Solar Farm Sale Reveals Green Energy Sorcery
A solar farm sale in New Jersey tells us everything we need to know about solar energy schemes, green eggs and scam and the real value of green energy.
A good friend and guest blogger here sent me a link yesterday to a post at EnviroPolitics that reveals some of the sorcery behind solar energy. The editor of that journal, Frank Brill, is a big fan of solar energy and ran what appears to be a news release from Cushman & Wakefield about their role in a 49-acre Warren County solar farm sale for $3.5 million. I’m would imagine Frank thought this sale was evidence of the growing value of solar and that’s why he published it. But, it demonstrates the opposite.
According to the release, which appeared in several places, these are the facts of the solar farm sale:
The 10-megawatt solar farm, installed and operated by NJR Clean Energy Ventures III, sits on 49 acres just off Exit 3 of Interstate 78 in Pohatcong.
The property is fully leased to NJR, a subsidiary of New Jersey Resources Corp. and the largest owner-operator of solar farms in the state, Cushman & Wakefield said.
The team of Andy Merin, Kyle Schmidt, Andrew Schwartz, Jordan Sobel, and Andre Balthazard represented the seller, RDG at Pohatcong, and procured the buyer, Turner Group, the firm said.
“Considering the enormous barrier to entry and the fact this site took 10 years of planning, negotiating, and constructing to ultimately come online in January 2020, it’s no surprise that we saw strong interest in the I-78 Solar Farm,” Schwartz said.
No information is provided on the buyer, the Turner Group, and there are several entities by that name operating in New Jersey, but it’s safe to assume the buyer invested for the sake of earning a return on its $3.5 million. But, here’s the thing. There was clearly no return for the seller.
That’s because a 10 megawatt facility costs a capacity-weighted $2,544 per kilowatt (that’s $25,440,000 per megawatt for those of you who live in never-never land) to build before considering the value of the land. Do the math and the seller probably put something on the order of $25 million in this 10 MW facility that will only generate power about a quarter to a third of the time and still require 10 megawatts of natural gas fueled power generation available as backup at all times.
The land the facility sits upon is worth at least $16,000 per acre in a vacant condition based on comparable sales in the immediate vicinity (two parcels totaling 57.9 acres sold in 2016 and 2018 for an average of $15,976/acre), so if we deduct that from the sale price we are left with $2.7 million or so, which represents a likely return of capital in the range of 10-11¢ per dollar.
It’s probably a lot less given the 10 years of time it took NJR Clean Energy Ventures III to get the project done, but let’s just go with 10¢ on the dollar. This is the real hard core value of the finished project produced by this solar farm sale. Everything else is phony money with Phil Murphy’s picture on it. Murphy, of course, is the second Goldman Sachs guy out of the last three governors elected by Garden Staters and he knows green eggs and scam inside out. Moreover, Murphy and Corzine (the other Goldman Sachs governor) were separated by a pompous buffoon whose favorite activity was selling out every friend and principle he ever had when he wasn’t saving the solar industry.
If you read that link you’ll see it’s all a shell game. Oh, yes, the good people at NJR, which is primarily a natural gas supplier, will surely pretend it makes economic sense to sell an asset for 10¢ on the dollar. They’ll talk about Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), SRECs, tax credits and every other form of direct and indirect subsidy that arguably makes this a smart financial decision for NJR. It may well be so on paper, of course, because they have no choice but to participate in a pay to play rigged market where renewables are forced onto them to be able to sell natural gas.
That’s how the other 90¢ of this solar farm sale deal was covered and it’s all your money, one way or another; rent grabbed from the government to allow true green believers to signal their virtues but, much more importantly, to make a pile of real money on green eggs and scam for the likes of big money firms invested in selling green bonds and the like. Solar farms make no economic sense whatsoever but they are being forced on all of us to benefit a very few, using unsettled global warming as the excuse. It is disgusting corruption and this solar farm sale at 10¢ on the dollar proves it.
https://naturalgasnow.org/solar-farm-sale-reveals-green-energy-sorcery/
*******************************************Why are BMW and Daimler being sued over climate change?
German activists have filed a lawsuit against automakers BMW and Daimler for refusing to tighten carbon emissions goals, the first time German citizens have sued private companies for exacerbating climate change.
