Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Top politicians such as Economics Minister Robert Habeck and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz play down the issue of deindustrialization. Habeck describes it as a mere buzzword that does not do justice to reality. Scholz sees the warnings about deindustrialisation as nothing more than scaremongering. But the politicians’ assessments are at odds with what is actually happening in many industrial companies.
The automotive supply industry in Germany is facing challenges that are increasingly prompting it to think about investing abroad. According to a survey by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), one in three automotive suppliers is considering relocating planned investments from Germany to other countries, reports the Blackout News.
This development is worrying and is seen by experts as a warning signal for Germany as a business location. The reasons for this are manifold and range from bureaucratic hurdles to high energy costs (Welt: 02.11.23).
One-third of automotive suppliers are considering foreign investments due to bureaucracy and high energy costs
Automotive suppliers consider foreign investment due to bureaucracy and high energy costs
One of the main reasons why automotive suppliers are considering relocating investments abroad is the bureaucratic hurdles they face in Germany. The high administrative burden and regulatory requirements make it difficult for many companies to invest in Germany. This leads them to look for other locations that offer less bureaucratic obstacles.
Another important factor is the high cost of energy in Germany. Rising electricity prices are putting a strain on companies and reducing their competitiveness. To remain competitive, some automotive suppliers are considering investing in countries with lower energy costs.
Investment Goals Abroad and the VDA’s Appeal
The survey shows that the main destinations for investment abroad are mainly other EU countries, followed by Asia and the US. However, for some companies, shifting investments is not the only option. Around 14 percent of those surveyed said they would cancel planned investments altogether.
In view of this development, the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) appeals to the German government and politicians to take measures to make Germany more attractive as a business location. In particular, the focus is on reducing energy costs for industry and strengthening competitiveness abroad.
Automotive suppliers in Germany fear further deterioration of the situation
The survey also shows that around a quarter of SMEs expect the current economic situation to deteriorate further in the coming year. These concerns reflect the uncertainty and challenges facing the automotive supply industry in Germany. It remains to be seen what measures politicians will take to keep Germany attractive as a business location for companies and to promote domestic investment.
This fascinating story finally brings together everything that scientists have learned about the origin of polar bears, in clear language that non-scientists will understand: not just when and where the species arose, but exactly how it happened and why the bears were able to survive repeated cycles of sea ice change, some of unimaginable magnitude. The book includes a detailed account of the fossil evidence, recent hybridization events between brown bears and polar bears, and summaries of more than a dozen genetic studies that have been done on these bears to determine the most plausible time and place for the origin of polar bears.
For the first time, a biological mechanism explains how this rapid transformation from a brown bear ancestor could have happened. Thyroid hormone, essential for countless coordinated body functions including stress responses, the growth of embryos, and the activation of critical genes, seems to have played a vital role in the vast majority of all speciation events. A testable theory based on thyroid hormone not only explains how polar bears came to be but does the same for domestic dogs, flightless birds like the dodo, and extinct dwarf species like Homo floresiensis aka “The Hobbit” from Flores Island, Indonesia.
If you’ve ever wondered whether polar bears could have arisen more than once or if hybridization with brown bears really did play a significant part in polar bear evolution, this book is for you. It also explains how polar bear biology and behavior have been fine-tuned by natural selection, adapting the species to the highly dynamic Arctic environment of the late Pleistocene, which included interglacial times when sea ice was scarcer than it is today. This book is more than the complete story of polar bear origins: it’s a big-picture account of how evolution works for most organisms. It’s a fascinating story that deserves to be a staple in your home library.
I have reduced prices on all formats of my Polar Bear Evolution book for four weeks starting today (8 November-6 December 2023), in time for holiday gift-giving. The ebook version has the largest price reduction (60% of regular price, to US$17.40) but the other discounts are also substantial. This sale is a time limited offer: don’t miss out! Links below.
