The NY Post Editorial Board takes Cuomo to task for trying to have it both ways:  Climate Hero without being the Energy Villain.  Their article Cuomo’s latest bid to dodge blame for Long Island’s natural-gas crisis.   Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo upped his histrionics on the Long Island natural gas crisis Tuesday, formally threatening to revoke the license of National Grid, the utility that has stopped taking new gas customers.

The company says it can’t take on new commitments because Cuomo (followed by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy) blocked construction of a new pipeline.

That new-hookups moratorium, the gov insists, “is either a falsified device or a lack of competence.” That is, National Grid either doesn’t need the pipeline — or is still at fault because it didn’t find some other way to assure supply.

Yet it never should have needed a Plan B: The proposed pipeline is obviously safe; it’s to run right next to an existing pipeline that’s done zero harm. The supposed environmental fears blocking it are nothing but a pretext, allowing Cuomo to pander to green extremists who oppose all carbon-based fuels.

To be clear: The pipeline is the safest, cheapest and even greenest way to get new energy supplies to the area (which includes parts of the city). But the greens don’t care — they’d rather consumers just do without.

Cuomo says gas can be “trucked, shipped, or barged” instead. But that, says Manhattan Institute energy specialist Jonathan Lesser, would require fleets of trucks supplying a huge processing facility that doesn’t exist. And the trucks (or ships) would themselves burn more carbon fuel.

The gov won’t get out of this by following through on his threat — because whoever took over for National Grid would face the exact same problems.

Maybe the company should just call his bluff.

Background on East Cost Pipeline Politics:  Payback Upon Climate Grasshoppers

An article at World Oil reports Renewables are growing, but greenhouse emissions will continue to rise, says IEA  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

LONDON (Bloomberg) – The International Energy Agency’s annual report into fuel supply and demand shows a pickup in the rate of growth for wind and solar power.

But that’s not enough to curtail greenhouse gas pollution, which is on track to grow through 2040. The findings are a blow to the international effort to rein in climate change and contrast with expanding awareness of the impact humans are having on the environment.

The IEA’s report tracks the different paths the world can take, with government policies shaping the energy industry. While clean energy leaves some reason for optimism, the gap is widening between what scientists say is necessary to protect the environment and how industry’s energy needs are evolving.

1. Offshore wind is booming …

The global market for offshore wind turbines grew 30% from 2010 to 2018, driven primarily by northern Europe. Now, the technology is entering new regions. China added more capacity last year than anyone else. By 2040 the offshore wind market will become a $1 trillion business, the IEA says. Wind and solar power will push renewables past coal in terms of share of the power market by the middle of the next decade. By 2040, those clean energy sources will provide more than half of the world’s total electricity.  [Comment:  Mostly wishful thinking considering what is said below]

2. … but emissions continue to rise

Global carbon dioxide emissions rose for a second year, and the outlook is for continued increase to 2040 unless governments take radical action to hit targets set out in the Paris Agreement. The report shows that efforts to shift the world away from the most polluting fuels are moving too slowly. The developing world’s thirst for energy is also lifting consumption of coal and other fossil fuels, pushing more pollution into the atmosphere. [Comment: See at bottom previous post on a Kenyan POV regarding energy development]

3. Coal is the dominant power generation fuel

Global coal demand rose for a second consecutive year in 2018, with three-quarters of that demand coming from Asia Pacific. If global coal policies remain unchanged, then demand will keep expanding for two decades, the IEA said. However, growth will flatten out in that period if countries implement the promises they have already made. Over the past 20 years, Asia has accounted for 90% of all coal-fired capacity built worldwide and many of those new plants still have three decades of burning the dirtiest fossil fuel. [Comment:  US is exporting increasing amounts of refined coal.  See post US Refined Coal Surging

4. Oil demand slows

Global oil demand will hit a plateau around 2030 as the use of more efficient cars and electric vehicles ends an expansion that dominated the past century. While the IEA won’t call “peak demand” yet, the stagnation points toward major changes in the oil industry ahead. [Comment: According to 2018 McKinsey report electric vehicles did pass 1 million sold, which is less than 1% (0.66%) of world auto sales.  More wishful thinking.]

5. Quicker growth for natural gas

The world’s natural gas will deliver more of the fuel by tanker than pipeline as China’s thirst for it has grown by more than a third in the past two years. Demand for gas is set to grow four times faster than oil through 2040. By then, China will import twice as much LNG as India. The share of gas in China’s energy mix will rise to 13% by 2040 from 7% now.

