Green Energy / Climate Issues - Failures - Lies and Falsehoods

[GURPS]

'In Case of Grid Meltdown, Break Glass'​

Best to have those batteries and schmaybe a little Sterno on hand to warm up some water when the heat pump they’ve shoved down your throat can’t operate for lack of electricity. At least, that’s why I’m figuring they’ve issued this prep list – because they’ve botched up the national grid badly enough you can’t rely on it.

But that’s not how they’re framing the warning at all. Not a peep about what’s missing on their end – just what might come down the pike. This is all about “cyber attacks,” sunspots, “phishing emails,” even “flooding and climate-related emergencies.”

Like cold?

Stock up on battery devices in case of grid meltdown, Britons told
Deputy prime minister urges public to imagine analogue era to prepare for digital or power blackouts
People must buy battery-powered radios, torches and candles to boost their “personal resilience” in the event of a national crisis wiping out digital network or power supplies, the government has said.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, has given the first of what will be an annual update to MPs on the government’s national risk and resilience strategy.
Guidance to be issued next year will help people to prepare for different emergencies.
He said that members of the public needed to be more “personally resilient” as he suggested they have become too reliant on devices powered by the internet.

THINK ANALOG MODERN WEAKLINGS

Hilarious advice in a hysterical piece that never once mentions how deconstructed and compromised what used to be a given is that these very same geniuses now telling you to live like a pioneer with candles, chalk, and a slate have completely jacked up – a reliable, secure electrical grid. One that only was lost if something truly cataclysmic occurred, such as lines blown down, the London Blitz, or biblical inundation. And, even then, it wasn’t the generation of electricity that was compromised – it was the delivery. Lines were repaired and replaced, homes or business dried out and rewired, power back on. In the meantime, everyone else not in the affected area still had lights and heat.

In today’s UK, thanks to their NetZero transition, the problem IS generating the power reliably. And when their vaunted renewables let them down – always at the worst possible juncture – they have cut themselves so far to the bone by eliminating instead of modernizing traditional power sources, they are in dire shape when back-up is needed. Like this past weekend.

So everyone gets to fret and “conserve” instead of seamlessly carry-on.

“Buy batteries,” indeed.

Temperatures plunged last week across Europe and the wind stopped blowing for a number of days. Without gas- and coal-fired turbines coming immediately to the rescue, thousands of people could have perished in the bitter cold. Yet natural gas is being legislated out of existence as a source of electricity across the continent. The black lie at the heart of Net Zero energy fantasies is that there are workable back-ups for intermittent wind and solar. Apart from oil and gas, there are none. Once politicians remove them from the mix – if elected, the British Labour party plans this in barely 60 months – the old and the infirm will shiver and die when a windless electricity grid produces negligible amounts of crucial power.

Yeah D sized batteries are going to heat your house

 

[GURPS]

These hot rocks can glow brighter than the sun. They could also help spell the end of fossil fuels​

“(The rocks) in the box right now are about 1,600 degrees Celsius,” Andrew Ponec said, standing next to a thermal battery the size of a small building. That is nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, “Hotter than the melting point of steel,” he explained.

But what makes his box of white-hot rocks so significant is they were not heated by burning tons coal or gas, but by catching sunlight with the thousands of photovoltaic solar panels that surround his prototype west of Fresno.

If successful, Ponec and his start-up Antora Energy could be part of a new, multi-trillion-dollar energy storage sector that simply uses sun or wind to make boxes of rocks hot enough to run the world’s biggest factories.

“People sometimes feel like they’re insulting us by saying, ‘Hey, that sounds really simple,” Ponec laughed. “And we say, ‘No, that’s exactly the point.’”

Ponec’s clean energy passions began when he was a curious public-school kid tinkering with photovoltaics in his parent’s garage and was lured to drop out of Stanford to build grid-scale solar plants.

 

[GURPS]

Ironic Plot Twist Slams The Brakes On Maine Vote To Ban Gas Cars​

An ironic plot twist caused a planned vote to limit sales on gas-powered cars in Maine, forcing a transition to electric vehicles, to come to a screeching halt: a widespread power outage following recent storms that brought heavy rains and high winds.

