Day: January 20, 2025

Federal Reserve Withdraws from Global Climate Coalition

n recent weeks, the climate policy landscape has shifted significantly, with institutions, governments, and corporations beginning to step back from the ambitious but economically questionable climate commitments they made over the last decade. Two major developments underscore this retreat: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s exit from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) and BlackRock’s withdrawal from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM) and it’s subsequent suspension of activities. These high-profile decisions, along with similar moves globally, suggest growing recognition of the economic damage wrought by costly, ineffective, and overreaching climate policies.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

In recent weeks, the climate policy landscape has shifted significantly, with institutions, governments, and corporations beginning to step back from the ambitious but economically questionable climate commitments they made over the last decade. Two major developments underscore this retreat: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s exit from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) and BlackRock’s withdrawal from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM) and it’s subsequent suspension of activities. These high-profile decisions, along with similar moves globally, suggest growing recognition of the economic damage wrought by costly, ineffective, and overreaching climate policies.

The Federal Reserve: Not a Climate Policeman

In a move that has sent shockwaves through climate advocacy circles, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced its withdrawal from the NGFS—a coalition of central banks established in 2017 to address climate-related risks in financial systems. Citing its limited statutory mandate, the Fed made clear that it was not responsible for shaping climate policy. Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly emphasized this point, stating that climate matters belong to Congress, not the central bank​.

The NGFS, claimed lofty goals of integrating climate risks into monetary policy, and has grown increasingly politicized. Its shift toward broader mandates—essentially promoting green agendas over sound economic principles—clashes with the Fed’s responsibility to maintain monetary stability. The exit comes amidst broader U.S. skepticism of climate-focused regulations, particularly in the financial sector, where their potential to disrupt industries and inflate costs is well-documented.

BlackRock, the Financial Behemoth, Exits the Climate Stage

Adding to the wave of institutional departures, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, recently withdrew from the NZAM, which then collapsed. This coalition aimed to align financial investments with the nebulous goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Yet, BlackRock’s exit reflects a broader reality: these climate initiatives are not only politically fraught but also deeply misaligned with financial performance and client interests.

BlackRock faced mounting criticism, especially from Republican-led states in the U.S., for prioritizing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives over fiduciary responsibilities. Florida, Texas, and other states accused BlackRock of undermining traditional energy industries and pulling resources away from economically viable ventures. Tennessee recently pummelled BlackRock in court. These pressures have created a domino effect, with other institutions also reconsidering their commitments to net-zero coalitions​

Corporations Abandon Ambitious Climate Pledges

The retreat is not limited to financial institutions. In the corporate world, companies like BP and Shell have quietly scaled back their green initiatives, prioritizing short-term profitability over unrealistic carbon reduction goals. BP recently spun off its offshore wind projects, while Shell drastically cut back on renewable investments. Both companies have signaled a return to traditional energy sources as energy security and profitability take precedence over climate narratives, driven by a foundational flaw in climate policy: the failure to acknowledge economic realities. Renewable energy remains heavily reliant on subsidies, while oil and gas—despite decades of demonization—continue to drive global economies. Attempting to prematurely phase out fossil fuels without viable replacements has proven disastrous, with Europe’s energy crisis serving as a glaring example.

The Cost of Climate Ambition: A Reckoning for Governments

The global retreat from climate commitments signals a long-overdue recognition of the real costs of these policies. Nations that enthusiastically embraced net-zero goals are now grappling with rising energy prices, faltering economies, and public discontent. Germany, once hailed as a green energy pioneer, faces skyrocketing electricity costs and industrial flight, as energy-intensive industries relocate to more affordable regions. Similarly, the UK government’s climate policies have drawn ire from both businesses and households burdened by rising living costs.

The U.S. isn’t immune to these effects. A Congressional Budget Office report estimated that clean energy subsidies enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act will cost $825 billion over the next decade—a staggering price tag for policies that are unlikely to achieve meaningful reductions in global temperatures. These costs disproportionately impact working-class households, who bear the brunt of higher energy bills and inflation.

At the heart of this shift is a recognition that climate policies have devolved into a costly exercise in virtue signaling. They demand enormous economic sacrifices with little measurable impact on global temperatures. Worse, these policies often exacerbate existing challenges, such as energy insecurity, supply chain disruptions, and inflation.

Additionally, the politicization of climate science and policy has fueled resistance. Increasingly, institutions and governments are questioning the wisdom of aligning with initiatives that prioritize ideological goals over economic and practical considerations. As the Federal Reserve’s exit from the NGFS demonstrates, organizations tasked with specific mandates cannot afford to be sidetracked by climate-related ambitions outside their purview.

The Way Forward: A Pragmatic Approach to Energy and Policy

The unraveling of these grand climate coalitions provides an opportunity to reassess priorities. The global economy needs energy policies grounded in reality—not utopian ideals. Policymakers should abandon sweeping mandates and instead focus on ensuring energy reliability, affordability, and innovation.

Ultimately, the retreat from climate policies underscores an uncomfortable truth: these initiatives are costly, ineffective, and increasingly unsustainable. The financial and corporate worlds are waking up to this reality, and the broader public is not far behind. As more institutions step away from the climate bandwagon, one hopes this marks the beginning of a more rational, economically sound approach to energy and environmental challenges.

Trump’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” Energy Policy Will Enjoy the Enthusiastic Support of the Global South

The inauguration of Donald Trump on Monday, January 20th as 47th President of the United States promises to dramatically change the trajectory of U.S. energy policies pursued by the outgoing Biden administration as well as the previous two-term Obama presidency.

From The Daily Sceptic

The inauguration of Donald Trump on Monday, January 20th as 47th President of the United States promises to dramatically change the trajectory of U.S. energy policies pursued by the outgoing Biden administration as well as the previous two-term Obama presidency.

In a speech and Q&A session on January 7th, the President-elect stated that both climate alarmism and Biden’s energy policies are “huge scams”; that he would terminate U.S. participation in the UN’s Paris Climate Agreement; that he would rescind Biden’s cynical permitting “pause” on LNG export infrastructure development allegedly to assess its impact on U.S. energy security and domestic natural gas prices; that he would do away with Biden’s EV mandates “very quickly”; that he would “un-ban” Biden’s blanket offshore oil and gas drilling ban; that he would rescind all the actions taken by the Biden regulators to disadvantage or ban gas appliances and stoves; and that he would unwind Biden’s offshore wind boondoggle. He has also vowed to rescind unspent funds earmarked for climate provisions contained in the euphemistically named, boondoggle-laden Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

It is of course too early to assess how quickly the incoming Trump administration can achieve these objectives. Vested interests, bureaucratic backsliding and the considerable resources of the climate industrial complex will seek to constrain the Trump administration’s energy policy ambitions.

But it would be a mistake to look at the Trump administration’s energy policy promises as the only hope in turning around what has been a decades-long onslaught against fossil fuels in the U.S. and Western Europe. Key developments in world energy affairs in 2024 suggest that a Trump administration will have important allies in Europe and around the world in its fight against the globalist climate agenda.

