero" Have No Clue About Energy Storage. The problems of trying to provide enough
storage to back up a fully wind and solar system without fossil fuels are so huge and so costly that you would think that
everyone pushing the "net zero" agenda would be completely focused on these issues. And given that the issues are quite
obvious, you would think that such people would be well down the curve with feasibility studies, cost studies, and
demonstration projects to make their case on how their plans could be accomplished. Remarkably, that is not the case
at all. Instead, if you read about the plans and proposals in various quarters for "net zero" in some short period
of years, you quickly realize that the people pushing this agenda have no clue. No clue whatsoever.
The World Does Not
Run on Magic. [Scroll down] It seems that we assume the world can run in a magical way. We need
only wish a thing, and it will happen, because somebody will take care of it, or rather something, a mysterious agent in a
black box. To save the world from climate change, we should use electricity instead of burning fossil fuels. But
where do we get the electricity? It must simply happen, like lightning from the sky. I daresay we have all read
hundreds of articles on the need to provide power in a clean, efficient, and sustainable way. But how many address the
fundamental problem posed: that is, that all electricity is generated by the brute physical fact of making a great shaft of
magnetic metal turn?
Green
Energy Industry Is In For A Rude Awakening. Renewable energy prices have skyrocketed while new wind and solar
installations have plummeted over the last year, even as governments continue to forge ahead with ambitious climate
plans. While the U.S., European Union, other Western nations and international organizations have all pursued
aggressive climate agendas that involve expanding renewable energy technology and infrastructure, prices have surged and
profits have declined, according to industry reports and corporate earnings reviewed by the Daily Caller News
Foundation. President Joe Biden has made a series of climate pledges, including a commitment to decarbonize the grid by
2035 and achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions by 2050, while pushing a long list of anti-fossil fuel policies.
Commodity markets tied to global renewable energy development have been roiled by inflation, supply chain issues stemming
from the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Even as project demand has stayed high,
industry profitability has declined because of these factors.
How
to Turn a Whole State's Power Production to Wind and Solar Dreams. Many ideas considered radical a decade ago
now enjoy mainstream support in the environmentalist movement. Demands to "decarbonize" electricity production are
proceeding apace despite the limitations of generating electricity reliably and affordably from renewable sources
alone. The technology to store energy simply hasn't kept pace with our ability to generate it, leaving renewable
sources like wind and solar handicapped by their inherent intermittency. Consequently, renewables provide only a
fraction of Nebraska's energy needs and find economic viability only through a regime of heavy government subsidy.
Despite this technological deficiency, clean energy advocates still insist we decommission "dirty" sources sooner rather than
later. Cities and regions who have done so have encountered grave disruptions in production and delivery, resulting in
rolling blackouts, brownouts, and at times grid failure under heavy demand. This is not entirely by accident.
Artificial scarcity raises prices, which in turn reduces consumption, a prime goal of the modern environmental movement.
'Green Energy'? Let's Do the
Math. Rather than argue climate politics and ideology, let's look at math, the language of the universe.
Americans own approximately 270 million private gasoline vehicles (GVs) and drive 3.2 trillion miles per year, consuming
123 billion gallons of gasoline. Why? Because we want to. Because we (still) are free to do what and go as and
where we want. Democrats don't like this. They prefer that we little people live in little boxes wedged-in with a
hundred other little boxes, next to the (subsidized) light rail and the (un-air-conditioned) workplace and the (un-air-conditioned)
grocery store selling bugs instead of food. President Brandon read from his teleprompter that he wants to build 500,000
EV charging stations. By comparison, our 279 million GVs require only 115,000 "charging" (gas) stations.
"Charging" a GV for the next 400 miles takes about 10 minutes. Absent fast chargers, charging an EV for the next
400 miles can take up to eight hours. Spending less time per person charging requires having more stations —
about four times more. How much CO2 will be expelled into the atmosphere to build this costly infrastructure? As with
windmills, arguably more than using them will reduce.
Renewables:
the pandemic of wishful thinking. There is a transition underway in our electricity sector.
Fundamentally, the people financing, regulating, designing, and operating these systems, are driving a public relations
campaign promoting renewables as cheap and effective. Activism disguised as leadership is bringing about significant
changes in the electricity system, changes that are having far-reaching consequences on the Australian economy and
security. Until recently, economists, engineers, and CEOs could be relied on to objectively consider all sides of a
problem, making fact-based decisions for the best outcomes for their clients and shareholders (and themselves). But the
much-vaunted 'transition' in the electricity sector has seen the share price of our two ASX-listed electricity retailers (AGL
and Origin) shrivel. In February 2021, AGL announced the write-down of AUD $1.9 billion of wind power contracts.
AGL paid too much for long-term fixed-price contracts with wind developers and Origin had a similar write-down for the same
reasons in July 2021. Combined, these two companies supply over 50 percent of the Australian retail electricity
market. Further afield, Germany's wind and solar gamble is failing too.
"Green"
Dreams Kill People. The amount of land needed for unreliable, intermittent wind and solar installations (which
always must be backed up by natural gas plants that supply electricity most of the time, when wind and solar are idle) is
immense. Robert Bryce, in a paper written for American Experiment, calculated that it would require an area more than
twice the size of California to meet America's existing electricity needs (not all energy needs) with wind turbines. Of
course that isn't going to happen. But as the destructive Green Machine rolls on, the land devoted to turbines and
solar panels won't be in cities or suburbs. It will be farm land. [...] Wind and solar are not remotely competitive.
They exist only because of government subsidies and, worse, mandates. The FARM act would at least ensure that we, the
taxpayers, are not paying to destroy farm land at a time when the world needs all of the food America can produce.
Mines,
Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check. Among the material realities of green energy:
• Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society.
• Replacing hydrocarbons with green machines under current plans — never mind aspirations for far greater expansion — will vastly increase the mining of various critical minerals around the world. For example, a single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery's life, each mile of driving an electric car "consumes" five pounds of earth. Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile.
• Oil, natural gas, and coal are needed to produce the concrete, steel, plastics, and purified minerals used to build green machines. The energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil is used in the processes to fabricate a single battery that can store the equivalent of one barrel of oil.
• By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels — much of it nonrecyclable — will constitute double the tonnage of all today's global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage.
The Magic of Rare
Earth Elements & the Hypocrisy of Clean Energy. [Scroll down] The villages surrounding Baotou are now
desolate, the inhabitants long gone. Where once there was greenery and fields, there are now factories. With the
factories came tailing ponds, containing toxic chemicals along with radioactive elements such as thorium, which, if ingested,
causes cancers of the pancreas and lungs, and leukemia. Li Guirong secretary general of the local branch of the
Communist party, is one of the few who dares to talk about it. It was in 1958, when he was 10, that a state-owned
concern, the Baotou Iron and Steel company (Baogang), started producing rare-earth minerals. The lake appeared at that
time. "To begin with we didn't notice the pollution it was causing. How could we have known?" The soil and
groundwater are now saturated with toxic substances. Eventually, Li had to get rid of his sick pigs, the last survivors
of a collection of cows, horses, chickens and goats, killed off by the toxins.
Bungling
Biden tells families they can save $500 a month by switching to renewable energy: White House issues a
correction. President Joe Biden vastly overpromised Americans that they can expect savings of $500 a month by
transitioning to renewable energy, which the White House corrected by saying the savings would actually come over a
year. In a fumble during his speech on gas prices on Thursday, Biden touted rebate programs for consumers switching to
green energy but incorrectly cast how much would be saved. 'If your home is powered by safer, cheaper, cleaner
electricity like solar or heat pumps, you can save about $500 a month on average,' Biden said. The White House
corrected Biden's remark in a transcript, making clear he meant to say the savings he predicted would be over a year, not a
month. [...] Biden is grappling with fallout from surging energy prices, including gasoline that has reached an average of
$4.23 per gallon, after the United States banned imports of Russian oil and gas.
Granholm:
We Have to 'Use' War to Move to Clean Energy. On Thursday's broadcast of MSNBC's "All In," Energy Secretary
Jennifer Granholm stated that many hoped "we would be focusing solely on clean energy solutions, renewable, making that
transition," but the war in Ukraine has thrown a wrench into that and said that "we have got to use this reason to become
energy independent with clean energy."
Unrealistic
Paths for Net Zero: You Can't Get There From Here. Depending on your crystal ball reaching Net Zero by
2050 is either the Holy Grail or a complete nightmare. The concept that transportation, manufacturing, construction and
life generally will produce zero carbon emissions or at least negligible emissions in less than 30 years is a vaulted promise
which has become politicized to the point of overlooking the basic realities, say critics like former banker and now energy
sector analyst Parker Gallant. The fatal flaw in the equation is that there's no plan for where the energy to replace
fossil fuels will come from other than vague claims of wind and solar which are almost useless without robust storage and, at
this stage, affordable, compact and high energy density batteries just don't exist other than the laboratory. More than
that, it all ignores the irrefutable laws of supply and demand.
No
Amount Of Incremental Wind And Solar Power Can Ever Provide Energy Independence. No amount of incremental wind
and solar power can ever provide energy independence. Electricity gets consumed the instant it is generated.
Electricity is consumed all the time, and therefore must be generated all the time. Indeed, some of the peak times for
electricity consumption occur on winter evenings, when the sun has set, temperatures are very cold, the wind is often
completely calm, and the need for energy for light, heat, cooking and more are high. During such times, a combined wind
and solar generation system produces zero power. It doesn't matter if you build a thousand wind turbines and solar
panels, or a million, or a billion or a trillion. The output will still be zero. And calm winter nights are just
the most intense piece of the problem. A fully wind/solar generation system, with seemingly plenty of "capacity" to
meet peak electricity demand, will also regularly and dramatically underproduce at random critical times throughout a year:
for example, on heavily overcast and cold winter days; or on calm and hot summer evenings, when the sun has just set and air
conditioning demand is high.
Renewable Failure.
The "Greens" promise renewables, solar and wind power, will replace fossil fuels. After all, the wind and sun are free,
and they don't pollute! Oops. Now countries that embraced renewables are so desperate for power that they eagerly
import coal, the worst polluter of all! Do they apologize? No. Greens never apologize.
The Editor says...
Is coal really "the worst polluter of all?" I can think of other fuels that would yield less energy per ton and produce
more pollution. Firewood and dung, for example.
How
solar power hurts people and the planet. The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits
that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of
wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. But
not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and
people — especially people with lower incomes.
The Editor says...
Reliance on fossil fuels is not a problem if there is an abundant supply here in the U.S. The U.S. includes ANWR. "Greenhouse
gas emissions" usually refers primarily to carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the combustion of hydrocarbons. Carbon dioxide is plant
food. It is not something to be avoided. In fact, it can't be avoided.
41
Inconvenient Truths on the 'New Energy Economy'. [#4] A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to
400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace five percent of global oil demand. [#5] Renewable energy would have to
expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to
expand "only" ten-fold. [#6] Replacing U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a
construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history. [#7] Eliminating
hydrocarbons to make U.S. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70 percent of U.S.
hydrocarbons use — America uses 16 percent of world energy.
The Sheer Madness
of Today's Left. [Scroll down] Normally, the mad Left would not object terribly to the ensuing fuel price
hikes. Remember, Joe Biden bragged on the campaign trail that he would end fossil fuels during his tenure.
Obama's soon-to-be Energy Secretary Steven Chu said during the 2008 campaign he wished to see American gas prices match those
in Europe (i.e. $9-10 a gallon). And then President Obama himself did not disagree. He meekly added that such increases
should be "gradual." He had also warned that his cap-and-trade initiatives would necessarily "skyrocket" electricity
prices — without suggesting that his off-guard brag was even a gaffe of unexpectedly telling the truth. So
green orthodoxy dictates that the highest possible fossil fuel prices are good. Unaffordability will hasten the end of
gas and oil, ensuring currently subsidized but uneconomical green energy as the only remaining alternative.
Imagining
Regime Change Without Tears. [Scroll down] Then there's California, going full-steam ahead to a
fossil-fuel-free future, where the state goals include:
[#1] "getting 33% of our electricity from renewable resources by 2030."
[#2] "achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2045."
Suppose these goals are a) impossible, and b) crash the California economy. Are you "Facebook, Apple, Netflix,
Twitter, Google, Intel, and a host of other social media and technology companies," plus Hollywood plus the gubmint sector going
to sacrifice your lives, your fortunes and your sacred honor if it turns out that carbon neutrality is the cruelest and the
stupidest idea since Stalin's Five-Year Plan that starved the Ukraine?
Biden's
America: The inmates are running the asylum. How does one sanely describe what has happened to the United
States since Joe Biden was inaugurated? The nation has been effectively ruined by the policies of Biden's band of
incompetents; every Cabinet member is a disaster, promoted for his previous record of failure. Not one of them is
qualified for the jobs they've been given. [...] As evident to all by now, Biden is suffering from advancing dementia, so he
is clearly not making any of the policy decisions that now bedevil America. Cutting off our vast supplies of oil is
sheer moonbattery, as if Air Force One will soon be able to take off on solar or wind power. And yet Biden promises
that "net zero" is near. Not even close. Fossil fuel is the gift that keeps on giving and will for
eternity. Those who continue to hawk the hoax of climate change as a means to subdue the world's population are
mind-numbed cultists whose dreams of a fossil-fuel-free world will never be realized, certainly not in their lifetimes.
And yet, we are currently benighted by these authoritarian dreamers who think they can and should be able to control how the
rest of us live our lives.
Ukraine and the
Great Energy Reset. [Scroll down] If there were ever a time for energy realism, it is now. The data
are clear regarding the challenge, in cost and time, to abandon hydrocarbons. The European Union and the United States
have, over the past two decades, spent more than $5 trillion and made countless mandates and exhortations in the service of
replacing oil, natural gas, and coal. They didn't do these things to minimize the now starkly evident risks of
dependence on Russia (or OPEC, for that matter) but to "decarbonize" the global energy system. Overall global energy
demand is up 50 percent since 2000 because of economic and population growth. To put it in terms that illustrate the
scales involved: that growth equals twice the total annual energy use of the United States. That growth was fueled by a
30 percent increase in global oil production and a 60 percent increase in both coal and natural gas production. Yes,
the $5 trillion spent on alternatives did help reduce the hydrocarbon share of all energy use. It's down to 84 percent
today — a mere two percentage-point decline relative to two decades ago. Meantime, burning wood still supplies
far more energy than all the world's solar panels, and oil still fuels nearly 97 percent of all the world's transportation.
Two
weeks of War undoes thirty years of energy propaganda: Everyone wants fossil fuels. There is pandemonium
on the markets and suddenly many nations want to be energy sufficient. It's perhaps not The Great Reset than the
collective-types were expecting? The gas flows from Russia to the EU are sporadically tightening, and the Yamal-Europe
line has been cut off. Gas in Europe is now trading at €340/MWh which is fully 22 times the long term
average. Newcastle coal normally trades around $60 per ton, but now is over $400 USD. A few days ago the former
head of MI6 in the UK called for an immediate lifting of the frakking ban which was set to see concrete poured down the only
two shale gas wells in England by March 15th. Thirty-five Tory MPs and four peers sent a letter to Boris demanding the
same thing. Now even Boris Johnson is suggesting the Green targets could be relaxed, not just for Britain, but for all
the West.
The climate
crisis disappearing act. [Scroll down] Mr. Biden forgot to mention that there is no
evidence — none — of a climate crisis or of any attendant "devasting effects." His entire proposal
to achieve net-zero US emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 would reduce global temperatures by less than 0.173 degrees C
by 2100, using the EPA climate model under assumptions that exaggerate the effects of emissions reductions. (An immediate and
permanent 50 percent emissions cut by China: 0.184 degrees C.) And "environmental justice," notwithstanding
the infinite elasticity of that phrase, means massive subsidies for Democratic Party constituencies, both geographically and
politically. It cannot mean anything else. Would the up-front cost of "weatheriz[ing] your homes and businesses"
be less than the present value of the annual $500 energy-cost savings of Mr. Biden's imagination? If so, why are
households and businesses not doing it already? Is the president oblivious to the reality that the expanded use of
unconventional electricity has yielded skyrocketing energy costs in Europe and in the US despite all the subsidies and other
policy favoritism? (As Pravda in its glory days would have put it: It is no accident that California has
almost the highest electricity costs in the lower 48 states.) Is there anything "clean" about unconventional energy?
Yes, emphatically, if we ignore the heavy-metal pollution, wildlife destruction, noise and flicker effects, massive and unsightly
land use, landfill pollution, and all of the other environmental problems created by unconventional energy. And about that
monthly savings of $80 "because you'll never have to pay at the gas pump again": Does Mr. Biden believe that the electricity
consumed to recharge electric vehicles is free?
