Posted on 03/22/2024 6:02:55 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates. Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?
No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.
A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14. The front page article had the headline “A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals.” The gist is that various sources of new electricity demand are rapidly emerging, from data centers to EVs to AI. Demand for electricity is starting to rise, but wind and solar generators can’t be added to the grid fast enough to fulfill this demand. And thus utilities are starting to add large numbers of new natural gas plants.
The Times provides this chart of the recent history of electricity demand in the U.S., with a projection for the next decade:
Demand has been flat for fifteen years, but now looks about to surge. From the Times:
To meet spiking demand, utilities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are proposing to build dozens of power plants over the next 15 years that would burn natural gas. In Kansas, one utility has postponed the retirement of a coal plant to help power a giant electric-car battery factory.
So why not just build a bunch of new wind turbines and solar panels?
Some utilities say they need additional fossil fuel capacity because cleaner alternatives like wind or solar power aren’t growing fast enough and can be bogged down by delayed permits and snarled supply chains. While a data center can be built in just one year, it can take five years or longer to connect renewable energy projects to the grid and a decade to build some of the long-distance power lines they require. Utilities also note that data centers and factories need power 24 hours a day, something wind and solar can’t do alone.
I like that last line about wind and solar not being able to provide “power 24 hours a day” by themselves. Finally, somebody has noticed.
And the Times even has figured out that something about this might be inconsistent with the government’s ridiculous “climate” pledges:
Burning more gas and coal runs counter to President Biden’s pledge to halve the nation’s planet-warming greenhouse gases and to generate all of America’s electricity from pollution-free sources such as wind, solar and nuclear by 2035.
Other than that one sentence, the Times piece is noticeably devoid of any quantitative information on what promises have been made by the U.S. as to “greenhouse gas” emissions, and on what progress has been made toward achieving those promises. However, here at Manhattan Contrarian we know that the information to answer those questions can be found easily. So let’s take a look at it.
The two main pledges as to GHG emissions that the U.S. has supposedly made to the international community are:
- In the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 (when Barack Obama was President), the U.S. pledged to reduce GHG emissions by 26-28%, from 2005 levels, by 2026.
- At a World Climate Summit on April 22 (“Earth Day”), 2021, President Joe Biden pledged to reduce U.S. GHG emissions, from 2005 levels, by 50-52% by 2030.
And how is progress going toward those pledges? The EPA puts out an annual Report titled “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks.” The most recent such Report came out on February 14, 2024, and contains information through the year 2022. Here is the summary chart of numbers:
Total U.S. “gross” emissions were 6,341.2 MMTCO2e in 2022, compared to 7,488.2 MMTCO2e in 2005. That’s a decrease of 1147.0 MMTCO2e, or 15.3%. But notice in the two most recent years reported, the emissions went up rather than down.
Today, the pledge date of the Paris Climate Agreement, 2026, is only two years away, and we’re barely half way toward the goal. Moreover, most of the supposed “progress” has been achieved by closing coal power plants and replacing them with natural gas, a process that is now nearly complete. There are almost no coal plants left to close. And now electricity demand is rising and utilities are looking to build more natural gas plants. The 2026 pledge will never be achieved.
And the 2030 pledge is even more ridiculous.
Here is a chart from page 2-29 of EPA’s Report showing trends in U.S. GHG emissions by economic sectors:
As you can see, the large majority of the decreases in emissions achieved since 2005 have been in the electric power sector. A chart with numbers on the same page of the Report says that emissions in the electric power sector went down from 2457.4 MMTCO2e in 2005 to 1574.7 MMTCO2e in 2022. That’s a decline of 882.7 MMTCO2e since 2005 in this sector alone, representing 76.9% of the decline in emissions achieved over all sectors.