Europe’s deindustrialisation and the green backlash

The impact of Europe’s deindustrialisation – a process that began with Germany’s adoption of Energiewende in 2010 which sought to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with solar and wind – became painfully evident last year. Germany’s Federal Statistics Office reported on January 15th that the economy contracted for the second consecutive year in 2024, highlighting the depth of the downturn gripping Europe’s biggest economy with few signs of any imminent reprieve. The avalanche of headlines on Germany’s economic and political implosion after Chancellor Olaf Scholz sacked his Finance Minister in November were only the latest in a series of reports over the past two years on the “sick man of Europe” (“Behind Germany’s Political Turmoil, a Stagnating Economy”, “Germany Is Unraveling Just When Europe Needs It Most”, “Europe’s Economic Apocalypse Is Now”) .

Sky-high labour and business operating costs, caused by the myriad regulations of over-reaching bureaucrats and among the world’s highest energy prices brought about by the follies of the EU’s and U.K.’s “climate leadership” policies of the past two decades, have cost Europe dearly. In 2008, the EU and U.S. economies were neck and neck. Today, the U.S. economy is 50% larger than its hapless ally across the Atlantic.

A growing ‘greenlash’ against the environmental agenda in Europe and U.K. – along with the rejection of mass immigration and the open-ended commitment to funding Ukraine’s war – has led to the rise of populist “far-Right” political parties. They have achieved significant success in regional and national elections in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany and the U.K.

Geert Wilders, the political leader of the Party for Freedom which is in a coalition of four parties which constitute the Dutch Government, sounded positively Trumpian as he decried government spending on the climate and supporting Ukraine and the need to reduce taxes, stating: “I want us to finally put the Dutch first.”

Alice Weidel, leader of the German AfD party that has 20% voter support across the country, making it Germany’s second strongest political party, is yet another potential Trump ally. In one of her typically fiery speeches to the Bundestag, she said: “Germany is deep in recession… And it’s not Putin, not the world, not some fictitious climate disasters that are to blame for this. This incapable Government is responsible for the collapse…”

In an extended interview with Elon Musk – who will lead the Department of Government Efficiency in Trump’s incoming administration – Ms. Weidel spoke of Angela Merkel as the first “green” chancellor who “wrecked and destroyed” the country with its “obnoxious energy policy” which made Germany “the first industrial economy that unplugged nuclear power plants”.

Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform U.K. party which is now neck and neck with the ruling Labour Party on 25% in some polls, has long been a personal friend of Mr. Trump. Like Mr. Trump and reflecting most Reform U.K. members, Mr. Farage is skeptical about climate alarmism. His party manifesto states that Net Zero policies are “crippling our economy” so “scrapping climate change goals should be made a priority for the next government as it would save the public sector £30 billion per year for the next 25 years”.

There are other leaders in the EU that share Mr. Trump’s opposition to the fundamentalist beliefs of the climate church. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban dismisses EU plans to tackle climate change as a “utopian fantasy”. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has pointedly stated that “ecology has been militarily occupied from the Left” and that “Greta Thunberg’s ideology will lead us to lose thousands of companies and millions of jobs in Europe”. Parties opposed to the unconstrained green climate agenda are now in governing coalitions in Finland, Sweden and Austria.

Energy pragmatists in the Global South

Ever since the first ever international forum devoted to the environment and climate change took place in Stockholm in 1972, the developed countries of the West have made climate policy a centrepiece in their international relations. From the earliest UN negotiations starting in 1992 at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit under the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developing countries in the ‘Global South’ such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa had “common but differentiated responsibilities”.

This meant that the developed countries (primarily the West, but also its allies including industrialised Japan and South Korea) adopted commitments to reduce carbon emissions by specified amounts over a specified period. This was allegedly dictated by the ScienceTM popularised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change periodic “Summary for Policymakers”. The developing countries not only did not have any binding policy commitments but were expected to receive considerable support in “climate finance” to assist mitigating and adapting to climate change.

After almost three decades of negotiations at the Conference of Parties (COP) at the UNFCCC forum, the chasm that exists between the policy perspectives of governments in the collective West and those of the rest of the world that make up 80% of the global population is no closer to being bridged. The delegations from China and India among other developing countries at COP26 held in Glasgow in 2021 successfully insisted at the last minute that the forum’s final communique refer to a “phase down” not a “phase out” of fossil fuels. This was to ensure there was no watering down of their aspirations for higher standards of living which depend on reliable and affordable fossil fuel supplies.

At COP28 held in Dubai in 2023, the contradictions between the climate alarmists of the West (which included both government representatives and a vast phalange of environmental NGOs that are accorded semi-official status at COP meetings) and the energy pragmatists of the ‘Global South’ broke into the open and was widely reported in the media.

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the President of the COP28 climate summit and CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, said pointedly in an interview: “You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuels… Please, help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

Nor is Dr. Al Jabber the only natural ally of the in-coming “drill, baby, drill” Trump administration. Al Jaber’s remarks were amplified by Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman who told Bloomberg that the world’s biggest oil exporter would not agree with Western demands to phaseout fossil fuels. “Absolutely not,” he said in an interview in Riyadh. “And I assure you not a single person – I’m talking about governments – believes in that… If they believe that this is the highest moral ground issue, fantastic. Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

Last year’s COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory in the presidential elections, much to the consternation of climate activists and a hyper-ventilating media around the world. The Financial Times saw Trump’s triumphant win as “a blow to global climate action” which would “cast a pall over the UN COP29”. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, host of COP29, came out as among Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, describing his country’s oil and gas resources as “a gift from God” and that oil and gas would be needed for “many more years”.

Upending green geopolitics

That the upcoming Trump administration will upend the green geopolitics pushed by the progressive environmental Left in the West is in no doubt. This was evident at the confirmation hearings for key nominees in the Trump administration which took place this week. Chris Wright, an oil executive and the nominee for Secretary of Energy, said this at his Senate hearing: “President Trump shares my passion for energy… if confirmed, I will work tirelessly to implement his bold agenda as an unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable and secure American energy.” He continued:

There’s seven billion people in the world that don’t live lives anything like we do…They want what we have. And of course, they should get what we have. And through market forces and improvement and leadership, particularly leadership from the President-elect Trump, I think we’re going to see growing more abundant energy resource coming out of our country and hopefully out of the world so that everyone else can live lives like we do.

Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent was asked at his confirmation hearing about fears that President-elect Trump’s efforts to reverse gains made in green energy would favour China. He responded as follows:

China will build a hundred new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race. China will build 10 nuclear plants this year. That is not solar. I am in favour of more nuclear plants. And I would note that the IRA as scored by the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] is wildly out of control in terms of spending on the upside.

Mr. Trump couches his promised energy policies in the mantle of “America First”. Yet in his ambitions to bring about a renaissance in energy production in the U.S., he enjoys the prospects of strong support from all corners of the world not beholden to the powerful lobbies of the globalist climate agenda.

Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, a former contributor to Forbes, and a member of the CO2 Coalition.

The Energy Storage Fiasco — How Soon Will It Be Abandoned?

Energy from the wind and the sun — they’re clean and green and free. OK, there’s the small problem of intermittency. But clearly the intermittency problem can easily be solved with a few batteries to store some power for the occasional calm nights.

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

Energy from the wind and the sun — they’re clean and green and free. OK, there’s the small problem of intermittency. But clearly the intermittency problem can easily be solved with a few batteries to store some power for the occasional calm nights.

