Day: April 26, 2024

The Be-All / End-All “Chicken Little” Advertorial: When It’s All You Got, You. Still. Have. Nothing.

No joke, the collective enviro-activist lobby is completely enslaved to that “Chicken Little” ‘disinformation ad’ accusation as they try to dupe the public into believing an advertorial having that headline is smoking gun evidence of sinister fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. There might just be a new development about this – the question is whether somebody within that mob has tipped their hand in the last few weeks to reveal they now know the “Chicken Little” ad is worthless.

From Watts Up With That?

From the Gelbspan Files

Russell Cook

1) If you were going to adamantly suggest that ‘fossil fuel company executives and the shill experts they hired to spread disinformation’ should be charged with climate homicide; and/or 2) if you were going to advocate that regulatory bodies / organizations have the power to enforce laws against the spread of fossil fuel industry disinformation and persecute those who break them; and/or 3) if you tout yourself as an expert on such industry disinformation while making yourself available for law firms currently suing fossil fuel for global warming damages — it would be political suicide to put all your eggs in the one basket of a so-called newspaper disinformation advertorial titled “Who told you the earth was warming, Chicken Little?” if you never bothered to find out if the advertorial was ever published anywhere . . . . wouldn’t it? When it never was, you’d be in huge trouble if you recklessly continued to promulgate an accusation devoid of evidence to support it, wouldn’t you?

No joke, the collective enviro-activist lobby is completely enslaved to that “Chicken Little” ‘disinformation ad’ accusation as they try to dupe the public into believing an advertorial having that headline is smoking gun evidence of sinister fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. There might just be a new development about this – the question is whether somebody within that mob has tipped their hand in the last few weeks to reveal they now know the “Chicken Little” ad is worthless.

Regarding the ‘climate homicide’ idea angle, that’s entirely a product of Public Citizen’s David Arkush. I’ve specifically covered his fatally faulty accusation twice before at GelbspanFiles last year, but noted how his diatribe oddly left out the most viable-looking bit of ‘evidence’ that enviro-activists have in their arsenal for claiming industry-led disinformation campaigns exist, namely the worthless, never implemented “reposition global warming” memo set which goes hand-in-glove with accusations about the “Chicken Little” ad (e.g. in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits). Arkush must have been given a lecture about that missed opportunity – he popped up again on April 10, 2024 with that same ‘homicide’ mantra in his Newsweek article “Big Oil Could Face Homicide Charges,” where he offers the following (with clickable links):

… the “Information Council for the Environment” set out to “Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)” through, for example, advertisements comparing concerns about climate change to “Chicken Little’s hysteria about the sky falling.” This conduct did not just violate every principle of human decency; according to dozens of civil lawsuits cases brought by cities and states across the country, it violated the law, as well. ….. As a growing number of legal experts, scientists, and former prosecutors have recently begun positing, the fossil fuel industry’s knowing generation and coverup of the climate crisis may constitute a range of criminal offenses. … They could even support charges of homicide.

Right. David Arkush would have people charged with homicide based on a rejected proposal for a public relations campaign that never operated on a directive to ‘reposition’ anything, and based on a newspaper ‘advertorial’ that was never published anywhere. And how does Arkush aim a political suicide gun at his own head on this? The first two clickable links there are the same, going to the same Union of Concerned Scientists “Dossier #5” which the Sher Edling law firm is enslaved to for its boilerplate copy “ExxonKnew” lawsuits’ accusations about the “reposition global warming” memo set and the “Chicken Little” ad, e.g. its Imperial Beach v Chevron 2017 filing. Lead lawyer Victor Sher proudly showed this advertorial ‘evidence’ in a 2017 presentation, in which he could not keep his details straight about them. Meanwhile, who does the UCS cite for this? They cite the old “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action” memo scans collection, – with the memo set and the pair of never-published advertorials.

One more thing here, not helpful to Arkush at all: Who does he cite in his clickable link as evidence for the ‘growing number of legal experts positing the fuel industry’s coverup constitutes criminal offenses‘? A UK Guardian article about him. He’s the growing number. When it becomes abundantly obvious how fatally weak his ‘evidence’ is for jailing fossil fuel industry misinformers, the number of people distancing themselves from any prior endorsement of his idea will likely skyrocket.

This embarrassment is not limited to his flawed advocacy, either.

Just under eight weeks before Arkush’s Newsweek article was published, the CarbonCredits group (“your source for carbon news, carbon pricing, carbon opportunities and more”) put out a piece titled “Ending the Big Lie: No More Fake News for Fossil Fuels” on February 16, 2024. What was the headline illustration supporting their demand for the ‘end of fossil fuel lies’? No less than arguably a lie itself, also disingenuously cropping out the text at the bottom, which only adds to their self-inflicted crash. It’s basically the same ill-advised cropping action that the Sher Edling law firm inflicts upon itself (hold the thought for a few moments on who the image source is in that screencapture).

The ‘end of lies’ they advocate is a law in Canada making it illegal to falsely promote the burning of fossil fuels as a benefit to the public – prohibiting ‘disinformation,’ in other words. They set it up this way:

The Canadian Parliament is introducing a new drastic, and highly controversial move against false fossil fuel advertising. … it didn’t always used to be this way. In fact, big oil fought for a very long time to conceal, downplay, and outright deny the evidence of the impact that fossil fuels were having on our planet.

Take the picture above, for instance. This newspaper ad ran all the way back in 1991 and was paid for by an organization named “Informed Citizens for the Environment”. … Also known as the “Information Council for the Environment” or ICE, this group had one simple goal: to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).”

No, the ICE campaign was never known as “Informed Citizens,” it never had the goal to ‘reposition’ anything, and the “Chicken Little” advertorial did not run anywhere.

It doesn’t stop there. CarbonCredits group . . . meet your leap-of-assumption brick wall.

that’s not just an assumption either. That’s taken verbatim from one of their own internal documents ….

No, it is not the Western Fuels ICE campaign’s own internal documents.

The CarbonCredits group would have people charged with and prosecuted for promoting disinformation, of which the basis of their advocacy is a prime example of . . . . disinformation.

The ‘verbatim internal doc’ they show is their own upload from a source they do not name. What is the source? ClimateFiles, the same outlet who supplies Sher Edling with that “Chicken Little” image, albeit less cropped. Run by Roland C “Kert” Davies, formerly out of his Climate Files/Climate Investigations Center, formerly out of Greenpeace USA/Ozone Action, now at the Center for Climate Integrity (CIC). Yes, that CIC … which got their “reposition global warming” memos / “Chicken Little”/ “Doomsday Canceled” advertorials from Kert Davies.