The Maine Board of Environmental Protection was scheduled to take a final vote on the proposal — which would have called for electric and plug-in hybrids to total 43% of new vehicle sales by 2027 and over 80% by 2032 — but after Governor Janet Mills (D-ME) declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, the vote was postponed until early February.

In addition to the vote being postponed, the effective date of the potential policy has been pushed to 2028 for the first threshold. The board would reevaluate the situation in 2028 to determine the next steps in whether a full transition to electric vehicles would be feasible.

A non-binding vote in October showed that the majority of the board supported the move, but there has been a fair amount of pushback from car dealers and Republican lawmakers. U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) has also issued a statement opposing it.

[clip]

Several types of vehicles would be exempt from the policy even if it passes, according to a report from the Bangor Daily News. Among them: “emergency, off-road, rural postal carrier and military vehicles, along with rental vehicles with a final destination outside Maine.”






Purchase your vehicle in another state or is Maine going to limit registrations or importation of NEW Vehicles

 

[GURPS]

Without Fossil Fuels ‘Six Billion People Would Die Within a Year’​

The “nightmarish scenario” Record envisions demonstrates just how much humanity depends on coal, oil and gas for a wide variety of basic needs. Record made his disturbing conclusion early on: “But what would happen if we literally just stopped oil tomorrow and did without the natural resources on which the world, its economies and populations depend? The answer: most likely six billion people would die within a year.”

Record explained that an immediate cutoff of energy extraction would translate to a loss of basic modern conveniences within a few days in England. “This would mean in turn that the domestic supply would be shut down too – gas would stop flowing, and some 21 million households (74pc of the population) would no longer have heating, hot water, and cooking facilities,” Record wrote.

The British economist went on to address the inability of renewables to compensate for gas in such a scenario and predicted that remaining energy sources would be overloaded until they too were exhausted.

He pointed out that this loss of power would fall most heavily on the vulnerable, those dependent on communicating with others and people living in crowded cities.

In a chilling but obvious paragraph, Record explained that this emergency in England would receive no outside assistance: “In dire national emergencies, international help is often forthcoming, but in this case, this scenario is taking place, in largely identical ways and timing, across the developed and developing world. Only isolated rural communities, agriculturally self-sufficient, would be relatively unaffected. So no international rescue mission.”

The cavalry isn’t coming. The whole world would suffer together.

Furthermore, Record noted that more densely populated areas would have more problems than just a critical lack of food and clean drinking water. He said they would also suffer from a complete breakdown of law and order, fierce competition over remaining food, and rampant disease.

In real life, hungry protestors toppled the government of Sri Lanka for just a small move in this environmentalist direction: Sri Lanka switched away from synthetic fertilizer to organic fertilizer decimating food production in that country.

After explaining that “murder and mayhem” would replace “markets and prices,” Record challenged environmentalists to explain to the world, especially large countries such as India and China, how society can continue to survive and prosper without fossil fuels.

“Do the nice, well-meaning people of Just Stop Oil understand how the world works, or not? If they do, they are nihilists; if they don’t, then why are they disrupting the smooth running of our society, promoting an extreme course of action of which they have no understanding?” Record questioned.

Incredibly, Record outlined a realistic and horrifying scenario of what the world would look like sans fossil fuels, without noting the critical importance of fossil fuels to the production of plastic, cement, steel and most importantly, fertilizer.

Still, the death of the vast majority of living humans through famine, violence, disease, dehydration and neglect is an incredibly high price to pay for listening to environmentalists.

 

[GURPS]

California admits its reckless renewable energy dream is failing​

It is yet another admission of failure by California Democrats in their embarrassing effort to turn the state into a wind- and solar-powered liberal paradise despite the technology being nowhere near making that possible. Diablo Canyon alone provides roughly 9% of the state’s electricity, leading even Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to reverse his previous opposition to the plant and advocate its extension.