Or is that solution really so easy? Regular readers here will know that I wrote an energy storage Report, titled “The Energy Storage Conundrum,” published by the GWPF back in December 2022. After some straightforward calculations based on elementary-school-level arithmetic, that Report concluded that the amount of storage needed was so large, and the costs so completely unaffordable, that energy storage was totally infeasible as a way to make wind and solar work as the main power sources for an electricity grid. Calculations set forth in that Report concluded that the amount of energy storage needed to enable a predominantly wind/solar grid to get through a year without hitting a blackout was in the range of 500 to 1000 hours of average electricity usage. Keep that range in mind for the rest of this post.

Paying no attention whatsoever to my warnings, and not troubling themselves to do any simple arithmetic of their own, the states of New York and California have chosen to forge ahead with plans for predominantly wind/solar grids backed up by batteries. Multiple years into the project, neither state is anywhere near to building 1% of the energy storage that would be needed to make their fantasy systems work. But even in these very early stages, they have both blundered into an additional and unanticipated problem: catastrophic fires.

Lithium-ion batteries have an unfortunate downside that they occasionally catch fire spontaneously. This can be a notable problem for your cell phone or computer, and a bigger problem for your electric bicycle or car. But the batteries for those things, even the electric car, are tiny compared to the huge batteries needed to back up the electrical grid. Grid-scale batteries must store thousands of megawatt-hours of electricity, compared to maybe 100 kWh for an EV. It seems that the frequency of these spontaneous fires increases with the size of the battery. Can this problem be solved? I have no idea. But it certainly has not been solved yet.

In March 2024, I had a post titled “New York and California Getting Totally Lost With Energy Storage,” reporting on the efforts of those two states to build gigantic battery farms to back up their planned wind/solar adventures. At a stage of having built only a fraction of one percent of the amount of batteries that would be needed to support the project, both had run into a situation of repeated huge and catastrophic spontaneous fires in their newly-built battery farms.

New York (State) has average electricity demand of about 17,000 MW, meaning that the storage capacity it would need for the predominantly wind/solar system of the future would be 500 to 1000 hours of that, or 8,500 to 17,000 GWh. Governor Hochul has set a (ridiculous) goal of 24 GWh of energy storage for the State by 2030, and my March 2024 post reported that by August 2023 all of 1.2 GWh of that had been built. And yet, between May and July 2023, New York had had three large fires at the grid battery storage facilities built up to that time:

  • On May 31, a battery that NextEra Energy Resources had installed at a substation in East Hampton caught fire.
  • On June 26, fire alarms went off at two battery units owned and operated by Convergent Energy and Power in Warwick, Orange County; one of those later caught fire.
  • On July 27, a different Convergent battery at a solar farm in Chaumont caught fire and burned for four days straight.

Source: this August 2023 piece from Canary Media.

Over in California, their average electricity demand is around 30,000 MW, meaning that the range of 500 to 1000 hours of battery storage they would need to back up their dream of a wind/solar system would require 15,000 GWh to 30,000 GWh of batteries. Here from the State of California is an Energy Storage System survey from October 2024. The amount of energy storage built so far is stated as 13,391 MW. Of course, they use the wrong units. These people are completely innumerate. However, we know that they are talking about 4-hour lithium-ion batteries, so multiply by 4 and divide by 1000 to get 53.564 GWh of storage built so far. That would be between about 0.18% and 0.36% of the amount of energy storage they would need to back up a predominantly wind/solar system.

And yet with this teensy amount of storage built so far, California too has had repeated spontaneous fires. My March 2024 post reported on two of these fires (sourced from an LA Times piece from October 2023):

  • In September 2022, a Tesla Megapack caught fire at a battery storage facility operated by Pacific Gas & Electric in the Northern California town of Moss Landing.
  • A fire broke out at the Valley Center Energy Storage Facility in San Diego County on Sept. 18 [2023].

And now we have the biggest fire of all, this time again at the Moss Landing facility. According to Energy Storage News in August 2023, after a 2023 expansion to 3 GWh capacity, the Moss Landing facility became the world’s largest energy storage facility. The fire broke out yesterday, January 16, and appears to be still burning to some extent at the time of this writing. I can’t find an estimate of how much of the facility is getting destroyed, but it is not a small part. Here is a picture of the fire from NPR:

NBC News reports today that there was a mandatory evacuation of an area of 7600 acres surrounding the facility. 7600 acres is about 12 square miles. Approximately 1200 to 1500 residents living in that area were evacuated, according to NBC.

NBC quotes Monterey County District 2 Supervisor Glenn Church calling this “a worst case scenario of a disaster” that nobody predicted. Church continues:

“This is really a lot more than just a fire, it’s really a wake up call for this industry, and if we’re going to be moving ahead with sustainable energy we need to have safe battery systems in place,” Church said.

Church is further quoted as stating that this is the fourth fire at this facility going back to 2019. Besides the current one and the one in 2022 reported in the LA Times story linked above, there were additional fires at Moss Landing in 2019 and 2021.

Back here in New York, my friend and co-author Richard Ellenbogen sends me an email pointing out that we have a large grid-scale battery storage facility moving toward construction on the East bank of the East River right across from Midtown Manhattan. I don’t find whether construction has actually begun, but this project has been in the works for years, and has gotten multiple regulatory approvals. Here is a piece from the New York City Economic Development Corporation indicating that the financing for the project was closed in May 2024. My friend Ellenbogen points out that the technology is the same as the Moss Landing facility in California, and a 12 square mile evacuation zone around this facility would include a big chunk of Midtown Manhattan and another big chunk of densely-populated Western Queens — hundreds of thousands of people, instead of the paltry 1200-1500 just evacuated out in California. What are our New York pols thinking? Actually, the EDC press release quotes a bunch of them. Here are a couple of quotes:

“Large-scale deployment of battery storage helps New York City advance its PlaNYC goal to achieve a clean, reliable, and equitable future,” said Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice Director Elijah Hutchinson. “NYCIDA’s support of this 100 MW project will help reduce our reliance on polluting fossil fuels and when completed, be one of the largest battery storage installations in the state.”

“For decades, residents of historically disadvantaged communities in Queens have suffered the negative effects of peaker plant pollution,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. “The battery energy storage facility coming to Astoria will help address this longtime injustice and result in a healthier environment for all of us in Queens. I commend the NYCEDC and the NYCIDA for taking decisive steps to bolster our city’s green economy by facilitating projects like this one that produce clean and renewable energy.”

OK then. This is the level of incompetence we are dealing with.

You would think that the latest Moss Landing disaster would be big news, but not so much. I find pieces at NPR, CBS and NBC, but not, for example, The New York Times. I guess this news is not “fit to print.”

Implications of the Moss Battery Plant Fire

The PEAK coalition has stated that “Fossil peaker plants in New York City are perhaps the most egregious energy-related example of what environmental injustice means today.” The influence of this position on current New York State environmental policy has led to this issue finding its way into multiple environmental initiatives. I have prepared a summary of this issue that explains why the presumption of egregious harm is based on selective choice of metrics, poor understanding of air quality health impacts, and ignorance of air quality trends.

From Watts Up With That?

Roger Caiazza

Yesterday Charles Rotter described the fire at the Moss Landing Battery Plant that was big enough to trigger evacuations.  I think it is appropriate to consider the implications of this fire on the PEAK Coalition report Accelerate Now! The Fossil Fuel End Game 2.0 that described their plan to “address harmful and racially disproportionate health impacts of the city’s peaker plants by replacing them with renewable energy and energy storage solutions.” 