Regarding the countless number of times the “Chicken Little” advertorial phrase has been repeated over the decades, it’s practically endemic; I could spend hours pointing out the errors of assumption in the written narratives about the ad, it’s embarrassing to see the extent of blind trust put in the accusation by people who should know enough question it first at the most minimal of levels when they view images of the advertorial:

  • why are some of the images missing text underneath while others show text?
  • what does the ad text say?
  • why is it cropped at the bottom?
  • why does it look like a multi-generation degraded photocopy?
  • if these were printed in newspapers … why not show those out of actual newspapers instead of whatever these lousy images are?

The “Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action” memo scans collection that included this advertorial went offline in April 2022, but I downloaded that collection before then and saved them here. The Google Image results for the “Chicken Little” ad always show the bottom cropped in some way. What happens when anyone magnifies that advertorial in the Greenpeace/Ozone Action scans? It shows a non-existent “toll-free” number, and a name suggestion for the PR campaign that was unsolicited and never used.

Same never-used ICE name for the “Doomsday Canceled” advertorial.

See the problem there?

Think about it. Would you be taken seriously if you advanced the position that people should be prosecuted for questioning anything about your argument that big corporations need to be held accountable for damages to the natural habitats of – and possibly for them to be charged with the killing of – Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster …. when the only proof of their existence are singular grainy images sourced from hugely suspect people?

And yet that is the moral equivalent of what is happening here, with major news outlets not questioning anything about a cropped, lousy quality photocopy of a chicken.

There is, however, a new weeks-old head scratcher development, after almost 30 years of enviro-activists showing the public only Greenpeace’s/Ozone Action’s lousy photocopies of advertorials attributed to the Western Fuels “ICE” public relations campaign. It happened on April 2, 2024, in between the above Feb 26 and April 10 “Chicken Little” repetitions I detailed above. Have a look at this, from the “ExxonKnews” website’s “Big Oil clouded the science on extreme weather. Now it faces a reckoning” report about the days-old Bucks County v BP lawsuit, where they offered nothing more about the advertorial image beyond what appears in part of the caption below the image:

One ad from a PR campaign by the “Information Council on the Environment,” funded by fossil fuel and electric utility interests. …

Compared to any other enviro-activist screed claiming the “reposition global warming” memos / ICE advertorials prove industry-led disinformation campaigns happened, this ExxonKnews piece uniquely shows an actual ICE advertorial published in a newspaper. It’s the ExxonKnews site’s own uploaded image, and it is still quite hard to read the small text, but it is genuine. I recognize it, I showed it myself in my “The Real ICE ads, Part 4” blog post in January 2022. The ad was published in the May 22, 1991 Flagstaff Arizona Daily Sun newspaper. My downloaded copy out of the Newspapers.com website is one which people can magnify and easily read.

The mystery here is – again, after the prior 28-year pattern – why this otherwise standard screed at ExxonKnews about fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns went off the reservation and did not feature the standard horrible photocopy advertorial images out of Greenpeace/Ozone Action. It’s very likely that whoever wrote the caption was operating off a template narrative, since the person predictably got part of the spelled-out ICE name wrong even though the actual official name was right there in, well, more or less plain sight.

Might be just a coincidence – the author of that ExxonKnews piece and/or her editor might have had enough brains to ask, “geeze, isn’t there a more clear image of one of these ICE ads out there in a newspaper that doesn’t look as weirdly terrible as the ones we were told to use?” Or is this an indicator that folks promulgating the ‘industry disinformation’ accusation have figured out they are in a hole they cannot dig their way out of from using those old Greenpeace/Ozone Action scans?

What is “ExxonKnews”? It’s a project of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI). Who was hired at CCI as their new “Director of Special Investigations” nine months ago?

Kert Davies.

EV, heat pump mandates just the tip of the iceberg

Modern governments are infected with the idea that they are anointed to squelch the desires of ordinary humans. To hold onto power, they force compliance – in even insignificant ways – with their whims. They try to crush anyone who speaks or acts against their power.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Midsection of businessman stacking coins with electric car at wooden table

“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Lord Acton

Modern governments are infected with the idea that they are anointed to squelch the desires of ordinary humans. To hold onto power, they force compliance – in even insignificant ways – with their whims. They try to crush anyone who speaks or acts against their power.

Here’s an unspoken truth. While it is true that governments have subsidized the rich who buy electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels, wind turbines, and other products, their motives are far from the altruistic myth they spread across even kindergarten classrooms. They are rubbing our faces in the mud, saying, “Gimme your lunch money, or you will be sorry!”

And they are not ashamed, even when their pet policies create great harm to their “subjects.”

In the United Kingdom, the very birthplace of the Magna Carta and the modern theory of the “rights of man,” the government has decided to ban tobacco products, phasing it in over time. This comes on top of a myriad of other diktats – electric vehicles, heat pumps, and multi-front assaults on traditional culture.

Elsewhere in Europe, governments are just as smugly arrogant. As part of a putsch to force 40 million Europeans to buy electric vehicles (up from 8 million today), governments offer bribes to auto buyers to force-feed a future EV monopoly. Even in tiny Malta, 50 million euros have been allocated to “help” 5,000 Maltese into total dependency on the electric grid.

In the United States, government has decided to ban the export of natural gas, impose electric vehicle mandates, ignore laws protecting endangered species in the name of “saving the planet,” attack the very foundations of liberty inscribed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and lock up those who resist and ignored their right to a speedy trial. Another mandate requires all new vehicles to have a government-controlled “kill switch.”

New York is now monitoring social media writings, collecting data, and using law enforcement to stifle expression it dubs as “hate speech.” As nearly everything from mathematics to Taylor Swift lyrics is now deemed by somebody as “racist,” it becomes clear that New York intends to suppress any opinion the monarchy does not like.

In Canada, the Prime Minister debanked truckers who fought for their jobs. Now, a new “Online Harms Act” would empower the government to put people in prison for life for “hate speech” (defined by them, of course). Talk about squelching freedom!

It’s not just the monarchy that wants to crush free people. In pre-pandemic 2019, The Atlantic “warned” that “Overtourism is destroying the planet.” Last year, The New Yorker made a new case against travel, asserting that “travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best.”

That is, of course, unless you were an Antifa rioter traveling from city to city to burn down buildings and assault the police. Or John Kerry and his merrie men out “saving the planet” on private jets.

Funny how this viewpoint dovetails with globalist demands for “15-minute cities,” which the BBC glowingly describes as a glorious model that “requires minimal travel among housing, offices, restaurants, parks, hospitals, and cultural venues.” Then there’s the push for per-mile highway taxes to further suppress private travel.

