Guest Darth Vader voice by David Middleton
America’s liquefied natural gas boom may be on a collision course with climate change
By Matt Egan, CNN Business
Updated 7:01 PM ET, Mon July 1, 2019
New York (CNN Business)
America’s liquefied natural gas boom has a climate change problem, according to a report released on Monday.
The US energy industry is scrambling to build dozens of expensive export terminals that can be used to ship cheap natural gas to China and other fast-growing economies that want to move away from coal.While those investments make sense today, they will likely be derailed in the longer run by a combination of plunging renewable energy costs and rising climate change concerns, according to the Global Energy Monitor, a network of researchers tracking fossil fuel projects.
Those dual forces will make many LNG projects “unprofitable in the long term,” putting much of the $1.3 trillion of investments in the sector at risk, the report said.
[Blah, blah, blah]
CNN
Fly…
Global Energy Monitor was launched under the name CoalSwarm in early 2008 and later that year was accepted as a project of Earth Island Institute, an incubator for innovative projects in ecology and social justice. Affiliation with Earth Island Institute gave access to logistical resources and 501(c)3 tax status, allowing the project to receive tax-deductible donations as well as foundation support. In 2018 CoalSwarm became an independent 501 (c3) organization, and in 2019 changed its name to Global Energy Monitor.
Fly
Windshield…
Articles like this deserve this:
Media Face 12,000 Job Cuts, Most Since 2009 Economic Crash
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/07/05/nolte-media-face-12000-job-cuts-most-since-2009-economic-crash/
My local daily newspaper keeps getting smaller and smaller. Things are getting so bad for them that they are starting to run more conservative opinion pieces, in attempt to halt the circulation losses.
I remember when news papers got smaller because of a shortage of trees.
CNN is rapidly becoming the AOL of cablenews.
It won’t be long when they can no longer afford the multi-million dollar talking head contracts for opinion fake news propagandists like Anderson Cooper, Lemon, etc. You’ll see them depart one by one.
Then they’ll shut down the cablenews presence, then their internet presence will eventually fade too.
CNN is depressing, anti-solution, and anti-think.
It is amazing that they have any viewers.
Fake news, angry commentaries, and the promotion of chaos policies.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/randy-hall/2019/06/04/cnn-has-double-digit-monthly-ratings-loss-primetime-%E2%80%A6-again
CNN Has Double-Digit Monthly Ratings Loss in Primetime … Again
Its primetime hours were only able to average a measly 761,000 viewers,… ….total day viewers dove nine percent (compared to this same month last year) to just 559,000 viewers.
For comparison purposes, Fox News earned three times as many primetime viewers (2.34 million) and more than twice as many total day viewers (1.34 million). What’s more, when compared to this same month last year, Fox lost none of its primetime viewers and only four percent of its total day viewers.
(….)
How does a nationally known brand like CNN, a brand that is decades old, only manage to attract 761,000 viewers throughout a gonzo news month in a country of over 300 million?
CNN has many dozens of “viewers” in every airport. No one is actually watching their bovine effluent, as the people are looking at their phones, tablets, and laptops, … but those screens get counted as “viewers”.
And as I understand it, CNN has a contract with those airports to have only CNN on the airport TVs. I.e. CNN pays the airports to show only CNN. How sad is that…?
I can only hope…
The clickbait prostitutes are being driven from the temple by an increasingly engraged and disgusted citizenry.
The clickbait prostitutes are being driven from the temple by an increasingly enraged and disgusted public.
Churnalism doesn’t need journalists
Perhaps if journalists got back to reporting the news instead of being propaganda outlets, they’d still have jobs
Next we will hear that the recent “earthquakes in the California desert” were caused by all the new solar projects, just as the claim fracking causes earthquakes. (The green gods do not like technology, earthquakes are punishment for our sins… We can expect some figurative witch burning to appease the gods)
The only thing worst than 12,000 job cuts would be 11,000 job cuts.
Near-tragedy: A bus-full of CNN jouralists drove off a cliff and sank into the ocean.
Full-Tragedy: There was an empty seat.
I’m deeply concerned about the “mainstream” media unemployment rate, but I’m optimistic that with a little effort we can get it to 100%.
Sometimes you’re the windshield
Sometimes you’re the bug
Sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger
Sometimes you’re a fool in love
Dire Straits?
My favorite of “The Bug” by Mary Chapin-Carpenter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hW_maN0eSs
And she’s very easy on the eyes.