Overview

The PEAK coalition has stated that “Fossil peaker plants in New York City are perhaps the most egregious energy-related example of what environmental injustice means today.”  The influence of this position on current New York State environmental policy has led to this issue finding its way into multiple environmental initiatives. I have prepared a summary of this issue that explains why the presumption of egregious harm is based on selective choice of metrics, poor understanding of air quality health impacts, and ignorance of air quality trends. 

Peak Coalition and Battery Storage

The Accelerate Now! The Fossil Fuel End Game 2.0 report concludes that “The pace of renewable energy, energy storage, and transmission development must increase.”  The following energy storage recommendations were made:

  • The most immediate and pressing step is to address the short-term reliability challenges that led NYISO to issue reliability must-run scenarios for the Gowanus and Narrows peaker plants. Governor Hochul must direct key decision-makers to fund and develop transmission and energy storage assets before May 2025 in order to minimize or eliminate the use of these peaker plants.
  • NYPA must be held accountable for the linked mandate to phase out their peaker plants in New York City and Long Island by accelerating the process of issuing, evaluating, awarding, and developing battery storage projects at the sites.
  • NYSERDA can and must develop new large-scale and community-led renewable energy and energy storage projects in an expedient manner and prioritize applications that will transition fossil fuel operations or develop distributed energy resources capacity.
  • Local leaders can play a significant role in educating the public on issues such as developing responsible solutions to address safety concerns without overburdening renewable energy and battery storage development due to misinformation.

Clean Energy Group prepared the report and facilitated a webinar entitled “Replacing NYC’s Peaker Plants with Clean Alternatives: Progress, Barriers, and Pathways Forward” on February 6, 2024, that  discussed battery storage.  Victor Davila, Community Organizer, THE POINT CDC included the following slide in his presentation that demands that battery storage replace peaking power plants.

Replacing NYC’s Peaker Plants with Clean Alternatives: Progress, Barriers, and Pathways Forward

Megan Carr, Skadden Fellow – Environmental Justice Program, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest talked about regulatory barriers including those for battery storage.  She illustrated her comments with the following slide.

Replacing NYC’s Peaker Plants with Clean Alternatives: Progress, Barriers, and Pathways Forward

Regarding battery storage she said:

I want to talk about regulatory barriers.  There are real challenges to developing battery storage in New York City.  The city has additional codes and safety standards beyond the state standards when it comes to siting battery storage.  FDNY has a site-specific approval process for every potential energy development.  There are set back and clearance requirements that limit the possibility of rooftop solar across the city.  There are fire code regulations that continue to prevent lithium-ion batteries from being installed indoors and the second use of lithium-ion batteries is banned in New York City.  These limitations stem from real safety concerns.  We’ve all been horrified by the deadly e-bike fires that we’ve read about in the news.  To increase energy storage development in New York City without sacrificing safety we need greater education for the public and policymakers alike that looks at the nuance between different types of battery storage and does not just fear monger in the public about the risk of storage. 

Time Out

The literal poster child for the Peak Coalition proposal is the Rise Light & Power Renewable Ravenswood initiative, a plan to transition Ravenswood Generating Station into a clean energy hub. The following slide from the presentation includes a picture of the Ravenswood facility.  The plan involves the replacement of Ravenwood’s remaining peaking capacity with “a mix of offshore wind, upstate renewables, district heating, and large-scale battery storage”. 

Replacing NYC’s Peaker Plants with Clean Alternatives: Progress, Barriers, and Pathways Forward

A couple of years ago I put together a substantive post that discussed battery energy storage system (BESS) concerns.  I concluded that these systems must overcome space constraint issues and are not proven technology.  When a leading expert on batteries says: “Everybody has to be educated how to use these batteries safely”, I think the best course of action is to follow his advice.  It is not appropriate to make the residents of the disadvantaged communities near a BESS become unwilling lab rats to test whether a technology that can generate toxic gases, fires, and explosions is appropriate in an urban setting.  I am sure Ms. Carr believes that article is “fear mongering the public about the risk of storage”.

At the risk of further fear mongering, I think it is appropriate to consider what would happen if there was a fire at Ravenswood. The Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility is the largest lithium battery energy storage system in the world, located in Moss Landing, California. It has a total capacity of 750 MW and 3,000 MWh, providing critical support to California’s electricity grid.  On January 16, 2025 a fire was reported at the facility shortly after 3 PM.  Mercury News reported that:

Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection said at a Friday morning press conference said the fire had died down significantly by 8:30 a.m., down from its peak about 12 hours earlier.  The evacuations remained in place at 11 a.m. for about 1,200 residents

According to the Mercury News “Flames and smoke in the community of Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area in northern Monterey County largely were just smoldering late Friday morning following a major fire at a battery storage plant that brought evacuations.”  Despite a flareup early Friday afternoon evacuations orders were lifted Friday night albeit health officials still advised residents to limit outdoor exposure and to keep doors and windows closed until further notice.

I understand that the fire was in the 300-megawatt four hour storage  Phase I energy storage facility and reports indicated that 75% of the facility had burned.  The nearby Tesla storage facility was unharmed.

This is the third fire at the facility in the last three years.  They evacuated 8 square miles and closed a major highway.  What would happen in New York City if there was a fire at the poster child storage facility.

New York City Battery Storage Fire Impacts

Richard Ellenbogen saved me from having to figure out the impacts.  The following quotations are lightly edited comments from an email he sent to me.

The Moss Landing Battery Plant fire is burning at a temperature of between 2500 – 5000 degrees Fahrenheit.   From reports, the fire encompasses 75% of the 300 MW facility.  Assuming a 4 MW battery fits in a 40-foot sea container sized package, there are about 56 sea container sized units on fire.  The first responders did not get close enough to the fire to fight it because a lot of the water sprayed on it would likely turn to steam before it hit the batteries.  Lithium battery fires turn water that does come into contact with them into hydrogen and oxygen.  Explosive fuel, an oxidizer, and heat sources aren’t a great combination.  At $400 per Kilowatt-hour, that is $90 million in damage for the 225 Megawatts that are burning, not counting cleanup costs. 

Please explain to me how the technology can qualify as zero emission.  Not to mention that any water sprayed on it would carry heavy metals and other toxins into the ground or into Monterey Bay.  In addition to the ridiculous cost of the storage and the short lifespan, this has been one of my arguments against these facilities for years.

This fire has further implications for use in New York City.  At Moss Landing, there are 7676 acres under evacuation with only 1214 people living there.  At 640 acres per square mile, that is 12 square miles.  It is a circle with a radius of about two miles, much of which is over the Pacific Ocean.  The following figure shows the area around the plant.

They are building a similar sized storage facility using the same technology at the Ravenswood Power Plant in Queens.  It is not clear that anything can be done to make it any safer than the Moss Landing Plant.  A similar fire there would require at least a shelter in place order and possibly an evacuation order for nearly a million people to say nothing about shutting down highways and the East River. The Ravenswood location is the Red Stick Pin on Vernon Blvd. across the East River from Roosevelt Island shown below. 

The average population density of NY City is 30,000 people per square mile.  It is the most densely populated city in the United States, except that figure also includes less densely populated areas in the outer boroughs.  The average population density of Manhattan is 73,000 people per square mile and a 12 Square mile evacuation zone would cover some of the most densely populated areas of Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.  The evacuation zone would cover most of the map shown.   Two miles from Ravenswood extends to the West Side of Central Park due west, southwest to the Empire State building on 33rd Street and 5th Avenue, all of the East side of Manhattan above 30th Street up to 106th Street, and Queens and Brooklyn from the RFK Bridge down to Greenpoint.  That is the entire area circled by Routes 278 and 495.  Those are the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the Long Island Expressway, roads that are notorious for being parking lots on a normal day. 

