UN Paris Agreement Architect Blasts Australia’s “Lack of Integrity” on Climate Action

Christiana Figueres
Paris Agreement Architect Christiana Figueres. By International Maritime Organizationhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/imo-un/39536174340/, CC BY 2.0, Link

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to former UN climate chief and Paris Agreement architect Christiana Figueres, coal exporting Australia is not acting with integrity when it comes to global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

Christiana Figueres blasts Australia’s “suicidal” position on climate change

by Tarla Lambert

Christiana Figueres who was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010 to 2016, has slammed Australia’s “suicidal” position on climate action saying it conveys “a lack of integrity”.

“The climate wars that have been going on in Australia for over a decade now are just – honestly they are such a suicidal situation because Australia… holds such promise with renewable energy,” she said during a recorded session for the Australasian Emissions Reductions Summit, which began online today.

Now the director of the global climate movement Mission 2020, Figueres said she had never shied from speaking about her frustration with Australia’s haphazard stance to a pressing emergency.

“I’ve been pretty vocal about my frustration for so many years of a completely unstable, volatile, unpredictable stand and position on climate change in Australia.”

“There is no other country that has as much sun potential as Australia,” she added.

Rather than extend itself on Paris Agreement commitments, Morrison has instead suggested that Australia’s overachievements on Kyoto Protocol targets could be used as credits– a position Figueres simply branded “cheating” .

“It is just a total lack of integrity and not something that does Australia proud,” she said.

Read more: https://womensagenda.com.au/climate/christiana-figueres-blasts-australias-suicidal-position-on-climate-change/

I agree with Figueres about Australia having a two faced position on Climate Change.

The Australian government could end coal exports overnight with a single act of parliament. But instead of coming clean about wanting an important carbon intensive industry to continue and grow, or supporting the climate skepticism of President Trump on the international stage, Australian politicians maintain a transparent fiction that they care about climate change, both at home and abroad.

Figueres’ comment that Australia has lots of “sun potential” is just plain wrong.

What is missing from Australia is copious quantities of clean fresh water to wash the solar panels or collectors.

The dust which accumulates in Australia has to be seen to be believed. In the dry inland the dust sticks to everything, thanks to static electric charges which accumulate when the dust is blown by the wind. Covering even a sizeable fraction of Australia’s deserts with solar systems would require cleaning water on a scale which we simply don’t have.

Update (EW): Fixed a couple of typos (h/t Leo Smith)

0 0 votes
Article Rating
80 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
stinkerp
December 3, 2020 10:12 am

The ones who lack integrity are all the so-called climate scientists and scaremongers who use made-up computer data instead of real world measurements. For example, global temperatures:

RCP8.5: 3.7 to 4.8 C per century
Measured: 1.4 C per century

Don’t presume to lecture anyone about integrity, Ms. Figueres, because your lack of integrity is monumentally apparent.

Latitude
Reply to  stinkerp
December 3, 2020 2:21 pm

lack of integrity > China

Ian
December 3, 2020 10:23 am

“a lack of integrity” – ?

Kettle -> Pot -> BLACK

December 3, 2020 10:32 am

Christiana Figueres is talking about integrity.
If I have my memory right, she is the one who came clean that efforts to control CO2 were not really about Global Warming but were an “opportunity” to establish worldwide income redistribution. The old 3 card Monty inflicted on the poor ignorant inhabitants of planet Earth by our natural elite class of over educated morons. She calls that integrity?

fred250
Reply to  john harmsworth
December 3, 2020 11:53 am

comment image

Evil and sly and CONniving as they come. !

Reply to  fred250
December 4, 2020 5:33 pm

Both Fred and John:
Plus 1,000!

Carl Friis-Hansen
December 3, 2020 10:39 am

Covering even a sizeable fraction of Australia’s deserts with solar systems would require cleaning water on a scale which we simply don’t have.

I Australia really, really wanted to waste nature, money and resources on solar panels, the water needed could be made available.
Build the needed nuclear power plants to facilitate desalination plants for the salty sea water and build pipelines to the solar panel industrial complexes inland.

If time is an issue, then substitute the nuclear with coal as a temporary solution.

OldGreyGuy
Reply to  Carl Friis-Hansen
December 3, 2020 2:35 pm

Why not just build the nuclear plants and use the power where and when we need it. We could just avoid covering the desert and other fragile ecosystems with toxic chemical leaching solar farms or bird killing inefficient wind towers. The environment would be better off.

