October 19, 20217:30 AM Terry Etam
So, the energy crisis has finally arrived. I am mulling this over from my underground bunker, my ‘home office’ on one side and flats of dried pasta/canned goods/instant coffee/baked beans on the other (speaking of the beans, hmm, there’s no proper ventilation – I did not think this through very well). While, like most serious students of energy, I’d expected its arrival sometime, but scrolling through the energy news flow, I must admit I had no idea it would unfold quite like this.
To anyone that pays attention to the energy world with any objectivity (i.e., not searching for villains), it was obvious that the world would one day run into a hydrocarbon supply crunch. This didn’t have anything to do with a rapid energy transition; it had to do with a massive black hole in global upstream capital expenditures. The world’s oil consumption needs, particularly new growth in demand, had been met by huge international projects that took half a decade or more to get off the ground. Think of Brazilian sub-salt development, or even new Middle Eastern fields (simplistic commentators love to point to the Middle East as having super-low-cost fields, however even Saudi Arabia’s latest big-field development was expensive offshore oil (the Manifa offshore oil field, which kicked off in 2006, required 27 constructed islands connected by a 41-km causeway – not cheap stuff)).
The US shale boom masked that problem quite well for a while, capturing the attention of the global media spectacularly. While US shale growth was indeed huge, context is important – US shale fields added ~8 million b/d to a global production base of 80-90 million b/d, and that base had natural declines of probably more than 5 percent after the price meltdown that began in 2014 (when maintenance and exploration capex slowed significantly). US shale largely did a good job of offsetting those global declines for a few years, but not much more.
In 2019, global oil consumption passed 100 million b/d. At about the same time, two cataclysmic events hit the hydrocarbon world. First, in late 2019, global climate hysteria reached new levels; children marched through the streets demanding and end to fossil fuel usage; governments panicked and signed on; and the ‘divest fossil fuels’ movement took off. Together, these developments, which were petroleum anti-developments, further cratered the world’s ability to provide the hydrocarbons the world cannot live without (more on that in a second).
Then of course Covid struck, shrinking hydrocarbon demand for the simple reason that everyone was sitting at home on the couch for a year. The same activists that made fossil fuel divestment a rallying cry for the befuddled masses convinced the world’s governments that Covid provided a glorious opportunity to ‘build back better’ or accelerate the energy transition. Because few truly understand energy, they all signed on, because politicians do not like having children yelling at them in public.
So anyway, I’d always thought that the world would gradually come to the realization that weaning itself off hydrocarbons was much harder than most thought, and that the pace of both renewable development and hydrocarbon bashing would slow as reality sunk in.
Wow, was I wrong.
It hardly needs pointing out what is happening, but I’ll do it anyway in case you are wise enough to avoid the energy news. Don’t get me wrong, energy news is critical, but has become dominated by views that display a stunning level of energy ignorance.
Those views have convinced the world that we no longer need hydrocarbons, that renewables plus batteries can handle the load, and that the energy transition is happening so rapidly that leaving a dollar invested in oil/gas reserves is a super-risky strategy because the assets will become ‘stranded’ as the world demand rapidly evaporates. Low oil prices during peak-Covid were offered as proof that ‘oil is dead’, as Canadian Green party leader Elizabeth May smugly barked out.
Turns out reality is somewhat different, to put it mildly. That global full-court-press to minimize hydrocarbon investment is coming back with a vengeance. Demand has roared back as economies shake off Covid, and prices have started to rise as demand exceeds supply. In every other commodity price boom, rising prices signalled the market to provide more supply, and producers happily obliged because ample cash flow is a mighty fine thing.
The thing with oil and gas though is that fields deplete, and new production means new infrastructure – new wells, new pipelines, new processing facilities, etc. And that’s where the trouble really starts. Nothing is easier in the protest world than obstructing new infrastructure development. There is a veritable catalogue of options: direct protests, PR campaigns, regulatory delay tactics, lawsuits, a friendly media to stir up opposition, and on and on. Three or four idiots dangling from a bridge in Vancouver held up marine traffic so badly a few years ago that Vancouver Island nearly ran out of fuel. The media covered every burp from the dangling protesters, but paid no attention to possible fuel shortages.
