Tag: Net zero

Addressing Wind/Solar Instability: Hardwiring the Grid

Those of us who were watching the grid had noticed for years that Texas ran with a very low reserve margin…and there were predictions that Texas was going to be in trouble,

From Master Resource

By Ed Ireland

The near failure of the Texas power grid, coming just 4 minutes and 37 seconds from a complete collapse on February 14, 2021, was the first alarm bell that something was dreadfully wrong with US power grids. Meredith Angwin, a physical chemist and power grid specialist, described the February 2021 failure of the Texas power grid failure as a seminal event that was not a surprise:

Those of us who were watching the grid had noticed for years that Texas ran with a very low reserve margin…and there were predictions that Texas was going to be in trouble, [1],”

Since then, more power-grid operators have been speaking out about the increasing instability of their grids due to an over-weighting of non-dispatchable wind and solar power. A report on February 24, 2023, from the largest power grid in the US, PJM, warned of “increasing reliability risks” affecting 13 states and the District of Columbia and 65 million people who get their power from PJM. This report is a wake-up call for all US power grids because most face the same grid instability problems highlighted in the report:

  • The growth rate of electricity is likely to continue to increase from electrification coupled with the proliferation of high-demand data centers in the region.
  • The projections in this study indicate that it is possible that the current pace of new entry (of electricity generation capacity) would be insufficient to keep up with expected retirements and demand growth by 2030.
  • Thermal generators are retiring rapidly due to government and private sector policies as well as economics.
  • PJM’s interconnection queue is composed primarily of intermittent and limited-duration resources.

More grids have been warning that the addition of new wind and solar needs to be restrained and that retirements of dispatchable thermal generation—such as coal, nuclear and natural gas—need to slow. 

This was emphasized by Manu Asthana, CEO of PJM, in a speech at the Electric Supply Association, on March 27, 2023, when he noted that new supply resources had not kept pace with retirements because of clogged interconnection queues, siting obstacles, and supply chain constraints:

I think the math is pretty straightforward. I think we need to add [supply resources] faster … but I also think we need to subtract slower and subtract generation only when the replacement generation is here at scale. I really think that’s critical.

Asthana also emphasized that these retirements are not the result of old facilities being voluntarily shuttered but instead are being forcibly closed by government intervention:

Most of the retirements are expected because of state and federal environmental and climate policies.

He added that PJM faces the additional problem of increasing loads from the EVs and the push to “electrify everything,” plus data center growth since their grid includes the greater Washington DC area.

The problem of rapidly retiring dispatchable power generation such as coal and natural gas is indeed entirely policy-driven. One of Joe Biden’s campaign promises was to eliminate fossil fuels, with policies focused on eliminating coal mines and coal-fired power plants. He said recently that all of the country’s coal plants should be closed because they’re “too costly to operate and can’t be relied upon as a dependable energy source for future generations” and replaced by wind and solar.

The significant impact of these energy policies was emphasized in a recent article in the Houston Chronicle:

Hundreds of power plants, representing more than 87,000 megawatts of coal-, nuclear- and natural gas-fired generation, have retired in the United States over the past five years as power grids age and adjust to investor pressure and tougher state regulations around climate change, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

New solar and wind farms are coming online to replace them at a fast clip — of the 46,000 megawatts of new capacity added to the grid last year, more than 60 percent were solar and wind projects, according to the energy administration.

These warnings are not new. ERCOT, the operator of the Texas grid, warned two years ago after the near collapse of the Texas grid during Winter Storm Uri that they were launching a study of potential changes to improve the performance and long-term stability of the Texas grid.

The results of that study provided the basis for the Texas legislature to hold hearings that culminated in two bills approved by the Texas Senate last week on May 5. Senate Bill 6 passed by a vote of 22 to 9 to build up to 10 gigawatts of backup power generation that is weatherized and has on-site fuel equivalent to 10 nuclear reactors. It would create an energy insurance fund using taxpayer money, and builders of the facilities would be assured returns of up to 10%. Senate Bill 7, passed 31-0, creates a financial incentive to encourage the private development of energy generation resources that can come on within two hours and run for at least four hours, such as natural gas plants or batteries.

Opponents immediately created the false narrative that the Texas bills are proof that Texas politicians “no longer have faith that competitive markets can adequately and economically satisfy the electricity need of Texas citizens,” said Beth Garza, a consultant for the think tank “R Street Institute.

On the contrary, the Texas Senate plan is designed to address the anticompetitive policies embodied in the comically-misnamed Inflation Reduction Act and other policies coming out of the Biden Administration. As PJM CEO Asthana (cited above) noted, such measures are needed because “the U.S. no longer has competitive energy markets now that the heavy hand of government has superseded markets with massive taxes and subsidies for wind and solar.”

In a recent article in Forbes and Substack, David Blackmon summed up the pending legislation in Texas:

Advocates for renewables and the climate change lobby also oppose the program on the grounds that it could crowd out the building of more renewables and increase emissions. But the bill does nothing to impact the array of incentives and subsidies for renewables that already exist. ERCOT has clearly demonstrated it already has a hard time properly managing the high volume of wind capacity that has been loaded up on the grid in recent years, and a major weakness of renewables is their failure to perform during severe weather events, which is the whole point of having an adequate reserve of dispatchable thermal capacity.

We will know soon if these bills can be passed into law by both houses of the Texas legislature. With the federal government ramping up subsidies for more and more unreliable energy, states may need to follow some form of the Texas approach by subsidizing or otherwise facilitating the addition of dispatchable power, such as natural gas-fired generation, to preserve power grid stability.

[1] Robert Bryce’s Power Hungry Podcast, starting at the 2-minute mark).

—————

Ed Ireland is an Adjunct Professor at TCU’s Neeley School of Business. He received his B.S. from Midwestern State University and Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. This analysis was originally posted at Thoughts About Energy and Economics (free subscription).

Woke-Washing Hypocrites Demand Endless Taxpayer Subsidies For ‘Green’ Hydrogen Scam

Using other people’s to offload personal guilt is hardly virtuous, but the wind and solar scam has attracted plenty of guilt-laden oligarchs looking to atone for their (often obscene) wealth doing just that – and using taxpayer-backed subsidies to conjure up all manner of new ‘green’ scams, like ‘green’ hydrogen.

From STOP THESE THINGS

Using other people’s to offload personal guilt is hardly virtuous, but the wind and solar scam has attracted plenty of guilt-laden oligarchs looking to atone for their (often obscene) wealth doing just that – and using taxpayer-backed subsidies to conjure up all manner of new ‘green’ scams, like ‘green’ hydrogen.

Australia’s Twiggy Forrest, is just another blowhard billionaire eager to squander taxpayer’s money. Forrest made his $billions digging up large parts of Western Australia and shipping it to the Chinese, among others.

Wallowing in a mountain of cash from iron ore sales – at record prices – he’s been targeting the renewable energy scam, with over-the-top plans for the mass production of what eager rent-seekers call ‘green’ hydrogen.

Like every well-connected rent-seeking spiv, he recoils at the thought of staking of his cash on his grand green hydrogen fantasy, instead he’s demanding untold $billions in subsidies for something that he, quite evidently, appreciates will never make a buck on its own.

With that object in mind, Forrest set up Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) a first-rate rent-seeking operation designed to gouge whatever it can from gullible governments, on the (hazy) premise that it will use wind or solar power and turn it into hydrogen gas, something that has never been done at scale and is completely uneconomic, thanks to the laws of physics, especially the immutable rules of thermodynamics.

