Tag Archives: electricity

Our Future With Extreme Environmentalists

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article about energy prices in California. Obviously inflation combined with the curtailment of American energy production has caused energy prices to increase everywhere, but in California they have increased at double the rate of the rest of the country.

The article reports:

California’s energy costs are double the national average and increasing at double the national rate as the state pushes for reducing emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. The state’s energy regulator says energy costs are rapidly approaching the tipping point at which filling up a Tesla with electrons will cost more than filling up a Camry with gasoline.

With the state reducing emissions by an average of 1.5% per year since 2010, this rate would leave the state not reaching its emissions goal until 2047.

California energy costs 2.3 times the national average, with energy costs in the state increasing 10.9% over the past four years compared to 5.1% nationwide, according to an analysis by Radiant Energy Group of U.S. Energy Information Administration data. In some markets, consumers face even higher increases — in San Jose, average monthly energy bills rose from $121 in 2021 to $203 by the end of 2023, with increases from $152 to $220 and $113 to $138 in Los Angeles and San Diego across the same time frames.

The California legislature is dealing with this increase by instituting what can only be called a Marxist solution–equal outcome–not equal burden.

The article reports:

Due to the extremely high cost of California energy, the legislature ordered the California Public Utilities Commission to restructure energy bill surcharges for non-consumption costs to be based on household income. Under this plan, monthly fees to cover utilities’ normal costs outside of electricity consumption — such as power line maintenance and wildfire protection — would be charged to homes based on their household income. Both Republican and Democratic state legislators have come out with plans to repeal this order, suggesting the income-graduated fixed charge may be shut down before it takes effect on July 1.

I think we can safely say that the free market is dead in California.

Destructive Carbon Emission Mandates

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

The Marxist Left is out to destroy our country. Period. Anyone who does not recognize this is either blind or part of the problem. Karl Marx in his book, The Communist Manifesto, stresses the importance of finding an issue that allows the government to control the people. Well, the Democrat Marxists have found that issue: the manmade CO2 climate change hoax. Regrettably, we have some Republican legislators who have been going along with this non-scientific, unproven belief that threatens to destroy our country and our standard of living.

Recent declarations by respected climate scientists are increasingly showing that there is no evidence that CO2 emissions have any impact on climate conditions. In fact, they have argued that increasing CO2 levels enhance plant growth essential to man’s survival. The climate has changed dramatically over millions of years as a result of natural causes such as solar flares, earth orbit, tilt of the earth, ocean currents, and other changes having nothing to do with man’s actions. Climate change, whatever the causes, is not an existential threat to mankind. What is a threat are the extreme actions being taken to combat a non-existing problem. No modern civilization can exist without adequate, inexpensive energy from fossil fuels. We are committing social suicide by going along with the elimination of fossil fuels.

Let’s look at some things occurring in North Carolina that are heading us down the road to economic catastrophe. First, in 2021 the General Assembly passed and Governor Cooper signed HB 951 which established the requirement to cut carbon emissions from electric power plants 70% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This will require massive expenditures on solar and wind farms and the construction of massive battery centers to store electricity, since wind and solar are intermittent sources. Who makes the solar panels, the wind mills, and the battery components? You guessed it; our global enemy China. It is estimated that the average consumer’s electric bill will quadruple and there will be massive electricity shortages. Germany, which tried to rely on solar and wind, had to reactivate their coal fired plants to handle the demand for electricity this winter. The cost of electricity in Germany is three times higher than in the United States. Meanwhile, we have the technology to have the cleanest coal fired plants in the world and have a 200 year supply of coal; which we are now sending to China.

Second, the Cooper regime is proceeding with the construction of offshore wind farms. One off Kitty Hawk and the other of the southern coast near Bald Head Island. Again, these will be built by foreign countries and use Chinese components. Just think how vulnerable these wind mills will be to attack in the event of war.

