Makes sense to me......
Green Energy / Climate Issues - Failures - Lies and Falsehoods
- Thread starter GURPS
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I like how the article noted the lack of broader coverage.
I posted about this a couple of days ago ...
Climate Hypocrisy
Just Stop Oil is hoping to 'paralyze' London this week (Is it working?) This group has been disrupting events for days. David highlighted some of the incidents which happened over the weekend. But there is apparently a concerted effort focused on shutting down traffic all around the city of...
forums.somd.com
Driver Dials 911 After Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm Bogarts EV Charging Station
As previously reported, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and some of her staffers set out on a 4-day electric vehicle road trip through the Southeast this summer.
They traveled from North Carolina to Tennessee to tout the Biden Regime’s commitment to funding electric vehicles that virtually no one wants (or can afford).
According to a reporter embedded in the Energy Department’s EV caravan, the entourage had trouble charging the vehicles.
The best part of the road trip? A family called the police on an Energy Department staffer who was so desperate to reserve a charging plug for Jennifer Granholm’s EV that he blocked the charging station with a gas-powered vehicle.
There was trouble in EV paradise as the caravan of electric vehicles began to run out of charge as they passed through a suburb of Augusta, Georgia.
Energy Department staffers pulled over to charge their fleet when they realized there weren’t enough available fast-charging plugs to juice up their vehicles.
One of the four chargers was broken and the other plugs were in use.
An Energy Department staffer was so desperate to reserve one of the fast-charging plugs for Granholm’s approaching EV that he boxed in a poor family – with a baby in the car – on a sweltering hot day – with his gas-powered vehicle.
The family was so angry that they called the police on Granholm’s staffer.
Small modular nuclear reactor project in Virginia to enter new phase
Youngkin’s response has been to devise a more moderate energy plan that doesn’t abandon the pursuit of alternative energies but attempts to relax the timeline, much of the plan has not yet made it into passing legislation. He’s also advocated exploring other non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, like hydrogen generation and nuclear energy.
In particular, he wants Virginia to invest in small modular reactors or SMRs – in theory, less cost-prohibitive than larger nuclear power plants. The Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a design for SMRs in the U.S. in January.
Youngkin unveiled his “all-American, all-of-the-above” energy plan in October 2022 in Lynchburg and announced that it included a “moonshot”: “Build[ing] a small, modular reactor that will supply baseload demands within the next 10 years.”
This now-famous statement prompted members of the LENOWISCO Planning Commission to get to work. LENOWISCO, an acronym for Lee, Wise and Scott counties and the independent city of Norton, all of which comprise part of Southwest Virginia.
There is a small nuclear reactor on Wright-Patterson AFB, which was decommissioned back in the 70's. It was experimental, but did provide most of the electricity the base used. I'd think that the technology has improved since then.
Biden Incompetence Tees Up Years of Energy Woes
For all the promise of these alternative energy sources, they are failing to live up to their hype either in availability or price. The Financial Times reports, "Larger solar projects that supply power to the grid were the worst hit, with installations declining by 31 percent as a result of probes into tariff-dodging by Chinese manufacturers and US customs seizures of modules linked to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, according to Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)."
Wind power is doing even worse. Ørsted, a Denmark-based offshore wind firm with a big presence in the United States, has canceled two major wind projects off the coast of New Jersey.
“Macroeconomic factors have changed dramatically over a short period of time, with high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply chain bottlenecks impacting our long-term capital investments,” David Hardy, group executive vice president and CEO of Americas at Ørsted, said. “As a result, we have no choice but to cease development of Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2. We are extremely disappointed to have to take this decision, particularly because New Jersey is poised to be a U.S. and global hub for offshore wind energy.”
Late last summer, the Biden administration offered offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico for sale, with few takers. Now, other East Coast wind projects in Rhode Island and New York may also face the ax.
Wall Street Journal:
Prominent car rental company reneges on promises of an EV fleet citing ‘twice’ the cost
By Olivia MurrayAmerican Thinker is fortunate enough to have a number of friends around the world, and one of those friends, an Aussie, sent me a story with this lede from the JoNova blog:
The original item came from a car outlet, and reported that Hertz was dialing back on promises the company had made to transition a sizable portion of its rental fleet from gas-powered vehicles to rechargeable ones, citing “higher than expected repair costs and price cuts.” From that article for the backstory:
Here’s why a $2M coal mine in Wyoming could be worth $37B
A former Wall Street banker who dished out $2 million for an old coal mine in rural Wyoming has possibly hit a $37 billion mother lode after the discovery of “rare-earth elements” at the site, according to a report.
Randall Atkins, the son of infamous oil tycoon Orin Atkins, bought the sleepy Brook Mine outside of Sheridan, Wyo., sight unseen, 12 years ago.