Previous Post: The West vs. Africa: Energy Hypocrisy as Seen from Kenya

Suleiman Shahbal writes in Kenya at Standard Media Global warming: Why the West preaches water yet drinks wine.. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A few months ago I was with a group of Kenyan politicians in Abu Dhabi. Hosting us for a cup of coffee was my good friend Abdalla Nassir. Abdalla is a serial entrepreneur who owns 94 businesses, including the coffee shop. His 95th business is a steel mill that he was going to open in Djibouti, targeting the Ethiopian market of 80 million people.

I asked him why not in Kenya; the gateway to the Comesa market of 150 million people, to which he replied that the cost of power in Kenya is more than twice that of Djibouti and Ethiopia. One week later, I read that a glass company in Mtwapa had just closed down, with the loss of over 400 jobs. The reason? The high cost of power.

So what do we do? The quickest solution that everyone would like to come up with is solar or wind power. Both, ‘clean energy’. The problem is, what do you do when it doesn’t shine for three days? Or if there is no wind? You cannot run a hospital hoping for the sun to shine. Those baby incubators or that poor patient being operated on cannot depend on the weather being conveniently agreeable.

We are forced to look for dependable energy or, to use the lingo of the industry, ‘base load’. That leaves you with two energy sources – coal or gas. Coal is the cheapest. Gas prices are closely correlated to oil prices, which are very volatile and expensive. Remember that we have fewer industries and jobs because of cost. We have little choice but to go for the cheaper option. But the world doesn’t like coal. Why?

Affecting forests

In 2004, the world met in Copenhagen and came to the conclusion that global warming was a real threat to the planet. The world resolved not to allow global temperatures to rise above another 2 degrees.

Anything more would lead to catastrophic changes affecting forests, air, water and the environment. All true so far. No one doubts the disaster of global warming. The solution was either for the world to stop making any new coal plants or for the developed world to reduce their emissions by 10 per cent.

The developed world categorically refused. Such a drastic drop in emission would lead to loss of livelihoods and jobs, something they were not willing to take. So, let us force the poor Third World to stop starting such plants. Let the poor make the sacrifices. Who cares if they lose jobs or new companies? That’s why we have such a strong opposition to our coal power.

Shiekh Mohamed Al Maktoum is considered one of the most visionary leaders in the world. After all, he took the desert and transformed it into one of the world’s leading cities. He has all the gas and oil in the world, but he chose to build the Hassyn Coal Power Plant of 5,000 Megawatt. That is five times the one proposed in Kenya.

Do you think he is unwise to use coal when he has all the other alternatives? Turkey, one of Europe’s major economies, gets over 70 per cent of its power from coal and it is building a new one called Karabiga plant of over 1,500 megawatts. South Africa gets over 90 per cent of its power from coal. Do you think all these people are unwise?

Acceptable levels

Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel once said: “there comes a time in every nation when they have to make sacrifices with their conscience and to make hard choices’’. Kenya is now at that cross point. Either we make that difficult choice and use the cheaper coal and create those jobs – or spend another 20 years dreaming of industralisation and job creation. Fortunately for Kenya, over 90 per cent of our power is from clean energy, mainly geothermal and hydro so the world can forgive us for trying to create jobs.

Chemicals can be deadly if used in excess. For example, 500mg of paracetamol (Panadol) will cure you, but 5,000 grams will kill you. That is the logic of chemistry. The same logic applies to all emissions from a coal plant, whether it be sulphur, carbon-dioxide or nitrogen. What is acceptable and what is not? The World Bank has set the standards that are acceptable and the proposed coal plant in Lamu meets all the requirements – and the day they don’t meet those standards then shut it down. No point arguing about the chemicals without stating the acceptable levels.

I am writing this in Lamu and I have to admit that I am one of the promoters of the coal plant. I am from Lamu, my family lives here and no one can claim to love this place more than I do. I would never do anything that would harm my people. However, there is no greater pollution than having millions of our youth remaining jobless and having their ambitions crushed through loss of hope. To quote Golda Meir, we need to make sacrifices with our conscience and bring the cheap power. Even if this annoys our rich friends.

Mr Shahbal is Chairman of Gulf Group of Companies

Summary

So wealthy elites in Europe and North America get to take virtuous postures on the imaginary problem of global warming, while Africans pay the price.  Racism anyone?  They are not asking for reparations, just letting them play by the same rules other nations used to build prosperous and healthy societies.

