Natural gas shortages threaten governments' green goals.
Another crucial global market has gone from excess to great scarcity. Last September in Europe it cost 119 euros ($ 139) to buy enough gas to heat an average home for a year, and the continent's gas storage facilities were full. Today it costs 738 euros and stocks are scarce. America, which has an abundance of shale gas, has also seen prices more than double, albeit from a much lower level, and could see further increases if winter is cold.
Deficiency has many causes. A cold European spring and a hot Asian summer have increased the demand for energy. The rebound in industrial production has increased the global appetite for liquefied natural gas (LNG). Russia has piped less gas into European reserves. Hawks suspect it is trying to scare the market and make sure its new Nord Stream 2 pipeline is approved. But it has also faced disruptions, including a fire at a processing plant in Siberia – writes The Economist .
Gas has filled gaps in energy production from other sources. The wind didn't blow much in Europe this summer, while the drought interfered with the production of hydroelectricity. The rising price of permits needed to emit carbon in the EU has made coal expensive. So there are few alternatives to gas combustion for electricity and home heating.
While the other bottlenecks in the world economy – for container ships and microchips – have sparked a boom in capital spending, investments in fossil fuels are in long-term decline. American shale can only help up to a point, because gas markets are imperfectly connected via LNG. High prices, when they hit, will mainly serve to ration the limited supply. But it takes big price movements to curb demand. If the coming months are cold, energy in Europe may have to become extremely expensive to convince businesses and households to use less.
Solving this problem requires an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong. Governments have not sufficiently taken into account the intermittency of renewable energies. The world has too little nuclear power – a low-carbon energy source that is always on. Gas interventions and subsidies will only make matters worse. Expensive energy angers voters and hurts the poor. But subsidizing energy in a squeeze, as Italy is doing, or limiting prices, as Britain does, will exacerbate shortages and make policymakers' commitment to green seem hollow. Governments should use the welfare system to support household incomes, if necessary, while helping energy markets to function efficiently.
The long-term challenge is to smooth out volatility as the shift to renewable energy continues. Eventually, low-cost battery storage could solve the intermittency problem; at this time, even more gas storage would help. Meanwhile, changes in the market could make things better.
In Britain, many small energy suppliers that offer, for example, one-year fixed-price contracts to consumers, but buy energy at variable rates, will soon go bankrupt. Getting companies that sell at fixed rates to hedge against wholesale price increases should encourage more physical gas storage. Another idea is to invest more in connecting networks (a link between Britain and France has recently failed) and natural gas infrastructure, so that arbitrage exchanges can level the disparities in the global supply of power.
Dirty power sources should be expensive. But without reliable alternatives, rising prices increase inflation, lower living standards and make environmentalism unpopular. If governments do not manage the energy transition more carefully, today's crisis will be the first of many that threaten the vital transition to a stable climate.
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A worldwide energy shortage
Across the world, an energy shortage drags on. In Britain petrol stations are running dry. In Europe governments are introducing emergency measures, such as such as the capping of energy prices in Italy, as they worry about the surging cost of natural gas. At least 19 of China’s provinces, including many of its industrial heartlands, have suffered power shortages in recent weeks. About a tenth of India’s power plants have no coal left in storage. Since the end of August prices have surged. Crude oil is up by a fifth, coal has jumped by half and liquefied natural gas rose by four-fifths. Most analysts think the energy crunch will not be resolved until after winter. And if that is particularly cold, prices could soar higher still.
The energy shortage has many factors. Analysts cannot help but describe it as a “perfect storm”. Its causes include supply disruptions, such as fires at natural gas plants in Russia, and outages because of covid-delayed maintenance. At the same time energy demand has increased over the past year thanks to a rapid economic recovery, an unusually warm summer in Asia and an unusually cool winter in Europe.
In some places regulation aimed at slowing global warming has compounded the problem. In Europe when gas prices surge, utilities switch to using more coal. But because the cost of emitting carbon in Europe is at a record high, less switching is taking place than previously. That has pushed gas prices up further. Meanwhile, in China environmentally friendly policies have limited the amount of electricity factories can source from coal-fired power plants.
