Green Energy: Greatest Wealth Transfer To The Rich In History
We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy members of society and rich nations.
The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs.
Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations.
Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy.
More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles.
The world spends about $1 trillion per year on green energy. Government subsidies run about $200 billion annually, with more than $1 trillion in subsidies spent over the last 20 years.
World leaders obsess over the need for a renewable energy transition to ‘save the planet’ from ‘human-caused global warming’. Governments deliver an endless river of cash to promote adoption of green energy.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided $370 billion in subsidies and loans for renewables and EVs. But renewable subsidies and mandates overwhelmingly favor the rich members of society at the expense of the poor.
Wind systems receive production tax credits, property tax exemptions, and sometimes receive payments even when not generating electricity. Landowners receive as much as $8,000 per turbine each year from leases for wind systems on their land.
Lease income can be quite high for a landowner with many turbines. In England, ordinary taxpayers pay hundreds of millions of pounds per year in taxes that are funneled as subsidies to wind companies and wealthy land owners.
In the US, 39 states currently have net metering laws. Net metering provides a credit for electricity generated by rooftop solar systems that is fed back into the grid. Solar generators typically get credits at the retail electricity rate, about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.
This is a subsidized rate, which is more than double the roughly five cents per kilowatt-hour earned by power plants.
Apartment residents and homeowners that cannot afford to install rooftop solar pay higher electricity bills to subsidize homes that receive net metering credits. Rooftop solar owners also receive federal and state tax incentives, another wealth transfer from ordinary citizens.
US federal subsidies of up to $7,500 for each electric car purchased, along with additional state subsidies, directly benefit EV buyers.
The average price of an EV in the US last year was $66,000, which is out of reach for most drivers.
A 2021 University of Chicago study found that California EV owners only drive 5,300 miles per year, less than half the mileage for a typical car. Most electric cars in the US are second cars for the rich.
A mid-size electric car needs a battery that weighs about a 1,000 pounds to provide acceptable driving range. Because of battery weight, EVs tend to be about 50 percent heavier than gasoline cars, which causes increased road damage.
But EVs don’t pay the road tax included in the price of every gallon of gasoline. EVs should pay higher road taxes than traditional cars, but today this cost is borne by everyday gasoline car drivers.
Renewable systems require huge amounts of special metals. Electric car batteries need cobalt, nickel, and lithium to achieve high energy density and performance. Magnets in wind turbines require rare earth metals, such as neodymium and dysprosium.
Large quantities of copper are essential for EV engines, batteries, wind and solar arrays, and electricity transmission systems to connect to remote wind and solar sites.
According to the International Energy Agency, an EV requires about six times the special metals of a gasoline or diesel car.
A wind array requires more than ten times the metals of a natural gas power plant on a delivered-electricity basis. The majority of these metals are mined in developing countries.
Almost 70 percent of cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Indonesia produces more than 30 percent of the world’s nickel.
Chile produces 28 percent of the copper.
China produces 60 percent of the rare earth metals.
These nations struggle with serious air and water pollution from mining operations. Workers in mines also suffer from poor working conditions and the use of forced labor and child labor practices.
But apparently no cost is too great so that rich people in developed nations can drive a Tesla.
To top it off, the European Union recently approved a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The CBAM will tax goods coming from poor nations which aren’t manufactured using low-carbon processes.
CBAM revenues will be a great source of funds for Europe’s green energy programs that benefit the wealthy.
In January, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Washington proposed a wealth tax on billionaires.
It’s interesting to note that all seven of these states mandate and heavily subsidize wind and solar arrays and electric vehicles, which transfer wealth from poor and middle-class residents to those same billionaires.
https://principia-scientific.com/green-energy-greatest-wealth-transfer-to-the-rich-in-history/
****************************************************Ignoring International Pressure, China Ramps Up Coal Power Production
President Biden’s plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to try to curb climate change are running up against the ugly geopolitical reality that China has no plans to join the growing international effort. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Beijing’s embrace of a fossil fuel that has become anathema in the rest of the world — coal.
A report out this week from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air says China accelerated its investment in coal power plants dramatically in 2022, with new permits reaching the highest level since 2015. More new coal-fired plants were started in China in 2022 than in the rest of the world combined, the report said.
“China continues to be the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development,” a research analyst with the center, Flora Champenois, said. “The speed at which projects progressed through permitting to construction in 2022 was extraordinary, with many projects sprouting up, gaining permits, obtaining financing, and breaking ground apparently in a matter of months.