The author of Polar Bear Evolution, Susan Crockford, is a good, credentialed scientist. Her writing is clear; her thinking is also. She has a broad understanding of biology and an informed paleo perspective. Crockford condenses a very large literature on polar bear biology and evolution in this book which will help readers understand the science related to the evolution of an Arctic species. Perhaps the most important aspect of this book is its synthesis of information from the fields of wildlife biology, molecular evolution, paleontology, and climate. Her original ideas and hypotheses on thyroid hormone’s role in evolution are very important and add a credible mechanism of phenotypic change which complements the literature on molecular genetic evolution. Polar Bear Evolution is an important contribution to science and its application in evolutionary biology and wildlife biology. Matthew A. Cronin, Ph.D.
Available at the links below (others also available):
Free the People’s mission is simple—to make the values of liberty entertaining, accessible, and human. Free the People deliberately explores issues that bridge the partisan divide—topics like criminal justice reform, health care choice, and opposing corporate cronyism. We produce documentary films, video web series, and podcasts that illuminate the people and ideas changing the world for the better. We reach audiences across the political spectrum as a rational but passionate voice for liberty.
Free the People specializes in video production, creative storytelling, and social media engagement. We are building a community of people who believe in the values of freedom, entrepreneurship, individual responsibility, choice, and peaceful cooperation. Free the People finds and tells stories of people affecting positive change in their community through entrepreneurship and innovation. We defend free choice in everything from drug policy, to health care and retirement, to every aspect of the sharing economy. Our values, like “equal treatment under the law” and “innocent until proven guilty,” animate fights for criminal justice reform. We tell the stories of people who have lived through the hardships of authoritarianism and collectivism throughout history. We show our viewers that beautiful things can happen when free people come together to make the world a better place.
Are computerized climate simulations a sufficient basis for attributing observed warming to human CO2? With the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.
“By now, it’s some people’s job, if not personal vocation, to enact these rituals of denunciation simply because it helps prop up the green corporate welfare….” (Holman Jenkins, below)
Holman W. Jenkins, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, is a straight-shooter on many things climate, including the blanks fired from alarmist science. Yes, he defends a CO2 tax, which is considered a “moderate” position within the climate-industrial complex. (Even Homer nods.) But his November 3rd column was powerful.
Jenkins latest column coincides with a new book by Javier Vinos, Climate Puzzle: The Sun’s Surprising Role, summarized at Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.[1] And the climate intelligentsia is upset with such upstream distractions when the downstream of their campaign, Net Zero, is on its last legs. Climate science? We are still stuck in 1980s, sorry to say, when it comes to climate sensitivity and the ecological impacts of anthropogenic warming.
———————————-
Here are some quotations from Jenkins’s recent article, “The Earth is Warming, but Is CO2 the Cause?” His inspiration was an incident where some top science and scientists ran afoul of Big State Science.
If this column has ever plagiarized itself, it’s by repeating the phrase “evidence of warming is not evidence of what causes warming.” A paper published by the Norwegian government’s statistical agency, written by two of its retired experts, touching on this very subject has called forth so many shrieked accusations of climate apostasy that you know it must be interesting.
The authors ask a simple question: Are computerized climate simulations a sufficient basis for attributing observed warming to human CO2? After all, the Earth’s climate has been subject to substantial warming and cooling trends for millennia that remain unexplained and can’t be attributed to fossil fuels.
As statisticians, their conclusion: “With the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.”
Wow. For all the abuse dumped on them for this modest observation…. The correlation-to-causation puzzle is hardly the authors’ invention, having bedeviled the oracular Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its founding in 1988.
But unrestrained name-calling is required, the critics say, because anything that undermines confidence in climate models undermines progress against climate change…. Since we’re using abstruse calculations of an annual average global temperature to validate the climate models, it matters if these calculations—based on disparate instruments and unstable sampling frequencies and a variety of “proxies” for times and places when no measurements were taken—are accurate and meaningful….