More people now see that would-be monarchs and their courtiers are hell-bent on forcing society to bend to their oft-misguided will. No wonder that anyone who challenges government power is tarred as a “right-wing extremist.”

American colonists rebelled against a 4 percent tea tax because the revenues were being sent to the monarchy. Today, much higher taxes are being extracted for earmarks, foreign “aid” that never helps ordinary people, and subsidies to the rich and powerful that harm average taxpayers.

The 2024 U.S. elections could be a referendum on the abuses of government power against the people – a vote up or down on the elitist control. Rest assured that the powerful will do all in their power to distract, obfuscate, and even encourage street violence to prevent any serious challenge to their rule. Consider how quickly House Speaker Mike Johnson became a mouse.

There is a budding revolt, even in once-free Britain. Evidence includes the fact that £173 million of a £300 million subsidy program for heat pumps to replace gas boilers remains unused after 2 years of the bribery scheme (only the rich took the money). Even new electric vehicle sales to private individuals fell by 14 percent last year despite government bribes and threats.

Eschewing Biden’s mandates, consumers cite marathon charging times, higher insurance rates, and benefits to China among their objections to being forced to abandon their 300 million cars and trucks just so their “leaders” can earn brownie points in Davos.

In what might be deemed a shocking development (a betrayal of her class), Rebecca Grynspan, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, admitted that “rich countries are using the green transition as an excuse to boost their own economies at the expense of developing ones, exploiting outdated WTO rules.”

Grynspan said developing countries see Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” and its European Union counterparts that subsidize domestic production of silicon chips, critical minerals, and green technology as “protectionist.”

She may as well have said “racist.” Developing nations are pressed to comply with EU- and UN-imposed “net zero” mandates via restrictions to trade, duties, and new taxes – all of which work against development of indigenous economies.

The massive wealth transfers to largely unregulated tech giants, the Big Three hedge funds (Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard), and well-protected Big Pharma reveal just how much influence government has today over who wins and loses — and how the rich skew the game to their own advantage.

At the same time, leaders have brought the entire world to the brink of nuclear war.

A reckoning is coming.

Freedom that comes via oppression is only for the few.

The world today is crying out for freedom despite all the efforts of the monarchies and their courts to suppress and control the freedoms earned over centuries by those we once revered.

The battle is just now heating up.

As Coriolanus Snow might say, “Let the games begin.”

US Taxpayers Hit With $425 Billion For Wind & Solar Subsidies Over Next Decade

The only thing scalable about wind and solar is the subsidies gouged from power consumers and/or taxpayers. While rent seekers can plant turbines and scatter solar panels from horizon to horizon, they can’t make the sun shine or the wind blow. Accordingly, sunset and/or calm weather makes the whole thing utterly pointless, at any scale.

From STOP THESE THINGS

The only thing scalable about wind and solar is the subsidies gouged from power consumers and/or taxpayers. While rent seekers can plant turbines and scatter solar panels from horizon to horizon, they can’t make the sun shine or the wind blow. Accordingly, sunset and/or calm weather makes the whole thing utterly pointless, at any scale.

But, nonetheless, the subsidy scam rolls on unabated.

As Robert Bryce points out in the piece below, the cost to American taxpayers over next decade is simply astronomical.

Wind/Solar/Alt-Energy Subsidies To Cost Federal Taxpayers $425 Billion Between Now And 2033
Substack
Robert Bryce
4 April 2024

Last month, Senator Chuck Grassley, the 90-year-old Republican from Iowa,  celebrated Sunshine Week by taking to the Senate floor with a speech about “the importance of whistleblowers in promoting transparency and accountability.” According to Whistleblower Network News, Grassley, who has frequently touted his efforts to fight waste, fraud, and abuse in government, declared that “to control a government as big as ours, it takes a lot of very bright light shining on every agency and office.”

A government as big as ours should be shining more light on alt-energy tax credits. Back in 2015, Grassley declared, “As the father of the first wind energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent.” Grassley made that statement while lauding a deal to phase out the production tax credit (PTC), the lucrative federal subsidy that has driven the wind industry’s growth for decades.

When he made that statement, the estimated 10-year cost to federal taxpayers of the PTC was $16 billion, and the investment tax credit (ITC), primarily used for solar energy, was about $3.9 billion.

Those were the good old days. The tax credits that were “never meant to be permanent” have not only become permanent, they have exploded in cost.

According to a March 11 report by the Office of Tax Analysis at the Treasury Department, the alt-energy sector will collect a staggering $424.6 billion over the next decade via the PTC and ITC. The agency estimates that between 2024 and 2033, the PTC will cost taxpayers $276.6 billion, and the ITC will cost $148 billion. The PTC and ITC are the most expensive energy-related preferences in the tax code. (The 10-year cost of tax credits for “clean vehicles” comes in third, at an estimated cost of $112 billion.)

Thus, since 2015, when Grassley (who has been in the U.S. Senate for 43 years) lauded the phaseout of the subsidies for wind energy, the tax credits for alt-energy haven’t decreased at all. Instead, they increased by a factor of 21!

This year alone, again, according to the Treasury, the PTC will cost taxpayers $7.5 billion, and the ITC will cost taxpayers $27.5 billion. Thus, alt-energy subsidies will cost the federal treasury $35 billion in 2024. For reference, the oil and gas industry’s biggest tax credit, the depletion allowance, will cost taxpayers about $1.6 billion. The total of all hydrocarbon tax credits this year will be about $2.1 billion.

Although the Office of Tax Analysis doesn’t explain why the cost of the ITC and PTC is skyrocketing, it’s clear evidence that the Inflation Reduction Act has become one of the biggest corporate giveaways in American history.

In just two years, the expected 10-year cost of PTC and ITC has nearly quadrupled. In its fiscal year 2023 report (the federal government’s fiscal year begins on October 1 and ends on September 30), the Treasury projected that the ITC and PTC together would cost taxpayers about $112.8 billion between 2022 and 2031.

