Best Energy Picks - September 7, 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:
We Told You It’s All About the Money! — The High Cost of New Zealand’s Political Correctness — The Sad Tale of Germany’s Energiewende — No, the U.S. Is Not Warming Faster Than the Rest of the World! — and much more.
We Told You It’s All About the Money!
And, the money isn’t producing anything that actually works:
As for spurring new industries and economic growth, today, the U.S. solar manufacturing industry is moribund, with almost 90% of the solar panels installed in this country now produced in China. All but one of the offshore wind projects under construction or slated to be built are owned by European companies that their respective governments control.
The economic costs of these subsidies are borne by taxpayers, who must finance the additional deficit spending; electric ratepayers who, despite claims that renewable energy resources are less costly than traditional generating resources, have seen their electric rates soar; and drivers, who pay more for gasoline and diesel fuel as refineries have closed or been modified to produce subsidized biofuels.
Those higher costs for electricity and transportation fuels raise the costs of producing and distributing almost everything else, which ripples through the entire economy, reducing economic growth and destroying jobs.
As for green energy subsidies spurring the development of new, lower-cost clean technologies, there is nothing new about wind and solar generation that receives the lion’s share of subsidies. After almost half a century, neither are cost-competitive, especially when the additional costs of addressing their inherent intermittency are included—costs that others must pay. And new technologies, such as direct air capture of carbon, will only be commercially viable if the U.S. imposes carbon taxes of several hundred dollars per ton, which few politicians will be willing to do.
That last paragraph is critical, as subsidies never work. They only perpetuate what qualifies for the subsidies and only competition produces real advances and innovation.
Hat Tip: D.S./S.H.
The High Cost of New Zealand’s Political Correctness
Jacinda Ardern was a wicked tyrant on not only COVID, but also on energy and that’s no coincidence:
New Zealand recently gave us a wicked lesson in the process of understanding the gap between being told not to touch the stove and touching the stove.
A few years back, their youthful, idealistic, and globally exuberant leader, Jacinda Ardern, enacted a ban on petroleum exploration in New Zealand. The legislation was cutting-edge energy policy thinking, in alignment with many global leaders whose ears had been stuffed with talk about how oil and gas properties were quickly going to become stranded assets.
These policy advocates “knew” this, and passed their knowledge on to leaders who would be visionaries. Want to be in effect a department store manager, running a country like one, or…do you want to go down in history as one of the brave that saved the world from rising temperatures? Appealing to political egos is shooting fish in a barrel, and so off they went, legislating anti-hydrocarbon agendas hither and yon with joyous abandon.
Fast forward a few years, and New Zealand has touched the stove. You can see the minute that it happened. In a June 9 article entitled “Government to reverse oil and gas exploration ban” (thanks to Dan Tsobouchi for flagging; his research and output is invaluable), the NZ government spoke of a startling discovery: that oil and gas fields deplete over time.
As they put it: “When the exploration ban was introduced by the previous government in 2018, it not only halted the exploration needed to identify new sources, but it also shrank investment in further development of our known gas fields which sustain our current levels of use…Without this investment, we are now in a situation where our annual natural gas production is expected to peak this year and undergo a sustained decline, meaning we have a security of supply issue barrelling towards us.”
In another document, the government put it this way:
“The latest petroleum reserves data show gas reserves are declining. There is less natural gas available to produce than previously thought. This drop in natural gas reserves (called Proven plus Probable reserves) is the result of producers lacking certainty that they can economically extract the natural gas in their fields…”
Better late than never, I guess. But this newly-lit lightbulb is only a part of the equation. NZ’s path illustrates just how wrong many energy assumptions are.
The saddest part of this story (now apparently being reversed) is what Jacinda Ardern is doing now after resigning because of mistakes such as the above. She is now the Trustee of the Earthshot Prize, “which funds innovative projects aimed at addressing environmental challenges” and has “taken on fellowships at Harvard Kennedy School, where she focuses on public leadership and management, reflecting on her experiences and the lessons learned during her political career.” You can’t make this stuff up!
Hat Tip: R.N.
