Thursday, March 31, 2022


How Solar Power Hurts People And The Planet

False beliefs about renewable energy are harming the environment. I say this as someone who championed renewable energy for over two decades—first as executive director of a green building non-profit, then as CEO of a consulting firm specializing in clean energy, and most recently as founder of a cleantech startup. I thought my efforts were helping to protect the environment. But I was wrong.

Like many people, I believed the worst harm to the environment came from ‘fossil fuels’—and greedy companies exploiting the land, polluting the air, and destroying ecosystems to get them. It took me many years to realize that this viewpoint is distorted and to admit that many of my beliefs about renewable energy were false.

And now I’m ready to talk about what we really need to do to save the environment.

The Truth About Energy

The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions, and reduced reliance on ‘fossil fuels’. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes.

Looking At Life Cycles

To fully evaluate how solar and wind energy hurt people and the environment, we must consider the lifecycle of renewable energy systems. Every artifact has a lifecycle that includes manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Every stage in that lifecycle requires energy and materials, so we need to tally up the energy and materials used at every stage of the cycle to fully understand the environmental impact of an object.

Think of a car. To understand its full impact on the environment, we must consider more than simply how many miles it gets per gallon of gas. Gas consumption measures only the cost of operating the car, but it doesn’t measure all the energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the car. Tally up the costs at each stage of the car’s lifecycle to get a more complete picture of its environmental impact.

The same is true of solar panels. To fully understand the environmental impact of solar panels, we need to consider more than simply how much energy and emissions the panels produce during operation. We also need to tally up the expenditure of energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the panels.

Once we tally up those costs, we see that solar power leaves a larger ecological footprint than advocates like to admit.

The Environmental Costs Of Manufacturing And Installing Solar
Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.

Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.[1]Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38 percent of the world’s industrial energy and 11 percent of total energy currently go into mining operations.[2]

Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal.[4]

There are also environmental costs to installing the panels. Solar panels are primarily installed in two ways: in solar farms and on rooftops. Most U.S. solar farms are sited in the southwestern U.S. where sunshine is abundant. The now-canceled Mormon Mesa project, for instance, was proposed for a site about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It was slated to cover 14 square miles (the equivalent of 7,000 football fields) with upwards of a million solar panels, each 10-20 feet tall.

It would have involved bulldozing plants and wildlife habitat on a massive scale to replace them with concrete and steel. Environmentalists and local community groups opposed the project because it threatened views of the landscape and endangered species like the desert tortoise, and the proposed project was eventually withdrawn.[5]

Placing massive solar farms far from populated areas presents additional challenges as their remote locations require new power lines to carry energy to people who use it. Environmentalists and local community groups often fiercely oppose the construction of ugly power lines, which also have to get approval from multiple regulatory agencies. Those factors make it almost impossible to build new transmission lines in the U.S.[6] If approval is granted, installing those lines takes a further toll on the environment.

In addition, the farther the electricity has to travel, the more energy is lost as heat in the transmission process. The cost-effective limit for electricity transmission is roughly 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers.) So you can’t power New York or Chicago from solar energy farms in Arizona.

Limitations To Rooftop Solar

Rooftop solar installations could sidestep some of the problems of solar farms, but they have problems of their own.

First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.

Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.

Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39 percent of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.[8]

Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas[10] and nuclear plants[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.[13]

More here:

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Incon­veni­ent truths about energy

The energy trans­ition is not hap­pen­ing. Or not nearly at the pace that every­one believes or wishes. At cur­rent rates, the “trans­ition” is set to fin­ish in the mid-2600s.

The Kyoto Pro­tocol launched the energy trans­ition drive in 1992. Global energy con­sump­tion from hydro­car­bons has grown massively since then, with mar­ket share only declin­ing by 4 per­cent­age points over the past 30 years from 87% in 1992 to 83% today.

I am not cel­eb­rat­ing this fact as I have spent years work­ing on energy trans­ition tech­no­lo­gies.

The energy trans­ition isn’t fail­ing for lack of earn­est effort. It is fail­ing because energy is hard, and 3 bil­lion people liv­ing in energy poverty are des­per­ate for reli­able and scal­able energy sources. Mean­while, 1 bil­lion energy-rich people are res­ist­ant to dimin­ish­ing their stand­ard of liv­ing with higher cost and an increas­ingly unre­li­able energy diet.

There is no “cli­mate crisis,” either. If there is a term more at odds with the painstak­ing work of the Inter­gov­ern­mental Panel on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) than “cli­mate crisis,” I have not heard it.

Cli­mate change is a real global chal­lenge that is extens­ively stud­ied. Unfor­tu­nately, the facts and rational dia­logue about the myriad tradeoffs aren’t reach­ing poli­cy­makers, the media or act­iv­ist groups. Or are they are simply ignor­ing these incon­veni­ent truths?

For example, we hear end­lessly about the rise in fre­quency and intens­ity of extreme weather. This nar­rat­ive is highly effect­ive at scar­ing people and driv­ing polit­ical action. It is also false. The real­ity is detailed in count­less pub­lic­a­tions and sum­mar­ized in the IPCC reports.

Deaths from extreme weather have plunged over the past cen­tury, reach­ing new all-time lows last year, an out­come to be cel­eb­rated. This is not because extreme weather has declined. In fact, extreme weather shows no mean­ing­ful trend at all. Deaths from extreme weather events have declined because highly ener­gized, wealth­ier soci­et­ies are much bet­ter pre­pared to sur­vive nature’s wrath.

Recog­niz­ing real­ity

You are not sup­posed to say out loud that there is no cli­mate crisis or that the energy trans­ition is pro­ceed­ing at a gla­cial pace. These are unfash­ion­able and, to many, offens­ive facts. But let’s be hon­est. Energy trans­ition ambi­tions must recog­nize real­ity. Oth­er­wise, poor invest­ment decisions and reg­u­lat­ory frame­works will lead to sur­ging global-energy and food prices. This is exactly what is hap­pen­ing.

We are here today in large part because energy trans­ition efforts that pre­vi­ously encom­passed solely aggress­ive sup­port of altern­at­ive energy policies, eco­nom­ics be damned, have recently sup­ple­men­ted this strategy with grow­ing efforts to obstruct fossil fuel devel­op­ment. Fossil fuels make the mod­ern world pos­sible.

The real crisis today is an energy crisis. It began to reveal itself last fall with a severe short­age in glob­ally traded Liquified Nat­ural Gas (LNG). The LNG crisis has not abated and it gives Rus­sia’s Vladi­mir Putin tre­mend­ous lever­age over Europe. Without Rus­sian gas, the lights in Europe go out. Amid war, pub­lic out­rage, and intense sanc­tions, Rus­sian gas flows to Europe remain unchanged. Rus­sian oil exports have con­tin­ued with min­imal inter­rup­tion. The world can talk tough about sanc­tion­ing Rus­sian energy exports, but those exports are vitally needed; hence they con­tinue. Energy secur­ity equals national secur­ity.

The world energy sys­tem, crit­ical to human well­being, requires mean­ing­ful spare capa­city to handle inev­it­able bumps in the road. In the elec­tri­city sec­tor, which rep­res­ents only 20% of global energy but 40% in wealthy coun­tries, this is called reserve capa­city. In the oil mar­ket, spare pro­duc­tion capa­city today is shrink­ing and con­cen­trated in OPEC nations like Saudi Ara­bia and the United Arab Emir­ates. Also, there is a massive global stor­age net­work in both sur­face tanks and under­ground cav­erns. In nat­ural gas mar­kets, there are both extens­ive under­ground stor­age reser­voirs and typ­ic­ally spare export capa­city through pipelines and large indus­trial LNG export and import facil­it­ies.

The past sev­eral years have seen this spare capa­city whittled away due partly to lower com­mod­ity prices and poor cor­por­ate returns shrink­ing the appet­ite to invest. Excess capa­city has also shrunk due to reg­u­lat­ory block­age of crit­ical energy infra­struc­ture like pipelines and export ter­min­als. Road­b­locks for well per­mit­ting and leas­ing on fed­eral lands, together with a mass pub­lic mise­du­ca­tion cam­paign on energy and cli­mate alarmism, are also sty­mie­ing hydro­car­bon devel­op­ment. Invest­ment cap­ital is fur­ther con­strained by a cor­por­ate Envir­on­ment, Social and Gov­ernance (ESG) move­ment, and divest­ment cam­paigns. These factors are shrink­ing hydro­car­bon invest­ment below what it oth­er­wise would be in response to price sig­nals and out­look for sup­ply and demand. The net res­ult is a con­strained sup­ply of oil, nat­ural gas, and coal, which means higher prices and greater risk of mar­ket dis­lo­ca­tions like the one unfold­ing today.

High energy and food price infla­tion is the cruelest form of tax on the poor. After a few spe­cific examples, I’ll return to what we should do now to reverse these dam­aging and deeply inequit­able trends.