I’ve long argued that if a future climate scandal is lurking, it’s here. A spirit of disingenuousness already pervades NOAA’s use of these numbers to make “hottest year” and “hottest month” proclamations, ignoring its own stated margin of error, which is often a large multiple of the claimed temperature difference from one period to the next.
Something beyond hysteria, though, explains the continued reliance on the no-longer-plausible idea that ritually attacking every expression of skepticism moves the ball on climate policy. By now, it’s some people’s job, if not personal vocation, to enact these rituals of denunciation simply because it helps prop up the green corporate welfare….
As long as we’re noting ironies, much of the abuse of the Norwegian authors comes from their fellow Norwegians, whose pretense of green virtue is funded by their country being, per capita, one of the biggest exporters of oil and gas the world has ever known.
Reaction
The intellectual bodyguards for climate alarmism are out in full force. Andreas Rasche, Professor and Associate Dean at Copenhagen Business School, stated:
Shocking to see that well-respected media outlets like the The Wall Street Journal still publish climate denialism in 2023. On the other hand, also not surprising: WSJ belongs to News Corp which again is owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.
News Corp has been sowing confusion and doubt around climate change through its various media outlets for some time.
Of course, everybody is entitled to her/his opinion. But there is a difference between opinions and facts…
I responded: “Ad hominem reveals a dearth of argument and attempt to shut it down. Remember Climategate? Let’s debate…. And don’t think you have all the answers and ‘the science is settled’.”
One of the dismayed stated: “Long past time such blatant promotion of harmful fossil trade by denial of the dangers were considered criminal.”
Really? By the way, Climategate’s 14th anniversary is right ahead–a good time for alarmists to read some unvarnished emails and revisit the scientific method.
————-
[1] Vinos states: “… a large body of evidence supporting that changes in the poleward transport of heat are one of the main ways in which the planet’s climate changes naturally. It also shows that changes in solar activity affect this transport, restoring the Sun as a major cause of global warming. Since climate models do not properly represent heat transport and the IPCC reports completely neglect this process, this new hypothesis will not be easily dismissed.”
The urban heat island (UHI) was first described by Luke Howard in 1833 for London, England. Urban area air temperatures are almost always warmer than their rural surroundings, especially at night. Thus, the average human experiences warmer temperatures than they would if they lived in wilderness conditions.
This has nothing to do with global warming, and would occur even if there was no long-term ‘global warming’. In fact, since over 50% of the Earth’s population now lives in urban areas (expected to increase to nearly 70% by 2045), the temperatures humans actually experience would continue to break high temperature records even without climate change. For reference, the following plot shows the increase in global population between 1800 and 2023.
Our new global gridded UHI dataset allows one to compute just how much warmth (vs wilderness conditions) the average person experiences merely because most people live where human settlements cause localized warming. The following plot shows my computed ‘demographic warmth’ (during June, July, and August) experienced by the average human and how it has changed since 1800. For comparison I’ve also plotted the area-average temperature departures from the 1885-1984 average of the land portion of the HadCRUT4 thermometer dataset.
What can one conclude from this plot? At a minimum it shows humans choose to live under warmer conditions just by living in densely populated areas — and increasingly so. I will leave it up to the reader to decide if it shows anything beyond that. Note that this does not include the effect of (for instance) the migration of the U.S. population from colder to warmer latitudes, which would show an additional source of demographic warming. The warming shown by the red curve is only for urban effects relative to wilderness conditions at the same location.
Now, don’t be confused about what this means regarding the UHI impact on the thermometer measurements — that’s a different subject. All this shows is an metric of human-centric experienced warmth, not a thermometer-centric estimate of how much warming from the thermometer network can be attributed to UHI effects. The UHI effect on air temperature is due to a variety of processes associated with human settlements, such as replacement of vegetation with buildings and impervious surfaces and generation of waste heat that change the daily energy budget of those locations. Our UHI dataset simply approximates all of those processes using population density as a proxy, a choice made for us by the fact that it is the best (and possibly only) long-term dataset that exists to analyze the UHI problem.