Limits
to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer. We have been told that intermittent electricity from wind and solar,
perhaps along with hydroelectric generation (hydro), can be the basis of a green economy. Things are increasingly not
working out as planned, however. Natural gas or coal used for balancing the intermittent output of renewables is
increasingly high-priced or not available. It is becoming clear that modelers who encouraged the view that a smooth
transition to wind, solar, and hydro is possible have missed some important points.
The
Strategic Threat from Net-zero Emissions. [Scroll down] Analysis of published grid data in the US shows
that, notwithstanding close to 10% of capacity contributed by unreliables, only 0.3% of total grid emissions is being
abated. By the time emissions from construction and cabling are taken into account, that 0.3% becomes a net-zero cut in
emissions. Forgive the pun. In any event, net-zero emissions are unnecessary. Climatologists perpetrated a
grave error of physics in 1984 when they borrowed feedback method from control theory in engineering physics without
understanding it. They forgot the Sun was shining. They added the large solar feedback response to, and
miscounted it as part of, the actually minuscule feedback response to the small direct warming by greenhouse gases.
Thus, they overstated CO2-driven warming fourfold. After correction, global warming will continue to be, as it has long
been, small, slow, harmless, and net-beneficial. Not a cent need or should be spent on attempts — futile in
any event — to abate it.
Standing
Up To Putin Means Ditching Net-Zero. Until now, Western leaders have been saying that the biggest threat to the
world is climate change. Now comes Putin armed with nuclear weapons, tanks, and thousands of troops declaring his
intent to overthrow Europe's post-Cold War order. The dilemma for the West: you can't win a geopolitical conflict
lasting years or decades with an economy powered intermittently by wind turbines and solar panels. [...] One of the Biden
administration's first actions was cancelling the license for the Keystone XL pipeline. Thanks to inadequate
infrastructure connecting New England to the rest of the country and the century-old Jones Act — requiring that
all goods moving by water between American ports travel on ships built, owned, and manned by Americans — the
winter of 2018 saw Russian liquefied natural gasbeing brought ashore in Boston Harbor.
The
stampede of Green lemmings. Solar energy has a huge problem. Even on sunny days, almost nothing is
generated to meet the demand peaks around breakfast time and dinner time — the solar energy union only works a
six-hour day, goes on strike with little warning, and takes quite a few sickies. So, for at least 18 hours of every
day, electricity must come from somewhere else. Then, around noon, the millions of solar panels pour out far more
electricity than is needed, causing electrical and financial chaos in the electrical grid. Naturally, our green
"engineers" see wind power as filling the solar energy gaps. But wind power has a union, too, and they take lots of
sickies when there is no wind over large areas of the continent. And they down tool in storms, gales, or cyclones in
case their whirling toys are damaged. So the green planners claim that batteries can solve these intermittent problems
of the green energy twins. They will need humongous batteries. Batteries are just a crutch for a crippled
generation system.
High
Electricity Prices Are Unavoidable with Solar and Wind! The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act
(Climate Act) establishes a "Net Zero" target by 2050 and the Draft Scoping Plan defines how to "achieve the State's bold
clean energy and climate agenda". However, there hasn't been a feasibility plan that fully addresses the cost and
technology necessary to provide reliable energy in the future all-electric net-zero New York energy system. [...] I have
written extensively on implementation of the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy
outstrip available technology such that it will adversely affect reliability and affordability, risk safety, affect
lifestyles, will have worse impacts on the environment than the purported effects of climate change in New York, and cannot
measurably affect global warming when implemented.
Worthless
Wind & Solar: Once Again Output Totally Collapses During Freezing Weather. Keen to survive when
dead-calm, freezing weather sets in? You'd better have access to nuclear or fossil-fuelled power sources, simply
because wind and solar generators are bound to deliver absolutely nothing, at all. Texans and Germans know all about
it. Now, Canadians are getting a taste of what it is when you pin your daily energy hopes on the weather. In the
middle of a bitter, frigid Northern hemisphere winter, wind and solar output have been utterly pathetic, notwithstanding
claims that we're well on our way to an all wind and sun-powered future. You know, that old chestnut about the
'inevitable transition'?
How
Green Energy Fantasies Can Amplify Civil Unrest. Policies that make energy scarce and expensive, promoted by
wealthy elites, result in domestic unrest while diminishing a nation's ability to vigorously pursue its national
interests. Since 2011, this has been the case in Egypt, France, Kazakhstan, Germany, and others. Even California
and Texas are grappling with similar problems. Texas is approaching the one-year anniversary of its epic four-day
electrical blackout, triggered by a polar vortex bringing record cold and freezing rain, but exacerbated by the state's
growing dependence on federally subsidized unreliable wind and solar. That conservative Texas, America's energy
capital, isn't immune to the trendy push to decarbonize at all costs, should be a warning that the forces of energy chaos are
formidable. Decades of federal subsidies for wind and solar have caused those resources to be overbuilt in the Lone
Star State, leading to extreme price volatility and distorted, sometimes even negative, wholesale prices.
The
high cost of the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Center of the American Experiment analyzed Virginia's compliance
with the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) legislation passed in 2020. This analysis models the cost of meeting the renewable
energy mandates established by the VCEA and analyzes its impact on the electric grid's reliability. Our study examines
two scenarios. One scenario, called the VCEA scenario, examines the cost and reliability impacts of fully meeting
electricity demand in Virginia using a combination of the state's existing nuclear power plants and new offshore wind,
onshore wind, solar, and battery storage technology by 2050. The other scenario, called the Reliable Resource Scenario
(RRS), focuses on maintaining existing nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired power plants to optimize affordability and
reliability. It also adds natural gas generation capacity to reduce the need for electricity imports from other states.
Fracking
would have saved Britain from the energy crisis. Exports are flat. Imports are rising. The UK is,
despite the best efforts of the Government, still struggling to pay its way in the world, and sterling remains perpetually at
the mercy of foreign investors. It would be easy to blame the UK's woeful trade performance on our departure from the
European Union, and no doubt some die-hard Remainers will do their best to make that case. And yet there is a far
simpler explanation: our catastrophic energy policy. Figures from the Office for National Statistics published
yesterday showed imports of energy rising by £800 million month-on-month and hitting historically high levels.
Our deficit on natural gas alone is now running at almost £2 billion a month and has doubled in a year. That is
crazy. The UK has plenty of gas of its own under the North Sea. And it has even more abundant reserves of shale
oil and gas.
When
the Left Hates Green Energy. Although renewables have exhibited tremendous growth over the past year, a quick
look at Germany's energy policy indicates that renewables are not sufficiently mature to power the entire globe. The
country's heralded transition to carbon-neutral energy has suffered from a lack of reliability, high costs, and general
ineffectiveness. Similar problems have arisen domestically, where ultra-liberal states such as California have
struggled with reliability as they transition to renewables. Even in deep red Texas, a lack of reliability from the
state's heavily subsidized wind power contributed in part to the deadly blackout that plagued residents last February.
Indeed, countries that have shut down nuclear plants have typically encountered both higher emissions and higher energy costs.
Germany
to raze a 1,000-year-old forest in the name of 'going green'. Germany, as we well know with its Russian gas
capers, is a highly industrialized society in need of a lot of energy. Fine and dandy. But how they get it
presents increasingly bad options. They got rid of their nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear
meltdown after a big earthquake in Japan, (despite Germany not being in a quake zone), driving themselves to dependency on
foreign suppliers. That's presented problems for them what with Russia filling that role, so their other recourse has
been the one Joe Biden is touting for America: Green energy — like wind and solar power. It's costly,
requiring state subsidization, given that Germany is not a big sunshine zone nor particularly windy: But it's costlier
than just the wasted cash. They also are now looking at the loss of their 1,000-year-old Reinhardswald old-growth
forest — known as the Grimm's Fairy Tale forest.
Backlash
Against Renewables Surged In 2021, With 31 Big Wind And 13 Big Solar Projects Vetoed Across US. Despite the
many false claims about the land intensity of renewables, the physics and the math don't lie. The incurably low power
density of wind and solar energy means that they require cartoonish amounts of land. Furthermore, the notion that there
are plenty of rural towns and counties who just can't wait to have forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines and oceans
of solar panels inflicted upon them is nothing more than rank propaganda. Furthermore, as the industry has grown, the
land grab (and ocean grab) being attempted by companies like NextEra Energy, Invenergy, Avangrid, Copenhagen Energy Partners,
and others, has spawned a backlash that is raging from the fishing docks in Montauk and Rhode Island, to McKibben's home
state of Vermont (where, by the way, you can't build wind turbines), out west to Shasta County and Oahu, as well as in
Canada, Germany, France, Australia and other countries around the world.
Fossil
Fuels Aren't Going Anywhere As New England Learns. On the evening of Tuesday, January 11, New England's grid
provided key insights on what cold snaps amid a forced energy transition look like — stagnant windmills and
burning oil for electricity. ISO New England, the region's grid operator, utilized oil capacity to provide for
17 percent of the region's electricity needs as temperatures dropped well below freezing. Because of high natural gas
prices, and scant availability of the region's renewable capacity, the most economical move for the region was to bring oil
and coal fired capacity online to power the grid. Additionally, a large portion of the renewable capacity that was
online on Tuesday wasn't exactly the green utopian vision that the energy transition movement has envisioned. Of the
7 percent of overall capacity that came from non-hydro renewables, 29 percent was from burning trash, with an additional
23 percent came from burning wood. So, in this instance, less than four percent of the grid was powered by wind and solar.
The
EU is sabotaging its economy in the name of unattainable climate targets. As Europe is suffering an energy
crisis, the European Union continues to boast about its energy strategy, the "European green deal", which is supposed to
point the way to the rest of the world. This is all happening under pressure from countless green NGOs, combined with a
lack of critical reflection which is prevalent within EU institutions. Faced with the COP26 fiasco, the EU failed to
notice that the rest of the world is not following it. Now, it continues to stubbornly promote renawble energy even
more, even though this EU policy is at the root of Europe's energy crisis. Natural gas prices on the spot market have
risen fivefold in one year, due to a very strong economic recovery in China which caused an equally strong increase in its
energy consumption. Thanks to an abundance of natural gas — the energy source of the future — a
single, liquid market now exists between the EU and Asia, while the geographically isolated United States rejoices in the
very low price of its shale gas.
Stanford
Professor's Plan to Save the World. Professor [Mark] Jacobson built a showcase solar house, presumably to
demonstrate the practicality of his ideas. His house can be seen here. There are solar panels, batteries, and
Tesla battery-powered cars. One little problem is that the house is still connected to the electric grid. Clearly
when the solar fails due to clouds, and the batteries run flat, the electric company steps in. The operators of the
electric grid must maintain infrastructure — generating plants and distribution lines — sufficient to
keep every solar house running when the sun and batteries fail. Given the massive subsidies that usually apply to
rooftop solar homes, the homeowners don't pay their fair share for that infrastructure. Non-solar electric customers
subsidize the solar homes. Residential roof top solar is essentially a symbol that makes no sense economically or
environmentally.
Green
Technologies Have a Glaring Problem of Scale. In the context of the massive attention paid to climate change,
nations around the world have committed to substantially reducing and even eliminating their carbon emissions by 2050.
Achieving these goals relies on several 'green' technologies that would form the basis of a future energy system. As
envisioned, mass deployment of these technologies will encounter fundamental physical limits that call into question their
ability to function as replacements for their equivalents in the current energy system. By placing firm targets,
nations around the world have committed to terminating their carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 to offer confidence that a
better world is achievable if only society implements the right policies and employs the correct technologies. This
assumption is inaccurate, based on a view that is at odds with nature. Due to unavoidable physical constraints, future
green technologies offer little promise for achieving economies of scale. Many of the improvements suggested to improve
their performance remain marginal and frequently come with the environmental costs of additional embedded energy requirements,
extensive land use and greater material complexity.
Assessing
Virginia's Hidden Wind And Solar Costs. Among Governor Glenn Youngkin's first actions was Executive Order #9
initiating Virginia's withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Northeastern U.S. "carbon market" that sets
and enforces emission limits for coal and gas power plants. RGGI also lets utilities buy "carbon credits" when
emissions exceed those limits, passing costs on to families, businesses, hospitals and schools. Special interests will
contest withdrawal, but the EO sets the proper tone for reforming Virginia's energy system. Meanwhile, though, the 2020
"Virginia Clean Economy Act" still requires that utility companies close all fossil fuel generating plants — and
replace them with wind and solar power by 2045. The VCEA also stipulates that "not less than 5,200 megawatts" (rated
capacity) of that "clean, renewable" power must come from offshore wind. That translates into 370 14-MW turbines, 430
12-MW turbines or 865 6-MW turbines off the Virginia coast. Construction of the first 180 has already hit cost overruns
and could reach $10 billion.
Stop posing. Start drilling.
The current energy crisis, with domestic bills set to rise some 50 percent in April, has confronted Net Zero-loving
Westminster elites with the stark reality of the choices they've made. Twenty-five retail energy companies have gone
bust, another has been nationalised, along with a fertiliser plant — so that it can produce carbon dioxide for
fizzy drinks — all now featuring as extra costs on either bills or taxes. We are shipping fracked gas from
the United States while banning fracking here, and we have undermined investment in the North Sea, while allowing Putin to
use Nord Stream 2 as a bargaining chip over the future sovereignty of the Ukraine. It is literally the case that we are
using public money to import gas to manufacture CO2, while claiming to lead the world on tackling climate change.
Unsurprisingly, no one is following.
Lights Out for New
York? New York can have 100 percent zero emissions electricity in 2040. But it can't have enough of it to keep
the lights and the heat on. Last night [12/20/2021], New York's Climate Action Council voted to release its Draft Scoping Plan
("the Plan") to implement the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Unfortunately, the Plan fails in its most important
task — ensuring a reliable supply of electricity at all times. This risks leaving New York in the dark due to severe
electricity shortages. The Plan explicitly admits that in 2040 there may be a gap of 15-25 gigawatts of electricity production,
as much as 10 percent of the state's electricity needs, according to the New York Independent Systems Operator (NYISO). The
gap is much more than it takes to power every home in the state, and is equal to as many as 10 hydroelectric or nuclear power plants.
The problem is that the Plan calls for a dramatic increase in electricity demand without sufficient increase in production.
The
Catastrophe of Nord Stream 2. There is a real possibility that the European Union (EU) will endure major fuel
shortages this winter. Record-high electricity prices are currently the norm with no end in sight. Russian
president Vladimir Putin astutely understands that the EU heavily relies on Russian natural gas, which the Nord Stream 1 and
now 2 (NS2) natural gas pipeline will provide. [...] The Germans and EU have created a geopolitical nightmare for every EU
member state, NATO, and the U.S. by following net-zero dogma, allowing Putin to dictate whether the Europeans are going to
receive enough Russian natural gas to heat their countries this winter. The Texas blackout of mid-February 2021 should
make the EU realize the foolishness of relying on renewables, the push for net-zero or attempting to electrify entire
economies. This will only lead to energy poverty, death, and the demise of European security backstopped by NATO.
When the Wind Doesn't
Blow. The political push to transform our electrical grid into reliance on "renewable" wind and solar energy keeps running into
the laws of physics. The laws of physics are going to win, but the economic carnage in the meantime will be terrible. [Chart]
The basic point here is that wind energy shows up only sporadically and unpredictably, and tends to disappear when it is needed the
most. The worst time for a blackout is when the mercury is at -20, as it was yesterday where I live. Note where electricity was
actually coming from in the chart above: coal, the dark brown line, was the principal source, while natural gas, the light brown line,
is only slightly behind. These are the sources that liberals want to do away with. Wind was flighty; sometimes it worked, but
often it didn't. Is that how you want your light switches to operate? And if you can find solar energy on this chart, a
technology in which many billions of dollars have been invested, your eyes are sharper than mine.
It
wasn't very windy this morning, and that's a problem. It is a well-understood phenomenon that wind generation
in the Midwest essentially disappears when the mercury dips below -22° F. Electricity generation from wind turbines drops
under these circumstances because wind turbines are programmed to automatically shut off when the temperatures get this cold
to prevent them from breaking. Ironically, wind turbines are actually net consumers of power during these periods because they
have electric heaters installed in the gearboxes to keep the oil inside the wind turbines from freezing. Hourly data from the
U.S. Energy Information Administration shows wind production plummeted yesterday as the temperatures dropped overnight.