So where is all this money going? The expansion of the PTC and ITC under the Inflation Reduction Act allows a panoply of non-hydrocarbon technologies to feast on federal tax credits. That includes a lucrative boost for existing nuclear plants. Under the revised PTC, owners of nuclear plants can collect up to $15 per megawatt-hour for the juice they generate. Over the next few years, the big money will be doled out through the ITC. Between now and 2027, the Treasury expects the ITC to cost taxpayers nearly $75 billion. Offshore wind projects will likely be among the biggest winners because the ITC provides a tax credit of up to 30% of the project’s cost. Offshore projects can get another 10% under the ITC if they use sufficient quantities of domestically produced iron and steel. Offshore wind is only part of the story. As the Treasury report explains, the ITC covers:

Solar and geothermal energy property, qualified fuel cell property, stationary micro-turbine property, geothermal heat pumps, waste energy recovery property, small wind property, offshore wind, energy storage technology, qualified biogas property, microgrid controllers, and combined heat and power property. The credit is 30 percent for projects that begin construction before 2020 and 26 percent for projects that begin construction in 2020-2022. The credit returns to 30 percent for projects that begin construction after 2022 but the full credit rate is dependent on meeting prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements.

Recall that on August 16, 2022, when President Joe Biden signed the IRA, he said the measure “invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever — ever, ever, ever — in confronting the climate crisis.”

Today, less than two years later, the Treasury is projecting that the cost of the IRA’s climate provisions will be nearly $425 billion over the next decade, or 15% more than what Biden claimed. Furthermore, the March 11 estimate from the Treasury likely understates the long-term cost of that legislation. In April 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated the IRA “will provide an estimated $1.2 trillion of incentives by 2032” for alt-energy incentives, including tax credits for electric vehicles.

As the Cato Institute’s Travis Fisher explained last September, the IRA is supposed to move to technology-neutral tax credits for low-carbon electricity production starting in 2025. Those tax credits will begin winding down by 2032 or when the power sector’s CO2 emissions are slashed by 75% compared to 2022 levels. (Note that the Department of Energy uses confusing phrasing for this requirement, saying the phaseout will only occur after emissions fall to 25% of 2022 levels.) But Fisher (who has an excellent Substack) points to a 2023 Energy Information Administration analysis, which found that even with a high uptake of IRA subsidies, emissions from the power sector are likely to decline by about 35% by 2050.

Indeed, the idea that the U.S. power sector will be able to slash its emissions by 75% — even by 2050 — is little more than wishful thinking. The energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie has said the IRA tax credits could continue indefinitely. Fisher explained:

With an expanded time horizon, Wood Mackenzie found the cumulative cost of IRA energy credits could reach $2.5 to $3 trillion, most of which would go to utility‐​scale solar energy projects. Of course, if EIA is right about the trajectory of GHG emissions from the electricity sector…the cumulative cost could be even higher. (Emphasis added.)

There’s plenty more to write about the massive subsidies going to alt-energy and how big business, big banks, big law firms, and climate-focused NGOs are profiting from this run on the federal treasury in the name of climate change. But less than two years after the passage of the IRA, it’s evident that the legislation will cost taxpayers trillions of dollars. Given that the national debt is now $34.6 trillion, and we are adding about $1 trillion more to that sum every three months, Senator Grassley should put a little sunshine on this alt-energy spending binge.
Substack

Big Ag, not Only Big Oil, on the ‘Climate Change’ Menu

The U.S. and global meat industries are thriving. Fake meat is in trouble because of bad taste, bad ingredients, high prices, and ultra-processing (“lab creatures“). Vegetables … well, they are good along side the protein, right?

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

The U.S. and global meat industries are thriving. Fake meat is in trouble because of bad taste, bad ingredients, high prices, and ultra-processing (“lab creatures“). Vegetables … well, they are good along side the protein, right?

The average American consumes nearly a pound a day of meat (chicken, beef, fish). Nine out of ten eat meat, with near-record consumption year after year. And flame-kissed with gas or charcoal is a best practice in such enjoyment.

Globally, the growth of meat consumption is dramatic. According to Our World in Data, “global meat production has … more than quadrupled since 1961.” Continuing:

Regionally, Asia now holds the position of being the largest meat producer, contributing a substantial portion of the total global meat production. This represents a significant shift from previous decades. In the early 1960s, Europe and North America were the primary meat-producing regions. However, by the early 21st century, their combined share had decreased notably, with Asia emerging as the predominant region in terms of meat production.

All regions are registering increases.

All good? Not so fast. The busy-body food police (gestapo?) are using “climate change” as a pretext to regulate your preferences at the dinner table.

DeSmog Weighs In

At DeSmog, Rachel Sherrington recently criticized the U.S. beef industry for … acting in the interest of its investors and consumers. (Imagine that!) Her article “U.S. Meat Lobby Celebrates ‘Positive Outcome’ of COP28“, subtitled: “Industry leaders praise UN food and climate plan as ‘music to our ears’.”

Dodging climate politics to cater to consumers deserves a hurray. But Sherrington sees the good as bad. She reports how the climate complex was outmaneuvered by the the beefers:

Lobbyists for the world’s biggest meat companies have lauded a better than expected outcome at COP28, which they say left them “excited” and “enthusiastic” for their industry’s prospects…. Campaigners and climate scientists had hoped the summit – which was billed as a “Food COP” due to its focus on farming – would see governments agree to ambitious action to transform food systems in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

It has been a long failure.

Like Kyoto in 1997 and Paris in 2005, the thrill is gone. But while more than 130 governments pledged to tackle agriculture’s carbon footprint, a slew of announcements and initiatives failed to set binding targets, or to broach the question of reducing herds of ruminant livestock such as cattle and sheep, which are agriculture’s largest driver of emissions….

Outcomes at the summit were characterised as “a far more positive outcome than we had anticipated” by Constance Cullman, the president of the Animal Feed Industry Association (AFIA) – a US lobby group whose members include some of the world’s biggest meat and animal feed producers.

The good news for consumers and the industry was a disappointment to the vegetarian ilk.

Academics described the FAO report’s failure to recommend cuts to meat-eating as “bewildering” in a March submission to the journal Nature Food. According to a March paper, which surveyed more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, meat and dairy production must be drastically reduced – and fast – to align with the Paris Agreement.

The report concludes that global emissions from livestock production need to decline by 50 percent during the next six years, with “high-producing and consuming nations” taking the lead….

The meat industry took the moral high ground, illustrative of what the fossil fuel industries need to do.

Another industry panellist, Eric Mittenthal, had attended COP28 on behalf of lobby group the Meat Institute (formerly the North American Meat Institute, or NAMI) … stressed the importance of sharing the message that animal agriculture is necessary for nutrition and sustainability.

The Meat Institute, which runs an initiative called the ProteinPACT, represents hundreds of corporations in the meat supply chain, including the meat sector’s three largest companies, JBS, Cargill and Tyson, which together have emissions equal to oil majors Shell or BP.

And yes, the meat and dairy industries were keen to protect their industries and seize the moral high ground with common-sense

The number of lobbyists for big meat and dairy companies tripled at COP28 as revealed by DeSmog and the Guardian, amid rising scrutiny of the food sector’s climate impacts….