The renewable energy industry is in full collapse mode this week. First, Orsted A/S, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, abandoned two major US projects due to supply chain and interest rate impacts, and now solar stocks are being clubbed like a baby seal in US premarket trading on Thursday after solar equipment-makers SolarEdge and Sunrun reported dismal guidance amid waning demand.
Keep cranking up power prices and watch your economy slowly disappear. Subsidised wind and solar guarantee the former and the latter simply follows.
Every country that has tapped into the so-called wind and solar transition is suffering from power prices that are simply out of this world. Australia is a case in point.
Having just been whacked with 20-30% increases in their power bills – on top of increases of between 10-20% in retail power prices that took effect throughout the financial year – many Australian households and businesses will see a 50% jump in their power bills in less than 12 months.
And yet, Labor party apparatchiks reckon that the solution to the unfolding disaster is simply more of the same; much, much more. As Nick Cater explains below.
Labor’s renewable ‘investments’ are just blowing in the wind The Australian Nick Cater 6 November 2023
The floundering offshore wind turbine industry received some welcome news from Australia last week with a strong hint from Jim Chalmers of more sugar on the table for renewable energy.
The promise of what the Treasurer euphemistically called “more decisive action across all levels of government” is a sign of increasing desperation as the government’s emissions-reduction timetable falls hopelessly behind.
The giant boring machine crawling beneath the Snowy Mountains is an apt metaphor for the government’s progress towards its 2030 target. Both projects were based on heroic assumptions, neither were adequately surveyed, and both have turned into giant sinkholes for capital that could be better spent elsewhere.
It will be little comfort to know that ours is not the only government to discover that the carbon challenge cannot be overcome simply by setting targets.
Joe Biden’s dream of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines by 2030 is in tatters after a string of cancelled projects. Last week, Danish wind energy company Orsted dropped two projects that would have installed more than 200 giant turbines off the New Jersey coast. Orsted’s stock has fallen 60 per cent this year and The New York Times estimates it will have to write off billions of dollars in investments in the two projects. Orsted is not the only company encountering headwinds.
Britain’s target of 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 can only be met with substantial subsidies and revenue guarantees. The Swedish company Vattenfall abandoned a giant offshore wind project off the Norfolk coast earlier this year, blaming a 40 per cent rise in costs. The latest auction for offshore wind licences failed to attract a single bid.
Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, BP’s head of low-carbon energy, told a Financial Times conference on Wednesday that the US offshore wind industry was “fundamentally broken” and required a “fundamental reset” to help the nascent market grow. Mounting problems included approval delays, long timelines and escalating interest rates that have caused financing costs to soar.“There’s really not a Plan B right now,” environmentalist Jeff Tittel told the New York Times. “It’s a political disaster.”
Enter Energy Minister Chris Bowen who told the Asia Pacific Offshore Wind and Green Hydrogen Summit in August that Australia had big ambitions for offshore wind. “We aren’t just building an industry from scratch,” he said. “We are building an industry in which we want to be a world leader.”
Bowen has announced five offshore wind zones in the past year, with a sixth between Bunbury and Perth expected to be formally announced this month.
The numbers, sprinkled like fairy dust in the minister’s press releases, are too silly to believe. The Hunter, Illawarra and Southern Ocean zones alone will provide enough electricity to power 16 million homes, according to the minister. In a country of 9.7 million households, that would be impressive if it were true, rather than a scribble on the back of an envelope.
We are told that the energy capacity of the five offshore wind zones in the eastern states will be 43GW. That means constructing 5400 turbines with a boilerplate capacity of 8MW, or one a day for the next 15 years. On a conservative installation cost assumption of $US1.3m a megawatt, that would require a capital investment of $86bn.
“We need you,” Bowen told the industry gathering. “We need your capital. We need your investment. We need your experience.