Threatened fuel shortages have in the past few years been met with a yawn from the media. A few years ago when Canadian railways were blocked by protesters, Quebec nearly ran out of propane, which would have been cauchemardesque, to put it mildly, yet the media was far more interested in the feelings of the protesters, and, incomprehensibly, the RCMP stood by and watched the fools blockade critical fuel supplies because the cops were afraid to make a scene. (I hope that is what they were afraid of. Lord help us if they really were intimidated by tiny bunches of unemployed and un-calloused socialists.)
The opposite is usually true: a warning of fuel shortages, particularly of hydrocarbon shortages, has been met with a wall of sound, a unified cry from the climate industry of ‘fossil fuel shill’ or ‘climate change denier’ or worse; an indignant primal scream that renewables are all we need and that apologists of the status quo will kill us all, and the planet to boot (not one ‘save the planet’ person has ever explained exactly how the planet would be ‘not saved’ if CO2 emissions continue – would it explode? Would it stop spinning, throw us all off, and turn into a fireball or something? Don’t dare ask though, you will be branded ‘anti-science’.)
The hydrocarbon industry, the providers of the fuel that keep 8 billion people alive, were therefore powerless to point out how critical fuel supplies were, having been outplayed in social media six ways from Sunday. So the industry battened down the hatches, trying to figure out what to do next. It had no history of public engagement; governments and citizens always clamoured for more and more of their products. To become public enemy number one in a few short years is a bit alienating.
Global clarity came in the form of the inevitable reconciliation between a capital starved industry and a world clamouring for more. While it was inevitable, the speed of the impacts has been ferocious. Six months ago, it was business as usual for a world recovering from a pandemic, and charging towards a green future with the electric motor’s throttle pushed right to the carpet.29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
In Canada, Trudeau boiled over with enthusiasm during a climate conference, pushing Canada’s emissions-cut-targets from a wildly difficult 30 percent cut by 2030 to a drunk’s boast of ‘at least 40 per cent’. Biden rose to the occasion also, seeing Trudeau’s flexing and raising him – sure Justin, you say you can lift the back end of a car, well, just watch me, I’m going to flip it right over and I’m as old as Jerusalem.
Fast forward to October, and Europe is planning to roll out…fossil fuel subsidies for consumers. I kid you not. The very economic lever that drove activists apoplectic is now a newly forming EU policy because China, India, Europe, and soon other jurisdictions are bidding the price of coal and natural gas through the roof, hitting all time highs. Oil is past $80 for the first time in 7 years. Entire industries are slashing output of everything from metals to food to fertilizer due to fuel costs and/or shortages. Biden is backing down from massive climate spending pledges because he can’t even get his own Democrats to support the initiatives.
If the sudden fondness for fossil fuel subsidies seems kind of panicked and reflexive for such a colossal about face, check out the brand new infatuation with nuclear power. According to one British paper, Boris Johnson has “reportedly backed the building of a new generation of nuclear reactors by 2050 after the lorry driver shortage sparked fuel panic.” WTF? Nuclear reactors take decades to come into service.
What on earth is going on in western leaders’ minds when they bark out something as stupid as that? Not that I’m against nuclear; if the world truly wants emissions-free energy as a dominant source within the next 30 years, there is no other way. But enough of the world is against it to make its widespread adoption a massive challenge (Germany and California are currently shuttering perfectly good nuclear facilities because of public hatred). And in saunters Boris with nuclear as a solution to a drivers shortage, which is akin to quitting your job, leaving your family, and moving to Tibet because the grocery store had no dill pickle chips.
True, a truck driver shortage is a serious problem, but do you deal with it by kicking off a new energy source that won’t be ready for 20 years? And will face a mountain of opposition along the way?
Oddly enough, that makes sense though, when governments and institutions have sworn to fight to the death the hydrocarbon system that keeps everything running before they have a replacement. That’s what you get when you have panicked developers that have ripped the roof off your house, haven’t thought of what to use for shingles because none are available, and a storm is on the horizon. No solution will sound stupid when the alternative is to admit the whole scheme was brainless beyond compare.
It will make a hell of a show from the bunker, even if I need a periscope.