In denial about demand

Why does the world today suf­fer from a severe short­age of LNG? Demand for nat­ural gas has been grow­ing strongly for dec­ades. It provides a much cleaner sub­sti­tute for coal in elec­tri­city pro­duc­tion, home heat­ing, and a myriad of indus­trial and pet­ro­chem­ical uses. Rising dis­place­ment of coal by nat­ural gas has been the largest source of GHG emis­sion reduc­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, the afore­men­tioned factors have pre­ven­ted sup­ply from keep­ing pace with rising demand. Energy short­ages drive rapid prices rises and have cas­cad­ing impacts on everything else. Energy is found­a­tional to everything humans do. Everything.

Per­haps the most crit­ical use of nat­ural gas is nitro­gen fer­til­izer pro­duc­tion. Roughly a cen­tury ago, two Ger­man chem­ists, both sub­sequently awar­ded Nobel Prizes, developed a pro­cess to pro­duce nitro­gen fer­til­izer on an indus­trial scale. Before the Haber-Bosch pro­cess innov­a­tion, nitro­gen con­tent in soil was a major con­straint on crop pro­ductiv­ity. Exist­ing nitro­gen sources from bird guano, manure, and rotat­ing cul­tiv­a­tion of pea crops were lim­ited. Today, elim­in­a­tion of nat­ural gas-syn­thes­ized nitro­gen fer­til­izer would cut global food pro­duc­tion in half.

The now 6-months-long LNG crisis trans­lates into a world­wide food crisis as skyrock­et­ing fer­til­izer prices are cas­cad­ing into much higher food prices. Wheat prices are already at a record high and will likely head higher as spring plant­ings suf­fer from under fer­til­iz­a­tion.

Global LNG mar­kets are tight because rising demand has out­run the growth in LNG export capa­city in the United States, now the largest LNG exporter. We have an abund­ance of nat­ural gas in the United States. Unfor­tu­nately, we have a short­age of pipelines to trans­port this gas and LNG export ter­min­als, pre­vent­ing us from reliev­ing the energy crisis in Europe and around the world. These pipeline and export ter­minal short­ages are due in large part to reg­u­lat­ory block­age.

The res­ult is that nat­ural gas prices in the United States and Canada are five to ten times lower than in Asia and Europe. This deeply dis­ad­vant­ages con­sumers and factor­ies (like fer­til­izer factor­ies) in Europe and Asia that rely on LNG imports to ful­fill their needs.

Failed energy policies

Rus­sia’s inva­sion of Ukraine did not cause today’s energy crisis. Quite the reverse. Today’s energy crisis is likely an import­ant factor in why Rus­sia chose to invade Ukraine now. Europe’s energy situ­ation is both tenu­ous and highly depend­ent on Rus­sian imports. Rus­sia is the second-largest oil and nat­ural gas pro­du­cer after the United States. Rus­sia is the largest exporter of nat­ural gas, sup­ply­ing over 40% of Europe’s total demand. Addi­tion­ally, Rus­sia is the largest source of impor­ted oil and coal to Europe. Europe put itself in this unen­vi­able pos­i­tion by pur­su­ing unreal­istic, polit­ic­ally-driven policies attempt­ing to rap­idly trans­ition its energy sources to com­bat cli­mate change. Europe’s energy pivot has been a massive fail­ure on all fronts: higher energy costs, grave energy insec­ur­ity, and neg­li­gible cli­mate impacts.

Ger­many is the poster child of this fail­ure. In 2000, Ger­many set out to decar­bon­ize its energy sys­tem, spend­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars on this effort over the past 20 years. Ger­many only mar­gin­ally reduced its depend­ence on hydro­car­bons from 84% in 2000 to 78% today.

The United States matched this 6% decline in hydro­car­bon mar­ket share from 86% in 2000 to 80% today. Unlike in the U.S., Ger­many more than doubled its elec­tri­city prices — before the recent massive addi­tional price increases — by cre­at­ing a second elec­tric grid. This second grid is com­prised of massive wind and solar elec­tric gen­er­at­ing sources that only deliver 20% of name­plate capa­city on aver­age, and often less than 5% for days at a time.

The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Hence, Ger­many could only shrink leg­acy coal, gas and nuc­lear capa­city by 15%. It now must pay to main­tain both grids. The leg­acy grid must always be flex­ing up and down in a wildly inef­fi­cient man­ner to keep the lights on, hos­pit­als func­tion­ing, homes heated, and factor­ies powered.

Out­side of the elec­tri­city sec­tor, Ger­many’s energy sys­tem is largely unchanged. It has long had high taxes on gas­ol­ine and diesel for trans­port­a­tion, and lower energy taxes on industry. Ger­many sub­sid­izes indus­trial energy prices attempt­ing to avoid the near-com­plete dein­dus­tri­al­iz­a­tion that the U.K. has suffered due to expens­ive energy policies across the board.

Over the past 20 years, the United States has seen two shale revolu­tions, first in nat­ural gas and then in oil. The net res­ult has been the U.S. pro­du­cing greater total energy than con­sumed in 2019 and 2020 for the first time since the 1950s.

The U.S. went from the largest importer of nat­ural gas to the second-largest exporter in less than fif­teen years, all with private cap­ital and innov­a­tion. The shale revolu­tion lowered domestic and global energy prices due to sur­ging growth in U.S. pro­duc­tion.

Sur­ging U.S. pro­pane exports are redu­cing the cost and rais­ing the avail­ab­il­ity of clean cook­ing and heat­ing fuels for those in dire energy poverty still burn­ing wood, dung, and agri­cul­tural waste to cook their daily meals. U.S. GHG emis­sions also plunged to the low­est level on a per cap­ita basis since 1960.

We are start­ing to ham­string and squander the enorm­ous bene­fits of the shale revolu­tion. The same mis­in­formed anti-hydro­car­bon cru­sade that impov­er­ished Europe and made it heav­ily depend­ent on Rus­sia is now sweep­ing the U.S. Cali­for­nia and New Eng­land had already adop­ted European-style energy policies driv­ing up elec­tri­city prices, redu­cing grid reli­ab­il­ity, and driv­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing and other energy-intens­ive, blue-col­lar jobs out of their states. Col­or­ado is not far behind.

Cali­for­nia, a state with a plentitude of bless­ings, man­aged to cre­ate the highest adjus­ted poverty rate in the nation with an expens­ive, unstable power grid increas­ingly reli­ant on coal-powered elec­tri­city imports from Nevada and Utah.

New Eng­land’s prox­im­ity to Pennsylvania’s clean low-cost nat­ural gas resources was a stroke of luck. But it refused to expand the nat­ural gas pipelines run­ning from Pennsylvania, leav­ing it chron­ic­ally short of nat­ural gas, its largest source of elec­tri­city and clean­est option for home heat­ing.

Instead, it remains heav­ily reli­ant on fuel oil for home heat­ing and occa­sion­ally imports LNG from Rus­sia to keep the lights on. Last winter New Eng­land burned copi­ous amounts of fuel oil to pro­duce elec­tri­city which went out of fash­ion in the 1970s else­where in the U.S.

Texas has not been immune from energy illit­er­acy and col­lat­eral dam­age. Texas’ poorly designed elec­tric grid, struc­tured to encour­age invest­ment in renew­ables, led to hun­dreds dying last year in the Uri cold spell. No one would pay the same price for an Uber that showed up whenever con­veni­ent for the driver and dropped you off wherever they desired.

But that is what Texas does with elec­tri­city: pay­ing the same price for reli­able elec­tri­city that bal­ances the grid as they do for unre­li­able, unpre­dict­able elec­tri­city. No won­der the reli­ab­il­ity of the Texas grid has declined and is headed for more trouble.

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The People Promising Us "Net Zero" Have No Clue About The Energy Storage Problem

If you are even a semi-regular reader of this blog, you know about the energy storage problem that is inherent in the effort to eliminate dispatchable fossil fuels from the electricity generation system and replace them with wind and solar. As discussed here many times, other than with nuclear power, the storage problem is the critical issue that must be addressed if there is ever going to be “net zero” electricity generation, let alone a “net zero” economy based on all energy usage having been electrified. For a sample of my prior posts on this subject just in the last few months, go here, here and here.

The problems of trying to provide enough storage to back up a fully wind and solar system without fossil fuels are so huge and so costly that you would think that everyone pushing the “net zero” agenda would be completely focused on these issues. And given that the issues are quite obvious, you would think that such people would be well down the curve with feasibility studies, cost studies, and demonstration projects to make their case on how their plans could be accomplished. Remarkably, that is not the case at all. Instead, if you read about the plans and proposals in various quarters for “net zero” in some short period of years, you quickly realize that the people pushing this agenda have no clue. No clue whatsoever.