She’ll be at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with Pink Martini and The Colorado Symphony
Morrison, CO on July 14th. Wish I could go.
OT
Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of several non country born artists who have thrived in the Country Music genre
MCC was born in New Joisey.
Brookly born Eddie Rabbit is another.
When the sun is down and the wind dies down, you have to have NG to run the generators, otherwise the grid goes down and it can take days to re-energize it. Every “renewable” generator must have a non renewable generator. Every solar panel and every wind mill sells an NG generator and lots of NG. It is a guaranteed market.
+1 But telling that to a Greeny is like spitting in the wind. Unless nuclear is embraced, but even that won’t solve all our energy needs like air travel, shipping, construction/farming equipment and trains (possible but not probable), long haul trucking and private (car) beyond a couple hundred miles.
mark
And this is why the Greeny World must always be held to account for the displayed economic (read expensive) consequences of their folly.
Soaring electricity costs in Germany and South Australia are fact.
The exorbitant (projected) fuel prices in France and the state of Washington due to carbon taxation derailed the implementation of these horrific policies.
Money, money is a powergul motivator to get the wider population engaged in this ongoing struggle.
“markl July 5, 2019 at 1:21 pm
+1 But telling that to a Greeny is like spitting in the wind.”
And telling THAT to a greenie is social dead.
He will answer what he’s telling politicians, not burdened with brains, what the greenies are convincing daily other greenies:
Coral reefs are not destroyed because of green sports snorklers protecting the reefs in their spare time.
The catastrophic warming is just condemned by costly green renewables.
And schooltime is lost in 12 years but to save the Planet.
I just watched a CNN “reporter”, Christiane Amanpour, interview Washington Governor Jay Inslee about climate change, 12 years, tipping points, what do we have to do to save the planet, evil carbon pollution, why does Donald Trump want a burning hell on earth, and so on. Ms. amanpour also had an “environmental photographer” who explained the carbon pollution producing ashma in children (?). And now comes David Middleton, the likes of which we were duly warned against, and he’s channeling Darth Vader as he delights in adding more of the pollutant carbon to the atmosphere, almost certainly in some sort of unholy alliance with BIG OIL. I wonder what David will say when the burning hell deal kicks in?
David would say, “Drill, baby, drill!”
Fracking A, Hell yes! Frack-on baby!
Paraphrasing John Paul Jones, Captain of the USS Bonhomme Richard:
We have not yet hardly even begun to frack!
JO’B
“We have not yet hardly even begun to frack!” (sp)
You may be a little surprised at just how accurate your statement is.
The long running mis presentation of the unconventional world of hydrocarbon extraction seems to have led to a “No Clue About What Is Going On” mindset amongst the MSM and those remaining few who rely upon same for information.
Fact is, production from early stage regions such as Oklahoma’s SCOOP/STACK/MERGE, the Powder River Basin, the Uinta are very promising.
Ongoing improvements right across the board in evaluating, drilling, completing, and better long term recovery techniques have greatly expanded prospective acreage all across the country.
Current producers paradoxically have allies with those who wish to promote the false, scarcity narrative as, indeed, foreign producers have been in this same position for the preceding decade.
No, I understand clearly we’re still in the early steep growth phase of the Fracking Energy Revolution.
As David has written here many times in his posts, we have just begun to scratch the “deep layers” of the source rocks. Source layers for the upper reservoirs of petroleum and natural gas that supplied the 20th Century’s fossil fuel revolution will now power the 21st Century. And there is nothing the GreenSlime can do to stop it short of a full-on socialist political system control of the US, which is why the GreenSlime crony capitalists and the GreenBlob eco-socialists are now fully united.
Prior to about 2009, the GreenBlob-GreenSlime alliance never saw this Black Swan shale fracking juggernaut coming (by definition of what a Black Swan event is, that is, an unforeseeable event that radically alters previously expected paths forward). They had been promised since the 1970’s that “peak oil, peak gas” was just around the corner of Y2K. Not anymore of course.
Which is ironic considering Obama became President in 2009 with much hope from the Greens of finally shutting down fossil fuel energy to appease the Malthusian environmental socialists and their Green Slime financial backers. And now we have a President who understands the implications of energy dominance that fracking will bring. And they are willing to throw everything at Trump now to defeat him and put in a President who will shut down by any and all means fracking on both federal, state, and private lands. Elizabeth “PowWow Chow” Warren has said as much in recent days. So you can be sure who the GreenSlime is now starting to align with and putting their money behind. She is speaking for them.