Stefan
Reply to  Carl Friis-Hansen
December 5, 2020 9:39 pm

Carl,
+100
But you forgot the /sarc 🙂

CD in Wisconsin
December 3, 2020 10:39 am

Ms. Figueres is persistent if nothing else. If she is beginning to feel as though she is beating a dead horse, chances are she probably is. I realize that she is probably very frustrated that the world still hasn’t embraced Marxist-Socialism sufficiently enough for her satisfaction, but that is her problem and not the world’s.

Someday, if and when climatology is actually a branch of science again and not something to be manipulated for a political and eco-activist smokescreen, people like Ms. Figueres will likely be long gone.

Tarquin Wombat-Carruthers
Reply to  CD in Wisconsin
December 4, 2020 12:35 am

and rightly so!

Steve Case
December 3, 2020 10:49 am

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” Christiana Figueres, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary

stinkerp
Reply to  Steve Case
December 3, 2020 11:25 am

Figueres is not only astonishingly arrogant, she’s also extraordinarily ignorant about history and economics, which is a defining characteristic of every Leftist. The socialist leaders of the USSR and China set themselves the task of intentionally changing the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years since humans began bartering and trading thousands of years ago. It didn’t go so well. Tens of millions starved to death and almost everyone except the political elites were uniformly poor. “Capitalism” as Karl Marx and other socialists like to derisively label it, is simply the freedom to produce, sell, buy, or own what you choose. Every other economic system ever invented by pointy-headed theoreticians and social-justice warriors is the opposite: not freedom.

fred250
Reply to  stinkerp
December 3, 2020 12:22 pm

“and almost everyone except the political elites were uniformly poor.”

The MAIN FEATURE of socialism !

JCR
Reply to  fred250
December 3, 2020 6:58 pm

Too damn true. It should be remembered that she is the daughter of a former President of a South American country (I don’t remember which), and her brother subsequently became president. In other words, she is the daughter of wealth, power and privilege. If her deluded fantasy ever came about, you could bet money that she would ever give up her privileged status and all that goes with it.

Harry Passfield
Reply to  stinkerp
December 3, 2020 12:38 pm

Figueres is the Che Guevara of global warming – and knowing what he was capable of, I don’t mean that as a compliment. If she had her way….

Ian W
December 3, 2020 10:54 am

Figueres admitted that the Global Warming conspiracy set by the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which she is the executive secretary, has a goal not of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity, but to destroy capitalism. She said very casually:

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

She even restated that goal ensuring it was not a mistake:

“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-03/un-official-admits-global-warming-agenda-really-about-destroying-capitalism

It would appear that Figueres is the one with a lack of integrity on “climate action“. The UN aim is to cripple Australia’s industry and ‘remake capitalism’ in the pattern that Klaus Schwab of the WEF has decreed and all his sycophantic globalist billionaires support. All of it inline with UN Agenda 2030. Suddenly, 2030 is a date that everyone is quoting Boris Johnson wants no internal combustion vehicles sold in UK by 2030

How does a small coterie of unelected bureaucrats and billionaires think that they have the right to decide things for the ~200 countries in the world and their 7 billion population?

One thing is certain Figueres’ Paris Accord has nothing to do with CO2 or a ‘climate emergency’ and is more to do with deindustrialization of the ‘West’. At the same time Paris Accord has a ‘Green Fund’ into which the developed countries of the ‘West’ are required to pay while pauper ‘undeveloped” (?) countries like China are paid from the Green Fund as they continue building coal fired power stations commissioning around 2 a month until the magic date of 2030.

Trying to Play Nice
Reply to  Ian W
December 3, 2020 11:51 am

I didn’t vote for any of those cretins and will not do anything they tell me to do. Fortunately we have the 2nd Amendment in the US to protect ourselves from these would-be dictators.

MarkW
Reply to  Trying to Play Nice
December 3, 2020 12:42 pm

At least we do until the Democrats pack the Supreme Court with liberals who declare that the 2nd only applies to the National Guard and other persons employed by the state.

Harry Passfield
Reply to  Trying to Play Nice
December 3, 2020 12:55 pm

And that, TTPN, is where this is all going to end, I fear. People will only take it so much but when they see the filthy rich making their fortunes in this new world order – there’s going to be a lot of brown stuff hitting fans – unfortunately mixed up with some red stuff.