Today, I am going to look at discussions of the storage situation coming out of three jurisdictions with ambitious “net zero” plans: California, Australia and New York. First a very brief summary of the problem. It is (or certainly should be) obvious that wind and solar generators have substantial periods when they generate nothing (e.g., calm nights), and other times when they generate far less than users demand. Get out a spreadsheet to do some calculations based on actual historical patterns of usage and generation from wind and solar sources, and you will find that to have a fully wind/solar generation system and make it through a year without a catastrophic failure, you will need approximately a three-times overbuild (based on rated capacity) of the wind/solar system, plus storage for something in the range of 24 - 30 days of average usage. For these purposes “usage” at any given moment is measured in gigawatts, but usage for some period of time is measured in gigawatt hours, not gigawatts. California’s average electricity usage for 2020 was about 31 GW; Australia’s was about 26 GW ; and New York’s was about 18 GW.

To calculate how much storage you need in gigawatt hours, multiply average usage in GW by 30 days and 24 hours per day. So California will need about 22,302 GWH of storage, Australia about 18,720 GWH, and New York about 12,960 GWH. That is to supply current levels of demand. For the “everything electrified” case, triple all of these numbers: 66,906 GWH for California, 56,160 GWH for Australia, and 38,880 GWH for New York. Price that out at current costs of Tesla-type lithium-ion batters (~$150/KWH) and you will get around $10 trillion for California, $8.4 trillion for Australia, and $5.8 trillion for New York. These figures are in the range of triple total annual GDP for each of these jurisdictions, before you even get to the cost of the three-times overbuild of the generations system to account for charging of the batteries when the sun is shining and wind blowing. Nor can Tesla-style batteries hold charge for months on end as would be necessary for this system, but at this point, that seems like a minor quibble.

With that, let’s consider some recent discussion of the march toward “net zero” in each of these jurisdictions:

California. On March 14, PV Magazine (I think that stands for “Photo Voltaic”) had a piece by Christian Roselund with the title “California’s solar market is now a battery market.” The gist is that California’s solar developers have now caught on to the need to pair batteries with their projects, and that therefore new projects going forward are as much battery projects as solar panel projects. Here’s a sample of the cheerleading:

No US state has led the energy transition like California has. . . . As a result California has been a pioneer for a range of clean energy technologies. . . . California is on the cusp of no longer being a solar market where batteries are being added – instead, it is becoming a battery market that (sometimes) includes solar.

So how much battery capacity is being added by the new projects?:

According to the American Clean Power Association, California had only 256MW of utility-scale batteries before 2020, but had reached 2.1GW by the end of 2021 – an eightfold increase. . . . The 256 solar-plus-storage projects representing 72GW of solar and 64GW of batteries make up the vast majority of hybrid projects in the CAISO queue. . . . California will need all the energy storage it can get its hands on; a recent analysis suggests that the state needs 37GW of batteries over the next 20 years, as well as 53.2GW of utility-scale solar.

It’s all GW, GW, GW. But guys, how about the amount of GWH that California will need? You will not find any mention of that unit in this piece. Sorry, but if those 64 GW of batteries you are planning to buy only store energy for one hour, then you will need to multiply your purchase by about a factor of a thousand. If they store energy for about four hours (typical of what you might be able to buy today), then multiply your purchase by a factor of 250.

Could they really be so far off from the actual problem? I’m afraid that the answer is yes.

Australia. Over in Australia, it appears that they have people who have figured out that they need to measure the storage requirements for wind/solar backup in GWH rather than GW. Here is a piece from March 25 from Energy Storage News, headline “Australia surpassed 1GWh of annual battery storage deployments during 2021.” That’s huge progress. But one GWH?

Read the article, and again it’s all cheerleading for the great progress being made:

[F]or Victoria it was a record-breaking year, while NSW has already recorded strong installation volumes and its tally of 7,377 installations was in line with figures in recent years. . . . Victoria hosts a 48% share of the commercial and grid-scale operating capacity today, with South Australia the next biggest at 24%, Queensland on 14% and NSW on 9%. Last year, the Victorian Big Battery came online, which at 300MW/450MWh made a big contribution to the state’s total.

And how much is in the pipeline?:

There is around 1,000MWh of grid-scale energy storage currently under construction, but the development pipeline of projects is a massive 57GWh.

“A massive” 57 GWH. Really? Has anyone told them that they are going to need more like 56,160 GWH to fulfill their “net zero” fantasies? Like California, they are off by about a factor of 1000. Here is a picture from the article of what a Tesla-type battery installation for a mere 150 MWH looks like. That’s well less than 1/6 of one GWH.

Looks like they’re going to need 400,000 +/- of these installations. And by the way, these Tesla-style batteries have no ability to store energy without loss for months on end. Good luck trying to find anyone addressing these issues.

New York. In crazy New York, we have a statute passed in 2019 that requires state-wide greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to 60% of 1990 levels by 2030. Since electricity is less than 1/3 of final energy consumption, this would necessarily mean that all fossil fuel electricity generation will be gone in 8 years.

How to do that? A collection of panels and advisory bodies have been putting out reams of reports, thousands of pages in the aggregate. Nobody could possibly keep up. On the other hand, it is obvious that essentially no batteries are yet under construction.

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A globetrotting carpenter and Sussex University professor are among 117 Insulate Britain activists charged over road-blocking protests between September and November last year

Charges have been issued by the Metropolitan Police, Kent Police and Essex Police in recent weeks.

They include 146 charges of causing a public nuisance, 137 of wilful obstruction of the highway, and 10 of criminal damage.

Among those charged are Cameron Ford, 31, a carpenter from Cambridge, who appeared at several protests despite going on globetrotting trips abroad on two occasions.

He went on a 10,000 mile four month trip across the Atlantic and around Canada - then just months later on a 2,000 mile plus jaunt across much of Europe in an old diesel van.

Also charged is Nick Till, 66, a Sussex University professor from London.

Insulate Britain said it is 'likely these numbers will rise as we understand that further charges are still being issued'.

At least 25 plea hearings are scheduled to take place at magistrates' courts in Crawley, Chelmsford and Stratford in April and May.

Some 174 people were arrested a total of 857 times during the protests.

Insulate Britain said some who repeatedly returned to the roads were arrested '10-15 times during 18 days of roadblocks'.

How Insulate Britain made a mockery of the law over two months
September 13 - 78 Insulate Britain protesters arrested after blocking junctions 3, 6, 14, 20 and 31 of the M25

September 15 - More than 50 protesters arrested after targeting junctions 1, 8, 9 and 23 of the M25

September 17 - 48 protesters arrested after targeting junctions 3, 9 and 28 of the M25, as well as the M3

September 20 - 29 protesters are arrested after blocking the M25 at junctions 4 and 18, as well as the A1

September 21 - Protesters risk death by running into moving traffic to block the carriageway near Junction 10. Some 38 arrests are made. National Highways obtains an injunction against further protests on the M25

September 22 - Protesters burn copies of the injunction outside the Home Office, blocking the road outside the ministry. No arrests are made

September 24 - 39 protesters arrested after blocking roads at three locations in Dover. They are all released under investigation. National Highways obtains a second injunction covering Dover.

September 27 - 53 protesters are arrested for blocking a slip road at Junction 14 of the M25. They are all released under investigation.

September 28 - National Highways says it is taking 'legal advice' over how to enforce its injunction

September 29 - 27 protesters are arrested for blocking a roundabout at Junction 3 of the M25 on two occasions

September 30 - Protesters return to junction 30 at Thurrock in Essex, and nine are arrested

October 1: The group block the M4 at junction 3, the M1 at junction 1 and M25 at junction 25. Some 39 arrests

October 2: Third injunction bans them from obstructing traffic and access to motorways and major A roads in and around London

October 4: 38 arrests after protesters block three major roads in London - the Blackwall Tunnel, Wandsworth Bridge and A40 and North Circular at Hanger Lane.

October 8: 19 arrested over protest at Old Street roundabout and a further 16 on the M25 at junction 24. Transport for London gets a High Court injunction to ban them from obstructing traffic in 14 locations in London.

October 13: Protesters return to the M25 at junction 31 and a nearby industrial estate, with 35 people arrested.

October 25: Activists target areas around Southwark Bridge, Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street station. Some 53 are arrested.

October 27: Protesters blockade the A40 in North Acton, West London, and a major roundabout next to the Dartford Crossing in Kent. Kent Police arrested 32 protesters, while the Metropolitan Police detained 17.

October 29: 10 activists are arrested after walking onto the M25 between junctions 28 and 29 in Essex

November 2: Police arrest 20 activists before they can even get onto the M25 at junction 23 for South Mimms, but other actions take place on the M56 in Manchester, with 11 arrests, and the A4400 in Birmingham

November 4: Some 62 protesters sit down at Parliament Square in Westminster

November 17: Nine of the protesters are jailed at the High Court for between three and six months

Prior to the wave of charges, activists had only faced civil action. Fourteen were jailed for breaking injunctions banning protests on the M25.

Insulate Britain said public nuisance prosecutions can result in a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine.

Cameron Ford, 31, a carpenter from Cambridge who is summoned to appear at Crawley Magistrates' Court on April 4, said: 'The CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) undertaking these mass prosecutions is an attempt by our Government to ignore and avoid addressing the biggest dangers facing people right now.