That is the conclusion reached by seasoned energy analyst Gail Tverberg after asking the question: Do the World’s Energy Policies Make Sense? The article title is a link to her post at her blog Our Finite World. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The world today has a myriad of energy policies. One of them seems to be to encourage renewables, especially wind and solar. Another seems to encourage electric cars. A third seems to be to try to move away from fossil fuels. Europe and others have been trying carbon taxes. There are programs to buy carbon offsets for energy uses such as air travel.

Maybe it is time to step back and take a look. Where are we now? Where are we really headed? Have the policies implemented since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 had any positive impact?

Let’s look at some of the issues involved.

[1]  We have had very little success in reducing CO2 emissions.

CO2 emissions for all countries, in total, have been spiraling upward, year after year.
If we look at the situation by part of the world, we see an even more concerning pattern.
The group US+EU+Japan has been able to reduce its CO2 emissions by 5% since 2005. Emissions were slowly rising between 1981 and 2005. There was a dip at the time of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, followed by a downward trend. A person might get the impression that CO2 emissions for the EU tend to rise during periods when the economy is doing well and tend to fall when it is doing poorly.

The “star” in emissions reductions is the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. I refer to this group as the Soviet Empire. Emissions fell around the time of the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. This big decrease in emissions seems to be related to huge changes that took place at that time. Instead of one country with a single currency, the individual republics were suddenly on their own.

The high point in CO2 emissions for the Soviet Empire came in 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union central government. By 1999, emissions had fallen to a level 37% below their 1990 level. In fact, even in recent years, emissions for this group of countries has stayed low. Much industry collapsed and has never been replaced.

The group that has more than doubled its emissions is what I call the Remainder Group. The group includes many countries, including China and India, that ramped up their manufacturing and other heavy industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the World Trade Organization added members. The Remainder Group also includes many countries that suddenly found new export markets for their raw materials, such as oil, iron ore, and copper. The Remainder countries became richer; they became more able to pave roads and build more substantial homes for their citizens. With all of this GDP-related activity, CO2 emissions increased rapidly.

[2]  Population growth has followed a pattern that is in some ways similar to CO2 growth.

The group that is simply outstanding for population growth is the Remainder Group, with 35% growth between 1997 and 2018. A big part of this population growth comes from improved sanitation and basic medical care, such as antibiotics. With these changes, a larger percentage of the babies that are born have been able to live to maturity.

It is hard to see any bend in the trend lines, showing that recent actions have really changed the course of activity from the way it was headed previously. Of course, the trend is only “linear,” implying that the percentage growth is gradually slowing over time.

This rapidly growing population feeds into the CO2 problem as well. The many young people would all like food, homes and transportation. While it is possible to obtain some version of these desired products without fossil fuels, the version with fossil fuels tends to be vastly improved. Most people prefer homes with indoor plumbing and electricity, if given an opportunity, for example.

[3]  Deforestation keeps growing as a world problem.
High Income Countries keep pushing the deforestation problem to the poorer parts of the world. Heavily Indebted Poor Countries are especially affected. Worldwide, deforestation continues to grow.

[4]  With respect to fossil fuel, there is a great deal of confusion with respect to, “What do we need to be saved from?”

Do we have a problem with too much or too little fossil fuel? We hear two different stories.
Climate modelers keep telling us about what could happen, if indeed we use too much fossil fuel. In fact, the climate currently is changing, bolstering this point of view.

It seems to me that there is an equally great danger of collapse, accompanied by low energy prices. For example, we know that energy production of the European Union has been declining for many years, without the countries being able to do anything about it.

We also know historically that many civilizations have collapsed. The Soviet Empire collapsed in 1991, illustrating one type of collapse. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. Its collapse came after oil prices were too low to allow adequate investment in new oil fields for an extended period of time. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 offers a much smaller, temporary version of what collapse might look like.

What we have been seeing recently is falling prices and prices that are too low for producers. Such a result can lead to collapse if too many energy producers go bankrupt and quit.
If we are in danger of collapse from low prices, renewables would not seem to be of much assistance unless they (a) are significantly less expensive than fossil fuels and (b) can be scaled up sufficiently rapidly to more than replace fossil fuels. Neither of these seems to be a possibility.

[5]  Early studies overestimated how much help renewables might provide, especially if our problem comes from too little energy supply rather than too much.

Renewables look like they would be great from many points of view, but when it comes down to the real world situation, they don’t live up to the hype.