The lawsuit from the heads of Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), is similar to one being lined up for Volkswagen by the heads of Greenpeace's Germany division in collaboration with Fridays for Future activist Clara Mayer and an unidentified landowner. However, this group has given Volkswagen until Oct. 29 to respond.
DUH also challenged energy firm Wintershall to restrict its emissions targets, but no suit has been filed against the company as of yet.
Here's what the cases mean, and why they matter.
WHERE HAS THIS COME FROM?
In May last year, Germany's top court ruled the country's climate law was not doing enough to protect future generations. It set carbon emissions budgets for major economic sectors, increased the percentage by which emissions must be reduced from 1990 levels by 2030 to 65% from 55%, and stated that Germany as a country must be carbon-neutral by 2045.
While meeting these demands implies some restrictions to current generations' lifestyles, not meeting them would force future generations to make significantly more drastic sacrifices in order to both survive in a warmer world, and prevent the problem from getting worse, the court argued at the time.
In the same month, environmental groups in the Netherlands won a case against oil company Shell for not doing enough to mitigate its impact on the climate – the first private firm to be ordered by a court to reduce its emissions.
On the back of those two rulings, the German activists are making their case.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
This case is important on two levels.
Firstly, because of the legal precedent it could set - namely, that companies are directly responsible for the effect on people's lives of the emissions their products create.
If the defendants win, citizens could be emboldened to sue other companies – from airlines to retailers to energy firms – for not doing enough to mitigate their impact on the planet.
Secondly, because companies will be forced to prove in court that their emissions targets are as watertight as they say they are – stress-testing their claims that they are taking climate change seriously.
WHY THESE COMPANIES?
Daimler and BMW have set a number of climate-related targets.
Daimler aims to produce purely electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030, and provide an electric alternative for all models by 2025. BMW wants at least half of global sales to be EVs by 2030, and reduce CO2 emissions per vehicle by 40% in the same timeframe. Volkswagen has said it will stop producing fossil fuel-emitting cars by 2035.
All three firms have stated that their targets are in line with the international Paris Agreement on tackling global warming.
But the defendants argue that the companies' goals aren't enough to adhere to the German climate ruling and carbon emissions budgets set by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).
By prolonging carbon-emitting activities, the companies are directly responsible for the constraints on individual rights that will have to endured in future if carbon budgets aren't stuck to, the case argues.
These are by no means the only firms to which such an argument could apply - and if DUH wins, more lawsuits could follow.
WHAT DO THEY WANT?
DUH wants both autos firms to legally commit to ending production of fossil fuel-emitting cars by 2030, and to ensure the CO2 emitted by their activities before those deadlines does not go beyond their fair share.
What do they mean by their fair share? It's a complex calculation – but put simply, the NGO has calculated a personal ‘carbon budget’ for each company, based on a figure put together by the IPCC of how much carbon we can still emit globally without warming the Earth beyond 1.7 degrees Celsius, and how much carbon the companies emitted in 2019.
According to its calculations, the companies' current climate goals aren't enough to keep them within their allocated budget – meaning that even if everyone else sticks to their budgets, these companies' activities would push emissions over the limit.
WHAT HAVE THE COMPANIES SAID?
Daimler said on Monday it did not see any grounds for the case. "We have long provided a clear statement for the path to climate neutrality: it is our aim to be fully electric by the end of the decade - wherever market conditions allow," it said in a statement.
BMW said its climate targets were already at the forefront of the industry, and its goals were in line with the ambition of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees.
Volkswagen said it would consider the case, but that it "does not view suing individual firms as a suitable method to tackle societal challenges."
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Sweden’s green dilemma: can cutting down ancient trees be good for the Earth?