STT has already pointed out Twiggy’s Condor killing exploits in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region, where FFI plans to spear thousands of wind turbines to, you guessed it, produce so-called ‘green’ hydrogen, all heavily subsidised by Argentina’s taxpayers, of course.

Closer to home, Forrest’s plans include wiping out thousands of hectares of virgin rainforest and eucalypt woodland in Far North Queensland for exactly the same purpose.

The Australian’s Nick Cater reports on yet another woke-washing scandal.

Twiggy Forrest, Chris Bowen caught in green hydrogen fantasy
The Australian
Nick Cater
10 April 2023

Whatever plagues Chris Bowen’s mind it is clearly not self-doubt. So it is not unreasonable to assume he stands by his prediction that Australia will be a renewable energy superpower in seven years’ time.

Bowen told the National Press Club in December 2021 that by 2030 thousands of Australians will be employed exporting renewable energy to Asia, via submarine cables and shipping deep-frozen green hydrogen offshore.

Green hydrogen is to renewable energy enthusiasts what gold was to ancient alchemists: the universal panacea that frees the human soul from disease and corruptibility and transports it to a perfect and everlasting state. They believe it holds the key to turning dilute, fickle sources of energy, such as solar and wind, into something vaguely useful.

That is the view of Andrew Forrest, a miner turned born-again renewable energy entrepreneur. Forrest’s company, Squadron Energy, is Australia’s biggest player in weather-dependent renewable energy. He is on record as predicting that renewables could squeeze coal out of the market by the end of the decade. But the real breakthrough will come with the development of green hydrogen, which, he claims, is Australia’s greatest resource.

“To make it, all you need to do is run electricity through water,” he told a Clean Energy Council summit in 2021. Water is the easy part. Generating the eye-watering quantity of electricity needed is a more formidable challenge.

Let’s assume global demand for hydrogen reaches 300Mt by 2050 and that the green energy superpower Australia is going to become produces one-15th of that total, as an influential Deloitte report suggests is possible. That would require about 900TW of electricity, which is roughly 3½ times Australia’s current annual output. The absurdity of the numbers sends green hydrogen into dreamy land even before we confront Forrest’s insistence that we do it with two hands tied behind our back.

For Forrest, the only genuinely green electricity is generated by weather-dependent renewable energy. The Minerals Council canvasses carbon capture and storage as an option but Forrest reckons that would be cheating.

Small modular nuclear reactors are out of the question too. “I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Forrest told Sky News last year. “When you’ve looked at all the renewable energy that we in Australia and the world (have), we have so many thousands of times more energy, which is fully renewable, which uranium isn’t.”

Yet no amount of Forrest’s spin can overcome the iron law of energy density. Coal requires 25 square metres to generate a megawatt of electricity. A modern small modular nuclear reactor requires less than one square metre. A wind turbine plant typically requires more than 2000 square metres per megawatt, which means that even in a country as vast as Australia, the supply of available land is quickly exhausted.

In Queensland, where Squadron Energy is investing billions of dollars, wind and solar developments are being pushed beyond the boundaries of farmland into native scrub. In a rational world, Apple’s announcement last week that it was pulling out of a deal to purchase energy from Squadron’s proposed wind plant in the Upper Burdekin would be the beginning of the end for unreliable renewables.

An environmental assessment, released in December, found that 769 hectares of koala habit would be destroyed if the development goes ahead. It would involve the clearance of 662ha of Sharman’s rock wallaby habitat, 709ha of greater glider habitat and 754ha of habit that provides sanctuary for the red goshawk.

That a wind turbine development should even be considered on such a sensitive site shows how desperate the sector has become. Pushing renewables in such far-flung territory adds considerably to the cost. It requires wide roads to be cut through hillsides and the bulldozing of native tree, plus extra transmission lines.

The sheer weight of minerals needed for the construction of wind and solar plants brings other challenges, as Siemens Energy chief executive Christian Bruch acknowledged. “Never forget, renewables like wind roughly need 10 times the material (compared to) what conventional technologies need,” he said. “If you have problems on the supply chain, it hits wind extremely hard.”

Squadron’s Upper Burdekin development was already looking less profitable after it was forced to reduce the number of turbines from 139 to 80. Add to that the opprobrium foisted upon it by Apple’s withdrawal and the project looks to be in trouble. The kind of hydrogen Forrest is proposing is only green in the sense that it is technologically unripe.

Current international demand is so low as to be effectively non-existent compared to our exports of natural gas and coal. If international demand starts to accelerate, what’s to stop others cornering the market? The competitive advantage will belong to the jurisdiction with the cheapest electricity, and that’s not going to be Australia.

It’s little wonder that many with an eye on the capital markets are wondering if green hydrogen will ever get off the ground. In February, a meeting of federal, state and territory industry ministers called for the 2019 green hydrogen strategy to be “revised and refreshed” in the light of international developments.

President Joe Biden’s absurdly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act offers $US580bn of incentives for green innovation. Guy Debelle, a former Reserve Bank deputy governor, warned that Australia is at risk of being left behind by countries with generous subsidies, lower renewable energy costs and closer access to major industrial markets. He said the government would have to devote at least $15bn in public funds to counter a global hydrogen “subsidy arms race”.

A head somewhat cooler than the one sitting on the shoulders of the federal Energy Minister might conclude that this isn’t a fight Australia needs to be in. It would be better to focus our attention on the green economy games we can win; lithium, for example, where we are the world’s largest exporter; rare earths, where we’re the world’s second-largest producer; or cobalt, where we rank third.

Arriving at that conclusion, however, requires clear strategic thinking, indifferent to headlines and uncontaminated by hype. Policy formation in the 24-hour media cycle rarely happens that way.
The Australian

The Greens’ hypocrisy on energy is laid bare by their silence on Twiggy Forrest’s not-so-green wind farm plans
Sky News
Nick Cater
8 April 2023

Talking the talk on climate change is easy.

Walking the walk is somewhat harder, as Apple has discovered since it embarked on its journey to make its products carbon neutral by 2030.

Last August, Apple struck a deal with Twiggy Forrest’s Squadron Energy to buy 500MW of electricity annually from the yet-to-be-built Upper Burdekin Wind Farm in far north Queensland.

“It’s actually really cool to be able to do it in Australia,” Apple’s vice president of environment, Lisa Jackson, told a Fairfax newspaper.

“Because the country is sort of facing this climate challenge head-on recently. We feel like it’s perfect timing.”

This week we learned that the timing wasn’t so perfect and the deal wasn’t so cool after all when Apple announced it was pulling out.

The supposed clean energy project turns out to be dirtier and meaner to nature than Forrest might have hoped.

The environmental statement for the project paints a devastating picture of the bloodbath that might result from the construction and operation of 80 giant wind turbines in a remote area rich in biodiversity.

The statement released quietly before Christmas warned there would be an “unavoidable significant residual impact” on four endangered species.

It would require the clearance of 662 ha of Sharman’s rock-wallaby habitat, 709 ha of greater glider habitat, and 754 ha of habitat that offers sanctuary to the red goshawk, the most endangered bird of prey in Australia.

And then there is the koala.

The construction of the wind turbine plant would bulldoze 769 hectares of koala habitat, an area three times larger than the Brisbane CBD. No wonder Apple decided to pull out.

It was only a matter of time before the headlong rush for wind and solar collided with the iron law of energy density.

There is no getting around the physics: dilute sources of energy like wind and solar require huge amounts of land.

A modern nuclear small modular reactor requires less than one square metre to produce a megawatt of energy.

Coal-fired generation requires 25 square metres per megawatt. A wind turbine plant typically requires more than 2,000 square metres per megawatt.