Falling wind output resulted in an increase in coal, natural gas, and oil generation.
Green
energy firms [are] the biggest corporate welfare recipients ever. How much would solar, wind and electric vehicle
companies have gotten in federal handouts and tax loopholes in President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill? Well over
$100 billion in taxpayer largesse. If all the tax credits are included, that number could reach half a trillion
dollars. No other industry in American history has ever received this lucrative a paycheck. The folks at the
Institute for Energy Research calculated that this is on top of the more than $150 billion in subsidies these industries
received from Uncle Sam in the last 30 years. The umbilical cord to taxpayer wallets never gets cut. Yet,
laughably, the left says all these subsidies to "green energy" are necessary for an "infant industry." Really?
Does Big Wind or Big Solar ever grow up? Incidentally, our ancestors were using windmills and solar panels during
the Middle Ages.
Which
Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall? [Scroll down] Worldwide, fossil
fuel usage continues on a steady upward trajectory, pretty much as if the whole decarbonization obsession didn't exist.
But then there is that handful of very wealthy, small population jurisdictions that have convinced themselves that they can
save the planet by eliminating their own fossil fuel use and substituting wind and solar power, even as the rest of the world
laughs at them behind their back. Four jurisdictions stand out from the rest, two of them European countries and the
other two U.S. states: Germany, the UK, California, and New York. In the aggregate, these four places have
population of about 200 million, or about 2.5% or world population. Each of the four has announced draconian targets
for net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, with even more stringent interim targets for eliminating carbon emissions from
things like electricity generation and home heating. All these places, despite their wealth and seeming sophistication,
are embarking on their ambitious plans without ever having conducted any kind of detailed engineering study of how their new
proposed energy systems will work or how much they will cost.
Europe
Shows the Way to Energy Chaos and Disaster. Europe's energy crisis has been aggravated by its policy choices
designed to stifle investment in fossil fuel projects and encourage renewable energy. All of this is ostensibly to
reach a net zero carbon future, which is literally impossible in that fossil fuels are needed to make renewable energy
technologies. The result has been record-high energy prices, blackouts and economic dislocation, placing more Europeans
into energy poverty where they cannot pay their energy bills or have to choose not to heat their homes. The dire
situation has prompted Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) to comment, "The upheaval in Europe is giving us a preview of the
economic fiasco caused by underinvesting in reliable and secure fossil fuels. For Democrats, Europe is a model.
For the rest of us, it should be a warning." Natural gas prices in Europe are five times what they were in early 2021
and they are approaching 10 times the equivalent price in the United States.
Decarbonization
cannot manufacture the products demanded by civilization. As late as the 1800's, the world was "decarbonized"
as there were no coal or natural gas power plants, and what the Beverly Hillbillies situation comedies of the 1960's theme
song called "oil that is, black gold, Texas tea", had not been discovered as something that could be manufactured into usable
products. Before the 1900's life was hard and dirty, and most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were
born, and life expectancy was short. Today, crude oil is manufactured into all the products used in the medical
industry, fertilizers, electronics and more than 6,000 other products that are the basis of lifestyles and economies.
Now, worldwide efforts are in place to have electricity generated by breezes and sunshine to decarbonize the electricity
being generated by coal and natural gas. The "other" fossil fuel of crude oil is caught on the chopping block efforts
to eliminate ALL 3 fossil fuels, but crude oil is seldom ever used for electricity generation!
Renewables' Reckoning
Is Long Overdue. It's not just that renewables are so intermittent and unreliable that they must be legislated
and subsidized; eat up land; will require more storage than physically possible; have nearly bankrupted and blacked out
Germany with little emissions improvement; and are doing the same to California and other jurisdictions adopting
mandates. Despite these indisputable truths, the White House's policy remains "a carbon pollution-free electricity
sector" by 2035 and "net-zero emissions economy-wide" by 2050. Yet three additional existential threats must and will lay
the renewables narrative bare. The first was reflected in Joe Biden's recent signing of the Uyghur Forced Labor
Prevention Act. Forty-five percent of the worldwide supply of solar-grade polysilicon stems from China's Xinjiang
region, where it is reportedly largely produced by enslaved Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslims. (China overall
produces three-quarters of polysilicon and 95% of solar wafers.)
Skeptics
argue public should know true costs of state's push for carbon-free grid. A government watchdog group is urging
New Yorkers to be skeptical of claims that the state's ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gases will yield billions of
dollars in economic benefits, with a new analysis finding it could lead to a net cost of up to $300 billion. The
assessment for the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank, argues that the Climate Leadership and
Protection Act, enacted in 2019, questions the assumptions in the legislation that target dates for slashing the emissions of
greenhouse gases can be achieved without damaging the state's business climate. "I would say at stake is the cost to
New Yorkers and whether the benefits of it are really going to be worth the costs they are going to be paying," said
James E. Hanley, the researcher who completed the study.
Utility Bills to Rise
up to 10 Percent to Green NYC Electricity Grid. A pair of recently inked contracts to fuel more than one-third
of New York City's electricity grid with renewable energy will raise monthly electricity bills for upstate ratepayers up to
9.9 percent once the projects are on-line. Both downstate (ConEdison) and upstate (National Grid) customers will bear
the project costs equally based on load share, but upstate customers — who tend to have lower electricity
bills — are expected to experience roughly double the percentage increase. That's according to a petition
just filed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which is now seeking to have the
contracted projects approved by the Public Service Commission.
Doug
Casey on Why the Carbon Hysteria is a Huge Threat to Your Personal Freedom and Financial Wellbeing. [Scroll
down] I'm all for green energy in principle. There's no question that solar and wind are worthwhile and effective
for select applications — generally small, isolated, special locations where conventional fuel is inconvenient or
too costly. The efficiency of solar has been tremendously improved over the last few decades, as has wind
efficiency. But neither make any sense for mass base-load power in industrial economies. With further
technological advances, they may become more economic someday. Perhaps people will eventually put large collectors in
high Earth orbit and microwave the power down to the surface. There are all kinds of sci-fi possibilities. But
right now, "green" is just a nice word for "stupid," "ideological," or "government-sponsored." Doing things the green
way takes power away from the markets, which is where people vote with their dollars. It instead places power in the
hands of ideologues and bureaucrats.
Europe's
Energy Crisis Better Wake America Up. [Scroll down] Britain and various US cities and states want to ban
natural gas heating and cooking — and replace them with expensive heat pumps and other electric appliances,
powered by expensive, weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels. Meanwhile, energy prices have been skyrocketing
in response to Covid recovery and anti-fossil-fuel policies. Climate theory has long held that most 21st-century
warming will occur in northern latitudes during winter months. But now we're now told a warming Arctic could also be
causing colder winters, which could endanger far more people than rising temperatures or more frequent heatwaves.
Actually,far more people die in cold weather than in hot weather or heat waves. In the United States and Canada, cold
causes 45 times more deaths per year than heat: 113,000 from cold versus 2,500 from heat. Worldwide, where air
conditioning is far less available, some 1,700,000 people die annually from cold versus 300,000 from heat — a
ratio of almost 6:1.
Green
energy: A bubble in unrealistic expectations? Presently, natural gas is going for $29 per million British
Thermal Units (BTUs) in Europe, a quadruple compared to the same time in 2020, versus "just" $5 in the US, which is a mere
doubling. As a consequence, wholesale energy cost in Great Britain rose an unheard of 60% even before summer
ended. Reportedly, nine UK energy companies are on the brink of failure at this time due to their inability to fully
pass on the enormous cost increases. As a result, the British government is reportedly on the verge of nationalizing
some of these entities — supposedly, temporarily — to prevent them from collapsing. (CNBC reported on
Wednesday [10/6/2021] that UK natural gas prices are now up 800% this year; in the US, nat gas rose 20% on Tuesday alone,
before giving back a bit more than half of that the next day.) Serious food shortages are expected after exorbitant natural
gas costs forced most of England's commercial production of CO2 to shut down. (CO2 is used both for stunning animals
prior to slaughter and also in food packaging.) Additionally, ballistic natural gas prices have forced the closure of two
big US fertilizer plants due to a potential shortfall of ammonium nitrate of which "nat gas" is a key feedstock.
How
Many People Must Be Thrown into the Volcano Before the Left Is Happy? The whole "global warming" schtick is
predicated on the idea that fractional temperature deviations (what climatologists and geologists understood as a natural
condition of the planet before their expertise could be used for political and financial gain) are a threat to human
life. Yet temperature fluctuations are poppycock compared to the loss of human life that will be precipitated by
choking off the fuels necessary to generate electrical power. Where electricity is neither stable nor cheap, surviving
the winter with scant heat is never guaranteed. Where refrigeration, water pumps, and lighting are scarce, so too are
medicines, food, and personal security. Killing electricity means killing people, plain and simple.
Net
zero greenhouse emissions is an impossible goal. The scale of the effort needed to meet net zero greenhouse gas
(GHG) targets is extremely large and appears impossible to achieve on a reasonable timescale. All alternatives to
current en-ergy systems start from relatively very low bases, and face serious, and perhaps insurmountable, environmental,
economic and materials-availability barriers. The debate over net zero needs much more honesty, a sense of realism, and
an appreciation of broader global developmental, economic and environmental needs. Even if 40% of the UK's fossil fuel
use could be eliminated through efficiency improvements, 120 GW of new, continuous CO2-free energy generation
capacity — equivalent to 40 nuclear power plants of Hinkley Point C size or 300 GW of new offshore
wind — would be required to replace the remaining 60%. The capital cost would be over £1 trillion, even
without the necessary back-up. Storage costs and operating costs would also be very high. The UK government has
announced a new target of reducing GHG emissions to 22% of 1990 levels by 2035.
Red
China Tried To Go Green, Now It's Going Dark. Last year, President Xi Jinping announced that Communist China
was going to go carbon neutral by 2060. Like every Communist 5-year-plan, it began with lies and ended in disaster.
The 14th Renewable Energy Development Five Year Plan would have China dominate the green energy industry and increase its share
of non-fossil fuel energy from 15% to 20%. That was last year. This year, China is importing American coal to keep the
lights on in its cities. China's desperate buying spree has sent the price of lignite coal, the dirtiest coal, up from $20 to
$120. While Democrats are trying to destroy coal in America, our shipments of coal have increased 30 times making China
our second biggest coal market. And we have the "green energy" of the reds to thank for it.
The
Real Cost of Government Mandated Wind and Solar. The government and big financial institutions promote a
fraudulent analysis of the cost of solar and wind electricity. Their narrative is that wind and solar are competitive
with traditional fossil fuels and that the cost of wind and solar is rapidly dropping. Academics and the media amplify
and spread the fraudulent analysis. The basis of the fraud is a simple comparison of the cost per kilowatt hour at the
plant fence for electricity produced by wind or solar versus electricity produced by a traditional plant. Some or all
of the massive subsidies for wind and solar are ignored in such comparisons. With such a rigged comparison, wind or
solar may seem competitive. A proper comparison reveals that wind or solar are five or even ten times more
expensive than natural gas or coal electricity.
The Grid
Isn't Ready for the Renewable Revolution. You can almost hear the electrical grid creaking and groaning under
the weight of the future, as two forces converge to push it — often literally — to its breaking
point. One force is climate change, which can exacerbate disasters that take down parts of the grid, as Hurricane Ida
did this summer, knocking New Orleans offline just as a heat wave settled in. Or extreme weather can suddenly spike the
demand for energy just when the grid is least able to provide it, like during last winter's Texas freeze and subsequent power
system failure. The other force, ironically enough, is the massive deployment of renewable power — the best
way to fight climate change and avoid these kinds of disasters. But this will demand a fundamental rethinking of how
the grid operates. Gas and coal power plants generate continuous power by burning fuel, and how much they burn can be
modulated based on the demand for electricity. But the generation of solar and wind energy fluctuates. The sun
doesn't shine at night, and turbines don't turn without wind. This can create a mismatch between demand and supply.
A
Closer Look at Renewable-Energy Disposal. Every source of energy — including fossil fuels, wind and
solar power, and nuclear power — have both positive and negative attributes. Often, proponents or opponents
of a certain source gloss over, or hype up, specific challenges or benefits in order to promote their favored solution.
In order to make informed decisions about which energy sources can meet America's energy needs, policymakers and the public
need to know about the entire life cycle of all energy sources. For example, proponents of fossil fuels often highlight
their affordability and reliability, while ignoring the effects of waste disposal or extraction. Likewise,
renewable-energy advocates focus on "zero emissions" without considering the materials used in the production of the source
or the ultimate disposal of the byproducts or equipment.
Climate Crazies Claim Global Stilling At Fault
For Wind Turbines Not Producing Energy. The far-left Gaia worshippers say that the "Climate Crisis" is
responsible for floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. A longer list of
crazy things blamed on climate change is at the end of this post. Their latest crazy belief is that their unproven
hypothesis caused the slowing of global wind speeds. Is there nothing that "climate change" doesn't affect? [...] I'm
old enough to remember when climate grifter and former Vice President Al Gore insisted that lower Manhattan, San Francisco,
and half of Florida would be underwater by now because of the terrifying melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica.
That didn't happen. Frankly, the climate hysterics have been 0 for 50 in half a century of their
Chicken Little-like predictions of an "eco-pocalypse."
China's
Stunning Green Energy Collapse Should Come As No Surprise. As reported in the FrontPageMag article "Red China
Tried To Go Green, Now It's Going Dark," the U.S. is currently experiencing widespread supply chain disruptions caused in
part by China's disastrous renewable energy collapse, which has led to a severely crippled economy brought on by widespread
power blackouts. Democrats tout green energy as a "clean" and "renewable" source of electricity. They also say
that producing green energy has minimal impact on the environment (that's a flat-out lie). For those who have been led
to believe that green energy is "clean," I strongly urge them to watch Michael Moore's jaw-dropping documentary, "Planet of
the Humans." The 2019 feature length film exposes the Democratic Party's push for subsidized wind and solar energy for
what it is: a brazen environmental hoax that causes eye-popping harm to the environment, while funneling billions of
taxpayer dollars to Al Gore and other inside investors in government-backed green energy projects.
The
Green Agenda or How This Energy Crisis is Different from All Others. The price of energy from all sources
conventional is exploding globally. Far from accidental, it is a well-orchestrated plan to collapse the industrial
world economy that has already been weakened dramatically by almost two years of ridiculous covid quarantine and related
measures. What we are seeing is a price explosion in key oil, coal and now especially, natural gas energy. What
makes this different from the energy shocks of the 1970s is that this time, it is developing as the corporate investment
world, using the fraudulent ESG green investment model, is dis-investing in future oil, gas and coal while OECD governments
embrace horrendously inefficient, unreliable solar and wind that will insure the collapse of industrial society perhaps as
early as the next months. Barring a dramatic rethinking, the EU and other industrial economies are willfully committing
economic suicide.
Heating
costs in NY expected to spike for many customers this winter. A new forecast on energy costs for heating in New
York state calls for a spike in those expenses this coming winter. During an annual presentation by the state of the NY
State Public Service Commission last week, staffers said that on average, statewide, consumers will be hit with about a 21%
increase in heating costs over the entire winter compared to last year. Rochester Gas and Electric is forecasting about
a 33% average increase over the winter for natural gas customers.
The Editor says...
Which political party opposes fracking, pipelines, offshore exploration, internal combustion engines, nuclear power, and the use
of coal? Those are the people to blame when energy prices inflate overnight.
'Global
stilling' blamed as wind speeds drop across Europe and threaten to drive up energy prices. Industry experts are
warning that climate change may have caused wind speeds in Europe to plummet this year in news that threatens to drive energy
prices even higher. Long labelled as a saviour of the energy industry, wind farms have cropped up across the continent
in recent years and have been billed a low-cost, renewable and dependable source of power. Increased dependence on
green forms of energy has also been touted as a solution to Britain's national gas crisis, amid soaring global prices and
energy bills set to reach record-breaking levels.
The Editor says...
If there is such a thing as "global stilling," and there's not, what could be done about it? Nothing. The simple
fact is that sometimes the wind doesn't blow, but you don't notice unless your electricity supply depends on the wind.
Renewables
won't keep the lights on. Boris Johnson announced yet another new green target at last week's Conservative
Party conference. All the UK's electricity must be generated from 'clean' sources by 2035. According to Boris, if
Britain drops gas turbines and replaces them with renewable-energy production, 'our own clean power' will help put a lid on
the soaring electricity prices that are blighting Britain right now. If that's the plan, we have a long way to go.
