Energy Policies

No Green Energy Future Without Coal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Teresa Mull writes at American Spectator Why ‘dirty’ coal is vital to a ‘clean’ green future. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

‘Any time you have energy, you have to dig something out of the ground’

The under reported truth, however, is that coal is key to the continuation of civilization as we know it. Apart from “providing more than 36 percent of global electricity” and accounting for “nearly one-quarter of the electricity in the United States” (per the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration), coal is necessary in the production of steel and other metals and is used in the manufacturing process of other materials city folk love, including cement. Coal is also critical in bringing about the “green, renewable” future we are told is inevitable (not to mention our first-world luxuries: smartphone batteries, fluorescent lights, computer monitors, etc.).

There are fifty critical minerals and metals in our beautiful black coal, and in the clay beneath needed to produce electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, rechargeable batteries, and so forth. Sarma V. Pisupati, professor of energy and mineral engineering and director of the Center for Critical Minerals at Pennsylvania State University, explains that the United States imports more than 50 percent of forty-three of those elements from other countries, and twelve of those fifty minerals are 100 percent imported.

Such a strong reliance on foreign countries, especially China, which the German Marshall Fund of the United States reports “dominates global critical mineral supply chains, accounting for approximately 60 percent of worldwide production and 85 percent of processing capacity,” is “an urgent matter of national security,” says Pisupati.

Which is where Pennsylvania — and Penn State — come in.

Data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) shows that “abandoned mine problem areas have been identified in forty-three of Pennsylvania’s sixty-seven counties.” Pennsylvania has some 5,000 miles worth of streams that have been polluted by acid mine drainage (AMD). In my own backyard (in Centre and Clearfield Counties), abandoned strip mines, described by our township solicitor as “lunar in nature,” are a playground for us backwoods folk. “The strippin’s” are where teenagers meet up to party under cover of steep high walls, coal refuse (or “boney”) piles and scraggly trees, side-by-side riders rip over rutted roads in packs each weekend and hillbillies sight-in their hunting rifles.

Yet in recent years, these “legacy coal mines,” as Pisupati calls them, have been garnering attention. Not because environmental agencies have seen the light about how important coal is, the strides the industry has made to purify the process, or because they’ve realized that re-mining is sometimes the only way to get to underground water discharges and address them, but because coal and its byproducts are a source of the critical elements necessary for a “greener” future.

“Because the old [pre-1977] coal mines were not under the new regulations, they were left abandoned, and there is a lot of water flowing through those old mines which gets oxidized, and there is a lot of acid coming out of that,” Pisupati says. “That acid actually brings out the rare earth elements and critical elements from the mines, so nature is doing some of this extraction for us. It could be viewed as a blessing in disguise, because right now we are importing these critical minerals from elsewhere.

“Acid mine drainage is flowing through those old mines and polluting our streams, so if we treat them to get these elements out, we’re actually doing a favor, and taxpayers don’t have to pay to clean these waters up if we generate money off of [the pollution]. There is work to be done, but it can be achieved so we can reduce our imports, we can make these materials right here, and we can clean up our environment.”

“Waste” produced from extracting and burning coal is increasingly becoming a misnomer. That “boney,” comprised of low-quality, “junk” coal mounded together with shale, clay, and other materials discarded during the mining process, for instance, is strewn in mountains, or “spoil piles,” throughout the region, “and the fly ash associated with coal-fired power plants are a potential source of critical minerals,” reports Penn State.

At one time, this low-quality coal and boney had no use and was piled up along old mines. Mountains of it literally surround my hometown. But now boney can be used in cogeneration (“cogen”) plants to generate electricity. According to Arnold, cogen plants “use fluidized bed combustors that operate at a lower temperature to capture all the sulfur.”

So if mining coal has the effect of unearthing the rare earth elements we so desperately need to combat “climate change,” and we need coal to make the cement and steel necessary to erect solar panels and wind turbines, and re-mining old abandoned mines offers the opportunity to extract even more rare earth elements while also cleaning up badly polluted lands and waters — the government should be handing out mining permits liberally, right?

“Getting remining permits is not easy,” Pisupati says.

Not only is obtaining a permit an expensive, onerous challenge, but one of the area’s few remaining coal operators likens getting a mining permit to “a criminal sentence.” It used to be that DEP inspectors would work with operators, or as a former operator puts it, “They’d tell me what we needed to do, and we’d do it.” Yet as fossil fuels, and coal in particular, are increasingly demonized, the regulatory rope tightens, unfriendly administrations impose harsh mandates.

And mining coal becomes more of a complicated, extremely costly burden
than the prosperity-generating industry that
helped the US win back-to-back world wars.

“You can’t get anything done with DEP breathing down your neck,” one coal operator tells me. “When you do get it done, it costs four times what it should and takes four times as long. And while green energy doesn’t work, and gets subsidized, we can’t survive without coal — and coal gets taxed like crazy!”

To mine coal, you see, you must first get that permit, which can take months, if not years. The engineering required to apply for the permit could run you in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, before you’ve dug so much as a shovel full of dirt.

Next, you invest millions in heavy equipment (a new Caterpillar 992 loader runs about $1.8 million — you’ll need a couple at each job site), fuel, wages, etc. You have payments on those machines and payroll to meet, so you hope your permit gets issued quickly!

Then the coal operator must post a performance bond, carefully calculated on each cubic yard of dirt he moves, combined with the prevailing price of diesel fuel. After the operator has removed the coal, but before he backfills, he must purchase and add hundreds of tons of limestone per acre to offset the possibility that he has exposed acidic rock that could affect nearby water quality. Meanwhile, his every move is scrutinized, and he is frequently fined by an overzealous career bureaucrat.

Then, if you happen to “touch” water associated with an old mine that predates the 1977 regulations, says Rachel Gleason, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, “You’re responsible for treating it for the rest of its life.”

“Meanwhile,” as an operator remarks, “it’s been making a mess for 100 years.”

Gleason points out that all active coal operations in Pennsylvania are fully bonded to the cost for DEP to reclaim them, to the tune of more than $1 billion. Despite the operators putting up — and risking — so much of their own fortunes, ESG initiatives inhibiting would-be operators’ abilities to get bank loans, and the fact that operators must have a proven track record to be permitted at all, there is “definitely a lot of regulatory uncertainty” that makes it “more difficult to mine, more expensive, and the [regulations] are constantly changing.

“When efforts to shut down industry outright aren’t accomplished,
they try to kill the industry with the strike of a thousand swords.”

“If you take a step forward,” an operator tells me, “the inspectors just want to push you a step back.”

Pisupati acknowledges there are “some gaps still in knowing how much we have, what we have, and where we have [it],” and that more exploration is needed to find the highest concentrations of critical elements. He says we “definitely need a project like the Manhattan Project to get out of this import-reliance situation.”

We also need to raise awareness to “every walk of life that they are using these rare earth elements in their daily life and to educate them about their importance and dependency [and how extracting them] can revitalize the entire region that is affected by abandoned coal mines,” Pisupati adds.

As for awareness, one coal operator offers this as a starting point: “Any time you have energy, you have to dig something out of the ground,” he says. “But you never see a billboard with a windmill up top and a coal mine underneath saying, ‘We’re getting our rare earths out of here for this windmill!’”