It isn’t just nuclear energy that is getting reevaluated either. Newsom went from campaigning to shut down the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility to pushing for it to be expanded. Natural gas comprised about 47% of the state’s energy in 2022, compared to just over 26% for wind and solar combined. This now marks four years of California turning to natural gas to avoid blackouts, with Newsom now taking a more proactive approach to avoid additional headlines about, for example, firing up temporary gas-field generators to keep the grid running.

Implicit in all of this is the admission that California’s renewable dream was a miserable failure. Knowingly or not, California Democrats recklessly pursued energy policies that would leave the state unable to provide consistently reliable energy for its residents. They didn’t have a plan to move on from natural gas or the nuclear energy provided by Diablo Canyon. They only had a dream toward which they wanted to plow forward regardless of the consequences, up until those consequences caused politically inconvenient headlines for Newsom and others about their inability to even keep the lights on.

The renewable energy dreams that Democrats are selling are frauds, and even California Democrats have shown that to be the case now. The rapid transition to unreliable forms of energy is not possible in its current, dreamed time frames. Voters should immediately distrust any politician following California’s model for ruining its energy grid in the name of climate change.

 

[GURPS]

Climate Hysteria Powers Slavery​

“Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you,” Bono shrieked in that song. I agree, and I’m glad my gas-powered truck does not require child slavery to make it run. The Biden administration’s green agenda cannot say the same.

Or consider another line: “Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time.” That lyric today explicitly excludes Congolese slave children. We have deemed “climate change” worth their exploitation. We’re no different than our predecessors, who considered cheap cotton worth the exploitation of slaves decades ago.

Going green is the great driver of the modern slave trade.

To be sure, fossil fuels have drawbacks and limitations. Even as one of their greatest advocates in the public square, I will gladly outline those downsides honestly and objectively. No matter how much the green movement hates oil, natural gas, or coal, they need to accept the truth that their “green” energy requires the forced labor of Congolese children.

End Oil, Erect Slave Camps​

Just recently, the United Nations’ annual climate summit, COP28, ended in Dubai with an agreement that we must end fossil fuels and go green. This is bad news for Congolese slave children, yet no musician will compose a song for them. “Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?” I assure you they do not.

Perhaps if the child slave camps were in Ukraine our elected officials would care.

American fossil fuels built the nation. They drive our economy, power our military, and uphold our national security. They feed the world. Fossil fuels are inexpensive, abundant, and clean. They provide life-saving power and products to all people. And they are 100 percent free of child slavery. Yet, for some reason, we have a president and a powerful green movement that prefer the expensive, unreliable, intermittent, weather-dependent “green” energy that enslaves millions. This is the “energy transition” we hear so much about.

My American fossil fuels are not made with slave blood. Your “green” energy is. And no feel-good song can change that.

Africans Might Know It's Christmas If They Weren't Slaves To 'Green' Energy

Nearly 40 million people across Africa and elsewhere are affected by slavery, a trend driven by developed nations.

thefederalist.com

 

[GURPS]

The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be On the Verge of Collapse​

In 2022, she says, a door-to-door salesman from the company Solgen Construction showed up at her house on the outskirts of Fresno, Calif., pushing what he claimed was a government program affiliated with her utility to get her free solar panels. At one point, he had her touch his tablet device, she says, but he never said she was signing a contract with Solgen or a loan document with GoodLeap. Unbeknownst to Jones, the salesman used "yoursolarguyujosh@gmail.com" as her purported email address—that of course, was not her email address. She’s on a fixed income of $960 a month, and cannot afford the loan she says she was tricked into signing up for; she’s now fighting both Solgen and Goodleap in court.

Her case is not uncommon. Solar customers across the country say that salespeople obscure the specific terms of the financial agreements and cloud the value of the products they peddle. Related court cases are starting to pile up. “I have been practicing consumer law for over a decade, and I’ve never seen anything like what we are seeing in the solar industry right now,” says Kristin Kemnitzer, who represents Jones and says her firm gets “multiple” calls every week from potential clients with similar stories.

