Tag Archives: energy transition

Didn’t Anyone Think This Through?

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On Tuesday, The American Thinker posted an article about the demand for copper that the switch to electric vehicles would create.

The article reports:

A team of University of Michigan researchers recently discovered that the amount of copper needed to keep up with the manufactured demand created by the globalist E.V. agenda is “essentially impossible” to generate. On May 16th, Engineering and Technology published an article by Tanya Weaver which covered the results of the new study:

Copper cannot be mined quickly enough to keep up with current policies requiring the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), according to a University of Michigan study.

…

The study found that renewable energy’s copper needs would outstrip what copper mines can produce at the current rate. Between 2018 and 2050, the world will need to mine 115% more copper than has been mined in all of human history up until 2018 just to meet current copper needs without considering the green energy transition.

To meet the copper needs of electrifying the global vehicle fleet, as many as six new large copper mines must be brought online annually over the next several decades. About 40% of the production from new mines will be required for EV-related grid upgrades.

So what exactly do these numbers look like, in context? Well here’s this, also from Weaver:

[A]n EV requires three to five times more copper than petrol or diesel cars, not to mention the copper required for upgrades to the electricity grid.

‘A normal Honda Accord needs about 40 pounds of copper. The same battery electric Honda Accord needs almost 200 pounds of copper,’ said Adam Simon, professor of earth and environmental studies at the University of Michigan.

‘We show in the paper that the amount of copper needed is essentially impossible for mining companies to produce.’

Wow. Wind mill blades that don’t biodegrade filling up our landfills, solar panels made with toxic chemicals, and now not enough copper to be green. Can we please just go back to fossil fuel. It works and can be used in a way to minimize pollution.

When The Chickens Come Home To Roost

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Yesterday Legal Insurrection posted an article that illustrates the duplicity of the Biden campaign and the Biden presidency.

The article reports:

In October 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden privately told U.S. miners he would support boosting domestic production of metals used to make electric vehicles, solar panels, and other products crucial to his climate plan.

The U.S. Democratic presidential candidate also supports bipartisan efforts to foster a domestic supply chain for lithium, copper, rare earths, nickel and other strategic materials that the United States imports from China and other countries, the sources said.

Just last month, Biden persuaded the nation’s largest coal miners’ union to support the move away from coal and other fossil fuels in exchange for a “true energy transition” that includes thousands of jobs in renewable energy and spending on technology to make coal cleaner.

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said ensuring jobs for displaced miners — including 7,000 coal workers who lost their jobs last year — is crucial to any infrastructure bill taken up by Congress.

“I think we need to provide a future for those people, a future for anybody that loses their job because of a transition in this country, regardless if it’s coal, oil, gas or any other industry for that matter,″ Roberts said in an online speech to the National Press Club.

“We talk about a ‘just transition’ all the time,″ Roberts added. “I wish people would quit using that. There’s never been a just transition in the history of the United States.″

Unfortunately the coal miners’ union forgot that President Biden has a long history in politics–some of it indicating that his word might not be trustworthy.

The article notes:

This month, Biden “forgot” the promises. Biden’s team said it will rely on ally countries to supply the bulk of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and focus on processing them domestically into battery parts. The move is part of a strategy designed to placate the Democratic Party’s eco-activists.

The plans will be a blow to U.S. miners who had hoped Biden would rely primarily on domestically sourced metals, as his campaign had signaled last autumn, to help fulfill his ambitions for a less carbon-intensive economy.

We can debate whether or not it is foolish to expect any politician to keep his promises, but you might want to include in that debate that President Trump did keep his promises.

The article also notes:

The plan will reportedly rely on metals imported from Canada, Australia, and Brazil. This is not a trivial economic move, either. Biden plans to make the entire federal fleet electric.

That includes 245,000 in various federal agencies… 225,000 in the United States Postal Service… and another 173,000 in the military.

That adds up to a grand total of 643,000 cars, trucks, and vans set for an upgrade on the U.S. government’s dime. And after the year we’ve seen for EVs in 2020, this should come as no surprise.

As an extra bonus, electric car manufacture will also be outsourced.

This does not sound like the coal miners’ union will be benefiting at all from the energy policies of the Biden administration.