Natural Gas Now Best Picks – October 29, 2022
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; California EV fairy tales, German coal mining and Democrats who want to nationalize oil and gas.
Look for these stories below, including links to the original articles!
The California Energy Plan: Electric Vehicle Toys and Fairy Tales
Gavin Newsom is mandating Californians all drive EVs in the future because…well, you figure it out:
The linchpin of the EV revolution is California’s 100% ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars, SUVs, and light trucks, which is scheduled to go into full effect in 2035 and expected to be adopted by other states. California’s mandate includes a phased-in ban on the sale of new hybrids, which only recently were considered technological marvels. California will restrict the sale of plug-in hybrids to just 20% of total EV sales, a significant cap for low-emissions vehicles that are nearly as popular with environmentally conscious California consumers as all-electric EVs…
San Diego power outage
That power demand will be acutely felt in California, where, just days after the California Air Resources Board decreed the phaseout of internal-combustion cars, the state narrowly averted rolling blackouts during a record heat wave and the California Independent System Operator urged residents to cut back power usage by, among other things, avoiding charging their electric cars during times of peak energy demand. RealClearInvestigations has reported that California’s grid is straining under the load, while The New York Times reported that California faces “the threat of rolling blackouts for years to come,” a consequence of the state’s increasing reliance on solar power and wind farms that make for unpredictable electricity production and render California dependent on importing emergency electricity from neighboring states.
“To think that we are going to completely eliminate these by far dominant sources of energy and transportation services in our economy in the next 13 years is a fairy tale,” said [David Rapson, a professor of energy economics at the University of California], who has authored papers challenging optimistic projections.
You don’t say? Maybe Gavin, an admirer of megalomaniac Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum, doesn’t care because he knows the whole thing is a fairy tale and he simply wants the current transportation to fail and everyone to be forced to stay at home where he and Klaus can control them. No more freedom to travel for you! Meanwhile, it is natural gas that is making most of the electricity for the EVs!
Hat Tip: D.S.
Energiewende Fruits Ripen As Germany Still the Wind to Dig for Dirty Coal
How long will Germany maintain the pretense that the Enegiewende was anything but a ridiculous exercise in virtue signaling and corporatist grifting?
Last week, numerous media outlets reported that Germany will extend the lives of three of its nuclear power plants. The move to keep the reactors online, which was opposed by the country’s Green Party, showed that German politicians are recognizing the need to keep reliable generation plants online to assure the country has enough electricity this winter.
But another equally important announcement was also made last week that got far less media attention: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany was reopening five power plants that burn lignite, a low-rank coal. Germany’s return to lignite demonstrates, yet again, the Iron Law of Electricity, which says that people, businesses, and governments will do whatever they have to do to get the electricity they need.
Indeed, Germany’s move back to lignite is chock-full of contradictions, including one that belongs in the “you can’t make this up” column.
German coal mining
The Iron Law of Electricity is so powerful that the utility RWE is dismantling the Keyenberg wind project in the western part of the country to, wait for it… make more room for the expansion of the Garzweiler mine. Lignite from Garzweiler fuels the Neurath C power plant, which is one of the power plants being brought back online. A spokesperson for RWE told the Guardiannewspaper that “We realize this comes across as paradoxical.”
Stories such as this always bring to mind a polite argument I had eight years ago with an obviously well-off couple outside a Josh Fox event in Oneonta, New York as they insisted the U.S. needed to follow Germany’s “lead.” I told them Germany was actually building coal plants at the time and, of course, they still are; simply because they must as they refuse to develop their natural gas. Moreover, they are mining and using Lignite, otherwise known as brown or dirty coal, not the Anthracite or hard coal found in Northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s not just Iron Law but also hard irony.
Hat Tip: S.H.
Democrats Are Saying It Aloud; They Want to Nationalize Oil and Gas
and Enslave Us to the World Economic Forum; Government by Elites
This story should scare the hell out of everyone. The Democrat party should just go ahead and rename itself as the Totalitarian Party:
The energy crisis is worsening. The U.S. has fewer than 30 days of diesel and other distillate fuels, the lowest level since 1945. Supplies are so low that there will be shortages and price spikes within six months unless the U.S. enters recession, experts warn. In response, the Biden administration is releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But the reserves are of crude oil, not refined oil products such as diesel. And the releases are stifling investment in future oil production. “People are depleting their emergency stocks,” warned Saudi Arabia’s energy minister earlier this week. “Losing emergency stocks may become painful in the months to come.”
In response, influential Democrats, including a leading U.S. Senate candidate, a former Department of Energy official, and an influential energy expert, are urging the U.S. government to socialize America’s oil and gas firms.
At a Houston conference last week, Jason Bordoff, Dean of Columbia University’s Climate School, called for the “nationalization” of oil and gas companies. “Government must take an active role in owning assets that will become stranded,” he said, “and plan to strand those assets.”
…Earlier this month, Bordoff told the World Economic Forum, which has called for a “Great Reset” to quickly move from fossil fuels to renewables, that climate change required a “massive transition” that is “going to be messy, it’s going to be disruptive.” Said Bordoff, “I think part of the broader macro environment that’s happening now is one of more disruptive change because of climate impacts, but also more disruptive change because of geopolitics coming out of the pandemic, coming out of this conflict, completely rethinking what the World Economic Forum is all about.”
Yes, Democrats have aligned themselves with Klaus Schwab and demanded we go down the road to serfdom and slavery to the WEF and China agenda. And, oh, by the way, Jason Bordoff is a Rockefeller guy. Surprised?
Hat Tip: R.N.
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