Carl Friis-Hansen
December 3, 2020 11:00 am

Christiana Figueres may not even like Mr. Tesla.
In Brandenburg in Germany Elon Musk plans to build a battery factory (a giant one). Lots of constant uninterrupted power is needed for his Giga Factory.
Due to the unreliability of the German weather dependent power generation, he intend to build his own power plant in Brandenburg.
Not only that, he suggest nuclear, as in this statement:

‘Where there is no risk of natural disasters such as earthquakes, the risk of nuclear energy is very small,’ says Tesla CEO

Taken from this article:
https://www.focus.de/auto/elektroauto/mehr-power-fuer-elektroautos-ja-zur-kernenegie-erst-elon-musk-reisst-die-deutschen-aus-ihren-oeko-traeumen_id_12727192.html

Elon does not like his cars to be called “coal fired or coal charged.”

Mr.
December 3, 2020 11:15 am

Eric, how come you’re reading stuff at womens agenda . com?
Is there a declaration pending from you?

Mr.
December 3, 2020 11:21 am

Heaps of stuff about climate(s) is unpredictable.
What is consistently predictable though, are the hypocritical press releases from the climate carpetbaggers such as Figueres and her ilk.
One wonders why releases from the carpetbaggers aren’t flagged by the MSM and social media platforms as –
** this content is disputed **

Editor
Reply to  Mr.
December 3, 2020 8:01 pm

Don’t knock it, ** this content is disputed ** is a very handy way of quickly identifying something worth reading.

If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.
– [Edward Krehbiel]

If you don’t do your own thinking, others will do the thinking for you – it’s called fascism.
— Jacque Fresco

commieBob
December 3, 2020 11:39 am

That woman’s photograph is unfortunate. It’s way too easy to imagine her with horns.

DonM
Reply to  commieBob
December 3, 2020 1:29 pm

The odd thing is that she puts effort into looking that way … she wants to look like that. All the photos reflect the sameness of the makeup and hair.

commieBob
Reply to  DonM
December 3, 2020 4:54 pm

The fake smile … am I dreaming or is that fake smile more common on Democrat politicians than on Republican politicians.

Thinking about bad portraiture made me think about good portraiture. Yousuf Karsh was the best. As far as I can tell, he never published a picture of a phoney smile. His portraits seemed to capture the deep personalities of his subjects. Maybe phoney politicians want to avoid that. I wonder what he would have done with President Trump.

PaulH
December 3, 2020 11:41 am

Hopefully, Australia will not accept this insult by begging for forgiveness. It’s time for the world’s democracies to stand up to this nonsense.

fred250
December 3, 2020 11:50 am

I blast the ork’s totally lack of integrity or morality or humanity as a person or a human being or whatever he/she/it passes for. !

A deep totalitarian facist/marxist/socialist thug/bully who should she its beak where the sun don’t shine.

DonM
Reply to  fred250
December 3, 2020 1:27 pm

She has had two daughters. But that is still not enough evidence for me to accept that (s)he is an actual (human) female.

Timo Soren
December 3, 2020 12:09 pm

Can you spell:

Flaming charlatan?

fred250
December 3, 2020 12:20 pm

Being that Indonesia exports more coal than Australia, where are its comments about Indonesia?

Tom Abbott
December 3, 2020 12:21 pm

Meahwhile, China gets a pass on their CO2 output.

Joel Snider
December 3, 2020 12:30 pm

‘Integrity’ – wow.

Imagine how freeing it must be to be utterly devoid of shame.

Joel O'Bryan
December 3, 2020 12:32 pm

Q: Why isn’t Comrade Figueres calling on Saudi Arabia to stop exporting oil? Or for Russian to stop exporting oil and natural gas?
A: She knows the Saudis and Russians aren’t that stupid.

High Treason
December 3, 2020 12:34 pm

This is from the same person that stated in January 2013 that Democracy is a poor political system to combat global warming. Chinese Communism is the best model.

MarkW
December 3, 2020 12:38 pm

I suspect that if Australia cut off shipments of coal to China, they could expect Chinese warships in their harbors within the week.

RexAlan
Reply to  MarkW
December 3, 2020 4:00 pm

Hi Mark, China is currently not accepting Australian coal.

