I have been following the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed and most of the articles described are related to it. I have devoted a lot of time to the Climate Act because I believe the ambitions for a zero-emissions economy embodied in the Climate Act outstrip available renewable technology such that the net-zero transition will do more harm than good. The opinions expressed in this article do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other company I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone.
Videos
Turbine graveyards sprawled across Texas Independent journalist Ron Kendall Jr warns of “turbine graveyards” which have been popping up over the US state of Texas as turbine blades reach their useable life. Texas is home to more than 15,000 wind turbines and has been dubbed a “clean energy powerhouse”. In a documentary produced by Yucca Films, Mr Kendall Jr investigates the lifespan of the turbines and where they go once used. Transcript here.
Climate Fact Check
Steve Milloy does a monthly fact check of climate change impact claims. This month he debunked ten claims:
- Amphibians going extinct because of climate change
- Sizzling September
- Melting Himalayan glacier causes deadly flood
- Alaskan king crab harvest hurt by climate change
- Summers getting hotter
- Climate change hurting pumpkins
- Tragic Himalayan avalanche caused by climate change
- Butterflies hurt by warming
- Soaring heat deaths in Arizona
- World cup skiing affected by climate change
In every case he explained why the claims were baseless. For the most part the explanations boiled down to weather is not “climate change”.
Climate Transition Endgame
Eric Worral describes a report from the Australian Lowy Institute titled Private finance cannot lead the global response to climate change. He quotes the document:
Misplaced faith in private sector solutions delays the redistribution of trillions from developed countries and multilateral institutions.
In response to the looming trillion-dollar global climate finance shortfall, a broad array of policymakers, international bureaucrats, environmentalists, and financial institutions have called for the urgent scaling up of private climate investments.
The logic of private finance mobilisation starts by recognising that developing countries will need climate finance “amounting to US$5.8–5.9 trillion up until 2030”. In the face of such eye-watering sums, private finance offers an enticing solution. By leveraging comparatively small government financing into substantial private investments, governments and international organisations can turn “billions into trillions”, sidestepping the problem facing developed countries of how to justify domestically the global redistribution of trillions of dollars.
Alternatively, developing countries have advocated for a suite of multilateral measures, including sovereign debt cancellation, the redistribution of IMF-issued Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), increased concessional development financing, and even global carbon taxes. These proposals are often perceived to be concerned with global justice and equity, as opposed to efficacy. However, this distinction becomes blurred when the US$5.8–5.9 trillion climate finance needs of developing countries are interrogated more closely.
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Private finance is clearly no panacea for the climate crisis. It is no wonder that the developing countries have long called for far more drastic levels of public and multilateral financing. Rather than seeking to pursue global economic justice alone, developing countries have been acutely aware that trillions of developed country government dollars need to be put on the table. If developing country financing asks are honoured, US$5.8–5.9 trillion would be well within reach. But the challenge remains getting developed countries on board. Proposals such as political economist Dani Rodrik’s “bridging compact” hold some promise, although any equivalent global consensus could only emerge following the recognition that a private finance-centred approach doesn’t provide a workable alternative.
Worral points out that the rushed removal of $5.8-5.9 trillion from the economies of wealthy nations would have major impacts to schools, hospitals, roads, policing. These are all the things that matter to ordinary people and surely would cause enormous public reaction. He believes that “the fake climate crisis movement is on the verge of collapsing under the weight of its own absurdity.” I only hope that is true.
Setting Utility Rates
Kevin Kilty does a great job describing how utilities are setting rates as the generating resources used on the grid change. Whenever Kevin publishes an article I learn something. I have been involved in the electric utility industry for decades and have never really paid much attention to the details of the rate case process and I learned a lot about the process. He explained his motivation for the article:
My principal goal is this. Many of us are pretty certain that pouring more renewable energy into a network makes delivered energy more expensive and less reliable. We often point to a graph that shows costs rising with percent renewable contributions to generating capacity. Yet, our antagonists claim that adding energy from renewables should, and in fact does, reduce utility costs. They have data, too. We strengthen our case by demonstrating specific reasons, or lack thereof, for rising utility bills. The rate setting process ought to make those reasons visible.
I also suspect most people know little about rate setting and are unaware about its complexity. It’s important to understand this bit of the order of battle.
Kilty makes the reasonable observation that the rate setting process should make the rationale for increases visible but admits that this is a challenge because the issues are so complex. He explains how the shift to weather-dependent wind and solar resources complicates this process bur explains the obvious problems. In New York the politics of the ruling party’s preference for this transition and the Climate Act make it easy for the utility companies to go with the flow and ignore the politically inconvenient facts associated with the transition. I do not think there is any incentive for these companies to fight for what they know is right.
Kilty concludes that the happy talk about wind energy saving customers money will never substitute for reliable operation. Whining about thermal assets being inflexible and preventing full adoption of wind and solar is simply public relations blather. The intermittency of wind and solar combined with the steady decline of coal-fired resources are major problems that must be addressed for a reliable system but are being ignored in the rate case he is following.
Electrify Everything Means Higher Energy Costs
Robert Bryce uses Federal data to show why residential electrification means higher prices, he Energy Information Administration released its Winter Fuels Outlook for 2023-24 shows that “an average U.S. homeowner who uses electricity to heat their home will pay about $462 more this winter than ones who use natural gas.” That means heating with electricity costs about 77% more than heating with natural gas.
In addition to the fuel costs Bryce raises two issues. He quotes Glenn Ducat’s new book, Blue Oasis No More: Why We’re Not Going to “Beat” Global Warming and What We Need To Do About It, who says burning natural gas directly “is at least twice as efficient and emits about half as much CO2 as processes that use electricity produced from fossil fuels. Converting process-heat applications to electricity before the electricity grid is completely carbon-free will increase CO2 emissions.”
His second point is that electrify everything push is terrible for energy security:
The first rule of energy security is to have diversity of supply. It makes no sense — none — to put all of our eggs in one energy basket. Yet, that’s precisely what the electrify everything crowd wants to do. Even worse, they want to do it when our electric grid is cracking under existing demand, and regulators and market watchers, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation, are warning of reliability problems on our electric grid.
I agree with his conclusion that “The goals of policymakers should be to ensure that energy is affordable, reliable, and resilient. Trying to electrify everything will achieve the opposite.”
Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York 