But if the remaining annual emissions from the electric power sector are only 1574.7 MMTCO2e, then that is all the further reduction in emissions that can possibly be achieved in that sector, even if all production of electricity by fossil fuels has been completely eliminated. If those 1574.7 MMTCO2e of emissions are eliminated tomorrow by closing down every single fossil fuel power plant, then the 2022 total national emissions of 6341.2 MMTCO2e would go down to 4766.5 MMTCO2e — not even close to the 3744.1 MMTCO2e (that is, 50% of 7488.2) that Biden supposedly committed us to by 2030.
And how about all those other sectors where emissions have barely budged since 2005? Nothing is going to change. Have you noticed any move away from using aviation fuel for airplanes? Something other than fossil fuels for steelmaking? A move toward electric farm equipment? Yes, there are now some all-electric cars — but that trend is also starting to stall out.
On Monday, Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest oil company — gave a speech in Houston where he said a bunch of obvious things that somehow other oil executives (from companies based in the U.S. and Europe) are unable to say. The speech was widely reported. Here is one report from CBC. Excerpt:
The head of the world's largest energy company on Monday urged the world to accept the "hard realities" that oil and natural gas will be around for a long time to come and consumption of both sources of energy is likely to grow for at least the next decade or two. . . . "We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions," he said. . . . "All this strengthens the view that peak oil and gas is unlikely for some time to come, let alone 2030," he said. "No one is betting the farm on that."
“Abandon the fantasy” — I couldn’t have said it better myself.
What are we paying these politicians for if they can't do this?
Manhattan Contrarian ping
energy bkmk
bttt
The fact is that people tend to do what is in their best interests. Meaning, what is going to save them money.
My daughter and son in law(the accountant) put up a solar array on their property in NH about five years ago. They didn’t do it because they are Liberals. They did not do it to be “green” or any other virtue signaling BS. They did it because there was a 30% federal tax credit and a one time NH incentive.
Based on my son in law calculations it will pay itself off within the next four years. Assuming Eversource does not raise their rates again. They do not plan on moving from this house. Therefore, starting in four years their cost of electricity per year will dramatically decrease. It will never be FREE. They are hooked up to the grid. However, the NET METERING payback price/KHW is locked in according to NH State law.
FYI, they also run a business out of their home selling frozen raw dog food. They have a walk in freezer(which I helped assemble) that uses a fair amount of juice too. In addition, they have an RV, Jeep Wrangler and recently bought a used Corvette. Not exactly “Green” vehicles.
About ten years ago someone calculated that only a 0.0005% increase in fuel efficiency would replace ALL of the wind and solar power existent at that time. The two still amount to not much more than a fart in a whirlwind minus their availability and reliability. Any fool should see from that measure alone this whole affair is a folly.
What's interesting is that he accepts the premise of peak oil. He just puts it a few decades further out than the climate alarmists. He says we should continue to invest in fossil fuels in the meantime, which makes sense, but what if peak oil really does happen in, say, the latter part of this century? If there's a serious energy choke point coming, we had better be getting a plan B together. IMO that plan B needs to be nuclear, because wind and solar aren't going to cut it.
The other thing that Peter Zeihan pointed out a few months ago was that some of these so called green energy options make more sense in some places than others.
Zeihan is a Liberal, but he is also pretty intelligent.
He lives up in the mountains of Colorado. Where he gets over 300 days/year of sunshine. Also, his house is up around 7000 ft. Solar panels work better in COLD temperatures below 50 degrees than they do at 100 degrees. Therefore, they work better in CO or NM than the desert of AZ.
So, Peter pointed out that solar panels make a lot more sense in places like the SW US than they do in Germany. Where it is overcast all the time. Same story around the Great Lakes. Where it is overcast/cloudy a large percentage of the year.
This is the same idea with wind mills. They make more sense on the central plains of the US than other areas.
I don’t want to debate the merits of wind turbines in general. We have beaten that subject to death here for years.
There are several smaller scale wind generation machines that have come out in the last ten years. The most recent one that shows promise is one based on the Archimedes Screw.
It is shaped just like an Archimedes Screw. These are meant to placed on the top of multi story buildings. Where winds tend to be higher velocity.
