Biden’s Green Energy Plans Would Require Covering The American West In Solar Panels
Environmentalists say they want to preserve the natural world in its original, pristine state.
Yet the climate change activists among them would instead cast a solar panel shroud of human fabrication over parts of the great American West.
President Biden has given them the green light
The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management last month updated its Western Solar Plan, detailing options to open public land for large solar projects.
The bureau’s earlier blueprint allowed 16 million acres of public land to be used for solar development, which has now been enlarged to 22 million acres across 11 Western states. That’s more than 34,000 square miles — about the size of Maine.
Only portions of this land would be used. There are exclusions for steeply sloped terrain, tracts containing sensitive environmental and cultural resources, and land beyond a 10-mile distance from current or planned transmission lines.
Altogether, about 700,000 acres would be used to support the administration’s plan to convert the entire electric grid to intermittent sources such as solar and wind by 2035.
The scheme would add to the more than 11,000 megawatts of solar, wind, and geothermal energy the administration boasts it has already approved, which will provide electricity for more than 3.5 million homes — unless it’s a cloudy or windless day.
The Interior Department’s period for public comment on the revised plan ends April 18.
In addition to the massive human footprint blighting the natural environment, solar energy development has other downsides.
Most obvious is that even in the sun-drenched West, the sun doesn’t shine at night, which means backup power must always remain on standby.
And while solar panel manufacturing has exploded to meet growing world demand, it is not the United States that stands to benefit from Mr. Biden’s green energy policies.
In the past decade, China has grabbed a more than 80% market share of panel manufacturing, according to the International Energy Agency.
Increasing U.S. supply chain dependence and China’s export profits is hardly what the president has in mind with his “build back better” agenda.
Also, solar panels lose their capacity to transform sunlight into electrons in the course of an estimated 30 years of use. What to do with the expired sheets of glass and metal that no longer generate power?
According to the Department of Energy, the cost of recycling runs up to $45 per panel, which is far more than the $5 cost of disposal. That means most are destined for a landfill.
The consequence is a heap of trash that the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates could weigh in at 77 million tons by 2050 — yet another environmental blight.
With next-generation panels providing greater efficiency at lower cost, the option of replacing aging panels with new ones could result in 50 times as much waste, according to a 2021 Harvard Business Review study. Oops.
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Foundations Who Channel Public Funds Into ‘Renewable’ Energy
Of all rackets, the so-called ‘renewable energy’ racket may be the most fraudulent and nonsensical.
What geologists call the Last Glacial Period occurred between c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago.
Pretty much ALL human development has occurred since the glaciers retreated.
During the last Ice Age, glaciers advanced as far south as what is now the state of Missouri.
They retreated at a time when human population is estimated to have numbered around 4 million.
The so-called ‘greenhouse gases’—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone—comprise less than one percent of the earth’s atmosphere.
Even scientists who pay lip service to the human induced global warming theory acknowledge that for most of the last 300 million years, CO2 levels in the earth’s atmosphere were much higher than they are today.
In the 1970s, climatologists were concerned that modern man would soon experience another cooling trend, resulting in yet another glacial advance that would bulldoze the cities of Canada and much of the United States.
In the eighties, the theory of global warming—induced by human ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions—became fashionable.
What really ignited this intellectual, social, and political trend was the discovery that billions of public funds could be funneled into ‘renewable energy’ industries through the mechanism of subsidies and tax credits.
This morning I stumbled across a notable investigative report titled Secret Partnership Fueling Climate Hawk Journalism.
Note that many of the foundations that are key players in Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex are also key players in the Climate-Industrial Complex.
https://principia-scientific.com/foundations-who-channel-public-funds-into-renewable-energy/
**************************************************Proposed Climate Reporting Rule Is Foolish and Outside of SEC’s Mission, Study Shows
A new study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) finds the climate disclosure rule being finalized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “exceeds the commission’s statutory authority, undermines its existing disclosure-based framework, and greatly increases costs and work-hour burdens for companies subject to the mandate.”
When the SEC first broached the possibility of such a rule in 2022, I offered an official comment. I wrote, in part,
The SEC’s proposed climate accounting and disclosure rules fall well outside its legal mission to protect investors from fraud and the markets from insider trading and manipulation.
The factors likely to materially affect the success or failure of publicly traded companies are best known to the officers and managers of the firms and funds themselves, not the SEC, other regulatory agencies, politicians, or self-appointed stakeholders, including climate activists, not actively involved in the relevant business.
The effects of climate change 20, 30, 50, or 100 years from now are unknown and unknowable. …
The SECs proposed rules would require publicly traded companies to track and report on the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from their own operations and those of companies in their supply chain and the electric utilities that supply them power. In addition, companies would have to determine and report on how climate change is affecting their businesses now, how it is likely to affect them in the future, and what they are doing in response, including steps they are taking to reduce non-toxic greenhouse gas emissions.
