Monday, September 16, 2024
The Golden State of California Is Turning Brown Without Continuous Electricity
As a resident of California for more than six decades, I am aware that the availability of continuously generated electricity in California is deteriorating and will get worse!
The “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies in California that are supported by Governor Newsom and the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris have led to the state’s most expensive electricity and fuel prices in America and increasingly high cost of living, housing, and transportation, coupled with an increase in crime, smash-and-grab robberies, homelessness, pollution, and congestion that has caused many tax-paying residents and companies to exodus California to more affordable cities and states.
California’s net move-out number of residents in 2022 alone was more than 343,000 people that left California — the highest exodus of any state in the U.S.
The California Policy Institute counted more than 237 businesses that have left the state since 2005. Among these businesses were eleven Fortune 1000 companies, including AT&T, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently made a startling admission: U.S. electricity demand will double by 2050, and meeting that soaring demand will require the equivalent of building 300 Hoover Dams.
The last California Nuclear Power Plant at Diablo Canyon, a 2.2 GW plant generating continuous uninterruptable electricity, is projected to close soon. In nameplate only, it would take 1,000 2.2MW wind turbines to generate 2.2 GW, but then, it’s only intermittent electricity vs. the continuous uninterruptable electricity from Diablo demanded by the California economy!
As a result of the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies and renewables of wind and solar stations built at the expense of taxpayer dollars, California now imports more electric power than any other US state, more than twice the amount in Virginia, the USA’s second-largest importer of electric power. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Power prices are rocketing into the stratosphere and, even before winter drives up demand, are being deprived of continuous electricity in a way that was unthinkable barely a decade ago. But such is life when you attempt to run the economy on sunshine and breezes.
Further, these so-called “green” electricity sources of wind and solar are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They also endanger wildlife.
California’s economy depends on affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner electricity and fuels. Unfortunately, policymakers are driving up California’s electric and gas prices, and California now has the highest electricity and fuel prices in the nation. Those high energy prices are contributing to the pessimistic business sentiment. California’s emission mandates have done an excellent job of increasing the cost of electricity, products, and fuels to its citizens.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed “green” alternative methods of generating electricity won’t work — especially as electricity demand is projected to double by 2050 due to AI, charging of EVs and data centers, government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries. Intermittent electricity from wind and solar cannot power modern nations.
These “green” wind and solar projects primarily exist because they are financed with taxpayer money, i.e., disguised by taxpayers as “Government Subsidies.”
“GREEN” policymakers are oblivious to humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels from fossil fuels, as they are to these two basic facts:
(1) No one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil!
(2) “Renewables” like wind and solar only exist to generate intermittent electricity; they CANNOT make products or fuels!
To rid the world of crude oil usage, there is no need to over-regulate or over-tax the oil industry; just STOP using the products and fuels made from crude oil!
Simplistically:
STOP making cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, farming equipment, medical equipment and supplies, communications equipment, military equipment, etc., that demand crude oil for their supply chain of products.
STOPPING the demands of society for the products and fuels made from oil will eliminate the need for crude oil.
The primary growth in electric power usage is coming from new data centers housing AI technologies. It is expected that over the next few decades, 50% of additional electric power will be needed just for AI, but data centers CANNOT run on occasional electricity from wind and solar.
How will the occasionally generated electricity from wind and solar support the following:
America’s military fleet of vehicles, ships, and aircraft?
America’s commercial and private aircraft?
America’s hospitals?
America’s space exploration?
Despite Governor Newsom’s and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s support for the “Green New Deal” and “Net Zero” policies in California, it’s time to stimulate conversations about the generation of continuously generated electricity to meet the demands of America’s end users.
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Right, Rigzone and Rystad Energy, Oil and Gas Will Remain Dominant for the Foreseeable Future
A recent article at Rigzone, “Rystad: Oil, Gas Will Remain Central to Energy Mix for Foreseeable Future,” reports on comments made by Rystad Energy, a Norwegian energy research company, in a report it published claiming that despite the push for renewables, oil and gas will stay dominant as an energy source in the coming years. This is true, although Rystad goes on to lament the resulting emissions and tries to push further decarbonization. It is true that there has been little actual transition, despite what renewables hawks say.
Rigzone writes that “despite the accelerating energy transition, oil and gas will remain central to the global energy mix for the foreseeable future as the key hydrocarbon sources continue to satisfy global primary energy demand, Rystad Energy stated in a release . . ..”
