Renewable Energy – By Royal Decree!

In 2016, Missouri generated 96.5% of its electricity with fossil fuel and nuclear power, 1.6% with hydroelectric, and just 1.5% with wind and solar. The St. Louis Metro Area did roughly the same.

But now, by royal decree, the St. Louis City Crown has made it clear, the climate must be perfect all year – and by 2035 the city will somehow, magically be powered by 100% “clean, sustainable” electricity.

The Board of Aldermen unanimously passed a resolution calling for this to happen – via tougher energy efficiency measures and a transition to wind and solar power. The decision was supported by “environmental, advocacy and religious” organizations, which cited “sustainability and climate consciousness” as major concerns, an effusive article noted. The decision was simply “smart business,” they claim, because renewable energy is becoming “cheaper and cheaper,” and businesses want to move to cities that rely on renewable energy

The world shall be using energy from the burning of hydrocarbon fuels well into the 22nd Century, as a PRIMARY power source, am maybe even longer. We can do some pretty miraculous things with that old standby, coal, and so far as "renewable" energy goes, the earth's crust is constantly manufacturing new stores of energy as hydrocarbons, found at the Mohorovicic Discontinuity‎, the boundary between the earth's molten interior, and the stony crust above it. Plus one of the decomposition products of all organic material is in huge stores on the ocean floor, as natural gas trapped in something called Methane Hydrate, a most peculiar physical entrapment of methane in a water suspension. Fifty years from now we shall be mining this substance as a MAJOR energy source.

This has so little to do with the use of the fuels. It has to do with the industry and the employment it provides. In the US alone, the industry supports 9.8 million jobs or 5.6 percent of total U.S. employment, according to PwC. In 2012, the unconventional oil and natural gas value chain and energy-related chemicals activity together supported more than 2.1 million jobs, according to IHS – a number that’s projected to reach 3.9 million by 2025.

Rapid growth in oil production from shale using advanced hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling is creating high-paying jobs and boosting personal incomes in states like North Dakota and Texas. Thanks to development in the Bakken Shale formation, North Dakota boasts the nation’s lowest unemployment rate. North Dakota also saw the nation’s fastest growing income in 2013, at 7.6 percent, due to growth in the oil and gas industry. Oil production from the Eagle Ford Shale has transformed a relatively poor region of South Texas into one of the most significant economic development zones in the nation for the past half decade. In fact, due in large part to the oil and natural gas industry, the Texas Comptroller estimates that Texas has recovered 100 percent of the jobs lost during the Great Recession and has added 597,000 above the previous peak in August 2008.

The U.S. manufacturing sector is being revitalized because of the shale energy revolution, with manufacturers gaining an edge for products made domestically from the use of affordable natural gas and associated feedstocks.

The development of America’s vast shale natural gas reserves could add more than 1 million U.S. manufacturing jobs by 2025, according to PwC. A Reuters analysis indicated that low-cost natural gas made a $2.08 trillion contribution to the U.S. manufacturing sector in 2013 alone.

And when you consider the amount of funds and employment the industry supports world wide when so many of the oil rich countries overseas are oil rich only, and flat broke other ways so they can’t support themselves, then the damage of conversion would create a funds depletion and cause many of those countries to look next door for food. Welcome to WW III.

rwood

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