'By not insulating Britain's leaky homes they are knowingly condemning millions more families to live in fuel poverty and thousands and thousands of our elderly to die in frozen homes next winter.'

Nick Till, 66, a university professor from London who is due to appear at the same court on April 6, said: 'As an academic, my duty is to find and tell the truth, and civil disobedience is now the only way of getting the truth out there.

'I do not regret my actions. Even though I regret the inconvenience caused to many of my fellow citizens by my actions, it is nothing compared to what is coming down the line for those same people and their loved ones if we fail to do anything.'

Insulate Britain began a wave of demonstrations last September which included blocking the M25 and other roads in London, including around Parliament, as well as roads in Birmingham, Manchester and Dover in Kent.

A series of High Court injunctions against its road blockades were granted to National Highways and Transport for London to prevent their disruptive protests.

Those who breach them could now be found in contempt of court and face a maximum penalty of two years in prison or an unlimited fine as well as seizure of assets.

The offshoot from the Extinction Rebellion is calling on the UK Government to implement policy and funding for a national home insulation programme starting with all social housing.

The group wants the UK government to promise to fully fund and take responsibility for the insulation of all social housing in Britain by 2025.

It is demanding 'a legally binding national plan to fully fund and take responsibility for the full low energy and low carbon whole-house retrofit, with no externalised costs, of all homes in Britain by 2030 as part of a just transition to full decarbonisation of all parts of society and the economy'.

It comes as Insulate Britain, and a number of other protest groups, threatened to conduct raves around the M25 last month - before postponing the planned chaos until April 2.

There are four demos planned at unknown locations, which are set to take aim at the cost of living crisis as well as the country's reliance on fossil fuel energy.

One party named 'Staying Alive on the M25' has been organised by campaigner Gabriella Ditton, 27, from Norwich, with more than 500 already signed up to attend.

Ms Ditton already received a suspended sentence in February after blocking part of the M25 in a protest.

Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis said last month: 'Yet again, a minority of the crusty Wokerati are willing to endanger others. 'These middle class hippies are hell-bent on imposing green extremist ideals on people regardless of how hard-up that will make working people.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10667177/117-Insulate-Britain-activists-charged-M25-chaos.html \

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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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Wednesday, March 30, 2022


Madness of our worship of wind: They despoil our glorious countryside, add £6 billion a year to our household bills and are arguably the most inefficient solution to our energy crisis

Take a wild guess at how much of the UK’s total primary demand for energy was supplied by wind power in 2020.

Half? 30 per cent? No, in fact, it was less than 4 per cent.

That’s right, all those vast wind farms in the North Sea, or disfiguring the hills of Wales and Scotland, give us little more than one-thirtieth of the energy we need to light and heat our homes, power our businesses or move our cars and trains.

Just think what this country and its seas would look like if we relied on wind for one-third or half of our energy needs.

Last week, Government ministers were considering lowering people’s energy bills if they live close to onshore wind turbines.

They’re also considering relaxing the rules so that onshore wind farms no longer need the backing of local communities and councils in order to get planning permission.

This will give wind farms an easier ride through the planning process than new housing — or shale gas drilling sites.

More importantly, it means further privileging an industry that has cost a fortune, wrecked green and pleasant landscapes and made us dependent on the weather for our energy needs — and thus more wedded to natural gas as a back-up.

The wind industry has already been fattened on subsidies of more than £6billion a year (paid for out of green levies on your electricity bills), it has privileged access to the grid and is paid extra compensation when the wind blows too strongly and the grid cannot cope with the energy output.

Indeed, the way wind power has managed to get politicians and others to think it is uniquely virtuous will deserve close study by future theologians.

Its symbols, akin to a post-modern Easter crucifix, now adorn almost any document that purports to be about British energy needs, signalling ‘goodness’.

Tousle-headed eco-protesters go weak at the knees when they see an industrial wind farm on wild land, while angry anti-capitalists won’t hear a word against the financial firms that back wind companies, somehow convincing themselves that this is all about re-empowering the common man.

When faced with a looming energy crisis, it’s obvious that the Government needs to act fast to secure energy selfsufficiency.

But what is so special about wind?

Why, to the exclusion of all else — in particular, fracking and nuclear energy — has arguably the most inefficient solution been privileged?

I was once a fan of wind power, because it seemed to be free. But it’s not. It takes a lot of expensive machinery to extract useful power from the wind. And once turbines are up and running, they’re not reliable.

Because you cannot store electricity for any length of time without huge cost, wind farms need backing up by fossil-fuel power stations.

This makes wind even more expensive.

As I write this article in still, fine spring weather, millions of tonnes of turbines stand largely idle, generating just 3 per cent of our electricity.

Coal contributes 5 per cent.

As a source of energy, wind is so weak that to generate any meaningful electricity output you need three 20-tonne carbon-fibre blades — each nearly the length of a football pitch — turning a 300-tonne generator atop a gigantic steel tower set in reinforced concrete.

Hundreds of these monsters are required to produce as much electricity as one small gas-powered plant. In terms of land covered, wind takes 700 times as much space to generate the same energy that one low-rise shale gas pad can.

It is not as if wind turbines are good for the environment. They kill thousands of birds and bats every year, often rare eagles on land and soaring gannets at sea.

If you were even to disturb a bat when adding a conservatory, you could end up in jail.

The wind turbines are also near impossible to recycle, with the rare earth metals such as neodymium that are vital for the magnets inside most of their generators coming from polluted mines in China.

Wind turbines are often built on hills to catch the breeze, meaning they inevitably intrude into natural beauty.

My favourite Northumbrian view, of Bamburgh Castle and Cheviot from the Farne Islands, is now visually polluted by a giant wind farm.

But for those who live closer to them, life can be intolerable.

The unresolved problem of wind turbine noise can make sleep difficult.

On sunny days, the shadows of the blades create an unnerving flicker as they pass your windows.

Being next to a wind farm won’t enhance your house’s value — and I doubt any reduction in your energy bill would help.

Nor is it clear that wind farms reduce emissions significantly.

If the meagre 4 per cent of our energy that came from wind in 2020 had entirely displaced coal, we would have seen at least a modest cut in our emissions.

But there are three reasons why that is not what happens.

First, we need other power stations to back up the wind farms when the wind does not blow, and these plants — mostly burning gas — are inevitably less efficient when being ramped up and down to support wind’s erratic output.

The wind industry promises that the more wind farms we build, the more likely we are to find there will always be a breeze somewhere.

But experience shows the opposite. Last week, for instance, was virtually still everywhere; the week before was windy everywhere.

A recent study published in the International Journal for Nuclear Power, looking at Germany and 17 neighbouring countries, confirmed this erratic output.

Its author, physicist Thomas Linnemann, wrote: ‘Wind power from a European perspective always will require practically 100 per cent back-up systems.’

Second, wind turbines themselves are built and maintained using fossil fuels.

Analysis of audited accounts suggests that many wind farms will not work for much more than 15 years before the cost of maintaining the machine eats into income and it has to be scrapped and replaced.

The capital refreshment cycle for these machines is very short. A gas turbine on the other hand can easily last 30 or 40 years.

Third, the one source of energy whose economic rationale has been most damaged by wind power is zero-carbon nuclear.

Nuclear plants all over the world are closing down early, or being cancelled, because they cannot pay their way in a world where bursts of almost valueless wind energy keep being dumped into the grid.

Nuclear plants cannot ‘fill a gap’ when the wind drops — they’re efficient only when generating constantly.

A wind-powered grid can be backed up with gas, or a nuclear grid topped up with gas, but a grid powered by wind and nuclear will not work.

Wind’s champions insist its costs are coming down and that its electricity is now cheaper than from gas or even coal.

But there is a great deal of data, all pointing to industry costs (per megawatthour) not falling but rising, as economics Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University has found.

Building and maintaining wind farms is about to get even more costly because of the rocketing costs of fuel and raw materials.

As for the competition, gas is currently very expensive in Britain, but it used to be cheap and it could be once more — particularly if we open up the North Sea and get fracking.

Then there’s the cost of ‘constraint payments’, which means extra compensation paid (by you, the electricity consumer) to wind farms when the grid cannot cope with their output.

Some wind farms in Scotland have been paid to throw away large fractions of their energy.

Since the introduction of the payments in 2010, the cost to consumers has topped a staggering £1.1bn.

That’s before you consider the subsidies, which data shows have been rising for offshore wind for two decades.

When the wind industry boasts of being cheap and you challenge them to forgo subsidies, they mutter and look down at their feet.

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India to Start Building 10 Nuclear Power Plants in ‘Fleet Mode’ from Next Year

With the first pour of concrete for a 700 MW atomic power plant in Karnataka’s Kaiga scheduled in 2023, India is set to put in motion construction activities for 10 ’fleet mode’ nuclear reactors over the next three years. The first pour of concrete (FPC) signals the beginning of construction of nuclear power reactors from the pre-project stage which includes excavation activities at the project site.