I hope I have made my case that these actions are a real threat to the citizens of North Carolina; and all for no legitimate reason. Manmade Climate Change is a Marxist hoax! We need to pressure the General Assembly to (1) repeal HB 951 establishing CO2 emission mandates; (2) block the construction of wind farms off the coast; (3) remove all state tax incentives for solar and wind energy projects. Before you cast your vote this year, find our where each candidate stands on this issue. It is a looming crisis that must be stopped.

Want A Good Deal On A Used Electric Vehicle?

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On Tuesday, Autoblog reported the following:

Electric vehicles were already considered unappealing by a section of the car-buying public. Now their image could take another hit as rental giant Hertz dumps 20,000 of them, mainly Teslas, for gas-powered cars.

Hertz, the largest U.S. fleet operator of EVs, has blamed the sale on high repair costs and weak demand for the vehicles it offers on rent.

Analysts and industry experts believe the move will affect the second-hand market for EVs and dissuade buyers who are already rethinking big purchases due to higher borrowing costs.

“The larger impact of Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology,” said Karl Brauer, analyst at used-car aggregator iSeeCars.com.

“Mainstream consumers are already hesitant to buy an EV, and this news only supports their concerns.”

The higher costs associated with repairing EVs stem from a lack of sufficient expertise in dealing with such vehicles and challenges in getting the replacement parts as they are still very new, industry experts said. 

Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr flagged elevated costs caused by damages to certain EVs, particularly Teslas, last year at a conference. In announcing the liquidation of Hertz’s EV fleet, Scherr also blamed the high repair costs on Tesla for not offering to discount bulk purchases of replacement parts the way other automakers do.

Tesla and Polestar, whose cars are popular with car rental firms, did not respond to a request for comment. Car rental firms Avis and Enterprise also did not respond to a query on their EV strategy.

I love the concept of an electric vehicle. I love the idea of being able to park my car in the garage at night and have it fully charged in the morning–never having to stop for gas. However, I worry about fire danger–I don’t want my house to burn down because I didn’t want to buy gas. I also worry about the rising cost of electricity and how economical an electric car would be in the future. I also worry about having to spend thousands of dollars to replace a battery on a used car. Until those issues are addressed fully, I will simply stand back and admire the acceleration that comes with an electric car.

Do You Like Having Electricity 24 Hours A Day?

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Years ago, I remember talking to someone from another country who was very impressed that Americans had electricity for 24 hours every day. In her country they thought four or five hours of electricity a day was good. That was a foreign concept for me. I would like it to remain a foreign concept.

On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about President Biden’s plans for American energy.

The article reports:

The Biden administration made two virtue-signaling proclamations at last week’s COP28 conference in Dubai that it says will help save the planet from climate change.

The policies aren’t likely to change the planet’s temperature by even one-tenth of a degree, but they might just destroy the 21st-century American industrial economy as we know it.

First, Team Biden announced it will stop production of all new coal plants in the United States.

This comes on the heels of President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency saying this year it would impose new power plant emission regulations that are virtually impossible for coal plants to comply with.

The article also notes comments from the Vice-President:

Vice President Kamala Harris trumpeted the next day new rules to “sharply reduce methane from the oil and natural gas industry.”

The administration calls methane a “super-pollutant” that it wants to eliminate because it’s “many times more potent than carbon dioxide.”

But methane is effectively a hydrocarbon that comes from natural gas.

Eliminating methane is a de facto ban on natural gas power plants.

Here is the most sinister part of this story that no one in the Biden administration is telling you: Eradicating coal and natural gas plants will ravage America’s electric power capacity.

These regulations will cause rolling blackouts and brownouts across the country, much like we’ve already seen in California — America’s forerunner of radical anti-fossil fuel policies.

The lights will go out intermittently, and home heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer will have to be turned off or rationed.

Without gas and coal plants, hospitals, schools, the internet, construction projects and factories will be routinely shut down when unreliable alternative energy sources like wind and solar power aren’t delivering enough juice.

Upward of 60% of America’s electric power generation will go away — and soon.