It was not supposed to happen this way to the anti-beefers.

COP28 had promised to accelerate action on food systems transformation, but campaigners and experts said its declarations and reports fell far short of what climate science says is needed. On the second day of the summit, the leaders’ declaration on sustainable food systems, which was signed by more than 130 countries, committed to food systems transformation. 

Sounds good to me…. The meat industry deserves kudos for their frontal, honest messaging against political threats to human betterment. Sherrington describes just this.

The meat lobbyists, whose industry enjoyed many routes to influence at the summit, also celebrated the cut-through of their message that industrial animal agriculture has an important role to play in addressing global hunger….

Key messages around hunger were a pillar of the meat industry’s COP28 PR plans, which primed its attendees to target decision-makers with the idea that “meat plays a key role in reducing food insecurity”. While an estimated 828 million people go hungry, experts say that nourishing the planet will involve addressing issues of power, access and distribution, rather than a blanket increase in food production….

Sherrington’s article ends by sharing the meat industry’s perspective, a good one.

Mittenthal stressed that industry’s voice at COPs was “critical” given that some summit attendees were “not representing the science or the reality on the ground”. Asked about the year ahead, [Cullman] said: “We need to jump into that and make sure that we don’t take the pressure off of communicating the incredible work that’s been done for decades and continues to be done. “The short answer is: not take the foot off the gas pedal – we’ve got to keep pushing.”

Keep pushing indeed. Keep government out of the dining room, public and private.

The West’s electric car giants now risk destroying themselves

It is a classic case of supply greatly exceeding demand, in this instance brought about by politicians and regulators determined to impose arbitrary deadlines on carmakers regardless of whether they are realistic and without any consideration for the wider fallout.

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

It’s nice to see that Ben Marlow has finally woken up to reality, after years of promoting Net Zero:

For an industry built on the quiet purr of its expensive technology, the sound of the electric car market screeching to a halt is too loud not to be heard.

The ensuing pile-up threatens to turn into a battle for survival – the car industry’s equivalent of the Hunger Games that some of the biggest names may not walk away from.

The dynamics are very simple.

It is a classic case of supply greatly exceeding demand, in this instance brought about by politicians and regulators determined to impose arbitrary deadlines on carmakers regardless of whether they are realistic and without any consideration for the wider fallout.

It is further evidence, if any was needed, of the wrong-headed pursuit of net zero at all costs. Almost eight in 10 new electric cars are now being sold at a discount as demand stalls – a sharp increase on just over half a year ago. And while a similar proportion of petrol cars are experiencing price cuts, electric vehicle (EV) prices are being cut more sharply.

Meanwhile, the market is increasingly being propped up by tax-efficient corporate schemes as appetite among private buyers goes into reverse.

Fleet purchases have accounted for 60pc of registrations so far this year, up from a little over half over the same period in 2022.

Private sales have fallen nearly 10pc, suggesting the so-called early adopter phase that drove the first wave of purchases is already over. In Germany, Sweden and Italy, electric sales have plunged 30pc.

As carmakers scramble to meet strict deadlines for phasing out petrol and diesel models that have been imposed on them by complicit governments, overproduction of electric cars is taking place on a massive scale.

The industry may argue that it has no choice as companies which fail to hit targets must pay fines or trade carbon credits. But the result will still be the same: millions of unsold electric cars piling up in giant lots and at dealerships.

Major European ports are already being turned into giant car depots, as manufacturers, distributors, and retailers struggle with the demand slowdown.

And despite all the fears about Western brands being unable to compete with the cheap Chinese models flooding the market, cars from the East Asia are a big contributor to the bottlenecks being experienced at many major ports.

Some Chinese brands have been sitting in European ports for up to 18 months, prompting some to demand proof of onward transport from importers, according to reports.

Without the demand to support the vast number of cars flying off the production line, new data shows that the global car industry is on course to produce as many as 20 million more electric cars over the next three years than the market can absorb. It is hard to think of another example of such a staggering misallocation of capital. The dot-com bubble perhaps? That is one analyst’s analogy.

The optimistic take is that such a vast glut will be great for consumers because it means prices will come tumbling down, paving the way for the next wave of consumers – those that American sociologist Everett Rogers dubbed the “early adopters” – for whom cost is a key factor.

Yet, price is only one reason why the majority of consumers continue to stick with petrol and diesel models.

The obstacles to mass adoption are by now well-trodden but it is worth recalling that they are numerous: range anxiety; lack of charging points; fears over reliability; repair bills; insurance costs; concerns about qualified technician numbers; limited selection; and of course, affordability.

Prices are coming down fairly sharply. Tesla has just announced a string of price cuts in China, the US and Europe following a slowdown in sales.

The expected influx of cheap Chinese versions will help to bring down prices further. There will be bargains to be had for those that time their first purchase right.

But equally, there is every reason to think there will be a whole generation of consumers that led the way for whom the depreciation will be so severe that in a couple of years, they will be sitting on huge losses and the mess will put them off buying again.

A more realistic view is that the EV market is on the cusp of a major reckoning that will claim some serious scalps.

The cracks are already emerging.

Arrival, the electric van start-up that some laughably called “Britain’s Tesla”, has declared bankruptcy in the UK, just months after Sweden’s electric lorry outfit Volta Trucks went bust.

California’s Fisker, which even more preposterously once likened itself to Apple, is expected to go the same way.

These are the weaker players but it would be a mistake to assume the big manufacturers are immune by virtue of size alone. A rethink is already taking place. Ford is considering partnerships with General Motors after warning that some battery-operated models have become unprofitable because of spiralling raw material prices.

Rental giant Hertz has blamed high repair costs for a decision to dump 20,000 electric vehicles. Others are tentatively pulling back.

Yet, the bigger picture is still one in which the industry goliaths have set aside billions to build entirely new line-ups from scratch.

Stellantis, maker of Fiat and Peugeot, is planning to introduce more than 75 fully electric models this decade, while Volkswagen has earmarked €180bn for electrification. It is a massive throw of the dice.

Elon Musk recently said that China’s electric upstarts will demolish most Western carmakers unless trade barriers are erected. But it may not come to that. Some could end up squandering such vast sums of capital that they end up destroying themselves. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/23/the-electric-car-revolution-is-eating-its-children

So why not take the next logical step Ben, and start campaigning not just for the ending of the ZEV Mandate and the ban on ICEs, but the abolition of the Net Zero Act itself?