Rystad predicts that more than 75 percent of total energy demand will be met by fossil fuels by 2030.
Rystad’s report says that as upstream energy companies “work to transform into integrated energy players and decarbonize their operations, it is crucial not only to achieve transition goals but also to minimize the carbon footprint of upstream activities, with extraction of these resources accounting for more than 800 million tonnes of CO2e every year.”
Going further, Rystad recommends recommend energy companies focus more intensely on “premium energy basins” to try to “decarbonize” operations.
It seems strange that Rystad would say it’s crucial to “achieve transition goals” – meaning the so-called energy transition away from the use of fossil fuels, which would not only “minimize” the carbon footprint of upstream operations, but aims to eliminate them altogether. They advocate in wishy-washy corporate terms for the annihilation of the industry that Rigzone purportedly represents.
In terms of energy supply, Rystad’s report predicts that even as wind and solar produce a larger percentage of energy by 2050, overall the global energy supply will drop rather than continue to rise. This forecast should alarm anyone concerned about continued economic growth, which tracks energy use. It is especially troubling when one considers the political push to electrify everything, from electric vehicles, to appliances, in addition to the projected demand for power from utilities to satisfy the growing demand electricity to power data centers and AI facilities.
Real-world electricity production data described by Our World in Data, provides little evidence of a transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Rather wind, biofuels, and solar are being added to the overall mix, with traditional sources of energy still growing, although at a slower rate than in past decades. Consumption of all energy sources has increased or remained constant since the 1980s.
Coal, despite being villainized in the West lately, may well also continue to see increasing demand in international markets. In 2022, a new record for coal consumption was hit, and it made up 37 percent of the world’s energy use in 2023. In 2022 India revised their energy use targets and increased their coal production and use. As discussed in a Climate Realism post, “Green Media Misrepresents World’s Energy Reality,” India, on its own, is set to consume more energy than all the countries that make up the European Union by 2030, and coal will be large part of that mix. Likewise China continues to buy up and use coal, and they also have been steadily increasing demand for oil.
Renewables would need to make an unbelievable, and likely technologically and materially impossible, jump in the coming years to catch up and displace fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal.
As Climate Realism has pointed out many times; here, here, and here, for example, forcing an energy transition will lead to misery and reduced or halted standards of living for people around the world.
It is not clear what Rigzone and Rystad mean by an “accelerating” energy transition, based on the facts above. If anything, it seems like the growth of coal and oil and gas are at worst keeping pace with gains made by renewables like wind and solar. Rigzone and Rystad are both correct, though, that for the foreseeable future oil and gas will continue to make up the vast majority of global energy production.
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Fiat Suspends Production of Electric Car for Month Due to Slump in EV Demand
Italian car maker Fiat has told the workforce on its electric 500 assembly line to down tools for a month due to lack of demand for the battery-powered city cars. The Mail has more.
Its parent company Stellantis said on Thursday it would suspend production of the fully electric Fiat 500e for four weeks due to sluggish demand.
The global slowdown in sales of electric vehicles, partly due to diverging policies on green incentives, has pushed car makers worldwide to adjust their EV plans, with Volvo earlier in the month abandoning its ambitions of becoming an electric-only auto maker in 2030.
“The measure is necessary due to the current lack of orders linked to the deep difficulties experienced in the European electric (car) market by all producers, particularly the European ones,” Stellantis said in a statement issued earlier in the week.
The 500 is made in Turin, the birthplace of the Fiat brand, at the historic Mirafiori plant.
The suspension of production will start on Friday, Stellantis said, adding it was “working hard to manage at its best this hard phase of transition”.
As part of these efforts, the Franco-Italian group said it is investing €100 million euros (£85 million) in the Mirafiori plant to adopt a higher performance battery.
Changes to the factory are also afoot due to the decision to produce a hybrid version of the 500 electric model, starting between 2025 and 2026 – another reactionary move to tackle a slowdown in EV demand.
When Fiat discussed the reasons behind the decision to reintroduce a petrol-hybrid powerplant – something it originally said it would not do with the intention of the new 500 being electric only – it pointed to older drivers in particular not wanting to buy battery-powered vehicles.
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The insane Net Zero revolution is starting to devour its own children
The latest technology to fall foul of the zealots passionate hatred of all things hydrocarbon is ‘carbon capture’, a process that consumes billions of dollars, often fails to meet expectations and, horror of horrors, justifies the continuing activities of oil and gas companies
Green Blob-funded Oil Change International (OCI) has released a report entitled ‘Funding Failure: Carbon capture and fossil hydrogen subsidies exposed’.