Forest-owner Lars-Erik Levin doesn’t seem like an environmental villain. As he walks through his 80 hectares (198 acres) of woodland in southern Sweden, he identifies goldcrests by their song, points out a cauliflower fungus and shows off the aspen in his wood that grouse feed on. This year he’s picked more than 100kg of chanterelles, and even more bilberries.
But this is the part of the property he manages by so-called continuous cover forestry, where he claims he only fells trees with trunks so thick his arms no longer reach around them. On the other side of his farmhouse is a wide-open space the size of two football pitches, where, five years ago, he cut the forest to the stumps. Little now remains but grass, brambles and young, waist-high spruce. “Animals and birds have legs and wings, they can move a little,” he protests when asked what happened to the wildlife.
“It’s devastation,” says Magnus Bondesson, the local officer for the Swedish Forest Agency. “It’s not a good thing for biodiversity.”
Clear-cutting, which sees a total forest area a third larger than Greater London cut to the stumps every single year in Sweden, has become a hot political issue after the EU’s new forest strategy in July said the technique should be “approached with caution”, and called for Sweden to protect more of its forests.
Forestry policy now threatens to cause clashes with the European commission. The Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, declared in a speech to open parliament that “forestry should not be micro-regulated from Brussels”.
The issue also threatens the stability of the government. The Social Democrats’ coalition partner, the Green party, last week refused to bow to a demand from the agrarian Centre party that forest owners’ property rights should be strengthened, as part of its price for propping up the government.
The issue is even splitting the Green party itself, pitting those who see forest products as key to the green transition against those who want to protect biodiversity at all costs.
“I describe it as environmental destruction, the most serious damage ongoing in Sweden,” says Rebecka Le Moine, the radical runner-up in last year’s party leadership contest.
Unlike many other European countries, Sweden doesn’t have a limit on clear-cutting, meaning that areas of more than 100 hectares can be cut in one go, threatening the 2,000 red-listed species connected to the country’s forests.
Le Moine is pushing for her party at its October annual meeting to agree to campaign to limit clear-cuts to two hectares and to push for wood used for heating to no longer be seen as renewable and instead taxed on its emissions, like coal or oil.
Maria Gardfjell, the party’s spokesperson for forestry, who is herself a forest owner, admits the party is split.
“If you look at Green party policy, it’s not the same as what you hear from Rebecka. It’s not our politics,” she says. “If you take the climate law we have in Sweden, you can see that we will need forest products as substitutes for plastic, clothes, fuel and almost every kind of product. But at the same time, we need to promote biodiversity much, much more.”
At Levin’s property, he walks from his lush, natural-seeming continuous cover forest into an area he planted with spruce 30 years ago. It comes as a jolt. Whereas in the continuous cover area there are trees of all ages, and in places thick undergrowth, the spruce forest is a plantation, the trees evenly spaced and all the same age.
“It’s a bit darker,” says Bondesson, while admitting the biodiversity is “zero”. “It wouldn’t feed a mouse. There are mushrooms, but that’s it.”
It is by no means clear, however, which of the two areas brings the most environmental benefits. “The spruce produces 15 to 20 cubic metres of wood per hectare, and the continuous cover produces five,” Bondesson explains. “Do you understand the climate impact? How much more carbon dioxide it is binding?”
According to Tomas Lundmark, a professor of forestry ecology management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, harvesting forests by clear-cutting and then growing trees of the same age absorbs on average as much as 30% more carbon than if you use continuous cover forestry techniques, perhaps even more.
Trees of 30 to 50 years old, like those in Levin’s plantation, absorb the most carbon, while forests untouched for hundreds of years tend to be small net emitters. This is the industry’s big claim to sustainability.
The total volume of standing wood stored in Sweden’s forests has more than doubled over the past century, and its forests are still sucking in a net 48 million tonnes of CO2 a year as they grow, with another 7 million stored in long-lasting products made from Swedish wood. Taken together, that’s enough to make Sweden effectively carbon neutral.
The supply of biofuels in Sweden has tripled over the past 40 years and now provides close to 30% of its total energy supply, helping to halve its consumption of petroleum products.