These rules would take hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars away from businesses core operations, to carry out the SECs mandate to predict future climate to account for its fiscal effect on business operations, and act as their brothers’ keepers by tracking their power companies and suppliers’ emissions as well as their own.
The SEC does not possess the statutory power to deputize or empower officers of publicly traded corporations to act as agents of the state to seek information from other companies under its regulatory control, much less from individuals or companies not under its regulatory purview.
CEI Research Fellow Stone Washington’s analysis confirms my own and goes beyond it to detail the myriad failings of the rule. Taken together, these flaws undermine any legitimate case the SEC might assert for its climate disclosure rule. CEI’s press release about the study states,
Under the SEC’s proposed rule, companies must report how climate change risk factors influence their financial decisions, business, models, locations, and projects. Regulated companies will be required to capture and report data on their direct, indirect, and value-chain produced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
By capturing data from regulated companies’ value-chain—known in the rule as Scope 3 emissions (Scope 1 are direct emissions, Scope 2 are indirect emissions)—the rule would greatly expand the SEC’s regulatory reach, allowing it to demand information from a host of private entities that are not usually the target of the commission’s regulatory powers. The rule’s requirements would harm many non-regulated suppliers, including farmers, ranchers, and facility owners, simply because they do business with a registered company.
[T]he climate disclosure rule’s Scope 3 mandate will compel unregulated private companies to turn over sensitive GHG emissions data to registered firm partners. This backdoor regulation will likely be deemed by a reviewing court to compel information that is financially immaterial.
In his study, Washington says the proposed rule has all sorts of legal problems:
The SEC’s current climate rule now seeks to radically redefine established standards of materiality. This defies the Supreme Court’s Northway decision, previous agency precedent, and the agency’s statutory authorization … [and] violates the nondelegation doctrine, specifically the “major questions doctrine.”
In addition to the lack of appropriateness and legality of the rule, it is impractical. Washington estimates the rule will impose an additional $864,000 or more of annual disclosure costs for the average firm, with firms being forced “to hire lawyers, accountants, and ESG experts to contend with the rule’s estimated 39 million additional hours of paperwork.”
Large companies can absorb such costs, but smaller ones will struggle. The rule will force them to increase their prices or divert scarce resources from their core operations. Either way, their operations will be made less competitive with those of larger firms. On top of all that, the SEC has requested an additional $101 million in funding from Congress to hire new ESG-focused staff—more deficit spending for President Biden’s all-of-government approach to fighting climate change.
In a recent article on the SEC’s rule, I noted an additional problem:
If a company reported in its public documents and to the SEC that it did not expect climate change to materially affect its operations, whether because its board did not consider climate change a serious threat based on real-world data, or because it had no way of anticipating the types of weather events that might occur in the future, where, or when, it would be honest. However, it is doubtful that such honesty of a conclusion on the part of a company would satisfy the SEC’s climate mandarins.
Indeed, although the rule would do nothing to prevent climate change, because no single company or industry substantially impacts global warming, it would open regulated companies up to potential enforcement actions from the SEC and lawsuits from activists for “improper filing,” if the SEC isn’t satisfied with the filing or the anticipated impacts do not occur but other unforeseen impacts do occur that do materially affect the company’s profitability.
What should we conclude about the SEC’s rule? Washington has an answer:
In its current form, the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule will lead to expanded red tape, huge compliance costs, lawsuits, and little meaningful disclosure. Thus, the SEC should reconsider implementing the rule … and focus on its statutory mission of collecting disclosures of financially relevant information.
I wholeheartedly concur.
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Australia is way off track on drive for new fuel standards
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is not someone who allows the grass to grow under his feet, or under the industrial-sized solar panels he is so keen to promote, for that matter.
Early this month, he announced the government’s intention to introduce a New Vehicle Efficiency Standard for Australia. At the time, he told us Australia and Russia are the only advanced economies in the world not to have such a policy.
After the standard is implemented here, Russia will be on its own – something that’s not likely to worry the Russian government unduly. Bowen is targeting a start date of next year.
As is the case with many policy settings, the devil is always in the detail. It’s not just about having or not having an efficiency standard; it’s also about the parameters of the policy, other related measures and timing. Bowen plans to accelerate the implementation of the standard here by insisting we catch up to the US by 2028. This is the first problem with Bowen’s announcement.
How these schemes work is that an overall efficiency standard (typically set in terms of CO2 grams per kilometre) applies across a manufacturer’s entire fleet for sale. On average, the standard must be met, with some vehicles above the standard and others below. Credits are generated if the standard is more than met and these are tradable. For those who cannot meet the standard, these credits can be bought.