Does anyone want to make a wager as to whether or not the mucky-mucks who are making these policies will continue to have electricity 24 hours a day while the rest of us have electricity for maybe eight hours a day?

Has Anyone In Washington Actually Read The U.S. Constitution?

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On Saturday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported the following:

Biden invokes emergency wartime powers to boost heat pump production with $169M in federal funds in administration’s latest push to replace gas appliances

  • Biden will fund nine manufacturers with $169 million from last year’s climate bill
  • Funding is the first under emergency authority on the basis of climate change
  • Biden is using the powers under Defense Production Act to boost green energy

There is no reason to use emergency powers because of climate change. The first question here is how much money did these nine manufacturers pay Joe Biden or his family recently? It also should be noted that heat pumps are not efficient in temperatures below 40 degrees. We had a heat pump in our first house in North Carolina and on the rare occasions that the temperature dropped below 40 degrees, the house was cold and we had to resort to small portable heaters. There is no way that this is better for the environment than gas heat. Where does the Biden administration think that electricity comes from?

The article reports”

President Joe Biden will use special wartime powers to boost US production of heat pumps, by funding nine manufacturing projects with $169 million from last year’s climate bill, the Energy Department said on Friday.

The awards were granted under the emergency authority of the Cold War-era Defense Production Act (DPA), which Biden invoked on the basis of climate change to boost spending on clean energy technology. 

‘The President is using his wartime emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to turbocharge US manufacturing of clean technologies and strengthen our energy security,’ said Biden’s National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi in a statement.

Heat pumps can heat and cool homes and businesses more efficiently using thermal transfer, which moves heat from one area to another, rather than generating new heat.

President Biden’s wartime powers do not apply in this case, and I hope either Congress slaps him down or that a court case is quickly put together to stop this nonsense.

Paying People To Attack Our Soldiers

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On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported that the Biden administration has given Iran access to another $10 billion in previously frozen assets. Iran is the major sponsor of terrorism around the world. Now they have more money to buy weapons to attack American soldiers stationed in the Middle East. I am sure the people who manufacture weapons are thrilled–they just got $10 billion in new sales.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is extending a sanctions waiver that will allow Iran continued access to $10 billion in previously frozen assets, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The four-month extension will allow Iran continued access to previously frozen $10 billion in electricity revenues for humanitarian aid, according to the AP. Critics of the Biden administration have said that giving Iran to access frozen funds will free up money in Tehran’s money reserves and allow them to carry on sponsoring terrorism.

The sanctions waiver will authorize Iraq to continue purchasing electricity services from Iran and give Tehran access to the billions in payments currently stored in the Iraqi banks, according to the AP. The Biden administration made assurances that Iran has only spent a small amount of the existing $10 billion and can only be used for humanitarian relief.

Does anyone believe that the $10 billion will be used only for humanitarian relief? Are we really that naïve?

The article concludes:

“Biden administration doubles down on giving $10 billion sanctions relief to Iran,” Richard Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on X Tuesday. “Money is fungible. This is 100% budget support for the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

Iran supports a number of terrorist groups to carry out its will, including Hamas, which killed over 1,400 civilians in attacks on Israel that began on Oct. 7. Iranian-backed militias have launched 46 attacks on U.S. troops on U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East since the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

This Green Energy Thing Just Isn’t Working

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On Friday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the current state of green energy.

The article reports:

Wind and solar are both terrible methods of generating electricity, both expensive and unreliable. The one thing that can make the situation worse is the drive to electrify everything, including motor vehicles. The impracticality of this “green” vision has become blindingly obvious, and the “green” movement has begun to fall apart.

The article cites a few recent articles on the subject.

From the Telegraph: “Electricity prices ‘must rise by 70pc to pay for more wind farms.’”

No new wind farms will be built off Britain’s shores unless the Government lets operators earn more money from the electricity they produce, the chief of the nation’s biggest generator has said.