Angry customers aren’t the only reason the solar industry is in trouble. Some of the nation’s biggest public solar companies are struggling to stay afloat as questions arise over the viability of the financial products they sold to both consumers and investors to fund their growing operations.

These looming financial problems could topple the residential solar industry at a time when solar is supposed to be saving the world. Though solar represented just 3.4% of the nation’s electricity generation in 2022, studies show that rooftop solar could eventually meet residential electricity demand in many states if deployed widely, freeing American homes from dependency on fossil fuels. To help speed adoption, the Inflation Reduction Act extended a 30% tax credit for residential solar and battery installations.

Still, the residential solar industry is floundering. In late 2023 alone, more than 100 residential solar dealers and installers in the U.S. declared bankruptcy, according to Roth Capital Partners—six times the number in the previous three years combined. Roth expects at least 100 more to fail. The two largest companies in the industry, SunRun and Sunnova, both posted big losses in their most recent quarterly reports, and their shares are down 86% and 81% respectively from their peaks in January 2021. (This isn’t because of an economy-wide trend; the S&P 500 has grown 26% over the same time period.) Sunnova is also under the microscope for having received a $3 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy while facing numerous complaints about troubling sales practices that targeted low-income and elderly homeowners. Another solar giant, SunPower, saw shares plunge 41% on Dec. 18 after it said that it may not be able to continue to operate because of debt issues. Sunlight Financial, a big player in the solar finance space, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October; it also faces a lawsuit alleging that the company made false and misleading statements about its financial well-being.

 

[GURPS]

BP urged to scale back its green agenda: Investor blasts oil giant's 'irrational' climate targets​

An activist investor has urged BP to ditch its green strategy and continue to cash in on oil and gas.

Bluebell Capital Partners wrote to the energy giant’s chairman Helge Lund with concerns about how the FTSE 100 energy giant is run.

The London-based hedge fund blasted BP’s green transition plan as ‘irrational’ and said the strategy has depressed its share price.

Investors are concerned that BP is underperforming compared with rival Shell and US energy giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

Shell has scaled back its net zero transition strategy under the leadership of chief executive Wael Sawan. And American energy firms have doubled down on oil and gas production.

 

[SamSpade]

The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be On the Verge of Collapse​

In 2022, she says, a door-to-door salesman from the company Solgen Construction showed up at her house on the outskirts of Fresno, Calif., pushing what he claimed was a government program affiliated with her utility to get her free solar panels.

It just seriously cost too much - for most systems and household use - the return on investment is either very long - or never arrives before the panels need replacement.

If they were able to make it substantially cheaper - the nation would be beating down their doors. No one wants outrageous electric bills.

 

[Kyle]

The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be On the Verge of Collapse​

Angry customers aren’t the only reason the solar industry is in trouble. Some of the nation’s biggest public solar companies are struggling to stay afloat as questions arise over the viability of the financial products they sold to both consumers and investors to fund their growing operations.

Imagine.

The Greeny Schemey isn't living up to the hype. :shockedface:

 

[Clem72]

It just seriously cost too much - for most systems and household use - the return on investment is either very long - or never arrives before the panels need replacement.

If they were able to make it substantially cheaper - the nation would be beating down their doors. No one wants outrageous electric bills.

Meh, the prices are crazy because people buy more than they need and then get raked over the coals on labor. And of course people get talked into putting it where it makes no sense, like that house on 237 that has their panels 100% in shade all day every day from the trees directly in front of their house.

But if you have a uncomplicated roof with no shading and lots of sun (like 90 percent of rancher style houses in AZ/NM/Texas) you could slap on a 4-8KW system with one string inverter on each roof face rather than microinverters or whatever other crazy flavor of the day is and no batteries. Sure it's not the absolute most efficient way possible, it's also half the price and more than good enough. Install yourself if you're handy and have an electrician hook it up. Can EASILY be done for $2w and if sized right (about 80% of average need) it should pay for itself in like 8-10 years at worst. With incentives, 4-6 years.

