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Today — March 28th 2024Your RSS feeds

Yellen: Pushing Green Energy to Lower Energy Costs 'Over Time' Is Key Part of Fighting Inflation

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that a key plank of President Joe Biden’s agenda to lower costs is by “creating incentives to dramatically improve the use of clean energy in the United

The post Yellen: Pushing Green Energy to Lower Energy Costs ‘Over Time’ Is Key Part of Fighting Inflation appeared first on Breitbart.

Yesterday — March 27th 2024Your RSS feeds
Before yesterdayYour RSS feeds

Biden is still trying to take your gas-powered car

White House's latest restriction on emissions is another attack on gas-powered cars. Biden is pushing for electric vehicles at the very same time consumers are backing off.

Texas School Fund Divests $8.5 Billion from BlackRock over Anti-Fossil Fuel Policies

Texas on Tuesday said it is divesting $8.5 billion from asset manager behemoth BlackRock over the company's anti-fossil fuel policies.

Biden Adviser: We're Managing Green Transition by Ensuring Lower Prices, Gas Prices Lower than Europe and Elsewhere

On Monday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Last Call,” Biden Senior Adviser for Energy and Investment Amos Hochstein said the Biden administration is “managing our energy transition by making sure prices are lower.” And “Gasoline prices are lower than they are in Europe

Memo: Hunter Biden Tried to Help CCP-Linked Company Purchase U.S. Maker of Nuclear Reactors

Hunter Biden's deal with CEFC underscores a pattern in which he sold out the interests of United States taxpayers by forming lucrative business relationships with countries or companies adversarial to American interests.

Exploding the Myths of “Green” Energy

(John Hinderaker)

American Experiment’s Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling tell you what you need to know to respond to ill-informed advocates for “green” energy. There is much more at the link, but here is an overview:

1. Renewables can’t survive on their own

The renewable energy industry is a subsidy-based industry, as wind and solar are largely dependent on lucrative state and federal subsidies. However, renewable advocates justify these perpetual subsidies by claiming thermal generators receive more subsidies than wind and solar. This assertion is not based on reality….
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In 2022, wind and solar generators received three and eighteen times more subsidies per MWh, respectively, than natural gas, coal, and nuclear generators combined. Solar is the clear leader, receiving anywhere from $50 to $80 per MWh over the last five years, whereas wind is a distant second at $8 to $10 per MWh.

Poor solar energy! No matter how many billions the government pours down the solar rathole, no one has figured out a way to generate solar power after the sun goes down.

2. Renewables increase the cost of electricity

Renewable advocates often claim that the adoption of more wind and solar will lead to lower electricity costs, but the opposite is true. In a previous Substack, we wrote in detail about how utility companies with the largest rate increase requests in the country admit the energy transition is a major reason behind increasing electricity prices for families and businesses.

“Green” advocates fake the numbers for wind and solar by the simple expedient of only counting a fraction of their costs. This chart shows the actual cost of the various energy systems if all costs are included:

3. More wind and solar means more blackouts

Advocates of renewable energy also don’t want to account for one of the most damning facts about policies that favor wind and solar energy at the expense of dispatchable generators: that they have led to electricity blackouts in more than one region.

Greenies are full of bogus reasons why increased use of wind and solar are not to blame for blackouts, but they can’t answer the simple question: why is that we didn’t have blackouts before spending hundreds of billions on wind and solar, but now we do have blackouts?

Isaac and Mitch conclude:

Despite claiming to be ardent followers of “tHe ScIEncE,” wind and solar advocates live in their own universe of alternative facts that deny the basic physics and economics of the electric grid. Hopefully, this piece is useful for you the next time a wind or solar stan is arguing with you in the comments section.

One more “green” myth remains to be exploded: the claim that wind and solar are better for the environment than natural gas, nuclear and coal-fired electricity. That myth will be addressed in an upcoming report.

Transition? What Transition?

(John Hinderaker)

Robert Bryce is one of America’s foremost energy experts. At his Substack site, he describes his recent appearance before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The commissioners were glad to hear from Robert:

After I finished, about two dozen people (most of them were state regulators) came forward to say they appreciated my talk and that they’d never heard many of the points I’d made. One utility commissioner told me that the regulators who attend NARUC’s meetings are “not used to having anybody tell the whole story.” I also received several dozen emails from people who said NARUC had never had anyone like me give a speech.