Tom Glover, country chair of RWE’s UK arm, said the price offered by the Government to wind farm operators must rise by as much as 70pc to entice companies to build.
***
His warning follows the disastrous result of the last offshore wind allocation round in September, which ended in a humiliation for ministers with not one company offering to build new offshore wind farms.

From Robert Bryce: “Ford Lost $62,016 For Every EV It Sold In 3Q.”

The bloodbath in Ford Motor Company’s EV division continues. On Thursday, Ford reported an operating loss of $1.3 billion in its EV division during the third quarter. That translates into a loss of $62,016 for each of the 20,962 EVs it sold during the period.

That’s a smaller loss than the company recorded in the second quarter, when it lost $72,762 for each EV and the $66,446 it lost per EV during the first quarter.
***
In its October 26 press release, Ford provided an additional comment on the EV losses, saying, “According to the company, many North America customers interested in buying EVs are unwilling to pay premiums for them over gas or hybrid vehicles, sharply compressing EV prices and profitability.” …

That’s a truth bomb of the first order, one to which veteran observers of the EV hype should rightly reply, “ya think?” Consumers, that is, consumers who aren’t part of the Benz and Beemer crowd, have been unwilling to pay premiums for EVs throughout the century-long history of the EV business. The question that Ford shareholders should be asking the company’s management, and CEO Jim Farley in particular, is obvious: “What the hell took you so long to recognize that customers aren’t willing to pay high prices for EVs?”

I don’t know if I can ever forgive Ford for what it did to the Mustang!

This is what happens when the government interferes in the free market.

The Answer To Carbon Emissions May Reside In The Thing The Environmentalists Hate The Most

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On November 11th, Natural Gas Now posted an article about the decreasing CO2 emissions in the United States. Oddly enough the decrease is largely due to the change from coal-generated electricity to natural gas-generated electricity. The availability and low price of natural gas is due to the practice of fracking. So the thing that the environmentalists hate the most (fracking) is the thing that is getting the result the environmentalists are seeking. Irony at its best.

The article reports:

  • After rising by 3% in 2018, energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell 3% in the United States in 2019. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) U.S. Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2019 analysis, total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019 were about 150 million metric tons (MMmt) lower than their 2018 level. EIA attributes nearly all (96%) of this decline to the changing mix of fuels used to generate electricity.
  • The electric power sector accounted for nearly one-third of U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2019; only the transportation sector emitted more CO2. Within the electric power sector, emissions from coal fell by 15% (177 MMmt) in 2019.
  • U.S. electric power sector emissions have fallen 33% from their peak in 2007 because less electricity has been generated from coal and more electricity has been generated from natural gas (which emits less CO2 when combusted) and non-carbon sources. U.S. total energy-related CO2 emissions have fallen 15% since their 2007 peak.
  • Changes in the composition of electricity generation, as well as improvements in energy efficiency, have led to a decrease in the total carbon intensity of electricity, which has fallen from 619 metric tons per megawatthour (mt/MWh) in 2005 to 408 mt/MWh in 2019.

The article also notes:

Yes, there have been other factors, including growth in solar and wind generation, but the big gorilla when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions has been the substitution of natural gas for coal. And, that’s happened thanks to fracking, which is something fractivists are eager to avoid, deny and trash. Now, just imagine what will happen as carbon-capture comes on line. It’s real, it’s coming fast and it will make natural gas far superior to any renewable energy source, rendering the latter as a silly failed experiment.

I honestly do not believe that man is important enough to be a major influence on the earth’s climate. However, I do believe we have a responsibility to keep the environment as clean as possible while balancing the economic needs of civilization. It does seem that natural gas is one way to achieve that balance.

When The Government Gets Involved, The Incentive For Innovation Goes Down

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Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article about the Crescent Dunes thermal solar plant in central Nevada. The thermal solar plant has failed.