What would happen during a battery fire mass evacuation that could also potentially impact the utility system and mass transit in a worst-case scenario, eliminating subways as a viable means of egress?  Grand Central Station would also fall within a 2 mile radius evacuation zone so would Metro North trains be able to operate?  What contamination would enter the East River during a similar fire at Ravenswood?  How many people would die in an evacuation like that from heart attacks, being crushed in a crowd or run over by vehicles, and how many other types of accidents that could occur in an evacuation of that size?  A 2 mile evacuation zone would also include all of the hospitals between  60th Street and 70th Street near the East River including Sloan Kettering and Weill- Cornell, and also NYU Langone Medical Center on 34th Street and the East River.  How would those facilities be evacuated?

Conclusion

The Peak Coalition demands that regulators “allow community governance in renewable energy and battery storage”.  I worry that addressing this constraint distracts from the complex issues involved with peaking power plant needs and fire safety mandates.

When Ms. Carr talked about the Fire Department of New York response to energy storage permitting her voice suggested that she did not agree with their requirements.   Even though she acknowledged that their “limitations stem from real safety concerns” she said: “To increase energy storage development in New York City without sacrificing safety we need greater education for the public and policymakers alike that looks at the nuance between different types of battery storage and does not just fear monger in the public about the risk of storage.”  These fires have implications for this recommendation.

The Peak Coalition has a very narrow focus that is based almost entirely on emotion.  Most importantly, they have no accountability when they disparage the agencies and organizations that are responsible for environmental protection, electric system reliability, and in this case, fire hazards.  In my previous article I concluded that we should follow the advice of experts who say: “Everybody has to be educated how to use these batteries safely”.  Given the experience of Moss Landing, I think it is fair to ask if they can be operated safely and would it be prudent to delay implementation until that can be shown. 

The alleged impacts of air pollution from peaking power plants pale in comparison to the disastrous direct and indirect impacts of a battery energy storage fire.  Those risks must be considered as the energy transition implementation plan is rolled out.  Crossing fingers and hoping that a fire will not happen is a prescription for disaster.

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other organization with which he has been associated.

Climate Rescuer Hydrogen 12 Times Worse for The Climate, Researchers Find

We’ve been told that hydrogen is now the savior of the energy transition. At some point, the green energy planners realized that the power grid cannot serve as a storage system. So a storage material without carbon had to be found: hydrogen, H2.

From No Trick Zone

By P Gosselin

Warming effect of leaked hydrogen is almost 12 times stronger than CO2

Hat-tip: Klimaschau

We’ve been told that hydrogen is now the savior of the energy transition. At some point, the green energy planners realized that the power grid cannot serve as a storage system. So a storage material without carbon had to be found: hydrogen, H2

Source here.

However, that might not work out either, as a team of researchers from the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo (CICERO) published an article in the Nature Communications Earth & Environment” in June 2023. The title: “A multi-model assessment of the global warming potential of hydrogen.”

Here’s the press release (emphasis added:

The global warming effect of leaked hydrogen is almost 12 times stronger than CO2, shows a new study by CICERO, a climate research center, published in Communications Earth & Environment.

The study fills a gap in our knowledge about the climate effects of hydrogen, a central technology in the energy transition.

Unlike exhaust from burning coal and gas that contains CO2, burning hydrogen emits only water vapor and oxygen. Rather, it is the leaking of hydrogen from production, transportation and usage that adds to global warming.

Hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas, but its chemical reactions in the atmosphere affect like methane, ozone, and stratospheric water vapor. In this way, emissions of hydrogen can cause global warming, despite its lack of direct radiative properties.

The study was led by Dr. Maria Sand, a senior scientist at CICERO, and her colleagues with collaborators from the U.K., France and the U.S.

‘The climate effects of hydrogen have been an under-researched topic. However, a few papers based on single model studies confirm our estimated global warming potential (GWP100) of 11.6,’ said Sand.

‘We used five different atmospheric chemistry models and investigated changes in atmospheric methane, ozone and stratospheric water vapor,’ said Sand.

‘Hydrogen interacts with various biogeochemical processes. In our estimates, we have included soil uptake, photochemical production of hydrogen, the lifetimes of hydrogen and methane, and the interactions between hydrogen and methane,’ said Sand.

The study is the most comprehensive assessment of the climate effect of hydrogen to date, thanks to the advanced and novel use of existing climate models.

‘We have assessed the uncertainties, and our study forms a robust foundation for political decision-making on hydrogen,’ said Sand.

‘A global warming potential of 11.6 is significant, and our study clearly shows the importance of reducing hydrogen leaks. We lack the technology to monitor and detect hydrogen leaks at the scale needed, but new technology is being developed as the industry adapts,’ said Sand.

The potential benefit of switching to a hydrogen economy will depend on the magnitude of hydrogen leakages and to what extent hydrogen replaces fossil fuels.

‘There are still many open questions, and our group will continue to expand our knowledge to ensure timely and accurate decision-making on a key mitigation technology,’ said Sand.”

Starmer’s Millstones

Who can forget Keir Starmer’s Six Milestones? Who can remember them? Were there even six?

It’s barely a fortnight since the latest Government Reset, and I’ve already forgotten what happened. It was a case of cold reboot and the start screen showing something substantially similar to what went on before: it was still broken.

From Climate Scepticism

By Jit

The UK’s Doom Loop

Who can forget Keir Starmer’s Six Milestones? Who can remember them? Were there even six?

It’s barely a fortnight since the latest Government Reset, and I’ve already forgotten what happened. It was a case of cold reboot and the start screen showing something substantially similar to what went on before: it was still broken.

If I had to take a stab, I’d have to say there were in fact six of the Milestones. One of them was “Cleanish” energy by 2030. The other five? I’m guessing that we had an NHS waiting list target. Stop the boats? Something on stop the boats? Net immigration in the “tens of thousands”? Fastest growth in the G7? An army? Less stab stab stab on the streets?

Nope, I’m going to have to check. According to Sky,

The milestones cover six policy areas – healthcare, policing, education, housebuilding, energy and the economy.

Here’s the list:

Raise living standards and aim at the highest growth in the G7.

A 92% target for a shorter than 18-week wait for NHS treatment.

1.5 million new homes.

“Cleanish” power by 2030.

More cops. 13,000.

75% of 5-year-olds ready to learn when they start school.

The first is what ought to be a trivial task in “ordinary” times. Two, three and four won’t happen. Five is trivial. Six is a joke.

Milestones come and go. Who can forget Rishi Sunak’s? Well, me for one. They’re not quite as faint a memory as the list of concessions that David Cameron came back from Europe with. Stop the boats! That’s the ticket. Actually, it’s the most expensive ferry to Britain you can take. Don’t worry, we don’t check your passport before embarkation.

Why is Jit rambling about milestones, you might wonder?

Well, it occurred to me that the UK might be in a doom loop. A doom loop is, or at least I think of it as, a damaging, indeed dooming, cycle in which actions taken to address a problem only make matters worse. A classic example is the fine British pub, which responds to a lack of customers by putting up the price of a pint of beer, resulting in fewer customers, and the need to raise prices further, unto doom, windows covered in oriented strand board, and eventually a couple of nice flats.