Get Real, Bloomberg, Climate Change Is No Child Labor ‘Threat Multiplier,’ Climate Policies Are

A recent Bloomberg article describes a new tool that scores companies based on how much they rely on child labor, which the news outlet claims is exacerbated by climate change. This is false. While weather disasters can force people into desperate circumstances, extreme weather is not getting worse.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent Bloomberg article describes a new tool that scores companies based on how much they rely on child labor, which the news outlet claims is exacerbated by climate change. This is false. While weather disasters can force people into desperate circumstances, extreme weather is not getting worse. Further, it is much more likely that the increasingly forced energy transition to renewable energy technologies in the name of stopping climate change is a much more direct child labor threat multiplier.

In the article, titled “Climate Change Poses a Child Labor ‘Threat Multiplier’,” Bloomberg describes the new tool is an AI-driven index that it refers to as “a newly developed quantitative approach may help raise its prominence as an environmental, social, and governance issue.” This corporate speak means that it is supposed be used to pressure companies that rely on high amounts of child labor anywhere in their supply chain.

The article goes off the rails when Bloomberg cites an International Labour Organization study that claimed climate change is a “threat multiplier” for child labor, because poverty forces people to rely on their children to help work and earn money for the family.

Bloomberg insists that “[a]s environmental disasters push more people into poverty, families are forced to pull children from school and put them to work in farm and field,” citing child labor due to bad weather in Cambodia, Tanzania, Uganda, Pakistan, and “a similar dynamic is unfolding in Peru, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Ivory Coast[.]”

The problem is, climate change is not causing more frequent or intense extreme weather conditions and the poverty rate has fallen considerably over the past few decades of modest warming.

As explained in Climate at a Glance: Deaths from Extreme Weather, real world data show no significant increase in extreme weather over the last 100 years. What’s more, data show that certain types of extreme weather, like extreme cold conditions, have declined, and so have human deaths associated with weather or climate related disasters. While deaths are not a direct and perfect analog to the destruction of crops or homes, they do show that the peril associated with extreme weather in general is declining –due to advancements in technologies, and the fact that the weather simply isn’t getting worse.

Even in the case of Africa, although the media has recently run plenty of articles claiming that climate change is devastating a variety of crops this year, it’s not clear that climate change is actually making the weather or even crop production worse.

In the case of West Africa, for example, which is directly referenced by Bloomberg’s post by mentioning the Ivory Coast, Climate Realism has already shown, here, that bad harvests of cocoa due to weather this year were mostly driven by the naturally occurring El Niño conditions, not climate change. When crop production data is looked at over a longer period, it becomes clear that the average trend over time is towards increasing crop production, not catastrophe. (See figure below)

Bloomberg is also wrong to claim climate change is driving rising poverty globally, and pushing more people into using children as laborers. Poverty has been on a multi-decade decline, especially during the periods with the most warming. According to data from the U.S. Agency of International Development, poverty levels dropped from 43 percent of the global population in the 1990s, to just 21 percent by 2011.

World Bank data likewise show the share of the population living in extreme poverty around the world has been dropping. (See figure below)

Future projections by groups like the Brookings Institution project that this trend in declining extreme poverty will continue, (see Figure below) and organizations like the United Nations, U.S. government, World Bank and others target 2030 as the year extreme poverty may be driven down to “global zero.”

Various projections for the prospect of ending extreme poverty by 2030. The y-axis represents the percentage of people living in extreme poverty worldwide. Via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

The real driver of child labor, other than lingering poverty in general, is the increasing demand for materials, often materials demanded for green energy technologies, found in third-world countries that are currently responsible for a lot of child labor. A prime example is, cobalt used for lithium-ion batteries, more of which is needed for things like electric vehicles, than phones or laptops. A 2018 report says each EV battery needs over 30 pounds of cobalt, and predicted that the cobalt demand would skyrocket as electric vehicle sales (pushed by climate mandates) increased.

According to Humantraffickingsearch.org, the world’s largest cobalt producer is the Democratic Republic of Congo, about 60 percent of global production. The DRC is known for using child labor in “artesian” cobalt production.

Bloomberg gets partial credit for a single paragraph in which the writer acknowledges that materials vital for “climate transition commodities” also use child labor, which the founder of the company that created the index said might surprise some investors.

“For example, an asset manager may be unaware of the true extent of child-labor risk for certain climate-transition commodities, such as tin used in solar panels, lithium for batteries or even sugarcane used for some forms of renewable energy,” they write.

Bloomberg’s writer seemed to miss the fact that while it is true that poverty drives much of the world’s worst child labor exploitation, in most places it is allowed to flourish due to government corruption, limited private property rights, a lack of child labor protections, and, increasingly, the demand for green energy technologies. Child labor is not being caused or exacerbated by climate change. One good way to ensure that child labor continues is by increasing the demand for solar panels and other “green” technologies that rely on mining in extremely poor areas, and by refusing those poorer countries the ability to develop using cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy. Bloomberg turned what could have been a powerful expose of the use of child labor in the creation of modern technologies, into another false, “climate change causes everything” narrative.

Alinta chief admits the transition has “soaring costs”, and has stalled because of the rooftop solar glut

A couple of weeks ago in Australia the chief of Alinta Energy admitted in a big speech that the industry needs to be honest with the public about the costs of the transition. This marks a big shift from the “cheaper and cleaner” misinformation which the renewables industry was practically built on.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Solar panels eat the profits of the reliable generators for lunch

The system is reaching a crisis point and April is turning out to be the month of confessions

His speech was the sound of an industry being tortured. The transition is going backwards. Big projects are stalled. Costs are rising and reliable old assets are being closed too quickly. It’s like we are disassembling the plane as we fly it…

A couple of weeks ago in Australia the chief of Alinta Energy admitted in a big speech that the industry needs to be honest with the public about the costs of the transition. This marks a big shift from the “cheaper and cleaner” misinformation which the renewables industry was practically built on. Jeff Dimery had a stark warning — his company bought a large old coal plant in Victoria for a billion dollars in 2018, and it powers one fifth of Victoria. But to replace that today with renewables would cost $10 billion.

But he also laid bare the crushing effect subsidized rooftop solar PV panels are having on the transition. No news outlets seemed to appreciate the implications of this.  Fully one in three Australian homes now has solar panels, but they are all dumping power on the grid at the same time pushing wholesale prices into negative territory that burns the other generators. The midday solar glut, as he calls it, means no one wanted to invest in large scale renewables. But as night follows day, surely that which ruins the market for large scale renewables would also ruin it for large scale fossil fuel plants too? The subsidized solar panels are vandalizing the whole market.

