Election of Donald Trump ‘could put world’s climate goals at risk’
Another reason to vote for him
Victory for Donald Trump in the US presidential election this year could put the world’s climate goals at risk, a former UN climate chief has said.
The chances of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels are already slim, and Trump’s antipathy to climate action would have a major impact on the US, which is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and biggest oil and gas exporter, said Patricia Espinosa, who served as the UN’s top official on the climate from 2016 to 2022.
“I worry [about the potential election of Trump] because it would have very strong consequences, if we see a regression regarding climate policies in the US,” Espinosa said.
Although Trump’s policy plans are not clear, conversations with his circle have created a worrying picture that could include the cancellation of Joe Biden’s groundbreaking climate legislation, withdrawal from the Paris agreement and a push for more drilling for oil and gas.
Espinosa said: “We are not yet aligned to 1.5C. That’s the reality. So if we see a situation where we would see regression on those efforts, then [the likelihood of staying within 1.5C] is very limited. It would certainly be a much bigger risk.
“We could see a slowdown, an even bigger slowdown [in action to reduce emissions], which would unfortunately probably take us to an even more terrible scenario, unless we see strong leadership coming from other places, [such as] Europe.”
She said other countries must continue with climate action even if the US were to renege on its goals under Trump, but the absence of the US would be a significant blow. “What happens in the US has a very big impact in so many places around the world,” she said.
It is not all gloom, however. Espinosa was the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement, in 2016 when Trump was elected president. She said that if other countries put up a united front in favour of strong climate action, it could help to counteract the absence of the US.
“When President Trump announced that they would withdraw from the Paris agreement, there was a certain fear that others would follow, and that there would be a setback in the pace of the climate change process. Not only did that not happen but some countries that had not yet adhered to the Paris agreement did so,” she said.
If Trump were to take the US out of Paris in a fresh term, she does not believe others would follow suit. “As of now, I don’t see countries really going back. I think that the process will continue.”
On the contentious issue – particularly for the US – of climate finance, Espinosa said Biden was now facing difficulty in getting climate finance commitments through a hostile Republican Congress.
“We are seeing a lack of leadership, including in the big countries that can make contributions,” she said. “[In the US] I think there is a willingness but there are also limitations. In the EU there has been a long period where they have been discussing the internal frameworks [for climate finance]. At the same time, we have been seeing a reduction of funds going in general to the global south, and very little is going to climate change. It’s really a question of giving it priority.”
She is also concerned that too much of the focus of climate finance and efforts to reduce emissions so far has been on shifting from a reliance on fossil fuels to renewables.
“We are now realising that nature will make or break net zero – decarbonising the energy sector will not be enough,” Espinosa said, calling for more emphasis on the role of nature, to halt deforestation and transform food production, which accounts for about a third of global emissions. “The 1.5C economy can only be achieved by ending deforestation and accelerating the transition to sustainable agriculture and food systems this decade.”
In 2024, most of the world’s population will go to the polls in elections, in the US, Russia, India, the UK and scores of other countries. Climate action will be a contentious issue in many of these elections, as some parties are arguing for stronger policies based on stark scientific warnings, while others oppose such action.
Espinosa warned of the opposition to climate action that is being orchestrated around the world. “In the US, we see a very well organised and very strong campaign intending to reduce the perception of the critical nature of action that needs to be taken.”
To combat this, she called for businesses to play a greater role in pushing for a low-carbon economy. “We need to work closely with the private sector, make them aware of the important opportunities that the new [low-carbon] economy provides. There are profitable investments that protect nature and innovate technologies
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/31/election-donald-trump-world-climate-goals-at-risk-un-chief#:~:text=Victory%20for%20Donald%20Trump%20in,UN%20climate%20chief%20has%20said .
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“I Was Wrong About Renewables,” Says Former Green Energy Executive
Renewables will make electricity so cheap that they’ll pay for themselves, explained the news media to the public over the last decade. Electric cars will replace internal combustion vehicles and drive down oil use. And poor nations will “leapfrog” into being rich with solar panels and batteries.
However, a different picture has emerged over the last three years. Rather than renewables paying for themselves, President Joe Biden and Congress passed legislation in 2022 that could result in an astonishing $1 trillion of taxpayer money for renewables, efficiency, and electric cars.
Despite that investment, the US generated less electricity from renewables in 2023 than it did the year before. Meanwhile, oil consumption continues to rise, the market for electric cars is oversupplied, and automakers have slowed electric vehicle spending as demand has slowed.
It’s true that the overall decline in electricity generated from renewables is relatively small at 0.8%, and most of the reduction is due to a decline in power from hydroelectric dams. Electricity from utility-scale solar farms rose 14%. And the US still reduced carbon emissions in 2023.
However, hydroelectricity wasn’t the only renewable energy source that declined. Wind did as well, by 2%, despite an increase in the number of turbines.
Hydro and wind problems are fundamentally the same: they depend on the right weather. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. As a result, wind and solar energy rely on backup energy sources like coal and natural gas.
The yearly unreliability of renewables is matched by their daily unreliability, which raises electricity generation costs and makes electric grids unreliable. Wind and solar advocates claim that sun and wind are free, but they don’t discuss all the infrastructure needed to manage this unreliability. As such, places with solar and wind mandates have higher-than-average electricity costs.
The decline in emissions was due mostly to cleaner natural gas replacing coal. As such, what happened in 2023 debunks the Big Lie that we don’t need fossil fuels, that fossil fuels can’t reduce carbon emissions, and that renewables are always the better option.
The New York Times blames the supposedly unanticipated higher electricity usage from the servers needed for AI, but the fundamental problems with renewables have been known for decades. They simply don’t produce enough cheap and reliable energy.