On the back of a fag packet – I don’t smoke, I just happened to have one handy – I wrote a list of what I decided to call “Starmer’s Millstones.” You see what I did there?

Starmer’s Millstones

Here is my list.

1. The green electricity crap.

2. The Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate.

3. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

4. Employer’s NI.

5. War on the rich.

6. Grocery tax.

Will these measures make things better for Britain?

1. The green electricity crap.

Aficionados of this site are well aware that if your electricity generator has to have three qualities – cheap, reliable, and no carbon dioxide emissions – it belongs in the pages of a book by Douglas Adams. It is quite obvious to everyone, except the people who matter, that pushing the UK into a renewables future is going to end up with electricity costing twice as much, or more, and finally going off with a sad little fizzle, probably permanently. It also has a number of other disadvantages, like the fact that carpeting good English land with solar panels means it cannot be used to grow crops, which will increasingly have to be imported. Oh, it also needs to compete with the fantasy-land 1.5 million houses that are (not) going to get built in the next 5 years. And having extension leads trailing all over the North Sea does wonders for energy security. Vlad probably doesn’t even want to sabotage offshore wind farms anyway. Why interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake? Doubling electricity bills? Make the poor, poorer. And from Vlad’s point of view, make it impossible for the UK to afford to have an armed forces to speak of. Of course, I should point out that the Government want to borrow on the open market to pay for all the green electricity crap. And the markets are just throwing money at the Government like guests hurling confetti over the bride and groom, knowing how much growth the green electricity crap is going to generate. Or are they? In fact, the numbers seem to show that our lenders think we are just going to burn the money. Which is probably fairly accurate.

2. The Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate.

If you wanted to boost the UK’s vehicle manufacturing industry – one of the few that remains here – then forcing manufacturers to build cars that they can’t sell is quite the doom loop move. And they will try to patch things together by making the better cars more expensive, or making the VED on older cars as much as they are worth. Making it harder to own or use a car… makes the poor, poorer.

3. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

I happened to notice that our carbon is leaking. Places around the world like to do things cheaply. Like growing crops with fertiliser made using methane. Of course, in the doom loop world, you have to raise a tax on imports of food grown in those conditions. So on the one hand we’re carving out chunks of farmland and using them for other purposes. Then we’re making food imports more expensive. This makes poor people poorer: everyone has to eat.

4. Employer’s NI.

Not strictly a climate matter, but there is an angle here, and it’s a perfect example of a doom loop move. Not getting enough taxes in to pay for all those green crap intermittent power thingies? Slap a tax on jobs. That way, you’ll raise tonnes of dosh. Oh wait. No, you won’t. You’ll cause companies to fire employees because they can’t afford to keep them on. They won’t hire new employees. They’ll bang up their prices – just like the pub – and spiral down into the doom loop. As you know, all I know about economics I learnt from “Economics for Dummies.” But throttling the horse that you want to pull the cart has to be the dumbest move you can take as a government, unless you really want the doom loop. Those newly-unemployed people will need subsistence pay, enforcing yet another doom loop. People afraid of losing their jobs won’t change jobs. They won’t move house. They won’t spend money. They won’t buy a shiny new EV. If you want to boost the economy, this is stupid. Part-timers? Low paid? Your jobs are the first in line. It’s a great way to make the poor… even poorer.

5. War on the rich.

Tax the rich! That’ll show ’em. Will it? Will it really? Or will they just naff off elsewhere, and take their wealth-creation mojo with them? It will raise taxes! No, not if the rich have naffed off. It will reduce taxes. But at least Britain will be a fairer country? Yes, we’ll all be poorer together.

6. Grocery tax.

(Yes; this is a trivial example.) Taxing packaging is a seductive idea, except when you realise that supermarkets already try to minimise packaging – who wants to pay for something they don’t need? I look forward to the day that eggs are laid out loose, like apples used to be, when the UK still had orchards. (It is eminently possible to re-use egg boxes.) Can’t see any wastage going on there, can you? Who will pay this tax? Shoppers. Making poor people poorer.

Editorial

This is not a party-political point. Yes, Labour is awful. I can’t even think of a suitable adjective for how awful they are. But the Conservatives started this doom loop. They started Net Zero, and the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate, and the Boiler Tax (which I haven’t even mentioned above!). They have only recently begun to whistle a slightly different tune. And that is as infuriating as anything else, because the obvious facts were right there under their noses, and all it took was for them to be booted out of power – to have the ability to do anything useful removed from them – for them to suddenly realise that they themselves had doggedly steered us down this ruinous path in defiance of all good sense, and in pursuit of the shallow appearance of virtue, that they had tipped the UK into a doom loop.

Conclusion

Everything is terrible, and it’s getting worse, and the worseness is getting worse faster and fasterer; in short, we’re in a doom loop.

A wise man once proposed to “cut the green crap.” If a government wanted to achieve something useful – like improving living standards – it would do well to heed that call. I think it might be a good shout for getting out of the doom loop, too.

I always warn against despair, but right now, rivers of hope are flowing out of the UK. We need to stem that flow.

ExxonMobil Is Done Playing Nice—And Rob Bonta Should Be Worried

It looks like ExxonMobil has finally had enough of California’s environmentalist clown show. In a move that can only be described as epic, Exxon has filed a defamation lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his merry band of activist accomplices, including the Sierra Club and other virtue-signaling outfits. Their crime? Allegedly smearing Exxon’s reputation with claims that are as baseless as they are self-serving​​.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

It looks like ExxonMobil has finally had enough of California’s environmentalist clown show. In a move that can only be described as epic, Exxon has filed a defamation lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his merry band of activist accomplices, including the Sierra Club and other virtue-signaling outfits. Their crime? Allegedly smearing Exxon’s reputation with claims that are as baseless as they are self-serving​​.

Let’s set the stage. Bonta, ever the aspiring political showman, has spent years targeting Exxon and other oil companies. In 2022, he subpoenaed Exxon as part of his crusade against the so-called “global plastics crisis.” By 2024, he upped the ante, accusing the company of running a “decades-long campaign of deception” about plastics recycling. According to Bonta, ExxonMobil has been lying to the public, pushing the “myth” of recycling while raking in billions and polluting the planet. Oh, the horror​​.

But here’s the kicker: ExxonMobil isn’t rolling over. This isn’t some slapped-together PR campaign or a weak press release meant to placate the mob. No, Exxon took the gloves off and went straight to federal court in Beaumont, Texas. Why Texas? Because they know better than to trust California courts, which are about as friendly to oil companies as PETA is to a steakhouse. The lawsuit calls out Bonta and his pals for what they really are: political opportunists running a “deliberate smear campaign” under the guise of environmentalism​​.

Calling Out the Greenwashed Hypocrisy

ExxonMobil’s lawsuit points out the irony of Bonta’s accusations, labeling his campaign as “reverse greenwashing.” While these so-called environmentalists strut around proclaiming their moral superiority, they’re actually undermining legitimate recycling efforts and stifling innovation. And for what? Political points and donations. The lawsuit even suggests that Bonta’s antics are less about protecting the planet and more about padding his résumé for his inevitable run at higher office​.

And let’s not forget the hypocrisy of California’s own policies. The state collects recycling fees on every plastic bottle you buy, yet much of that plastic ends up in overseas dumps, contributing to the same pollution crisis they claim to be combating. If anyone is perpetuating a scam here, it’s California​.