 

[SamSpade]

Meh, the prices are crazy because people buy more than they need

NOT possible, at my house - I have never figured out why my home wastes so much energy, but I have to think it's because it leaks cold and hot air like a sieve. I don't plan to remain in this house 10 years - so a ten year recovery of my investment is a waste of my time.

I DO believe - if rooftop solar was a third of the price it is now - EVERYONE would do it.

But I am curious about one thing - if you get MORE than you need - isn't there some thing where the electirc company has to buy it BACK from you?

 

[Clem72]

NOT possible, at my house - I have never figured out why my home wastes so much energy, but I have to think it's because it leaks cold and hot air like a sieve. I don't plan to remain in this house 10 years - so a ten year recovery of my investment is a waste of my time.

I DO believe - if rooftop solar was a third of the price it is now - EVERYONE would do it.

But I am curious about one thing - if you get MORE than you need - isn't there some thing where the electirc company has to buy it BACK from you?

I'm in the same boat. Half my house is made of windows and I have 100% tree cover. Otherwise I would have done it myself a long time ago.

I don't think it's smart to get more than you need, unless you get an awesome deal on the panels and aren't paying for labor. The absolute best you can hope for is that you are paid back at a 1 to 1 rate, but that's almost never the case. Usually any excess power is bought by the power company at wholesale rates, and they may charge you a distribution fee to send them the power. If you find yourself with excess generation it might tip the scale for someone to buy an EV or put up an extra large Christmas lighting display, don't give the power company electricity that they will sell for 5x as much to your neighbor and keep the profit.

 

[GURPS]

Bad news for the narrative. Fox News ran a long-expected story yesterday headlined, Electric buses are sitting unused in cities across the US; here's why. It’s a defective-bus pandemic! They are running out of juice, but for good. The article’s sub-headline explained, “Cities coast-to-coast grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed.”



Whoops. Even in the liberal Mecca of Asheville, North Carolina, three out of five million-dollar 2018 e-buses are gathering pollen sitting around unplugged, unused, and unwanted. The city’s transportation director blamed the idle equipment on a broken door, software issues, and mechanical problems.

In 2020, the Philadelphia Tribune reported the city’s entire $24 million fleet of Proterra E-Buses were out of commission, all done, dead as doornails. A transit agency spokesperson “declined” to specify exactly why the 25 buses – the third-largest fleet of all-electric buses in the U.S. at the time – had been iced, but suggested the issues might be covered under the manufacturer's warranty.

You never know. But doesn’t it always seem like, when it’s the expensive stuff, it’s never covered by the warranty, or the warranty period has expired?

Complicating things, popular e-bus manufacturer Proterra went bankrupt in August last year, after which a small California e-shuttle maker bought Proterra’s bus division and hopes to revive the brand. They might need some luck. Given the headlines, one suspects that excessive warranty issues drove the original maker out of business.

It’s not a good look for the “green industry.” Maybe it’s just growing pains.

But in September 2021, the California Daily Bulletin reported that "As of August, Foothill Transit had 13 idled battery-electric buses out of 32 in its fleet. At one point, the agency indicated up to 67% of its electric buses were not operating during 2019 and 2020." That’s two-thirds, for people who live in Portland.

And in November 2022, WDRB-TV reported that Louisville’s entire $9 million dollar fleet of electric buses had not operated in over two years.

My goodness. The electric bus industry seems to be experiencing an American Airlines-style landing. Sorry, an “issue on landing.”

☕️ MIX UPS ☙ Tuesday, January 30, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Diverse Airline hard landing; secret base attack stirs more war talk; epidemic of Alzheimer's and Mad Cow baffles scientists; electric buses running out of juice; Florida pitches Amendments; and more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

California Solar Companies Hit The Skids After Receiving Huge Handouts From Biden, Dems​

• California’s rooftop solar industry is facing significant financial distress despite the help of generous state and federal subsidies.
• A December 2022 reduction to the state’s subsidies for rooftop solar has severely undermined the solar installation industry, which has seen an estimated 17,000 job losses and an 80% drop in demand in the wake of that reduction, according to CalMatters.
• “We have seen a wave of recent solar installer bankruptcies and believe another wave will come in Q1 2024,” Ara Agopian, the CEO of Solar Insure, which backs many of the solar companies doing business in California, told pv magazine USA.