The article reports:

Crescent Dunes was a serious project designed to attack the great weakness of solar electricity.  Sunshine is strongest in the middle of the day, but demand for electricity peaks at the end of the day and in the early evening.  This is especially true during the Las Vegas summer, when air-conditioners are running full blast as temperatures soar well past 100 degrees in the late afternoon.

A method of storing plentiful midday solar electricity so it can be utilized in the evening was needed.  Otherwise, solar would hit a ceiling at far less than 50%.  One method is to use batteries.  That is wildly expensive and quite dangerous as the flammable batteries store vast quantities of energy.  That’s not stopping the Gemini project, scheduled for a site north of Las Vegas.  The Gemini solar project will have a $500-million battery system that stores as much energy as 5 million sticks of dynamite (1,400 megawatt-hours).  There have been dozens of fires at similar installations around the world.

The Crescent Dunes project stores energy in the form of molten salts.  During the day, sunshine is concentrated by motorized mirrors aiming beams of sunlight at a central tower, where the liquid salts are heated to a high temperature.  The hot salts are stored in a large tank.  When power is need in the early evening, heat is taken from the tank to make steam and drive a turbine-generator to make electricity.  Crescent Dunes was plagued by leaks in the salt tank, forcing it to close for months at a time.  By contract, the electricity was sold to NV Energy for $135 per megawatt-hour, or about six times as much as it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity in existing natural gas plants.

Crescent Dunes is eligible for the usual government subsidies amounting to around 75% of the construction cost.  It was granted a $700-million government loan guarantee on the ground that it was pioneering, experimental technology, which it was and is.  That problems emerged is not surprising.  That happens to pioneers.  But the not unexpected failures at Crescent Dunes besmirch the propaganda that solar energy is the wave of the future.  Thus, it is necessary to kill Crescent Dunes for the spurious reason that it is obsolete technology.  Like all utility solar, it is useless, but it was an honest attempt to fix the severe problem that solar doesn’t work well late in the day, and not at all after the sun sets.

If green energy were allowed to emerge on its own in a free market, we might have actually solved some of the problems associated with it by now. However, when you introduce government subsidies into the free market, you lessen the drive to innovate. Useful inventions make money for their inventors. That provides incentive to create new ways of dealing with problems. When the government gets involved, those incentives are gone (at taxpayers’ expense).

That Didn’t Go The Way It Was Supposed To

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At one time or another, many of us have had a dream of living ‘off the grid’–private well, private septic system, solar energy, etc. Think of how much you could save on energy bills. Well, the solar industry has promoted various aspects of solar energy over the years, and many people have installed solar panels on their homes to cut utility expenses. I suspect that many of the people who installed these panels also assumed that if the power went out, their solar panels would keep supplying their homes with electricity. Evidently that is not true.

PJ Media reported the following today:

Going solar isn’t necessarily any protection from California’s new “planned” power outages, and local residents and businesses are enduring a lot more than just a few inconveniences.

Bloomberg’s Chris Martin has a story on California’s troubles with one of my favorite headlines ever: “Californians Learning That Solar Panels Don’t Work in Blackouts.” Apparently, many of California’s would-be Earth-savers had no idea that just putting solar panels on their roofs doesn’t mean they’ll have power when PG&E switches it off. As Martin explains:

Most panels are designed to supply power to the grid — not directly to houses. During the heat of the day, solar systems can crank out more juice than a home can handle. Conversely, they don’t produce power at all at night. So systems are tied into the grid, and the vast majority aren’t working this week as PG&E Corp. cuts power to much of Northern California to prevent wildfires.

The only way for most solar panels to work during a blackout is pairing them with batteries. That market is just starting to take off. Sunrun Inc., the largest U.S. rooftop solar company, said some of its customers are making it through the blackouts with batteries, but it’s a tiny group — countable in the hundreds.

Martin quotes Sunrun Chairman Ed Fenster explaining that solar power with local battery storage is “the perfect combination for getting through these shutdowns,” although he fails to mention just what an expensive proposition that is, especially in the rural areas most affected by California’s return to the primitive. Fester, whose company sells those very batteries, expects battery sales “to boom” now that the promised blackouts have begun.