For Le Moine, however, none of this is worth the loss of natural habitat. “They keep telling us we have more forests now than we had before,” she says. “My reply is we have never had this many trees, but never had such a little amount of forest ecosystem.”
Levin says that when he started doing continuous cover forestry back in the 1980s, he had to keep it secret as it was viewed by the forest agency as “almost criminal”. Now, others are starting to see the advantages. “It’s beautiful,” he says. “It produces money, and berries and mushrooms, and it’s not so much work.”
But he grimaces at the mention of activists such as Skydda Skogen (Save the Forests) or Le Moine, who want clear-cutting stopped altogether.
“They don’t understand that the forests have to do their work,” he says. “They need to make money for people, so that people can live out here.”
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Australia: It’s a $50b-a-year export industry. How long until coal’s rivers of gold run dry?
If the end of coal is near, it’s hard to see it among the open pits and billowing cooling towers of Victoria’s Latrobe Valley and the Hunter in NSW.
Canyons of brown and black coal, set between green paddocks and sloping hills, loom large in these mining districts and dominate their economies as a source of great wealth, just as they have for a century or more.
A global push is accelerating to eliminate the use of thermal coal — the worst-emitting source of energy — to restrain the planet’s rising temperature and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
But the mines in Latrobe and the Hunter are still operating around the clock. White steam still rises from the nearby power plants as they burn coal to supply more than two-thirds of Australia’s electricity needs. And, at the ports, huge volumes of coal are still being loaded onto cargo ships bound for Asia, bringing in billions of dollars of export revenue a year.
“The coal industry is just so damn important to the regional centres,” says Peter Jordan, a Cessnock local and mining union official who worked in the sector for more than a decade.
“Our coal mining jobs are well-paid relative to other industries, but they support many others in the mining communities; services, retail, health … most of them wouldn’t exist without coal.”
With 50,000 coal mining jobs nationally, the industry’s head count is relatively modest in contrast to sectors such as manufacturing, which employs 900,000 Australians. But coal has an outsized influence in a handful of seats, where it is a provider of good jobs and rich revenue streams for governments.
“It sends rivers of gold to Sydney in the form of royalties,” Jordan adds, “paying for roads, schools, and hospitals.”
For now, coal is a $50-billion-a-year export industry. How long until its rivers of gold run dry?
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull lost his job over an attempt to reshape energy policy and push down emissions. Scott Morrison went to the last election warning voters that Labor’s “net-zero” target would unleash economic havoc and widespread lay-offs.
Most Australians now say they want stronger emissions curbs, new polling suggests. But fewer than half (49 per cent) think coal power should be phased out within a decade and 44 per cent want to keep mining and exporting coal for as long as buyers want it.
Australia’s coal addiction might seem hard to shake. While 10 coal-fired power plants have shut down in the past decade, coal still generates about 70 per cent of the nation’s electricity.
Winds of change are, however, blowing anyway. The clean energy era is firmly upon us. And powerful forces are radically reshaping coal’s outlook overseas and on the home front.
With 3.3 gigawatts of new wind and solar power capacity plugged into the nation’s main grid in 2020 alone, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has officially declared the transition to be the fastest of anywhere in the world, describing the pace as “absolutely staggering”.
A consequence of more wind and solar farms being built, and more Australians installing rooftop solar panels, is that coal is getting squeezed. In the past 12 months, the flood of cheaper-to-run renewable energy has pummelled daytime wholesale power prices to levels where just about every coal-fired power plant is considered at risk.
This year, EnergyAustralia brought forward the closure of its Yallourn power station to 2028, four years ahead of schedule. Last week, it said it would shut its Mt Piper plant earlier, too, sometime prior to 2040.
Other sites, though, are still licensed to be burning coal until the back half of the 2040s, or even the 2050s, putting Australia at odds with a growing chorus of world leaders calling for a markedly more urgent phase-out plan.
Ahead of the world climate summit in Glasgow, the United Nations has launched a push for all OECD countries to quit coal power by 2030, and non-OECD countries by 2040. “The alarm bells are deafening,” UN secretary-general Antonio Gutteres says.