The FPC of Kaiga units 5&6 is expected in 2023; FPC of Gorakhpur Haryana Anu Vidyut Praiyonjan units 3 & 4 and Mahi Banswara Rajasthan Atomic Power Projects units 1 to 4 is expected in 2024; and that of Chutka Madhya Pradesh Atomic Power Project units 1 & 2 in 2025, officials of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) told the Parliamentary panel on science and technology. The Centre had approved construction of 10 indigenously developed pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) of 700 MW each in June 2017. The ten PHWRs will be built at a cost of Rs 1.05 lakh crore.

It was for the first time that the government had approved building 10 nuclear power reactors in one go with an aim to reduce costs and speed up construction time. Bulk procurement was underway for the fleet mode projects with purchase orders placed for forgings for steam generators, SS 304L lattice tubes and plates for end shields, pressuriser forgings, bleed condensers forgings, incoloy-800 tubes for 40 steam generators, reactor headers, DAE officials said. Engineering, procurement and construction package for turbine island has been awarded for Gorakhpur units three and four and Kaiga units five and six, they added.

Under the fleet mode, a nuclear power plant is expected to be built over a period of five years from the first pour of concrete. Currently, India operates 22 reactors with a total capacity of 6780 MW in operation. One 700 MW reactor at Kakrapar in Gujarat was connected to the grid on January 10 last year, but it is yet to start commercial operations.

The PHWRs, which use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as moderator, have emerged as the mainstay of India’s nuclear power programme. India’s first pair of PHWRs of 220 MW each were set up at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan in the 1960s with Canadian support. The second reactor had to be built with significant domestic components as Canada withdrew support following India’s peaceful nuclear tests in 1974.

As many as 14 PHWRS of 220 MW each with standardised design and improved safety measures were built by India over the years. Indian engineers further improvised the design to increase the power generation capacity to 540 MWe, and two such reactors were made operational at Tarapur in Maharashtra. Further optimisations were carried out to upgrade the capacity to 700 MWe.

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Experienced Engineers must take the lead in the Energy Transition

Guus Berkhout

In recent centuries, faith and superstition have been replaced by rational thinking (“Enlightenment”). For instance, it gradually became clear that extreme weather is not the hand of mysterious gods but is determined by a complex interplay of natural forces.

Another example shows that, step by step, primitive medicine men became the qualified doctors of today. The worldview of the enlightened thinkers brought us great technological developments in all sectors of society. As a result, the quality of life improved by great strides.

Central to that revolution was the concept that measurements are the source of new knowledge. Engineers played an indispensable role in inventing, designing and making the measuring equipment that is required for making new discoveries. That role has become even more important in today’s highly technological society, where natural and anthropogenic systems interact in a complex way.

Today’s technical universities have a great responsibility to educate the new generation of engineers. Without them, there will be no sustainable future.

Collection and analysis of measurements allow us to determine and visualize properties of complex systems. In practice, this needs to be often done without yet knowing much of the internal mechanisms of the system.

Fortunately, empirical knowledge about system properties – in time and space – is often sufficient to make important decisions about how to deal with system changes. This is particularly important when decisions are urgent, and policymakers do not have time to wait until reliable theoretical knowledge becomes available.

In other words, in practice we often cannot wait for scientific explanations (via theoretical models) before acting. In such a situation, it is wise to collect and analyze measurements rather than use theoretical models with large uncertainties. Think of the Earth’s climate, where it may take many more decades to better understand what is going on.

Today, the crucial question that technical universities must ask themselves is: “Is the low-carbon-society ideology really as blessing for nature and society as we are forced to believe daily? After all, CO2 is the building block of life on Earth, isn’t it? If we want to use more organic products, we need more CO2, right?” And as for ‘green’ energy, are solar and wind energy not unreliable? And is the combination of these energy sources with hydrogen storage not unaffordable? Aren’t these the typical matters for sound engineering judgment?

In recent decades, the believe of policymakers in theoretical models has increased dramatically. This is partly due to the impressive computing power of modern computers. In fact, the confidence in computer models has become so large that modeled measurements are increasingly replacing real measurements in government policy. In doing so, governments are creating their own little world. We therefore see that more and more policies are not based on reality, but on political dreams. Ideology-based models increasingly determine what must happen. The most well-known examples are climate policy, energy policy and covid-19 policy. With this irrational development, we are falling back into the pre-Enlightenment world of belief and superstition, now determined by what computer models tell us how to act.

Instead of universities being critical of this trend, they have gone along with it. This may certainly benefit them financially, but it has driven university research into political hobbyhorses. This is bad news for the quality of university education.

For example, at my ‘alma mater’, Delft University of Technology, not real measurements but the output of climate models are assumed to be the guideline. Based on these models, technology is developed with the idea of stopping the global ‘warming crisis’. Think of the belief that wind turbines, solar panels and biomass plants will meet the world’s energy needs in a sustainable way. My university has even awarded an honorary doctorate to European Unions’s (EU) vice-president Frans Timmermans, a champion of green superstition. Because reliable and affordable energy is the key to prosperity and well-being, that honorary doctorate is a historic university failure.

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The New Greenwashing – False Advertising about Green Energy Jobs

In the private sector, false advertising can get you into legal trouble. In the public sector, it’s often good politics.

Supporters of renewable energy want you to believe that green jobs at union wages are a benefit of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). For example, NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris recently boasted that for every job lost because of the green-energy transition, ten will be created. And Governor Hochul pledged last week to prioritize union labor in the green-energy transition, and the CLCPA mandates the application of New York’s prevailing wage law, which essentially requires union-standard wages and benefits be paid to workers on public construction projects, even when they far exceed market rates.

But Harris and Hochul are wrong — these jobs are a cost of the public policy, not a benefit. And expensive prevailing wage jobs only increase the cost.

How are they a cost?

Consider that the Climate Action Council claims that the CLCPA will cost up to $340 billion while providing benefits of at least $420 billion, for a net gain of at least $80 billion. The state’s numbers are probably wrong but set that aside for now. Instead, imagine that the cost was only one-tenth as much, just $34 billion. In that case, the net benefit would increase to $386 billion.

That would be a huge increase in the net value of the policy, but it would mean many fewer green jobs, because there would be less spending to hire people. Can anyone seriously deny the state would be better off if the net benefit of the policy was higher?

In other words, as a policy requires the public to pay for more jobs — or to pay more for those jobs — it becomes more costly to the paying public, not more beneficial.

Either state officials don’t understand this themselves or they hope you don’t. And admittedly, you’ve probably never been told that jobs are a cost. But it’s true.

But what about the jobs that will be lost in the industries negatively affected by the green-energy transition? That labor is freed up to perform other beneficial economic activity. And this always happens when an industry declines.

For example, almost half of the 100 largest industrial firms of the 20th century have disappeared, and yet with the exception of occasional recessions, employment rates have remained strong. Even more dramatically, two centuries ago, 90 percent of the U.S. population lived on farms. Today it’s only about one percent. The descendants of all those farmers are not unemployed today — instead they’re doing all the jobs that didn’t even exist a century ago.

The free market does a great job of creating all the jobs we need to replace those lost. For job creation, we rarely need any government policy except “get out of the way!” Governor Hochul has also pledged to make New York the most business-friendly state in the nation (it now ranks 48th). If she actually accomplished that, the market would take care of providing all the jobs people need.

Oh, yes, a public policy can create jobs in a specific economic sector, but that’s not the same as creating overall economic growth. Only entrepreneurs can do that.

Politicians promote industries that sound good, and which will reward them with votes, but they have no real skin in the game. If the businesses fail, or need to be propped up with taxpayer subsidies, there’s rarely any cost to the politicians who supported them. In fact, spending more taxpayer dollars on money-losing businesses can actually buy them more support. But entrepreneurs have to find opportunities that have real economic value, or they’ll lose their shirts.

This doesn’t mean the transition isn’t sometimes difficult for those who lose jobs in a declining industry (and public policy can help them out). It just means that if we could transition to a green energy future with fewer jobs, we’d have green energy and whatever other goods and services those other workers would be producing as entrepreneurs took advantage of having more available labor. We’d be producing more, and then we really would be better off.

There will, of course, be jobs associated with the transition to green energy. But for the broad public, that is part of the Climate Act’s cost, not its benefit. Government officials telling you differently is false advertising.

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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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Tuesday, March 29, 2022



Solar’s dirty secrets: How solar power hurts people and the planet

False beliefs about renewable energy are harming the environment. I say this as someone who championed renewable energy for over two decades—first as executive director of a green building non-profit, then as CEO of a consulting firm specializing in clean energy, and most recently as founder of a cleantech startup. I thought my efforts were helping to protect the environment. But I was wrong.

Like many people, I believed the worst harm to the environment came from fossil fuels—and greedy companies exploiting the land, polluting the air, and destroying ecosystems to get them. It took me many years to realize that this viewpoint is distorted and to admit that many of my beliefs about renewable energy were false. And now I’m ready to talk about what we really need to do to save the environment.