One issue is that while wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other devices for capturing energy are called “renewables,” they are really only available through the use of the fossil fuel system. They are made using fossil fuels. If a part breaks, or if insects eat away the insulation on wires, replacements need to be made using the fossil fuel system and transported by the fossil fuel system. At best, renewables use less fossil fuels than conventional electricity generation. They are dependent on other resources, which may eventually deplete, but which are not a problem at this time.

A second issue is that it is extremely difficult to do a proper cost-benefit analysis on renewables because they can only be used as part of a larger system. They tend to look inexpensive, when viewed in isolation. But when total system costs are viewed, they often are quite expensive.

One difficulty in a proper cost-benefit analysis is the fact that renewables are often at quite a distance from where electricity is to be used, leading to the need for a significant amount of long distance transmission lines. If renewables provide intermittent power, they need to be sized for the maximum output, not their average output. All of these long distance lines need to be properly maintained, or they tend to cause fires. In some instances, burying the lines underground at significant cost is the only solution. Somehow, these higher costs need to be recognized as part of the cost of the system, but this is rarely done.

Another difficulty in a proper cost-benefit analysis is the fact that the intermittency must be overcome, if the electricity is to be of benefit to a modern economy that requires electricity 24/7/365. In theory, a person could greatly overbuild the renewables system and the transmission. This might work, but a person would end up with a large percentage of the system that is not used most of the time, greatly adding to costs.

A third issue is that renewables really need to be “economic” to work. In other words, they need to generate a profit for their owners, when comparing the unsubsidized costs with the benefits of the system. In fact, their owners need to be able to pay fairly substantial taxes to governments, to cover their share of governmental costs as well. If renewables truly were providing substantial benefit to the system, their use would tend to “take off” on their own, because they would be providing “net energy” to the system. Instead, renewables tend to act like “energy sinks.” They need endless subsidies. They can never substitute for fossil fuels. In fact, they can’t even pay their own way.

A related issue is that, because of the high total costs (as well as their lack of true net energy benefits), it is almost impossible to ramp up the quantity of renewable such as wind and solar very high. The EU has been a big supporter of renewables other than hydroelectric. Figure 7 shows a chart of the EU’s own energy production, together with its energy imports.

Figure 7. EU energy by type and whether imported, based on data of BP’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy. Renewables are non-hydroelectric renewables such as wind, solar, and geothermal.

[6]  Looking at the actual outcomes, a person might ask, “What in the world were policymakers really thinking about?”

We are told that the reason policymakers made the decisions they did was because they thought that they could reduce CO2 emissions in this way. Really? If a person really wants to reduce CO2 emissions, it is easy to see how to do it. A person simply has to take steps in the direction of reducing global co-operation. One step would be to reduce international trade. Another would be to get rid of umbrella organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the United Nations and the European Union. In fact, within individual countries, the top level of government could be removed, leaving (for example) the provinces of Canada and the states of the United States. In other words, policymakers could push economies in the direction of collapse.

[7]  The IPCC climate models need to be revisited.

A climate model looks to the past and tries to forecast the future. When the IPCC models were put together, the scenarios about which concerns are raised are based on the assumption that fossil fuel use can grow practically indefinitely. Coal production in particular is seen as continuing at a high level for many, many years, even though world coal production has been fairly flat for several years, and prices tend to be lower than producers require if they are to stay in business.
It seems to me that climate modelers should be considering more reasonable scenarios regarding fossil fuel consumption. One scenario which should be considered is the possible near term collapse of several governmental organizations, such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and the governments of several oil exporting countries. Such a model would be more realistic than one in which energy consumption continues to grow indefinitely.

[8]  The push toward renewables makes little sense without a firmer foundation than currently exists.

Early studies looked only at the cost of renewables themselves, without the cost of extra long-distance grid transportation and battery storage. Such an estimate makes renewables look far more valuable than they really are.

We now have enough experience that we can see what goes wrong. A hydroelectric plant that operates during the wet season in a tropical country may be of little practical use, for example, it there is not fossil fuel energy to provide electricity production during the dry season. The total cost of the overlapping systems is needed, including the need to hire staff year around for both types of facilities. Electricity transmission will likely be needed for both.

There are many other real-world examples that can be examined, before blanket “use renewables” recommendations should be issued. If renewables are not truly very inexpensive (around 2 cents per kWh or less), without subsidies, they are likely not to be long-lasting.