Even in a country as vast as Australia, the land bank starts to run low.

Which is why the Victorian government is pushing ahead with offshore wind turbines despite the technical challenges and the estimated $29 billion cost.

It is why the Queensland government is spending $5 billion on a new transmission line to turn remote areas of the state into renewable energy zones.

Upper Burdekin is just one part of a chain of approximately 550 turbines which would stretch for hundreds of kilometres along the Great Dividing Range from the Barron River west of Cairns to Lotus Creek south of Mackay.

Three of the 14 wind plants are already operating and one is under construction. All of them will create significant environmental damage, some within areas of outstanding national beauty.

Of the many well-funded environmental lobby groups in Australia, only one, WWF Australia, has been courageous enough to challenge the green energy mantra and recognise the permanent damage being caused to native wildlife and natural landscapes.

WWF-Australia’s energy transition manager, Cam Crawford, told The Guardian: “We called for the project to be substantially downscaled or relocated to already cleared land with good wind resources. We welcome Apple’s decision this week. It shows leadership and a commitment to renewables that are good for climate and nature.”

There has been silence from the Greens, which seems odd for a party that more than any other has exploited the koala for political ends.

In October last year, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young introduced a Save the Koala Bill into Federal Parliament which would place a moratorium on the destruction of critical koala habitat.

Hanson-Young blamed the villainy of the Morrison government and coal mining companies for the koala’s plight.

Together with the effects of climate change, she claimed, the koala faced extinction within decades.

Hanson-Young said the threat was reason enough to stop the expansion of BHP’s Peak Downs coal mine in Queensland and MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coal mine expansion in the upper Hunter Valley once owned by Rio Tinto.

“Stand strong, stand up for the koala,” she urged the Senate in a rousing second reading speech. “Stand up for your conviction and ensure that big companies like BHP cannot continue to make profits off the destruction of koala homes.”

As it happened, neither project carries anything more than a hypothetical risk to koala habitats.

The original EIS for Mount Pleasant recorded no koala sightings nor any sign of koala scats or scratches.

At Upper Burdekin, by contrast, the environmental report sighted several populations whose foraging grounds and shelter face a real and concrete threat from the development of an industrial wind plant.

We need a word far stronger than hypocrisy to describe the Greens’ double standards towards koala protection.

If they were genuinely committed to reducing human impact on the environment, they would denounce the sins of big wind and big solar as loudly as they condemn big coal.

Today’s preening, morally arrogant Greens possess neither the courage nor intellectual honesty of their founding leader Bob Brown who led objections to Tasmania’s giant Robbins Island wind turbine development.

“We have alternatives for renewable energy,” he told the ABC four years ago. “We don’t have alternatives for extinct species of birds.”
Sky News

Blinky Bill’s homeland bulldozed to make way for wind turbines.

Tesla rejects batteries for net zero storage

When a world leader in grid scale batteries says they are not the way to net zero electric power it is a big thing. Tesla has produced what is says is the optimal net zero plan and it uses almost no batteries for grid scale storage.

From CFACT

By David Wojick 

When a world leader in grid scale batteries says they are not the way to net zero electric power it is a big thing. Tesla has produced what is says is the optimal net zero plan and it uses almost no batteries for grid scale storage.

The grandiose title of this quick study is “Sustainable Energy for All of Earth”. Woohoo!

See https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf

WOJICKREPORTHerunterladen

The most detailed part is about bringing net zero to America and the primary point of interest is this. The total grid storage required (by them) is 120 terawatt hours. Of this just 6.5 is with batteries. That is a minuscule 5%. Batteries have almost no role to play. I agree.

I love that we are now into the land of terawatts, which is trillions of watts. I foolishly thought gigawatts were big. Remember the 100 watt lightbulb that you held in your hand?

Think trillions instead. But then Federal spending (and taxes) are now in the trillions so it is all of a piece, but I digress.

Absent their batteries, how does Tesla propose to store the enormous amounts of juice required for net zero?

In a word — hydrogen. Unlike batteries, hydrogen has never been deployed at scale so there is no way to know what depending on this magic elixir might cost. That is a huge advantage when it comes to fantasy projections, right?

Keep in mind that this study merely finds that net zero is “technically feasible”, as have many others. That just means it is physically possible, not that it is realistically possible. For comparison it is technically feasible that America is powered by gerbils running in cages.

The value of studies like this is that they show just how ridiculous net zero really is. Here are a couple of points to that effect.

On the storage front they say we need a whopping 120 TWh for net zero. But Gregory’s hour by hour analysis found that we need something like 250 TWh just to replace today’s fossil generation with intermittent renewables, keeping today’s nukes and hydro.

See my http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/WOJICKREPORT.pdf

For net zero as described by Tesla we would need more like 400 TWh, at least. So their impossible storage number is less than a third of what might actually be required.

Moreover, they say we would need over 5 million MW of generating capacity, mostly wind and solar. Today we have roughly 1 million MW. So all we need is five times what we have after first scrapping most of that. This is truly ridiculous.

Note too that while the study attempts to estimate the cost of some of this impossibility, it ignores a lot of it.

There is nothing for the vast infrastructure to take all this hydrogen to wherever it is supposed to be used. Presumably they are going to make it where the wind blows, the sun shines and there is lots of water to use up. Not sure where that is.

Then too there is the new transmission and distribution grid to get all this green juice to all the people, vehicles and uses it needs. Nothing on that. If we make it they will get it?

We are talking about rebuilding the entire US electric power system from the ground up. Not a problem?

We are Tesla.

When they go global it gets even funnier. As I read it global power need at net zero is something like twice America’s. But China alone already produces more juice than the US, EU and UK combined. The developing world’s use of electricity is growing rapidly. Guess they missed that part.

All things considered the stupidity of this study is bigger than the hubris, more or less, depending on how you measure it.

Just to repeat, net zero studies like this are very useful. They measure the fantasy. Bring on the gerbils.

Author

Luxury Beliefs And Energy Policy: The Fatal Conceit

In a remarkable interview on Wednesday with anchor Laura Ingraham of Fox News, Norman Fenton, Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London, spelt out just what the “net zero” economy really means.

From Forbes

By Tilak Doshi 

Contributor

A political cartoon aimed at wealth businessman Cyrus Field (1819 – 1892), Jay Gould (1836 – 1892), … [+]GETTY IMAGES

In a remarkable interview on Wednesday with anchor Laura Ingraham of Fox News, Norman Fenton, Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London, spelt out just what the “net zero” economy really means. Net zero, to remind ourselves, is the rallying policy battle cry of all major governments in the West and intergovernmental agencies such as the International Energy Agency, the World Bank and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the UK context, Prof. Fenton points out that all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow will close by 2030. No one will be flying at all by 2050. There will be no new gasoline or diesel cars by 2030 and by 2050 road use will be restricted to 60% of today’s level. Food, heating and energy will be restricted to 60% of today’s levels by 2050. Beef and lamb will be off the menu by 2050.

Many of the restrictions on mobility and social activity will be achieved by “15-minute cities”. These are, Wikipedia informs us, where daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure “can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city.”

Prof. Fenton put out his observations in a twitter thread that scored an astonishing number of views — some 3.3 million — which was then followed by the Fox News interview. These consequences of net zero for the UK — and by extension, the rest of the collective West — are not mere conjectures by him. They are derived from a detailed document issued by UK FIRES, a research program funded by the government. The program informs the government’s policy strategy to achieve the “net zero by 2050” goals of the 2019 Climate Change Act amendment. The Act was enthusiastically supported by every political party without public consultation and astonishingly without a debate over the costs and benefits of the legislation.

Matt Ridley put it to his peers in the House of Lords as follows: “I am genuinely shocked by the casual way in which ‘the other place’ [presumably the House of Commons] nodded through this statutory instrument [the 2019 Climate Change Act amendment] on Monday committing future generations to vast expenditure to achieve a goal that we’ve no idea how to reach technologically without ruining the British economy and the British landscape.”

Tough Road Ahead For Hopeful Chicago Bulls

How did a leading economy like Great Britain’s come to have governments (from both sides of the aisle) that promise their people penury and a future without the basic freedoms Westerners have taken for granted for over two centuries? This, it should be noted, is in the land that boasts the 1215 Magna Carta, the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government were not above the law. How does the scare of an alleged “climate emergency” impel a ruling elite of whatever ideological persuasion to impose draconian energy policies that promise their people a return to pre-industrial standards of living?

Good Intentions and Luxury Beliefs

Predicated on unfalsifiable climate models and a hockey-stick global warming chart of suspect provenance, Western policy makers assure us that “the end is nigh.” We are told that this is the “scientific consensus”, an established truth which the BBC, for example, holds such that it sees no need to allow contrarian views on any of its programs. Michael Crichton was emphatically wrong, in this view, when he said:

“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics… The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

What have luxury beliefs to do with the proclaimed “scientific consensus” on climate change? Rob Henderson who coined the term defined them as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.” This was an update on the sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s century-old theory of conspicuous consumption. Veblen wryly portrayed a shallow, materialistic “leisure class” obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder. But today, Henderson argues, “because material goods have become a noisier signal of one’s social position and economic resources, the affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs.”

With rapid economic growth on the back of modern capitalism, material goods have become relatively cheaper with affluence afforded to a much broader mass of the population. Consequently, virtue signaling and luxury beliefs now dominate elite behavior while conspicuous consumption of status goods and services plays a lesser role or is even frowned upon. The moral worth of a person today is related to his luxury beliefs, of which the “fight against climate change” is the crowning achievement. While the rich may drive their “clean” Teslas, ordinary people can bike or take public transit in this most virtuous of all possible worlds.

Children of the upper bourgeoisie — steeped in learning the tenets of the new left — are unsurprisingly the moral shock troops of climate alarmism. Convinced of their cause, they throw tomato soup onto art masterpieces and glue themselves to block traffic and inconvenience the general population from going about their daily lives of work and paying the bills. They do this without the slightest compunction, even “gleefully” blocking ambulances from ferrying the injured or sick to hospital. The larger cause of “saving the planet” overrides all, including the needs of the general populace for heat, mobility and affordable food (dependent on cheap fossil fuel-based fertilizers). Indeed, the net zero economy threatens the very basis of modern civilization.

Politicians of all stripes find it easy to attach themselves to the great moral crusade to save the planet and win office. Tending to the most vociferous rather than serving the material interests of the majority seems to be the winning ticket. If the great essayist H. L. Mencken was correct in his view of practical politics as the means “to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”, there is a corollary: if a particular hobgoblin, that is the “climate emergency”, has already been fully conjured up over decades of mass media repetition, it’s easiest to build on it so that the “clamor for safety” results in good ballot box performance. The so-called conservative parties try to even outdo the liberal ones – as in Britain – to fight for the cause.

The In-built Obsolescence of Luxury Beliefs

Luxury beliefs come with an in-built obsolescence because of their, well, luxuriousness. The cost of radical climate policies are increasingly becoming apparent, “even to Europeans”. The massive policy push for electric vehicles across the West offers an enlightening example of luxury beliefs and their costs on the average consumer.

As ideological green policies – Germany’s reigning luxury belief — are decimating the country’s economy, warnings of a social and economic disaster by local observers have multiplied in recent years. In an interview on Tuesday, long-time head of the CDU Economic Council and former Audi and Daimler board member Professor Kurt Lauk accused Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (a Greens party leader) of technology hostility. “The anti-technology emanating from the Ministry of Commerce is unbearable. Wherever we are or were world market leaders, we have set about abolishing it. For several years now, hard work has been done to destroy this competitive advantage of German industry or to hand it over to other nations. The technological advantage of German carmakers through 150 years of experience with the combustion engine, transmissions etc. is being recklessly abandoned.” Pointing to the unaffordability of electric vehicles, he said “We are running into a huge social conflict with this idiotic, singular policy to drive on electric batteries.”

The recent decision by the EU to allow the sale of internal combustion cars using “e-fuels” technology (itself unproven at scale and very expensive) after 2035, rather than the suggested outright ban by then, signals an important retreat. Last minute objections by the German, Polish and Italian governments suggest that the impending suicidal destruction of Europe’s industrial base is coming increasingly into focus despite the luxury beliefs of the past few decades.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Verge reported on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to announce tough new emission standards to force the phase out gasoline-powered cars while boosting the sale of electric vehicles to fulfil the Biden Administration’s climate policy goals. “Up to two thirds” of cars sold are mandated to be EVs by 2032. Despite the relentless push for EVs, the working class has little interest. In a recent Gallup poll reported on Wednesday, just 2 percent of non-college respondents say they currently own an electric vehicle and a mere 9 percent say they are “seriously considering” purchasing one. The results are not much better for the population as a whole: just 4 percent own one and 12 percent say they are seriously considering one.

The University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute in collaboration with AP-NORC conducts an annual survey on climate attitudes. This year’s survey finds less, not more, urgency around climate change. The share of those who attribute climate change to humans, as opposed to natural changes in the environment, has fallen from 60 percent in 2018 to 49 percent. And where it matters most, putting one’s money where the mouth is, “the share of respondents who would be willing to spend their own money on tackling climate threats has also nosedived” according to the survey results. It would shock today’s privileged luxury believers that only 38 percent of Americans would support a carbon fee of just $1 on their energy bills each month. And that is 14 percentage points less than when they were asked the same question two years ago.

It is no surprise that Prof. Norman Fenton’s twitter thread got over 3 million views and that one of America’s most popular news anchors interviewed him. Today’s luxury belief of choice, net zero and the climate crusade, seems to be coming apart in front of our very eyes.

Follow me on Twitter. 

Tilak DoshiFollow

I have worked in the oil and gas sector as an economist in both private industry and in think tanks, in Asia, the Middle East and the US over the past 25 years.

I focus on global energy developments from the perspective of Asian countries that remain large markets for oil, gas and coal.

I have written extensively on the areas of economic development, environment and energy economics. My publications include “Singapore in a Post-Kyoto World: Energy, Environment and the Economy” published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (2015). I won the 1984 Robert S. McNamara Research Fellow award of the World Bank and received my Ph.D. in Economics in 1992.

NASA’s 49% Boost to Recent Global Warming Under Scrutiny as Earth Cools Since 2016

Global warming is in short supply these days, and there is increasing interest in how the major surface temperature datasets keep the heating topped up in their published results.

From The Daily Sceptic

By CHRIS MORRISON

Global warming is in short supply these days, and there is increasing interest in how the major surface temperature datasets keep the heating topped up in their published results. The GISS service is run by NASA and in his latest ‘State of the Climate 2022‘ report, Professor Ole Humlum notes that since January 2008, GISS increased the surface air temperature change between January 1910 to January 2000 from 0.45°C to 0.67°C, a boost of 49% over this period.

Humlum accepts the surface temperature record is subject to error and should be corrected whenever possible. But reporting delays and other administrative corrections fall away over time. Most likely, he suggests, changes over the longer term are the result of alterations in the way average monthly values are calculated by the various databases, “in an attempt to enhance the resulting record”.