Skeptics who have been predicting this all along, note that the same people who cheered every time a coal plant was struck down are now wading through an impenetrable swamp of their own creation. The same subsidies that hurt coal and gas power, now wipe out the large (subsized) wind and solar plants too. It’s takes some chutzpah to complain about solar subsidies ruining the market for other generators which are also subsidized.

Someone let a plague of solar-locusts on our grid. They eat the profits out of all the reliable providers, which close down. We are actively sabotaging the entire grid — killing off the parts that made it work.

Australians to pay more for their energy as transition accelerates, Alinta Energy says

By Colin Packham, The Australian

Australians face higher bills as the country struggles to build adequate replacements for coal with soaring costs for new sources of green power and transmission, Alinta Energy chief executive Jeff Dimery has warned.

The stark comments, described by the energy boss as “truths and straight talking” comes amid growing concern about the toll of Australia’s energy transition.

Mr Dimery said Australian energy stakeholders must be honest with the public about the toll of the transition.

Mr Dimery complains he can’t build anything profitable at $58 a megawatt hour.

“When I sat down to write this speech, the future Victorian energy price for the 2026 calendar year was $58 a megawatt hour,” said Mr Dimery.

“At $58, I can’t build anything to meaningfully prepare for coal to come out of the system. I can’t build more solar, because we already have a glut of solar in the middle of the day, which is sending spot prices deeply negative. If I was just looking at the forward price, I would also be very wary about building new wind, because the margins would be slim to non-existent, and any curtailment – which is a growing problem – could be disastrous.”

If only the energy commentators of Australia could read the same AEMO reports that unpaid bloggers do? Then they’d know that this time last year old brown coal plants were still selling electricity for $15 a megawatt-hour. But Mr Dimery probably knows this, since he owns one of those coal plants, and he didn’t mention it either. (Perhaps he believes in the transition, or perhaps the Hong Kong owners of Alinta might not appreciate that?). He’s being more honest than the other energy chiefs, but Australians need the whole truth. Just what are we giving up by blowing up the old coal plants?

The renewables transition was like a gold rush, but quickly projects started to fail… as Big Government plans do:

11 minutes: I also want to explain what’s caused the drop in investment for large scale renewables. … In the last 5 years the top three gentailers [combined generator-retailers] in this country have collectively written off in excess of $10 billion of shareholder funds. There’s a race to Net Zero but it’s supposed to be for emissions not for profit.

In the early era of renewables Australia had the perfect investment climate for wind solar and pumped Hydro. It could have been seen as the gold rush for renewable generation and certainly we saw no shortage of companies trying to get a piece of the action, but very quickly projects started to fail, loss factors increased and investment cases started to crumble. With a lack of planning and proper infrastructure we quickly found the grid overwhelmed…

Costs are rising rapidly:

15 minutes: Let me tell you why higher cost and uncertainty about recovering those costs that’s why in 2017 Alinta energy developed and built the first big battery in Australia for around $1.5 million per megawatt. Right now we’re building another one that will cost roughly $1.7 million per megawatt . In 2020 it cost around $850,000 to insure a gas fired power plant. Today it’s around $1.75 million — that’s up 40%. I shocked people when I spoke at a conference two years ago and said that it would cost $8 billion to hypothetically replace our Brown Coal fired power station which was acquired for $1.1 billion. Replacing it with pumped hydro and offshore wind today would now cost in excess of $10 billion. That’s up two billion in a mere two years. Developers rightly are afraid to lock in high costs in case they can’t be recovered.

The Alinta chief admits his biggest problem is the glut of solar panels at midday

Everything he says about the problems with massive solar input at lunchtime is true for all the original baseload generators on the grid too. In full honesty he would admit coal plants were not retired because solar and wind were cheap, they were driven out of the market by the subsidy on an essentially irrelevant unreliable form of extra generation that always turned up when we didn’t need it:

18 mins: Without the deployment of new private capital, state and Commonwealth balance sheets simply cannot carry the financial burden we have a glut of daytime rooftop solar energy at the same time that 95%of all large scale renewables are getting curtailed — basically switched Off in some hours of high rooftop solar. The percentage of all energy produced by large scale renewables that was curtailed increased from 10% in the last quarter of 2022 to 13% in the last quarter of 2023. Now you might think 3%, who cares? Well boards care, investors care, and developers care. No one wants to lose 13% of their output and no one dares think just how much more could be lost that could be the difference between profitable and unprofitable. In short, ladies and gentlemen, continued subsidies at one end of the market are driving higher uptake into a glut and undermining the economics of new and existing large scale renewables.

But let’s be real eh? We were happy to destroy the profitability of the old coal plants and the gas plants that taxpayers built, which is what all the subsidized intermittent players did. We’re only complaining now, Mr Dimery, because we care about “renewable” profits.

The solution to the solar panel glut is battery storage

(What did I say? One reason for the EV mandate is so they can make you buy the backup battery to store the useless intermittent watts in?) Dimery doesn’t want to offend 3 million solar panel owners, but he is quietly saying “they must pay”:

I know how much households love their solar and how important solar is to the transition, but as with any of the intermittent technologies on its own it has pluses and minuses. … the daytime production from rooftop solar needs to be stored and shifted to when it’s required. We’ll need household batteries but they’ll fill up quickly. We’ll need big batteries, and they’ll also fill up quickly too. EV’s will take time to build up to critical mass and for vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid models to alleviate some of the imbalances of homeowners dominating solar and battery installations. We’re exploring other options too like inviting retail customers to be co-investors in wind farms and giving them a portion of the output offset against their bill as well as providing better insights about their appliances via itemized bills that show what’s being spent on heating and cooling and refrigeration.

It’s a solar death spiral

He points out that solar PV owners themselves don’t care about the negative wholesale prices at lunchtime (but in a real market they would).

Rooftop solar is contributing to low energy prices at various times in daylight hours but it isn’t affected by price signals in the same way large scale generators are. It’s a problem we need to solve.

So we subsidize lunchtime solar we don’t need, which makes electricity more expensive for those without solar. Eventually everyone feels they have to buy solar panels, but at the same time the solar glut is driving out the generators we need the other 75% of the day. This is a spiral that only goes down. The end is coming. The subsidy game can’t go on forever.

We need to put real prices on solar panels now, and if that stops all new solar being installed (except in remote locations) so be it. Then we then need to rejig the billing system so those who installed the panels aren’t being subsidized by those who couldn’t afford them. It will take years to unravel this mess.

The land of truth is arriving at the magic renewable tree.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Jeff Dimery was alwys a renewables guy, Oh the irony, that he is now the one saying we need to keep coal running a bit longer:

Jeff was a founding member of Australia’s Clean Energy Council, and previously served on the boards of The Renewable Energy Generators of Australia, Australian Energy Council (including as both Chair and Deputy Chair), and the Australian Wind Energy Association.