The shortage also highlights how ill-prepared the world is for the energy transition. In northern Europe unusually calm conditions in September meant a decline in wind generation, which provides about a fifth of power used in Germany and Britain. More investment in power storage, such as utility-scale batteries, would have eased such intermittency problems. As we argued in last week, the energy transition is likely to lead to volatile power prices and, if it is poorly managed, that could make environmentalism unpopular.
The timing of the shortfall is unfortunate. COP26, the UN’s climate conference, kicks off at the end of October. The summit is particularly important because it is the deadline for countries to announce their updated climate plans. The hope is that these plans are more ambitious than those announced after the Paris agreement in 2015 and that the sum of the emissions cuts helps to slow global warming. Some analysts fear that the energy shortage will cast a shadow over negotiations. It may, for instance, discourage countries, such as China and India, from making strong commitments to reduce their future coal consumption. Green groups had already been worrying about a list of factors that could derail the conference, from fraying Sino-American relations to the uneven distribution of covid-19 vaccines. The energy shortage has become yet another concern.
Email from The Economist
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Citizens Organizing to Block Offshore Wind Projects
The Biden administration’s plans to erect a string of giant offshore wind-energy projects off the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coasts is encountering stiff headwinds from local residents who will have to deal with the economic and ecological consequences of the ruling class’s embrace of renewable energy.
On Nantucket Island, Massachusetts – not far from tony Martha’s Vineyard – residents have filed suit challenging the pre-construction environmental review for the of proposed Vineyard Wind project, which would install 100 giant turbines 14 miles offshore. Plans are already in place, however, to expand to adjoining lease areas and install a total of 600, 650-foot-high turbines in the region’s offshore waters. The Nantucket residents join groups forming from North Carolina to New England and along the Great Lakes seeking to protect their communities and wildlife from the damages they fear will be inflicted once the turbines’ rotors start spinning.
On Nantucket, citizens have formed the group ACK Rats, playing off the code name for the local airport, ACK, with Rats standing for “Residents Against Turbines.”
“Some people oppose the offshore wind development because it will harm their ocean view. Some people oppose it because it will result in higher electricity rates. Some people oppose it will hurt commercial fishing,” said Val Oliver, co-founder of ACK Rats, in a statement.
“While these are all valid and true concerns, what motivates us in our opposition to the industrial offshore development is the fact that it will result in the destruction of our ocean floor, its ecosystem, and will have a deadly impact on countless birds, bugs, bats, fish, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. Saving these species, especially the critically endangered Right Whale, is why we are here today.”
Environmental Damage
The ACK Rats’ suit says the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and in a supplement to the EIS, failed to take the requisite “hard look” at Vineyard Wind’s impact on whales and other sea mammals, fish, birds, sea turtles, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, cultural resources, aesthetics, and other resource categories.
The lawsuit also say BOEM’s two 1970National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents also failed to examine a legally adequate range of alternatives, and failed to mitigate the project’s impacts, along with grossly underreporting the project’s cumulative impacts.
Meanwhile, The Jefferson Journal reports that a broad coalition of multi-state offshore wind opponents is prepared to combat the well-funded and well-subsidized wind energy industry. They call themselves “Coalition for Ocean Protection and Safety.”
One of the coalition’s leaders is David Stephenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute in Delaware. Stephenson, Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (publisher of The Jefferson Journal), and others are keeping a close eye on the ACK Rats’ suit. If BOEM’s EIS for Vineyard Wind can be struck down in court, they hope this will send a shot across the bow of a similar proposed project off the Virginia coast.
Wind Off Virginia’s Shores
Dominion Energy, a Richmond-based utility, is behind the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which will be located 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. In its first phase, Dominion says the project will have the capacity to deliver 2,600 megawatts of power. The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) estimates the total consumer cost of the Dominion project at $37 billion by 2030, because the power provided will come from unreliable wind.
Currently, the U.S. has only one offshore wind project “in operation,” the five-turbine, 30-megawatt Block Island project off the coast of Rhode Island. Block Island went into operation in 2016 but now lies still. Four of its turbines aren’t working due to stress fractures, a problem that has plagued offshore wind turbines in Europe.
Rapid Loss of Efficiency
Advocates of wind power – offshore and onshore – proudly tout their projects’ “capacity” to produce a certain amount of power.
But capacity should not be confused with actual production.
