Next Prime Minister warned not to wreck UK shale gas opportunity yet again
Net Zero Watch has warned that the next Prime Minister will have to radically break with 12 years of failure by Conservative-led governments to develop the UK’s massive shale gas reserves.
The campaign group welcomed the pledges by Tory leadership contenders Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to overturn Boris Johnson’s fracking ban if they succeed him, but warned that despite similar pledges by previous ministers, conservative-led governments had completely failed to get any shale gas out of the ground for the last 12 years.
Net Zero Watch has repeatedly called for the UK to accelerate the development of Britain’s massive and potentially game-changing shale gas resources. It warns that unless the entire regulatory process is reformed swiftly and effectively, the extraction of shale gas will most likely be impossible for years to come.
Benny Peiser, the Net Zero Watch director, said:
"While both Tory leadership hopefuls have promised to be pro-fracking, their pledges are just the first mini-hurdle in the campaign to revive UK shale gas development. The next Prime Minister will have to follow up on these promises with radical reforms and policy changes if the government wants to overcome inherent blockages posed by civil servants, green MPs, activists and Putin’s useful idiots."
"Unless the new Prime Minister swiftly reforms the approval process, relaxes seismic restrictions and declares UK shale gas a matter of national security it will be near impossible to develop UK shale gas for years to come."
"The UK’s worst energy and security crisis since World War II demands decisive and radical action by the next Prime Minister. One of the most urgent responses is for the UK to kick-start a shale gas revolution without any further delays.”
Contact: Dr Benny Peiser, Director, Net Zero Watch. e: benny.peiser@netzerowatch.com m: 07553 361717
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Man Suffers 'Life Changing Injuries' After Electric Car Bursts Into Flames While Driving Down Highway
A man suffered serious injuries near Broughton, North Wales, on Tuesday morning when his electric vehicle spontaneously burst into flames.
According to the Liverpool Echo, the man was driving near the A55, also known as the North Wales Expressway.
His car reportedly caught on fire without warning, and bystanders rushed to the vehicle to pull the man from the flames. Paramedics attended to the victim at the scene.
Police said the man was eventually transported via ambulance to a hospital with “serious, possibly life-changing injuries,” the Echo reported.
The Welsh Ambulance Service said two rapid response vehicles, an emergency ambulance, helicopter and the Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service responded to the scene.
Authorities closed the road at the sight of the incident around 8:45 a.m. local time, and it remained that way for several hours.
Chief Inspector Alwyn Williams of North Wales Police said fire crews remained at the scene into Tuesday afternoon “due to the car involved being an electric vehicle.”
The incident in North Wales followed another electric car fire that made headlines earlier this week, though the actual incident occurred in June.
According to Electrek, Gonzalo Salazar wrote in an email to them that he purchased a new 2019 Jaguar I-Pace in 2020. He did not have any issues with the vehicle until two years later, but when they did arise, they were significant.
Salazar said he left his car plugged in overnight on June 16, and he took it the next day to run errands. He drove the car for just about 12 miles before returning it to the garage.
After going inside his house, Salazar said he began hearing strange popping noises from the garage. He went outside and saw thick smoke coming from the vehicle.
“My thought immediately was, ‘When there is smoke, there is fire,’ and I need to get the car out of the house garage,” Salazar told Electrek.
He called Jaguar roadside assistance and asked them to transport the vehicle to a safe place, but the situation continued to worsen.
“When I ended the conversation with them there were more pops, but this time it was followed by fire from under the car,” Salazar wrote. “I then called 911 to come help with the situation.”
“But this was not a slow burn, once the fire started there were multiple pops, and the car was just engulfed in flames rapidly.”
Eventually, the majority of the vehicle was completely destroyed by the fire. Photos of the car after the fire was put out showed just a small portion of the front of the car remained intact.
