Reposted from Fox and Hounds Daily
By Ronald Stein
Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California
Tuesday, November 12th, 2019
California is about to take one giant step toward following Germany’s failed climate goals which should be a wake-up all for governments everywhere. Yes, you guessed it, our legislatures have authorized CalEPA in the 2019 – 2020 California State budget and Assembly Bill AB 74 to conduct studies and identify strategies to manage the decline of in-state crude oil production and decrease demand and supply of fossil fuel.
Germany tried to step up as a leader on climate change, by phasing out nuclear, and pioneered a system of subsidies for industrial wind and solar that sparked a global boom in manufacturing those technologies. Today, Germany has the highest cost of electricity in the world.
From Alberta to Australia, from Finland to France and beyond, infuriated voters are increasingly showing their displeasure with expensive energy policies imposed by politicians in an inane effort to fight purported human-caused climate change. Now you can add Chile to the growing list of countries whose governments are suffering a backlash as average people, tired of elites forcing costly climate policies down their throats with continuous proposals to raise public transport fares and energy bills.
Like Germany and a slew of other countries, California continues to make decisions based on their believe that intermittent electricity from renewable wind and solar will be the replacement to fossil fuels to run the 5th largest economy in the world. Like Germany, this has come at a HIGH COST to Californians.
With its green dreams of an emission free state, California has not even been unable to generate enough of its own electricity in-state and imported 29% of its needs in 2018. The bad news is that imported electricity comes at higher costs and those costs are being borne by residents and businesses alike. California households are already paying 50% more, and industrial users are paying more than double the national average for electricity.
The future of electricity in California does not bode well as the State has chosen to not challenge the closure of the States’ last nuclear zero emission generating plant at Diablo Canyon, and 3 natural gas generating plants in Southern California.
The four upcoming losses of continuous generating electricity are:
- 1. PG&E’s Nuclear 2,160 megawatt Generating Plant at Diablo Canyon’s to be shuttered in 2024.
- 2. The 823 mw Natural Gas Power Plant at Scattergood in Playa Del Rey, to be shuttered in 2024.
- 3. The 575 mw Natural Gas Power Plant at Haynes in Long Beach, to be shuttered in 2029.
- 4. The 472 mw Natural Gas Power Plant at Wilmington, to be shuttered in 2029.
With NO plans for industrial wind or solar renewable intermittent electricity projects to generate “replacement” electricity in-state, especially with the huge land requirements for those renewables, there will be a need to import from other states greater percentages of California’s electricity needs in the years ahead. And as you guessed it, more costs to the consumers and businesses who are already infuriated with high costs.
Could it be that our legislatures are also unaware that those unstoppable costs of more regulations, taxes and increased minimum wages targeted toward businesses are just passed through to the consumers of the services and products from those businesses? Those higher costs roll directly into housing, utilities, food, and entertainment if there’s any money left, and may be very contributory to California’s growing homelessness and poverty populations.
I know our legislatures want to sunset the oil industry, BUT imagine how life was without those fossil fuels before 1900 when we had NO militaries, NO vehicles, NO airlines that now move 4 billion people around the world, NO cruise ships that now move 25 million passengers around the world, NO merchant ships that are now moving $50 Billion dollars of products monthly through California ports, NO space program, NO medications and medical equipment, NO vaccines, NO fertilizers to help feed billions, NO tires for vehicles, and NO asphalt for roads.
Most importantly, before the 1900’s we had NONE of the 6,000 products that are manufactured from the chemicals and by-products from fossil fuels. Interestingly from each 42-gallon barrel of crude oil, half is for those thousands of products and the other half for the fuels to run commerce.
We’ve had more than 100 years to find alternative or generic methods to manufacture the thousands of products we get from those deep earth minerals, and to manufacture the fuels for commerce and the military. By nearly every quantifiable measure, we are better off than our pioneer predecessors because of fossil fuels. In more than a century we’ve only come up with electricity that can be generated intermittently from sunshine and wind.
When we look at what intermittent electricity from wind turbines or solar panels CANNOT do, we see they are blatant failures to qualify as replacements for the fossil fuels that produce those 6,000 products that are the basis of our lifestyles and of our numerous infrastructures, and manufacture more than 60 million gallons of fuels every day to meet the demands of the states’ commerce and nearly 40 million residents.
I believe it’s easy to understand that wind and solar alone are obviously incapable of supporting the military, airlines, cruise ship, and merchant ships. As a reminder just in case you’re still living in the pre-1900’s, without transportation and the leisure and entertainment industries, we have no commerce.
Imagine if politicians would tell voters that their utopian vision of a world run on solar panels and windmills is a fairy tell? But instead, they have doubled down to sunset the economy with legislature verbiage that pre-determines the outcome of the CalEPA efforts to study ways to decrease the size of the in-state oil industry that’s driving (no pun intended) the California economy.
Darrin,
I think that we in OR and WA states can look forward to higher electricity rates as CA sucks more electricity from PacNW hydropower. Governor Nitwit Inslee believed that selling electricity to CA at higher rates was a good thing, when he was a Congress-weenie.