Of course the sceptical might observe that the enhancements often lower many past records and increase more recent ones, and thus provide a convenient ‘hockey stick’ backdrop for the promotion of the collectivist Net Zero project. Rising temperatures are said to be primarily caused by humans emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making it somewhat inconvenient that a short 20-year spell of warming started to run out of steam over two decades ago. Nevertheless, the CO2 warming scare remains the heavy artillery needed to promote the radical transformation planned for human society.

The graph above illustrates the significant recent changes made to NASA’s 130-year past record. The hockey stick effect of recent warming has been enhanced by around 80 years of cooling and significant recent warming. Several of the changes made since 2008 are quite substantial, notes Humlum, ranging from +0.2°C to -0.2°C. Similar retrospective alternations have been made by other databases run by the U.S. weather service NOAA and the U.K.’s Met Office. Over the last 10 years, for instance, the Met Office has added about 30% recent warming to its HadCRUT record.

“Frequent and large corrections in a database unavoidably signal a fundamental uncertainty about the correct values,” concludes Humlum. Others are even less charitable. Two distinguished atmospheric scientists, Professors William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT, recently made a general point that “climate science is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence”. Fellow climate scientists Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama have been working on the effect of urban heat on surface temperatures. They recently found a fifth extra warming from this source across 20,000 global weather stations. Despite this bias towards a warming trend, it was also discovered that NOAA was further warming average temperature trends in its urban heat calculations, rather than cooling them to correct for the bias. To say the least, the scientists noted, this finding was “curious”.

Of course global heaters face challenges on a number of fronts. Humlum notes that relative to the period dating back to 1850, during which a little ice age has been lifting, 2022 was warm, but cooler than most years since 2016. In the Arctic, conditions “generally have turned somewhat cooler”. During 2022, sea ice thickness increased along the coasts of Canada and Greenland. Near the Arctic from 55-65°N, the northern oceans have on average experienced a marked cooling down to 1,400 metres depth since 2004. Since 2016, sea ice indicates a “stable or even rising global trend”.

The eight to nine year length of the current temperature pause can be subject to statistical debate. But all the major surface records show a spike caused by one of the most powerful El Niño heat transfer episodes ever recorded up to the start of 2016. Since then, Humlum notes there has been a  gradual turning back towards pre-2015 conditions, including an increase in 2019-20, and a subsequent decrease. All the databases show that last year was part of a declining trend since 2016. As we have seen over the last few years, political agitators have reacted to the warming slow-down by promoting ‘record’ one-off temperatures and pseudoscience attributions of individual bad or ‘extreme’ weather events to ‘climate change’.

Of course there has been a lot of general interest in the relationship between rising temperatures and atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, not least because the ‘settled’ science view that humans control the climate thermostat by burning fossil fuel underpins Net Zero. Humlum briefly looks at the relationship, noting that they vary in concert, but sea surface temperatures are a few months ahead of the global temperature, and 11-12 months ahead of atmospheric CO2. It might be expected to be the other way around if CO2 was the main driver of warming, although other factors might leave the matter open for debate Nevertheless, Humlum concludes that “important changes apparently originate at the sea surface”.

Finally, it seems from Humlum’s observations that the world may be a slightly less windy place than in past periods. Measured energy from global hurricanes and cyclones “is well within the range seen since 1970”. Hurricanes hitting land in the United States remain within the normal range “throughout the entire observation periods since 1851”. Meanwhile on an exposed cape in south-west Norway, the Lista Lighthouse has been measuring wind since 1931. Peak wind strengths were recorded shortly after World War II, and have declined since then.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Waste Not, Want Not, Still True About Food

Eat what you want and ignore the marketing claims. In the big picture,
anyone’s diet has a small footprint. But whatever you choose to eat,
make sure you don’t let it go to waste.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

FILE – Dairy cows graze on a farm near Oxford, New Zealand, on Oct. 8, 2018. New Zealand scientists are coming up with some surprising solutions for how to reduce methane emissions from farm animals. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)

Jack Hubbard reports at Real Clear Markets Eat What You Want While Questioning ‘Food Sustainability’ Claims.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Earth Day started 50 years ago, and if you judge the event by society’s environmental conscientiousness, it’s been a success. Today, people are increasingly considering the environmental impact of products they buy. That’s true not just of cars and clothing, but also what we eat.

A survey last year found that 37% of consumers look for sustainability claims on food. Food marketers have taken note, increasing the number of food products with eco claims.

But buyers should beware: Not all food sustainability claims are true.

Where is the Beef?

Perhaps the single most common claim you’ll hear today about food is that meat is bad for the environment. Ads for plant-based fake meat commonly assert this. These claims are parroted by animal rights activists who–naturally–don’t like people eating meat. You can even find a few documentaries that try to paint meat as eco-unfriendly.

But is eating meat actually bad for the environment? No.

A frequently cited statistic is that 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions are from animal agriculture. But what you may not know is that this figure doesn’t apply to the US, where we have the most advanced modern agricultural technology in the world.

American agriculture has become economically and environmentally more efficient over time. For instance, we need 60% fewer cows yet produce twice as much milk as we did in the 1930s.

The EPA tracks greenhouse gas emissions and reports them by sector. According to the EPA, all of our agriculture only accounts for about 9% of total US greenhouse gas emissions, while animal agriculture accounts for only about 4%. That’s why researchers estimate that if the entire U.S. population went vegan tomorrow, it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 3%. That also means, as an individual, giving up meat will have zero impact on curbing climate change.

Fake Meat Doesn’t Lower Emissions

It turns out that producing plant-based fake meats actually produces the same amount of emissions as producing chicken. And cell-cultured meat–that is, grown from cells in a lab setting–has five times the emissions of regular chicken.

Why? Because while making fake meat may use less land than raising chickens, it uses much more electricity to power all those factories that make fake meat.

“Organic” Feels Good

“Organic” is another term that many consumers look for, thinking organic food is better for the environment and their health. Once again, reality is different from perception.

A recent study of organic vs. modern agriculture on different factors such as land use, climate, over-fertilization, and energy use. Modern farming was superior on land use while organic farming was better on chemicals. Overall, the two compared equally on most factors.

(Most consumers also believe that organic food is more nutritious. But once again, scientific research has found there’s no real difference.)

Food Waste Is Important

The biggest environmental impact associated with food isn’t about the food we eat. It is actually about food we don’t eat.

The USDA estimates that up to one-third of food produced in the country is thrown away. Whether that’s meat or fake meat, or organic produce or non-organic produce, that food took resources to grow and fuel to transport. And all of those resources go to waste when you don’t finish your meal or throw out the leftovers.

What’s the lesson?

Eat what you want and ignore the marketing claims. In the big picture,
anyone’s diet has a small footprint. But whatever you choose to eat,
make sure you don’t let it go to waste.

Operation Hymn-Sheet: identifying points on which skeptics agree

And have courage! The very fact that the Left now find it essential to spend so much time and effort on silencing all debate on climate (their number one topic) and on a growing range of other topics shows that the Left themselves know that if free speech were once again permitted they would lose the debate, and lose it comprehensively

From Watts Up With That?

Operation Hymn-Sheet: identifying points on which skeptics agree

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

The restless and eternal search for objective scientific truth is of its essence skeptical, not consensual (e.g., Aristotle, Refutations of the Sophists; Popper: Logik der Forschung). While the totalitarians responsible for originating and maintaining the climate-change scam and the consequent targeted economic destruction of the hated West all parrot the same Party Line, which they rebrand as an imagined “consensus” of supposed “experts”, skeptics do not usually sing from the same hymn-sheet, for we are no less skeptical of our own arguments than of the totalitarians’ arguments.