Electrek reported Salazar’s was the fourth known Jaguar I-Pace batter to catch on fire without an apparent cause.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/opinion/man-suffers-life-changing-injuries-electric-car-bursts-flames-driving-highway ?
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Washington Knows Best What Car You Should Drive: Electric Vehicles. Seriously?
“When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?” Toyota President Akio Toyoda asked in 2020, referring to the profound consequences of politicians forcing a transition away from conventional vehicles.
It’s a good question, and a proposal in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act being pushed through Congress suggests the answer is “no.”
President Joe Biden has used a variety of policy vehicles to force a transition from the ubiquitous internal combustion engine to electric vehicles. Among them are executive orders, procurement mandates for the military, and regulations to make it almost impossible to manufacture and sell a conventional car or truck.
The Senate is poised to join in. Heaped on top of tens of billions of dollars in grants, taxpayer-backed loans, and investment tax credits for EV manufacturers, the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., proposes an extension of EV tax subsidies.
The bill offers up to $7,500 in tax credits for new EV purchases, including bonuses for EVs made by union labor and batteries manufactured or assembled in North America. The legislation also makes the existing EV tax credit even bigger by eliminating caps on sales, adding a new tax credit of $4,000 for used EVs, and extending the credits for the next decade.
While there are some improvements—unlike the existing credit, the credit is not available for Americans earning more than $300,000 jointly or for EVs containing batteries made with critical minerals from “foreign entities of concern”—they don’t address the real problem.
The problem isn’t the size of the credit or even EVs themselves. The real problem is politicians attempting to force a transition to energy sources they prefer, having no inhibitions about the arrogance of such a central planning scheme, the restrictions it imposes on freedom, or the trade-offs, limitations, and collateral damage those policies cause at Americans’ expense.
Trade-offs, Limitations, and Collateral Damage
There’s no perfect vehicle or energy. All involve compromises that individuals, families, and businesses prioritize differently. Yet too many politicians think they know what’s perfect and the right vehicle for everyone else. And as they inappropriately impose their preferences on Americans, they ignore the costs of forcing EVs would impose on the country.
Let’s count some of the ways.
1. The disconnect between reality and political aspirations is wide. A full 90% of Americans’ transportation energy needs are covered by petroleum. EVs make up about 1% of registered vehicles in the U.S., despite years of federal and state subsidies. The International Energy Agency estimates that politicians’ aspirations for EV deployment under the Paris Agreement climate commitments imply a thirtyfold increase in demand for minerals used in EV batteries by 2040. That’s perhaps why the head of EV company Rivian warned that ongoing supply chain problems with “semiconductors are a small appetizer to what we are about to feel on battery cells over the next two decades.”
2. EVs trade fuel dependency for mineral dependency. While conventional cars and trucks rely on global markets for crude oil and refining capacity (both of which the U.S. is a major global supplier of), EVs must rely on global markets for mining and refining of minerals, which account for more than half the cost of an EV battery.
Minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and copper are needed to manufacture batteries and other components in EVs. According to the International Energy Agency, EVs use six times more minerals than a conventional car. The agency estimates that it takes more than 16 years on average to get a mine up and running from the moment of discovery of mineral deposits. Yet the Biden administration has done its level best to block new mining capacity in the United States, particularly in Minnesota and Alaska.
American miners are a small player in global markets for the minerals needed for EVs: Chile is the world’s largest mining country for copper; Indonesia for nickel; Australia for lithium, and—far more troublesome when it comes to human rights abuses and environmental stewardship—China for rare earth minerals and the Democratic Republic of Congo for cobalt.
Refining capacity for these minerals is deeply concentrated in China.
In other words, “concerns about price volatility and security of supply do not disappear in an electrified, renewables-rich energy system.”