“This kind of a process leaves little room for proper planning or consideration of alternatives,” she added.
The report states that construction of more than 50 gigawatts worth of coal power capacity began in China in 2022, an increase of 50 percent over 2021. The center expects more of the same in 2023.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has promised that his country would begin scaling back its coal consumption, but not until 2026. That so many new coal plants — financed and managed by companies with powerful political connections — are coming online, though, has analysts skeptical of his claims. The owners of these plants now have a vested interest in slowing the country’s transition to cleaner energy and a phase-out of coal, according to the report’s authors.
Of all the fossil fuels that activists blame for climate change, coal is by far the worst offender, accounting for as much as 30 percent of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. It is also the planet’s top source of electricity, according to the International Energy Agency, especially in developing economies like China, India, and Indonesia.
Until the war in Ukraine threw the continent’s energy industry into turmoil, Europe had been aggressively moving away from coal in recent years in order to meet goals laid out in international agreements. Since 2012, total coal-powered energy generation has dropped by a third in the European Union. Ten nations in the bloc were described as “coal-free” in 2021, and the remaining members have pledged to phase out its use at various points between now and 2038.
Mr. Biden and his allies in the climate change lobby have turned coal into public enemy no. 1 in America. During a campaign stop in California before last year’s midterm elections, the president lamented the country’s continued use of coal — about 20 percent of its electricity still comes from coal — and pledged that “we’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.” The White House later attempted to walk back the comments after coal-country legislators such as Senator Manchin of West Virginia erupted in anger.
Despite the dust-up, killing coal remains a key item in the Biden climate change agenda. His climate envoy, John Kerry, pledged at last year’s international climate change summit in Egypt that the country would be coal-free by 2030. Without legislative backing for its climate agenda, the administration is turning to regulators to hasten coal’s demise.
This spring, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue a number of new rules that are seen triggering a number of coal plant retirements around the country and making many of those remaining prohibitively expensive to operate. To offset the loss of generating capacity, the administration committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money to prop up wind and solar projects in last year’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
Without buy-in from developing economies in the rush to eliminate coal, though, all the spending by Europe and America in their efforts to curb climate change will be for naught. If anything, the reports about China’s continued enthusiasm for coal suggests the country is moving in the opposite direction of everyone else.
The worst-case scenario, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, is a major increase in China’s CO2 emissions over the coming decade that would “undermine the global climate effort, and could even put China’s own climate commitments in danger.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/ignoring-international-pressure-china-ramps-up-coal-power-production
******************************************************Biden Admin Proposes to Block Half of Current Gas Range Models
A new regulation proposed by the Department of Energy (DOE) would block half of current gas stove models from the market, an analysis by the federal agency shows.
In a proposed regulation published at the beginning of February, DOE set a maximum annual gas consumption of 1,204 thousand British thermal units (kBtu), also known as the EL 2 standard, for all gas cooking tops.
If the new regulation is finalized, only half of gas cooking tops will be able to meet the new standard, i.e., half of the products currently on the market will be blocked.
“DOE estimates that nearly half of the total gas cooking top market currently achieves EL 2 and therefore would not be impacted by the proposed standard, if finalized,” DOE said in an updated analysis (pdf).
DOE issued the updated analysis mainly because it excluded certain types of gas cooking tops in the previous analysis that was published on Feb. 1 (pdf).
Only 4 percent of the gas cooking tops in 2027 could meet the EL 2 standard if the new standard was not implemented, according to DOE’s projection in the previous analysis.
The governmental agency includes gas cooking tops with high input rate (HIR) burners in the new analysis.
The market share of qualified products expands substantially because all products with HIR can pass the new regulation, DOE said.
The new rule would be effective three years after it’s adopted.
The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) said they’re “very concerned” about the direction of the DOE.
“They have released the most stringent proposal for gas ranges, which only a sliver of the market can meet,” Jill Notini, industry spokesperson for AHAM, told The Epoch Times. “It’s very concerning what they’re doing with gas products. We believe that there should be consumer choice and that consumers should be able to make a decision on whether they would like to purchase a gas or electric product.”
“Clearly, the Department of Energy’s intentions are to eliminate gas products from the market. And they should just say that instead of releasing a deceptive and flawed analysis to justify their proposal,” Notini added.
AHAM is a trade association representing the manufacturers of household appliances sold in the United States.