In 2020, 43.1 percent of the UK's electric power was supplied by renewables. Even the BBC's greener-than-thou
environment correspondent, Roger Harrabin, is sceptical. 'Hitting the 2035 goal won't be easy — especially
at a time when finances are squeezed. And the public won't appreciate any home-grown energy shortages', he argues.
The
Future Of Power Generation. The current consensus on energy and climate is both unserious and incoherent.
Burning fossil fuels is said to be responsible for global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. Although nuclear
power is a carbon-free energy solution, much of the public seems to be more afraid of a reactor accident than extinction by
the greenhouse effect. Solar and energy conservation have been media darlings since the energy crisis of the
1970s. President Barack Obama spent $100 billion on "green energy" in just one stimulus package. Yet there is
little to show for it. World energy use is projected to grow rapidly. Solar accounts for only one percent of
energy production. Although I can't agree with his conclusions, Director Jeff Gibbs did an outstanding job of skewering
solar energy in [...] Planet of the Humans. (Michael Moore is executive producer.) Ethanol, hydrogen-powered
cars, solar cells, and other supposedly renewable solutions are exposed as frauds that are dependent on fossil fuel once you
scratch the surface. Brazil's forests are being converted to sugar cane and burned as part of the ethanol scam that
Goldman Sachs promotes. The manufacturing process requires a great deal of electric power. There is an amusing scene
in the film where a manager explains that Iowa is the perfect location for an ethanol plant because it is near coal deposits.
South
Australia's big Tesla battery [is being] sued for not helping during Queensland coal power station failure.
South Australia's big Tesla battery is being sued for allegedly failing to live up to its promises to help rescue the power
grid in the event of catastrophe. The 150-megawatt battery was being paid to be on standby to pump energy into the grid
at short notice in order to arrest a system failure in the event of a major power plant or transmission failure. But
the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) alleges it did not deliver as promised during a major Queensland coal plant failure in
2019, "creating a risk to power system security and stability". The Federal Court legal action against owner Hornsdale
Power Reserve comes months after the AER successfully sought financial penalties from wind farms for failures associated with
South Australia's statewide blackout.
Those
$4.5 trillion 'infrastructure' and 'reconciliation' bills are far more radical and dangerous than you think.
These "woke" Democrats are determined to break us. The premise of both bills is that by enjoying safe and comfortable
lifestyles, we are causing floods, fires and droughts that are ruining the planet. They say this is because we are
burning too much fossil fuel. The goal of both bills is to cut America's fossil fuel use in half during the next nine
years. If these bills become law, the federal government will heavily fine every power company that does not
systematically shut down most of its coal, oil, and natural gas power plants by then. It would also pay billions as
bribes to companies to build and use new solar panels and wind turbines instead. The federal government would also pay
people, businesses, and schools to buy electric cars, trucks, and buses. It would also pay for more solar panels.
This would permanently end prosperity in America. Solar panels and wind turbines cannot power a modern economy.
The electricity they generate is too weak, intermittent, unpredictable, and unreliable. Solar and wind energy is often
wasted. It cannot be stored when not needed. It saves little if any fossil fuel. That is because back-up
generators must always be running to give the grid steady power whenever the wind stops, night falls, or a cloud goes by.
Crippling
Cost of Ontario's Obsession With Wind Power: 71% Increase in Power Bills. Ontario's government determined to
eliminate coal-fired power in the deluded belief that wind power would soon replace it. The result, as the protesters
above predicted, has been an unmitigated economic disaster. Power prices in the Province have spiralled out of control,
as a direct result of its suicidal energy policy. Thousands of jobs have been destroyed, never to return. A
recent paper from Elmira Aliakbari, Kenneth Green, Ross McKittrick and Ashley Stedman — Understanding the Changes
in Ontario Electricity Market and Their Effects — demonstrates that the disaster was as perfectly predictable, as
it was perfectly avoidable.
Understanding
the Changes in Ontario's Electricity Markets and Their Effects. When it comes to energy, policymakers in
Ontario have made poor policy decisions, resulting in rising electricity costs, lower employment, and lower competitiveness,
while achieving minimal environmental benefits. Ontario's main policy shift began around 2005 when the government made
a decision to begin phasing out coal. [...] The high cost associated with aggressively promoting renewable sources is
particularly troubling given the relatively small amount of electricity generated by these sources. Ontario's decision
to phase out coal contributed to rising electricity costs in the province, a decision justified at the time with claims that
it would yield large environmental and health benefits. The subsequent research showed that shuttering these power
plants had very little effect on air pollution. Between 2005 and 2015, the province decided to increase its renewable
capacity to facilitate the coal phase-out. However, since renewable sources are not as reliable as traditional sources,
the government contracted for more natural gas capacity as a back-up. As a result of these structural shifts and poor
governance, electricity costs have risen substantially in Ontario.
Dutch
Greenhouses Go Dark As Energy Crisis Worsens; Food Inflation Fears Mount For Europe. Soaring European gas and
electricity prices are getting worse by the day, forcing a vast network of Dutch glasshouses, the largest on the continent,
to limit output or go entirely dark, according to Bloomberg. This could have a devastating impact on food supplies and
boost prices ahead of the holiday season. The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant and is the world's
second-largest exporter of food by value, primarily thanks to its 25,000 acres of greenhouses that supply Europe with
vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers, and flowers.
And
It's Not Even Winter! Europe's Energy Supply Debacle Already Here: Painful Prices, Shortages,
Blackouts. Empty gas stocks, windless days, disrupted supply lines, CO2 certificates, soaring inflation,
blackouts, bitter cold and other forebode a winter of discontent across Europe. Recently Bloomberg reported on how
Europe was on the path to a severe energy crisis this winter, with risks of blackouts. [Tweet] Germany's N-TV also
reports a dire picture, writing "Europe's gas storage facilities are largely empty, and supplies are not flowing as they
should. Already surging energy prices are forcing the first companies to close factories in Europe, and German
companies like BASF and copper producer Aurubis are complaining about extremely high prices for energy sources.
Greenie
energy leaves Europe in the cold — the freezing cold. Greenie energy has been vaunted by politicians
such as President Obama, Joe Biden, and virtually every European politician in power as progress itself, the way forward, the
wave of the future. Anyone who's got problems with it, as Obama smarmily assured, is "stuck in the past." Turns
out that's [false]. After going green and shutting down its coal, fossil fuel, fracking, and nuclear energy production,
and feeling mighty virtuous for doing it, Europe is now going cold — freezing cold. The region faces a very
bad winter ahead with energy shortages across the board. Seems green energy can do everything to make a lefty European
feel good except produce the actual energy. So, courtesy of the phony prophets of greenie virtue, Europeans are going
without, even as Joe Biden is [trying] to take America down that cliff.
Europe
is switching back to coal to survive bleak winter. Having banned fracking in much of Europe and with low wind
speeds compounding the continent's energy crisis, gas prices in the UK and much of Europe are going through the roof. A
shortage of affordable natural gas is forcing European companies to switch to coal to survive a bleak winter.
How
the Tories have fuelled Britain's energy crisis. Britain is caught in an energy crisis of the government's own
making. It is true that gas prices have spiked all over the world — but Britain is suffering more than
most. Energy suppliers are going out of business, thanks to the government's price cap. Even fertiliser companies
are going bust, with serious knock-on effects for the food industry: the British Meat Processors Association says shortages
could hit within a fortnight. The trigger for this crisis has been the sudden surge in demand for gas as the global
economy recovers from the Covid lockdowns. Gas prices have doubled in the United States, for example. In Britain,
however, prices are five times higher. Why? Because America exploited fracking technology and capitalised on its
huge inland gas reserves. Britain passed up the fracking opportunity, in spite of vast reserves found in Lancashire and
Yorkshire. We are living with the consequences. While the UK government is right to phase out the burning of coal
(easily the dirtiest form of energy, emitting around twice as much carbon dioxide as gas plants), it is also running down our
gas infrastructure without providing a viable alternative.
The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not dirty. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. The emission of carbon dioxide is not something
to be avoided — especially if China has no such intentions. Burning coal is a lot better than watching
everyone freeze in their dark little homes. If electricity is cheap and plentiful, coal looks really good.
Learn from this experience. "Renewable" energy is unreliable. China isn't playing your game. There is
no "climate emergency." The climate changes all the time, imperceptibly. Fire up your coal-powered generators
and live your life!
Europe's
energy crisis: A switch back to coal is on the cards. Having banned fracking in much of Europe and with
low wind speeds compounding the continent's energy crisis, gas prices in the UK and much of Europe are going through the
roof. A shortage of affordable natural gas is forcing European companies to switch to coal to survive a bleak
winter. Low wind speeds have compounded the continent's energy crisis, prompting utilities to turn to coal to bridge
the shortfall. The deepening energy crisis comes at a time when Western governments are trying to push emerging and
developing countries to agree Net Zero targets at COP26 in Glasgow later this year. Europe's embarrassing coal comeback
will make any Net Zero demands almost impossible for politicians from the UK and Europe not least because they are also
dealing with the growing fear of a voter backlash from the cost of Net Zero and rising energy bills. The Spectator's
editorial this week as spot on when it warned Boris Johnson that instead leading the world on Net Zero he "should be prepared
for other countries to see, in his energy policy, an example of what not to do".
Energy
Crisis Hits Europe With Natural Gas Prices Rising a Whopping 250 Percent. The British energy industry is headed
for a big shakeup as wholesale natural gas prices have been climbing since the beginning of this year. The latest gas price
at the Dutch TTF hub, a European benchmark, gained on Monday [9/202021] to trade at 73.150 euros ($85.69) per megawatt-hour,
close to the record high seen last week. The benchmark has risen a whopping 250 percent since January.
The Editor says...
Now is the time to hold an election and see who still supports "renewable energy." Let's see who wants to "save the earth" from
global warming (which never seems to match all the dire predictions), and who just wants to stay warm this winter.
The
Deep Optimism Manifesto. [Scroll down] Renewable energy is not a viable solution. Wind farms and
solar arrays destroy the very land and nature we are trying to save, are not scalable, and the economics don't work.
The race to Net Zero is a race to the bottom, it's based on false assumptions, the science is seriously distorted, and it has
impossible targets. They must all be backed up 100 percent by dispatchable power to make up for shortfalls in
production and storage, which will consume more minerals and resources than we are prepared to mine. We will need
technology we don't have today, but are renewables worth the cost?
Renewables: Is There Anything They
Can't Do? [Scroll down] So the transition to so-called renewable energy has really been raking European
energy markets over the coals. Literally, in fact, as coal-fired power plants are having to increase production to meet
energy demands. And it's making Russia into a one nation OPEC, the only country in the region with an excess of natural
gas which will happily export it... for some significant diplomatic concessions. Quite the bind the E.U. finds itself
in. Perhaps they might consider changing course, accepting that shutting down their natural gas and nuclear power
plants, not to mention banning fracking, is a mistake? Doesn't sound like it!
Due in part to renewables... UK
electricity prices now most expensive in Europe. UK day-ahead power prices tripled to record levels Sept. 13 as
tight generation margins combined with soaring power import, natural gas and carbon prices. The UK's accelerated coal
phase-out along with reduced nuclear availability and low wind generation have exposed the market to rising gas prices.
What's
causing soaring energy prices in Europe. Europe is facing an energy crunch caused by surging wholesale prices
for natural gas, raising the prospects of higher utility bills for customers and forcing some manufacturers to halt
operations. A complex brew of forces is causing the European gas market's unprecedented surge, creating a "perfect
storm" of higher than expected demand and low supply. [...] There are other factors at play. Stronger demand for
liquefied natural gas exports in more competitive Asian markets has diverted cargoes away from Europe. Europe has also
experienced unusually calm weather in recent weeks, leading to less wind power output and creating additional strain on gas
supply, particularly in the United Kingdom, where wind normally provides 20% of the country's electricity.
Will
"Green" Energy Destroy Europe? One of today's most important, and weirdly under-reported, news stories is the
economic crisis that threatens Great Britain and, more broadly, Europe. Its most striking current manifestation is a
food shortage in the U.K. ["]Acute food shortages were feared last night after high gas prices forced most of
Britain's commercial production of carbon dioxide to shut down. [...] The closure of two fertiliser plants in northern
England and others in Europe has left the food and drink industry facing a shortage of carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct
of fertiliser manufacturing.["] The fertilizer plants shut down because of sky-high energy costs:
["]Gas prices in Britain hit record highs this week on fears of energy supply shortages in the winter.["] [...]
It is fitting that the current crisis began when the wind stopped blowing in the North Sea, leading to a spike in demand for
natural gas. But the problem is inherent: wind turbines and solar panels cannot fuel the world. The delusion
that they can do so has led most European countries (France is a notable exception) to fail to provide adequate dispatchable
sources of power: nuclear, hydroelectric, coal and natural gas. It remains to be seen whether the Europeans will
correct this fundamental policy error before it is too late.
Green
Britain faces food shortages as energy crisis shuts down factories. As energy prices in Europe go through the
roof, factories are beginning to shut down and food is disappearing from the shelves. Welcome to green Britain,
offering a foretaste of what life will be like under Net Zero conditions — poorer, colder, hungrier —
unless Government changes course.
The
Disaster of Green Energy. I didn't write anything yesterday [8/12/2021] because my day was taken up with two
anti-Green Energy events here in Minnesota. The first was a lunch in Albert Lea, which anti-wind activists drove up to
four hours to attend. The second was a cocktail hour program in a Minneapolis suburb attended by more than 250. The
speakers were Isaac Orr of Center of the American Experiment and Robert Bryce, one of the country's top energy experts.
The title of the program was "The Environmental Catastrophe of Wind and Solar Power," although the program's content was
somewhat broader than that. What follows are a few of the slides from yesterday's presentation that illustrate the
foolishness of trying to power our electric grid — let alone our whole economy! — with wind and solar
energy. Along with inherent intermittency and ridiculously high cost, one of the fundamental problems with wind
turbines and solar panels is that they require an enormous quantity of minerals. This is because they are such
low-density sources of energy.
Low-Density
Intermittent Energy isn't Renewable.
· Nuclear is 3 to 5 Million times as energy dense than Solar or Wind.
· Solar is Toxic — a ticking recycling time bomb for the World.
· Weather damages panels and rain leaches heavy metals into the soil.
· Wind turbines are killing raptors and bats by the millions.
· Solar takes 37 times the materials to make same amount of power as Nuclear
· Wind takes 17 times the materials to make same amount of power as Nuclear
Massive
Tesla battery catches fire, takes 150 firefighters, 30 fire trucks four days to put out. A blaze stemming from
Tesla's largest battery pack took more than 150 firefighters and dozens of fire trucks to extinguish, Australian authorities
said in a statement Monday [8/1/2021]. The fire, which was fully contained as of Monday, began at the Victorian Big
Battery project Friday morning in Victoria, Australia, after a Tesla Megapack battery caught fire during testing, Business
Insider reported. "There was one battery pack on fire to start with, but it did spread to a second pack that was very
close to it," Ian Beswicke, Country Fire Authority (CFA) incident controller and a district assistant chief fire officer,
said in a statement. "The plan is that we keep it cool on the outside and protect the exposures so it doesn't cause any
issues for any of the other components in the power station," Beswicke added.
Tesla
Battery Fire Brought Under Control After Three Days Burning. A blaze at a massive Tesla battery site in
Australia that started three days ago was brought under control on Monday [8/2/2021], firefighters said. Emergency
services were first called to the Victoria Big Battery project — built by French renewable energy firm Neoen using
Tesla batteries — on Friday morning.
Big
batteries could be bigger bombs than Beirut fertilizer. It turns out storing Megawatts of high density energy
in a confined space is "like a bomb". Who could have seen that coming, apart from everyone who understands what a megawatt
is? Clean, green, noisy and explosive. And they are "unregulated" in the UK.
Now
is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy. While no other "carbon free" method of producing electricity
comes even close to nuclear energy, climate change alarmists refuse to even consider the option. If you do an objective
benefit-cost analysis of nuclear energy compared to the so-called "green energies" of solar and wind you learn that green
energies have serious time and space limitations. For example, you learn that with solar and wind there is a disconnect
between when they're produced and when they're consumed. Nighttime and cloudy days happen, and the wind does not always
blow, but the need for electricity goes on. The only solution to those limitations is reliance on batteries.
Batteries, of course, have their own problems. It takes at least an hour and usually eight hours to charge an electric
vehicle's batteries. It takes only five minutes to fill your gas tank.