The world needs to learn about energy systems or face Europe’s fate. Might as well get a laugh while you’re at it – pick up “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com. Thanks for the support.
Add to the stupidity the transition to electric vehicles being pushed by governments and the wealth creation lobby groups before baseload electricity supply has been increased to cope, before grids are upgraded, before public recharging points are easy to locate and in number able to meet peak demand as traffic increases.
But offer small cars for the price of ICEV large cars and even more over pricing and pretend to be saving the planet from natural weather and climate variations.
If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise…
All this ideological claptrap is running headlong into reality.
You can ignore reality. But not the consequences of ignoring reality.
Check out how many UN registered National Parks there are around the world and note that in order to make us feel good the slogan is that these now locked away areas are being preserved for future generations.
But look harder, locked within are minerals and energy resources that must not be exploited, no sustainable logging, no new dams, nothing, even restrictions on camping and hiking.
And, the forests locked away become CO2 neutral when they start to rot. And, they become C02 negative when they burn.
Even the IPCC state… ”A sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.”
What the hell are schools teaching the kids today ??? Is there no reality taught any longer so kids can THINK for themselves ?
No. They indoctrinated into what to think, not educated into how to think.
“… it was obvious that the world would one day run into a hydrocarbon supply crunch.”
18 months ago the world was awash in cheap natural gas and oil. What changed? Certainly not the remaining recoverable reserves of either by any significant amount in that time.
Reserve depletion induced supply crunch is not the same as human politics induced supply crunch.
Just like computer chips , when demand drops and excess supply floods the market the production is cut.
Opening up reverses the above situation, and demand eceeds the supply. Prices rise.
You don’t seem to realise many supply systems are in balance, and a disruption will upset that. Usually it’s a small scale like a hurricane or winter storm and last a week or less.
Excuse me, but neither TSMC, nor Samsung cut chip production. In fact they are building semiconductor fabs at twice the rate that they have historically. The lockdowns caused a significant uptick in computer sales which increased semiconductor demand. At the same time, much of the automobile industry procurement people canceled their chip orders, rather than delaying their deliveries.
These cancelations did not result in chip fabs sitting idle waiting for the automobile industry to place orders. The canceled orders allowed others to receive there orders sooner. When the automobile procurement people decided to place their orders, they found themselves at the back of the queue. The chip shortage is a result of increased demand, not reduced supply.
Biden?
Lockdown ended.
The most alarming thing is that the roads here instead of being clear, or having decent drivers on them, are suddenly awash with people who obviously haven’t left their houses in 18 months and didn’t really know how to drive in the first place.
Meanwhile the GlobalWarmingHysteria™ is reaching an intensity that is causing teenagers to suicide.
The roads here are awash with potholes and washouts from lack of maintenance over the past two years of covid-fear.It will be a decade before they are finally fixed, if it even happens then!
They fixed potholes and even installed optical fibre for me here in lockdown.
You lucky sod !!
we’ve still got holes & copper
A lot of things changed. US shale added more than 2M barrels of new production in 2018. That’s the most any nation had ever added to world production in industry history. Those huge production adds were still being worked through when the pandemic hit 18 months ago. Shale production depletes at an alarmingly high rate. Some wells deplete at 6% A MONTH! As oil prices collapsed huge numbers of drilling rigs got stacked. With less new wells coming on line US shale production dropped by 2M barrels post haste. Its still not recovered. Production in countries such as Nigeria, Angola, Mexico and Venezuela has also declined significantly. In addition, OPEC+ has been slow to bring back its shut in production. Worldwide demand is once again approaching 100M barrels per day. But supply is still several million barrels per day below levels that existed the last time demand was this high. World inventories have declined for 15 straight months and now sit well below the 5 year average. It appears draws from storage will accelerate this winter. Simply not enough barrels to go around.
The only reasonably quick supply response could come from US shale. Unfortunately, they are currently being pressured from all sides to only maintain a maintenance level of drilling. Banks and investors all want their capital back for fear the “energy transition” will ultimately gut oil and gas demand before they get their money back. Until investors , lenders and regulators all start pushing for more drilling it’s unlikely this present shortage will be alleviated.
Since Biden became US president, US inflation has dramatically increase {and reasonable expectation of it continuing and/or increasing].