I guess gas generators are probably the only way to have power during the blackouts. Wow.

Following The Money On Renewable Energy

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John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article yesterday about the cost of the a green energy proposal in Minnesota. The article illustrates what will happen if this sort of program is attempted on a national scale.

The article reports:

Today Center of the American Experiment released a groundbreaking paper that addresses a relatively mild “green” proposal: legislation that would raise the renewable energy standard in Minnesota from 25% to 50%. Two of my staffers have been working on the paper for months, drawing on publicly available (but rarely consulted) sources to understand what would be necessary to achieve that 50% goal, what it would cost, how it would impact the state’s economy, and what effect it would have on global temperatures.

The paper is titled “Doubling Down on Failure: How a 50 Percent by 2030 Renewable Energy Standard Would Cost Minnesota $80.2 Billion.” With appendices, it runs to 75 pages. I am not aware of a similarly comprehensive analysis that has been done of any “green” proposal at either the state or the federal level. The paper is fully transparent: all assumptions, data and calculations are clearly set forth. The appendices are largely spread sheets. If anyone disagrees with the report’s conclusions, it should be easy to identify where and why those disagreements arise. You can read the paper here.

The article cites a few highlights from the report:

* Building and maintaining “green” wind and solar facilities, along with transmission lines and necessary natural gas complementary plants (to provide electricity when the wind isn’t blowing, i.e. 60% of the time), would cost $80.2 billion through 2050. For a state like Minnesota, that number is out of the question.

* Every household in Minnesota would pay an average of $1,200 per year, in 2016 dollars, through higher electricity rates and otherwise.

* Electricity prices would rise by 40.2%.

* Electricity-intensive industries like mining, agriculture, manufacturing and health care would be hurt the most. Once again, urban greenies are hammering rural, and physically productive, America. [That last is my commentary, not found in the executive summary.]

* Higher electricity prices are a dead loss that will reduce spending in other areas as household budgets are squeezed. Therefore, according to economist John Phelan, using the generally accepted IMPLAN software, achieving the 50% renewable goal would cost Minnesota 21,000 permanent jobs, and reduce the state’s GDP by $3.1 billion annually. It is one small step on the road to Venezuela.

This really does not sound like a good idea. The push for green energy has always been about government power–whether at the state or federal level. It is interesting that the political left has chosen to attack fossil fuels just at the time when America has achieved energy independence because of fossil fuels and fossil fuels are driving our economic success. Economic success is the enemy of those who espouse socialism–if people are become prosperous, why would they want something different?

Green Energy At Its Finest!

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I am not against green energy. I am against government subsidies of green energy. If the free market is allowed to work in the alternative energy segment of the economy, we will get the best, most efficient, and least expensive form of alternative energy possible. Someone will make a huge profit from their invention, but I am fine with that. However, whenever the government gets involved, things get more expensive and less efficient.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted a story that is a glaring example of this. The story is about a solar roadway in Idaho.

The article quotes The Daily Caller:

An expensive solar road project in Idaho can’t even power a microwave most days, according to the project’s energy data.

The Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways project generated an average of 0.62 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per day since it began publicly posting power data in late March. To put that in perspective, the average microwave or blow drier consumes about 1 kWh per day.

On March 29th, the solar road panels generated 0.26 kWh, or less electricity than a single plasma television consumes. On March 31st, the panels generated 1.06 kWh, enough to barely power a single microwave. The panels have been under-performing their expectations due to design flaws, but even if they had worked perfectly they’d have only powered a single water fountain and the lights in a nearby restroom.

Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways has been in development for 6.5 years and received a total of $4.3 million in funding to generate 90 cents worth of electricity.

I have no problem with Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways trying to develop a road that generates electricity. Go for it! However, I do have a problem with my tax dollars paying for their research. Let them create a prototype that investors would be interested in and go from there. That is the way the free market works. That is how people actually prosper.