And as everyone here at WUWT realizes, it is cheap natural gas that is both the real coal and nuclear power ki11er.
In a never ending game of whack-a-mole, even if the Left manages to ki11 fracking, then nuclear power and coal mining would re-surge. Nothing short of a despotic government in the US would stop that. Renewables simply don’t work without lots of fossil fuel or nuclear power back-up, which means CO2 emissions do not decrease, just as Germany has proven.
And when people finally realize that, it’s game over for the GreenSlime. Which is why the Left are now in a desperate race against time to take-over the political system with democracy ki11ing socialism before America’s own Mouvement des gilets jaunes sweeps them away. MAGA.
Yoda would say
Drill we must, Reliable Energy we need!
The stoopid it burns
+42.
Don’t know if RL was serious or sarcastic, but sometimes you can’t tell. However, when he mentions an interview about climate change by the globally renowned climate scientist, Christiane Amanpour, I think he was serious.
please note, the phrase “globally renowned climate scientist, Christiane Amanpour” was (and still is) sarc.
I recognize good sarcasm quickly… it reminds me of… me.
When will burning something kick in; exactly!?
So far, thirty years of similar claims are all busted without any temperatures that Earth has experienced before; even during the current Holocene.
This inability of alarmists to face facts reverses your logic.
David would be the Harrison Ford hero against the multitude of alarmist darth vader wannabees.
Nothing like BIG OIL to provide said asthmatic child with the opportunity to live in the soothing comfort of BIG A/C.
Carbon pollution, aka carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere of around 400 ppm cause asthma in children whose lungs have 40,000 ppm in there already. Hmmmm, who woulda thought?
Or are we talking particulates from diesel exhaust that are saving the planet.
Hello, hello, is there anybody in there ????
“what do we have to do to save the planet?”
Eat maggots!!!
I scanned this comment and afterwards said to myself, “does this person really believe this bovine scat”. Then I read it again and saw the first line -I just watched a CNN “reporter”, and said yes he does. Please become more fact full sir and you won’t look so uninformed.
Maybe if you read it a few more times, you’ll even pick up on the sarcasm.
^¿^
Those dual forces will make many LNG projects “unprofitable in the long term,”
tru·ism
[ˈtro͞oˌizəm]
NOUN
a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting.
Everything is unprofitable in the long term.
Plunging renewable costs? Yeah, okay – on WHAT planet?
Plunging renewable costs are like Bernie’s “free College”, free healthcare for illegal immigrants and more free stuff, free stuff, free stuff. It’s all free stuff, even if you don’t want to work for it. They’ll provide for it as long as they can get enough dumb-asses to vote for them
The old head fake, shake-down of tax payers to buy votes. They are just banking on the Millennials being too financially illiterate to understand they are being fleeced with gargantuan increasing taxes for the rest of their lives. And all that brings is a socialist utopia, like Venezuela that Bernie lauded for so many years.
There is no such thing as free, if it is free it’s either worthless, charity, or enslavement/stealing.
You also get what you pay for… if it is free, by definition it is value less, for the giver and the receiver. For example, why would a medical doctor, who works for the state not the patient, have any incentive to put them self at risk seeing actual patients? he receives a salary and will get payed regardless.
Free money? Venezuela guaranteed everyone would be rich, and now everyone is a millionaire. Unfortunately it takes 2 million to buy a bag of rice.
Free education? Why would the students, or the teacher, show up for class? Cut out the middleman and save some money. Xerox out certifications and hand them out at the homeless shelter. That way, you do not need to give “homeless” homes when they can just get a high-paying job and become productive taxpayers with a PhD or Ivy league certification “on the spot” off of a printer? You can’t get a more free education than that! And it has the same value.
The only thing left that they can give us for free is sex… (for example, under sharia law, sex is mandatory for women to provide for their male owners… The fastest growing and expanding religion in the world)
it makes sense if “plunging” is used as a verb.
“plunging” (pushing the true costs out of site and down the drain; moving the untreated costs out of site and into the shared community system).
In this manner renewables can derail other more efficient energy systems.
Once again, since the UK went heavy into wind and solar and away from coal, they now have to import natural gas instead of exporting it. Imports now account for 55% of the NG that they use.
The bad thing is that this sort of nonsense will be used to drive election results and energy policy in stupid Western countries where the voters are clueless.
CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 +2H2O.
Burning natural gas still produces CO2. It is just more efficient than burning coal.