What makes these better than large scale wind turbines is that they can handle higher wind speeds. They also developed a smaller model made to put on the rooftop of a residential house.
Again, these things actually work in places that tend to be windy.
My surprise and after thought faces....😳... 😴
It is purely willful ignorance of leftists supported by the willful ignoring of the extremely limited capabilities of ‘green’ power sources by the media. The leftists say to themselves “I didn’t read that in the Times or the Post so it doesn’t exist and therefore you are wrong - la-la-la-la-la ...”
The stupid is strong on the political left.
It will not be very long before we see natural gas back to the $9.00 a thousand cubic feet at the wellhead that we saw back in 1982. Just for reference the trading price is now less than $2.00. California was clamoring for gas and Oklahoma was happy to sell it to them for that price. It was wonderful and a lot of us here made a lot of money. This will be the effect of another biden policy gone pear shaped. Another disaster. Buckle your seat belts you are in for one hell of a ride. A lot of you, half, voted for this. I wish you would all rot in hell but without dragging the rest of us down with you.
In a way I'm fortunate that Alabama wasn't a net metering state when I researched whether or not to go solar. Thus, my inverters have the feature to turn off the grid sell (which means no putting power onto the grid so I don't experience the extra charges that go with that, and the extra regulations that go with that). Plus, my financial calculations for when it pays for itself doesn't depend on making money from the grid. So for most of the almost 3 years I've had solar I didn't sell power to the grid.
Half a year ago I changed my settings and began selling power to the grid. That was after having solar long enough to know that the extra costs for selling power to the grid are less that the money I get back per kWh (about 1/4th the rate I pay when I pull power from the grid).
As far as the regulation that all states have (rightly so) to require solar users to automatically disconnect from the grid if the grid power goes down (to protect linemen working on the grid), my inverters automatically do that without cutting power to the house. If that regulation changes and I'm required to cut off power to my house when the grid goes down (if I'm selling power to the grid), fine. I'll quit selling power to the grid with a few settings changes (no having to buy inverters with that feature because it was already accounted for when picking the equipment).
That’s just common sense to anyone in the oil industry. No great shakes in admitting peak oil but it changes based on price. We will run out of useful production rate first but we will never run out of oil in the ground. It will just become too hard and expensive to produce and at a rate too low to fuel society. Something else that is effective needs to be found before it becomes a real crisis but it will not. Politicians and people live by crisis and just about never plan ahead.
They never want problems solved. They always need problems to exist, real or imaginary, for them to excuse having more and more power over the masses.
Yup! Meanwhile...... 💰🌪🚽
MC is the last sane person in NYC
The Aramco CEO seems to think there may be a few more decades of economical oil production. Is that pretty much the industry consensus?
A few decades will pass before we know it. I’ve been on FR for almost 25 years and it feels like just yesterday I signed up. If peak oil happens in the timeframe they’re expecting, we really do need to get cracking on it.
My impression is that this realization is starting to take hold at pretty high levels. Just this past September there was a big summit where the US and several other countries announced a plan to triple nuclear energy capacity. Last summer Sweden announced a huge course correction way from wind & solar and towards nuclear which is now the focus of their national energy plan. A week or so ago Japan announced they were dropping their ban on new nuclear capacity. France recently announced they were greenlighting a dozen or so new nuclear plants. Poland is getting ready to build a new nuclear plant.
Maybe the problem is real enough and close enough that it’s starting to scare some realism into our decision makers.
Bah! They’ve been claiming we will hit peak oil any year now for 45 years. Peak oil is nowhere in sight.
Easy to install.
Scalable.
Recyclable
Doesn't kill birds
No annoying 'thump thump thump' sounds.
Wind direction doesn't matter. Change in wind direction doesn't matter.
On sale at Walmart
You could mount a 1000 of these in the space it takes for one of the current 'wind turbines' we buy from the Chinese.
Paint them different colors or with patterns to add beauty.
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