China’s ban on Australian coal could be ‘indefinite’ amid heightened political tensions

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3105202/chinas-ban-australian-coal-could-be-indefinite-amid

fred250
Reply to  RexAlan
December 4, 2020 1:59 am

Just playing a juggling game.

China has to get its coal from somewhere…

Its not having as such of an effect on Australia’s coal market as one might expect.

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2153846-australian-coal-exports-hold-up-despite-china-ban

I like this part. 😉

“Shipments with confirmed destinations in China fell significantly in September and have remained depressed in October, but all the main ports show over 1mn t of shipments to unconfirmed destinations in both months”

ozspeaksup
Reply to  RexAlan
December 4, 2020 3:14 am

remembering”pigironBob” theyre taking shitloads of iron ore though
and like before it may well return as missiles planes n ships

LdB
Reply to  RexAlan
December 4, 2020 5:55 am

Yep coal exports remain steady and Adani coal is set to start exporting next year. The biggest issue is the dollar value of coal stuck off China at $500M, not going to send anyone broke but hurts bottom line.

Timo soren
Reply to  RexAlan
December 4, 2020 8:54 am

Sandoaling steam engines and coal.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XCRjBNaknRw

Amazing to watch.

PMHinSC
December 3, 2020 12:40 pm

So which way is the world turning…all the headlines read that the CAGW crowd is plowing ahead with success after success and sanity will not prevail in my life time. But wait, maybe perception is not reality! Are the CAGW(ers) winning the headlines but losing the future? Somebody please throw me a life line…who is winning and who is losing. Give me a date I can put on my calendar that says “sanity has prevailed!”

M Seward
Reply to  PMHinSC
December 3, 2020 5:28 pm

They seem to be ‘winning’ the propaganda stakes because they have devised such a synergy with the msm. Every bit of melodramatic schlok gives the media another segue to shout HOTTEST EVAH, CATASTPOHIC, DEADLY, etc etc day in day out and sex up their otherwise puerile, undergraduate, groupthink/talk drivel.

Keith Harrison
December 3, 2020 12:42 pm

If the Darwin to Singapore solar powered electric connector is ever built, the lady should be invited for few days to view the daily maintenance of such a structure deep in the Australian hinterland.

lee
Reply to  Keith Harrison
December 3, 2020 9:04 pm

Perhaps she will volunteer to do some maintenance there as she apparently knows it so well. 😉

IRFM
December 3, 2020 12:46 pm

It was odd to see/hear on Skynews in Australia last night a coal supporting Labor politician, Joel Fitzgibbons, claiming that Australia had substantially reduced its carbon omissions since 1990 while his LNP opponent supporting Senator Canavan claimed Australia that was not so over much the same time. Rather, all things considered, Australia had not greatly reduced its omissions. Apparently, there were different reporting reasons for these differing views. However, our coal loving politicians confirmed that Australia’s second biggest export is coal. Great energy low cost transfer at work. Not every country can park 80 odd coal ships off various ports in China and wait patiently for the highly cooperative Chinese to allow unloading. That’s capitalism for you.

yarpos
December 3, 2020 1:04 pm

UN….integrity?…..pointing fingers at others?……mmmm OK

She wouldnt even see the irony

timbersfine
December 3, 2020 1:09 pm

whats with the crap soft porn adds on this website side bar? Is everyone getting this garbage???

Watts up with this site becoming a geeks closet spank bank.

Nice choice of advertising Anthony, porn porn porn wooohooo!!!

MarkW
Reply to  timbersfine
December 3, 2020 1:41 pm

Anthony doesn’t choose the advertising. If anything, Google selects the ads based on your viewing history.

leowaj
Reply to  timbersfine
December 3, 2020 2:02 pm

What MarkW said.

If you block ad tracking data, then everything is fair game to be shown as ads, including pornographic content potentially.

If you are not blocking ad tracking data, then that means you’ve been on some naughty websites, whether you admit it or not, or know it or not.

Randle Dewees
Reply to  timbersfine
December 3, 2020 3:13 pm

Some ad algorithm somewhere knows I’m an old white guy living in the Mojave desert. I get suggestive ads that there are younger women nearby looking nearby for older men.