Even though the wind blows more consistently offshore than on land, seaborne wind turbines start losing their efficiency as soon as they go into operation, and their efficiency deteriorates from year to year. By the time they reach the end of their life cycles – about 20 years – their production is far below what was originally advertised.
Replacing dead offshore wind turbines is an expensive proposition, with the costs passed on to ratepayers. And the new turbines that replace the old ones are subject to the same ever-decreasing efficiency.
Offshore wind is snake oil in its purest form. Keep it away from your beach
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2021/10/citizens-organizing-to-block-offshore-wind-projects/
*******************************************Sorry, Idaho County Free Press, Climate Change Is Not Disrupting Idaho Agriculture
A generally accurate story in the Idaho County Free Press (ICFP) numbers increasingly extreme weather due to climate change among the challenges facing agriculture in the state, resulting in a decline in farmers. This is false. Data prove climate change is not causing greater instances of extreme weather and, indeed, farm yields have increased fairly consistently during the recent period of modest warming. This being the case, climate change cannot be a factor leading to falling numbers of farmers.
The ICFP story, titled “Idaho’s economy fifth most dependent on agriculture,” notes there are many reasons the number of people farming for a living in Idaho are declining, from farm consolidation, COVID induced supply chain problems, to trade policy, to government regulations and beyond. But one factor the story lists as putting farmers behind the eight ball is climate change, and that is not true.
“The past few years have been challenging ones for the agriculture industry,” says ICFP. “The threat of global climate change has continued to produce warmer temperatures and more extreme weather events that threaten crops and livestock, and this summer, the U.S. is currently experiencing serious drought in some of its key agricultural regions ….”
As Climate at a Glance: Drought points out, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while IPCC has “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.
Focusing just on the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports the United States is undergoing its longest period in recorded history without at least 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions. Note also the peaks in drought around 1978, 1954, 1930, and 1900 are much larger than what the U.S. experienced in the 21st century and the late 20th century. Indeed, as recently as 2017 and 2019, the United States registered its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history.
Idaho is currently in the midst of a drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor currently list 100 percent of the state as experiencing at least moderate drought or worse. Just a year ago, however, less than 18 percent of the state was experiencing moderate drought conditions or worse. Drought is a weather event and, as everyone knows, the weather can change quickly.
Idaho, like much of the Western United States, has periodically experienced drought throughout its history. The last time Idaho experienced a drier March through July was in 1924, 100 years of global warming ago, when average temperatures were cooler. Records indicate Idaho’s current dry cycle is the fifth driest on record, since such records were routinely recorded by the government. Idaho experienced worse or drier “water years”—October to September— in 1924, 1931, 1977, and 1994 with three of the four worse water years than at present occurring during a time when many scientists were worried about falling temperatures and warning of a coming ice age.
Just as there is no evidence indicating climate change is causing worsening droughts across the U.S. in general or Idaho in particular, there is also no evidence other extreme weather events likely to impact Idaho, such as heatwaves or flooding have worsened. The IPCC admits having “low confidence” in any climate change impact regarding the frequency or severity of floods.
Going further, the IPCC says it has “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes—in other words, it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe.
Concerning extreme heat or extended heat waves, data from NOAA, indicate heatwaves remain far less frequent and severe since 2000, than was the case during the 1930s – nearly 100 years of global warming ago.
A majority of each state’s all-time high temperature records were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of “global warming” ago.
Because climate change is not causing more extreme weather in Idaho, it also cannot be impacting crop production. The records show that during the recent period of modest warming, even as the number of farmers has declined, yields of Idaho’s major crops have consistently increased.
Idaho is the nation’s largest producer of potatoes and barley, and the second largest producer of sugar beets. The United States Department of Agriculture reports that between 2010 and 2019:
Idaho’s sugar beet production has increased by more than 22 percent and its yield per acre has grown by nearly 26 percent.
At the conclusion of ICFP’s article it reports on this good news, stating, “[b]y the measure of total factor productivity — essentially a ratio of agricultural inputs like land, labor, capital, and materials to outputs of crops and livestock — farms today are far more productive than they have ever been, part of a long-running trend dating back to at least the late 1940s.”
In a misguided effort to stoke climate alarm, the ICFP buried the lead, that Idaho’s farm productivity is higher than ever. Shame on them for doing so.
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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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