“The Australian government is deadly serious about our journey to become a renewable energy superpower.”
Reducing emissions is not as easy as Labor seemed to assume when it announced its 82 per cent renewable-energy target two years ago. The construction of onshore wind, grid-scale solar and transmission lines has fallen way behind the government’s timetable. Offshore wind, with its long lead time and significant capital costs, is an even larger challenge.
Yet building the extra generation capacity to meet the government’s 2030 target is only the beginning. The additional power that would be needed to manufacture green hydrogen on an industrial scale has barely been discussed. Yet the amount is considerable.
Plans for the proposed renewable energy hub in Gladstone, Queensland, for example, include a facility to export 4MT of green hydrogen a year. That would require 110GW of renewable energy capacity, according to a presentation by Gladstone Ports Corporation chief executive Craig Haymes at a recent engineering conference. It means an extra 10,000 wind turbines or 2500sq km of solar panels, an area the size of Fraser and Mornington Island combined.
Some attendees thought Haymes may have been trying to can the project by putting the figures on the table. Yet in a statement, the Corporation said Haymes had merely wanted to illustrate “the potential for renewable energy for Queensland and the opportunities this presents”.
Green hydrogen is at a nascent stage. It is an inefficient and hazardous way of storing electricity, and there is no serious industrial demand. It comes with huge capital constraints.
Yet governments in the US, Europe and Australia are investing billions of dollars of seed capital into hydrogen produced by renewable energy without a care in the world as to where the energy will come from.
In a speech to The Australian’s Economic and Social Outlook Conference last week, Chalmers flagged a “uniquely Australian” revamp of energy policy to prise an extra $225bn in capital from the hot little hands of private investors. He promised measures in the 2024-25 budget “to get private capital flowing towards our priorities effectively and efficiently”.
The hubris in this statement bodes poorly for our future prosperity. Diverting the flow of such huge sums of private capital to government pet projects, however noble the intentions, is the road to economic ruin. The investors withdrawing from renewable energy projects are responding to price signals. Private investors have a keen nose for snake oil. They are trading off costs and benefits and assessing the technical feasibility of projects with rigour this government has failed to match.
“Australia is, to be honest, a bit like the kid who forgot to study for an exam early in the process and is pulling all-night study sessions,” Bowen told the August conference. “But now we are working 24/7 to catch up.”
The tragedy is that Australia was gifted the chance to learn from the mistakes of others. Bowen’s obstinacy comes at a price. The Australian
The large and brilliantly-colored monarch butterfly is among the most easily recognizable of the butterfly species that call North America home. They have two sets of wings and a wingspan of three to four inches (7 to 10 centimeters). Their wings are a deep orange with black borders and veins, and white spots along the edges. The underside of the wings is pale orange.
It is time for the Great Journey South for the Monarch butterflies of North America. The super-generation of monarchs, who are the great-great-grandchildren of the monarchs that left overwintering sanctuaries along the coast of California in the United States and the Monarch Biosphere Reserve in central Mexico last spring, are on the move and have almost completed their incredible journey. The orange arrows on the continental map show the direction of travel in the fall of the year. The yellow areas are where monarchs are traveling from, an area extending all the way north into Canada. The majority of the monarch east of the Rocky Mountains travel south and west to arrive at the very geographically small area of the Monarch Biosphere Reserve in south-central Mexico. Yet there is some small population that stays in southern Florida and along the Gulf Coast, breeding and living as they do throughout the year.
West of the continental divide, some, but not all, of the monarchs gather in roosts along the coast of California, from San Luis Obispo north to Big Sur country. Some of the western population has been found traveling south to the Mexican Biosphere Reserve. And some of the western population doesn’t migrate anywhere at all, but just keeps in living in southern-most California.
For those curious as to what exactly happens to signal monarchs to start the migration, it is reported that when “the solar angle at solar noon (SASN) drops below 57 degrees, the date at each latitude” is “ when we can first expect to see directional flight indicative of the migration.” [ source ]
So, like many other things, it’s the Sun.