Is it possible for Australia’s coal-dominated national power market to be rid of coal entirely by 2030? “It depends,” says Lisa Zembrodt of Schneider Electric, an adviser to many of Australia’s largest corporate energy consumers.
Put this question to the power station operators, and they invariably insist 2030 is far too soon and would raise the threat of a “messy” transition that could see price volatility or even blackouts.
AGL, which accounts for 8 per cent of Australia’s total emissions, says nine years is not nearly enough time for replacement capacity to be invested in, built and plugged into the grid.
“We certainly recognise that the date of 2030 is something that is on the table with respect of the UN targets,” AGL chairman Peter Botten says. “I believe that 2030 is a very, very challenging target.”
Still, at its annual investor meeting last Wednesday, more than 50 per cent of AGL’s shareholders including US investment powerhouses BlackRock and Vanguard defied the board and voted to support an activist climate resolution requesting consideration of new goals that would compel accelerated coal plant closures.
What it boils down to, according to Zembrodt, is a choice we have to make as a society: As expensive as it may be, are we prepared to invest in the transition — smart grids, micro-grids, demand-management technology, batteries, energy storage and infrastructure — to fill the gap?
“We should be seeking to phase out coal as quickly as possible … and 2030 is a great aim,” she says. “But we need clear policy, we need market design, we need coordinated efforts between government, the market operators and consumers to enable the transition and support it, rather than prevent it.”
Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood agrees: Australia could be capable of retiring all its coal plants and replacing them with clean energy by 2030, but it would cost a “huge amount”.
“You would have to do a hell of a lot of things in the shorter-term that you otherwise would only have done in the longer term,” he says.
Because electricity production is a dominant source of emissions, exiting coal would help sharply reduce the country’s carbon footprint. At the same time, however, state and federal ministers have also become acutely aware to the risk of abrupt plant closures leading to undesirable outcomes for consumers.
Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor is driving development of a so-called “capacity mechanism” designed to spur investment into “dispatchable” assets – those capable of supplying on-demand power when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining.
Taylor insists the mechanism would be technology-neutral, with equal opportunity for gas, pumped hydro and batteries. But the policy has drawn fierce criticism from environmental advocates who have dubbed it “CoalKeeper” because it may see coal plants paid to guarantee future supply by remaining in the grid for longer.
NSW thermal coal has rallied this year to $US180 a tonne – a 10-year-high, and a sign of enduring near-term demand despite accelerating emissions goals globally.
As economies re-emerge from COVID-19 and energy consumption rebounds, coal markets are booming. What will happen next, though, is decidedly less certain. Top Australian coal destinations – Japan, China, South Korea – are targeting “net-zero” emissions by 2050-60, which, eventually, will diminish demand for fossil fuel cargoes.
There is much still to be answered. How sharp will the trajectory in those countries be? Will the world seek to limit global temperatures to 2.5 degrees of warming, 2 degrees or the most aspirational 1.5-degree pathway, as targeted by the Paris Agreement? What does that mean for Australian coal?
When the Reserve Bank of Australia considered these questions, it modelled four scenarios. Under one scenario of no change to existing policies in those countries, Australian coal exports rise 17 per cent by 2050. In other scenarios in which temperature rises are kept at 2 degrees or lower, coal falls by up to 80 per cent by mid-century.
“Countries are unlikely to materially alter their energy mix in the near term, and ... demand for coal will likely remain robust this decade, the RBA said. “However, as global appetite for coal tapers off from 2030 onwards under all scenarios except for the baseline, Australian coal-related investments are at risk of becoming ‘stranded assets’.”
Coal producers and analysts say Australian coal – with a relatively high quality and energy content – could face a brighter future than coal from other sources, as countries across Asia retire their older, less-efficient coal generators and move towards lower-emissions facilities.
“If everybody else goes down, we could end up holding a bigger piece of the global coal pie,” says Herd. “But is that who we really want to be? Do we want to be the last coal exporting-nation in the world?”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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