Best Energy Picks - September 21, 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:
Kamala Says She Wants Energy Independence — Now, We're Just Giving the EVs Away! — The New Divestment: BP Out of Wind Enthusiasm — No, the U.S. Is Not Warming Faster Than the Rest of the World! — and much more.
Kamala Says She Wants Energy Independence But…
Harris says she doesn't want to be dependent on foreign oil but that we should invest in ‘diverse forms of energy.’ It only sounds reasonable to the naive.
If your goal is to avoid dependence on foreign oil, then we can simply use American oil. Our country is flush with the stuff and we are quite good at getting it out of the ground, thanks especially to the fracking boom. Ever since 2018 the U.S. has been the world’s largest oil producer—a title previously held by Saudi Arabia and Russia. Among countries well-positioned for oil independence, ours is head of the class. But that’s not a complete picture.
It’s one thing to have the oil (geologically speaking). It’s another to extract it, transport it, refine it into usable products, and get those products to the consumer. Thanks to human ingenuity, we have the science and engineering to do those things in a largely safe and responsible manner (the dramatic reduction in methane emissions is a good example). Accidents are far less frequent than even just 20 or 30 years ago. But even with responsible industry behavior we face a persistent obstacle—government behavior. The reasons are a topic for another day, but it is a plain fact we have government officials and agencies who raise themselves up as fierce enemies of our friend, the hydrocarbon.
So they do things like shut down pipeline projects. And they arbitrarily raise the cost to drill on public land while simultaneously cutting the cost for producing “renewable” energy on the same land. And they impose exceedingly aggressive limits and thresholds that threaten grid reliability. And the pièce de résistance: they team up with media friends to inundate the citizenry with alarmist messaging until we’re all convinced we must quit our addiction to fossil fuels or risk our own destruction. If your friends from the oil and gas industry look tired, this is why.
I should point out this sort of obstructionism does not fully permeate our government at all levels. There are pockets of reasonable thinkers who make some effort toward smart decisions about energy policy. But the anti-hydrocarbon religion has been sufficiently evangelized so as to hinder what ought to be one of our most revered industries. It is certainly the most valuable, existentially speaking. As we say in The BEN Declaration, energy independence is essential to American independence. In this regard, we agree with Vice President Harris—we don’t want dependence on foreign oil. But her solution as advertised is disingenuous and defies fundamental logic.
This gets to the root of the Harris position. It is pure bollocks. All hat and no cattle.
Hat Tip: D.S.
Now, We're Just Giving the EVs Away!
This is how messed our country is today…
Thanks to tax incentive loopholes, the price of EV leases have plunged to as low as just $20 per month in some areas of the county.
Leases have become the customer's method of choice for taking home EVs since sale prices have become too expensive, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
Average monthly payments for new vehicles in the U.S. rose to $735 in the first quarter of 2024, while lease payments dropped to $595, according to Experian.
This has driven more EV buyers to opt for leases, which made up 32% of EV transactions in Q1, up from 11% a year ago, per Cox Automotive. EV leases are $88 cheaper per month on average compared to new electric vehicle loans.
Bloomberg writes that lease payments for electric vehicles have become more affordable due to cooling demand, automaker incentives, and changes in the $7,500 federal tax credit, which now often favors leasing over buying.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 limited tax breaks for EV purchases, so many models don’t qualify, but a loophole allows leased EVs to qualify as commercial vehicles.
This lets automakers apply the tax credit to lease deals, reducing monthly payments.
Manufacturers receive the tax credit on leased EVs but often pass it to consumers as a rebate or discount, the report says.
In some areas, it has led to stunning offers. In Colorado, some 2025 Nissan Leaf leases were offered for as low as $20 a month in July, thanks to EV tax credits and state incentives, the article notes.
At Koons Kia in Virginia, Finance Director Ramon Nawabi says few customers inquire about EVs, with high prices deterring them.
Some EV6 SUVs have been on the lot for over six months, leading Kia to offer discounted leases on top of the $7,500 tax credit. "In a sense, we're just giving them away," he told Bloomberg.