3. EVs are being used as a pretext for big government favors to labor unions. While there is certainly no reason why policies addressing EVs have to be special favors for labor unions, the Schumer-Manchin bill would give bonus tax subsidies for EVs made with union labor. This is just good, old-fashioned cronyism. Further, these policies would inflate EV costs and penalize most workers who prefer not to join a union. It could even backfire and lead to fewer electric vehicles being produced and sold in the U.S. Only about 14% of autoworkers are unionized in the U.S. Meanwhile, foreign-owned automakers now employ more U.S. workers than domestic automakers.
4. Policies pushing EVs are corporate welfare and special favors for the wealthy. Of the estimated $7.5 billion in existing EV credits to be claimed between 2018 and 2022, corporations will take about half. Of the other half claimed by individual Americans, 78% will go to people making more than $100,000 per year. One state leads the pack: California is home to 39% of registered electric vehicles—perhaps unsurprising inasmuch as the state is banning the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles starting in 2035 as part of its radical climate agenda.
5. There’s no guarantee that EVs reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regardless of how one views the issue of global warming, EVs are no surefire solution. EVs have to plug in somewhere, and 60% of the electricity consumed in the U.S. is generated from natural gas and coal. Ironically, even as the need for electricity generation would grow, federal regulators and some states are trying to choke off production and use of natural gas as a power source, just as they’ve been trying to do to coal for years. It’s no wonder grid operators have heightened concerns about reliability.
6. EVs come with trade-offs for owners. EVs bring interesting capabilities to the table, but they also have detractors. Currently, many EVs cost more than their conventional counterparts. Refueling takes time. EV batteries lose an average of 2% of their capacity each year (depending on exposure to temperature extremes, how often an owner charges the battery, and other habits that degrade batteries), and replacement is costly. Some parking garages even prohibit drivers from parking in them due to the risks of batteries potentially catching on fire. And the driving range of EVs decreases and heating becomes a costly choice in cold weather, which is probably why very few EVs are registered in cold-weather states that don’t heavily subsidize them or penalize gasoline cars.
It’s one thing for an individual, family, or company to weigh trade-offs and make the decision to purchase an EV. It’s a totally different matter for politicians or bureaucrats to force the decision on Americans.
Competition made America a great country in which to innovate, run a business, and shop for products that meet the diverse needs of Americans. EVs are one of a variety of options out there competing for Americans’ business and should compete on their merits.
Unless Congress comes to its senses, American taxpayers will be covering the costs of big government EV policies, whether they buy an EV or not.
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Is the Electric Revolution Coming to an End? EV Maker Faces Major Problems, Slashes Production in Half
Climate alarmists’ misguided fantasy of an electric vehicle-dominated world has morphed into a nightmare amid historic inflation and crippling supply-chain bottlenecks.
In the latest blow, EV maker Lucid Group slashed its production outlook by 50 percent, citing supply-chain disruptions and “logistical challenges,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Other factors contributing to the expected shortfall are increased competition in the EV market and skyrocketing prices of raw materials amid the runaway inflation that has become the hallmark of Joe Biden’s failed presidency.
This is the second time in the past eight months the California automaker has cut its production projections. Lucid now expects to make just 6,000 to 7,000 cars this year.
In February, the electric vehicle company had cut its outlook from 20,000 vehicles to 12,000.
“This quarter has proven to be a very challenging period, and whilst we have experienced supply chain and logistics challenges along with the entire industry, the limitations of our logistics systems have compounded the challenge,” CEO Peter Rawlinson told the Wall Street Journal.
As a result, Lucid will “increase the price of its sole vehicle, the Air sedan, to $87,000, citing rising raw material costs.”
The purported logic of paying $87,000 for a car to “save money on gas” is baffling, and it might hasten the industry’s downfall.
The challenge for EV makers is making a profit, as many of them operate at a loss for years — even with hefty, taxpayer-funded federal subsidies.
For example, Tesla — the biggest and most prominent EV company — recorded its first profitable year in 2021 even though it launched in 2003.
Meanwhile, for the second quarter ended in June, Lucid lost $220 million, slightly better than the $261 million it lost in the year-ago period.