So, the price of all energy will obviously go up dramatically.
And anyone selling energy, obviously wants higher prices, and everything thing Biden does
would cause energy prices to increase, even if Joe was not causing inflation.
But poor Joe and his cronies are too stupid to do anything about it except enact more bad policy and plea for the Middle East to pump more oil.
Too bad the Keystone pipeline wasn’t finished…
Largely overlooked is lowly coal. The largest reserves by far.
I expect things will get much worse. Central banks will want to raise interest rates to offset inflation. This will crush governments and consumers who have way over extended after years of cheap money. Assets will have to be liquidated. Markets will fall with no safe haven.
Ed Fox,
You say,
“Largely overlooked is lowly coal. The largest reserves by far.”
Coal is “largely overlooked”? Surely you mean coal demand and usage have been stable for decades..
Please see
https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2021/supply
Richard
It worries me that oil majors are either intimidated to not invest in new hydrocarbon fields or denied capital (as Mark Carney has been threatening along with Blackrock). Shortages will continue to mount and prices continue to climb until the economy goes into severe stagflation. Maybe Russia will make up the shortfall?
Carney is an example of someone with a participatory Ph.D. in economics. Such degrees are issued by the debating club rather than scientists, and only means their recipients are practised orators. Economists have a far worse track record of predicting financial problems than weather forecasters, and their musings of what the world will be like if their imagined money redistribution plans are followed, are no better than doctors debating what society should do about drug abuse.
I hope that someone is keeping track of the guilty parties who have been working so hard to destroy the fossil fuel industry.
This is not down to some raggidy ass scruffy protesters, you think if Greta had been an anti-war protester she’d have a podium at Davos?
Are the reserves actually there to find? (I don’t know) Because it sounds like lack of investment, and ringfenced minerals in the ground via Agenda 21/30 i.e. wholey manufactured. It’s not just an oil supply crunch, UK &US HGV driver situation has been brewing for years, at least 3 years, wholey manufactured. Climate scam, wholey manufactured. Plandemic, wholey manufactured globally in lock-step (if there was no PCR test and no global personal BS meter failure, there would be no pandemic, it would just have gone down as another bad flu year). Not to mention paying farmers more than the crops value to destroy it in the fields (US and UK) has yet to hit anyones radar.
It looks more like controlled demolition than supply crunch, lead by the ringleaders of stakeholder capitalism, the Global Public Private Parnerships “Great reset” and their globally uttered “Build Back Better”.
I have said many times that if we were to stop the PCR tests, the hysteria and the ‘pandemic would go away.
If we’d had PCR testing for the last flu outbreaks, we would have seen all of this hysteria playing out every flu season.
In retrospect, we could not have handled this Covid disease any more wrongly than we did. We should have protected the elderly, and ‘insisted’, that everyone else be exposed to get it, like we did Chicken pox in earlier years. Many doctors freak out over that suggestion. They shouldn’t. Common sense should have prevailed, but didn’t.
It’s not even debateable John, it bloody obvious. There was so much obvious BS on the news it actually irked me, I spent the last 18 months reading Immunobiology 101, and a bunch of covid papers, just to get a handle on WFT is really going on biologically, it’s a shitshow.
Talking heads on TV have no clue, the shit they spout isn’t just bad, it’s 180 degees out of phase, antibodies = immunity? WTAF? There is not correlate of immunity, period.
Not to mention the old “vaccines are safe and effective” complete BS. Luckily I found JJ Couey who’s a neuro-biologist (original DRASTIC group) streaming biology/immunology 101 a few days a week on Twitch (gigaohmbiological.com) that made it much eaiser to understand. Read his review paper it’s not just educational, it’s a real eye opener!
And the most worrying thing is not even being talked about, the response isn’t just bad, it’s potentially catastrophic, and they’re not even monitoring the numbers properly, why are they ignoring this?
https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/keep-looking-at-snapshots-and-you-ll-never-see
Well you always rip the shingles off if you’ve modelled some replacements and these folk are the very model of a modern major modeller-
Electric cars could save $500b: analysis (msn.com)
The article says…..”based on air pollution setting us back $488 billion, greenhouse gas emissions by $205 billion”…..so let’s have a better breakdown of these supposed setbacks of $30K per Australian, $120K per household…
The covid pandemic reduced demand, resulting in lowered production.