So does not meet the goal of ELIMINATING fossil fuel.
I’m sure it eliminates more coal than solar panels.
Walt D. “the goal of ELIMINATING fossil fuel”
If the goal is to eliminate fossil fuels … we should encourage burning them, since otherwise they would still exist.
I suggest while we’re burning them, we pursue extracting as much efficiency as possible.
We’re eliminating evil natural gas as fast as we can per the reaction you describe.
Just be patient.
Haven’t I heard that natural gas is a ‘Greenhouse Gas’ 30 times more powerful (evil) then CO2? Obviously we need to destroy it all by burning it up.
Think of the future children!
~¿~
David what do you know?
The author clearly wrote “plunging” renewable energy costs. Can’t you see the plunging?
I know Greta can.
Feel sorry for Greta. She’s been led down the primrose path, and has no internal defenses against those lies. Her parents are fully to blame.
Global Energy Monitor is just a spin off of innovative projects in ecology and social justice.
That tells you all you need to know about their credibility on energy reporting.
That CNN editors would see fit to allow such a junk report from a non-credible source to be the basis of a article in their Business section tells you all you need to know about CNN’s credibility and who they are working for.
In reality, folks need to understand how “articles” like this appear on CNN Business or other big media outlets.
Folks need to understand the behind the scenes circle of big green money fiannces all this, corrupts the politicians for crony capitalism, and how to close that circle of propaganda and misinformation back to its originators.
– Deep-pocketed Liberals (read billionaires, Steyer Bloomberg, etc, and billionaire trusts and foundations like the Rockefellers, and deeply underfunded public retirement funds like CalPERS) invests in Renewable Energy schemes. Schemes that carry low risk, high ROI by transferring the risk to taxpayers/ratepayers, i.e. the middle class via politcal mandates from bought and controlled pols. So they depend on crony capitalism and harvesting cash from the middle class. They coat themselves in a “Green” slime-like veneer to appear virtuous. Let’s just call them what they are: The GreenSlime.
– As a marketing cost, The GreenSlime funds ENGOs and nexus coordinating entities like CERES.org to be their useful idiots in an ever-expanding heirarchy of money flows. The money flows are wrapped in “virtue signaling” and fed to “useful idiots” filled with idealism, and dependent on financial, science and technology and energy illiteracy (AOC comes to mind, but she is just the tiniest tip of a humongous GreenSlime iceberg.).
– Via pass through funding through ENGO’s and CERES, junk “research” group like Global Energy Monitor spring-up (as recently new 501(c)3) and write climate porn “research.”
– The nexus coordinators like useful idiots at CERES.org work with their Big Media controlling interest contacts who then tell the editor to assign a reporter to write a story about this latest “research.”
-This is top-driven driven propaganda style stuff. These stories (like the one here) do not come from grass-roots, bottom-up honest journalists hitting their beat and finding interesting stories, then researching them, vetting sources, verifying, checking facts, etc.
So Matt Egan was almost certainly given this garbage “research” by his editor and told to write the propaganda story he did.
And if he didn’t, then CNN would fire him and hire someone who would. Which is probably how Matt Egan got hired in the first place, as all the old-school journalists were fired, quit, or took early retirement to be replaced by writers who be be “useful idiots.”
And The GreenSlime gets the propaganda they pay for on major media outlets.
Thus closing the Circle of Slime back to The GreenSlime.
–
–
Don’t forget the Climate Action Network, Joel, that keeps all the eNGOs on-message.
There are several coordinating nexus for the GreenSlime in the North American market of public opinion.
CAN
CERES
even NRDC does a lot coordinating along with lobbying.
No doubt others that stay below the radar, on purpose.
They all work to funnel money and coordinate climate porn campaign with various media outlets depending on the message and target demo that has been decided upon.
David,
The Farce is with you on this one
+++++
The global warming church of mandated subsidized renewable energy wastes $1.5 trillion (plus) dollars per year currently.
They have failed to replace any fossil fuel generators, since all renewables are transient intermittent low quality electrical producers. Which mandates that local fossil fuel, hydroelectric or nuclear facilities continue operating to maintain both grid and electric current quality and to cover gaps in renewable supply.
Making the alarmist worry about wasting $1.3 trillion investment dollars as a bad joke.
Not now, nor in the foreseeable future can renewable energy power industry, mining, smelting, refining, machining, large computer infrastructure, wind turbine components, wind turbine construction, solar cells manufacture, etc. etc. etc.