The Truth about Energy

The truth is this: every source of energy has costs and benefits that have to be carefully weighed. Wind and solar are no different. Most people are familiar with the benefits of wind and solar: reduced air pollution, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. But not as many recognize the costs of wind and solar or understand how those costs hurt both the environment and people—especially people with lower incomes.

Looking at Life Cycles

To fully evaluate how solar and wind energy hurt people and the environment, we must consider the lifecycle of renewable energy systems. Every artifact has a lifecycle that includes manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Every stage in that lifecycle requires energy and materials, so we need to tally up the energy and materials used at every stage of the cycle to fully understand the environmental impact of an object.

Think of a car. To understand its full impact on the environment, we must consider more than simply how many miles it gets per gallon of gas. Gas consumption measures only the cost of operating the car, but it doesn’t measure all the energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the car. Tally up the costs at each stage of the car’s lifecycle to get a more complete picture of its environmental impact.

The same is true of solar panels. To fully understand the environmental impact of solar panels, we need to consider more than simply how much energy and emissions the panels produce during operation. We also need to tally up the expenditure of energy and materials that go into manufacturing, transporting, installing, maintaining, and ultimately disposing of the panels. Once we tally up those costs, we see that solar power leaves a larger ecological footprint than advocates like to admit.

The Environmental Costs of Manufacturing and Installing Solar

Solar advocates often gloss over the solar-panel manufacturing process. They just say, “We turn sand, glass, and metal into solar panels.” This oversimplification masks the real environmental costs of the manufacturing process.

Solar panels are manufactured using minerals, toxic chemicals, and fossil fuels. In fact, solar panels require 10 times the minerals to deliver the same quantity of energy as a natural gas plant.[1]Quartz, copper, silver, zinc, aluminum, and other rare earth minerals are mined with heavy diesel-powered machinery. In fact, 38% of the world’s industrial energy and 11% of total energy currently go into mining operations.[2]

Once the materials are mined, the quartz and other materials get melted down in electric-arc furnaces at temperatures over 3,450°F (1,900°C) to make silicon—the key ingredient in solar cells. The furnaces take an enormous amount of energy to operate, and that energy typically comes from fossil fuels.[3] Nearly 80% of solar cells are manufactured in China, for instance, where weak environmental regulations prevail and lower production costs are fueled by coal.[4]

There are also environmental costs to installing the panels. Solar panels are primarily installed in two ways: in solar farms and on rooftops. Most U.S. solar farms are sited in the southwestern U.S. where sunshine is abundant. The now-canceled Mormon Mesa project, for instance, was proposed for a site about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It was slated to cover 14 square miles (the equivalent of 7,000 football fields) with upwards of a million solar panels, each 10-20 feet tall. It would have involved bulldozing plants and wildlife habitat on a massive scale to replace them with concrete and steel. Environmentalists and local community groups opposed the project because it threatened views of the landscape and endangered species like the desert tortoise, and the proposed project was eventually withdrawn.[5]

Placing massive solar farms far from populated areas presents additional challenges as their remote locations require new power lines to carry energy to people who use it. Environmentalists and local community groups often fiercely oppose the construction of ugly power lines, which also have to get approval from multiple regulatory agencies. Those factors make it almost impossible to build new transmission lines in the U.S.[6] If approval is granted, installing those lines takes a further toll on the environment.

In addition, the farther the electricity has to travel, the more energy is lost as heat in the transmission process. The cost-effective limit for electricity transmission is roughly 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers.) So you can’t power New York or Chicago from solar energy farms in Arizona.

Limitations to Rooftop Solar

Rooftop solar installations could sidestep some of the problems of solar farms, but they have problems of their own.

First, many buildings are not suitable for rooftop solar panels. Rooftop installations are typically exposed to less direct sunlight due to local weather patterns, shade from surrounding trees, the orientation of a building (which are often not angled toward the sun), or the pitch of the roof.

Second, the average cost to buy and install rooftop solar panels on a home as of July 2021 is $20,474.[7] This makes rooftop installations cost-prohibitive—especially for lower-income families.

Finally, even if we installed solar panels on all suitable buildings in the U.S. we could generate only 39% of the electricity the country needs according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.[8]

Solar panels also have a shorter lifespan[9] than other power sources (about half as long as natural gas[10] and nuclear plants[11]), and they’re difficult and expensive to recycle because they’re made with toxic chemicals. When solar panels reach the end of their usable life, their fate will most likely be the same as most of our toxic electronic waste: They will be dumped in poorer nations. It is estimated that global solar panel waste will reach around 78 million metric tons by 2050[12]–the equivalent of throwing away nearly 60 million Honda Civic cars.[13]

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Shutting Canadian Pipeline Would Cost US Consumers $23.7 Billion More in Fuel Costs: Report

A recently published analysis by a consumer advocacy nonprofit maintains that shutting a 4.5-mile section of a nearly 70-year-old pipeline that spans the Great Lakes from Wisconsin to Ontario would impose $23.7 billion in higher fuel costs on families and businesses in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Consumer Energy Alliance’s (CEA) 14-page report estimates that closing Canada-based Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron, would spur regional fuel price spikes of 9.47 to 11.66 percent “independent of any other market conditions, such as the surge in fuel prices observed over the past 12 months that are tied to international oil markets and logistical challenges caused by the pandemic.”

Enbridge and the state of Michigan have been engaged in litigation for more than a year over the pipeline after Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, in November 2020 revoked the pipeline’s original 1953 lakebed easement and ordered the pipeline to be shut by May 2021, citing the risk of a spill in the ecologically sensitive straits.

Enbridge ignored the order—the pipeline is still funneling 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) of light crude oil, light synthetic crude oil, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) through the straits—and petitioned to have the case heard in federal courts. In October 2021, the government of Canada backed Enbridge in its challenge and invoked a 1977 pipeline treaty with the United States to demand bilateral negotiations at the federal level.

In November 2021, a federal judge transferred Whitmer’s suit out of Michigan’s courts. That suit was subsequently dropped, but a similar lawsuit filed by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel remains in state courts, although a ruling is pending regarding its jurisdictional status.

Built in 1953 by Bechtel Corp., the Line 5 pipeline is actually two 20-inch-diameter parallel pipes with an enamel coating that’s three times thicker than a typical pipeline. Enbridge maintains that there has never been a leak in its 69-year operational existence.

The company maintains that it monitors Line 5’s Straits crossing “24/7, using both specially trained staff and sophisticated computer monitoring systems” that include “regular inspections of the line, using inline tools, expert divers, and remote operating vehicles (ROVs), going above and beyond regulatory requirements.”

In April 2020, Enbridge filed an application with the Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) requesting authority to replace its 4.5-mile Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac and encase it inside a tunnel.

The Straits Line 5 Replacement Segment Project would replace the dual 20-inch diameter pipes with one 30-inch diameter pipe and relocate it within a concrete-lined tunnel below the lakebed.

The application didn’t address the tunnel—only the pipeline replacement. The proposed $500 million tunnel project is being reviewed under separate applications filed with state and federal agencies. The last date for public comments on the proposed tunnel was March 11. State regulators and the three-member PSC are currently reviewing the proposal.

Enbridge sought swift approval for its pipeline replacement project based on its original 1953 approval, but the PSC determined that the proposed pipeline replacement project presented significant differences and denied its request for declaratory relief, referring it to the state’s Act 16 process for formal contested case hearings.

Six months later, Whitmer pulled the plug by revoking its easement and ordering the pipeline shuttered by May 2021, effectively pushing the matter into the courts.

Although there have never been any reported leaks from the pipeline in the straits, Enbridge-owned pipelines have been responsible for oil spills elsewhere in Michigan, including from Line 5 in Crystal Falls in 1999 and in the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

Eight Michigan counties and municipalities have formally called for the “retirement “of Line 5 including Cheboygan, Cheboygan County, Emmet County, Genesee County, Mackinaw City, Mentor Township, Munising Township, and Wayne County.

According to a study published by the University of Michigan and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a leak in Enbridge 5 near the Straits of Mackinac could affect roughly 700 miles of shoreline. A pipeline leak and oil spill could cost as much as $6 billion in cleanup efforts and environmental damage, according to the state, citing a close call in 2018 when a ship’s anchor stuck, but didn’t rupture, the pipeline in the straits.

An August 2020 study by Gary L. Street, former Dow chemical engineer, found a temporary court-ordered shutdown of one of Line 5’s dual pipelines following an incident elsewhere along its traverse didn’t affect gas prices or supply in Michigan or Canada.

But according to CEA’s analysis, shutting down the pipeline permanently would be another matter.

CEA stated that its “independent third-party analysis,” conducted by California-based Weinstein, Clower, and Associates, examined the effects that a Line 5 closure would have on the region and found “shutting down this critical infrastructure would have a devastating impact on the supply of transportation fuels in regional markets, and hurt petrochemical refiners that rely on the pipeline to safely and efficiently deliver feedstock.”