 

 

The rules of Energy Transition Club

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Irina Slav lists the rules strictly followed by leaders of the Great Energy Transition at her substack Irina Slav on Energy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

We call them climate crusaders, climateers, a cult, and other, less polite words. Essentially, however, the transition leadership is a club and I only say this because I’m in a good mood this week, seeing as the local case of global boiling has ended for the year.

Like every club, Transition Club has rules and we all must give its members top marks for following these, not least because following these rules is often quite challenging. Here’s why.

Rule #1: We do not talk about the problems. (Unless we absolutely have to.)

The IEA this week made its fans happy by releasing a new report that said the world needed to replace and build 50 million miles of transmission lines to make the transition work.

This would only take $600 billion annually by 2030, which is double the current investment rate for transmission lines. For context, the global transmission line network is half the length the IEA says we need right now.

The expansion needs to take place by 2040 because Climate Targets. In other words, the world needs to double its transmission line network in a matter of less than 20 years… after it took a century to build all the lines we currently have. Realistic, right?

In fairness, the IEA does hint that there might be a slight problem with securing all of the raw materials necessary for this enormous undertaking. It absolutely had to admit it, what with miners crying shortage all the time, annoying people. But that cannot stop the transition. Else we get global broiling.

Rule #2: Facts are obsolete. Only the transition matters. (Until facts punch you in the face.)

The UK government had a plan to replace gas heating systems in homes with hydrogen. It even scheduled local trials to see if it would work. I know, that’s almost unheard of in transition circles but they did.  Following massive opposition from the target community, the government ditched the trial plan and started mumbling that maybe hydrogen for heating is not such a marvelous idea.

The facts: hydrogen — green hydrogen, that is — is expensive.
All hydrogen is also dangerous, which makes
the green variety even more expensive.

At the time the plans were made, these facts were shunned. The opposition of the locals in the village of Whitby, however, prompted their return to the scene, ultimately leading to this piece of news: Hydrogen for UK home heating should be ruled out, says infrastructure adviser

Summed up, the match between facts and fantasy in hydrogen sounds like this, per the FT: ““We do not see any role for hydrogen in the future of home heating,” said Nick Winser, NIC commissioner, arguing it was “simply not ready at scale” and risked being an inefficient use of green electricity.”

Rule #3: Tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it

Okay, this one is from a quote and here’s the whole quote:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

It kind of feels I can add nothing constructive to this description of the climate change narrative, especially if you consider the source, which appears to be (though not verbatim, I understand) a little book called Mein Kampf. I mean, if a tactic was tried in one context and it worked splendidly, you can totally make it work in another, and I’m not being ironic. The tactic does work.

It’s only too bad “the State” cannot shield the people from
the consequences of the lie for very long.

In Europe, we are witnessing in real time how the consequences, from which governments have been unable to shield their populations, are causing a turning political tide, with voters electing parties that do not prioritise the transition.

Land area required for wind farms to power London UK.

Rule #4: If it’s failing, double down

The countries with the greatest wind and solar power generation capacity in the EU also have some of the highest electricity prices. This is a mystery to absolutely no one with rudimentary mental acuity. And yet the billions continue flowing into wind and solar. And then, once a gas crunch hits, they start flowing into households.

Wind and solar clearly cannot work at the scale their fans want them to work. It is physically and financially impossible for them to make sense at that scale at this point in time. The evidence is there on a daily basis, courtesy of Electricity Maps and, I’m sure, other real-time tracking websites.

Transition Club has no truck with evidence, however, unless it’s the right kind of evidence, such as record-setting wind/solar output for some day or another. The rest is dismissed as irrelevant, disinformation, or simply ignored. And the billions keep flowing because there are targets to be hit in wind and solar installations. Whatever it takes.

Rule #5: Words and numbers are weapons

Old but gold and put to good use by the Club. All the talk about global boiling, the highway to hell, the accelerating extreme weather, the climate catastrophe and all the rest of it are water to the Transition Club agitprop mill. It keeps the lie going.

Numbers are even better: from the 99% of climate scientists who are in agreement about the climate and related catastrophies to all the CO2 emission updates and the horrific temperature readings from this summer we get actual numbers that stoke up fears that the planet is dying and we’re on our way out with it unless we kill the oil and gas industry and go full-wind/solar.

Or unless we check how the authors of the 99% consensus study came to their conclusion and what their sample size was, what the significance of those emission updates is for the total content of CO2 in the atmosphere, and how those temperatures were measured during the summer.

Rule #6: Questions are denial

This rule evolved organically from following all the others and sprouted actual disinformation laws, at least in the EU, for now, and not-so-official reporting rules for the media that require the climate narrative to be reported as fact despite evidence to the contrary, said evidence being dismissed as science denial and denialist propaganda, even when — and perhaps especially when — it comes from actual scientists.

Apparently, these days there are two kinds of scientists,the right and the wrong kind.
The wrong kind are those asking questions,  even though
science is by definition a process that involves a lot of question-asking.

Per the Oxford Dictionary science means “the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.”

Not in the transition era, it doesn’t. In the transition era, there is a right kind of observation and computer modelling to replace experimentation and testing of theories against evidence. Then there is the wrong kind, which is any systematic study of the physical and natural world that questions the right kind, using evidence.

Glory be to the transition.

AFP “fact check” of Clintel Climate Declaration.

 

Biden’s Mad Dog EPA Gone Rogue

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mario Loyola explains at Real Clear Wire EPA’s Illegal Power Play.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

EPA’s Ambitious Gambit to Reorganize America’s Electricity

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA last year was a historic defeat for the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only did the Court rule that the 2015 Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s signature climate regulation, was unconstitutional; it also dramatically limited EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA) moving forward.

That left the agency with two courses of action. It could take its lumps and focus on proposing regulations with a high chance of surviving federal court review. Or it could stake everything on a final desperate attempt to decarbonize America’s power sector, and go for the win in keeping with President Biden’s commitment to net zero carbon emissions.

On May 23, 2023, EPA chose the latter, proposing carbon emissions standards
for power plants far more ambitious than those
struck down by the Supreme Court last year.

Like other EPA climate regulations, the proposed emissions standards under Section 111 of CAA are not designed to reduce emissions from standard power plants, but rather to force a rapid transition away from reliable and affordable sources of dispatchable power—natural gas and coal—to intermittent renewables and new kinds of power plants that don’t even exist yet. Together with EPA’s electric vehicle mandates, the proposed rule would be a train wreck for the American electricity grid and society as a whole, endangering economic competitiveness and energy security while yielding no measurable climate benefit.

Those hoping for a dramatic finish to Biden’s climate action will not be disappointed: the proposal has so many legal vulnerabilities that it would be a miracle nightmare if the rule survives federal court review.

Under the proposed rule, which President Biden hopes to finalize by next summer, large new or modified natural gas plants and existing coal plants would be required to virtually eliminate carbon emissions by 2038, at the latest. Under Section 111(a) “New Source Performance Standards” (NSPS), large new or modified combined-cycle natural gas plants, which currently supply roughly 30% of the nation’s electricity, would be required to achieve close to zero carbon emissions, either by implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS) to capture 90% of carbon emissions by 2035, or by switching from natural gas to 98% “green” hydrogen co-firing by 2038. In addition, under Section 111(d) emissions guidelines, existing coal plants, which currently supply more than 20% of America’s electricity, would be required to virtually eliminate carbon emissions by implementing CCS by 2035.