Alexy Scherbakoff
Reply to  timbersfine
December 3, 2020 4:01 pm

Use an ad blocker. I was getting nonsense about how to make millions of dollars and some political party (global warming) not one of the normal parties. I’ve never clicked on political stuff or ‘ making millions’ websites. I, unashamedly, look at porn but don’t get porn ads. Ad placement is big business and a simple answer that ‘you look at porn sites’ is not correct.
Using an ad blocker gets rid of most stuff.

Rainer Bensch
Reply to  Alexy Scherbakoff
December 4, 2020 3:38 am

…making millions…
Here too. But… why should I believe or even talk to a person who is clearly lying or an idiot? I mean, why don’t it make the millions itself?

Timo soren
Reply to  timbersfine
December 4, 2020 8:58 am

Seen the same, mine had Santa outfits designed by former star twiggy.

jono1066
December 3, 2020 1:17 pm

I have a cracking idea . . .
simply install a parrallel striped film across the top of each collector and use some of the spare electricty (and a small van-der-graph genny) to alternately charge then earth the strips to drag the dust off the panels, and offset the last strip onto a bare wire overhanging the side, then earth the last strip . . and. . . Hey presto, all dust drops to the desert floor.
Special bonus is if you crank up the voltage real high we can even turn them into Ozone generators.
Grant cheques to my home address please.

lee
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 3, 2020 9:08 pm

Perhaps Christina can be grounded for us.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  lee
December 4, 2020 3:19 am

yup
6ft oughta do it.

if she was anywhere near me Id wallop the daft bitch upside the head
as an aussie female this bint gives me the irrits

Craig from Oz
Reply to  jono1066
December 3, 2020 6:42 pm

You know why people don’t like sand? It’s coarse and rough and irritating… and it gets everywhere.

And once it is everywhere it doesn’t just sit around because of static. All the stripped film is going to do is reduce the effectiveness of the panel (cause it’s a film), reduce the useful power output (anything you are using on site is something you are not selling) and make something else that needs maintaining, but probably wont be.

Also the sand eventually turns you evil and you wake up one day slaughtering younglings with a light sabre. True!

Chris Hanley
December 3, 2020 1:23 pm

“… When you look back at how we started with wood and charcoal and coal, then gas, and then renewables, you can see a constant decrease of carbon value and a constant increase in efficiency of burning … a shift away from fossil fuels to highly efficient renewables is a natural one …” (Christiana Figueres 2015).
A common fallacy, the first part is correct the second part is not, adoption of so-called renewables is a regressive step.
So-called renewables wind and solar cannot be rated without including the cost of energy storage to be comparable with legacy sources.
Existing legacy energy sources are an order of magnitude more efficient that solar PV, solar thermal and wind when the cost of storage is included:
comment image
Solar PV in regions of moderate insolation are a net energy sink.

Chris Hanley
Reply to  Chris Hanley
December 3, 2020 1:55 pm

The “cost of storage” should be ‘energy cost’ of storage.

Jordan
December 3, 2020 1:25 pm

If Figueres things Australia is is not acting with integrity, it would be interesting to hear her views on the Scottish Nationalist Party.

https://www.politico.eu/article/scotland-nationalists-rethink-their-love-of-north-sea-oil/

“The Scottish National Party (SNP) burst onto the British political scene in the early 1970s campaigning under the punchy separatist slogan of “It’s Scotland’s Oil” — a reference to the vast reservoirs of oil and gas recently discovered beneath the North Sea waters around Aberdeenshire.”

“In a speech to the Oil and Gas UK conference in 2017, [Sturgeon] noted that the North Sea may contain up to 20 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves. “Our primary aim – and I want to underline and emphasis this – our primary aim is to maximise economic recovery of those reserves,” she said.”

“At the SNP’s annual conference in April 2019, [Sturgeon] declared a climate emergency, lauded the recent spate of climate strikes led by high school students, and pledged that Scotland would “live up” to its responsibilities in the battle against global warming. ”

“Ahead of next autumn’s COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Sturgeon’s ambitious carbon reduction targets have even earned praise from global environmental campaigners like Al Gore.”

Climate believer
December 3, 2020 1:30 pm

The cabal have had a brilliant idea to combine China Kung Flu and Climate change™ calamities to force unwanted change and limit freedoms.

They have been rather disappointed in peoples reticence to embrace the new world order as shown in recent surveys like The European Perceptions of Climate Change Project (EPCC). When people were asked “what do they think is the most important issue facing their country in the next 20 years?” climate change™ was only mentioned by 2% of respondents in the UK, by 3% of the respondents in Germany, and by 6% of the respondents in France.