Which is a truly scary reality. From whom are the commissioners accustomed to hearing? Financially self-interested left-wingers:

[A] few conference attendees took to Twitter to complain that I’d been allowed to speak at NARUC. One person in particular, a lawyer who works for Earthjustice, the San Francisco-based NGO that is funded by dark money, had a sphincter-puckered snit on Twitter, saying that I presented “nonsense.” Earthjustice had $151 million in revenue in 2023 and employs more than 200 lawyers in 15 U.S. cities. Another attendee, who works for San Francisco-based Energy Innovation LLC, which doesn’t reveal its donors, got his NARUC knickers in a twist. On Twitter, he claimed I provided so many “falsehoods” that he “couldn’t keep up.” It’s funny, though, that he didn’t name a single falsehood or refute even one of my points.

Typical. Leftists don’t argue, they censor.

What did Robert say that so frightened greenies? Follow the link above for the whole story, but I would highlight two points. First, increasing government-mandated reliance on expensive and ineffective wind and solar power is threatening the reliability of the electric grid:

On February 22, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) issued a report that put the danger facing America’s electric grid in stark terms. In an introduction, MISO’s CEO, John Bear, said, “There are immediate and serious challenges to the reliability of our region’s electric grid.” His remarks must be quoted at length:

The transition that is underway to get to a decarbonized end state is posing material, adverse challenges to electric reliability. A key risk is that many existing “dispatchable” resources that can be turned on and off and adjusted as needed are being replaced with weather-dependent resources such as wind and solar that have materially different characteristics and capabilities. While wind and solar produce needed clean energy, they lack certain key reliability attributes that are needed to keep the grid reliable every hour of the year. Although several emerging technologies may someday change that calculus, they are not yet proven at grid scale. Meanwhile, efforts to build new dispatchable resources face headwinds from government regulations and policies, as well as prevailing investment criteria for financing new energy projects. Until new technologies become viable, we will continue to need dispatchable resources for reliability purposes.

Second, perhaps the most extraordinary fact about energy is that the much-ballyhooed “transition” from fossil fuels to wind and solar simply isn’t happening, despite government mandates and massive subsidies. In fact, it is rapid growth in use of fossil fuels that powers the world’s economy:

There is much more at the link. The bottom line is that a transition from reliable and affordable fossil fuels to unreliable and prohibitively expensive weather-dependent sources of energy would be a human disaster, and therefore, it isn’t going to happen. Ever. Leftists may whine and gnash their teeth, and for now they may reap enormous amounts of ill-gotten money from “green” interests. But what they want, or more likely pretend to want, isn’t possible, and it won’t happen.

Burn Those Trees!

(John Hinderaker)

We have written a couple of times about biomass, which is a fancy term for burning wood. If you thought using wood fires for energy was out of date–it has been, actually, for a century and a half–you are behind the times. Wood burning is considered “green,” a wholly political concept, and therefore is heavily subsidized in Europe. Millions of trees in the U.S. and Canada suffer the consequences.

The latest from the United Kingdom:

Wood, the fuel that British industry thought it had left behind more than a century ago, is staging a comeback.

Powering the resurgence is Drax Group, owner of the controversial Drax power station that recently posted a 10-fold increase in its latest yearly profits.

Its plant in Yorkshire, Britain’s largest and most controversial power station, generated around 6pc of the country’s electricity in 2023 by burning 6.4 million tonnes of wood. In context, it is the equivalent of 27 million trees.

27 million trees! The same Telegraph article points out that the New Forest only has 46 million trees, less than two years’ worth. So where does the wood come from?

Last year alone Drax imported 4.6 million tonnes of wood from the US and another 760,000 tonnes from Canada, with further deliveries coming from Brazil, Latvia and Russia.

You might think that cutting down trees in the southern U.S., thus preventing them from absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere–do they still teach junior high kids about photosynthesis?–shipping them to Europe on diesel-powered ships, and then burning them, releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, must be the dumbest possible way of generating electricity. And, while it is appallingly stupid, and not “green” in any coherent sense, it is arguably not as dumb as wind and solar:

[Drax chief executive Will Gardiner says], “We have created a business which plays an essential role in supporting energy security, providing dispatchable, renewable power for millions of homes and businesses, particularly during periods of peak demand when there is low wind and solar power.”