Interestingly, EPA declined to promulgate NSPS for coal plants because, as it explains, there are no plans to build any new coal plants in the U.S. It declined to promulgate emissions guidelines for existing natural gas plants out of concern for feasibility. Even more interesting, when EPA sent the proposed rule to the White House for regulatory review under E.O. 12866, it contained no emissions guidelines for existing plants at all, and therefore would not have applied to coal plants at all. The White House reportedly sent it back to EPA with orders to put a Section 111(d) rule for existing coal plants in the proposal. This suggests that EPA itself is not very confident in the ability of the Section 111(d) rule to survive court review.

Section 111 of CAA, the same provision at issue in West Virginia v. EPA, authorizes EPA to mandate “the degree of emission limitation achievable through the application of the best system of emission reduction which (taking into account the cost of achieving such reduction and any nonair quality health and environmental impact and energy requirements) the Administrator determines has been adequately demonstrated.”

Section 111 sets a high bar, especially after West Virginia v. EPA. The proposed rule falls woefully short. It has at least three major legal vulnerabilities, any one of which would be sufficient for a court to strike the rule down.

First, neither CCS nor green hydrogen is anywhere near “adequately demonstrated” within the meaning of Section 111.

Second, EPA has systematically ignored crucial costs and impacts that it is required to take into account in setting emissions standards under Section 111.

Third, like the “best system of emission reduction” struck down in West Virginia v. EPA, the new rule would require sweeping regulatory action and infrastructure investments entirely outside the fence line of the regulated facilities, thereby raising the “major question” doctrine’s presumption against the agency’s interpretation of the law.

The Mandated Technologies Have Not Been “Adequately Demonstrated”

Contrary to the unambiguous pronouncements of the D.C. Circuit, EPA treats Section 111 as if it were a technology-forcing provision throughout the proposed rule. For example, EPA claims that CCS has been “adequately demonstrated” for natural gas plants based on small-scale demonstrations at coal plants. But the coal demonstrations cited involve only small slipstreams (carbon captured from a small percentage of the plant’s total emissions) for use in the food industry. Moreover, the coal plant demonstrations do not involve the sophisticated combined-cycle configurations of large natural gas plants—in which the exhaust from the primary combustion cycle is used to heat the steam generator of the second cycle—that the new standards focus on.

In the several hundred pages laying out the proposed rule, EPA provides just two examples of demonstrations at natural gas plants. One, at Bellingham, Massachusetts, captured only a 10% slipstream and closed in 2005 because it was not economical. That was a decade before the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, in which EPA correctly rejected CCS as inadequately demonstrated and too costly. The other, a project at Peterhead, Scotland, is still in planning and may not even be built. Neither can be used as the basis for an adequately demonstrated BSER.

Furthermore, EPA’s CCS mandate would require a massive buildout of carbon transport and storage infrastructure, which has not been adequately demonstrated and would require sweeping investments and regulatory changes by developers and government authorities unrelated to the entities subject to regulation under Section 111 of CAA. Like the measures “beyond the fence line” of regulated entities that were struck down in West Virginia v. EPA, this massive infrastructure buildout would be beyond the ability of EPA-regulated entities to implement.

Co-firing with low-carbon hydrogen is even further from being adequately demonstrated. Nearly all hydrogen today is produced using carbon-intensive methods. Indeed, electrolysis from renewable and nuclear power produces only trivial quantities, and EPA doesn’t even bother to estimate the cost, feasibility, or time it would take to build out the vast amount of new renewable and nuclear power capacity that would be needed to make the low-GHG hydrogen a practicable option for power plants.

In short, neither CCS nor “green” hydrogen co-firing meets the Section 111 legal standards of “adequately demonstrated” BSER.

EPA Has Ignored the Proposed Rule’s Costs, as well as Its Health, Environment, and Energy Impacts

In determining that a technology is “adequately demonstrated” under Section 111, EPA must take into account the costs of the rule, as well as the health, environment, and energy impacts of the rule. Courts have interpreted this as requiring that costs be reasonable. That poses a threshold problem for EPA’s proposed rule because EPA can point to no measurable environmental benefit that would result from compliance. EPA has based all its greenhouse gas regulations on the same original 2010 Endangerment Finding, which has serious problems of its own, as William Happer and Richard Lindzen note in their July 2023 comment letter to the proposed rule. It has not been demonstrated that the sources subject to the rule make a significant contribution to a condition of air pollution that endangers human health, and the finding mentions the 2021 Technical Support Document on Social Cost of Carbon only in connection with a regulatory impact analysis that is unrelated to the requirements of CAA. Under such circumstances, there is a threshold question of whether any significant costs could be reasonable.

There are other problems with EPA’s estimate of costs and impacts.

First, its estimate of costs is highly speculative. The rule would affect a host of entities and government authorities across the whole society, the vast majority of them not subject to regulation under CAA, and EPA has little clue as to how they will adjust to the rule. If its cost estimates are off by any significant amount, regulated entities could well react by shuttering, rather than attempting to comply, which would create a situation of dangerous energy scarcity with skyrocketing prices. In parts of the country where fossil energy is restricted as a matter of policy, such as California, the electricity grid is on the verge of dangerous blackouts almost every evening in the summer.

And those restrictions are modest, compared with those now contemplated by EPA.

EPA’s most egregious failure to properly account for costs is that it subtracts the amount of federal subsidies from the cost estimate, a nominal reduction of $369 billion based on CBO’s score. That figure will likely turn out to be much greater, given the subsidies’ lack of date-certain sunset.

As for the impact on electricity prices, EPA estimates that the rule would lead to a price increase of 13%. That is almost certainly a woeful underestimate. In California, where a much milder form of renewable energy mandate has been in place for years, end-user electricity costs are twice the national average. The costs of compliance with the new rules could be far more exorbitant. As further explained below, CCS would reduce the power output of the relevant plants by at least 30%, while green hydrogen would likely be three to four times more expensive to produce and deliver as current demonstrations using natural gas.

 Given the number of factors outside EPA’s expertise and jurisdiction that would
determine how much time and money all that infrastructure would cost,
EPA’s estimates are little more than conjecture.

The Power Plant Rule Raises the Same “Major Question” as in West Virginia v. EPA

The Court held that EPA’s interpretation raised a “major question” and that, in the absence of clear congressional authorization, the claimed power exceeded EPA’s statutory authority. The Court noted that EPA’s approach to BSER allowed it to set emissions standards at whatever level the agency wanted, regardless of whether any regulated entity could feasibly comply with the new standards. The Court noted that the Clean Power Plan would result “in numerical emissions ceilings so strict that no existing coal plant would have been able to achieve them without engaging in [generation-shifting].”

EPA’s new power plant rule relies on a similarly expansive definition
of BSER to establish standards that can be met only
by shifting generation away from fossil sources.

The only way that regulated sources could comply with the rule would be if states or utilities (or other developers) would build a major interstate infrastructure for CCS and “green” hydrogen, including tens of thousands of miles of specialized pipelines, massive underground storage facilities for CO2, and large-scale facilities for the production and transport of hydrogen gas from renewable sources. Whether to develop such infrastructure is a decision totally beyond the control of regulated entities.

 The claimed power would regulate a significant portion of the American economy,
entails political impact of great significance, and intrudes on matters
that are the traditional domain of the states.