The Mexican agency that does the Monarch count in Mexico, in conjunction with the World Wildlife Federation, produces the data for this chart for monarch populations overwintering 2022-2023. There are so many butterflies, all bunched together, that an actual count is impossible, so they produce a figure that is in hectares of trees covered with monarchs, “estimates range from 10 to 50 million monarchs per hectare”.
And for the winter just past (2022-2023)? 2.21 hectares (5.5 acres) or between 22 million to 110 million monarch butterflies. Far better than the worst year on record (2013-2014) which had only 0.67 hectares (1.6 acres).
The Master of All Things Monarch, Chip Taylor, founder of Monarch Watch recently published two blog posts on the “whys and wherefores” of the monarch butterfly:
If you are interested in monarchs and their story, the two blog posts above are required reading.
This year’s southern migration is reporting good news, but it is truly too early to tell how many butterflies will make it to the monarch biosphere. The dependencies are weather and feeding opportunities: includes storms, local droughts (which reduce nectar sources), high adverse winds, heavy rains, etc. Texas reports seeing lots of monarchs:
The yellow circles show where the monarchs are bunching up….the Texas bunch really moves down through Mexico, but there are few reporting observers there. The Southern California group (including some of those in Southern Arizona) will either 1) move a little more north along the coast until they are above San Luis Obispo and roost for the winter, or 2) move a bit south of Los Angeles and spend the winter breeding as normal. We can also see the grouping in southern Florida, where monarchs can happily live all year long.
In the west, there was good news this past spring:
While totals were down, it is reported that this was the result of winter storms in California (which, you will recall, ended California’s long-term drought). You should ignore the dim grey line, it is the number of sites monitored and not a trend line of monarch population. Still, the count reveals that the stunning, unbelievable recovery from 2020-2021’s feared near-extinction event was not just a fluke but a strong resurgence in overall population. The Xerces Society, for reasons I cannot fathom, reports the above chart as bad news.
There will be some more up-to-date news about monarchs in the western population in the Thanksgiving count, which will run from 11/11/23 – 12/3/23, and the New Year’s count will run from 12/23/23 – 1/7/24. Readers living out west can participate: https://westernmonarchcount.org/
We usually only see information coming out of Mexico well after the New Year.
I am looking forward to good news.
# # #
Authors Comment:
I have been following this topic for years and you can read my other essays here.
I write about monarchs just because I like them and am fascinated by their migration behavior as a species – the reasons for which remain a mystery.
If you are interested, there are ways in which you can help maintain and improve monarch populations such as planting native milkweeds in your garden and urging states, counties and cities not to mow roadsides where milkweeds flourish.
Renewable energy companies are struggling with supply chain issues and the impact of high-interest rates, leading to reduced guidance and missed earnings. SolarEdge and Enphase are among the S&P 500’s worst performers this year, falling more than 70% each. Residential solar companies SunPower, Sunrun, and Maxeon have all declined more than 55% to 70%, as well.
The general US S&P shares index gained 15% this year but The Invesco Solar ETF (Fund) which invests in solar energy stocks around the world — fell by a dire 40%. Even the US “Inflation Reduction Act” couldn’t save the solar sector. As finances tighten with rising interest rates, apparently solar panel orders are among the first to be cancelled.
Some of the worst performers in the whole US share market are solar shares, with SolarEdge and Enphase losing 70% each this year. A few weeks ago, the CEO of SolarEdge said revenues this quarter were about half of what was expected. He blamed “unexpected cancellations” from European distributors. But US demand was down too. Indeed, the bad news started in California, the largest market in the US, when the government slashed home solar “net metering” payments in April by about 75%. Suddenly, it was going to take 10 years to pay off the panels. Solar panels were a luxury item.
If only solar panels were cheaper, in tough economic times, everyone would want them.