The Sad Tale of Germany’s Energiewende
Let’s be honest, this is such glorious schadenfreude:
Over the last two decades, no nation on Earth has been more celebrated by wind and solar advocates than Germany for its efforts to phase out fossil fuels and nuclear power in favor of these intermittent energy sources.
Germany’s Energiewende, or “Energy Transition,” has inspired taxpayer-funded junkets to Germany so state legislators could learn about the wonders of the German energy system. The Energiewende has also been on the receiving end of puff pieces from all the usual suspects in the media, including The New York Times, Inside Climate News, and Forbes.
In a similar vein, it feels like no country has been as insufferably self-righteous about their energy decisions as the Germans. In 2017, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel lectured the U.S. about its energy policies, and in 2018, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and other German delegates laughed when then-President Trump correctly warned of the dangers of becoming overly reliant upon Russian natural gas.
Now, the prevailing economic news out of Germany is low growth and deindustrialization, largely due to a thicket of regulatory red tape, high taxes, and high energy prices. Germany’s smug green pedestal is crashing down faster than a wind turbine on top of a German coal deposit, and we would be lying if we said we don’t feel a small glimmer of Schadenfreude.
Energiewende? More like, Energiewiemar.
What’s so annoying about this is that so many Americans bought into the whole Energiewende con and tried to lecture us about it over the years. Here is a little debate I had with some folks at a Josh Fox event a decade ago:
Hat Tip: I.O/M.R.
The Suicide of the West, Part 2024
David Blackmon nails it yet again:
Many readers here will remember that BRICS approved membership for Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) effective January 1, 2024. More recently, Turkey became the first NATO member to formally apply for BRICS membership.
Among other significant factors, the inclusion of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the UAE means BRICS now represents a bigger share of global crude oil production than OPEC. Given that oil is the most-internationally traded commodity on earth, that is a powerful reality.
Of course, the conceit of the globalist, authoritarian brutes who cling to control in most Western nations is that they can solve this nebulous concept called “climate change” by deindustrializing their economies to cut the use of oil, natural gas, and coal, force the meek masses to crowd into their 15-minute cities, and run what little economic activity remains with windmills and solar arrays covering the countryside. That is literally the plan, in case you weren’t already aware, and they are well down the path to achieving their goals.
Nowhere is this plan and the economic destruction it creates more obvious than in the UK, where [David] Turver resides, and in Germany, which has led the way in climate/energy policy lunacy for the last 15 years or so. The charts he published Saturday clearly illustrate that reality, as well as the magnitude of the transfer of industrial activity to China, India, and Brazil that is taking place. The charts also contain a stark warning for Americans and the direction the Biden cabal is taking our country.
Here is Turver’s Tweet:
…The precipitous drop of this key indicator of industrial output is equally stark in Germany, where the collapse of heavy industry started in earnest along about 2015 as the Energie Wende to replace coal and nuclear plants with windmills went tits up. You can also see the United States on a more gradual deindustrialization path that began in the George W. Bush presidency and accelerated in the Obama years.
The globalist authoritarian politicians in those countries look at this chart and claim it is cause for celebration since a collapse of electric generation means a lowering of those evil greenhouse gas emissions. But is that what this chart really shows?
Hell, no. What it really shows is that the greenhouse gas emissions, along with the industrial activity that creates them, are simply being transferred to other parts of the world. China is the most obvious beneficiary, but South Korea, India, and even Brazil are also significant economic winners in this equation.
Hat Tip: D.B.
And, Briefly:
Offshore Trojan Horses, from D.S.
Wind Turbines Will Cause More Warming Than Emissions Reductions, from R.N.
UK Carmakers Face ‘Gargantuan’ Fines For Not Selling Enough EVs, from S.H.
The Texas Heat Deaths Scam, from A.E.
Chop the Trees, Dation the Cars, from I.S.
Efficiency in Capacity Markets, from M.A.
#Energy #NaturalGas #BestPicks #Climate #GreenEnergy #Money #Power #Electricity #Solar #GlobalWarming #Wind #EVs #Oil #Gas
Lived in NZ in 90's. Writing was on the wall when Helen Clark was PM - started the rot of NZ economy. Rewarded by UN hire towards top of Rabid Green Conversion doubling down to this day.
Great compilation, thanks again Thomas