Best Energy Picks - November 23, 2024
Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.
This week’s best energy picks:
Trump Nominates Energy Leader to Lead the Department of Energy
This may be Trump's best pick:
Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as Energy Secretary nominee is a real oddity in the history of the job: A Secretary of Energy who has spent a career in the energy business. While a few previous holders of the job have spent some time in energy, they’ve mainly come from the power generation or power provision sectors: Wright is the first nominee who comes out of the oil and gas sector, not surprising given President-elect Trump’s intentions to refocus policy on taking advantage of America’s massive energy minerals resources…
Earlier this year, Liberty Energy published the third edition of a book it calls “Bettering Human Lives.” In it, Wright lays out his philosophy on energy and climate change, and why it is vitally important for the US to produce more oil and gas, not less of it as part of efforts to mitigate climate change and lift hundreds of millions of human beings out of energy poverty. The book sums up that philosophy in these “Ten Key Takeaways:”
1. Energy is essential to life and the world needs more of it!
2. The modern world today is powered by and made of hydrocarbons.
3. Hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized seven billion people who aspire to be among the world’s lucky one billion.
4. Hydrocarbons supply more than 80% of global energy and thousands of critical materials and products.
5. The American Shale Revolution transformed energy markets, energy security, and geopolitics.
6. Global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal are all at record levels and rising – no energy transition has begun.
7. Modern alternatives, like solar and wind, provide only a part of electricity demand and do not replace the most critical uses of hydrocarbons. Energy-dense, reliable nuclear could be more impactful.
8. Making energy more expensive or unreliable compromises people, national security, and the environment.
9. Climate change is a global challenge but is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life.
10. Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero 2050.
Currently, the global community, led mainly by western developed nations, is taking a top-down approach to the climate change fight. It’s an approach that involves spending trillions of dollars each year, often funded by taking on new debt, to attempt to subsidize a pre-selected set of favored industries up to scale…
In these 10 Key Takeaways, Wright advocates the adoption of a bottom-up approach that leverages the world’s vast mineral energy resources and advanced nuclear technologies to lift the masses in developing nations out of energy poverty. That ability to escape energy poverty helps bring developing nations into the developed world, making them better able to then achieve the desired emissions reductions.
Wright talks in real-speak and that alone makes him a great pick!
Hat Tip: D.B.
If ‘Green’ Energy is the Future, Bring a Fire Extinguisher
The failure of “energy transition” advocates to acknowledge this problem reveals a stunning lack of concern for the welfare of ordinary people:
Automakers have been wrestling with lithium battery fires for more than a decade. Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Tesla, and other manufacturers have recalled millions of EVs because of battery fire problems.
Batteries can self-ignite while the vehicle is in motion, when connected to a charger, or even when sitting idly in a parking lot.
EVs prone to self-ignition have been prohibited from parking at West Coast parking lots.
How are governments responding to the rash of lithium battery fires?
They are doubling down, promoting the use of even larger, grid-scale lithium batteries as part of efforts to transition from coal, oil, and natural gas to wind and solar energy.
Grid-scale batteries are viewed as the solution to wind and solar intermittency, meant to store excess electricity when wind and solar output is high, and then release electricity when wind and solar output is low.
But the number of grid battery fires is growing, and grid batteries are hundreds of times larger than EV batteries.
Vice President Kamala Harris recently announced $1 billion in grants for electric school buses. If a diesel bus engine catches fire, the driver can usually put it out with a fire extinguisher.
But this is not possible with electric buses, which explode when they catch fire. Let’s hope we’re not headed for fires in electric buses full of children.
If government leaders continue to push lithium batteries, battery fires will soon be coming to a location near you.
Read the whole article; the inventory of incidents is downright scary!
Hat Tip: D.S.
European Insanity Reaches Heights Previously Thought Unreachable!
This is what passes for being smart in Denmark and most of Europe these days; ending farming and strangling the food supply to be politically correct on climate:
Denmark has agreed on how to implement the world’s first tax on agricultural emissions, including flatulence by livestock.