Indeed, electric grids across the Western world are in jeopardy due to the high use of unreliable renewables. In the UK, the Prime Minister has called for emergency natural gas plants to meet rising demand, and many experts believe the same could happen in the US.
The UK plans to spend billions of pounds annually over the next three decades to cut CO2 emissions. But even with all that spending, the UK isn’t on track to hit net-zero goals.
And the UK is a wealthy country. Poorer countries are just trying to survive. They don’t have the luxury of thinking about carbon emissions when low-cost energy is their only hope of improving food production, health care, housing, sanitation, water quality, transportation, and economic opportunity.
I Was Wrong
I used to think that wind, solar, and electric vehicles were the best ways to protect our environment. I went into the business of renewables and efficiency because I believed that they would result in a better world.
I was wrong. It took twenty years of working in the energy industry promoting these technologies to realize they don’t solve climate problems.
Just look at Germany. Over the past two decades, it poured an estimated $500 billion into wind and solar power, restricted oil and gas development, shut down all its nuclear power plants, and increased its dependence on Russian gas. The results? German households saw their energy bills double between 2010 and 2020.
And that was before Russia invaded Ukraine, and somebody blew up the pipeline that brought natural gas to Germany. Germany is in a rapidly accelerating downward spiral driven by a lack of energy.
Manufacturers of car parts, chemicals, fertilizer, and steel are struggling to survive and have been forced to shut down plants, lay off workers, and even file for bankruptcy. German taxpayers had to fork over another $500 billion in 2022 alone to cushion households and businesses from hard-hitting energy costs and another $230 billion to bail out a giant energy company.
The collapse of German industry has the potential to bring the rest of Europe down with it. Bankruptcies are skyrocketing across the European continent.
In response to the failure of renewable energy, Europe demands that poor and developing nations follow its lead. But no country on earth has ever climbed out of energy poverty using wind and solar. Prosperity and growth depend on energy-intensive industries, and they require reliable, cheap, and reliable 24/7 power. China gets this: its coal industry is growing at about two new coal plants per week.
https://public.substack.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-renewables-says
***********************************************Energy Department loans $1.5B to restart Michigan nuclear plant
The Department of Energy offered a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan. The energy company Holtec International bought the decommissioned plant in 2022 and plans to restore it and resume operations by late 2025.
If successful, it will be the first nuclear power plant to be successfully restarted in U.S. history.
The plant was shuttered in 2022 because of financial difficulties
Provided through the Inflation Reduction Act, the loan will enable the plant to generate enough power annually to power 800,000 homes
The plant is expected to reopen in late 2025
“Nuclear power is our single largest source of carbon-free electricity, directly supporting 100,000 jobs across the country and hundreds of thousands more indirectly,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement.
The Palisades Power Plant was shuttered two years ago because of financial difficulties. Holtec International purchased the plant in June 2022 — shortly before President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law.
The Holtec loan is offered through the Inflation Reduction Act’s Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment program, which finances projects to retool, repower, repurpose or replace energy infrastructure that has stopped operating or to enable energy infrastructure that avoids or reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
The Palisades plant will operate through at least 2051 if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves licensing. It is expected to prevent 111 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 25 years, according to the DOE — the equivalent of taking 970,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road.
The DOE said the Palisades plant could double its electricity output with the addition of two more smaller nuclear reactors that will be financed separately.
The United States is the world’s biggest producer of nuclear power, generating about 30% of what is generated globally, according to the World Nuclear Assn. About 19% of the country’s electricity is generated with nuclear power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. There are currently 54 commercially operating nuclear power plants in the country operating in 28 states.
Still, in 2023, 41 nuclear reactors permanently shut down in the United States — the largest number worldwide. Falling natural gas prices are largely the reason.
Spurring the development of new reactor technologies domestically “is critical to combatting the climate crisis,” according to the DOE. Nuclear power is a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration goal of 100% clean electricity generation by 2035.
The 800-megawatt Palisades Nuclear Plant will employ 600 people and generate enough electricity to power 800,000 homes, according to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Once reopened, it will drive $363 million of regional economic impact and help “Michigan lead the future of clean energy,” Whitmer said in a statement.
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Bloomberg: Wind and solar will need subsidies indefinitely
Bloomberg recently ran a very interesting interview with Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.
In the interview, Christophers argues there’s a widespread misconception about what’s needed to expand the deployment of renewables and transition away from fossil fuel generation.
Christophers states there is a widespread argument that the economics of renewables work and that the only remaining significant obstacles are political and in the planning realm around permissions. However, his book pushes back quite forcefully against that argument and suggests that that’s a very partial and misleading perspective on the economics of the transition.
The basic argument is simple, and it’s something that the world doesn’t want to admit: The business of developing and owning and operating solar and wind farms and selling electricity is kind of a lousy business.
Whether new solar or wind farms get built is ultimately about the expected profitability of those assets. Even though the generating cost aspect has become increasingly beneficial over time that doesn’t necessarily mean that the expected profits are going to be there.
Generating costs are only part of the costs that a company that owns and controls a solar or wind farm, and sells the electricity, incur. There are also costs associated with delivering that power to where it gets consumed.
For renewables the delivery costs tend to be higher than they are for conventional power plants because conventional power plants on average tend to be located closer to centers of demand.
That’s because unlike conventional power plants, renewables like solar and wind farms require huge amounts of land to produce significant amounts of power.
Unless governments are willing to either assume the burden of renewables development through public ownership…they will have to keep subsidies and tax credits in place indefinitely or else renewables investment will collapse because of the unfavorable economics.
The author obviously favors wind and solar and later advocates for a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. However, it is interesting that he acknowledges there is no economy-wide business case for wind and solar without government support.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/bloomberg-wind-and-solar-will-need-subsidies-indefinitely/
***************************************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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