EPA’s Persistent Usurpation of Congressional Authority

EPA’s efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources represent a dangerous overreach of executive power. Congress never authorized EPA to regulate greenhouse gases in this expansive manner. By trying to reorganize the country’s electricity-sector limits through executive fiat, rather than the legislative process, EPA is abusing its authority and circumventing democracy.

Net zero climate policy raises novel issues that affect every American citizen
in almost every aspect of modern life. Policy requiring such
transformative change should be left to Congress.

 

Africa Hurting from Climate Policies Not Climate Itself

Posted on by Ron Clutz

CO2 and COPs

Following the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi this month, I am reposting a pertinent article regarding the world of hurt caused by misguided governmental policies driven by CO2 hysteria.

This is a fourth post toward infographics exposing the damaging effects of Climate Policies upon the lives of ordinary people.  (See World of Hurt Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3 )  And all of the pain is for naught in fighting against global warming/climate change, as shown clearly in the image above.  This post presents graphics to illustrate the fourth of four themes:

  • Zero Carbon Means Killing Real Jobs with Promises of Green Jobs
  • Reducing Carbon Emissions Means High Cost Energy Imports and Social Degradation
  • 100% Renewable Energy Means Sourcing Rare Metals Off-Planet
  • Leave it in the Ground Means Perpetual Poverty
The War Against Carbon Emissions Diminishes Efforts to Lift People Out of Poverty

world-population-in-extreme-poverty-absolute
The OurWorldinData graph shows how half a billion people have risen out of extreme poverty in recent decades.  While much needs to be done, it is clear that the world knows the poverty factors to be overcome.

wellbeing improves

That comprehensive diagram from CGAP shows numerous elements that contribute to rising health and prosperity, but there is one resource underlying and enabling everything:  Access to affordable, reliable energy.  From Global Energy Assessment: 

“Access to cleaner and affordable energy options is essential for improving the livelihoods of the poor in developing countries. The link between energy and poverty is demonstrated by the fact that the poor in developing countries constitute the bulk of an estimated 2.7 billion people relying on traditional biomass for cooking and the overwhelming majority of the 1.4 billion without access to grid electricity. Most of the people still reliant on traditional biomass live in Africa and South Asia.

The relationship is, in many respects, a vicious cycle in which people who lack access to cleaner and affordable energy are often trapped in a re-enforcing cycle of deprivation, lower incomes and the means to improve their living conditions while at the same time using significant amounts of their very limited income on expensive and unhealthy forms of energy that provide poor and/or unsafe services.”

The moral of this is very clear. Where energy is scarce and expensive, people’s labor is cheap and they live in poverty. Where energy is reliable and cheap, people are paid well to work and they have a better life.

adb fig.1
adb fig.2
adb fig.3
adb fig.4
adb fig.5
adb fig.7

How Climate Policies Keep People Poor

Note that the vision for 100% access to electric power was put forward by the African Development Bank in 2016.  (Above slides come from The Bank Group’s Strategy for The New Deal on Energy for Africa 2016 – 2025).  Instead of making finances available for such a plan, an International Cabal organized to deny any support for coal, the most available and inexpensive way to electrify Africa.
ieefa coal restrictionsThis is an organized campaign to deny coal-fired power anywhere in the world, despite coal being the starting point in the development pathway for every modern society, and currently the success model for Asia, and China in particular.  [Note in Figure 3 above that South Africa, the most advanced of African nations gets the majority of its power from coal.] The chart above comes from IEEFA 2019 report Over 100 Global Financial Institutions Are Exiting Coal, With More to Come.  Their pride in virtue-signaling is expressed in the subtitle:
Every Two Weeks a Bank, Insurer or Lender Announces New Restrictions on Coal.

How Climate Policies Waste Resources that could Improve Peoples’ Lives

The Climate Crisis Industry costs over 2 Trillion US dollars every year, and is estimated to redirect 30% of all foreign aid meant for developing countries into climate projects like carbon offsets and off-grid wind and solar. 

A much better plan is put forward by the Copenhagen Consensus Center.  A panel of social and economic development experts did cost/benefit analyses of all the Millenium Goals listed by the UN working groups, including climate mitigation and adaption goals along with all the other objectives deemed desirable. They addressed the question: 

What are the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing  countries, illustrated by supposing that an additional $75 billion of resources were at their disposal  over a 4‐year initial period?

These challenges were examined:

  1. Armed Conflict
  2. Biodiversity
  3. Chronic Disease
  4. Climate Change
  5. Education
  6. Hunger and Malnutrition
  7. Infectious Disease
  8. Natural Disasters
  9. Population Growth
  10. Water and Sanitation

CCC budget

Imagine how much good could be done by diverting some of the trillions wasted trying to bend the curve at the top of the page?

 

 

Biden Nanny State Coming At You

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Krebs exposes federal shenanigans in their war on home appliances in his Master Resource article Update: DOE Appliance Minimum Efficiency Standards.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“It started with gas cooking.  It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can. Basically, what we’re witnessing is the energy equivalent of ethnic cleansing. I’ve been saying this for years but now it should be obvious.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the Biden Administration has significantly accelerated the pace of minimum appliance efficiency rulemaking. With this acceleration, there has been a marked decrease in DOE’s analytical quality and transparency. The purpose of this update is to summarize:

  1.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products

2.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Products; Boilers

3.  Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Water Heaters

Note: In DOE-speak, the term ‘consumer’ means non commercial/industrial, or just residential.

Part 1: Consumer Cooking Products

On April 27, 2023, MasterResource published DOE vs. Gas Cooking: A Review of Critical Comments. On August 2, 2023, DOE reopened the docket with a “Notification of data availability and request for comment (NODA) with comments due September 1. More than 100 comments were filed.

Some commenters viewed the NODA and relatively short (30-day) comment period as a violation to the Administrative Procedures Act codified by 5 U.S.C. § 551(5)–(7) and the DOE’s “process rule” codified by 10 CFR 430 Appendix A to Subpart C. One such commenter making this case was the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

Other comments privided detailed content in opposition of DOE’s proposal for consumer cooking products.  My comments addressed what has changed since DOE determined (in 2019) that additional efficiency mandates for gas cooking appliances is not justified. In short, Biden happened. With that change, DOE resorted to a longstanding bias that any amount of net positive cash flow (greater than zero) on average was sufficient economic justification. I cited AHAM’s press release “Gas Cooking Appliances Remain at Risk Despite New DOE Data” for this NODA that succinctly justified what that amount now is:

“The revised data reduces consumer savings to just 9 cents per month.”

I contend no one would freely elect to invest in anything with that kind of return-on-investment (ROI). Additionally, 9 cents per month is far less than the uncertainty range within DOE’s economic calculations.  Besides, DOE’s economic calculations typically low-ball increased maintenance costs and over-inflate fuel costs (among many other biased input assumptions).

What else has changed is that DOE cost-effectiveness now includes highly controversial benefits from reduced climate change allowed by grossly inflated social cost of carbon (SCC) avoidance and health benefits from improved indoor air quality (IAQ).

Part 2: Consumer Boilers

On September 12, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential boilers. A 59-page slide deck for that meeting is here. (If you have never read one of these slide decks, I urge you to do so. It’s a relatively painless way of getting familiar with the ‘administrative state’ going about its business of picking winners and losers.)

There were many participants representing manufacturing interests that would be adversely impacted by DOE’s proposal, and they were quite vocal about it (in a professional way of course).  But why would manufacturers want to litigate? DOE would put some of them out of business. 