Welcome, then, to Operation Hymn-Sheet. The purpose is to identify a series of perhaps one or two dozen powerful and irrefutable climatological, economic or pragmatic propositions on which we can all or nearly all agree, so that in our interactions with governments hitherto deceived by the totalitarians we can speak as far as possible with one voice.

The following are the suggested criteria for including a proposition in our Hymn-Sheet:

First, each proposition should be of sufficient importance that, if it were generally known about and understood, it would materially influence the climate-change debate.

Secondly, each proposition should be clear enough and simple enough to be expressed, explained and justified in not more than 100 words. Complex theories have no place here.

Thirdly, for the sake of argument each proposition should be based on mainstream, midrange data and generally-accepted methods as far as possible.

Fourthly, though each proposition should be simple and clear, it should be sufficiently rigorous to be unimpugnable by any legitimate method.

This is where you come in, gentle reader. In comments, please put forward, explain and justify each proposition that should, in your opinion, stand part of Operation Hymn-Sheet.

Once the Hymn-Sheet has been compiled, we can all draw upon it in briefing our governments, so that they will no longer hear only the hysterical, endlessly-chanted mantras of the totalitarian enemies of the West and the host of useful idiots they have fooled.

Here are some sample propositions for the Hymn-Sheet.

If it’s consensus it’s not science: if it’s science it’s not consensus

The imagined “consensus” that recent warming is chiefly anthropogenic was fabricated. Police investigated and concluded that the report by Cook et al. (2013) of a 97.1% consensus constituted a “deception”. In reality, Cook had marked only 0.5% of the 12,000 papers on his list as having stated that recent warming was chiefly anthropogenic. In any event, his consensus proposition does not say global warming is dangerous. Moreover, argument from consensus conflates the two shop-worn logical fallacies of mere headcount and of appeal to the imagined authority of supposed experts. Argument from consensus has no place in science.

Wind and solar power cannot get us anywhere near net zero

Unreliables are the currently-favored method of trying to reach net zero emissions. However, weather-dependent renewables must be backed up at all times by thermal generation capable of supplying the entire demand on a grid. Wind and solar are, therefore, a deadweight capital and operating cost. They also increase thermal-generation operating cost because spinning-reserve backup is inefficient. In any event, installing nameplate capacity of wind and solar power in excess of mean hourly grid demand cannot further reduce emissions: yet most Western nations’ installed renewables’ capacity already exceeds the demand limit.

Warming since 1990 is less than half the then midrange prediction

In 1990 IPCC presented four emissions scenarios. Scenario B predicted that the effect of annual emissions would remain constant at 1990 levels until 2025. Scenarios C-D predicted the effect would decline. Instead, emissions have increased by more than half since 1990. Thus Scenario A, the business-as-usual scenario, has proven closest to reality. It predicted 0.3 C/decade midrange warming over the 21st century, but only 0.13 C/decade, or 45% of the midrange prediction, has been measured in the 33 years since 1990.

Even worldwide net zero would cut 2050 temperature by less than 0.1 C

Our influence on temperature has increased at 1/30th unit/year since 1990, with another 0.9 units by 2050 on business as usual. If all nations went straight to net zero by 2050, 0.45 units would thus be prevented. Unit warming is the ratio 0.46 C per unit of 1.8 C midrange transient 21st-century doubled-CO2 warming to 3.93 units midrange doubled-CO2 forcing. Finally, adjust for the ratio 0.45 C/C of 0.136 K/decade real-world warming to the predicted 0.3 K/decade warming since 1990. Then worldwide net zero would abate <0.463 C: that is, less than 0.1 C.

Individual nations would contribute infinitesimally to cutting warming

Since even worldwide net zero would reduce global warming by less than 1/10 C, individual regions’ or nations’ contributions to that minuscule reduction in global temperature would be infinitesimal. Chinese net zero would prevent only 1/30 C warming; Western net zero would also prevent only 1/30 C; US net zero would prevent 1/70 C; UK net zero would prevent 1/1000 C; Chilean net zero would prevent 1/10,000 C.

Each $1 billion spent would prevent one ten-millionth C warming

The UK’s grid authority estimates that net-zeroing the grid will, on its own, cost $3.6 trillion. Electricity generation accounts for only a fifth of total UK generation. On this basis, UK net zero would cost $18 trillion and global net zero would cost $1800 trillion. McKinsey Consulting reckon the capital cost of global net zero at $275 trillion. Opex, at least twice capex, would raise the total cost to $900 trillion. Using the lesser estimate, each $1 billion spent on emissions abatement would prevent future warming of only one ten-millionth C – the worst value for money in history.

Weather-related disasters are not increasing as predicted

Hurricanes, tropical cyclones, tropical storms and tornadoes show no trend in combined frequency, intensity or duration. The frequency and extent of forest fires and the frequency of record-breaking temperatures have declined since they peaked in the 1930s. The global land area under drought has decreased for several decades. Floods have not increased in frequency, intensity or duration. Global rainfall has risen beneficially: the world’s longest record (UK Met Office), shows an uptrend of just 2 inches in 250 years. Sea level is rising at only 4 to 8 inches/century.

More CO2 and warmer weather have benefits

Benefits of emitting CO2 and warming the planet include recent planetary greening by >15% and increases in global crop yields by CO2 fertilization; a 96% decline over a century in weather-related deaths; and a reduction in deaths from cold exceeding any increase in deaths from heat by an order of magnitude, both globally and in each region. In Africa, there are 40 times more deaths from cold than deaths from heat. Such benefits are widely unreported.

Exaggerated predictions arose from an error of physics

Climate feedbacks respond not only to 8 K natural and 1 K anthropogenic direct greenhouse warming but also to the dominant 260 K emission temperature. In 1850, final warming per 1 K direct warming was not 28 / 8 = 3.5 K/K but (260 + 28) / (260 + 8) < 1.1 K/K. But only a 10% increase in feedback strength since 1850 would hike 21st-century warming from 1.3 K to 3 K, since the difference between feedback strengths for 2 K and 5 K final warming is only 0.03 units per degree. Thus, feedback analysis cannot reliably predict warming.

Observational methods suggest only 1.4 C warming this century

Climate scientists had thought they could omit the 260 K emission temperature in their feedback calculations because in control theory the base signal is usually omitted because it is tiny and the feedback-response signal is orders of magnitude larger. In climate, though, it is the other way about: the 260 K base signal exceeds the feedback-response signal by orders of magnitude. That is why feedback analysis cannot reliably predict warming. Yet IPCC (2021) mentions “feedback” >2500 times. Warming since 1990 is only 1.4 C/century equivalent. The energy-budget method, not dependent on feedback analysis, shows a similar value.

Models’ predictions of global warming are purely speculative

An elementary error of statistics in the interpretation of climate models’ outputs led climatologists to assume that dangerous warming was very likely when, on correction, all predictions based on the outputs of models are proven to be no better than guesswork. Climate scientists had not realized that propagation of uncertainty in models running hourly time-steps over decades implies that any global-warming prediction falling between –12 and +12 C (as all do) is statistically insignificant and thus speculative. The paper by Dr Patrick Frank establishing this fact was published in 2019 and has not been refuted in any learned journal since.

Selectively targeting the West increases global emissions

Climate treaties are selectively targeted against the West on the specious pretext of purported “climate debt”. Therefore, manufacturing – particularly if it is energy-intensive – is being priced out to chiefly Communist-led nations that are greatly expanding inexpensive and affordable coal-fired generation. The unintended consequence of the West’s economic hara-kiri is to transfer manufacturing to nations with far higher emissions per unit of production than the West, increasing global emissions – precisely the opposite of what was intended.