According to the report, Ohio residents and businesses would incur $2.73 billion in higher gasoline and diesel prices through 2027. Michigan residents and businesses would see $2.22 billion in higher costs, those in Indiana $272 million, and those in Pennsylvania for $630 million.

“The jump in transportation fuel prices will not be borne evenly across all consumer groups,” the CEA report reads. “But given current macro-economic trends, most of these higher costs will likely be passed on to households.”

The increase in fuel costs will radiate through local and state economies, according to CEA.

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Biden Budget Packed with Cash for Extreme Climate Agenda

President Joe Biden's latest budget proposal has arrived and it is jam packed full of funding proposals for his far left policy agenda.

According to information released by the Treasury Department Monday, Biden is asking for $11 billion to continue his war on America's energy sector.

"The Budget includes over $11 billion in international climate finance, meeting the President’s pledge to quadruple international climate finance, a year early. This includes $5.3 billion in appropriations, in­cluding a $1.6 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund, a critical multilateral tool for financing climate adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries," the Treasury Department released. "The Budget also supports a $3.2 billion loan to the Clean Technology Fund to finance clean energy projects in developing countries by increasing energy security in high-emitting markets. U.S. international climate assistance and financing would accel­erate the global energy transition to net zero emissions by 2050; help developing countries build resilience to the growing impacts of climate change, including through the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) and other programs; and sup­port the implementation of the President’s Plan to Conserve Global Forests: Critical Carbon Sinks, while increasing energy independence by decreasing reliance on producers of carbon-intensive non-renewable resources."

Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to hold America's oil and gas producers hostage as prices at the pump skyrocket. From CNBC:

The Biden administration is delaying decisions on new oil and gas leases and permits after a Louisiana federal judge blocked officials from using higher cost estimates of climate change when making rules for polluting industries.

The leasing pause is an unintended result of the Feb. 11 decision by U.S. District Judge James Cain, who sided with a group GOP-led states and argued that the Biden administration’s attempt to raise the real cost of climate change would hike energy costs and hurt state revenues from energy production.

The ruling has prompted delays and uncertainty across at least four federal agencies that were using higher cost estimates of greenhouse gas emissions in decisions, including plans to restrict methane emissions from natural gas drilling and a grant program for transit projects. It also continues a contentious legal battle that has hampered Biden’s plans to address climate change.

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Australia: The ‘Green’ shades of political hypocrisy

It was only last month that the Leader of the Victorian Greens, Samantha Ratnam, called on the government to ensure that all rental properties contained ‘compulsory air conditioning’ as part of a minimum standard requirement in a letter to Minister for Consumer Affairs, Gaming and Liquor Regulation, Melissa Horne.

Air conditioning is an energy-consuming monster.

While those of us who are comfortable living in the modern world feel no guilt about the advances in technology that allow humans to wear a jumper inside when it’s over 45 degrees outside – the Greens hail from the apocalyptic ‘end is nigh’ pool of thought. They are prepared to send Australia back to the caves armed with candles through their relentless pursuit of policies that dismantle Australia’s energy security, but sure, let’s mandate air conditioners?

While the Greens terrify children and incite them to skip school and stage mock ‘die-ins’ in capital cities, they don’t mind arguing in favour of air conditioning to drag votes from the hot and sweaty poor (who are being made more poor by Climate Change policies).

This month, the Greens are back on track, calling for the luvvies in Canberra to give up their vehicles on ‘car-free’ days and try out ‘car-free zones’ in the city. Mind you, this might not be necessary as fuel prices continue to rise on the back of Australia’s dependence on internationally-sourced oil (because ideological zealots fight against domestic resources).

Jo Clay, the Greens’ transport spokesperson, released a discussion paper containing the above proposals along with the usual cash splurge on footpaths, bikes, and – of course – dramatically lowering speed limits so that cars have to expend more fossil fuels to go nowhere.

The paper also suggests mucking around with traffic light sequencing to make life miserable for motorists and leave cars pumping out fumes while bikes and pedestrians take priority. Or if that doesn’t suit, other recommendations include removing roads entirely to make ‘more space for the community’. Pesky things like on-street parking are listed as a ‘loss of space for little real gain’ – aside from having somewhere to park, which is a pretty big gain for motorists.

‘Canberrans love active travel,’ Clay insisted. ‘We have the highest level of cycling in Australia and almost everyone uses active travel at some point. Even those who drive most places will still get out of their car and walk or wheel to their final destination.’

According to Clay, these car-free days and zones are meant to offer the people of Canberra a way to ‘experience a different way to use our roads’ because exploring transport options for fun is probably high up on the list of activities for struggling businesses and families desperately scrambling to recover from Covid health orders.

Australians are more likely to believe in ‘active transport’ when representatives of the Greens permanently exchange their government-funded cars for push-bikes and cycle to Parliament in the pouring rain, freezing cold, and sweltering heat of Canberra. If they want us to believe that the working-class need to give up their cars for the ‘greater good’, Greens MPs should set the example by refusing to fly around the country and instead hop on long-distance trains or buses.

No takers?

‘We have to do more to help Canberrans choose the original zero-emissions transport method of active travel. We need to make active travel fun, accessible, and safe for everyone.’

How does this declaration work with the paper’s recommendation to trial off-road bicycle exemptions for helmet requirements? Helmets are widely regarded as the most important safety advancement for cyclists – something openly acknowledged by the paper – but people don’t like wearing helmets so the Greens reckon we should just ‘ditch them’ because cycling ‘participation dropped when helmet laws were introduced’. Sure, but fatalities also dropped by 46 per cent.

‘This off road exemption could be trialled and the effect on participation measured to see if this increases cycle commuting, especially for short distances within suburbs.’

The original zero-emissions method of transport has been common with the peasantry for thousands of years – walking – although we are yet to see that less-glamorous mode of transport kick off with MPs screeching ‘Net Zero!’ from the chambers of Parliament.

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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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Monday, March 28, 2022



The ‘Sustainability’ Business: A Gathering of Rent-Seekers

The Economist Group, publisher of the Economist, has been hosting its seventh annual “Sustainability Week,” with one day in London and three others on virtual platforms.

The event’s website offers a revealing glimpse into the ecosystem that “sustainability” has created — an ecosystem that contains true believers, to be sure, but is also one in which opportunists can take advantage of the pathway it offers to power, profit, and prestige — or at least a job.

The roster of speakers features an impressive sprinkling of the prominenti, from the secretary-general of the U.N. to the secretary-general of the OECD to the president of Austria to the mayor of Stockholm to the co-head of “global public policy” for — wait for it — BlackRock.

But it was also striking how many on that roster hold positions that, to a greater or lesser degree, depend on the sustainability of the sustainability bandwagon. To take a sample, they included seven (or was it eight?) chief sustainability officers; a chief brand, innovation, international, and sustainability officer; two heads of sustainability; a global head of sustainability; a head of sustainability and inclusion; a vice president of sustainability; a vice president of inclusive impact and sustainability; a director of sustainability (not to be confused with a global sustainability director, although one of those was billed as a speaker too); a senior vice president of marketing for purpose and sustainability; a head of global impact; a director of SRI (or “socially responsible” investment); a director of a climate-risk initiative; an environmental-development director; a director of environmental action; a director of social purpose; a global head of climate business; a global head of impact; a professor in practice for sustainable finance; a head of sustainable energies; a research director for sustainable finance; a chief responsible-investment officer; a global head of climate business; a director of climate-resilience investment; a chief ESG innovation officer, a head of sustainable procurement; a global sustainability-services lead; an ESG solutions engineer; the managing director of a center for carbon transition, and more.

This selection does seem quite . . . extensive. Then again, the event’s website refers to “185+ speakers” and “65+ sessions.”

It’s hardly surprising that sustainability professionals would address an audience attending (virtually or otherwise) a “sustainability week.” Not having them there would be like a church service without priests. At the same time, the sheer number of them — a mere microcosm, incidentally, of the sustainability caste — is a reminder of how rapidly sustainability has caught on, and of the opportunities that it now offers.

While we must assume that all such professionals care sincerely about working toward their particular vision of the planet’s future, it would be naïve not to appreciate that their hiring (and the recruitment, doubtless, of teams to support them) is constructing a powerful interest group that will not only regard any opposition as a danger to the environment but also as a threat to their livelihoods. The implications of where that will lead do not have to be spelled out, and it is by no means a phenomenon confined to the private sector.

We can also be sure that sustainability’s paid evangelists will be doing their best to get their message out — and far beyond their own organizations. They will see that as their duty, of course, but the more converts they win to their cause, the more influential — and the more valuable — they themselves become.

An event like this must have sponsors. Naturally its organizers are not shy about explaining why this is one to back:

"Our commitment to quality, and our unique ability to reach c-suite executives mean that we are able to attract the most important, qualified influencers to speak at our events"

Series speakers past and present include Bill Gates, John Kerry, Tony Blair and Larry Fink. Larry Fink, well, who’d have thunk it?