The
Real Reason They Blame Heat Deaths, Blackouts, and Forest Fires on Climate Change Is Because They're Causing
Them. [Scroll down] [W]hat determines whether or not there is enough electricity is whether there are
sufficient "baseload," reliable power plants and fuels, not marginally higher use of air conditioners. The people who
manage electricity grids knew perfectly well that it could be hot last summer, hot this summer, and that a cold snap like the
one that occurred in Texas in February was likely, since worse cold snaps had occurred in the past. The main reason
there aren't enough reliable power plants is because progressive activists, scientists, and journalists successfully
persuaded policymakers to shut them down, not build them, or not operate them. [...] Hundreds of people have died in North
America over the last few days from lack of air conditioning. But for years activist analysts, scientists, and
journalists have claimed we have too much of it.
"Green
Energy über alles," Say Oregon's Lunatic Democrats. Just as the national Democrat Party is chasing the
imaginary pot of gold at the end of the green energy rainbow, so too are Oregon's Democrats, and they are all-in on wind,
solar, and hydroelectric power as the ONLY sources powering Oregon's electric grid. [...] Some Oregonians actually understand
that science and are aghast that Oregon Democrats are hell-bent on committing "green energy suicide" by dooming the state to
dozens of future brownouts ala California. One of them is meteorologist Chuck Wiese.
Power
Grid Operators, Experts And Federal Audit Office Warn Of Blackouts As Coal, Nuclear Get Phased Out. As wildly
fluctuating, weather-dependent green energies come increasingly online, German grid operators and the German Federal Audit
Office are warning the German government of power blackouts. But the government is ignoring the warnings and continues
to insist everything is fine. Grid operator 50Hertz, for example, warns of energy shortages as Germany continues to
shut down its nuclear and coal power plants, which currently serve to provide crucial baseload power for the grid. [...] The
risk of blackouts are rising due to the unstable supply of growing wind and solar energy.
Not
Enough "Green" in Green Energy. The business page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday [6/2/2021]
reported one of those minor stories that you might blow past if you don't stop and ask yourself about curious missing
details. [...] Green energy is supposed to be all the rage among investors these days, but this item suggests that perhaps
the rate of return is subpar. Just what is the expected rate of return for this and similar investment firms? The
story doesn't say, and the Journal reporters don't seem interested in or able to find out.
The
huge, destructive green lie. [Scroll down] "Green" power is also inefficient. The need for backup
power to use when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow means costly firing-up of alternative means of power or
risking brown-outs. Those fossil-fuel power sources, when allowed to run continually, cost far less versus
intermittently powering them on. Add in the problems with battery-operated vehicles, and the whole self-righteous green
movement should simply turn brown and wither to nothing — and that's exactly what it would do, absent giant
government incentives and subsidies and municipal mandates such as Reach Codes which require adding solar (and other things,
from a laundry list of greenie ideology, depending on project cost). These codes also prohibit gas hook-ups in new
construction, on the grounds that it is a pollutant.
Batteries are fossil fuel, too! The
Hidden Risks of Batteries. The meteoric rise of lithium-ion batteries in the transport and IT sectors has been
spurred by demand for technologies that reduce carbon emissions and decrease energy use. While this sounds like a win
for everyone, there's a darker side that could alter the perceptions of ethically minded consumers and create significant
risks for brands. If you look at the production of cobalt and lithium used in these batteries, a stark picture emerges
of an industry exposed to issues such as child labor, modern slavery, and the undermining of land and water rights.
Demand for these raw materials is set to grow significantly.
International
Energy Agency report shows that green energy transition is a fantasy because of dependence on key rare minerals.
A prestigious intergovernmental organization created by the world's advanced economies is pointing out the bottleneck in the plans
to substitute so-called green energy for hydrocarbon-based energy: the availability of key minerals necessary for battery
storage, wind farms, solar panels, and other gizmos necessary for the switchover. Simply put: the world can't provide
the quantity of those minerals that would be necessary, and the environmental and social impact of trying to mine them in sufficient
quantities would be devastating. The cure, in other words, is worse than the disease.
Weather
Dependent Renewable power performance in Europe DE UK FR: 2020. In 2020, Weather Dependent Renewables (Wind and Solar
Power) made up 58% of all power generation installations in the three Nations, DE UK FR. Together they contributed
about 24% of the power generated at a productivity / capacity percentage of 19.7%. These three major Nations: Germany,
the United Kingdom and France, (DE UK FR), account for more than half of the Weather Dependent Renewable, energy generation
installations across Europe. These Nations cover an area of about 1.1 million square kilometres about a quarter of the land
area of the EU(27). It extends from 43°N to 58°N and 6°W to 13°E. The three Nations are predominantly in
Northern Europe.
Rural America is fighting
back against wind energy projects. Renewable energy is politically popular. Polling data show that about
70 percent of Americans want more wind energy and 80 percent want more solar. Regulators at the local, state, and
federal levels have responded to this popularity by passing a myriad of goals, mandates, and subsidies to encourage the
development and consumption of wind and solar energy. The Sierra Club claims that "over 170 cities, more than ten
counties, and eight states across the U.S. have goals to power their communities with 100% clean, renewable energy." In
addition to their political popularity, a spate of academic studies released over the past few years have claimed that the
U.S. can run most or, all, of its economy solely on renewables. No oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear required.
Although renewables are popular among voters and professors at elite universities, they also have several problems, including
their intermittency, need for high-voltage transmission lines, and resource intensity.
It
Got Serious In A Hurry. Biden's first executive order, shutting down the Keystone pipeline, set the tone.
In the beautiful illusion that constitutes woke energy policy, renewable but intermittent solar and wind will soon replace
fossil fuels, so why do we need fossil fuels and their pipelines (the cheapest and most environmentally friendly way to
transport oil and gas). Everything will be electric — like those cool Teslas! — because
electricity just comes from a plug. Never mind the fossil fuels, minerals and metals that must be extracted or mined
(nothing environmentally destructive there) to manufacture and transport solar panels, windmills blades, and batteries.
Never mind the costly environmental challenges of disposing of them. Never mind the fossil fuels that are burned to
provide the electricity for those plugs. Never mind the back-up power that must be supplied by fossil fuels for those
times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
After
the Texas Blackouts, Follow the $66 Billion of Wind and Solar Money. In the aftermath of the Texas blackouts,
one thing became clear: Big Wind and Big Solar have nearly every media outlet in the country on speed dial.
Indeed, in the days after the blackouts, numerous media outlets carried stories proclaiming that the near-disastrous failure
of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid should not be blamed on wind or solar energy. To cite just
one example, The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman declared that pointing the finger at renewables after the storm
and blackouts that left nearly 200 people dead was "another indicator of the moral and intellectual collapse of American
conservatism." But the effort to absolve renewables ignores the oldest maxim in politics: follow the money.
Doing so shows that wind and solar aren't as blameless as you've been told. Indeed, about $66 billion was spent
building wind and solar infrastructure in Texas in the years before the blackouts, yet all that spending was worth next to
nothing when the grid was teetering on the edge of collapse during the early morning hours of February 15.
The Ugly Truth About
Renewable Power. When Texas literally froze this February, some blamed the blackouts that left millions of
Texans in the dark on the wind turbines. Others blamed them on the gas-fired power plants. The truth isn't so
politically simple. In truth, both wind turbines and gas plants froze because of the abnormal weather. And
when Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway said it had plans for additional generation capacity in Texas, it wasn't talking
about wind turbines. It was talking about more gas-fired power plants — ten more gigawatts of them.
While the Texas Freeze hogged headlines in the United States, across the Atlantic, the only European country producing any
electricity from solar farms was teeny tiny Slovenia. And that's not because Europe doesn't have any solar capacity —
on the contrary, it has a substantial amount. But Europe had a brutal winter with lots of snow and clouds.
EU
Admits It Can't Go Net-Zero Without Natural Gas. Last week saw some much-needed good news for natural gas.
The European Union signaled that it would include natural gas in its energy plans for the future, emissions and all. The
not-so-good news is that speaking of emissions, the EU might oblige suppliers to minimize these as much as is possible.
Why
Wind and Solar Energy Are Doomed to Failure. Wind and solar energy are both essentially obsolete
technologies. There is a reason why only the very rich or the very adventurous sail across oceans: the wind is
unreliable, and at best produces relatively little energy. Nevertheless, liberals have concocted fantasies whereby all
of our electricity, or perhaps our entire economy, will be powered by those fickle sources. There are a number of
reasons why this will never happen, but a paper published last week by Center of the American Experiment argues that land use
constraints are the most basic reason why wind and solar are inexorably destined to fail.
CA
electric power chief says serious problems lie ahead. The head of the California Independent System Operator
(CAISO) recently gave a revealing interview, in an obscure outlet he probably figured would not travel. It is "Yale
Insights" published by the Yale School of Management. Elliot Mainzer, President and CEO of CAISO is a Yalie, so he gave
something back. Actually he gave a lot out, if you read the poli-speak correctly. Serious problems lie ahead.
Yes,
Overreliance On Wind And Solar Helped Feed Texas's Power Outages. When the lights went out in Texas earlier
this year, corporate media and the left swiftly developed a narrative and stuck to it: Texas failed because it didn't
regulate enough and it wasn't part of the national grid. This storyline also claimed a lack of electricity from wind
and solar had nothing to do with the disaster that claimed almost 60 lives. Instead, the blackouts were the failure of
normally reliable thermal power — natural gas, coal, and nuclear — due to a reluctance to spend
billions of dollars to winterize facilities throughout a state more known for persistently hot summers than for transient
polar vortices.
Texas:
The Lessons and the Not Lessons from the Energy Debacle. The tragedy in Texas is viewed by many as another
glimpse of our uncertain future, and that brings up the question of whether it is possible to be prepared for scenarios we
can't even imagine in the new, climate-changing world. [...] The storm wreaked havoc on almost all major power-producing
technologies. A nuclear generator supplying electricity to 1 million homes tripped off-line due to the cold weather
impacting a pump system. Natural gas supplies for heating homes froze up. And wind turbines froze in place.
The more climate changes, the harder it will be to predict, and outages like the one in Texas are all but guaranteed.
Green
investing 'is definitely not going to work'. From his desk in midtown Manhattan Tariq Fancy once oversaw the
beginning of arguably the biggest, most ambitious, effort ever to turn Wall Street "green". Now, as environmentally
friendly investing grows at an exponential rate, Fancy has come to a stark conclusion: "This is definitely not going to
work." As the former chief investment officer for sustainable investing at BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager,
Fancy was charged with embedding environmental, social and governance (ESG) corporate policies across the investment giant's portfolio.
It takes
big energy to back up wind and solar. Power system design can be extremely complex but there is one simple
number that is painfully obvious. At least it is painful to the advocates of wind and solar power, which may be why we
never hear about it. It is a big, bad number. To my knowledge this big number has no name, but it should.
Let's call it the "minimum backup requirement" for wind and solar, or MBR. The minimum backup requirement is how much
generating capacity a system must have to reliably produce power when wind and solar don't. For most places the
magnitude of MBR is very simple. It is all of the juice needed on the hottest or coldest low wind night. It is
night so there is no solar. Sustained wind is less than eight miles per hour, so there is no wind power. It is
very hot or cold so the need for power is very high. In many places MBR will be close to the maximum power the system
ever needs, because heat waves and cold spells are often low wind events. In heat waves it may be a bit hotter during
the day but not that much. In cold spells it is often coldest at night.
Renewable-Energy
Backers Want 10-Year Tax Credits in Biden Plan. The clean energy industry is rushing to hitch a ride on
President Joe Biden's emerging infrastructure plan, lobbying for a decade-long extension of coveted tax credits as the White
House drafts a recovery proposal that could top $3 trillion. Lobbyists for the industry want to attach the long-term
extension of credits used by the wind, solar and other industries, to the plan — a windfall that would be worth
billions of dollars if successful. "The flood gates are open," said Paul Bledsoe, a former Senate Finance Committee
staffer now with the Progressive Policy Institute. "Everyone is trying to get the maximum amount."
The
Politicization of Energy Policy Needs to Stop. Renewables being the solution for rising emissions under current
technological constraints are imagined benefits, which simply don't exist. Energy and climate policies should be based
on economic realities and the basics of energy for over 350 million people in the U.S. and a world needing to provide energy
and electricity for a growing population. Energy has to meet five pillars: abundant, affordable, reliable, scalable,
and flexible; otherwise it is a fad like green hydrogen with a current price tag of $11 trillion to implement and needing all
current global electrical generation for viability. The reasons the sun and the wind are a disastrous choice for energy
policy is simply this — while they are abundant — they aren't reliable since the sun and wind are
intermittent. Neither are they scalable, affordable, or flexible. Renewables aren't viable without billions spent
yearly on government subsidies and mandates.
California
power projections underscore difficulty of Biden climate targets. California will have to deploy renewable
power at record-breaking speed over the next few decades to meet its target for carbon-free electricity by 2045, a
transformation that state agencies say in a new report this week is technically achievable but immensely challenging.
The scale of deployment California alone will need to achieve underscores the hurdles facing President Biden and his team as
he calls for eliminating carbon from the power sector by 2035, 10 years earlier than California's target. The effort
would require the biggest transformation of the electricity sector since it was built.
Print and save this article. You may need it. Prepping
for a Two Week Power Outage. If you're new to preparedness, you may be reading some of the excellent and
informative websites out there and feeling quite quite overwhelmed. While many sites recommend a one year supply of
food, manual tools, and a bug out lodge in the forest, it's vital to realize that is a long-term goal, not a starting
point. A great starting point for someone who is just getting started on a preparedness journey is prepping
specifically for a two-week power outage. If you can comfortably survive for two weeks without electricity, you will be
in a far better position than most of the people in North America.
Germany
Considers Electricity Rationing to Stabilize its Shaky Green Grid. Before the days of climate alarmism and
hysteria, the job of deciding how to best produce electricity was left to power generation engineers and experts —
people who actually understood it. The result: Germany had one of the most stable and reliable power grids
worldwide. Then in the 1990s, environmental activists, politicians, climate alarmists and pseudo-experts decided they
could do a better job at generating power in Germany and eventually passed the outlandish EEG green energy feed-in act and
rules. They insisted that wildly fluctuating, intermittent power supplies could be managed easily, and done so at a low
cost. Fast forward to today: The result of all the government meddling is becoming glaringly clear: the country
now finds itself on the verge of blackouts due to grid instability, has the highest electricity prices in the world, relies
more on imports and is not even close to meeting its emissions targets. Germany's rickety and moody power grid now
threatens the entire European power grid stability, as we recently witnessed.
A Reality Check on Green Energy .
[#1] All "renewable" energy is actually "replaceable" energy, analyst Nate Hagens points out. Every 15-25 years
(or less) much or all of the alt-energy systems and structures have to be replaced, and little of the necessary mining, manufacturing and
transport can be performed with the "renewable" electricity these sources generate. Virtually all the heavy lifting of these processes
require hydrocarbons and especially oil.
[#2] Wind and solar "renewable" energy is intermittent and therefore requires changes in behavior (no clothes dryers or
electric ovens used after dark, etc.) or battery storage on a scale that isn't practical in terms of the materials required.
[#3] Batteries are also "replaceable" and don't last very long. The percentage of lithium-ion batteries being recycled
globally is near-zero, so all batteries end up as costly, toxic landfill.
[#4] Battery technologies are limited by the physics of energy storage and materials. Moving whiz-bang exotic
technologies from the lab to global scales of production is non-trivial.
[#5] The material and energy resources required to build alt-energy sources that replace hydrocarbon energy and replace all
the alt-energy which has broken down or reached the end of its life exceeds the affordable reserves of materials and energy available on the planet.
[#6] Externalized costs of alt-energy are not being included in the cost. Nobody's adding the immense cost of the
environmental damage caused by lithium mines to the price of the lithium batteries.
[#7] None of the so-called "green" "replaceable" energy has actually replaced hydrocarbons; all the alt-energy has
done is increase total energy consumption.
Climate
and COVID: The Erosion of Common Intelligence and Common Sense. The notorious Texas freeze, to take a recent
instance, should have provided abundant evidence that wind and solar are not only weather-dependent and inadequate suppliers
of electric power but potentially disastrous; yet many continue to believe that the answer to such emergencies is even more
green technology. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, who introduced the Green New Deal in Congress, claims that the
infrastructure failures in Texas "are quite literally what happens when you don't pursue a Green New Deal." The degree of
stupefaction here is legendary. Renewables are not only ill-suited for, but wholly contra-indicated to serving as
primary energy sources for industrial societies.
Renewables
and Reliability. Without reliable electricity, modern life doesn't exist. This is why the move to an
all-electric society is such a bad idea. Most leaders in the West do not understand this reality. It's why over 3
billion still live in squalid poverty while the West successfully fights COVID-19 with products derived from crude oil.