Simply unbelievable.
Hat Tip: R.N.
The New Divestment: BP Out of Wind
BP has had it with wind and is going back to oil and gas.
British oil company BP is divesting its U.S. onshore wind business, BP Wind Energy. [emphasis, links added]
BP has interests in 10 operating onshore wind farms across seven U.S. states, according to the company’s announcement Monday. It operates nine of them.
Altogether, the projects can produce up to 1.7 gigawatts when the wind is blowing. The company plans to sell all the assets as an integrated unit.
“BP Wind Energy’s assets are high-quality and grid-connected but are not aligned with our plans for growth in Lightsource BP,” William Lin, executive vice president of gas and low-carbon energy for BP.
BP CEO Murray Auchincloss announced in June, according to Reuters, that the company was imposing a hiring freeze and pausing new offshore wind projects in favor of an emphasis on oil and gas, as a result of investor complaints over the company’s energy transition strategy.
Writing in Forbes, energy analyst David Blackmon reported that the shift is a reversal from the company’s former CEO Bernard Looney’s plans, which included “aggressive investments” in both onshore and offshore wind projects.
Due to inflation and supply chain issues, Utility Dive reported, the projects ran into profitability issues.
It doesn't get much more clear, does it?
Hat Tip: S.H.
The war in Ukraine is forcing us to use warheads for energy!
Although the next era of nuclear energy inspires big green energy ambitions, the reactors powering that vision are surprisingly small. Terrapower, the Bill Gates-backed nuclear plant that broke ground in Wyoming earlier this year, is roughly one-third the size of your typical large energy plants.
This plant-in-the-making is a Natrium reactor that relies on sodium and molten salt as both a fuel and coolant, instead of water, but crucially relies on high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel, or HALEU, to operate.
According to the World Nuclear Association, current reactors use uranium-235 enriched up to 5 percent (weapons grade uranium is enriched up to 95 percent). HALEU, while still much lower than weapons-grade uranium, still requires enrichment between 5 percent and 25 percent, but it can be down-blended to reactor-appropriate enrichment levels by mixing weapons-grade uranium with depleted uranium in a furnace at roughly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. However, HALEU is hard to come by and, until recently, was only really used in research reactors and medical isotope production.
But things have changed, and it’s quickly become evident that U.S.’s nuclear ambitions rely on a steady supply of the stuff—and that’s where things get tricky.
Until last year, the U.S. relied on Russia to supply this low-enriched fuel. After all, following the Cold War, the former Soviet Union had lots of recently down-blended, weapons-grade uranium to sell and the U.S. was eager to buy.
But the war in Ukraine has severed that supply chain, and, according to a new report published by CNN, the U.S. is turning to its own nuclear arsenal to deliver much-needed HALEU to nascent nuclear projects in dire need of the stuff. While the U.S. nuclear arsenal represents a kind of emergency supply, it is by no means a long-term solution.
Just incredible…
Hat Tip: K.L.
And, Briefly:
Climate Carnage, from I.S.
New Home Solar Feature: Exploding Panels, from D.B.
Pennsylvania's Fracking Industry Plans to Continue, Whoever Wins, from B.T.
Biden’s ‘Record’ Energy Production Due To Trump Policies, from S.H.
End of the Line for A U.S. Solar Giant, from R.N.
Three Mile Island’s Nuclear Plant to Reopen for AI Energy, from D.S.
#Energy #NaturalGas #BestPicks #Climate #GreenEnergy #Money #Power #Electricity #Solar #GlobalWarming #Wind #EVs #Oil #Gas
Thanks for the share.
This is a pretty good video on why the US imports and exports oil. Below are two links, one of them being a traditional link, and the other being one of those tiny links.
Because of a number of factors listed in this video, it is unlikely that we will become energy independent in oil production, even if we have the oil in the ground.
This Is Why the U.S. Can’t Use the Oil It Produces
WATOP
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmt5D9vOoVU&pp=ygUVV2h5IHRoZSBVUyBpbXBvcnQgb2ls
https://youtu.be/nmt5D9vOoVU?feature=shared