So nobody really believes in the hyped threat which is encouraging.

This will not do though.

The media (propaganda machine) has been informed to start soft selling these ideas, as they do all bad ideas.

Here are some examples from my own countries media today (everyday):

The Parisian
Global warming: effects “already perceptible and deadly”
According to 120 world-renowned researchers, the rise in mercury increases mortality on the planet, in particular due to more frequent heat waves …

Le Monde
No country is immune to the adverse health effects of climate change
Heat-related deaths among those over 65 have increased by 54% over the past two decades, reaching nearly 300,000 deaths in 2018, …

Orange News
As like Covid-19, no country is immune to climate change
Health systems are ill-prepared to deal with the growing dangers of climate change and no country is immune… (interesting use of the word immune here)

Liberation
Health and climate change, converging crises
Heat waves,air quality and growing inequalities, climate change is putting a strain on our health.

Non stop BS from here on in.

Leo Smith
December 3, 2020 1:39 pm

She is called not Figures, but Figueras.
Amongst other things…

leowaj
December 3, 2020 1:54 pm

When she called it “cheating”, I pictured a little girl stomping her feet in anger when the other kids on the playground don’t play by her rules.

Ironically, that picture isn’t far from the truth.

john
December 3, 2020 1:59 pm
DonM
Reply to  john
December 3, 2020 6:26 pm

Who are the people in the video. Will they be brave enough to be there again, where people will recognize them, for the senate vote?

Chubby guy in the red shirt is easily recognizable, and he has some explaining to do. (As does pony tail girl).

Chubby guy had put on his jacket in pretense to leave; then takes off jacket in preparation of getting back to work; then talks on phone to get the all clear; then gets to work on the number of votes that will fit into three suitcases. Check the phone call number and see if it goes to the guy in the hat that left to cover the doors…. (but the response will be “I called to tell him to stick around because we found a batch of uncounted stuff” … but why then was it an incoming phone call? … “oh ya, he called me to tell me he was leaving and I filled him in on the situation and asked him to cover the doors and wait instead of leaving).

Again, will these workers be their for the runoff vote? Why not?

john
December 3, 2020 1:59 pm
markl
December 3, 2020 2:07 pm

So once the Marxist/Socialists destroy Capitalism by cutting off its’ energy supply who’s going to finance their ideology? Trickle up poverty eventually runs out of other people’s money.

Peter W
Reply to  markl
December 3, 2020 3:03 pm

Being idiot idealists, they haven’t figured this out, and never will.

Karl Juve
December 3, 2020 4:02 pm

U.S. out of the UN, UN out of the U.S., NOW.

Analitik
December 3, 2020 4:30 pm

To all those critics of Scott Morrison, I say “Not bad”

willem post
December 3, 2020 5:00 pm

Figures is an elite climate-warrior bureaucrat, who does not know anything about reality.
The Wall Street elites are salivating at a Biden win. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
However, more wind and solar would not reduce CO2 as much as touted, plus they produce very EXPENSIVE, GRID-DISTURBING electricity.

Wind and Solar Subsidies Provide a Bonanza for Wall Street
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-more-wind-and-solar-the-higher-the-electric-rates

This URL shows wind and solar prices per kWh would be at least 50% higher without direct and indirect subsidies. They would be even higher, if the costs of other items were properly allocated to the owners of wind and solar projects, instead of shifted elsewhere. See below section High Levels of Wind and Solar Require Energy Storage.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/economics-of-tesla-powerpack-and-powerwall-systems
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plants-require-large-scale-battery-systems
http://www.usu.edu/ipe/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/UnseenWindFull.pdf

This URL shows about 2/3 of the financial value of a wind project is due to direct and indirect subsidies, and the other 1/3 is due to electricity sales.
http://johnrsweet.com/Personal/Wind/PDF/Schleede-BigMoney-20050414.pdf

– Indirect subsidies are due to federal and state tax rebates due to loan interest deductions from taxable income, and federal and state MARCS depreciation deductions from taxable income.