Add the demand from Facebook, Google and Microsoft new data centers in The Dalles, OR and Quincy, WA, and electricity prices going up for us.
We want to treat everyone fairly. We’ll take employers from all west coast states equally. Aid stations for families overloaded in vans and SUVs will be set up with caring people and warm shelter.
I’m just glad that our dams on the Columbia R. are owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, if not Inslee and “If it’s Brown flush it down” Kate (slogan to get rid of Kate Brown for those living outside Oregon) would of colluded with Gang Green to rip them out already.
Yes, a note from our local** PUD came in the mail today: 5% increase. [ 4.99% ]
We knew about this because we are in a small cooperative, but the USPS brought the official notice.
Still, we have low cost relative to most of the USA.
**Kittitas County in central Washington State.
The lower 47 (48 minus California) should do them a favor. Cut them off all deliveries of gas and also electricity that has not been produced certifiably by wind or solar generation assets. California is about the enter a new age of Juche – that’s the supremely successful economic program of North Korea by which the country has been effectively isolated from the rest of the world. North Koreans sure are among the happiest people on Earth and soon Californians will be able to rejoice in eternal liss while the lower 47 live on their dreadful life of stable electricity and fuel for their cars.
California owns sizeable portions of th generating capacity in in neighboring states.
For but one example:
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-utah-coal-los-angeles-climate-20190711-story.html
How can “97%” of everyone it seems on the planet believe renewables are a near-term solution to (even assuming it exists) to CAGW? Why is it so hard to get all the great articles and studies published through WUWT out there? There isn’t anything on any TV network that would dare refute “the consensus”. The climate change dogmatists are clearly winning. I wish that with all the stupid ideas our government have here in Canada, that the federal leaders would at least grab a mouse, and try out Google. Our politicians have put climate change ahead of the disabled (22% of the population), veterans, and generally the national economy. Although Conservative Scheer does not necessarily subscribe to this idiocy, none of them have the cojones to contemplate calling the whole thing BS. There was one candidate in the recent federal election by the name of Maxime Bernier (Former Conservative Party leader). He got over 300,000 popular votes throughout Canada out of about 5.5 mm that voted, but couldn’t even keep his seat in his own riding, because: He doesn’t believe in government subsidies for industry (and stuck to his guns regarding dairy farmers, which probably put his lights out at home in Quebec) doesn’t believe in CAGW, and said that there are entirely too many unskilled immigrants coming to Canada. That didn’t help him either. It was simply seen as extreme right-wing racism. I think that most of my friends, and many of my colleagues agreed with Bernier’s platform, but wouldn’t vote for him because he couldn’t win. (Strategic voting -let’s vote for the local guy which gets either Daffy, Mickey, or Goofy elected.) In the first election where Bernier’s party participated after a year in existence, he won almost half as many votes as the idiotic Green party which has been around for years, under the leadership of Elizbeth May. The greens went from 1 seat to 3 (out of 338 available).
No political leader in Canada will challenge the alarmists for the fear of having to look for a real job after getting slaughtered by Greta fanatics in an election.
GAAAAHH… What to do?
Nice article. Most of the facts are right on. Sadly, the article is detracted from by a wholly unacceptable number of typos, spelling, and grammatical mistakes.
Re. California, if things are so bad there, is big business moving out ?
We are told that California has one of the Worlds biggest economies. Now
how can that be if energy costs so much.
The same goes for Germany, has business moved to other parts of Europe,
or to countries such as the US ?
Another question, we now hear from many of the Western countries that
classifying countries such as India and China as a developing country is
wrong.
As they both have developed the atom bomb, a space programme and a
military of considerable size, no way are they now poor just developing
countries.
But this was obvious from day one of the KYOTO agreement, which faced
with the outright rejection of none Western type countries cutting back on
their use of fossil fuel, who refused to sign.
My question is “”Why did the Western countries allow this ridicules state
of affeers to last so long ?””. Was it perhaps just the excuse for so many manufactures in the Western countries to move their businesses to low income countries. And why when we in the West are in effect slowly destroying
our economy, and with it our comfortable way of life, are they still allowed
to emit vast amounts of CO2.
Here in Australia with a vast sink ,around the whole country and we only
emit some 1.3 % of the Worlds content of this gas, we are clearly going into
a recession, not that PM Morrison would ever admit that.
The basic problem in the so called West, is gutless politicians who in their
endless quest for a vote or two will not speak out and tell us the truth about
Weather and long term, i.e. the 30 year Climate point.
Perhaps I am a bit simple in my thinking, but this whole rotten situation is
resting on one thing only, the facts about the molecule CO2 which is
essential to all living life on this planet, and yet its now demonised as a
pollutant.
Lets clearly state what it does when receiving energy, that’s all. Instead we
now have a vast industry which has been created about the effect of this
gas. Lots of people including the sceptics are nuking a very comfortable
living writing and talking about it.
Whole vast industries have been created to replace those industries which
emote this so called dangerous gas, which is just a minor trace gas anyway.
And don’t talk about the elephant in the room about transportation, especially aviation and shipping.
How many o the working population would be prepared o give up their car,
and change to a expensive electric car, with a high price to be paid when the
battery needs replacing.