Sponsors this time round included Deloitte, a firm active in the ESG business, Planetly by OneTrust (“OneTrust ESG simplifies the gathering, storing and assessing of your company’s ESG . . . data and metrics”), Mott Macdonald (ESG consultancy is one of the services it offers), Ecovadis (“the world’s most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings”), Wellington (an asset manager “embracing ESG”), BCG (“WEF [Davos] and BCG are shedding light on the financial materiality of ESG factors and how those factors will evolve”), and Accenture (“we help our clients reinvent their businesses at scale, creating business value and sustainable impact for all stakeholders”).

Yes, there’s an ecosystem. And the Economist Group is a part of it, quite literally, in word as well as in deed:

Since the Climate issue in 2019, The Economist’s climate coverage has permeated all aspects of our journalism. We take a clear-headed approach to analysing what does and does not work. A weekly email newsletter by the same name was launched shortly afterwards. In September 2021 we launched “To a Lesser Degree”, a podcast series exploring how everything—from finance to farming, transport to trade—must change to slow the pace of global warming. Over the last five years, our special reports have taken an in-depth look at the future of energy, water and the business of climate change. Our films reveal the politics of climate change, the definition of net zero and whether veganism could make a real impact on the environment. Our journalists explore the role that business and policy makers can play in reversing climate change, interviewing global leaders such as Bill Gates and Christine Lagarde.

The Economist is focused somewhat on the financial, so that’s an emphasis that would be expected at an event being organized by its parent. Moreover, as climate warriors have come to understand, harnessing capitalism is a way of advancing political aims (a specific response to climate change) without the inconvenience of going through the democratic process (The SEC’s new proposals on climate-related disclosure are just the latest example of this.)

And so, turning to this event’s agenda we see, among other treats, panels on greening the financial system, on innovation in green finance, on the best returns in green finance, and on how banks can gain competitive advantage by accelerating green finance. There were to be talks on investing for change (given by the founder and executive chairman of Engine No. 1, the activist fund that took on Exxon), on how digitization will improve company ESG data, and on analyzing environmental- and social-impact investments.

Another panel (advertised as “the road to nature-positive”) was to consider these compelling questions:

How can businesses across industries identify and calculate their natural-resource dependencies? What tools, metrics and targets exist to enable businesses to measure their impact on the natural environment? How can firms best understand the business risks that arise from environmental degradation and their own impact on biodiversity? What lessons can be applied from the journey towards net zero?

What lessons could be learned from the journey toward net zero?

Hmmm . . .

I wonder whether anyone suggested that, like all too many exercises in central planning, it has been an expensive shambles. Maybe one V. Putin (undisclosed location, Russia) took the time to send a message that he, for one, thought that the journey — which has, curiously, mainly been embarked upon by those in the West — was going very well.

Also on the agenda: a “fireside chat” on making money from sustainability, followed by a lunch break where the talk would revolve around unlocking investment for net zero, a topic so gripping that it was scheduled for further discussion during a networking break later the same day.

A conversation was promised on “embedding the value of natural capital in economic, financial and political decision-making”:

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Environmentalists Are Blocking the Post Office From Replacing Busted 30-Year-Old Mail Trucks

The United States Postal Service (USPS) wants to add 165,000 new trucks to its fleet, which hasn't been upgraded in over 30 years. The agency says it must upgrade its trucks due to their "inefficient gasoline engines" and lack of "modern safety features." But now congressional Democrats hope to stall the agency's plan because it won't add enough electric vehicles, even though forcing the USPS to purchase an entirely "green" fleet would cost the financially troubled agency billions more than its proposed plan.

As required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the USPS submitted its environmental impact statement for Next Generation Delivery Vehicle acquisitions in January 2021. The agency plans to purchase 50,000 to 165,000 new trucks over the next 10 years, of which 5,000 would be battery electric vehicles. This means that 10 percent of the new USPS vehicles will be emissions-free and the remaining 90 percent will be gas-powered.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as the White House Council on Environmental Quality quickly issued complaints, claiming that the USPS' statement did not fully comply with NEPA and that the agency must rely less on gas-powered vehicles.

In its letter to Jennifer Beiro-Réveillé, senior director of environmental affairs and corporate sustainability at the USPS, the EPA complained that the impact statement did not "disclose essential information underlying the key analysis of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), underestimates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fails to consider more environmentally protective feasible alternatives, and inadequately considers impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns." The White House said the purchase would conflict with President Joe Biden's effort to ensure that federal agencies achieve 100 percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035. (The USPS is an independent agency and doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of Biden's zero-emissions executive order.)

In response, USPS said it would move forward with its proposal and that there is no legal basis to deny it. "Our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition," said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in a press release. "But the process needs to keep moving forward."

Meanwhile, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D–Va.) has introduced legislation to block any USPS vehicle purchases unless 75 percent of the trucks are electric or emissions-free. And last week, a group of House Democrats penned a letter calling for an investigation into the purchase over its environmental impact. According to a spokeswoman, the letter has been received by the inspector general's office and is being carefully reviewed.

The cost of the purchase would be $6 billion over 10 years. Electrifying the fleet, however, would cost the USPS $2.3 billion more over 20 years due to the cost of manufacturing lithium-battery vehicles, as well as the 2021 average cost of kilowatt-hours ($0.11/kWh) versus gas ($2.71/gallon).

The purchase is part of DeJoy's 10-year Delivering for America plan to make the USPS more efficient and financially viable. Considering the agency's longtime financial unsustainability, it should be prioritizing its fiscal performance over its environmental impacts right now. Forcing the USPS to buy fewer trucks than it needs or necessitating another federal bailout further jeopardizes the agency's ability to serve Americans.

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Green Democrats do an end-run around Congress

Democrats, banks, regulators and activists have increasingly set their sights on the financial sector and legal system, not Congress, for pushing their aggressive climate agenda.

Employing so-called environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, financial institutions and government agencies have quietly implemented policies prioritizing a focus on factors unrelated to a company’s bottom line, experts said. The ESG movement has swept across the corporate world, leading to individual pledges from companies promising to become more sustainable and improve internal diversity.

In the latest example of the ESG and sustainable investing movement, the Democratic-majority U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey was one of many lawmakers to immediately slam the proposal, saying it “hijacks the democratic process and disrespects the limited scope of authority that Congress gave to the SEC.”

“Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”

“One of the ways that they’re doing it — it’s like an all fronts attack — is under the guise of environmental, social and governance investments,” he added. (RELATED: New York To Divest Pensions From Fossil Fuel Companies)

‘Priorities Are A Little Misplaced’

Regulators have also targeted Americans’ pensions. In October, the Department of Labor (DOL), which is tasked with regulating private sector pensions under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, reversed a Trump-era rule that placed barriers to fiduciaries’ ability to consider ESG factors when selecting investments.

Similar to the SEC proposal Monday, the DOL rule stated that “climate change and other ESG factors can be financially material” for investors.

“The primary purpose of fiduciaries is to look out for the wellbeing of the pensioners who contribute to these funds,” Pat Pizzella, the former deputy secretary of labor during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “Not to speculate on risky or trendy, expensive ESG products. I think their priorities are a little misplaced.”

He added that the Trump administration’s view was to look at ESG investing from a legal point of view. Pizzella predicted that individuals with pensions managed by fiduciaries that invest in risky ESG-focused companies or funds would eventually take the institutions to court.

“I think if we are going to hear about climate risk, we ought to hear about it from the National Weather Service, not the Securities and Exchange Commission,” he added.

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Morgan Stanley Flags EV Demand Destruction as Lithium price Soars

Electric vehicle battery makers will need to raise prices by almost 25% due to soaring lithium carbonate prices, leading to crimped margins and possibly demand destruction, according to Morgan Stanley.

Chinese prices for lithium carbonate, the key ingredient in many batteries, have jumped fivefold over the past year, analysts including Jack Lu said in a note. The pass-through of costs could push EV manufacturers to raise prices by as much as 15% and may hit demand, they said in the note dated March 24.

“Historically, the battery price cost curve had been declining at a pace of 3% to 7% annually for so many years in a row it almost seemed inevitable,” the analysts said. “But molecules don’t play by the same rules as Moore’s Law. The world has changed, and along with it is a new paradigm of input costs.”

Lithium carbonate prices have surged as demand from car-makers has outstripped supply, highlighting how the energy transition may be slowed by a shortage of materials and refining capacity. China’s top lithium producers -- Ganfeng Lithium Co. and Tianqi Lithium Corp. -- reported a surge in preliminary revenue in the first two months of the year on the back of the rally.

Most battery manufacturers in China -- which dominates the lithium-ion battery industry -- buy the material on the spot market, rather than though long-term contracts, Morgan Stanley said. However, big companies like Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd. may be able to get some discount, it said.

Despite the rising prices, Morgan Stanley is overweight on Tesla Inc., with a price target of $1,300 per share, about 30% higher than its current level. There’s scope for “profound” long-term changes in the battery industry, and Tesla’s scale, technology and vertical integration make it best placed to address the challenges relative to other EV manufacturers, it said.

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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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