Best Energy Picks - July 20, 2024

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

Jul 20, 2024

This week’s best energy picks:

Surprise, Surprise, Oil and Gas Fundamental to National Security! — New Jersey Winces, Utters Stupidities, and Approves Gas Power Plant! — Green Energy Incentives Overwhelming Go to People Who Don't Need Them! — The Offshore Wind Scandal and Who’s Behind It! — and much more.

Surprise, Surprise, Oil and Gas Fundamental to National Security!

From Trump’s former National Security Advisor:

Energy policy is not just a matter of governing approach, it is fundamental to our national security posture and economic resilience. The United States stands at a crossroads, and it is imperative we adopt an energy strategy that prioritizes our national interests, promotes clean air and water and economic growth, and ensures America’s global leadership.
As the former National Security Advisor to President Trump, I have seen firsthand the critical importance of energy policy in safeguarding our national security and economic prosperity. President Trump stands poised to reshape the nation’s energy posture through an “all-of-the-above” energy policy that is right for America.

We cannot ignore the central role that domestic oil and gas production plays in our nation’s economy and that it will continue to do so long into the future. Thus, we must facilitate further growth of this vital industry by confronting the impact of regulations that stymie growth. In a world where Europe and Asia are striving to stabilize their energy supplies amidst growing demands, the United States' decision to pause new Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) export approvals has serious implications for global stability. American energy dominance over our adversaries necessitates an approach that spans all sectors.
This policy must include dramatic increases in drilling for oil and gas, the restoration of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which was needlessly drained for political reason, the revitalization of our nuclear power industry, particularly through encouraging the building of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), and a reclaiming of American leadership in the clean energy sector. Such a strong all-of-the-above energy strategy ensures a diversified and secure energy supply and will foster peace and prosperity for America and our allies.

Yes, we need dramatic increases!

Hat Tip: D.S.

New Jersey Winces, Utters Stupidities, and Approves Gas Power Plant!

This story illustrates how far New Jersey has fallen under Governor Phil Panderbear Murphy. The state had to do this and is crying all the way through:

State environmental regulators issued a limited approval Thursday for a natural gas power plant at a sewage treatment plant adjacent to a neighborhood known to already be overburdened by pollution.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced an environmental justice approval for the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s Standby Power Generation Facility Project, which is a proposed natural gas-fired power plant that is meant to keep the PVSC’s sewage treatment plant in Newark running during power outages.
But the DEP’s approval was made with conditions that significantly restrict how the sewerage commission would be able to use its proposed power plant.

Those conditions specifically call for:
PVSC to only run the power plant as a backup generator in the event of a power outage, with one exception per month for test runs to ensure the power plant remains ready for any emergencies. PVSC would not be allowed to run the power plant continuously or run it as a revenue-generating asset.
PVSC will be required to install additional pollution controls at the sewage treatment plant, such as upgrading sludge heat treatment boilers and removing or upgrading outdated equipment.
PVSC will be required to install a minimum of 5 megawatts of solar at the sewage treatment plan, as well as a minimum of 5MW of battery storage.
PVSC must immediately study how to transition from this natural gas plant to a renewable energy alternative, including the possibility of green hydrogen.
Shawn LaTourette, the commissioner of the DEP, described the conditions as “strict” and “irreversible” legal requirements that sewerage commission would be required to follow. He stressed that if all the conditions are met, the DEP has determined they will create an overall reduction in air pollution emitted by the sewage plant even after the proposed power plant is brought online.

Note the plant is necessary to keep the sewage treatment facility operating during power outages. Yet, the NJ Spotlight folks, who serve as shills for elite NGO folks, start the story by talking about power plant pollution as if that was far worse than the sewage treatment not working. And, the plant will lower air pollution! What a joke this state is. Nonetheless, it couldn’t completely ignore reality, despite this.

Hat Tip: R.N.

Green Energy Incentives Overwhelming Go to People Who Don't Need Them!

Well, this is hardly a surprise:

The majority of the $47 billion in green tax credits claimed between 2006 and 2021 went to high-income households, according to a new study published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Households in the top 20% of earnings nationally received about 60% of clean energy tax credits, while the bottom 60% of households received just 10%, according to the paper written by Severin Borenstein and Lucas W. Davis, two economists at the University of California, Berkeley. This pattern of high-income filers claiming the lion’s share of green tax credits has stayed “relatively constant” during the time period until it experienced a “slight broadening” with the introduction of an electric vehicle (EV) credit in 2018.

**The working man in the Ford truck is subsidizing the driver of the Tesla EV! Source: ArtisticOperations**

In the case of EVs, the top 20% of earners receive 80% of the credits, while the top 5% of earners receive 50%, according to the study. There was also only a small correlation between greater green tax credits and the adoption of technology such as heat pumps, solar panels, and EVs…
The Biden administration has introduced more green subsidies in recent years using hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money allocated in the Inflation Reduction Act. One of those subsidies is a $7,500 EV tax credit aimed at boosting consumer demand for the product.

Why else would high-income folks tend to support green energy? It's green money in their pockets at the expense of others to do virtue signaling.

Hat Tip: T.Z.

The Offshore Wind Scandal and Who’s Behind It!

The offshore wind sector of the Big Green Grift is facing strong headwinds these days:

Two of Europe’s biggest energy companies are abandoning the SS Offshore Wind.
In May, Shell, the UK-based oil and gas giant (2023 revenue: $317 billion), announced that it was cutting staff from its offshore wind business because, according to Bloomberg, the company has decided to focus on markets that “deliver the most value for our investors and customers.” Bloomberg also reported that the staff cuts were made after the departures of top executives in the company’s offshore wind and renewable power businesses.
Last month, Murray Auchincloss, the CEO of oil and gas giant BP, imposed a “hiring freeze and paused new offshore wind projects.” According to Reuters, the new CEO is putting more “emphasis on oil and gas amid investor discontent over its energy transition strategy” and that BP (2023 revenue: $208 billion) was cutting investments in “big budget, low-carbon projects, particularly in offshore wind, that are not expected to generate cash for years.”
The moves by BP and Shell are only the latest examples of the troubles facing the offshore wind sector, which has been foundering on the shoals of higher interest rates, citizen opposition, and ballooning costs. Over the past year, numerous projects on the Eastern Seaboard, including Skipjack Wind in Maryland, Park City Wind in Connecticut, and South Coast Wind in Massachusetts, have been canceled due to bad economics. In all, according to data compiled by Ed O’Donnell, a nuclear engineer and a principal at New Jersey-based Whitestrand Consulting, about 14,700 megawatts of offshore wind capacity has been canceled. For comparison, about 15,500 megawatts of capacity is now in development, under construction, or operational.
Of course, those figures don’t jibe with the tsunami of hype about offshore wind energy that has appeared in major media outlets. But the hard reality is that America’s offshore wind sector is a subsidy-dependent industry that is dominated by foreign companies who are in bed with some of America’s biggest climate NGOs, including the NRDC (gross receipts: $555 million) and Sierra Club (Gross receipts: $184 million).

Those NGOs and others, including the National Wildlife Federation (gross receipts: $142 million) and Conservation Law Foundation (gross receipts: $17.5 million), are leading the most shameful environmental betrayal in modern American history. Rather than seek to protect marine mammals and stop the industrialization of our oceans, they are eagerly promoting the installation of hundreds of offshore wind platforms smack in the middle of the known habitat of the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

I’m so thrilled to see Robert Bryce expose this scandal. It’s part of a much bigger one, of course, and all about steering ever more money and power to globalist elites, the NRDC, for example, being nothing more than a tool of the Rockefeller family.

Hat Tip: S.H.