However, recent tests conducted by government researchers revealed that the 15,800-acre mineral reserve contains what might be the largest unconventional rare-earth deposit in the country, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Rare-earth minerals — such as gallium and germanium — are vital in the production of superconductors, and are also needed to power electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines.
When Atkins’ company Ramaco Resources first purchased the mine, the 71-year-old “didn’t know the difference between rare earths and rare coins,” he told the outlet.
Yesterday I allowed myself a little rant about the Superman Fallacy and the importance of ‘local, local, local,’ and reader response was strong. On my way to the gym last evening, an enthusiastic C&C fan stopped me, thanked me for the post, and let me know she’s running for her first local office. Perfect.And then this UK Daily Mail headline popped up in the feed: “Michigan township Green Charter votes out its entire local government over China-linked EV battery maker Gotion's plan to build a factory there.”
Boom: voters recalled every single township board member.
It’s a curious story. The five small-town board members who all got the boot by recall were all republicans, and their small county is solidly-red. They were replaced with five conservatives who ran as ‘NPA’ (non-party affiliated). Boiling down the issue, the replaced board members upset locals by fast-tracking a Joe Biden-approved, Chinese communist-party-affiliated, mega-corporate, environmentally-disastrous electric battery plant.
Residents complained that the booted board refused to listen to the public’s comments and concerns about the plant. Resident Corri Riebow, who had no previous political experience, ran for town clerk in the recall, and defeated the incumbent, Janet Clark. “We just plan on making it as difficult as possible for them to continue their process,” Corri said about the proposed battery plant. “They don't even have a site planned, they don't have permits yet, so we're not their friend,” she added, ominously.
I don’t know the backstory about how local Green Charter republicans organized their successful recall coup. But it had to have taken some work. The story is a perfect example of exactly what I described yesterday. It’s easier to accomplish things like this in a small red town like Green Charter, but the same principles of locality apply in Chicago and Philadelphia.
Local, local, local!
☕️ UNWELL VISIT ☙ Friday, November 10, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Court upholds Fla's anti-cross-dresser sports ban; local station braves 'anti-vaxx' label; Senator subpoenas Epstein logs; township recalls entire board; lots of SADS fitness influencers; and more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
And then this UK Daily Mail headline popped up in the feed: “Michigan township Green Charter votes out its entire local government over China-linked EV battery maker Gotion's plan to build a factory there.”
Angry Voters Kick Out Entire Town Gov't in Last Election
Texas officials warn of winter rolling blackouts; unreliable energy sources, population boom, all factors
“While the amount of electricity being used continues to grow at rates that outpace population growth, the amount of new generation being added to the grid has kept pace mainly in renewable energy,” according to the Morning News.
Texas has especially seen gains in wind and solar energy, both of which have been shown to be less reliable than traditional fossil fuels. Indeed, both were largely to blame for the rolling blackouts that were necessary in 2021.
“Nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators,” the Austin American-Statesman reported on Feb. 17th, 2021.
“Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt,” the paper added.
Conversely, the state’s fossil fuel systems worked just fine. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted at the time that, far from failing, the state’s fossil fuels jumped into overdrive to hold off the crisis as long as possible — all as nearly 100 percent of the state’s wind turbines failed.
“Between 12 a.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 16, wind power plunged 93% while coal increased 47% and gas 450%, according to the [Energy Information Administration],” the board wrote.
“Yet the renewable industry and its media mouthpieces are tarring gas, coal and nuclear because they didn’t operate at 100% of their expected potential during the Arctic blast even though wind turbines failed nearly 100%.”
Wyoming governor’s speech erupts into fight over future of fossil fuels, carbon capture
“It is clear that we have a warming climate. It is clear that carbon dioxide is a major contributor to that challenge. There is an urgency to addressing this issue,” Gordon said during the “Decarbonizing The West” talk.
The governor added that the problem won’t be solved by turning off fossil fuels, and he promoted the use of carbon capture and sequestration. These technologies either capture carbon dioxide (CO2) at the source, such as the exhaust stack at a coal plant, or directly suck it out of the atmosphere. The captured gas is then stored underground in geological formations.
Captured CO2 can also be used in making products, Gordon noted in his talk, such as asphalt and building materials. It can also be used to help increase production of oil wells, a process called enhanced oil recovery.
Carbon capture sounds simple enough, but critics point out that scaling the technology up to meet the stated goals is an enormously expensive undertaking. Today, there are approximately 40 carbon capture facilities in operation in the world, capturing around 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
To reach the goal of making human-caused carbon dioxide emissions neutral by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that 70 to 100 of these facilities will have to come online every year for the next 27 years. “The numbers are just astronomical. This just isn't going to happen. We're never gonna get anywhere close to these kinds of numbers,” Steve Goreham, author of “Green Breakdown,” told Just The News.