Yes: burning wood on an industrial scale is idiotic, but at least it works in the dark and when the wind isn’t blowing.

Finally, why does such a foolish way of generating electricity exist? Mandates and subsidies, of course:

Sir Peter’s reference to cost relates to the taxpayer subsidies that Drax receives for producing green energy, which amounted to £617m in 2022 and £587m in 2023.

Meanwhile, China is humming along with more than 1,000 coal-fired power plants, and more coming on line constantly.

James Biden Admits Joe Biden Got $40K in China Funds Via Alleged Loan Repayment

Joe Biden got a $40,000 check in 2017 from that originated from a Biden family deal with a CCP-linked company, James Biden admitted to the House impeachment inquiry.

Why plastic bag bans are failing

Plenty of environmental organizations tout these plastic bag bans put in place by states and municipalities as a success. But data suggests otherwise.

Blackouts, Here We Come

(John Hinderaker)

People around the world are increasingly realizing that “green” energy is actually black–as in blackouts. Thus, in today’s Telegraph: “The UK is much closer to blackouts than anyone dares to admit.”

We are heading for a big electricity crunch as it is. Whoever wins the general election, the next government will be committed to decarbonising the National Grid – by 2035 in the case of the Conservatives and by 2030 in the case of Labour. That means either closing all the gas power stations or fitting them with carbon capture and storage technology – which does not yet exist on scale in Britain and whose costs are likely to be massive. At the same time every single one of our existing nuclear power stations is currently due to reach the end of its life by 2035. If Hinkley C is delayed much beyond its latest estimated completion, we could end up with no nuclear at all.

That could leave us trying to power the country pretty much with intermittent wind and solar energy alone – and this at a time when politicians want millions more of us to be driving electric cars and heating our homes with heat pumps, thus substantially increasing demand. How will we keep the lights on? One struggles to find satisfactory explanation from the National Grid ESO, which is trusted with this task.

Britain is not alone in that regard. It is extraordinary that no one in any country has actually tried, seriously, to figure out how to power a modern economy with intermittent and absurdly expensive wind and solar power. We are simply cruising toward disaster with inept and even senile politicians at the helm.

It has produced a vision for a winter’s day in 2035 which foresees massive amounts of energy being stored in the form of green hydrogen produced via the electrolysis of water – a technology which may not be ready by then.

Or may not be ready, ever. I’ve been hearing about miraculous hydrogen energy for decades.

It also sees Britain importing around a quarter of its electricity. What happens if the countries we import it from are also short of renewable energy, it doesn’t say.

That is what happened a year or so ago when Duke Energy’s customers suffered a blackout. Duke’s plan included importing electricity from other states when the wind didn’t blow and it was dark out. But–surprise!–the wind wasn’t blowing in nearby states, either.

But now we get to the real plan, to the extent there is one:

But another large part of the picture seems to be “demand flexibility” – a polite term for rationing energy through smart meters, jacking up the price whenever supply is short. No wonder the Government seems keener than ever to force smart meters on us.

A “smart meter” is one that will adjust the temperature in your house, or otherwise reduce your use of electricity, when the utility can’t produce enough electricity to meet demand. In other words, the plan is for us to get poorer through electricity rationing.

This is Great Britain, but you could say the exact same thing about the U.S. or most other Western countries.

Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs

Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs
New in PJ Media: Old Joe Biden and his sinister handlers are doing just what they threatened to do. On July 5, 2020, Old Joe’s Twitter ghostwriter tweeted: “We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.” They have done so. They have transformed the […]

Get Ready to Stink for Climate Change, Thanks to Biden’s New Washing Machine Rules

Get Ready to Stink for Climate Change, Thanks to Biden’s New Washing Machine Rules
New in PJ Media: “No credible scientific body,” wrote energy and environmental researcher Michael Shellenberger in 2019, “has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species.” In fact, the whole idea that temperatures are rising to catastrophic levels is based on circular reasoning. But the Biden regime is all […]
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