Another California electric-car maker, Fisker Inc., lost $106 million in the second quarter — more than double the $46 million it lost the previous year. The 6-year-old company reported second-quarter revenue of just $10,000 — down from $27,000 a year earlier.
Just last week, still another California EV company, Rivian Automotive, laid off 6 percent of its 14,000 employees, citing record inflation.
“Over the last six months, the world has dramatically changed with inflation reaching record highs, interest rates rapidly rising and commodity prices continuing to climb — all of which have contributed to the global capital markets tightening,” Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe wrote in a company email announcing the firings.
With all these challenges roiling the industry, it makes no sense for Biden and the Democratic Party to continue to rabidly push electric vehicles as the solution to high gas prices.
If you like electric cars, get one — but they shouldn’t be forced on the American public as part of an insidious, calculated plan to destroy the oil industry in the name of climate alarmism.
Transitioning 332 million Americans from fossil fuels to so-called green energy will be expensive, inconvenient and painful — and it isn’t even guaranteed to combat “climate change.”
As it is, climate change is not a top priority for the vast majority of Americans, but this is what Biden is focusing on because he has had no success in quelling the numerous real crises ravaging the nation.
According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, only 1 percent of voters named climate change as the most important issue facing the country, far behind worries about inflation and the economy.
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Australia: Labor-Greens marriage produces forty new bills!
Viv Forbes
There is an ominous buzz in the new Australian Parliament where Albo and the Greens are planning to pass 40 new bills, quick smart.
Each bill will probably need 100 new regulations and 200 new inspectors, auditors, and enforcers plus many new taxes and fees. They will not deliver ‘Net Zero’ – they are ‘Net Negative’ – but they will divert labour and capital from productive activities to bureaucracies and green energy speculators.
Where are the 40 old bills that Green-Albo will repeal to make room for these 40 wordy additions to Australia’s already overflowing legislative sewer?
We need a new political party dedicated solely to the repeal of costly, destructive, or useless legislation.
Australia has thrived for over 200 years without Green-Albo’s 40 new laws. So they can be safely rejected or repealed and followed out the door by most of the legislation introduced under the baleful gaze of the Green Quad – Gillard, Rudd, Turnbull, and Morrison. A safe policy for the new Repeal Party would be ‘Last in, First Out’.
Not only is it imperative to start the domestic repeal movement, Australia also needs to back out of the international agreements swamp. Top priority here is to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Probably the worst bill in Green-Albo’s legislative avalanche is the Climate Change Bill.
This dreadful piece of legislation gives the government the ability to ‘ratchet up’ green targets without new parliamentary approval, but makes it difficult for future governments to ratchet back these targets when it all goes horribly wrong. This will clutter rural Australia with imported solar panels and windmills, and destroy forests and grasslands with spider-webs of roads and transmission lines. It will make blackouts more likely and destroy any heavy industry we have left.
Filling our cities with electric cars will stress the electricity grid and add greatly to urban fire risks. And in 15 years (or after every cyclone) we will have an enormous problem trying to dispose of the worn-out, non-degradable wind and solar generator debris.
Wind and solar are almost useless without big battery storage. Then there is Turnbull’s Green Elephant, the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro, which is way behind in time and way ahead in costs.
Australia survived booms and busts, two world wars, and the Great Depression only to see the Builder Generations outvoted by the Spoiled Brat generations – the Teal-tinged Baby Boomers, the Millenniums, Blockade Australia, and the Thunbergs.
Not only have Albo and the Green-Teals captured Australia’s Parliament, they also dominate the school rooms, the education departments, and most of the media. Climate activism is encouraged in schools at the expense of maths, science, and engineering. The Builder Generations are depicted in education propaganda not as wise elders but as ‘Cranky Uncles’.
No wonder we are cranky.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/08/labor-greens-marriage-produces-forty-new-bills/
***************************************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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Jim Hansen and his twin
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