Alarmists should make their own renewable claims viable before they worry about the fully functional electric producers.
Fortunately in America private individual and industry is permitted to invest their capital in what ways that they see fit to.
It’s only in fascist countries that the political establishment gets to make these decisions.
So remind me again just who the real fascists are in today’s America.
Don’t forget that one of the hallmarks old fascism, which is, after all a branch of socialism, is corporate cronyism. All socialism holds that an “elite” is entitled to run society, it is a variation on the ancient feudalism scheme. In fascism, those elite are the government bureaucrats and officers of the large corporations. The free market and actual capitalism (the providing of necessary capital for founding and expansion of companies) is blocked so that the elite may stay in power.
https://mises.org/library/what-fascism-1
http://www.piratechristian.com/fightingforthefaith/2016/6/resistance-is-futile-you-will-be-assimilated-into-the-community?rq=Fascism
One of the defining traits of socialism, of which fascism is a branch, is that an “elite” is entitled to rule. In the end, socialism is the latest incarnation of old-style feudalism. One of the ways that Fascism implements this is through crony corporatism, where the government bureaucracy and the leaders of large corporations are in each other’s pockets, on each other’s boards, and generally working so as to stifle competition. Given that fascism is a branch of socialism, the government and large business work together to direct the economy and control the market.
In a true free-market economy “capitalists” provide capital investment for the establishment and growth of small and large companies. The U.S. is not completely fascist yet, but seems to be rapidly moving in that direction – or at the least there are obvious fascist forces at work.
https://mises.org/library/what-fascism-1
http://www.piratechristian.com/fightingforthefaith/2016/6/resistance-is-futile-you-will-be-assimilated-into-the-community?rq=Fascism
“Global Energy Monitor, a network of researchers tracking fossil fuel projects.”
In the old days of journalism, a reporter would go verify his/her sources and look for biases. Matt Egan obviously doesn’t care about “old school” journalism in this new age of scientism by claimed “researchers.”
But in today’s internet connected world, it is so easy to check, that a reporter has to be willfully complicit in the scam to overlook this:
Aiqun – worked as a journalist and editor at China Central Television for 18 years, focusing on environmental and social issues.
Burton – Hobart-based Editor for CoalWire, the news letter of Endcoal.org. Surely no agenda there> /sarc/
Shearer – received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. worked as a postdoctoral scholar in Earth System Science at the University of California in Irvine, as a research fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. (translation: activist with a PhD)
Browning – “worked to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable” worked for ten years as a state and regional director for Common Cause. he published “Last Chance” in Orion Magazine, a set of cards that introduces air pollution, floods, drought, fracking, and other environmental problems into the game of Monopoly. (IOW, he hates weather, and “other environmental problems.” Whatever that is. Who could argue against that trite garbage?)
Plante – completed her graduate studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she studied parasitology and epidemiology. She holds certificates in outbreak epidemiology and maternal and child health epidemiology. Probably the only real academic on their “team.” But I’d like her to explain the asthma – air pollution link though using epidemiology. (As in, every measure of air pollution in the West continues to go down, while asthma rates continue to increase; and find some causation there without hand-waving nonsense).
Nace – the leader of “Team kill fossil fuel.” Without saying in what he has a “bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree from UC Berkeley.” Probably a straight shooter??? Naw. Just another activist.
David, I love your postings but get the impression you don’t condem big oil company executives. In my book, they are button-down synchophantic cowards. On October 28, 1980, when USGS said we had 12 years of natural gas, Ronald Regan stood alone and said in debate ‘… there are vast quantities yet to be found …’ meaning oil and gas. I didn’t belive him given the media propaganda which pooh poohed his statement serenaded by crickets from big oil.
Fast forward 40 years and you have big oil (BP worst offender) highlighting their green initiatives and carbon footprint in the supply chain. Absoltuely cowardly and repugnent.
“Big oil company executives,” like all corporate executives actually have to operate in the real world.
Nevertheless, their companies have fleets of scientists who know better. Such as you, David.
The execs could by fact and white paper hit back at, and ridicule, those who so obviously deserve it.
A friend of mine had a long career as an oil field chemist at Chevron. I’ve asked him why Chevron execs never hit back, when they so manifestly could do. His answer was that he has no idea why not.
The exces are either cowards, or they’re playing a different game.
Know better than what?
They know its all politics. And politicians come and go with the wind. No one wants to get downwind without a sail or paddle.