– Direct subsidies are up-front federal and state cash grants, the partial waiving of state sales taxes, the partial waiving of local property, municipal and school taxes. See URLs.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for-2200-kw-field-mounted-solar-system-in
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf

Any owner, foreign or domestic, of a wind and/or solar project, looking to shelter taxable income from their other US businesses, is allowed to depreciate in 6 years almost the entire cost of a wind and solar project under the IRS scheme called Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System, MARCS. The normal period for other forms of utility depreciation is about 20 years.

Then, with help of Wall Street financial wizardry from financial tax shelter advisers, such as BNEF*, JPMorgan, Lazard, etc., the owner sells the project to a new owner who is allowed to depreciate, according to MARCS, almost his entire cost all over again. Over the past 20 years, there now are many thousands of owners of RE projects who are cashing in on that bonanza.

Loss of Federal and State Tax Revenues

The loss of tax revenues to federal and state governments due to MARCS was estimated by the IRS at $266 billion for the 5y period of 2017 – 2021, or about $53.2 billion/y.
The IRS is required to annually provide a 5y-running estimate to Congress, by law.
The next report would be for the 2018 – 2022 period

The indirect largesse of about $53.2 billion/y, mostly for wind and solar plants^ that produce expensive, variable/intermittent electricity, does not show up in electric rates. It likely is added to federal and state debts.

Most of the direct federal subsidies to all energy projects of about $25 billion/y also do not show up in electric rates. They likely were also added to the federal debt.

Most of the direct state subsidies to RE projects likely were added to state debts.

The additional costs of state-mandated RPS requirements likely were added to the utility rate base for electric rates.

* BNEF is Bloomberg New Energy Finance, owned by the pro-RE former Mayor Bloomberg of New York, which provides financial services to the wealthy of the world, including providing them with tax avoidance schemes.

^ In New England, wind is near zero for about 30% of the hours of the year, and solar is minimal or zero for about 70% of the hours of the year. Often these hours coincide for multi-day periods, which happen at random throughout the year, per ISO-NE real-time, minute-by-minute generation data posted on its website. Where would the electricity come from during these hours; $multi-billion battery storage, insufficient capacity hydro storage?

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68227.pdf
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tax-equity-investors-break-their-silence-on-tax-bill#gs.GDbC2YIS

Warren Buffett Quote:

“I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/even-warren-buffet-admits-wind-energy-is-a-bad-investment

Craig from Oz
December 3, 2020 6:52 pm

Two things.

First this article is published by The Woman’s Agenda. One might be cynical enough to suggest that a site with that name doesn’t really care what Christina has to say, and is more excited that she isn’t a man. But only if one was cynical.

The other observation is that she talks about the ‘potential’ of solar power. Not the ‘reality’ of solar power, the ‘potential’.

Sadly government type figures in planning positions love to talk about potentials and possibility. I actually had one explain to me that I was failing to appreciate a problem correctly because my professional background was in Engineer and we dealt with probabilities. They were in planning. They dealt with possibilities.

(we also deal with observations, but don’t let that get in the way of someone senior in the public service)

So while an engineer might observe existing examples and calculated something was a bad idea, a planner would talk about the possibilities of the problems being overcome leading to the possibility of a brave and stunning new market.

Sigh.

JCR
December 3, 2020 10:22 pm

Too damn true. It should be remembered that she is the daughter of a former President of a South American country (I don’t remember which), and her brother subsequently became president. In other words, she is the daughter of wealth, power and privilege. If her deluded fantasy ever came about, you could bet money that she would ever give up her privileged status and all that goes with it.

DaveS
December 4, 2020 5:00 am

The Spanish are experts at maintaining solar PV output under difficult conditions. such as night time. I’m sure they could provide a similar solution to mitigate dust.

C Lynch
December 4, 2020 7:48 am

I’m surprised Comrade Christina can even spell ‘integrity’. Given her compulsive intellectual dishonesty she clearly has no idea what it means.

Ken Pollock
December 5, 2020 7:32 am

Should we believe anything Figueres says? She wrote a book called “The Future We Choose” where on page 55 she demonstrates she (or her co-author Tom Rivett Carnac) does not know the difference between “energy” and “electricity”. She writes “already more than 50% of the energy in the UK comes from clean power” The UK generated 50% of its electricity from wind and solar for a few months. Electricity is 13.6% of its energy (2018), so 50% is 6.8% of total energy, and that only for a few months.
And she organised the Paris Climate Agreement? Why believe anything she says?

%d bloggers like this:
Verified by MonsterInsights