Natural Gas Now Best Picks – April 1, 2023
Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
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Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.
This week; the crying wolf about global warming, poverty yielding green energy and what to do with antique industrial solar facilities.
Look for these stories below, including links to the original articles!
Because Crying Yields Action, Crying Wolf Never Grows Old
How is that climate propagandists never tire of predicting global warming disaster despite four decades of failed models, failed predictions and failed policies?
The most recent example of the drum roll of “The end is nigh and this is absolutely your last chance to avert the end of the world from climate collapse” is yet another Chicken Little Sixth Assessment Report from the indefatigable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At some point the IPCC morphed from a team of scientists into activists. “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report warns us. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it a “survival guide for humanity.” But a one-time climate action journalist-turned-sceptic, Michael Shellenberger, described the UN as a “Climate Disinformation Threat Actor.”
A typically undecipherable “crying wolf” chart from the IPCC
Calls for urgent climate action based on the language of “edging towards ‘tipping points” have been made over many years. Atmospheric scientists and former IPCC members Richard McNider and John Christy note that climate modeling forecasts have “always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate.” A few examples:
- In 1982, UNEP Executive Director Mostafa Tolba warned of an irreversible environmental catastrophe by 2000 without immediate urgent action.
- In 2004, a Pentagon report warned that by 2020, major European cities would be submerged by rising seas, Britain would be facing a Siberian climate and the world would be caught up in mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting.
- In 2007, IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri declared: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.”
- Most hilariously, in Montana the Glacier National Park installed “Goodbye to the glaciers” plaques, warning: “Computer models indicate the glaciers will all be gone by the year 2020.” Come 2020, all 29 glaciers were still there but the signs were gone, taken down by embarrassed park authorities.
The answer, of course, is that those crying wolf are gaining from doing so; they themselves are the real wolves. The massive subsidies moved into silly green energy schemes that have no practical advantages and threaten our energy security have further enriched the propagandists. Meanwhile, the politicians who enabled the real wolves are left to turn to natural gas, the only way out of the crisis they helped create.
Hat Tip: D.S.
Green Energy Threatens More Poverty
Natural gas is energy reality. Green energy is a scam and it invariably yields not only energy insecurity but more poverty.
The push to ditch reliable energy is out of control. Politicians are manipulating the energy market through subsidies, tax breaks, and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives in regulations and government pensions.
It’s also concerning that the “big three” investment institutions, which collectively hold over $20 trillion in assets, too often coerce the companies in which they have significant investments to bend the knee to their big-government political ideology, such as complying with the Paris Climate Accord.
Sadly, the result of this virtue signaling to prop up unreliable wind and solar comes at high costs for little benefits—if any benefits at all. And more than hemorrhaged taxpayer dollars are at stake: this green energy agenda increases poverty. It must stop.
While the media is constantly ringing alarm bells about the always-changing climate, not enough people are alarmed by the economic trade-offs these unreliable green energy initiatives create. But that requires an honest comparison of the climate change risks versus the economic costs, both of which impact future generations.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) finds that there were an expected 20 million more people without electricity globally, totaling 775 million people, in 2022. Many of these people are in sub-Saharan Africa, who are facing increasing hardship due to rising costs for food, fuel and other necessities. This situation is made worse by the left’s insistence on unreliable sources of energy that have forced many Europeans to use wood for stoves and heat instead of much cleaner-burning natural gas.
This an excellent summary of what’s really happening in energy and with the corporatist green energy scam that is about further enriching and empowering elites grifting off ratepayers and taxpayers. It will end at some point because it must and, yet again, reliable natural gas energy will come to the rescue, just as it is in Texas.
Hat Tip. S.H.
What Do You Do with An Antique Solar Facility?
This is an important issue confronting many landowners and municipalities today, particularly those who in areas where natural gas development is not, or not yet, an alternative:
Thus far in Pennsylvania, the issue of what happens when a solar farm shuts down has mostly been hashed out in land leases, private contracts between solar companies and landowners. Much like an oil and gas lease, the documents often say it’s the company’s responsibility to remove all the infrastructure of a solar farm and leave the land as it was found.
But, as with oil and gas, this hinges on the premise that the solar developer or some other company that buys the asset down the road will be around in 30 years and have the funds to reclaim the land.
Jacob Kiessling, a Harrisburg-based attorney with Barley Snyder, said he’s worked for landowners on hundreds of solar leases over the past few years and has advised his clients to ask for financial assurance, like a surety bond, up front. He asks that the bond cover the full cost of decommissioning, as determined by a third party and signed by a licensed engineer, and that it’s reevaluated every three to five years and adjusted accordingly.
Some companies agree to the terms right away, he said. Others argue.
“One of their marketing strategies to a farmer in particular is, ‘Look, we’re gonna tie the ground up for 30 years, but after that it’s gonna be farmable again.’ So when they push back against these provisions, it doesn’t look good for them,” he said.
Mr. Kiessling said he worked with the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau to craft similar language for Mr. Yaw’s previous attempt to establish solar decommissioning standards.
A major sticking point, he said, is salvage value and whether it should be deducted from the cost of decommissioning.
“Oftentimes, the salvage value and resale value of the equipment alone can largely, if not completely, offset the cost of decommissioning,” said Erin Baker, development director at Vesper Energy, the Texas-based solar developer that is building a 20-megawatt facility in Beaver County and developing nearly 1,500 megawatts of solar and storage elsewhere in the state.
An engineering estimate that forms the basis of the bond for Vesper’s Gaucho solar project in Beaver County projects about $819,000 to be spent on removing equipment and remediating the ground, and about $856,000 to be made in salvage value.
Companies that specialize in decommissioning industrial plants, like the wave of coal-fired powerplants retired in recent years, report the same dynamic at play — the value of the scrap they collect covers the cost of cleaning up the site
Mr. Kiessling says he doesn’t doubt there’s value in all the metal beams, racks and solar panel aluminum frames.
“If you just look at the sheer amount of copper, that value is there,” he said. “But to my landowner client it’s meaningless, because neither they nor I know how to do that. The landowner has no idea, nor do I, what they’re supposed to do with those panels.”
He said the Legislature should assign a state agency, like the Department of Environmental Protection, to be responsible for ensuring that a solar project is bonded and that decommissioning is handled properly.
Solar facilities are being heavily promoted by grifters across the realm and this is putting landowners and municipalities in the position of having to craft solutions to the issues involved. It also demonstrates no energy source is free and natural gas remains the best option when everything is considered.
Hat Tip: R.N.
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