Enough of the Mishegoss

You can tell that Attorney General Bonta had been caught off guard by this,” explained environmental lawyer Leonard Grissom to the Globe on Monday. “Usually, with a defamation suit like this, they are quick to a response. But not here.

“And it’s odd. Exxon, as well as other big oil companies, have been going after environmentalists more and more. And Exxon’s reaction to the suit in September showed that they had just about enough of all this mishegoss. They assumed too much here, and this suit shows it. Bonta and those environmental groups are going to respond soon. And when they do, we are going to see exactly just what kind of legal battle we are in for. Oil companies usually don’t respond like this.

https://californiaglobe.com/fl/exxonmobil-sues-ag-rob-bonta-environmental-groups-over-defamation/

ExxonMobil’s legal move isn’t just a defense—it’s a declaration. For years, Bonta and his ilk have been using oil companies as scapegoats for every environmental issue under the sun. Now, Exxon is saying, “Not today, Rob. Not today.” This lawsuit could very well expose the shaky foundation of Bonta’s entire crusade​​.

The company is demanding damages and a full retraction of the defamatory statements. In other words, they’re not just playing to win—they’re playing to embarrass. And while Bonta’s office has yet to respond, it’s safe to say the pressure is on. After all, defamation cases require evidence, not just political bluster​.

,Exxon_v_Bonta_et_alHerunterladen

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just about ExxonMobil. It’s about pushing back against the broader climate hysteria and the politicians who exploit it for power. The environmental movement, for all its high-minded rhetoric, has become a religion—a dogma enforced by fearmongering and pseudo-science. And ExxonMobil’s lawsuit might just be the first step in holding these zealots accountable.

It’s about time someone stood up to these eco-bullies. Bonta and his allies are quick to vilify corporations while conveniently ignoring the real-world benefits these companies provide—like, say, affordable energy and materials that make modern life possible. Sure, plastics have issues. But if Bonta were serious about solutions, he’d be working with companies like Exxon, not slandering them in a transparent bid for votes.

Conclusion

So here we are: ExxonMobil versus the State of California and its self-righteous minions. It’s a classic David-and-Goliath tale, except this time, David is packing billions in resources and a top-notch legal team. Rob Bonta, on the other hand, might want to rethink his career strategy. Because when the dust settles, this lawsuit could leave his political ambitions in the same state as California’s high-speed rail project: derailed and going nowhere fast.

ExxonMobil’s lawsuit isn’t just justified—it’s a long-overdue reckoning. Let’s see how Rob Bonta and his greenwashed army fare when they’re forced to play by the rules of actual evidence and accountability. My guess? Not well.

Can The CAN

The Climate and Nature Bill has its second reading this week.

Its objective is to reduce UK emissions, including imported ones, to close to zero during the 2030s. Currently those emissions are around 800 Mt a year, and the implication is that they will have to be cut to around 100 Mt by 2035 at the latest, dropping to near zero soon after.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3776

The Climate and Nature Bill has its second reading this week.

Its objective is to reduce UK emissions, including imported ones, to close to zero during the 2030s. Currently those emissions are around 800 Mt a year, and the implication is that they will have to be cut to around 100 Mt by 2035 at the latest, dropping to near zero soon after.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/12/31/the-climate-and-nature-bill/

What would this entail?

We actually have some idea, because the UK FIRES report, Absolute Zero, laid it all out in 2019.

https://ukfires.org/impact/publications/reports/absolute-zero/

They were of course talking about Net Zero in 2050, rather than 2040. So what they were planning for 2030-2049 would effectively apply to 2025 to 2040 if the CAN Bill is put into law. (The UK FIRES report also did not take into account imported emissions).

Taking them one-by-one:

  • Cars – to put a 1000kg car into perspective, the Nissan Leaf weighs double that. Given the weight of an EV battery, a one tonne car would be so tiny as to be useless. Absolute Zero also calls for a 40% cut in road use, but does not say how this could be enforced.
  • Flying – the chart says it all really! All airports bar Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast to shut by 2029, and those three must also close soon after.
  • All shipping to be phased out.
  • Heating – full rollout of unaffordable heat pumps, with the natural gas network shut down by 2040 at the latest, meaning existing gas boilers would be unusable.
  • Food – all beef, lamb and presumably dairy gone, along with most imported food. Fertiliser use “greatly reduced”, a double whammy given that there would no longer be any manure.
  • Materials – no blast furnace steel, no cement, no plastics
  • Construction – reduced to renovation
  • And no fossil fuels at all.

All of this will happen in the next ten years or so, if the CAN Bill is passed.

In years to come, we will all look back and realise how badly we were duped about Net Zero. We were lied to about the costs, we were lied to about renewable energy being cheaper.

But probably the biggest lie of the lot was that we could achieve this green nirvana just by embracing renewable energy and planting a few trees.

I don’t remember being told that all our airports would be forced to shut, there would be no imports, no meat or dairy, food shortages, heating made unaffordable, driving impractical and too expensive for most and industries decimated.

Study: “Wealthier … African nations … show lower levels of climate ambition”

The odd part of this article is, having discovered a statistically significant inverse correlation between climate ambition and national wealth, the author’s recommendation is to promote green energy and try to raise climate ambition in wealthy nations? Does she want to keep Africa poor?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Africa’s climate change balancing act: green energy vs economic development

Published: January 17, 2025 11.50pm AEDT
Oluwafikayo Akeredolu
PhD Candidate, University of Oxford

…

I research climate finance and investigated what drives sub-Saharan Africa’s climate ambitions. I also wanted to find out whether wealthier sub-Saharan African nations were more likely to prioritise economic development over aggressive climate commitments than the region’s more impoverished nations. 

…

I found that wealthier sub-Saharan African nations (measured by gross domestic product per capita) show lower levels of climate ambition. Nigeria and South Africa, for instance, are wealthier than many others in Africa. But they’re under political and economic pressure to expand energy access and industrial capacity. This can limit them from curbing greenhouse gas emissions. 

It’s clear from my study that gross domestic product per capita was the only statistically significant determinant of climate ambition among sub-Saharan African countries. This reveals how economic priorities often shape countries’ climate commitments.

…

I have several recommendations based on my findings.

…

Third, renewable energy must be promoted, particularly through investments in solar, wind, and hydropower. The region’s natural resources must be used to move countries away from fossil fuels.

…Read more: https://theconversation.com/africas-climate-change-balancing-act-green-energy-vs-economic-development-244758

The referenced paper;

African climate politics and multilateralism: Domestic factors and cross-country variation in climate ambitions

Fikayo Akeredolu

Pages 273-292 | Received 29 Feb 2024, Accepted 03 Oct 2024, Published online: 28 Oct 2024

ABSTRACT

This article examines how domestic factors explain variations in the ambitions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Although Africa contributes only 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is highly vulnerable to climate change. All 54 African countries have ratified the Paris Agreement, and by May 2022, 44 had submitted updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs), showing strong commitment to mitigating global temperature rise. Although SSA countries’ NDCs are more robust than the global average, significant cross-country variations exist. This article builds on the limited research on these variations to explore whether democracy, GDP, oil consumption, and historical emissions influence NDC ambition across 44 SSA countries. The analysis finds a statistically significant negative relationship between GDP and NDC ambition, while other variables show no significance. This study is crucial for understanding how domestic factors shape climate commitments in SSA.Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10220461.2024.2413686

The odd part of this article is, having discovered a statistically significant inverse correlation between climate ambition and national wealth, the author’s recommendation is to promote green energy and try to raise climate ambition in wealthy nations? Does she want to keep Africa poor?