Part 3: Consumer Water Heaters

On September 13, 2023, DOE held a public webinar to go over its proposal for increased minimum efficiencies for residential water heaters that lasted 3 hours. A 74-page slide deck for that meeting is here. There were nearly twice as many participants on line compared to the number of webinar participants the day before for consumer boilers; and many of the participants represented water heater manufacturers, some of which would be devastated if DOE’s proposed mandates were finalized.

One manufacturer that stood out in this regard was Rinnai America. Rinnai is the sole manufacturer of non-condensing tankless water heaters in the U.S. Rinnai’s President stated, as I recall, that DOE’s proposed ban of non-condensing water heaters would shut down Rinnai’s new factory that cost $70 million. That, of course, would devastate the many involved.

Conclusions

DOE has been (ostensibly) ‘improving’ appliance efficiency for nearly a half-century. The low hanging fruit is long gone. In many cases, DOE is doing more harm than good and using unfair tactics to maintain control and reward its minions. What we have now is relentless self-serving “mission creep” of the administrative state and its “useful idiots” that forces consumers to fund the erosion of viable energy alternatives. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act is greatly aiding and abetting this forced transformation away from free market forces.

DOE doesn’t care what it costs to litigate. After all, DOE has the backing of the Department of Justice for such matters. In my opinion, DOE has strayed too far from any redeeming virtue that may have originally existed from the 1975 passage of EPCA. It’s past time for Congress clean up the mess it created by enacting EPCA and the numerous ambiguous loopholes that gives undeserved deference to the administrative state to interpret. A valid question is whether EPCA (and DOE for that matter) should be salvaged or scrapped.

Biden’s DOE wants to eliminate alternatives to electricity. 

This fixation became apparent to all with their planned elimination of gas cooking and ran head-on with consumers that hold gas cooking near-and-dear. Consumer preferences for gas cooking was and is a major obstacle to control via societal electrification overall. As this article hopefully conveys, it started with gas cooking. It will end with getting gas out of homes and business entirely, If they can.

Postscript:

The Department of Energy (DOE) quietly promoted a top adviser to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to a senior role overseeing home appliance regulations after he failed to clear Senate confirmation.

The DOE announced last week that Jeff Marootian was appointed to be the principal deputy assistant secretary of the agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The appointment came days after the White House withdrew his name from consideration to lead EERE as the office’s assistant secretary.

While Marootian’s nomination failed after Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed him over the Biden administration’s crackdown on natural gas-powered stovetops, his appointment last week makes him the effective chief of the DOE’s EERE office.

More complete discussion on appliance war at Fox: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/experts-warn-biden-admins-water-heater-crackdown-hike-prices-reduce-consumer-choice

 

IMF Mad Hatters’ Notion of Hydrocarbon “Subsidies”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

The recent IMF updated report on fossil fuel subsidies took on the appearance of the Mad Hatter’s tea party (Alice in Wonderland) when you look into what is claimed to be subidizing hydrocarbon energy.  Robert Lyman explains the tricks and dishonesty running through this ongoing narrative against conventional energy sources, while ignoring the massive taxpayer direct funding of wind and solar power.  His Financial Post article is Most fossil-fuel ‘subsidies’ aren’t actually subsidies.  Excerpts later on with my bolds and added images.  But my overview of the context for these remarks.

Context–Back to Basic Terms

Climate activists and renewables lobbyists are acting like Mad Hatters, twisting language and logic to pursue their agendas. Let there be some common sense injected here.

A subsidy would be when the government takes money that has been taxed, borrowed, or printed, and pays it to some company like Solyndra to do something that the market does not support. Often these subsidies subsidize technologies that do not exist and may never exist (and they say WE ignore the laws of physics.)

In contrast, a tax reduction is NOT a subsidy. A tax credit says an industry gets to keep more of its own money that it has produced selling a product people want and need in the free market.

There is a huge difference between a law that lets you keep more of your own money; and another law that actually gives you someone else’s money. The two are not the same thing. Actually, the oil industry pays higher taxation rates than other industries and subsidizes the government with the billions it pays in taxes, not the other way around.

There are also billions more in economic benefit to the nation from the jobs they create and the increased mobility and productivity people enjoy by using our transportation system based on hydrocarbon fuels.

The Big Lie:  IMF counts not charging companies the full costs of global warming
as a subsidy. Common sense says it isn’t

Economists are used to having their terminology misinterpreted, co-opted and misused, usually in the interests of politics. One of the most common words to suffer this fate is “subsidy.” The Gage Canadian dictionary defines a subsidy as “a grant or contribution of money, especially one made by a government.” Economists would agree with that definition. Governments, on the other hand, rarely acknowledge that they subsidize anything. They “invest” — though, curiously, they seldom refer to the rate of return on their investments.

I was reminded of all this by the news last week that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published an updated version of its 2015 Working Paper on global and country-level subsidies for fossil fuels. According to the paper, total global subsidies “surged to a record $7 trillion last year,” equivalent to 7.1 per cent of world GDP. The paper’s authors estimate that scrapping these subsidies would: prevent 1.6 million premature deaths annually, raise government revenues by $4.4 trillion and put emissions on track to reaching official global warming targets. An annex to the report indicates that in 2020 Canada’s subsidies to fossil fuels were US$64 billion, or 3.8 per cent of GDP.

The paper’s extraordinary findings are almost entirely the result of how it defines “subsidy.”
It divides subsidies to fossil fuels into “explicit” and “implicit” subsidies.

Subsidies Wordplay

Explicit subsidies are the kind economists and ordinary people would recognize as subsidies: grants to cover some portion of the costs of production, as well as tax incentives and deductions (e.g., capital cost allowances) to fossil fuel producers for such things as investing in exploration and development.

By contrast, “implicit” subsidies are defined as “under-charging” producers for the environmental costs they generate from their exploration and production activities and consumers for perceived environmental costs not adequately covered by various consumption taxes (e.g., sales taxes, value-added taxes and carbon taxes).

So when, for instance, a country fails to impose a consumption tax high enough
to cover the perceived costs to society of climate change, congestion or
local pollution, the paper would classify that as a subsidy.

The working paper indicates that explicit global subsidies were US$450 billion in 2020, or six per cent of the total. Most of these are actually so-called tax expenditures: tax credits or deductions for investments in high-risk exploration and development activities, similar to those provided to firms in other sectors of the economy.

94% of Hydrocarbon “Subsidies’ Actually “Externalties”

That leaves the 94 per cent of subsidies that were what the paper refers to as “externalities.” Let’s be clear. Externalities are not subsidies. They are a cost or benefit of an economic activity that affects a third party not directly related to that activity. The cost is not always evident, nor is it clear by what mechanisms such costs and benefits should be shared. While the paper does not break down the percentages attributed to externalities, its 2015 predecessor estimated that the costs of global warming were 37 per cent, local air pollution 13 per cent, congestion 32 per cent, vehicle accidents five per cent and road damage two per cent. In effect, the paper is arguing that not making the fossil fuel industry pay the full cost of global warming constitutes a subsidy to the industry. The same for its not paying the full cost of local air pollution or of traffic congestion or road deaths, and so on. Attribution of any of these costs to fossil fuels is highly questionable, but one obvious question is why fossil fuels are to blame for road congestion. If all vehicles were electric, would there be no congestion?