Grids cannot function without energy sources that are abundant, reliable, scalable, affordable, and flexible.
Currently, only coal, natural gas, oil, petroleum, and nuclear energy meet this criteria. Even natural gas has
limitations compared to coal, because natural gas-fired power plants "depend on just-in-time fuel deliveries," which aren't
reliable in extreme weather. Whether in German winters, California summers, or Texas polar vortex storms, electrical
grids are fragile and need proper management or blackouts will happen. Trillions are needed to upgrade and build new
grids in the U.S. and globally if renewables continuing being deployed for electrical generation.
The Myths Of Green Energy.
Finance is often cloaked in arcane terminology and math, but the one dynamic that governs the future is actually very
simple. Here it is: [Video clip]
How
Politics is Making Power Failures the Norm. As designed, historically the U.S. power grid has proven remarkably
resilient. Sadly, as political considerations have increasingly trumped basic physics and engineering, electrical power
failures have become more common in the past couple of decades in the United States. The decline in the reliability of
the electric power system has coincided with the increasing incorporation of intermittent wind and solar power into electric
power networks. The increase in wind and solar power was not driven by market forces. Instead, it is the result
of politicians forcing and incentivizing ever greater amounts onto the power grid. In a single generation, politicians
have undermined the integrity of the U.S. electrical grid. [...] A power system that depends on the weather cooperating is a
bad idea. Yet, over the past two decades wind and solar power have accounted for an ever-increasing portion of electric
power capacity in in the United States. And it's all due to politics.
Why
The Texas Blackout Has The Greens So Scared: Deflecting blame to a more exciting apocalypse. Last month,
President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the "climate crisis" forced his
hand. "We can't wait any longer. We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to
act." Within days, most of the country was seeing "with our own eyes" and feeling "in our bones" a cold wave so severe
that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which
had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were left frozen (and inoperable). This constituted a double whammy to the huge
global warming establishment. First was the cold, when the "science" had confidently predicted a steadily warming
Texas. Second was the failure of renewables, vastly exacerbating the problems for the energy grid. [...] For the
global warming establishment, the disastrous performance of renewables was more upsetting than the cold spell itself.
Renewables
Sector Reels As 150,000 German 'Green' Jobs Evaporate. The great 'green' jobs 'bonanza' is being revealed for
the hoax that it truly is. And nowhere is that reality harsher, than in Mutti Merkel's Germany. Plastered in
solar panels (albeit blanketed in snow and ice at the moment) and overrun with 30,000 of these things, Deutschland has been
held up as a renewable energy 'superpower' by the wind and solar cult, across the globe. A bitter, breathless winter
has left them scrambling for the only reliable power source in town: coal-fired power from their own remaining plants and
from Poland, and nuclear power from France. One of the promises of its 'transition' to an all wind and sun powered
future — aka the 'Energiewende' — was an endless sea of 'groovy' sustainable employment in the
manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines.
Understanding
the Texas Energy Crisis. Outsiders may not be aware that Texas has a uniquely independent power grid that is
relatively disconnected from regional energy consumers and providers. Outsiders may also be surprised to discover the
dramatic growth of wind power in a state that has among the largest fossil fuel reserves in the world. The growth of
wind power to be second as a source only to natural gas is the debate raging in Texas politics now. Did wind reliance
help set up the energy crisis in an energy rich state? At a moderate level of study, it is apparent that both wind and
natural gas was blocked from full utilization by extended severely sub-freezing weather. [...] Has the decade-long move to
invest in wind power that placed so many turbines and transmission lines in West Texas proven to be a wise investment for
ERCOT and energy providers? The answer is probably 'no.' [...] More profound — was the switch from coal to
natural gas completely wise?
Fantastical
Energy. [Scroll down] As the catastrophic results in Texas this week show us, weather modeling is as iffy
as using your online astrologer to plan your investments. (It was supposed to be sunny and mild. [See illustration,
left.]) Such forecasts are too unreliable to count on ever, but particularly when the weather is harsh and your need for
reliable energy is greatest. In the real world, we have the choice of spending more money to harden conventional energy
production and transmission or living with unreliable energy. [...] The details of the Texas outage are explained at Powerline
blog. On the reliability grading scale, natural gas scored highest even though some natural gas pipelines froze. Monday
through Thursday natural gas provided over 65 percent of all electricity generation. What didn't work? "Green"
energy: solar, wind and hydro. Solar was irrelevant to energy production in the storm, wind was virtually irrelevant
as well. Indeed, it came out worst on the reliability scale, there was little wind in this cold blast and, worse, when it
gets really cold "they draw power off the grid to heat their motors... they become consumers, not producers of energy."
Some
Interesting Aspects of the Once-in-a-Century Texas Deep Freeze and the Problems of the Electricity Grid. Fossil
fuel and nuclear power generation plants all boil water to create steam and the pressurized steam spins turbines that
generate electricity. They all have piping mechanisms to move water — and natural gas in plants that burn
natural gas to boil water. The historic low temperatures caused the water to freeze in the pipelines — no
water => no steam => turbines quit spinning. There is always water vapor present in natural gas flowing through a
pipeline. When that temperature inside the pipe drops below freezing, the water vapor will begin to form ice on the
inside of the pipeline, and this ice will continue to build up until the pipeline becomes choked or blocked completely,
cutting off the flow of gas to boil the water that spins the steam turbines. But the same issue arises with regard to
preventative measures dealing with the pipelines as with the wind turbines — what is the cost-benefit analysis of
incurring the expense to prevent failure in the system from the occurrence of an event that had never occurred before?
An
Insider Explains Why Texans Lost Their Power. [Scroll down] If this sounds outlandish, here's the head of
the Electric Reliability Council of Texas: ["]The fundamental decision made in the middle of the night on Monday to
have outages imposed was a wise decision by the operators we have here, Magness said. If we had waited and not done
those outages ... we could have drifted to blackout. That's not just outages, but we could lose all electricity on
system, and it could take months or longer to repair that.["] With a total ERCOT system failure, as many as
12 million customers and possibly 20 million Texans could be in the cold, in the dark, in their cars with nowhere
to go — for months. Wind power did this to Texas. Be very afraid of the Green New Deal.
Wind
Energy Fails: Grading the Reliability of Energy Sources During the Texas Power Outages. Here were the major factors contributing to the energy crisis:
• Because Texas doesn't "winterize" its electricity infrastructure, around 45 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity became inoperable
the morning of February 15, 2021, due to extreme weather. Included in this capacity was:
○ 30 GW of fuel-based energy sources (mainly natural gas) that became unable to produce electricity due to frozen natural gas
pipelines and safety mechanisms that shut down nuclear and coal facilities to protect against extreme cold temperature. This is nearly 30 percent of all
nuclear, coal, and natural gas capacity on the Texas grid.
○ 15 GW of wind energy that could not generate electricity due to wind turbines freezing. This is roughly 50 percent
of all wind and solar capacity on the Texas grid.
• Because neighboring states and Mexico were also experiencing energy emergencies of their own, in addition to the independent and isolated
nature of the electrical grid in Texas, electricity imports were largely out of the question to mitigate the significant loss of generating capacity. Renewable
energy advocates were quick to come to the defense of wind and solar energy sources, while others were quick to blame them for the energy emergency that unfolded
in the Lone Star State. With so many competing narratives floating around, it's helpful to see the data.
Texas's
Power Grid Disaster Is Only The Beginning. Conservatives have been eager to blame Texas's problems on increased
use of wind power. It certainly played a role. Turbines froze in the cold and the focus on expanding renewable
energy sources over conventional gas and oil left the state less able to expand energy production in response to a
surge. But solar energy is far from the only culprit. Another factor was simply that Texas infrastructure could
not handle an outlier weather event.
Texas
power outage is a warning about 'green energy' reliance and globalist control. The current winter storm in
Texas, which has left millions without power, heat, and food, has led to questions about the reliability of so called "green
energy" and serves as an example of the danger posed by the green agenda in pursuit of the Great Reset. The storm
brought temperatures dipping well below zero degrees Fahrenheit and has left millions of people without power. Over
20 people have died in various states affected by the storm. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which
manages around 90% of Texas's electrical capacity, initially asked residents to "reduce their electricity use," as the system
was suffering from "higher-than-normal generation outages due to frozen wind turbines and limited natural gas supplies
available to generating units."
As
Germans freeze, leading newspaper calls green energy strategy 'a dangerous miscalculation'. Little attention is
paid to the question of just how much "climate change" is a result of human activity, i.e., CO2 emissions into the atmosphere
resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Does anyone have a handle on this? [...] The degree of warming in the
tropical troposphere resulting from an increase of CO2 is the central premise behind the climate change hoopla. The
fact that such warming is not occurring to the degree predicted by the climate models is not an 'isolated fact,' it is a very
strong indication that there is a real disconnect between theory and reality. The linchpin is weak or missing.
Whatever observed changes are taking place, they are probably not primarily the result of CO2 "pollution." What's also
missing is any great awareness of this by the general population. Try asking friends or acquaintances what their
understanding is of the connection between human activity and "climate change." A blank stare is often the result.
As far as our climate crisis leadership elites are concerned, I have little idea how many are merely ignorant, or lying, or
both. Whatever the case may be, it's misdirection on steroids. 90% politics, 10% science.
The
irony of Texas's massive power outrages during winter weather. A ferocious winter storm struck the southern
plain states with exceptional ferocity over the weekend. By Monday [2/15/2021], millions of Texans found themselves
without power. Contrary to what one might expect, the energy problem wasn't primarily because of downed power
lines. Instead, in a state that has a quarter of America's proven natural gas reserves, the power went away because
Texas has turned to wind generation — and the generators froze. [...] Germany is currently having a similar
problem because its winter storms have not only frozen their turbines, but they've also blocked sunlight from reaching the
solar panels that generate necessary energy since Germany made the decision to "go green".
Toward
a Renewable Chaos: Carbon Imperialism and Disadvantaged Smaller Nations. [W]ind and solar make up an
insignificant percentage of the world's energy consumption. The renewable contribution to global energy consumption in
2017 was less than 2%. Solar and wind contributed just 7% of the world's electricity in 2018. There is a reason for
that. Besides being expensive, they are highly intermittent and so are unreliable. Further, wind and solar power
cannot be used without backup by fossil fuel-powered energy sources. Even in Germany, increased reliance on wind and
solar has resulted in energy chaos. Berlin is facing energy shortages as both wind and solar have failed during the
ongoing winter, and coal plants are running at full capacity to meet the demand. "With this supply of wind and
photovoltaic energy, it's between 0 and 2 or 3 percent — that is de facto zero. You can see it in many
diagrams that we have days, weeks, in the year where we have neither wind nor PV. Especially this time (winter) for
example — there is no wind and PV, and there are often times when the wind is very miniscule. These are things,
I must say, that have been physically established and known for centuries, and we've simply totally neglected this during the
green energies discussion," said Dr. Harald Schwarz, professor of power distribution at the University of Cottbus.
The
Dark Side of Clean Energy. When Donald Trump offered to buy Greenland from Denmark in 2019 it was dismissed as
illegal and absurd. However, the president's expression of interest was far from absurd, says Guillaume Pitron.
Under its soil Greenland boasts one of the largest concentrations of the rare metals that the world will need to power
electric cars, computers, mobile phones, robots, solar power plants, artificial intelligence and many high-tech "green"
innovations that have not been dreamt up yet. If Trump were after those minerals, buying Greenland would have been a
smart move. The global production and sales of rare metals are dominated by China. It mines so much of them on
home soil and controls so much of their extraction in Africa and elsewhere that it oversees up to 95 percent of the global
production of certain minerals. This puts Beijing in charge of "the oil of the 21st century", writes Pitron, which is a
problem for western nations because it means China can restrict supply and drive prices up or down at will, as Opec does with
oil. We have "entrusted a precious monopoly of mineral sovereignty to potential rivals", he notes.
New
York Cannot Buy Its Way Out of Coming Blackouts. New York City will soon be home to the world's biggest
industrial-scale battery system. It's designed to back up the city's growing reliance on intermittent "renewable"
electricity. At 400 megawatt-hours (MWh), this cluster of batteries will be more than triple the 129 MWh world leader
in Australia. Mark Chambers, NYC's Director of Sustainability (I am not making this title up), is ecstatic. "Expanding
battery storage is a critical part of how we advance momentum to confront the climate emergency," he brags, "while meeting
the energy needs of all New Yorkers. Today's announcement demonstrates how we can deliver this need at significant
scale." In the same nonsensical way, Tim Cawley, president of Con Edison, New York state's power utility, gushes
thus:"Utility-scale battery storage will play a vital role in New York's clean energy future, especially in New York City,
where it will help to maximize the benefit of the wind power being developed off shore."
This
green fantasy will bankrupt us. It's 2050. You wake in your cosy, insulated house, turn on the
windfarm-powered lights, cook up a breakfast coffee on the hydrogen stove before jumping into your electric car. You
whizz silently along roads with air as fresh as a mountain stream past happy e-bikers and carbon-neutral schools to your
heat-pump powered office. So, viewed from Britain in 2020, can you spot the odd one out? Here's a clue: the
e-bikers get no subsidy. Everything else on this list loses money, and needs state support on a massive scale to get even
halfway to the nirvana glimpsed by the prime minister this week. Today's subsidy, of course, is tomorrow's tax rise.
he
Green Grift, or Gangrene Energy? The renewable energy fanatics like to point out that the cost of solar power
has been falling dramatically over the past decade, the result of technological and manufacturing improvements. This is
true, but raises the question: why does the solar industry continue to demand subsidies then? [...] It turns out that prior
subsidy contracts yielded nearly 20 percent profit margins for solar power producers, which the French government thinks is
"excessive" since the return on investment for conventional energy investments is closer to 5 percent. One thing this
makes clear is that solar power "investment" requires big subsidies to attract capital. Without the guaranteed
subsidies, green energy turns into gangrene energy in a hurry.
Study:
Renewable Energy does Nothing to Reduce CO2 Emissions. A group of high profile scientists, including
Dr. Willie Soon, have published a meticulously referenced study which discuses the pros and cons of various CO2
reduction strategies.
Study
Confirms Donald Trump Is Right — 'Clean' Energy Is the Worst. Renewable energy is cripplingly
expensive, hopelessly unreliable, massacres wildlife, destroys landscapes, destabilises the grid, harms indigenous peoples,
and causes climate change. But apart from that it's great, says a meticulous review published in the scientific journal
Energies by a team of Irish and U.S.-based researchers. Actually, the part about renewable energy being 'great'
is a joke but the rest is true. The scholarly review — Energy and Climate Policy — An
Evaluation of Climate Change Expenditure 2011-2018 — is probably the most thorough meta-analysis published on
the so-called 'clean energy' sector.
The Green Road
to Blackouts. California leads the way to electricity blackouts, closely followed by South Australia.
They both created this problem by taxing, banning, delaying or demolishing reliable coal, nuclear, gas or hydro generators
while subsidising and promoting unreliable electricity from the sickly green twins — solar and wind. All supposed to
solve a global warming crisis that exists only in academic computer models. Energy policy should be driven by proven
reliability, efficiency and cost, not by green politics. Wind and solar will always be prone to blackouts for three
reasons. [...]
The
Plague of Renewable Portfolio Standards. Wind and solar are feasible only because the operators of the grid
agree to do everything possible to accept whatever amount of wind or solar is coming their way at any time. They assume
this posture toward wind and solar because that is required by various regulations and contracts. All the other sources
of power are ordered to decrease or increase output as needed to balance the amount of wind or solar power flowing at any
moment. If wind and solar are minor players, the burden of accommodating their erratic nature is small. If they
become big players, the burden starts to be a serious problem. In some places, like California, it's starting to get serious.
Green
energy push blamed in California's rolling blackouts. California's electricity grid picked an inconvenient moment
to stumble, at least for Democrats seeking to drum up support this week for Joseph R. Biden's $2 trillion green-energy
plan at the Democratic National Convention. The Golden State's ambitious renewable portfolio standard is coming under
fire as the state's energy grid buckles under the strain of an oppressive heatwave, prompting rolling blackouts that have
left millions without power as the state moves to replace nuclear and natural gas as energy sources with solar and
wind. California seeks to generate 60% of electricity via renewables by 2030, but Mr. Biden's Green New Deal is
even more aggressive, calling for a 100% carbon-free grid by 2035 "to meet the existential threat of climate change while
creating millions of jobs with a choice to join a union."