The Climate scam is all politics. Science was gravely wounded circa 1995 with Santer, and died 1999 with the Hockey Stick.
Politics of the gravy train for “science” ever since.
“Wall Street” expects them to toe the line. By “Wall Street” I am referring to the entire finance industry. If oil company executives firmly believe that the government will impose stricter climate change regulations and/or taxes (they do), they have a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to do everything possible to reduce the harm to their shareholders from those regulations and/or taxes. To do otherwise would expose their shareholders to extreme liabilities. If oil industry executives behaved as you think they should, we would be losing the tobacco-style war being waged against us. And oil companies do hit back when there is a realistic opportunity, as Chevron did in their RICO lawsuit against Ecuador.
Last I checked there was exactly one professional scientific society with a position statement that does not endorse the alleged AGW consensus. That would be the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
American Association of Petroleum Geologists
Reality “is what it is.” The industry does not have the option of operating in an AGW skeptic’s fantasy-land; it has to operate in the real world where “Wall Street” is the main source of capital and governments are increasingly tightening regulations and/or taxes on GHG emissions.
We still only have about 12-15 years of natural gas…
The only oil & natural gas that oil companies “have” are their proved reserves.
Any CEO of a major publicly traded corporation who puts “social justice” ahead of investor ROI is shirking his/her fiduciary responsibility and will either 1) run the company into ground, or 2) be fired by investors in BoD revolt against his/her and their other corporate officers.
Greed is the basis of capitalism, and it is free market capitalism that has been the basis for the most dramatic and vivid increase in human welfare and environmental cleansing ability. “greed” is the motivator for innovation and entrepreneurship that tackles problems and solves them with efficient market-based solutions. Government has never been good at that, and almost universally has always been “bad” and will be “bad” at it.
Without wealth and fossil fuels, we’d simply be still cutting down more forests for firewood and clearing for crop lands since farmers wouldn’t have the modern fertilizers to keep existing cropland productive. Intensive animal husbandry operations at least focuses the impacts in small areas, where control and mitigation are possible for run-offs.
Without affordable reliable abundant energy, we’d still be dumping un-treated sewage into rivers and streams (like many 3rd world countries still do) and paying for the health costs from that with diseases and mortality, unable to afford energy-intensive treatment and filtering, or the treatment of water to provide potable water. Even the “cleanest” of natural surface waters can’t be directly used without treatment for drinking in a municipal system.
And the Left’s complete demonization of nuclear gives away their game plan. It is not about a clean environment. It is about control by a few over the many. It is about socialism, and return to a feudal Lord-vassal society in the West. Their are enough “useful idiots” around, like GEM here, to do the GreenSlime’s bidding in exchange for a few pieces of coin. That’s all.
Looks more like CNN Business has a truth and reality problem.
The only reason that renewable energy prices are “plunging” ( why does it need subsidies and mandates?) is because natural gas is cheap.
Salute!
I unnerstan the supply and demand economics, but I still do not like to see the U.S. subsidize at least one other country that will use every trillion ft^3 of our gas as far as the eye can see. Until we come up with another “fracking” revolution in extraction technology, I can see the gad bubble leaking, maybe not bursting, but ever-increasing extraction costs.
As a U.S. taxpayer interested in national security, it seems to me that a strategic gas reserve is just as necessary as a strategic petroleum ( oil) reserve.
Gums sends…
Gums
While I share several of your concerns, you may rest assured that the US possesses a century’s worth – give or take – of low cost natgas.
The ongoing thrust of ‘frac’ing’ technology research focuses on higher efficiencies, with the 2 main topics being a higher rate of primary recovery (up to 20% range in the Bakken from origional 3%/5%) and EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery), aka getting the rest of the hydrocarbons.
What we see unfolding in the MSM narrative is a looming, Stop At All Costs push as the imminent realization takes hold that hydrocarbon abundance is the New Reality.
And… Leaving it in the ground now, in case we need it later, is perhaps the dumbest possible course of action.
On the topic of the US LNG export boom … there is a rapidly evolving confluence of technologies, hardware and processes that portend ongoing explosive growth in natgas adoption on a global scale.
Implementing the cheap, fast-to-deploy Floating Storage and Regasification Units (FSRUs), countries worldwide are entering into the world of natgas.
Bangladesh quickly installed its second, Pakistan its third FSRU to take advantage of abundant, inexpensive fuel to service the newest iterations of Combined Cycle Gas Plants (CCGPs).
Brazil is turning online the biggest gas plant in South America at Sergipe (1,500 Mw) with FSRU supplied gas.