The renewable energy industry is in full collapse mode this week. First, Orsted A/S, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, abandoned two major US projects due to supply chain and interest rate impacts, and now solar stocks are being clubbed like a baby seal in US premarket trading on Thursday after solar equipment-makers SolarEdge and Sunrun reported dismal guidance amid waning demand.
That’s a nasty surprise:
Let’s start with solar equipment maker SolarEdge Technologies. The company said current quarter revenues are expected between $300 million to $350 million, far below analysts’ estimates of $718.9 million, as per Bloomberg Consensus data.
This has been a sharp turnaround in the solar industry. The rocket-like growth of 2020 has collapsed. And as long as interest rates are high, nobody is talking about a fast recovery:
Just about every major U.S. solar company had big quarterly misses…
Shares of Enphase Energy Inc. ENPH, which sells microinverters widely used in solar-power systems and can stand in as a barometer for solar, among other wares, are down more than 70% in the year. As recently as 2020, the stock drew triple-digit yearly gains; it rose 45% last year.
SolarEdge Technologies Inc. SEDGwarned late last month that starting in the second half of the third quarter it experienced “substantial unexpected cancellations and pushouts of existing backlog” from our European distributors, a dip it said wasn’t related to the Israel-Hamas war.
Some residential solar companies in the US are down 55-70% too. These are terrible numbers.
Solar is arguably one of the market’s most sold-off industries at the moment,…
SolarEdge and Enphase are among the S&P 500’s worst performers this year, falling more than 70% each; a significant weakening in US demand starting in Q2 worsened with weakening European demand in Q3, causing revenues to nosedive. Residential solar companies SunPower, Sunrun, and Maxeon have all declined more than 55% to 70%, as well.
The decline was sudden in Quarter 3. What was a 25% growth in quarter two, became a 34% fall:
Enphase echoed SolarEdge’s commentary about weakening EU demand, as European revenues fell (34%) sequentially in Q3, after recording +25% QoQ growth in Q2. That’s a pretty swift QoQ decline in European revenues, which Enphase attributed to “high inventory at our distribution partners along with a softening in demand in our key markets – the Netherlands, France, and Germany.”
The near-term outlook for solar has definitely taken a hit from high rates impacting demand – a forecast from Wood Mackenzie/SEIA is pointing to a YoY decline in US residential solar installations in 2024, weighed down by a sharp contraction in California. Overall, the group expects installations to drop (4%) in 2024, dragged down by a (38%) contraction in California primarily due to the shift to NEM 3.0.
A recent Canadian study reports that in 2017, between 6 percent and 19 percent of Canadian households experienced some form of energy poverty, with an above-average incidence in rural areas, Atlantic Canada and among people living in older single-family homes. For these households, the high cost of energy, which includes electricity, natural gas, heating oil and propane, means they may ration their use, leading them to live in energy poverty.
Jock Finlayson describes how climate change policies are depleting Canadians’ financial means in his article Millions of Canadians May Face ‘Energy Poverty’. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The term “energy poverty” is not yet part of day-to-day political debate in Canada, but that’s likely to change in the next few years. In Europe, the high and rising cost of energy has become a political lightning rod in several countries including Britain and France. Something similar may be in store for Canada.
The Trudeau government and some of the provinces are aggressively pursuing the holy grail of decarbonization.
To achieve this, they’re engineering dramatic increases in carbon and other taxes on fossil fuels and promising to pour vast sums of moneyinto building new electricity generation and transmission infrastructure to help reduce reliance on oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas and coal. Both strategies point to higher energy costs.
Tax advocates say it is a small % of GDP. But it is still $10 Billion extracted from Canadian households
The Trudeau government has legislated a national minimum carbon tax set to reach $170 per tonne of emissions by 2030, up from $50 in 2022 and $65 currently. Ottawa has also imposed a “clean fuel standard” that will further raise the cost of fuel. These policies are driven by concerns over climate change, which is a risk, to be sure, but so is the prospect of rapidly escalating energy prices for Canadian households and businesses.