The expectation is that manufactures will seek to impose higher prices on vehicles that are above the standard and lower prices for those below it.
In other words, the standard induces price cross-subsidisation so the overall standard can be met and penalties won’t be payable. Electric vehicles are highly prized in this setting. But for those models of cars with above-standard efficiency, prices will inevitably rise.
Now if you think this is suppressing consumer sovereignty, you wouldn’t be wrong. Instead of allowing car buyers to take into account fuel efficiency as well as other characteristics, this policy deliberately restricts consumer choice to meet the government’s target. Bear in mind here that the most popular vehicles in Australia – the Ford Ranger ute and the Toyota HiLux – will massively exceed the new standard. There is speculation of price increases of between $10,000 and $25,000 for some models.
Bowen claims everyone will still be able to buy their preferred car; indeed he expects the choice of vehicles to expand even though Australia is known to be one of the best catered-for markets for right-hand-drive cars in the world.
The fact that there is little demand for some very small, fuel-efficient vehicles – those that are common in Europe and the UK – is mainly due to their unsuitability for families as well as being underpowered for Australian conditions. Bear in mind here that in Europe and the UK, petrol/diesel is highly taxed. The high price of petrol/diesel has been a driving force for many years determining the kinds of cars these citizens purchase. And, of course, many of these countries are the size of a handkerchief compared with Australia.
Using his department’s assumption-driven modelling, Bowen is predicting Australians stand to save about $1000 per vehicle per year by 2028. If that sounds unconvincing, it’s because it is. For starters, most people only buy new cars occasionally.
There are also some large leaps of faith about the take-up of electric vehicles – the real heart of this new policy – and the fact that it should be cheaper to charge a vehicle at home and drive a certain distance compared with filling up an internal combustion engine vehicle. Recent data point to it now being more expensive to use paid-for fast chargers between Melbourne and Sydney than driving a petrol-fuelled car.
(A complication that Bowen chooses to ignore about this policy is the fact that EVs use electricity generated still mainly from coal. The modelling doesn’t take into account this second-round effect.)
Had his department been closely watching overseas developments, he would also have been aware of significant problems emerging in a number of countries in relation to vehicle emissions standards, particularly the US.
Notwithstanding the extremely generous subsidies available to EV purchasers and the fact that a number of the car manufacturers have aggressively switched to EVs – think here Ford, General Motors and Volkswagen – EV sales have stalled. There are said to be row upon row of unsold EVs in dealers’ premises in the US and the dealers are now loudly complaining. The Biden administration is now considering watering down its emissions standards.
It turns out early adopters were keen to buy EVs – many had another vehicle in their garage – but demand has since slowed. The combination of high purchase prices, costly insurance and poor resale values, as well as ongoing issues with charging, has contributed to this outcome. (In the UK, this trend is, unbelievably, being blamed on an article written by Rowan Atkinson.)
Some of the car companies are now scrambling to change direction, with GM reintroducing a plug-in hybrid model to kickstart sales as well as deal with the efficiency standard. Toyota has emerged a winner in this race, with its chief always sceptical about rapid consumer acceptance of EVs. Toyota has been a substantial investor in hybrid technology and its hybrid vehicles have emerged as commercial winners in a number of countries.
Another clear trend in the motoring world is the increasing dominance of Chinese car manufacturers, particularly in the EV space. Their factories are churning out reasonable quality cars at much lower prices than the car companies that have dominated world sales for decades. Volkswagen, in particular, is under pressure as its strategic tilt to EV production fails to meet commercial expectations. (The fact that Chinese vehicles are constructed using cheap coal-fired electricity is again something that policymakers such as Bowen chose to ignore.)
So what is really driving Bowen’s decision to run with this new vehicle efficiency standard with its accelerated timetable? There are number of factors at work. The first is that some of the car companies and activists have been strongly pushing this standard. Volkswagen, which was caught up in a significant emissions misreporting incident, is very keen to see the new standard implemented.
Secondly, Bowen now realises the government’s stated emissions reduction target of a 43 per cent cut by 2030 won’t be met with current policy settings and the delayed rollout of renewable energy and new transmission lines. He is seeking some quick abatement from road transport to get closer to the target.
As for the conclusion that the policy will return $3 for every $1 spent, pull the other one. I can come up with an equally plausible set of assumptions that leads to a negative net return. When the government report makes the fatuous claim that “the projected impact of (car) emissions on Australian’s climate outlook cannot be ignored”, you know the bureaucrats are talking through their hat. (Hint: it’s about global emissions.)
Bowen might also be well-advised to admit that Australians love their cars.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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