2 more FSRUs are planned at Belem and Santa Catarina.
Kaliningrad (!) has an FSRU, as does Argentina, Jamaica, Turkey and Egypt, amongst many other countries.
The Port Kembla, Australia terminal will be a bellweather for this industry as US LNG is on track to be the supplied fuel.
Coals to Newcastle indeed!
Newst generation power plants just got their own designation/acronym from the EIA … ANGCC … Advanced Natural Gas Combined Cycle .. essentially the new Frame H turbines.
Modular built components are being shipped and assembled onsite all across the globe.
This was covered a few days ago.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/02/greens-scrambling-to-demonize-the-climate-impacts-of-gas/#comment-2736136
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Global Energy Monitor was originally founded as CoalSwarm in 2008 as a project of Earth Island Institute, an incubator for innovative projects in ecology and social justice. In 2018 CoalSwarm became an independent 501 C(3) organization, and in 2019 it was renamed Global Energy Monitor.
Plungining renewable costs??
Will that be before or after the first fusion plant becomes operational?
Perhaps it will be after we decide to create all the minerals we need from fusion rather than mining.
plunging, as a verb.
pushing the crap (renewable costs) out of site and into the shared community system.
Another gas bag going on about gas. What I would like to see is the networks called on how much they have invested in “sustainable green energy” to support their own operations? I mean if they believe all the excrement they have pumped out over the years about climate, peak oil, coal, etc, they should be relying on “green energy for their operations. Other private concerns have invested in solar and wind, what about the networks?
I reckon that the first editor that decides to publish good honest sceptical material will make a killing and suck readers away from the current boring alarmist publications we all now have to put up with.
There is vaste array of very interesting material out there, just waiting to be gobbled up.
Currently MSM editors and journalists have got themselves stuck in a groove and will live to rue the day.
The discussion of the fly of climate change misses the probable brick of continuously declining costs for photovoltaics and wind that’s headed for the windshield of LNG exports. As the CNN article notes, constructing large LNG export facilities is very likely to be “unprofitable in the long term.”
An analogous situation: I was doing a very preliminary high-level environmental review of the impacts of a large nuclear power plant in a Middle Eastern country. Even though it was an environmental review, at the end I threw in a Powerpoint slide that showed projections of the future cost of photovoltaics. The projection showed that, by the time the nuclear plant was actually constructed and operating, it was likely that electric power from photovoltaics could be had for the same cost per kilowatt-hour. That prediction has come true.
In this case, in the U.S., the unsubsidized levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from utility-scale photovoltaics and on-shore wind are already approximately equal to power from natural gas combined cycle plants (NGCC) in the United States:
And the cost for photovoltaics and wind continue to head downward. (In fact, offshore wind, which is currently very expensive, is coming down in cost extremely rapidly.)
Also consider that a typical NGCC plant has a heat rate of about 7500 Btu per kWh. This conveniently means that every $1 increase per million Btu in the cost of natural gas means approximately a 0.75 cent/kWh in the fuel cost for a NGCC plant. In other words, if the cost of natural gas is $4 per million Btu, the fuel cost alone for a NGCC plant is 3 cents per kWh (4 x 3/4). It could well be, in a decade or two at the most, that the cost of photovoltaics and wind electricity are less than the cost to just buy the fuel for the natural gas power plants.
While there are some regions where solar and wind (with subsidies) are competitive on an LCOE basis…
LCOE doesn’t include storage or backup… Note that the capacity factors don’t improve, despite the “plunging” cost per MWh. So, you can double the LCOE to cover the cost battery storage or natural gas backup.
And… All of the price increase for CC is in variable O&M (fuel)… about $8-9/MWh… a $2-3/mcf increase in natural gas prices.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
PART 1
A first point of clarification: I can see I made a statement that could easily be misunderstood. I wrote:
When I wrote that sentence, I was thinking specifically of the cost of natural gas at electrical generation stations in the countries where the LNG was being shipped. I didn’t make that clear, but it’s obvious that when talking about LNG exports to foreign countries, the proper comparison is the costs of photovoltaics or wind in those countries versus the cost of the fuel that goes into the power plants from the LNG imports in those countries. Per Rigzone magazine:
But on to your amusement. You’re easily amused. You must positively wet yourself when you go back and read your 2017 statements about the resurgence of coal. Wouldn’t you agree that was one of the epic fails of prognostication of all time? (Sort of like, “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.”)