The vast majority of what the paper calls “subsidies” thus relate to charges not imposed for the harmful external effects of consuming fossil fuels, especially in oil-producing countries that choose to impose lower excise and sales taxes on gasoline and other fuels. The paper finds that East Asia and the Pacific regions account for almost half of total global energy subsidies. In effect, the report concludes that the prices of energy should be substantially raised for the world’s poor. This, of course, was not noted in the media summaries of the paper.

The paper did not explain how it calculated Canada’s 2020 subsidies to fossil fuels but, given its general analysis, one can only assume it was based on the judgment that fossil fuel costs to consumers were not high enough. But in 2018, total taxes on gasoline alone were roughly $24 billion. One has to wonder how the IMF’s math figures that this, and the more recent increases in carbon taxes, still constitute under-charging for externalities.

A final difficulty with the IMF paper is that it excludes any consideration of the positive externalities from reliance on fossil fuels. They are the most secure, affordable, storable, and reliable energy sources we have, and the ones upon which the remarkable advances in the global economy over the last century have been based. That is well worth bearing in mind as we consider the meaning of “subsidy.”

Summary

The Mad Hatters turn things upside down. Society is subsidized and made wealthy by fossil fuels, not the other way around. Some of that wealth is being diverted to renewable energy companies who do not create enough value to be in business without direct payments of tax dollars. They prove it by declaring bankruptcy when their subsidies are reduced.  Worse, hooking up wind and solar intermittent power to electrical grids adds more cost and unreliability than the renewable power is worth.

Read More about Energy Subsidies Abuse

The Appalling Truth About Energy Subsidies at Euan Mearns

Renewable Energy Cost Explosion: €25,000 euros for each German family of four  Daniel Wetzel, Die Welt (translation by GWPF)

What’s an Oil Subsidy? Heritage Foundation

Net Subsidy Analysis: A Better Way to Assess Government Energy Policy MasterResource

Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power Brookings Institution

Killing the Energy Goose Science Matters

At its prime, the Carrizo Plain (S. California) was by far the largest photovoltaic array in the world, with 100,000 1′x 4′ photovoltaic arrays generating 5.2 megawatts at its peak. The plant was originally constructed by ARCO in 1983 and was dismantled in the late 1990s. The used panels are still being resold throughout the world.

At its prime, the Carrizo Plain (S. California) was by far the largest photovoltaic array in the world, with 100,000 1′x 4′ photovoltaic arrays generating 5.2 megawatts at its peak. The plant was originally constructed by ARCO in 1983 and was dismantled in the late 1990s. The used panels are still being resold throughout the world.

 

Climate Initiatives

Green Energy Grinding to a Halt

Image | Posted on by Ron Clutz

Green Energy Activists are hitting hard realities, as summarized by Jonathan Lesser at New York Post Why wind and solar power are running out of juice.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images

Green energy and the push to electrify everything have been in the news recently but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of the green energy nirvana politicians and green energy advocates have promised, economic and physical reality has begun to set in.

Painful Green Economics

Start with the economic realities of Wind Energy

The result: Even while Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch insists that “energy transition without wind energy does not work,” 2022 saw 16% less new wind-power capacity than in 2021, according to the American Clean Power Association.

Wind turbine manufacturers like Siemens and General Electric have reported huge losses for the first half of this year, almost $5 billion for the former and $1 billion for the latter. Among other problems, turbine quality control has suffered, forcing manufacturers such as Siemens and Vestas to incur costly warranty repairs.

In Europe, offshore wind output has been less than promised, while operating costs have been much higher than advertised. Offshore wind developers in Europe and the US are canceling projects because of higher materials and construction costs.

In Massachusetts, Avangrid, the developer of the 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind project paid $48 million to get out of its existing contract to sell power to ratepayers. That way, the company can rebid the project next year at an even higher price.

Close by, the developers of the 1,200 MW SouthCoast Wind Project off Martha’s Vineyard will pay about $60 million to exit their existing contract.

Rhode Island Energy, the state’s main electric utility, recently rejected the second Revolution Wind Project because the contract price was too high.

And Ørsted, the Danish government-owned company that is developing the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off Long Island — as well as the Ocean Wind project off the New Jersey coast — last week announced that, without additional subsidies and higher contract prices, it will have to write-off billions of dollars in potential losses.

In New Jersey, the legislature passed a law in July, which is likely unconstitutional, to bail out Ørsted. The legislation will award the company with several billion dollars of investment tax credits that were supposed to go to consumers.

Few Hosts for Land-Gobbling Wind and Solar Projects

Back on dry land, opposition to siting land-gobbling wind and solar projects continues to grow.

Local governments in Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio have all rejected or restricted projects. Rural communities, it seems, do not want to host massive turbine farms — nor the high-voltage transmission lines needed to deliver electricity to power-hungry cities.

Electric Vehicles Leaking Money

Then there are electric vehicles.

Ford, which has bet heavily on its electric Lightning pickup and Mustang and received a $9.2 billion government-subsidized loan in January, revealed that it has lost $60,000 for every EV it sold in the first half of this year.

Rivian, another EV company, managed to reduce its losses per EV to around $33,000, a big improvement over the $67,000 loss per EV in the first quarter of the year.

Proterra, a Bay Area-based manufacturer of electric buses and batteries that had a $10 million loan forgiven by the Biden Administration, just filed for bankruptcy.

Alternative Energy Madness

Like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, alternative energy proponents claim these are just temporary little potholes on the road to economic and climate nirvana — all of which can be filled with more money through renegotiated power purchase contracts and more zero-emissions mandates.

Alternative energy madness – and that’s what it is – has had its biggest impact in California.  But New York and New Jersey have adopted most of that state’s mandates.

Sales of new internal combustion vehicles will be banned beginning in 2035 in the states. All of the electricity sold to retail consumers will have to be “zero-emissions.”

Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps.   And, gas stoves will be regulated out of existence.

Carbon Taxes Draining Wallets

New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon “cap-and-invest” program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities.  The billions of dollars collected each year will provide a green slush fund, allowing the governor and legislators to hand out money to their politically favored cronies, as has so often been the case in the past.

Washington State began its “cap-and-invest” program in January of this year.  Modeled after California’s, Governor Jay Inslee promised the program would have “minimal impact, if any. We are talking about pennies.”

Instead, the program has raised gasoline prices – almost 50 cents per gallon so far this year. Washington State now claims the honor of having the highest gasoline prices in the nation: In Seattle, for example, the average price of regular gasoline is over $5 per gallon.

Of course, the entire point of the program was to raise gasoline and fossil fuel prices to encourage consumers to switch to electric vehicles, mass transit, electric heat pumps, and so forth.

But politics being what it is, Governor Inslee, along with environmentalists and legislative proponents, now blames greedy oil companies for the price increases.  ‘We won’t stand for’ corporate greed,” the Governor said at a July 20, 2023, press conference.

Once New York’s cap-and-invest program starts, probably next year, you can expect a similar outcome: higher gasoline and diesel prices, higher prices for natural gas and fuel oil used to heat homes and apartment buildings, and endless political demagoguery denouncing it all.

And Basic Physics Stand in the Way

As the push toward electric-everything powered by green energy barrels along, proponents also refuse to confront basic physical realities.

Electricity accounts for just one-sixth of all energy use. The rest is fossil fuels consumed for transportation, space and water heating, and manufacturing. Convert everything to electricity and electricity consumption will increase. A lot.