Numerous rooftop solar panel companies in California are staring down bankruptcy despite the industry’s receipt of generous state and federal subsidies.

For many years, the state has generously subsidized the rooftop solar industry to the annual tune of up to $6 billion in order to spur green energy development, a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state’s utility regulator, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Now that state subsidy dollars are starting to dry up, rooftop solar companies in California are struggling mightily, with one insurance company estimating that about 75% of the affected companies in the state are at high risk for collapse, according to pv magazine USA.

​

Despite the state’s rooftop solar industry receiving subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature bill that includes $370 billion in green energy spending, rooftop solar firms across California are struggling to stay afloat.

 

[GURPS]

Even Democrats say Biden’s pause on LNG is like ‘throwing a match in a bale of hay’​

Longtime Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who retired last year, admitted in a post on X that the halt was “a major political issue that the D’s have just put themselves squarely on the wrong side” and would hurt his party’s ability to win seats in the Great Lakes Midwest.

He wasn’t the only Democrat complaining. Pennsylvania Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey Jr., the latter of whom is up for reelection this year, said in a joint statement to the Washington Examiner that as senators’ who represent the second largest natural gas-producing state, they were going to push Biden to undo his decision.

“This industry has created good-paying energy jobs in towns and communities across the Commonwealth and has played a critical role in promoting U.S. energy independence,” the statement said. They said the immediate impact on Pennsylvania remains to be seen, but they have deep concerns about the long-term impact this pause will have on the thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry.

 

[GURPS]

STEAL FROM THE POOR, GIVE TO THE RICH

That’s what solar power does. American Experiment’s Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling have an excellent expose of California’s solar power scam: Stealing with Solar: The Great Net-Metering Heist. Subhed: “How Solar Panels Helped Wealthy Californians Pick The Pockets of Low-Income Families.” See original for links:

Affluent households in California siphoned nearly $3.4 billion in 2021 from the pockets of low-income families through a government program called net metering. This program allows people with solar panels to get free electricity while forcing people who can’t afford them to pay all of the costs associated with maintaining the electric grid. What a steal!

Net metering allows customers with rooftop solar installations to sell their electricity back to the grid at the full retail price of power rather than the lower wholesale price that other power providers are paid. This is great if you own solar panels, but it effectively pays rooftop solar owners more than the electricity is worth.

For example, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show the statewide average retail residential electricity rate in California was 25.84 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2022. This means someone with solar panels on their house would be paid the full retail cost of 25.84 cents per kWh.

The problem with this arrangement, however, is that the people with solar panels on their roofs are not paying their fair share to upkeep the rest of the grid, but these substantial costs don’t disappear; they are foisted upon people without solar panels.

This graphic explains the economics of the steal:

Figure 1. Fuel costs a small portion of the total cost of electricity. Homes with solar panels are not paying their fair share of maintaining the infrastructure on the grid, and these costs are forced upon homes that don’t have solar panels.

 

[GURPS]

The Invasive Species That Is Renewable Energy​

“Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they’re being built,” says the USA Today headline from last week.

After the obligatory nonsense about how green energy is necessary because humans are setting the planet on fire, which is found daily across the hysterical mainstream media, the reporters note that “at least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both.” Through its nationwide analysis, USA Today learned that “limits come through outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments and other conditions that make green energy difficult to build.”

And it’s not just local governments. Three states, Connecticut, Tennessee and Vermont, have “implemented near-statewide restrictions,” according to USA Today.

The challenge isn’t unique to flyover country, where the main street Americans see the rush to green for what it is. Even some of the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County are off limits to utility-scale wind turbines. Residents of Antelope Valley in the northern reaches of the county don’t like the idea of “converting this beautiful land that was zoned” for agriculture “from our forefathers into industrial power plants.”