.o0O0o.

Now, gentle reader, it is your turn. What are the main points that every schoolboy would know about global warming if it were not for the outright censorship now inflicted upon nearly all media by the hate-filled, totalitarian far Left?

And have courage! The very fact that the Left now find it essential to spend so much time and effort on silencing all debate on climate (their number one topic) and on a growing range of other topics shows that the Left themselves know that if free speech were once again permitted they would lose the debate, and lose it comprehensively.

Recall that the execution by Robespierre of a dozen pious, habited nuns, who chanted hymns of praise and joy as the guillotine fell and the normally noisy crowd of sans-culottes stood utterly silent, led to the execution of Robespierre himself scarcely two weeks later, ending the Reign of Terror. Perhaps, then, the climate nonsense – and, as the above instances show, it is obvious, arrant nonsense – is the last gasp of totalitarianism. Perhaps, as it dies, so will die with it the notion that free speech should be curtailed so that Communism may continue to advance, slaughter and destroy. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit!

Expert Warns: Cars Soon Unaffordable To 50% Of Germans! “Huge Social Conflict”… Idiotic, Singular Policy”

In an interview, Prof. Kurt Lauk, former economic council head and automobile manager, warns half of Germans “will no longer be able to afford a car.” Socially explosive…”a disgrace”.

NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin on 12. April 2023

Ideological green policies are tearing Germany’s economy apart

In an interview, Prof. Kurt Lauk, former economic council head and automobile manager, warns half of Germans “will no longer be able to afford a car.” Socially explosive…”a disgrace”.

Green policies are currently driving German industry into a wall at 300 km/hr. Image cropped here. 

He also warns of a rapid demolition of Germany’s economic backbone: the automotive industry.

Story at Pleiteticker here.

“It is a disgrace what is sitting in the chair of Ludwig Erhard or Graf Lambsdorff. The hostility to technology coming from the Ministry of Economics is unbearable. Everywhere where we are or were world market leaders, we have gone about abolishing it,” Lauk said in an interview . It is the “worst thing that could happen” for German industry.

“For several years now, we have been working hard to destroy this competitive advantage of German industry or to hand it over to other nations. We now have ‘economic heads’ sitting in the Ministry of Economics who have no other professional qualifications,” Lauk added.

Lauk says Germany’s technological advantages are now in jeopardy because the backbone of Germany’s economy and driver of innovation is the country’s automotive industry. “This is where most of the jobs are.”

150 years of technological experience “thrown away”

“The technological advantage of German carmakers through 150 years of experience with the combustion engine, transmissions etc. is being recklessly abandoned, Lauk said. “We are throwing away our competitive advantage and adopting the ‘Chinese drive’. Because 80 per cent of the battery drives come from China. That means China has driven us up against the wall in a strategic situation. And with our naivety, we didn’t realize what was happening.”

Unaffordable for the bottom 50% 

Lauk warns that because of e-cars being considerably more expensive than conventional combustion engine vehicles: “The bottom fifty percent of the income pyramid will no longer be able to find a vehicle for less than 40,000 euros.” and thus this group will see significantly restricted mobility.

Tinder dry social powder keg of the haves and have nots

“Today you can get a cheap, suitable vehicle for 15,000, 18,000 or 20,000 euros. That will no longer be the case. We are running into a huge social conflict with this idiotic, singular policy to drive with electric batteries.”

Europeans May Be Rejecting the EV Kool-Aid

You may not know it if you rely solely on American media, but there is a growing revolt across much of Europe against Net Zero mandates in general and electric vehicle mandates in particular.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin 

Planet Earth Europe zone. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

You may not know it if you rely solely on American media, but there is a growing revolt across much of Europe against Net Zero mandates in general and electric vehicle mandates in particular.

It seems that, led by luxury carmakers, the future may be bright for the venerable internal combustion engine if new synthetic fuels technologies can produce an affordable replacement for gasoline and diesel fuels.

The revolt had been brewing ever since Europe got a wakeup call with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that upset the Net Zero applecart and led even Germany to reopen coal-fired power plants. Still, the EU last November had struck a provisional deal on a new vehicle emissions law that would have banned the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2035.

Two months later, though, the new Meloni government in Italy began to raise objections. The forced transition to EVs has already hit the Italian auto industry with job cuts, leading Transport Minister Matteo Salvini to argue that it makes no sense to put thousands of jobs at risk when there are plenty of reasons to keep ICE vehicles on the road with a carbon-neutral fuel.

Italy’s balking opened the door for German Finance Minister Christian Lindner to switch his government’s position to demand an exception for hydrogen-derived, carbon-neutral synthetic e-fuels (produced by electrolysis with added carbon) that can power ICE vehicles. Porsche, which has invested $75 million in a pilot plant to make e-fuels, and Ferrari could preserve their rich heritage and iconic models and still comply with zero-emissions requirements with e-fuels.

German Transport Minister Volker Wissing agreed, stating that, “We need e-fuels as there is no alternative if we want to operate our vehicle fleet in a climate-neutral way. Whoever is serious about climate-neutral mobility must keep all technological options open and also use them. I don’t understand this fight against the car and why people want to ban some technologies.”

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has long objected to the EU ban and had pledged to do “anything” to stop the “pseudo-green idea by rich countries and bureaucrats from Brussels” to ban gasoline and diesel engines. Polish families, he contended, cannot afford these expensive vehicles, and an ICE ban would cause Polish firms producing car components for well-known global brands to suffer irreparable harm.

As by simply abstaining from a final vote on the hard ICE vehicle ban, Germany could have killed the proposed EU legislation, the European Commission agreed to draft a compromise to allow the sale of ICE vehicles capable of running on e-fuels after 2035. Environmental groups objected, claiming that – because gasoline and diesel will still be available to power older vehicles – owners of e-fuel capable vehicles will cheat and fill up with gasoline.

Alex Keynes, clean fuels manager for the NGO Transport & Environment, claimed that e-fuels are too expensive to be given a seat at the table. He cited a T&E study that concluded that e-fuels would be 47 percent more expensive than petrol in France in 2030. [What he did not say was whether even that fuel cost differential would make e-fueled ICE vehicles more expensive to own and drive than lithium-battery EVs.]

Ferrari’s Benedetto Vigna scoffed at the T&E rhetoric. He expects the price of e-fuels to fall as they become more popular and that these fuels would allow carmakers to focus on producing lower cost e-fuels instead of expensive battery-powered cars that have their own limitations. Besides, suggested car industry veteran Andrew Graves, e-fuels may also be the answer for keeping older model vehicles on the road while further reducing emissions.

In the United Kingdom (no longer in the EU), former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in a move to one-up the EU, decreed a ban on new ICE vehicles by 2030 and on new hybrid vehicles by 2035.The adoption of this modified ban by the EU is putting pressure on the British government to follow suit.

Former Tory cabinet minister Sir John Redwood urged the Sunak government to consider the fact that, “Britain is in a desperate struggle to keep its car industry, and if we insist on phasing petrol and diesel out well before anyone else, we will find it harder to attract investment. The fewer bans there are,” he added, “the better to promote growth.” Like their Italian and German counterparts, British carmakers Aston Martin and McLaren are both investigating e-fuels for their future models.

There are other reasons that these bans on ICE vehicles are impractical. Graves says there is already a risk that there will not be enough EV charging stations or battery-making plants to satisfy demand in such a short timeframe. The still-fledgling industry remains beset with performance and safety concerns – as well as concerns over the environmental and societal damage done from the mining of critical metals used in EV batteries.

Another concern is cost, and thus popularity. EV sales have fallen across Europe with the lifting of subsidies. EV sales in Germany fell by a third from January 2022 to January 2023, and the market share fell from 55 percent of all car sales in December 2022 to just 15 percent in January 2023. The EV market share in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands fell by 50 percent month-to-month.

Automakers are still losing money in their quest to build all-EV fleets. Ford reported that its U.S. EV business had losses totaling $2.1 billion, a figure expected to rise to $3 billion in 2023. Ford finance chief John Lawler said it was normal for a startup to rack up losses, but if people have alternatives, not even the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies may be sufficient to turn car loving Americans into passive drivers of vehicles they cannot repair.

Finally, Europeans may be waking up to the realities of Chinese domination of the EV market and their attempted takeover of the European [and American] auto industry as well. The largest British auto dealership, Pendragon, has agreed with Chinese EV manufacturer BYD to sell its cars in the United Kingdom.

According to Ben Marlow, the Telegraph’s chief city commentator, the Chinese plan is to flood Europe with their own cheaper EV models to undercut European automakers and increase their market share. Not only does China control the market for many EV components, the Beijing government has thrown billions of dollars in subsidies to its EV industry.

And as Italy’s Matteo Salvini so eloquently put it, EU countries need to avoid “giving China entire industries and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

  • Duggan FlanakinDuggan Flanakin
  • Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.
  • A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
  • A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, “Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout.”

Tesla’s Entry into The Net Zero Game: “Sustainable Energy for All of Earth”

One of the core subjects of this site for several years has been doing reality checks on the schemes of Net Zero central planners.

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

One of the core subjects of this site for several years has been doing reality checks on the schemes of Net Zero central planners. Is there any chance that these zero carbon economy schemes might work? Or are they just dreams that ignore obvious physical obstacles in a religious zeal to reach an imagined future utopia?

My prior writings on this subject are summarized in my December 2022 Report “The Energy Storage Conundrum,” and in my recent posts (here and here) on the work of Bill Ponton regarding the UK.

On April 5 Tesla dropped into the debate a big Report of their own, with the title “Sustainable Energy for All of Earth.” Tesla reaches the exact opposite conclusion from me and the people I have cited in my writings on this subject. From the Executive Summary:

This paper finds a sustainable energy economy is technically feasible and requires less investment and less material extraction than continuing today’s unsustainable energy economy. While many prior studies have come to a similar conclusion, this study seeks to push the thinking forward related to material intensity, manufacturing capacity, and manufacturing investment required for a transition across all energy sectors worldwide.

Could that be? After all, this Tesla Report is clearly backed by many millions of dollars of funding, with dozens of smart and highly-paid people beavering away for months or even years on sophisticated computer models to come up with impressive results. By contrast, the people on whose work I have relied — Roger Andrews, Ken Gregory, Bill Ponton — as well as myself, are all unpaid volunteers working on our own and with no resources other than the internet and perhaps an Excel spreadsheet program.

Before getting into some specifics, I should mention that I have a good deal of admiration for Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk. He is a bona fide creative business genius. However, let’s not lose track of the fact that all of his main pre-Twitter businesses — electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, space launches — are almost entirely if not entirely dependent for their revenue on the gaming of government subsidy and handout programs. The electric vehicle business, in particular, that underlies the lion’s share of Musk’s net worth, has a valuation that can only be justified by a faith that essentially all vehicles will soon be electrified. So far, the market share of EVs has been almost entirely dependent on a combination of government subsidies and compulsion (e.g., “fuel economy” standards that exempt EVs). If EVs don’t take over the auto market, then Musk may be no wealthier than you or I come 2030. I suggest keeping that in mind when considering the Tesla “Sustainable Energy” Report.

There is a huge amount of detail here, and I only have time for so much. But let’s take a look at how this Report proposes to deal with the energy storage for the U.S. Recall that Ken Gregory calculated that if the U.S. fully converted to wind and solar generation, it would need to store approximately 250,000 GWh (which would be 250 TWh) to make it through a full annual storage and discharge cycle, given the seasonal pattern of wind and solar generation. Try to provide the 250 TWh of storage with lithium ion batteries at $200/KWh, and that will run you about $50 trillion. That would be slightly unaffordable, given current U.S. annual GDP of under $25 trillion.

Here is the chart from the Tesla Report on how they propose to deal with storage for the U.S.:

As you can see, their answer is almost entire hydrogen. The total storage proposed, at 120 TWh, is less than half of what Gregory calculated as needed, but not wildly out of range.

In Tesla’s favor, the idea of using hydrogen for the storage is substantially less insane than relying mostly on batteries. But, as discussed in my energy storage Report, hydrogen produced by electrolysis from water using electricity only from renewables is far from cheap. For my Report, I found a figure of $4-6/kg for producing this “green” hydrogen, which translates to a price of $32 – 48/MMBTUs (the units in which natural gas prices are typically quoted). By contrast, natural gas prices fluctuate, but over the last ten years they have always been under $10/MMBTU, and mostly around $3-5/MMBTU. The current price is more like $2/MMBTU. The Tesla Report cites a price of about $3/kg ($24/MMBTU) just to store the hydrogen on an annual basis.

As also discussed in my energy storage Report, hydrogen is more challenging to deal with than natural gas in every respect. It is less energy dense (meaning, more pipeline capacity needed to transport the same amount of energy), it embrittles steel pipes, it is more explosive and dangerous, it is more prone to leaks, and so forth. To move to hydrogen as the vehicle of energy storage would mean creating an entire national infrastructure of new facilities. Next to none of that currently exists, nor is it under construction or even in the planning stage. I can’t find any effort in the Tesla Report to estimate a cost for any of this.

And private investment will not build it. Why? For the simple reason that natural gas is cheaper and better in every respect. Nobody is going to buy green hydrogen at $40/MMBTU when natural gas can be had for $5, and nobody is going to build the infrastructure to transport and store hydrogen until it is price competitive to do so.

So natural gas can say all they want that their zero carbon energy system “requires less investment and less material extraction,” but the fact is that the market is saying otherwise. The whole “hydrogen economy” thing is completely dependent on a new economy of government central planning and handouts, and is sitting around waiting for the next round of hundreds of billions of dollars of government subsidies to get it going.

Without going into detail on other sections of the Tesla Report, I’ll just say that there are plenty of obvious fantasies. For example, how about air travel? No problem!:

Longer distance flights, estimated as 80% of air travel energy consumption (85B gallons/year of jet fuel globally), can be powered by synthetic fuels generated from excess renewable electricity leveraging the Fischer-Tropsch process, which uses a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) to synthesize a wide variety of liquid hydrocarbons, and has been demonstrated as a viable pathway for synthetic jet fuel synthesis.

Just another minor item to be invented new from scratch.

Why would a Tesla put out a Report like this? It doesn’t take much thought to understand the reason. Getting the bureaucrats excited about their utopia coming to pass is the route to the mandates and subsidies for EVs and batteries for decades to come, all of which will maintain Musk as the world’s richest man. And if it all doesn’t work in the end? Somebody else’s problem.

So, Mr. Musk, if all this can be done for “less investment” than our current system, there should be real money to be made by building the demonstration project to show us all how it works. How about taking one of the smaller Hawaiian islands (Maui?), and installing the wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen electrolyzers, and storage facilities to go 100% carbon free? The Hawaiians will all save money, and you’ll make additional billions. I hereby call your bluff. Put up, or shut up!