According to the New York Climate Action Committee’s Final Scoping Plan, New York will meet that increased demand by building almost 15,000 MW of offshore wind, like the Southfork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, and over 40,000 MW of solar panels. (By comparison, the emissions-free Indian Point Nuclear Plant, which former Governor Cuomo forced to close, had a capacity of just over 1,000 MW.)

Because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, keeping the lights on will require far more backup resources. This “reserve margin” – basically, the amount of generating capacity available to step in and meet electric demand – will need to increase from the current 20% to over 100%.

In other words, for every MW of generating capacity in 2040,
there will have to be an equal amount or more in reserve.

That’s like having to buy a second car and keep it idling all the time in case the first one won’t start. The Scoping Plan claims this will be accomplished by building over 20,000 MW of so-called “dispatchable emissions-free generating resources” (DEFRs) and installing over 12,000 MW of battery storage.

Transition Plans Depend on Green Fantasies

Those claims are fantasy.

Start with DEFRs, which are generators that burn pure hydrogen manufactured from surplus wind and solar power. They have yet to be invented (we repeat – they do not yet exist). Nor do any large-scale commercial plants to manufacture green hydrogen exist either.

Hydrogen cannot be transported in existing natural gas pipelines. An entirely new infrastructure will need to be built.

Assuming a new technology will be invented by whatever date politicians decree is foolish. That’s not how technology works. Just ask everyone working on commercial fusion power, which has been just 30 years off for the last 50 years.

As for battery storage, 12,000 MW will provide at most 48,000 megawatt-hours of actual electricity. That may sound like a lot but based on the New York Independent System Operator’s (NYISO) most recent forecast, on a windless and cold winter evening in 2040, it would keep the lights on for only one hour.

The materials requirements for batteries also are staggering, which is one reason why replacing existing internal combustion cars and trucks will be impossible. Batteries require large quantities of cobalt, much of which is now mined in the Congo using child and slave labor. They also require lots of graphite, most of which comes from China – the same with the rare minerals needed for wind turbines and solar panels.

Much Pain for a Drop in the Bucket

Ultimately, nothing New York does will have any measurable impact on world climate because the state’s carbon emissions are minuscule compared to the 35 billion metric tons of total global emissions. As long as China, which accounts for almost one-third of world energy-related carbon emissions, India, and other developing nations focus policies on economic growth, rather than cutting emissions, New York’s efforts will have no environmental value.

Nuclear Energy Denial

Nevertheless, if politicians and environmentalists were serious about zero-emissions goals, they would abandon the electrification mandates, and abandon reliance on wind, solar, battery storage, DEFRs, green hydrogen, and other unrealistic and unreliable energy sources.

Instead, they would embrace the one existing technology that dare not speak its name: nuclear power. Unlike wind and solar, nuclear plants run all the time. New, small modular reactors will offer greater safety, lower costs, and easy scalability to meet increased electricity demand.

Storing spent fuel is a political issue, not a technological one, for which the best solution is to recycle and reuse it, as France has done for the last half-century without incident. The country is also developing a permanent storage site for nuclear waste that can no longer be reprocessed.

The economist Herb Stein once quipped that anything that cannot go on forever, won’t.

That’s true of New York’s current alternative energy madness.
It won’t save the world, but it will grind down the state’s economy
and its residents until the folly is too great to ignore.

Jonathan Lesser is the president of Continental Economics and an adjunct fellow with the Manhattan Institute.

 

Time to Ban EVs

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Fremantle Highway cargo ship burns uncontrollably in the Netherlands’ waters after a major fire erupted onboard. The vessel carried about 3,000 vehicles, including 25 EVs, from Bremerhaven (Germany) to Port Said (Egypt). The ship has been abandoned and is expected to sink. July 26, 2023

Stephen Moore makes the case in his BPR article Is it time to ban electric vehicles?.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images

The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, “There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes.” The resulting fire is “very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous.”

Not only cars: Lithium bicycle batteries are responsible for 22 fires in New York, 2 deaths this year (Feb. 24, 2023)

Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs and other devices.

A fire ignited at an e-bike shop and killed four people near midnight on the morning of June 20. Two individuals were left in critical condition. The fire commissioner has warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible.

FDNY also reports that in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City. It’s happening all over the country as these blazes have become commonplace. Cars and e-bikes are randomly blowing up in driveways and garages.

NYC going after pizza oven emissions. You’d have to burn a pizza stove 849 years to equal one year of John Kerry’s private jet

Now let’s be honest: 13 deaths in a city the size of New York with some 8 million people is hardly an epidemic. Regulations should always be based on a cost versus benefit calculation, or there would be no cars at all.

And yet the same scaremongers on the left who have zero tolerance and want bans for small risks when it comes to everything from swimming pool diving boards, gas stoves, plastic straws, vaping, fireworks and so on, have a surprisingly high pain threshold when it comes to people dying or suffering critical injured from “green” electric battery fires.

1960 Chevrolet Corvair

Or consider this: In 1965, Ralph Nader almost single-handedly helped ban the popular Chevrolet Corvair — famous for its engine placed in the back trunk of the car. Nader’s bestselling shock book “Unsafe at Any Speed” declared the car was deadly. But there was no real evidence of that claim, and to this day there are no reliable statistics on how many passengers — if any — died in Corvairs from rear-end accidents.

What is indisputable is that EVs will cause far more deaths than Corvairs ever did.

One other example: There have been more fatalities in just one city in a single year from lithium-ion batteries in cars than all the people who died from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident — which was zero.

Yet, after the accident, thanks to the environmentalists’ fear campaign (with the help of the blockbuster anti-nuke movie “The China Syndrome”), no domestic nuclear plants were built for three decades. That is despite the fact that nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases.

But with EVs, the greens are pushing aside any concerns about the collateral damage of deaths and injuries. Biden wants to mandate that nearly ALL new cars sold in the U.S. be EVs by 2032. If that happens, many thousands of Americans may die or will be inured from electric vehicle fires.

All this is especially hypocritical because once upon a time the left’s mantra was “no trading blood for oil.” Now they are willing to trade blood in exchange for getting Americans to stop using oil. An irony of all this is that because of all the energy needed to produce windmills, solar panels and electric batteries, new studies are showing that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to this “net zero” transition is close to zero. It turns out, green energy causes some pollution, too.

For the record, I’m not in favor of the government banning EVs or e-bikes or just about anything. I just believe that we should make policy decisions based on real and factual risk assessments, not false scares and sensationalism.

As for the future of EVs, maybe it’s time for Ralph Nader
to write a sequel to “Unsafe at Any Speed.”

Australians: Look Hard Before Leaping

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Peta Credlin exposes the radical plans of Australian politicos in her Spectator video ‘Insanity’: Cost of net-zero energy policies becoming clearer.

For those prefering to read the commentary, below is a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.

In the Sunday papers I highlighted the growing Insanity of closing down coal-fired power stations when there’s no reliable alternative supply. And the fact that the Albanese government is planning to bring the same emissions obsession that’s given us some of the world’s highest power prices to other sectors of the economy.

Like housing, like farming meaning the food on your table, and like transport. It is a real worry these so-called sectoral plans, emission specific plans for each industry sector. Well they’re now being drawn up by the Climate Change Authority as part of the government’s ambition to announce yet more emissions reductions for 2035 on top of the 43 % they’ve already legislated for 2030.

Gas Stoves just the thin end of the wedge.

So that means:

♦  smaller herds and higher meat prices;
♦  bans on gas cooktops and heaters;
♦  forcing people to swap to expensive electric cars or use only public transport.

And the cost of these policies is finally becoming clearer. Ten days ago a group of experts Net Zero Australia have estimated the cost of getting to a 43 % reduction by 2030, as I said already legislated, will cost us 1.5 trillion dollars, that’s trillion with a t, not billion. These are experts from Melbourne, Queensland University and Princeton in the US. Now 1.5 trillion dollars is two-thirds of our annual GDP and this report says we need to find that in order to achieve these legislated targets due in just seven years time.

And that’s assuming that it’s actually feasible to build all the renewable energy required and all those extra transmission lines to get this decentralized intermittent power around to where we need it.  Now forget for a moment that Labor’s 83 % renewable energy target makes scant provision for Backup,  backup for when the wind doesn’t blow and of course the sun doesn’t shine. But we still need power 24/7.

Not only is this climate Crusade ruinously expensive,
but it’s also going to be Mission Impossible.

Australians might be broadly in favor of cutting emissions to do something about climate change, but it’s far from clear that we’re ready to pay all the extra costs. And it’s certain that more and more people are unhappy about what this means for them in practice.

We need somewhere between 10 to 28 000 kilometers of these new transmission lines. Towers some of them up to 80 meters tall, as high as the pylons on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. All built through national park lands or across prime agricultural land for Labor’s green dream to work. And as you’ll hear a little later on the show, Australian Farmers well you’re on the carpet despite some of the bribes being offered up to two hundred thousand dollars per kilometer for individual land holders.

Now that’s one of the reasons why the Hume link, just one of these new transmission lines is way behind schedule and already three billion dollars over budget. But without these new transmission lines, Hume Link in particular, well Snowy 2.0 is already years behind schedule and billions over budget. it just won’t work

I’ve been saying this for years, and you’ve been saying it as well: This is energy Madness. Why on Earth are we spending billions and billions of dollars in borrowed money just to take us back to the Dark Ages. It beggers belief.

A costly expansion of the Snowy hydro power storage scheme rests on transmission upgrades to succeed. (Supplied: Snowy Hydro)

 

Left Coast Closes the Dam Lights

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Klamath River flows by the remaining pieces of the Copco 2 Dam after deconstruction in June 2023. Juliet Grable / JPR

Triumphal headlines like this report the Klamath River news With one down, Klamath dam removal proceeds on schedule.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Removing the Copco 2 Dam takes deconstruction crews one step closer
to drawdowns of the remaining three reservoirs next January.

The first of four hydroelectric dams along the Oregon-California border has been removed from the main stem of the Klamath River. All that remains of the dam known as Copco 2 in Siskiyou County, California, is the headworks of a diversion tunnel adjacent to the now free-flowing river.

When complete, the overall project will be the biggest dam removal in U.S. history and will reopen 400 miles of fish habitat that was cut off for more than a century.  Deconstruction activities on Copco 2 will continue until September. Getting this first dam out of the way takes deconstruction crews one step closer to drawdowns of the remaining three reservoirs next January.

From CBS News:    The project, estimated at nearly $450 million, would reshape the Klamath River and empty giant reservoirs, and could revive plummeting salmon populations by reopening habitat that has been blocked for more than a century.  The proposal fits into a trend in the U.S. toward dam demolition as these infrastructure projects age and become less economically viable. More than 1,700 dams have been dismantled nationwide since 2012.

The structures at the center of the debate are the four southernmost dams in a string of six constructed in southern Oregon and far northern California beginning in 1918. They were built for power generation, and none has “fish ladders,” concrete chutes fish can pass through.

Two dams to the north are not targeted for demolition. They have fish passage and are part of a massive irrigation system that straddles the Oregon-California border and provides water to more than 300 square miles (777 square kilometers) of crops.

Those farmers won’t be directly affected but worry the demolition will set a precedent.

Good for the Salmon and Indigenous Fishermen, but what about the Lost Power?

Congressmen LaMalfa and Bentz draw the practical implications of this action in their press release Klamath Dams are Engines of Energy and Economic Reliability   September 29, 2022

A statement highlighting the importance of hydropower energy in the West
and opposing the removal of the four Klamath hydroelectric dams.

“Hydropower is the oldest source of renewable energy in the United States and accounts for nearly a third of total U.S. renewable electricity generation. Hydroelectric dams play a critical role in the resiliency of the West’s electrical grid, the preservation of our landscape, flood control, the creation of space for outdoor recreational activities, and many of these dams assist in the delivery of water to farms for agriculture production. Hydropower is a win for the environment, domestic energy production, and economic development in rural areas.

So why is hydropower under attack? Because some outlier environmental groups have claimed that dam removal is necessary for fish health, even though these dams provide stored water for fish in low water years and the needed cold water for fish in hot summers.

Residents in the Klamath Basin in Southern Oregon and Northern California know about this struggle because of the proposed Klamath River dam removal – the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. For decades, PacifiCorp (the owner of the dams), local municipalities, tribes, agriculture producers, and conservationists have gone back and forth arguing the benefits and drawbacks of the four Klamath Dams – Copco #1, Copco #2, Iron Gate, and J.C. Boyle.

Dam removal advocates claim the dams block salmon and steelhead spawning and rearing habitat in the Upper Basin, even though their only science is a questionable Master’s thesis. These advocates have conveniently avoided discussions of other factors that have caused salmon and steelhead populations to decline, such as overfishing, pollution from forest fires, a marginal population in a warm river, and disease.

They irresponsibly ignore the immense amount of sediment behind each dam, and how releasing it will impact water quality and river health, including the years long decimation of the very salmon runs they claim to want to protect. Nor have they considered how dam removal will affect other wildlife species who reside near the river and in the reservoirs, such as Canada Geese, sandpipers, Western Pond Turtles, and crayfish. It is essential that the conversation regarding dam removal consider the big picture, how this action will affect the Basin’s entire ecosystem and the people who live there, rather than base solutions solely on hypothetical scenarios for salmon.

Those who support keeping the dams know the true benefits they bring to the area. The Klamath River Hydroelectric Project generates, annually, enough low-cost, reliable power for 70,000 households. The dams provide good-paying, technical jobs and are the largest single private taxpayer in the county of Siskiyou. The reservoirs created by each dam are critical to the area’s firefighting efforts, ground water recharge, pulse flows for clearing debris, and flood control.

Removing hydroelectric dams from our energy grid will drive up energy costs,
decimate local jobs, and increase dependency on oil and natural gas
– something both California and Oregon have opposed.

The proper and best position on these dams is crystal clear: hydropower provides renewable, cheap energy to our power grid around the clock. It’s unconscionable that so-called environmental advocates are forcing dam removals across the West without the scientific evidence to back up their ideas, and no acknowledgement of the catastrophic consequences that could occur from these actions.

As the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission advances the removal of four dams on the Klamath, and elsewhere across the West, we must continue the fight to protect these engines of energy and economic reliability.”

Summary

The zero carbon juggernaut rumbles on, chewing up pieces of modern society’s energy platform.  Even dams are removed despite their essential baseload power stabilizing the grid, with no carbon emissions. Meanwhile, gas and coal supply infrastructure is constrained and allowed to decay, with no chance wind and solar will make up the difference in reliable affordable power.