The
excess costs of Weather Dependent Renewable power generation in the USA. These estimates show that using
Weather Dependent Renewables in the USA costs [about] 6 times as much as using Natural Gas for electricity generation and
about 1.2 [to] 2 times as much as Nuclear power. The benefit of these expenditures for Weather Dependent Renewables is
the replacement of about 9% of USA power gross output capacity by "nominally" CO2 neutral technologies. Electrical
power generation results in about 1/4 of the total CO2 emissions output from USA.
Why
Subsidised Wind & Solar Are Sending South Africa's Power Prices Into Orbit. Rocketing power prices and grid
instability are two inescapable consequences of subsidised wind and solar. While sunshine and breezes might be free,
attempting to run your power system using nature's gifts, brings with it a raft of other costs which RE zealots tend to gloss
over. The electricity generation and distribution system — which wind and solar power are meant to
completely replace — is one that was designed to work all on its lonesome; no mythical mega-batteries; no load
shedding when the wind drops or the sun sets; no prayers to the wind gods; no fuss; and no failures that can't be fixed in an
engineering jiffy. The same can't be said of the unreliables, which always and everywhere depend upon the system as it
was — one built on ever-reliable coal, gas, nuclear and hydro (where it's available). But STT is referring to
a system that works, always has and always will. On the other hand, those seeking to profit from the wind and solar
scam claim keep talking about a new 'system'; when, in reality, all they've got to offer is chaos. And chaos costs.
Why
"Green" Energy Is Impossible. High on the Left's agenda is mandating 100% "green" generation of
electricity — if not 100% of energy, period. I believe Joe Biden, among others, has now come out for 100%
"green" energy, meaning wind and solar. But for now, let's stick with energy generation. Would it be feasible to
get 100% of our electricity from wind and solar? Basic problems with these energy sources include inefficiency and
intermittency. Wind turbines produce energy around 40% of the time, and solar panels do much worse than that in many
parts of the country. So how does a utility ensure that the lights will go on, even at night when the wind isn't
blowing? The liberals' favorite answer is "batteries." Produce electricity when the wind is blowing and the sun is
shining, and store the energy in batteries for use when electricity is not being generated. Batteries exist, of course;
we use them all the time. But where is the battery that can store the entire output of a power plant or a wind
farm? That battery does not exist. Further, battery storage is ruinously expensive.
Climate science is not settled anymore
than pandemic science is. Climate activists are so sure they're right but are still afraid of scrutiny, and of
being judged on trust cost impacts, according to Sky News host Peta Credlin. "For years people like me have been saying
that climate science is not settled as activists like to say, anymore than pandemic science is settled". "All of us want
to do the right thing by the environment, but there's just no way we should be damaging our economy in an endless quest to
reduce emissions," Ms Credlin said.
£3
Billion-a-Year Cost to Prevent Green Energy Blackouts. An in-depth study for the Global Warming Policy
Foundation has revealed the skyrocketing costs of balancing the national grid, largely due to the intermittency of green
power generation sources, most notably wind and solar. Since 2002, when these power sources began to be introduced at
scale, the cost of balancing the grid has risen from £367 million to £1.5 billion per year by 2019.
And now with the lockdown shrinking demand, balancing costs are optimistically projected to be £2 billion,
potentially rising to £3 billion if the lockdown persists.
Renewable
power fails in Germany. Germany is even farther down the alternative energy road to oblivion than the U.S., and
the Germans are running up against multiple insurmountable roadblocks. Exorbitant tax subsidies haven't helped, except
to drain taxpayers' pocketbooks and enrich industries that otherwise wouldn't be profitable enough to exist. With
hubris typical of tax-and-spend fanatics, Germans decided last year to shut down their entirely reliable,
less-costly-to-operate 84 coal-ower plants in addition to closing all their nuclear-power plants. Now the Germans are
discovering what should have been obvious before they shot themselves in the foot: the alternatives of wind and solar power
tremendously costly and will remain completely unreliable to provide energy 24/7 365 days a year at any price.
Green
Electricity Delusions. With global warming the alleged science is so complicated that nobody, including the
global warming scientists, can really understand what is going on. Green electricity, mostly solar and wind, is
different. It's relatively clear cut. No supercomputers spewing out terabytes of confusing data are needed.
Green electricity is quite useless. The latest trend in green electricity is wind or solar with battery backup.
This green electricity costs about nine times more than the fossil fuel electricity it displaces. The true cost is
hidden from the public by hidden subsidies and fake accounting.
Wind and
solar add zero value to the grid. Why is wind power and solar power, not making significant gains in providing
a substantial amount of renewable electricity? The US has utilized, in its energy mix, about eight percent of wind and
two percent solar for more than a decade. The reason it is not growing requires an understanding of the fundamental
elements, of an electrical grid. The grid is the electrical industry's term for all of the hardware and software needed
to convert fuel into electricity. The electricity is distributed by wires, transformers, sub-stations, etc. to all of
us. The system must ensure our safety from malfunctions, security to customers, and safety for the community.
Is
today's wind and solar technology the solution to our energy problems? Today, close to 8 billion people live on
Earth, and 80% of the world's hunger for power is fed with hydrocarbons or 'fossil fuels'. Wind and solar made up an
estimated 2% of primary energy in 2018, with the 'non-fossil' remainder largely coming from nuclear, hydro and biomass. Only
100 years ago the global population was 2 billion. Of today's 8 billion people, there are at least 3 billion with
no or only erratic access to power. In addition, another 3 billion people are expected to be added during the next 50 years.
That adds up to 6 billion new power customers. Not only will the population increase, but as humans continue to crave new
gadgets, planes, cars and space travel, the average power consumption per capita will increase dramatically, and with it, the e-waste generated.
Abandoning
the concept of renewable energy. Renewable energy is a widely used term that describes certain types of energy
production. In politics, business and academia, renewable energy is often framed as the key solution to the global
climate challenge. We, however, argue that the concept of renewable energy is problematic and should be abandoned in
favor of more unambiguous conceptualization.Building on the theoretical literature on framing and based on document analysis,
case examples and statistical data, we discuss how renewable energy is framed and has come to be a central energy policy
concept and analyze how its use has affected the way energy policy is debated and conducted. We demonstrate the key
problems the concept of renewable energy has in terms of sustainability, incoherence, policy impacts, bait-and-switch tactics
and generally misleading nature.
Why
eco-leftists are suddenly turning on Michael Moore. [Scroll down] Director Moore's latest documentary
starts with electric cars, the vehicle of choice for the environmentally conscious. As GM proudly unveils its
battery-powered Volt, his narrator innocently asks the executive in charge where the electricity to recharge it comes
from. Power plants, comes the answer. Coal-burning power plants. Memo from Moore to those who think they
are driving green: You may indulge your illusions if you prefer. But all you've really done is transfer your
emissions from the tailpipe of your car to the smokestack of the local power plant. Maybe you think solar power is the
answer? Moore treats you to a visit to a showy solar array that covers an entire football field. The
power-company executive present admits that it can only power ten homes, and then only when the sun shines.
COVID-19
and Reliable Energy. Those holding degrees from elite universities now seem useless compared to farmworkers,
truck drivers, and warehouse stock clerks. These same university-educated folk believe renewable energy (sun and wind)
can deliver "critical medical equipment, ultrasound systems, ventilators, CT systems, X-ray machines, personal protection
equipment, masks, (and) gloves." Each of these medical commodities are examples of the over 6,000 products that start from
a barrel of crude oil. The plastic in plastic gloves is overwhelmingly made from crude oil. Under current
technology, and a world turned upside down by this virus, the United States, European Union (EU), and remaining United
Nations signatories are not replacing or banishing fossil fuels and the medical products derived from them with
renewables. Zero-carbon societies will ravage lives, leading to death, and wholeheartedly believing in global
warming/climate change without thorough questioning of this ideology renders the global, green-aligned environmental movement
impotent and feckless in the face of global pandemics.
Why
Dems are so bent on passing wind amid corona crisis. Renewables live or die by subsidies, in fact. That
was proved yet again this week, when Democrats tried (unsuccessfully) to stuff a panoply of Green New Deal measures into the
corona-crisis relief bill — including extensions of the tax credits that have been driving the growth of solar and
wind energy. That Congressional Democrats would push so hard for solar and wind subsidies at such a critical time for
the US economy is particularly galling for two reasons. First, the wind industry already stands to collect some
$33.75 billion in subsidies between now and 2029. Second, wind-energy development in some of the most-heavily
Democratic states in the country — Hawaii, California, New York and Vermont — has been effectively
stopped due to local opposition. To be sure, the Washington favor factory never sleeps. But the American Wind
Energy Association and its lobbyists deserve an Olympic gold medal for their utter lack of shame.
The
Collapse of Intellectual Standards in Science. The renewable energy industry has powerful sources of support
for its program to make money by fooling the public. There are many effective lies, repeated over and over. Long
term contracts for wind or solar electricity at $25 or $30 per megawatt hour are touted as proving that renewable electricity
is replacing "more expensive" fossil fuel electricity. A close examination of the cost of renewable electricity, either
wind or solar, shows that the real cost of this electricity is not $25 per megawatt hour, but around $80 per megawatt
hour. The difference is the federal and state subsidies. A good chunk of those federal subsidies are set to go
away by 2022. Then there is the matter of replacing fossil fuel electricity. Wind or solar electricity displaces
some fossil fuel electricity, but they never replace the plants used to generate fossil fuel electricity. The fossil
fuel plants are throttled back when the wind or solar is generating electricity. But sometimes wind and solar are
asleep. At those times the fossil fuel plants have to power the grid without any help from the wind or solar
plants. Nothing is replaced by building wind or solar plants. A dual system is created with dependable fossil
fuel plants supplemented by erratically operating wind or solar plants.
Renewable
Power Theatre of the Absurd. Along with many other states, California, Arizona and Nevada all have "renewable
portfolio laws." California requires that 60% of its electric power be from renewable sources by 2030. Nevada requires
50% by 2030. Arizona requires 15% by 2025. Renewable power is defined by law in each state, but usually it amounts to
wind or solar. One might think that having a quota for renewable power means that the power has to be generated by wind or
solar and consumed within the state. There is a loophole. The "renewable attribute" can be legally separated from
the actual power. So, the power can be consumed in one place, but a different place gets credit as if it had actually
consumed the renewable power. For example, a wind farm in Colorado can generate a megawatt hour of electricity.
The power is actually sold and consumed in Colorado, but California gets credit for a megawatt hour of renewable power.
The Colorado wind farm in the normal course of events can sell the abstract credit, known as an RPC or Renewable Power
Certificate to California. California needs credits to meet it renewable power quota, so it is willing to pay, for
what is a piece of paper.
Renewable
Energy Fairy Tales. [Scroll down] The technical bottom line is that when the wind or solar starts being a
bigger part of the grid, say 15% for solar and somewhat higher for wind, you run into difficulties. Solar and wind
surge. For example, midday solar may be 5 times as large as the average solar energy. For wind the surge may be
3 times larger than the average wind energy. If the surge production exceeds some threshold it has to be curtailed for
grid stability reasons. The bottom line is that to achieve 50% renewable electricity, electricity storage has to be added
to the system to smooth out the surges. The only remotely practically technologies for storage are pumped storage, a closed
loop hydroelectric system, or batteries. These are very expensive, and you end up with renewable electricity costing $200
per megawatt hour compared to running existing natural gas plants for $20 per megawatt hour. It's ridiculous and pointless.
Wind and solar, by the way, are extremely expensive methods of reducing CO2 emissions compared to the alternatives.
The Editor says...
The whole purpose of renewable energy is the avoidance of carbon dioxide emissions.
But carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is plant food.
Germany's
overdose of renewable energy. Germany now generates over 35% of its yearly electricity consumption from wind
and solar sources. Over 30 000 wind turbines have been built, with a total installed capacity of nearly 60 GW.
Germany now has approximately 1.7 million solar power (photovoltaic) installations, with an installed capacity of 46 GW.
This looks very impressive. Unfortunately, most of the time the actual amount of electricity produced is only a fraction of
the installed capacity. Worse, on "bad days" it can fall to nearly zero. In 2016 for example there were 52 nights
with essentially no wind blowing in the country. No Sun, no wind. Even taking "better days" into account,
the average electricity output of wind and solar energy installations in Germany amounts to only about 17% of the installed capacity.
Intermittent
& Unreliable Wind & Solar The Greatest Subsidy Scam In History. The so-called wind and solar 'industries' were
built on lies, myths and propaganda and run on subsidies. As wind power 'investor' Warren Buffett put it: "We get
a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without
the tax credit." Buffett might have continued, that it's the only reason anyone invests in them. As to the lies, myths
and propaganda, the spate of bushfires that have swept Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australian this summer have energized
doomsday climate cultists who — without a shred of scientific evidence — pronounce, with godlike certitude,
that those fires were all caused by Australia's failure to rein in its carbon dioxide gas emissions. Ergo, those fires
could have been wholly prevented had we only carpeted every inch of the Australian countryside with windmills and every rooftop
with solar panels. It's a sad indictment of Australia's journalistic tradition that the mainstream press not only repeats
this nonsense ad nauseam, but magnifies it by berating any politician with the temerity to stick to the facts.
Progressive
Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax that Benefits its Greenie Elmer Gantries like Al Gore.
Independent physicist John Droz, Jr. alerted me to the website of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), an international environmental
organization that calls for the total destruction of what it refers to as the "global industrial economy," a.k.a. capitalism.
Given the group's hard-left credentials, its call for dismantling capitalism throughout the world is not surprising. What is
surprising is that in an unusual show of progressive candor, Deep Green Resistance openly acknowledges what skeptical scientists have
been saying for more than two decades: that renewable energy is a government-backed hoax that enriches big corporations —
and green energy investors like Al Gore — at the expense of taxpayers and the environment.
10 questions
to ask your climate alarmist friends. [#9] How big would a battery have to be to power New York City for one
hour? Wind and solar produce power intermittently — the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always
shine. Many renewable advocates point out that in order to have stable power supplied around the clock, we would simply
need to store excess energy in batteries so that the power could be used later when demand is higher. This is correct
in theory, but battery technology currently lags far behind what is needed. For example, in order to power New York
City for just one hour, the entire world's battery storage capacity would be completely drained.
Green
Energy Studies: Consulting, or Advertising? Wind and solar aren't remotely competitive with traditional
fossil fuels and cannot replace them. They would scarcely exist if it weren't for massive federal subsidies, and state
laws establishing quotas for renewable energy. Neither are good at reducing carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). I
wrote a book about wind and solar called Dumb Energy and found them to be mainly political creations. They are a
complete waste of money kept alive by political action. Most of the things you have heard from the wind and solar
propaganda machine is wrong. But they have their champions. [...] Deloitte publishes academic-style papers touting the
virtues of renewable energy. Lazard published a widely quoted study purporting to show the unsubsidized cost of wind
and solar energy. These studies pretend to be objective but are actually promotional material for their renewable
energy clients.
Claim:
The Green Energy Lithium Rush is Destabilising South America. Renewables are not exactly covering themselves in
glory on the geopolitical stage. Cobalt, a vital component of high capacity batteries, is extracted by teams of
children working in dangerous mines operated by brutal Congolese warlords. Chinese peasants suffering toxic pollution
released by their hideous rare earth mine (rare Earths are used to produce high strength magnets, vital for efficient wind
turbines). Now we can add corruption and political instability in South America to the cost of renewables.
Renewables
May Make Us Feel Good, But Realistically They Just Don't Work. Despite the hype over the ever-increasing
connected capacity at wind and solar farms worldwide, none, yes, let me repeat that, none have replaced any of the hydro,
natural gas, coal, or nuclear generating plants that are providing continuous and uninterruptable electricity to people and
businesses around the world. Solar may work occasionally at homes and businesses as a source for supplemental
intermittent electricity to lower daily demand from the grid, but they're still connected to a reliable source for
continuously and uninterruptable power. We all know, if the sun is not shinning, their only source of electricity are
the power generating plants feeding the grid even with the burgeoning mass storage technology popping up in the most
auspicious places. It's not that we're not trying to tap into the emission free electricity provided by Mother Nature,
but wind and sunshine are too intermittent. They are not the panacea. They come with their own ills.
12
Reasons Why Chaotically Intermittent & Heavily Subsidised Wind & Solar Power Make No Sense. It takes a special
brand of delusion to believe that the world can run on sunshine and breezes. For wind and sun worshippers, disastrous
examples like South Australia — where mass blackouts and load shedding have become the new normal —
require not just practiced delusion but a form of self-flagellating stoicism, as well. Oh, almost forgot to mention,
that RE superpower suffers the world's highest power prices. And it reached that infamous status after it blew up its
last coal-fired power plant. The wind industry has had more than 30 years to get its act together. It was built
on subsidies and wouldn't last a minute without them. But, still, there are plenty happy to roll out the excuses and
plead for more of the same.