The “hostility” – USA Today’s word – toward the projects is easily explained. No matter what platitudes people might recite about renewable energy, they feel wind and solar projects are invasive. We see their point. They’re eyesores and nuisances to wildlife, whose habitats are threatened and then destroyed. The campaign to save the climate requires the eco-unfriendly acts of deforestation and extensive land clearing, leaving behind barren and gashed earth.

Renewable energy also stresses humans. “Turbine syndrome” is a condition recognized in Europe. In November 2021, a French court ruled in favor of a couple who had complained that a wind farm nearby caused them “headaches, insomnia, heart irregularities, depression, dizziness, tinnitus and nausea for more than two years,” says the Guardian.

 

[GURPS]

Shell expects 50% rise in global LNG demand by 2040​

LONDON/SINGAPORE, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Global demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is estimated to rise by more than 50% by 2040, as China and countries in South and Southeast Asia use LNG to support their economic growth, Shell said on Wednesday.

The market remains "structurally tight", with prices and price volatility remaining above historic averages, constraining growth, the world's largest LNG trader said in its 2024 annual LNG market outlook.

Demand for natural gas has peaked in some regions, including Europe, Japan and Australia in the 2010s, but continues to rise globally, and is expected to reach around 625-685 million metric tons per year in 2040, Shell said. That is slightly lower than Shell's 2023 estimates of a global demand increase to 700 million tons by 2040.

"While things are relatively balanced and seemed relatively comfortable today, the market is still quite fragile," Steve Hill, executive vice president for Shell Energy, told analysts on a call following the outlook report.

"We have a structurally tight market that's been balanced by near-term market weakness for where we see fragility and volatility continuing," Hill said.

 

[GURPS]

Study finds California’s semi truck electrification comes with enormous costs that hit consumers​

Electricity, minerals and infrastructure

In looking at California’s semi truck transition, ATRI followed methodologies from a 2022 national analysis. The national analysis found that electrifying all vehicles on America’s roads would require 40% of all electricity generation. Some states would need more, including California, which would require 57.2% of its total electricity generation.

Tens of millions of tons of cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel would also be needed, and that would take as much as 35 years at current global production rates and nearly 65% of global reserves of these minerals.

The analysis noted social impacts of this mining, which includes massive amounts of carbon dioxide that are produced in the energy-intensive mining and processing industries. The countries from where these materials are sourced lack the kind of labor protections of the developed world, meaning the exploitation of labor to mine the materials.

The weights of batteries would also take up a lot of the vehicle’s hauling capacity. Larger batteries would give trucks more range, but would mean a limited ability to carry freight. Ultimately, the analysis concluded, America’s highways would become even more congested since more trucks would be needed to haul the same amount of freight.

The charging infrastructure, as is a problem with passenger cars, would be an even larger challenge for electric semi trucks. Installation at the nation’s truck parking locations, according to ATRI, would be $35 billion. To supply the charging needs at a single rural rest stop would require enough daily electricity to power more than 5,000 U.S. households.

Another analysis by Guidehouse estimated that the electrification of America’s long-haul fleet would require 504 trillion watt hours annually. The average household uses about 899,000 watt hours per month. So, powering the nation’s long-haul trucks would require the same amount of electricity for more than 46 million homes every year.

“This is not something that's affordable or sustainable to scale this up on a society-wide basis, or even a statewide basis within the state of California,” Blackmon said.

The ATRI California analysis points out that a new battery-electric truck cost $425,000, which is double the cost of a comparable diesel truck. At California’s electricity rates, which are nearly double the national average, the cost to power an electric semi truck, including equipment, installation and utility upgrades, could be as high as $1.21 per mile. That’s twice the cost per mile of diesel fuel, according to ATRI.

The Capital Press reports that operating margins for truckload carriers was about 10% of their revenue in 2021. The authors of the ATRI analysis told the Press that the added costs of electrification would erase those margins unless the costs were passed onto consumers.