Alinta Energy from Wikipedia

Alinta owns 3GW of power, gas, wind, coal, and “co-generation” in NZ, and has about 1.1 million retail customers.

Alinta Energy is an Australian electricity generating and gas retailing private company owned by Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises (CTFE). The sale for $4 billion was approved by Treasurer Scott Morrison in 2017.[2] Alinta Energy has an owned and contracted generation portfolio of up to 1,957 MW, approximately 1.1 million combined electricity and gas retail customers and around 800 employees across Australia and New Zealand.[1]

Alinta Energy’s approximately 3,000MW electricity generation portfolio includes:[8]

    1. Port Hedland Power Station, Western Australia
    2. Newman Power Station, Western Australia
    3. Pinjarra Power Station, Western Australia
    4. Wagerup Power Station, Western Australia
    5. Goldfields Gas Pipeline, Western Australia
    6. Reeves Plain Power Station (Proposed), South Australia
    7. Braemar Power Station, Queensland
    8. Bairnsdale Power Station, Victoria
    9. Loy Yang B Power Station, Victoria
    10. Glenbrook Power Station, New Zealand

Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations (eCO2)

Despite many years of claims that increasing concentrations of CO2 are an “existential threat” to life on Earth, one cannot identify any harm that has been done. In fact, the only clear result of increasing CO2 has been an overall greening of the Earth and increasing productivity of agricultural and forest crops.

From The CO2 Coalition

We are pleased to announce the publication of our latest research report Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations (eCO2).

Despite many years of claims that increasing concentrations of CO2 are an “existential threat” to life on Earth, one cannot identify any harm that has been done. In fact, the only clear result of increasing CO2 has been an overall greening of the Earth and increasing productivity of agricultural and forest crops.

The evidence for greening of the Earth from eCO2 is now too obvious to deny. In recent years, some researchers have claimed that that nutritional values are negatively affected by elevated CO2 concentrations. Media promoters of climate alarmism have seized on these results to further demonize CO2.

In this paper we explain why the nutritional value of our more abundant crops can and will remain high as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase toward values more representative of those existing throughout most of Earth’s history.

While this is a somewhat technical report, it is a valuable tool for you to put in your quiver to use the next time you see increased CO2 being linked to declining nutrition.

Nutritive-Value-of-Plants-Growing-in-Enhanced-CO2-Concentrations-2024-04-22Herunterladen

Fortescue: Biden Forcing Green Hydrogen Producers to Use Renewables Drives Up Prices

“… The “hourly matching” rule will force hydrogen producers to either cease production when renewables are not available … or sign up for excess renewable power …”

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… The “hourly matching” rule will force hydrogen producers to either cease production when renewables are not available … or sign up for excess renewable power …”

Fortescue slams Biden administration’s green hydrogen tax rules

Peter Ker Resources reporter
Updated Apr 21, 2024 – 2.09pm, first published at 2.00pm

Fortescue says the proposed design of the Biden administration’s green incentives scheme could triple the cost of low-carbon hydrogen projects …

The iron ore group has an ambitious strategy to become a major force in hydrogen and renewable energy …

…

But Fortescue’s enthusiasm has waned since the US Treasury issued draft regulations known as “45V” which provide the detail on eligibility for the tax credits. Fortescue’s biggest problem is the requirement that companies must match each hour of production to an hour of renewable power generation and consumption to be eligible.

The rule is designed to ensure that subsidies are not given to hydrogen made from fossil fuel power during times when solar and wind power are not available.

The “hourly matching” rule will force hydrogen producers to either cease production when renewables are not available – an option that would undermine productivity and viability – or sign up for excess renewable power from diverse sources to improve the chances of having clean energy available from at least one source at all times.

…

“If I am building a gigawatt of electrolysers in Texas I may only need a gigawatt of energy at any time, but I have to buy seven times that to ensure that I have all the probabilities working, so I know I can match in that hour, which means the bulk of what I buy I don’t need,” he told a Bloomberg podcast.

…Read more (paywalled): https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/fortescue-slams-biden-administration-s-green-hydrogen-tax-rules-20240419-p5fl78

You can understand Fortescue’s distress. Who could have imagined Biden would insist green projects actually be powered by renewables?

As Fortescue helpfully explained, renewables are so unreliable they would have to build or buy 7x overcapacity to ensure continuity of supply, which would be prohibitively expensive. A bit like how attempting to power the entire economy using renewables would be prohibitively expensive.

CFACT Earth Day campaign soars over, rolls through Virginia Beach

On Earth Day, CFACT took its campaign against Dominion’s offshore wind initiative to new heights – this time by carrying out a protest that featured an airplane flying a banner saying “Save Whales — Stop Dominion Energy” over the boardwalk of Virginia Beach.

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

On Earth Day, CFACT took its campaign against Dominion’s offshore wind initiative to new heights – this time by carrying out a protest that featured an airplane flying a banner saying “Save Whales — Stop Dominion Energy” over the boardwalk of Virginia Beach.

The stunt was conducted near the intersection of 31st Street and Atlantic Boulevard, near the famous statue of the Greek God Neptune. Hundreds of onlookers walking up and down the beach took notice and shot pictures, as did local television station WAVY.

The purpose of CFACT’s aerial show was to draw attention to the potentially devastating impact Dominion Energy’s offshore wind project will likely inflict on whales, and in particular, the North Atlantic Right Whale, of which there are less than 350 in existence. The energy company is posed to place a staggering 176 massive wind turbines, over 800 feet tall, right smack in the migratory lanes of the large mammals. CFACT, naturally, opposes this initiative and has launched a lawsuit with a pair of its allies to stop it.

In addition to the aerial stunt, the Committee also treated Virginia Beach residents to other forms of viewing its poignant Earth Day message. One included a large billboard on the main artery leading into town on I-64, and a second involved a roving billboard truck that drove throughout the city throughout the day. Both sported a similar message as the aerial banner and were seen by tens of thousands.

CFACT has long employed the use of street theater to make its voice heard, especially on the issue of saving whales from the impacts of offshore wind. Other CFACT stunts included flying a plane with a banner over Atlantic City, staging a boat protest off Newport, RI, and organizing citizens to form a “whale tail” in Cape May, NJ, in 2023. All of them received generous media coverage.

This is by no means the last renewable energy developers will hear from CFACT. Expect to see more such street theater aimed at exposing their reckless disregard for the environment and property rights in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Watch CFACT’s banner fly over Virginia Beach!