Renewable
Energy Hits the Wall. If the official definitions of renewable energy were logical, renewable energy would be
defined as energy that does not emit CO2 and that is not using a resource in danger of running out anytime soon. But
the definitions written into the laws of many states are not logical. Hydroelectric energy is mostly banned because the
environmental movement hates dams. Nuclear is banned because a hysterical fear of nuclear energy was created by environmental
groups. Both nuclear and hydro don't emit CO2. Hydro doesn't need fuel. Nuclear fuel is cheap and plentiful.
Germany's
renewable energy program, Energiewende, is a big, expensive failure. The goal of Energiewende was to make
Germany independent of fossil fuels. But it hasn't worked out. The 29,000 wind turbines and 1.6 million PV
systems provide only 3.1% of Germany's energy needs and have cost well over 100 billion Euros so far and likely another 450
billion Euros over the next two decades. And much more than that when you add in the extra cost of maintaining fossil
generation systems to back up the lack of wind and sunshine from seconds to weeks. Because of their extremely low
energy density and need for a great deal of space, forests are being cut down, pits dug, and filled with hundreds of tons of
reinforced concrete for wind turbines to stand on, 5 acres per turbine.
Cost-Effective
'Renewable' Energy Is A Fictional Construct. The left just loves to tout "renewable energy" as the clean, green
panacea, something that will save the Earth. [...] Just as electric cars require belching coal plants to produce the gas to
fire up the electrical power charging stations, so the wind farms require massive amounts of resources just to get those
necessary rare earth minerals, along with Mexican-style quantities of concrete and other unpicturesque things Joni Mitchell
once sang against.
Climate
Trillions Frittered in the Wind. This year, the world will spend $162 billion (US) subsidising renewable
energy, propping up inefficient industries and supporting middle-class homeowners to erect solar panels, according to the
International Energy Agency. In addition, the Paris Agreement on climate change will cost theworld from $1 to
$2 trillion (US) a year by 2030. Astonishingly, neither of these hugely expensive policies will have any
measurable impact on temperatures by the end of the century.
Why
wind and solar will never work. This paper by Mark Mills of the the Manhattan Institute and Northwestern
University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, titled "The 'New Energy Economy': An Exercise in Magical
Thinking," does an excellent job of explaining why wind and solar energy will never replace fossil fuels or nuclear energy as
a primary energy source. The problem is fundamental: the laws of physics. And, no, better batteries
are not a solution.
41 Inconvenient Energy
Realities. A week doesn't pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or
predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the "burden" of the hydrocarbons
that have fueled societies for centuries. Regardless of one's opinion about whether, or why, an energy "transformation"
is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility
of anything resembling a radically "new energy economy" in the foreseeable future.
Batteries
Not Included; The True Levelized Cost of Renewables. A fascinating article by Roger Andrews at Energy Matters
gets into a matter of the highest importance when it comes to renewables. It addresses something that might seem
arcane; the Levelized Cost of Energy or LCOE. The truth, though, is that traditional measures of the costs associated with
renewables not only don't account for many of the subsidies involved, but also fail to consider the intermittency of renewable
energy. Given the fact renewable energy generated at the wrong time is a cost, not a feature, the intermittency issue
always has to be addressed with batteries which are not considered in costs. But, if they are considered, we quickly see
the true costs of renewables, which are enormous.
Disentangling
the Renewable Energy Scam. The solar energy industry is telling its pals in Congress that it is willing to lose
most of its subsidies. The current subsidy for solar is 30% of the construction cost. To that subsidy, an
additional 10% subsidy is available due to special fast depreciation for solar energy plants. The 30% subsidy is
scheduled to ramp down to 10% by 2022 and thereafter remain at 10%. This is not a consequence of declining costs of solar
that makes the industry no longer in need of such a large subsidy. Solar electricity is a mature industry, and cost
declines are moderate. The real reason the solar people are happy with a lower subsidy is that the 30% investment tax
credit (ITC) is not their most important subsidy. The real subsidy is more complicated and better hidden.
Disentangling
the Renewable Energy Scam. Renewable energy has been defined in an illogical way so as to favor solar and wind.
The ostensible motive for increasing renewable energy is to lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and thus avoid a supposed global
warming catastrophe. But hydro and nuclear are prohibited from being used to meet the renewable energy quota, even though they
don't emit CO2.
The
Energy Solution That Should Make Everyone Happy. Renewable energy is a crackpot invention of the environmental
Left. Supposedly, renewable energy uses sources of energy that will not run out, anytime soon, like the sun.
Renewable energy must not emit CO2, because that might cause global warming. But the renewable energy proselytizers
can't stick to their story. Hydroelectricity is obviously renewable, but it is excluded because the environmental Left
hates dams. Geothermal energy, using the heat in hot rocks underground to generate electricity, is considered
renewable, even though the hot rocks frequently cool because the heat is used up. The "fuel" runs out. Wind and
solar are loved by the environmental Left, even though they are expensive and brimming with serious problems. Nuclear
is hated and not considered renewable, even though it emits no CO2, the fuel is potentially inexhaustible, and there are no
noxious substances coming out of smokestacks.
Think
California's green, insider, pay-to-play politics is bad? It's about to get worse. Let's looks at energy:
what is "green" energy? A source that doesn't use fossil fuels, right? No, because nuclear power plants are not
"green." "Green New Deal" champions like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.,
oppose nuclear power. What about hydropower? Surely that's "green." The Los Angeles Times reports that in
California, hydropower near Yosemite National Park, which has "been churning out carbon-free electricity for nearly a
century," is somehow not counted as green. Hydropower is responsible for between 5 and 15 percent of California's
energy, none of it's "green" because of dishonest lawmakers and the green lobby that pulls their marionette strings.
They are pushing lawmakers to restrict what it means to be "green," so only wind and solar, the industry's favored companies,
can benefit.
Solar
Power to Hit the Wall in Nevada. Solar power and wind power are the dominant methods of generating electricity
that are acceptable to the extreme left. The left calls its acceptable methods of generating electricity "renewable
energy." The definition of renewable energy, enshrined in renewable portfolio laws in many states, tells us what the left
likes and doesn't like. It is very arbitrary. The general idea of renewable energy is that it doesn't use fuel
that could run out and it doesn't emit CO2. But the left breaks its own rules as is convenient. For example, nuclear
power doesn't emit CO2 and running out of fuel is strictly theoretical. Nuclear is also reliable with steady delivery
of electricity. The prospects for new technology in the nuclear universe are very bright. Yet, nuclear is arbitrarily
banned in renewable portfolio laws. Incredibly, most renewable portfolio laws effectively ban hydroelectric power too,
because the environmental left does not like dams.
We
Shouldn't Be Surprised Renewables Make Energy Expensive Since That's Always Been The Greens' Goal. In 2018, I
reported that renewables had contributed to electricity prices rising 50% in Germany and five times more in California than
in the rest of the US despite generating just 17% of the state's electricity. And in April, a research institute at the
University of Chicago led by a former Obama administration economist found solar and wind were making electricity
significantly more expensive across the United States. The cost to consumers of renewables has been staggeringly
high. Two weeks ago, Der Spiegel reported that Germany spent $36 billion per year on renewables over the last
five years, and yet only increased the share of electricity from solar and wind by 10 percentage points. It's been a
similar story in the US. "All in all," wrote the University of Chicago economists, "consumers in the 29 states had
paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy."
Energy
and Geopolitics Are under Attack. Global warming. Climate change. Renewable energy.
Carbon-free societies. All of these terms have gained status as the balm to eliminate fossil fuels, which is supposedly
causing anthropogenic global warming. [...] Nothing energizes environmentalists and citizens like renewable energy. But
in every single place renewables have been implemented, they are a disaster. In Germany, Denmark, Spain, Britain, South
Australia, Vermont, Minnesota, New Mexico (in the beginning stages of maligning fossil fuels), Arkansas, California, and
Texas, solar and wind farms have been valiantly attempted, and they have failed every single time.
Green
energy schemes have been costly failures. Fully ~85% of global primary energy is from fossil fuels —
oil, coal and natural gas. The remaining ~15% is almost all nuclear and hydro. Green energy has increased from
above 1% to less than 2%, despite many trillions of dollars in wasted subsidies. The 85% fossil fuels component is
essentially unchanged in past decades, and is unlikely to significantly change in future decades. The fatal flaw of
grid-connected green energy is that it is not green and produces little useful (dispatchable) energy, primarily due to
intermittency — the wind does not blow all the time, and the Sun shines only part of the day. Intermittent
grid-connected green energy requires almost 100% backup ("spinning reserve") from conventional energy sources.
Renewable wind and solar electrical generation schemes typically do not even significantly reduce CO2 emissions —
all they do is increase energy costs. Claims that grid-scale energy storage will solve the intermittency problem have
proven false to date. The only proven grid-scale "super-battery" is pumped storage, and suitable sites are rare —
Alberta is bigger than many countries, and has no sites suitable for grid-scale pumped storage systems.
Exposing
the Real Costs of "Green" Energy. Today Center of the American Experiment released a groundbreaking paper that
addresses a relatively mild "green" proposal: legislation that would raise the renewable energy standard in Minnesota from
25% to 50%. Two of my staffers have been working on the paper for months, drawing on publicly available (but rarely consulted)
sources to understand what would be necessary to achieve that 50% goal, what it would cost, how it would impact the state's economy,
and what effect it would have on global temperatures. The paper is titled "Doubling Down on Failure: How a 50 Percent
by 2030 Renewable Energy Standard Would Cost Minnesota $80.2 Billion." With appendices, it runs to 75 pages.
Why
"Green" Energy Will Never Replace Fossil Fuels. Regular readers of this site are well aware of the inherent
inferiority of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar. Nevertheless, the states of California and Hawaii have
pledged to get all of their electricity from renewable sources (wind and solar), as have numerous cities and counties.
Unfortunately, it can't be done, at any price.
A
Trove of New Research Documents the Folly of Renewable Energy Promotion. The advocacy for widespread growth in
renewable energy (especially wind, solar, and biomass) usage has increasingly become the clarion call of the anthropogenic global
warming (AGW) movement. And yet more and more published research documents the adverse effects of relying on renewables.
The
Ridiculous Myth Of Powering The Nation With Renewable Energy. Technocrats should back up a few steps and look
at the foolishness of their plans: To power America with 100% renewable enerty they propose 500,000 wind turbines,
18 billion square feet of solar panels, 75 million residential rooftop systems, 50,000 wind and solar farms.
The projected cost is a minimum of $15.2 Trillion. However, we are already fully powered with enough oil, natural
gas and coal resources to last another 200 years.
Is
100 Percent Renewable Energy Possible? It probably is possible to run on 100% renewable power, if you don't mind crippling
the economy by devoting vast sums to that pointless goal. It won't make much difference in CO2 emissions unless you can convince
the Asians, who make most of the CO2 emissions, to also switch to 100% renewable energy.
The
green empress has no clothes. During December 2017, Germany's millions of solar panels received just 10 hours
of sunshine, and when solar energy did filter through the clouds, most of the panels were covered in snow. Even
committed Green Disciples with a huge Tesla battery in their garage soon found that their battery was flat and that there was
no solar energy to recharge it. The lights, heaters, trains, TVs, and phones ran on German coal power, French nuclear
power, Russian gas, and Scandinavian hydro, plus unpredictable surges of electricity from those few wind turbines that were
not iced up, locked down in a gale, or becalmed.
Truly Green? How Germany's
'Energy Transition' is destroying nature. The German Green Party was founded in 1980. The Greens promised to
save nature. They wanted to be the protectors of forests, birds and rivers. But their policies have led to the
most widespread destruction of nature in Germany since the Second World War. No industry consumes as much land as the
generation of 'natural electricity'.
Puerto Rico Might
Ditch Oil to Build New Electric Grid Using Renewable Energies. With the majority of Puerto Rico's 3.4 million
citizens still without power following Hurricane Maria, the commonwealth's government is floating the idea of starting from
scratch as it rebuilds — ditching oil dependency and moving toward renewable energies.
The Editor says...
Brilliant idea, because everybody knows windmills and solar panels are impervious to tropical weather.
Evaluation of a proposal for
grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar. A number of analyses, meta-analyses, and assessments, including
those performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the International Energy Agency, have concluded that deployment of a diverse
portfolio of clean energy technologies makes a transition to a low-carbon-emission energy system both more feasible and less
costly than other pathways. [...] In particular, we point out that this work used invalid modeling tools, contained modeling
errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions. Policy makers should treat with caution any
visions of a rapid, reliable, and low-cost transition to entire energy systems that relies almost exclusively on wind,
solar, and hydroelectric power.
Renewable
energy cost and reliability claims exposed and debunked. A new paper published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from NOAA's Earth System Laboratory, Boulder Colorado exposes and debunks the contrived
claims of a recent renewable energy study which falsely alleged that low cost and reliable 100% renewable energy electric
grids are possible. The new paper concludes that the prior study is based upon significant modeling inadequacies, is
"poorly executed" and contains "numerous shortcomings" and "errors" making it "unreliable as a guide about the likely cost,
technical reliability, or feasibility of a 100% wind, solar and hydroelectric power system."
The
Appalling Delusion of 100 Percent Renewables, Exposed. he idea that the U.S. economy can be run solely with
renewable energy — a claim that leftist politicians, environmentalists, and climate activists have endlessly
promoted — has always been a fool's errand. And on Monday, the National Academy of Sciences published a
blockbuster paper by an all-star group of American scientists that says exactly that. The paper, by Chris Clack,
formerly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado Boulder, and 20 other
top scientists, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It decimates the work of Mark
Jacobson, the Stanford engineering professor whose wildly exaggerated claims about the economic and technical viability of a
100 percent renewable-energy system has made him a celebrity (he appeared on David Letterman's show in 2013) and the
hero of Sierra Clubbers, Bernie Sanders, and Hollywood movie stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio.
NY's Renewable Energy Plan
Gets Dirty . New York governor Andrew Cuomo's renewable-energy ambitions are running headlong into the hard
realities of maintaining a reliable electric grid. On July 8, the New York Independent System Operator, the agency
charged with managing the state's grid, provided comments on the governor's plan to require utilities to get 50 percent of
their electricity from renewables by 2030. The NYISO maintains that to keep the lights on, the state will have to spend
heavily on new transmission infrastructure to accommodate more renewables, preserve all of its nuclear capacity (including the
controversial Indian Point Energy Center), and build even more onshore wind-energy capacity in upstate communities. Five
days after the NYISO filed its comments, Cuomo's energy czar, Richard Kauffman, fired off an angry — and rather
bizarre — letter to Brad Jones, the NYISO president and CEO. Calling the grid operator's comments "misleading,
incomplete, and grossly inaccurate," Kauffman claimed that the NYISO showed "an alarming lack" of understanding of "how a
modern grid can be developed and operated."
How
Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course . Is the global effort to combat climate change,
painstakingly agreed to in Paris seven months ago, already going off the rails? Germany, Europe's champion for
renewable energy, seems to be having second thoughts about its ambitious push to ramp up its use of renewable fuels for power
generation. Hoping to slow the burst of new renewable energy on its grid, the country eliminated an open-ended subsidy
for solar and wind power and put a ceiling on additional renewable capacity. Germany may also drop a timetable to end
coal-fired generation, which still accounts for over 40 percent of its electricity, according to a report leaked from
the country's environment ministry. Instead, the government will pay billions to keep coal generators in reserve, to
provide emergency power at times when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.
German
Experience With Green Power A Lesson Obama Should Learn. Since the early 1990s, Germany has gone to great lengths to replace
fossil-fuel-generated electricity with renewables. Renewable electricity accounted for nearly 30% of the country's electricity by the
end of 2014. Germany is thus roughly where Obama hopes to take America over the next 15 years — he's even called on
Americans to "look at Berlin" for inspiration. But what are Germany's results? Dramatically higher energy costs for businesses
and consumers, an increasingly unstable electricity grid and a recent increase in carbon emissions.
Feds
Pull Plug on Wave Power Project. The federal government has cancelled permits for a wave power
project on the California coast. Renewable power advocates had hailed the project as an alternative to
conventional energy sources.
The collapse of the green-energy
bubble. The parallel-energy universe known as renewables, a place where dollars and economic theory
know no bounds and make no sense, looks increasingly like a bubble set to collapse.