They don’t trust DOE’s analysis and are carrying out their own analysis.
The results of the proposed regulation could be much worse than the DOE stated, AHAM said.
“What we believe is that products right now in the market would need significant redesign in order to meet the proposed levels,” Notini said.
The trade association said “everything is on the table” when asked if they plan to take legal action against the proposed regulation.
Rulemaking and Lawsuit
The DOE initiated the rulemaking process of potential regulation on gas cooking tops in 2014 and proposed standards in September 2016. The 2016 standard sets the maximum annual gas consumption at 924.4 kBtu.
However, President Donald Trump’s energy department halted the rulemaking process in December 2020, months before the president was going to leave the White House.
But the rulemaking process has also been disputed in the courts as six organizations, including some environmental groups, and some blue states filed two separate lawsuits in an attempt to force the Trump administration to regulate the gas cooking tops.
AHAM was one of the plaintiff intervenors in both cases.
In September 2022, a U.S. district judge ordered DOE to issue regulations on conventional cooking products or determine that no regulation is needed by Jan. 31, 2024.
The Biden administration resumed the rulemaking process by issuing the Feb. 1, 2023, proposed rule.
*******************************************************
Live not by lies – climate edition
David Archibald
I used to correspond with Cardinal Pell. He was the only cleric in Australia who took a stand against the climate hoax. I would send him my books on climate and he would send a letter thanking me, first on Sydney diocese letterhead and then Vatican letterhead. As for all the other clerics in Australia, there is an unpleasant colloquialism from half a century ago that might describe my thoughts toward them…
Our physical selves can only take us so far. Culture is the software of our civilisation and religion is a big part of that software. Culture enables adult males to work together productively and not waste their time fighting over females. We all know that some cultures are better than others and some religions are better than other religions.
We had the best culture and that is why people want to come here, and no Australians want to emigrate to Iran, Libya, or any of the other 180 ‘less desirable’ countries on the planet. It is culture and culture alone. Argentina, for example, is very scenic and agriculturally productive. But its population are largely the descendants of Europeans living in poverty because of their culture.
Global warming, the belief system, is a reversion to animism, a notion that some living and inanimate things have spirits. Animist cultures don’t achieve much. They go to bed when it gets dark because there is no lighting and that will be our fate too if we allow them to continue to run the Australian economy into the dirt.
Our clerics fail to decry global warming as a reversion to animism and by their silence are complicit in the duplicity of this state-sanctioned religion. Curse them in living and curse them in dying. They will end up with a peasant’s death.
Who else was complicit in not calling out global warming? Most of the hard science professionals – people like chemical engineers who could debunk global warming science in five minutes if they bothered to do so.
All have been as silent as the grave, and thus complicit. In the meantime, the hating on the carbon atom has become unhinged. The Australian economy is on the edge of power prices going through the roof which of course will crush our competitiveness in export markets, apart from simply making us poorer for no good reason.
Clerics have a useful role in society if they actually serve in the role required – affirming moral verities derived from the golden rule. Hard science/engineering graduates similarly have a moral duty to call out shoddy science. If they are not affronted by fake science, they have failed their moral duty to society.
Many basically good people likely think that global warming believers are harmless, like being a Moonie or the like.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In my opinion, global warmers are some of the most evil people that God has breathed life into. Some have taken it to its next iteration – is a belief system that takes Man’s fall from grace and his expulsion from the Garden of Eden for despoiling it to a further conclusion – Man is inherently evil and should be killed off as much as possible.
When I say some, I mean the main architects of the Covid plague. They started plotting 30 years ago to unleash a plague on humanity with global warming as the excuse. Their death toll so far is half of what Mao achieved with his Great Leap Forward but they are catching up on the Great Helmsman fast.
They need the excuse of global warming to salve their consciences.
Which gets back to the argument this essay started with. Those in society with the roles of either calling out shoddy religions or shoddy science failed in their duty to society. And the result hasn’t just been some higher power bills. The bitter harvest of their failure is a lot of deaths and maiming, with plenty more to come. The religious zealots are running amok and stuffing the crematoria with their human sacrifice.
The time to act on global warming is long past but it is not too late to save civilisation. It is well known that the global warmers are impervious to facts but do make their lives insufferable. Their religion is being used as the excuse to kill us so that is not a disproportionate response.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/live-not-by-lies-climate-edition/
***************************************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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment