Tag: energy projects

Argentina: New Climate Leader!

“The grand opportunity is not only to leave climate alarmism and forced energy transformation in the dust. It is also to elevate the private and public wealth of Argentina with expanded private property rights and free markets. Let’s go!”

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“The grand opportunity is not only to leave climate alarmism and forced energy transformation in the dust. It is also to elevate the private and public wealth of Argentina with expanded private property rights and free markets. Let’s go!”

The rating of “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker makes Argentina an international climate leader in 2025. President Javier Milei is putting people and greenery ahead of the Climate Industrial Complex in his country, offering a sound example of economic and environmental policy for other countries in the region.

Here is the good news (described as bad) by Climate Action Tracker (CAT):

Under Argentina’s new government, progress in developing and implementing climate policies has taken a step backwards. Among the restructuring and budget cuts in the national public administration, Argentina’s former Ministry of Environment has been demoted to the sub-secretary level, and the continuity of its previous climate policies remains in doubt. Meanwhile, the government continues to invest heavily in fossil fuels, notably a USD 30 billion LNG terminal to export fossil gas out of Vaca Muerta. Overall, CAT rates Argentina’s climate targets and policies as “Critically insufficient”.

Details follow:

Under President Milei’s administration which assumed office in December 2023, Argentina’s national government has been substantially restructured, with a focus on reducing the size of the public administration and cutting expenditure. In this process, the former Ministry of Environment has been reduced to the sub-secretary level, under the Secretary of Sport, Tourism and Environment (EcoNews Global, 2023).

During his presidential campaign, President Milei had stated he does not believe in man-made climate change and that his government will not support climate policies, including threats to leave the Paris Agreement (Colombo, 2023). While his administration later stated that Argentina will not be leaving the Paris Agreement, during COP29, Argentina recalled its delegation only a few days into the negotiations. Overall the outlook is bleak on Argentine increasing climate ambition for the next four years (Larena, 2024; Spring, 2023).

Energy projects for the masses have the green light!

The new government plans to continue developing the Vaca Muerta fossil gas fields, as well as a fossil gas pipeline and the LNG terminal planned by the previous administration. To support these large investments, the government set out an incentive package called RIGI or Incentive Regime for Large Investments (KPMG, 2024).

CO2 emissions are on the go also, doing its part to green the Planet and trash Net Zero.

In 2022, emissions in Argentina rebounded above 2019 levels after a sharp drop in 2020 due to COVID-19. This puts Argentina’s 2030 emissions projections under current policies at approximately 15% above its already unambitious 2030 target. Based on a study by UNICEN exploring energy scenarios (Blanco & Keesler, 2022), if Argentina were to implement additional policies to scale-up low carbon energy sources and reduce energy demand, it could get close to its NDC target. However, to be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, Argentina would need to develop more ambitious policies, especially to stop deforestation and reduce livestock-related emissions.

The past administration put Argentina on a continued-poverty course.

Argentina submitted an updated NDC in December 2021 that sets an unconditional target that is only a marginal improvement on the previous iteration. Argentina’s latest target only achieves a “Highly insufficient” rating when compared to required domestic efforts, and to Argentina’s fair share contribution to global climate change mitigation. With emissions (excl. LULUCF) projected to grow significantly after 2022, Argentina is set to miss its NDC target.

“In the last few months, climate policy has been significantly deprioritised in Argentina,” Climate Action Tracker continued. “However, there have been some positive developments:”

  • After denying climate change and claiming Argentina would exit the Paris Agreement, the Milei administration promised to keep all existing international climate commitments, including both the NDC and long-term strategy (LTS) targets.
  • Subsidies for power and fossil gas have continued to progressively decrease, including plans to mitigate the impact on the most vulnerable groups of the population. However, it is unclear how successful those plans are in protecting these groups.
    New measures were introduced to reform the power market, in an effort to increase competition and private sector investment.
  • New measures were introduced to reform the power market, in an effort to increase competition and private sector investment.

Argentina can follow the U.S. lead and skip COP 30 and further demote the international effort to help defeat it. But Climate Action Tracker dreams otherwise:

There is much that Argentina could do to increase its climate ambition to CAT, including:

  • Re-committing to its existing domestic climate policies and make resources available for their implementation.
  • Phasing out support for upstream oil and fossil gas developments.
  • Setting out a transition plan for the energy sector and revive existing renewables policies such as the RenovAr auction scheme.
  • Setting out a low-carbon transition plan for the land sector, including agriculture, livestock and land use change.

Explicit subsidies for upstream oil and fossil gas development should be eliminated, but more than this, the opportunity for production incentives and wealth democratization should incite subsoil privatization, an idea born by another great Argentinian, Guillermo Yeatts ( (1937–2018). As I have written elsewhere:

The case of Guillermo Yeatts for subsoil privatization should eclipse ‘climate change’ as the number one policy initiative of the 21st century. This friend of private property, free markets, the rule of law, and civil society, a successful entrepreneur in his own right, a thinker and doer, has set up an excellent opportunity for a new political era in his beloved Argentina.

The grand opportunity is not only to leave climate alarmism and forced energy transformation in the dust. It is also to elevate the private and public wealth of Argentina with expanded private property rights and free markets. Let’s go!

Drax gets go-ahead for carbon capture project at estimated £40bn cost to bill-payers

Scheme to convert biomass units could become one of world’s most expensive energy projects, experts say

Scheme to convert biomass units could become one of world’s most expensive energy projects, experts say

Drax has received permission from the government to fit carbon capture technology to its wood-burning power plant, in a project that could cost bill-payers more than £40bn.

The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, on Tuesday approved the project to convert two of its biomass units to use the technology. The Guardian has the story.

Analysts have predicted that the revamp of the North Yorkshire site could be one of the most expensive energy projects in the world.

The project could add about £1.7bn to energy bills every year if the company acts on plans to fit all four of its biomass units with carbon capture technology, or a total of more than £43bn, according to Ember, a climate thinktank.

In addition, the government is expected within days to extend a lucrative bill-payer-backed subsidy scheme that last year paid Drax more than £600m to burn trees for electricity until the end of the decade.

The decision is likely to anger environmentalists, who have campaigned against burning imported wood pellets and have opposed the multi-billion-pound subsidies paid to Drax over the past 12 years.

The planning decision said the project would “make a meaningful contribution” to the urgent need for carbon capture storage infrastructure to support the government’s net zero ambitions. A separate decision about its subsidy payments will follow before 2027.

Will Gardiner, Drax’s chief executive, said the planning approval “demonstrates both the continued role that Drax power station has in delivering UK energy security and the critical role it could have in delivering large-scale carbon dioxide removals to meet net zero targets”.

A report commissioned by Drax has claimed that adding carbon capture to its biomass power units could save the UK economy up to £15bn between 2030 and 2050 when compared to other, more complex carbon reduction measures using biomass.

Phil MacDonald, the chief operating officer at Ember, said the report ignored the “immediate real costs” of building the plant, which are likely to fall to taxpayers or energy users.

“Over 20 years, this could make Drax’s BECCS plans one of the most expensive energy projects in the world, funded from bill-payers’ pockets,” MacDonald said.

Read the full story here.