So what are the facts as I understand it. Two things CO2 does not in itself
store energy, it re-radiates it, and second what about the logarithmic effect,
that as the amount of this trace gas is increasing in the atmosphere, its
ability to pass on energy is decreasing.
MJE VK5ELL
IMO, California and Germany are economically dead, carried only by momentum that is now almost zero.
A measure of local economic strength in the U.S. stagnated in the third quarter, dragged down by lackluster growth in major California cities, according to new data published by Yelp.
Germany’s just released third-quarter GDP growth was an anemic 0.1%, narrowly avoiding a technical recession.
I will be surprised if both aren’t now in a recession that will be reflected in their 4th quarter numbers. We shall see.
The Sacramento Democrats can get away with this electricity deception because the public K-12 education system there has produced so much of this:
The Californians
https://youtu.be/dCer2e0t8r8
A high price to pay to calm down the fury of those climate change hurricanes but somebody has to do it, no?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/14/hurricane-obsession/
Even the author is using ecospeak terminology….”sunsetting” of the oil industry, instead of the more appropriate “euthanizing”…
But German electricity BILLS – what of them? Germans use less electricity and of course millions have solar panels or share in community renewable ownership…
Germany also has probably the world’s most reliable electricity grid.
German CO2 did decrease in 2018, despite (then) economic growth and increased level of emissions from (more) transport
https://www.statista.com/statistics/449701/co2-emissions-germany/
griff November 15, 2019 at 12:40 am
But German electricity BILLS – what of them?
Germans use less electricity and of course millions have solar panels or share in community renewable ownership…
Germany also has probably the world’s most reliable electricity grid.
________________________________________________
“Without cables and a substation, the energy from offshore wind farms cannot be transported from the sea to the shore.
The 1,300-ton substation is, so to speak, the heart of alpha ventus. Its main deck is 25 metres above sea level. The platform has a workshop, emergency accommodation, a helicopter deck and a docking facility for ships. Here, the energy from all of the wind farm’s turbines is collected and is converted to 110 kilovolts.”
“The geographic conditions present particular challenges for cable laying at the German North Sea coast because of the Wadden Sea National Park, a conservation area:
The cable track to connect alpha ventus and other offshore wind farm crosses the national park across the island of Norderney and through the Wadden Sea to the mainland.
Minimally invasive construction is of paramount importance and is continuously monitored by nature conservationists.”
https://www.offshore-stiftung.de/en/grid-connection
________________________________________________
Wer kann das bezahlen, wer hat das bestellt, wer hat soviel pinke-pinke wer ist so ein Held:
Who will ever pay that, who has ordered that, who has so much €€ who will master that:
https://www.google.com/search?q=wer+kann+das+bezahlen+wer+hat+soviel+geld&oq=wer+kann+das+bezahlen%2C+wer+&aqs=chrome.
“CalEPA studying ways to sunset the California economy”
Already tried it with South Australia… big failure. The people just refuse to die.
Apologies if someone has already said this, but one of the strongest arguments against burning fossil fuels is that we need the petroleum to go on making those 6000 products.
At the rate at which Russia is setting up sub-Saharan Africa with Nuclear power, either by direct sales or by setting up co-operation agreements, we will all be migrating there for reliable power whilst the locals are migrating to the “rich” West for the handouts. Interesting times !!
“Germany’s failed climate goals which [] be a wake-up call for governments everywhere.”
Bloomberg:
“Despite higher energy bills, public opinion has remained supportive of the energy transition.
Polls conducted by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam
found in its annual survey for 2017 that 88 percent of voters back the strategy to cut emissions.”
________________________________________________
The fallacy here is TO ASK the voters if they support the “energy transition”.
Whenever asked by a camera team on the streats, “anonymous” on the telephone or by filling out forms via Internet people always tend to represent themselves as the elites of the Good doers.
________________________________________________
Instead WATCH them in the real world when they’re asked TO PAY for their Good doings:
At the supermarket shelves, where they will ALWAYS reach for the cheapest Goods available regardless of their “publicly expressed opinion”.
WATCH them in the real world when they’re asked TO PAY for their Good doings:
At the supermarket shelves, where they will ALWAYS reach for the cheapest Goods available regardless of their “publicly expressed opinion”:
https://www.google.com/search?q=tv+documentaries+heavy+couponing&oq=tv+documentaries+heavy+couponing&aqs=chrome.
________________________________________________
“Germany’s failed climate goals which [] be a wake-up call for governments everywhere.”
Bloomberg:
“Despite higher energy bills, public opinion has remained supportive of the energy transition.
Polls conducted by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam
found in its annual survey for 2017 that 88 percent of voters back the strategy to cut emissions.”
________________________________________________
The fallacy here is TO ASK the voters if they support the “energy transition”.
Whenever asked by a camera team on the streats, “anonymous” on the telephone or by filling out forms via Internet people always tend to represent themselves as the elites of the Good doers.
________________________________________________
Instead WATCH them in the real world when they’re asked TO PAY for their Good doings:
At the supermarket shelves, where they will ALWAYS reach for the cheapest Goods available regardless of their “publicly expressed opinion”.