Coal got clobbered in 2018
PART 2
But I digress. I wrote:
1) “In this case, in the U.S., the unsubsidized levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from utility-scale photovoltaics and on-shore wind are already approximately equal to power from natural gas combined cycle plants (NGCC) in the United States:”
You responded with a Table 1b that shows unweighted (i.e., not capacity-adjusted) LCOE estimates for plants entering service in 2023, together with assumed capacity factors (which you highlighted):
The values for capacity factor and LCOE ($/MWh) were:
Conventional CC: 87%, 46.3
Advanced CC: 87%, 41.2
Wind onshore: 41%, 51.3
Photovoltaic: 29%, 60.0
I notice you did not show Table 1a, which contains capacity-weighted LCOE estimates. Those values from Table 1a were:
Conventional CC: 87%, 42.8
Advanced CC: 87%, 40.2
Wind onshore: 44%, 42.8
Photovoltaic: 29%, 48.8
A few questions:
a) Why did you only post Table 1b (with averages not weighted to capacities), and not Table 1a (with capacity-weighted averages)?
b) Why do you think it’s appropriate to base the LCOEs for CC plants on a capacity factor of 87 percent? For example, what was the average capacity factors for CC plants installed from, say, 2015 to 2017? Was it 87 percent? Or was it considerably lower?
c) How are the values in Table 1a compared to my statement hilarious (especially considering the 87 percent capacity factor for CC plants)?
2) I also wrote: “It could well be, in a decade or two at the most, that the cost of photovoltaics and wind electricity are less than the cost to just buy the fuel for the natural gas power plants.”
Again, I meant the cost of the fuel for the natural gas power plants in countries like South Korea, Mexico, Japan, and China. How is that in any way hilarious?
P.S. You wrote: “Note that the capacity factors don’t improve, despite the ‘plunging’ cost per MWh.”
Bwahahahahaha! Now that *is* funny. You take some incompetent EIA employee’s brain fart…that capacity factors for onshore wind will stay at 41% all the way to 2040, and that offshore wind capacity factors will stay at 45% all the way to 2040, as gospel. You’re so monumentally ignorant of wind technology trends that you actually think that’s plausible!
If you had even bothered to read my comments to your clueless (and cowardly) friends, you would have seen that GE is planning to bring into production an offshore wind turbine with a capacity factor of 63 PERCENT even before 2023:
GE Haliade-X 12 MW wind turbine
Wind turbine capacity factor is entirely the result of the wind resource. There are places where >60% capacity factors can be sustained. The average wind resource doesn’t change over human time scales.
David,
You obviously think you’re pretty hot stuff, with your juvenile animated gifs and your statements about capacity factors.
You say that the capacity factor for onshore wind will be 41% for new turbines in 2023, falling to 40% for new turbines in 2040. And you say the capacity factor for offshore wind turbines installed in 2023 will be 45%, remaining at 45% for new turbines up to 2040.
I say you’re wrong.
I propose a way to see which one of us is right, and which one of us is wrong. If you really think you’re right, you should be willing to take an even-odds bet that capacity-weighted capacity factors of onshore wind turbines installed in 2023 will be less than 41%, and the capacity-weighted average for offshore wind turbines installed in 2023 will be less than 45%.
But since I think you’re wrong, I’m willing to give you 2-1 odds that the capacity factors for onshore wind turbines installed will be higher than 41% and the capacity factors for offshore wind turbines installed in 2023 will be higher than 45%. I propose a $40 bet for onshore turbines and a $40 bet for offshore turbines.
In other words, if the capacity-weighted average capacity factor for onshore wind turbines is less than 41%, I will give you $80, but if it’s above 41% you only give me $40. Similarly, if the capacity-weighted average capacity factor for offshore wind turbines is less than 45%, I will give you $80, but if it’s above 45% you only give me $40.
Further, I propose that the bet be extended forward every year until 2040, unless the net loser decides to call off the bet.
For example, suppose you lose both bets in 2023 (which you will), and the capacity weighted average capacity factor for onshore wind turbines is above 41%, and for offshore wind turbines the capacity factor is above 45%. Then you’d owe me $80. But you could insist on renewing the bet to try to draw ahead. So if the next year, I lost both bets (fat chance!), I would owe you $160, and I would be behind by $80 on net. So I could insist on renewing the bet. And so on, year after year up to 2040, until the net loser decides he’s had enough.
How about it? Care to put your money where your juvenile and arrogant mouth is?