Surely a more reasonable conclusion is there may be something about “climate ambition” which damages national economies?

Africa is not alone in showing such a correlation. High climate ambition Britain, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have suffered years of energy poverty and economic difficulties. Yet despite the Biden Presidency, the USA, with consistently lower climate ambition, has a much healthier economy.

China is the odd man out when it comes to climate ambition vs economic progress, though some of the damage can be attributed to “climate ambition”. Despite their recent climate efforts, China is a coal powered economy which appears to be on the brink of a deep recession. But there are other factors affecting the Chinese economy, such as China’s gross mishandling of the Covid pandemic, Xi Jinping’s incompetent management of Chinese energy needs, China’s belligerent and disruptive posturing on the world stage, China’s brutal Maoist crackdown on business leaders, extreme local and regional government debt, and the ongoing banking crisis caused by their government’s long term failure to contain their property asset bubble, which I believe can more than account for China’s current economic woes.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/28/china-suffers-widespread-blackouts-as-climate-targets-bite/

The litany of problems being experienced by China makes me wonder if climate ambition is a proxy for more serious problems with governance. Perhaps governments which place climate ambition ahead of economic development are dysfunctional in other ways, which might make climate ambition a good litmus test for overall government incompetence, but not necessarily the complete explanation for why economies run by the climate ambitious perform so poorly.

I hope after Oluwafikayo Akeredolu wins her PhD; she has an opportunity to reconsider her list of recommendations. Because the obvious conclusion from her research is if Africa wants to be rich, they need to ditch climate ambition and fix whatever other problems led to the prioritising of climate ambition.

Climate Change Giving Meaning to Life

The religious mindset embraces the belief that there is more to life than the material world of the senses. There are truths that transcend the here and now. Things that give a non-contingent meaning to human existence. This is obvious with the monotheistic religions, and a little less obvious with Buddhism and polytheistic beliefs.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Dr James Allan

The religious mindset embraces the belief that there is more to life than the material world of the senses. There are truths that transcend the here and now. Things that give a non-contingent meaning to human existence. This is obvious with the monotheistic religions, and a little less obvious with Buddhism and polytheistic beliefs. Still, the appeal of this sort of belief in transcendent truths is pretty obvious. That means that not all that many people who reject established religions will move over to some sort of David Hume or Bertrand Russell-type sceptical view that what you see is what you get – we are here because of the fortuitous collisions of trillions of atoms, lots of time and even more luck. As Hume famously said, “the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster”.

That means that myriad people who hold secular views in today’s world are going to invest other things with a sort of enervated, but still transcendent, worth and meaning. It will become a sort of religion for them. And ‘climate change’ is the obvious exhibit number one. All sorts of people talk about this issue through a patently religious-type lens. They invest it with a sort of transcendent value. Mere cost-benefit type analyses are too tawdry and aren’t allowed because this is something beyond the material world of trade-offs and economic thinking. It becomes an explanation for everything, and so cannot be falsified (and really is not a scientific claim at all). Nor does it matter if actions taken in furtherance of this quasi-religious goal will accomplish anything at all, or not. As with the religious martyr, if China and India build a new coal-fired power plant every week (and they are) and the Trump administration pulls out of the Paris Net Zero accord (and it will) – meaning anything an Australia or Britain or Canada might do, including going back to the Stone Age tomorrow, will make virtually zero difference to future temperatures – none of that matters. Moral righteousness irrespective of consequences is what counts and what gives a sort of untainted meaning to life. ‘We will be a moral beacon, whether others copy us or not. We act in the service of a transcendent truth, etcetera, etcetera.’

Readers will think I’m over-egging this and exaggerating the type of thinking that drives many of the climate change cultists. But I don’t think I am. Talk to them of former Obama science advisor Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled, which pokes all sorts of holes in the supposed ‘settled science’ around global warming, and Bjorn Lomborg who argues our money could be infinitely better spent in preparing for a degree or two higher temperatures, and they will dismiss this all out of hand. Point out that extreme weather events have been declining, not accelerating (and the data are clear on this) and they will ignore you, and each time there is a fire or hurricane or flood, for them it will be a sign of the Climate Change God’s displeasure with human actions. No pedestrian human actions or failures will divert them from uttering the all-inclusive explanation that ‘it’s climate change what dunnit’.

Take the massive fires in Los Angeles. All the usual suspects have jumped on the ‘climate change is the culprit’ express. You’ll have heard this from Gavin Newsom, myriad Democrat politicos, Hollywood starlets, the preponderance of the legacy media (seemingly unaware, even after the recent U.S. election, that the vast majority of voters don’t give a flying firetruck what they think or are selling), the Teals in Australia, Bob Carr, the list goes on into the horizon. Now, a non-religious outlook that focused on the empirical facts would point to the lack of water management (no water retention, no dam building, and in fact dams removed so that this past year’s record rainfalls all ended up in the ocean) despite voters passing Proposition 1 to spend $7.5 billion to make it happen. It would suggest that the failure to do proper forest management and burn offs (in deference to the environmental lobby) mattered a lot too. As did the fact many water hydrants were empty of water. As did the $18 million cut in LA fire department’s budget last year, to fund DEI crap. As did DEI hiring practices and promotions in the that same fire department. As did all the homelessness that correlates with more arson. Ditto the illegal immigration gangs – start a fire and then loot when the owners have to leave. And did you know that there was no viable insurance industry for this in LA because the socialist Dems were dictating premiums that the insurance industry knew – given everything else Team Newsom was doing – were insanely too low. So many couldn’t get insurance.

Victor Davis Hanson sums it up quite pithily. These fires were “a total systems collapse”. Not spending on water storage. Suffering from an extensive DEI – so, by definition, no concern with merit in hiring and running the fire department – hierarchy. No forest management. ‘Newsom was fiddling’ while LA burned. It was like a ‘DEI Green New Deal hydrogen bomb’. And this despite huge rainfalls 11 months ago. And warnings from the insurance industry that went unheeded and forced many of these companies to leave. Nope, instead LA cut the fire department budget by almost $18 million last year.

But hey, if you’re a Teal or Bob Carr or one of many, many Democrat politicians this all happened because of ‘climate change’. Sure, I realise that not all exponents of this explanation are true believers. Renewables rent-seekers are grifters. And Gavin Newsom is watching his political future burn up before his eyes and needs to blame something other than Democrat policies. But we all know there are plenty of true believers in this cult. Heck, half the Coalition partyroom probably falls into that category (barf, barf). No amount of empirical explanation will dent the desire for these believers to embrace the gods of climate alarmism. And their need to lay moral blame on all who refuse to genuflect at the altar of this new pseudo-religion.

More has been done to protect and advance free speech since Donald Trump won the election than was seen in all the tenures of all the establishment Anglosphere governments over the last two decades – that is just undeniable. Likewise, the Don’s pending administration will do more to fight back against this climate change religious worldview than any established Anglosphere conservative government has or will do. Because when the costs get too high, businesses flee and everyone else is laughing at you for wearing a hair shirt to get to heaven, the spell can be broken. Los Angeles voters are getting what they voted for – good and hard.

James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.