This comes after months of negotiations between the country’s major parties, farmers, the industry, trade unions and environmental groups. The Green Tripartite agreement was first announced in June.
From 2030, farmers will have to pay a levy of 300 kroner ($43; £34) per tonne of methane (as per carbon dioxide equivalent) on emissions from livestock including cows and pigs, which will rise to 750 kroner in 2035.
The Green Tripartite minister said they will “do what it takes to reach our climate goals” after receiving a “broad majority” in parliament.
“[It is a] huge, huge task that is now underway: to transform large parts of our land from agricultural production to forestry, to natural spaces, to ensure that we can bring life back to our fjords,” Jeppe Bruus said…
Around 60% of Denmark's territory is currently cultivated, making it together with Bangladesh the country with the highest share of cultivated land, according to a Danish parliamentary report.
"Danish nature will change in a way we have not seen since the wetlands were drained in 1864," Mr Bruus said, as quoted by AFP news agency.
Speaking about the agreement, the Danish minister for climate, energy and utilities, Lars Aagaard, said it showed the country’s “willingness to act.”
Oh, there will be change for sure. There always is when ideologues are put in charge. Disaster awaits.
Hat Tip: R.N.
Bankruptcy of EV Battery Maker May Cost Canadian Pensioners Billions
This hardly looks good:
A Swedish battery maker — with ties to Canadian taxpayers and pensioners — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday, forcing its $7.2 billion Québec plant to shut down construction indefinitely…
Meanwhile, a Conservative motion to study some $50 billion in electric vehicle (EV) subsidies was voted down on September 26, amid concerns the plant would not proceed…
Four Canadian pension plans are among its lenders, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Investment Management Corp. of Ontario, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
Last year, the funds collectively financed Northvolt in excess of $3 billion in convertible debt securities. The state of those investments remains unclear as of writing.
According to documents filed on Thursday, Northvolt’s “liquidity picture has become dire,” with US$5.84 billion in debt, and a mere US$30 million in cash.
Fréchette claimed Northvolt secured enough funds to sustain operations for the next 18 months, with the company already investing over $100 million.
Québec taxpayers could be on the hook for $170 million should the company’s financial position fall into dire straits, however, the Chapter 11 filings indicate the company can still access $145 million in cash collateral…
Northvolt confirmed 1,600 job cuts in the Scandinavian country, with managers blaming “headwinds in the automotive market,” as well as fierce competition from Asia.
A federal mandate insists on rendering fossil-fuel vehicles obsolete by 2035, though EV demand faces a “significant slowdown.” Statistics Canada says purchases plateaued in the third quarter of 2023.
Rick Perkins, a Conservative MP and current vice-chair on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, previously said the EV industry only thrives wherever a “massive government subsidy” is in place.
The Department of Environment and Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) put current subsidies at $151.5 billion, including $52.5 billion for auto and battery manufacturers.
There is a combination of political correctness, subsidies and failure everywhere you look in green energy!
Hat Tip: S.H.
And, Briefly:
“World’s Largest Climate Fund Sees Few Investment Opportunities”, from S.H.
Indian Billionaire Indicted For Massive Solar Fraud, from R.N.
U.S. LNG Exports to Europe Set to Surge as European Gas Prices Soar, from D.S.
Range, Industry, & Community Celebrate 20 Years of Marcellus Shale, from R.R.
The Iron Law Of Land Mines And Climate Policy, from R.B.
The Second Trump Administration Will Benefit The Environment, from D.S.
Weaponized Bureaucracy: How Biden is Undermining LNG Exports, from S.H.
#Energy #NaturalGas #BestPicks #Climate #GreenEnergy #Money #Power #Electricity #Solar #GlobalWarming #Wind #EVs #Oil #Gas #FreeSpeech
I lived in Denmark for 5 years. We had no car, so I used my Alaska mountain bike to get around, regardless of weather. I loved Denmark, but I was paying 4 times as much for electricity (over 40 cents per killowatt hour) as a typical American paid. Taxing cow and pig farts....wow!