Energy poverty arises when households and families must devote a significant fraction of their after-tax income to cover the cost of energy used for transportation, home heating and cooking, and the provision of electricity. In 2022, the United Kingdom government estimated that 13.4 percent of households were in energy poverty, which it defined as needing to spend more than 10 percent of income to cover the cost of directly consumed energy.
There’s no single agreed methodology for assessing the prevalence of energy poverty. A recent Canadian study reports that in 2017, between 6 percent and 19 percent of Canadian households experienced some form of energy poverty, with an above-average incidence in rural areas, Atlantic Canada and among people living in older single-family homes. If accurate, this finding suggests that many more Canadians will soon become acquainted with the term as taxes on fossil fuels climband governments impose new regulations affecting the energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles, industrial equipment, appliances and agricultural operations.
Canada is blessed with plentiful and diverse supplies of energy. Over time, we have become an important global producer and exporter of energy, with oil, natural gas and electricity together expected to account for one-quarter of Canada’s merchandise exports in 2023. Canada is also an intensive consumer of energy, in part because of our cold climate, dispersed population and relatively high living standards.
80% of the Other Renewables is solid biomass (wood), which leaves at most 1% of Canadian total energy supply coming from wind and solar.
End-use energy demand in Canada is around 13,000 petajoules. Of this, industry is responsible for about half, followed by transportation, residential buildings, commercial buildings and agriculture. Refined petroleum products—all based on oil—are the largest fuel type consumed in Canada (around 40 percent of the total), followed by natural gas (36 percent) and electricity (16 percent). Biofuels and other smaller sources comprise the rest. These data underscore Canadians’ overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels to meet their energy needs.
Politicians in a hurry to slash greenhouse gas emissions via higher taxes and more regulations must be alert to the risk that millions of Canadians could find themselves in energy poverty by the end of the decade.
Jock Finlayson is a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will work alongside leaders from Conservation International to advocate for climate action and better treatment of the environment.
The destroyer of the New Zealand economy gifting her talents to the world.
Ex-NZ leader Jacinda Ardern joins conservation group
By Nick Perry (associated Press) Updated November 6 2023 – 4:05pm, first published 4:02pm
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will work with the Conservation International group to advocate for climate action and better treatment of the environment.
Conservation International said Ardern has become its sixth Arnhold Distinguished Fellow and will serve a two-year term to advocate internationally, especially on issues affecting the Pacific and Antarctica. The group said the role was considered part-time and came with a stipend.
…
“From the beginning of my time in the New Zealand parliament, I’ve advocated for global climate action,” Ardern said in a statement. “My passion and sense of urgency on this issue has only increased over the last 15 years, especially as I witnessed firsthand the impact of climate change in our region.”
Posted Fri 16 Jun 2023 at 3:58amFriday 16 Jun 2023 at 3:58am, updated Fri 16 Jun 2023 at 5:54am
New Zealand is now in a recession as official data shows the economy has contracted over two consecutive quarters.
On Thursday, Stats NZ released its gross domestic product (GDP) data for the first quarter of this year and the direction had not changed since December.
In quarter one of this year, it fell 0.1 per cent.
The figure is small, but there are other indicators that signal New Zealand is likely now in a period of economic contraction that will last longer than six months.
The last time the country had two consecutive quarters of negative growth — the technical threshold for a recession — its international borders were closed and the world was in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ardern has a plan to deal with those who impede her glorious vision for society with their criticism, as she explained in a speech which linked climate skepticism to gun violence.
My question to readers, which I posed at last year’s Aussie CPAC – how will we all benefit, when Jacinda Ardern is UN Secretary General? Because with someone like her, there is a real chance it could happen.
_after_2021_South_Moravia_tornado_strike_(04).jpg){kind=link}
You must be logged in to post a comment.