In an article circulated by Blob-funded Covering Climate Now and published by DeSmog (recently given £400,000 by the Rowntree Trust to continue running a grubby ‘blacklist’ of so-called ‘climate deniers’) ‘carbon’ capture is said to be a “colossal waste” with the United States leading the way in public spending on “false climate solutions”.
Perhaps not such good news for the Mad Miliband’s £8 billion GB Energy operation which will act as a state-run subsidy fund for numerous wacky green projects including ‘carbon’ capture and hydrogen.
The zealots are correct about ‘carbon’ capture and hydrogen. They both use vast amounts of energy to little effect. But there are few ‘green’ solutions in town to back up intermittent wind and solar power, so to date it is any port in a storm.
But capturing carbon dioxide from combusted material or the atmosphere and compressing it to store underground for eternity is crazy. The old saying, ‘fools and their money are easily parted’ springs to mind.
As an alternative to natural gas and a solution to electricity grid-scale storage, hydrogen – expensive, dangerous and lacking in kinetic energy – has almost nothing to offer.
Other major disadvantages of hydrogen have recently been discussed. The Daily Sceptic reported on a science paper that noted the higher combustion temperature of hydrogen can produce more ‘polluting’ nitrogen dioxide.
If runaway global ‘heating’ is your fear, the paper calculated that, pound for pound, escaping hydrogen causes 37 times more warming than CO2 since it produces ozone in the troposphere and water vapour in the stratosphere.
All the past observational evidence points to the conclusion that the warming properties of gases ‘saturate’ at certain atmospheric levels, but for alarmists it seems that backing hydrogen is an increasingly bad look.
If the figures presented by OCI are correct, the scale of the waste is truly colossal. Since the 1990s an estimated $83 billion has been “invested” in ‘carbon’ capture, but it has failed to make a dent in ‘carbon’ emissions. “Carbon capture projects consistently fail, overspend or underperform,” the report claims.
Over 80 percent of projects in the U.S. are said to fail due to technical issues, over-investment and a lack of financial returns. Even if the projects functioned as planned they would only capture 0.1 percent of emissions.
No doubt OCI is worried about taxpayer money being hosed away on useless projects, although ‘greens’ usually take a relaxed view of such matters. But the real hatred for capturing CO2 is that it is used to enhance oil and gas production.
The gas is sometimes pumped underground to extract the last barrels of oil from an exhausted field. ‘Carbon’ capture subsidies are said to enhance ‘fossil fuel’ extraction and boost oil industry profits.
The money wasted to date on ‘carbon’ capture and hydrogen is appalling, but it is a fraction of the amount of public money made available to spend in the near future. OCI claims that policies announced since 2020 could amount to over $230 billion.
One obvious take-away from the table is the ludicrous amounts of money committed by the United Kingdom, a legacy of Buffo Boris and recent ‘Net Zero’-obsessed Conservative governments.
For hapless British taxpayers, Mad Miliband is just the latest in a long line of politician removing cash from the wallets of working people and putting it in the hands of subsidy hunting, ‘planet-saving’ spivs where it is thought to most properly belong.
In the UK, as elsewhere, the ‘Net Zero’ madness has exploded as a political issue with citizens slowly realising what is being planned. None of this will come as a surprise to regular readers of the Daily Sceptic.
We have aimed to report on what the zealots have been writing and planning. Government-funded UK FIRES takes a realistic look at a future without hydrocarbons and envisages a 2050 world without meat, without personal travel and buildings made of compacted earth.
Britain could lose 75% of its energy supply by 2050 and the “whole excitement” of UK FIRES’s work has been to recognise that such a shortfall “is close to a certain reality”.
In other words, electrticity will become a thing of the past for all but the rich.
Meanwhile, the ‘green’ billionaire-funded C40 group, chaired by Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, raises the possibility of heavy reductions of personal transport and the imposition of Second World War-style rations with the populace being ‘allowed’ to have just 44 grams of meat a day.
This “pioneering piece of thought leadership” was said to seek a “radical, and rapid, shift in consumption patterns”.
Needless to say, none of this stuff gets a mention in mainstream media, but it is always a good idea to discover what the true zealot is actually planning. Few clues as to their plans are available while they are seeking political power, as we saw in the recent British General Election.
In the current U.S. Presidential campaign, Vice President Giggles is following a similar path, secure in the knowledge that carefully selected poodle journalists will not ask inconvenient questions.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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