As demand picks back up production has not increased.
This is not strictly the fault of protestors – but of manufacturers looking to increase their bottom line – after the fall in profits that they have already experienced.
It is a global anticompetitive oligarchy that holds the power for the meantime – they are ably supported by the Biden administration and the climate change campaigners – but make no mistake this is about profit, not ‘humanity’….
“What is abundantly clear is that the cuts
pledged by countries in the past year in
time for Glasgow, as required by the Paris
Agreement, leave us far from the 45 per
cent reduction in emissions needed by
What is abundantly clear is that the cuts
pledged by countries in the past year in
time for Glasgow, as required by the Paris
Agreement, leave us far from the 45 per
cent reduction in emissions needed by
2030 to hit a 1.5°C path. In fact, they would
equate to a 16 per cent rise in emissions.”
From the latest New Scientist. The conclusion is obvious. Either they don’t believe it, or they have no intention of acting on it, or both.
Either way we all, governments, media, science establishment, politicians and intellectuals, we all need to give up the idea that global emissions are going to be reduced. It is not going to happen. Its not worth trying any more. Its over.
Therefore the only logical thing to do is formulate our policy on the basis that emissions are going to rise. And this means, for the low emitters, like the UK for instance, not putting any more money into efforts to reduce emissions.
Instead put it all into planning for assessing and dealing with the local consequences of what is going to happen. If you are Holland, for instance, get real about sea level rise, and do proper cost benefit analysis of what to do with the dykes. Stop the fantasies about reducing fossil fuels and emissions, because that, globally, is just not going to happen. There is no global project to join up with.
The fact that Russia and China are not coming to CO26 tells us something. The fact that the global emission trajectory is as the NS reports tells us the rest.
I doubt there is a whole lot that needs to be done solely on account of the emission produced warming, since I doubt the consequences of the rise will be terribly serious. There is quite a lot to be done about air quality and flood protection even without any effects from global warming.
But this is where the science funding needs to be focused now.
Please, in future, leave facts and rational argument out of a nicely balanced emotional narrative of mass hysteria.
The New Scientist was the very first to go. It was antiscientific from front to back, last time I looked.
Well that is the whole point of the ‘new generation of nuclear reactors: ‘ They don’t.
That may not turn out to be the reality, but that is what purveyors of small reactors are shooting for.
Theyve had them in ships and subs for 30 years.
If this were 1984, that would be correct. USS Nautilus was commissioned in Sep 1954. Not 30 years but getting close to 70.
The problem here is, once again, the demand vs supply. There isn’t the supply of these SMR needed to meet the demand that is going to develop. Using one in a submarine is *NOT* like using one to provide power to a large city sub-division. The costs will sky-rocket as those purveyors try to meet demand – thus lowering demand. Catch-22
But the UK is investing £285 million to save the day (/sarc)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advanced-nuclear-technologies/advanced-nuclear-technologies
Why should costs skyrocket with increased demand? Which input to the process is constrained? Certainly not concrete, steel, uranium, water? Costs normally drop–and dramatically–when volumes increase. All the fixed costs are covered by much higher revenues. On top of that is the learning curve where the more you make, the more you learn, the more cost/waste you pull out of the process and the higher the quality becomes as you learn to do it right with higher and higher capability. This is basic economics.
After the first oil shock in 1973, France embarked on this exact project with great success. Griff would be freezing in the dark all winter if it were not for those very nukes across the Channel. (But as he’ll tell us, it can all be predicted very accurately, so he’ll know which days he is going to freeze in the dark).
There is absolutely nothing different today other than much more advanced manufacturing technologies and design capabilities. Today as 50 years ago, it all depends on whether the government abets the anti-capitalist protesters or tells them to pound sand and get out of the way of national security.
It takes time to ramp up production and see the cost reductions. As labor costs of the initial products soar because of the lack of people with the proper skills and demand grows exponentially costs will skyrocket. This happened in the telephone network when converted away from crossbar switches and again with the conversion to digital switching. I see nothing with smr that is different.
Tim, without wishing to be contentious with you, your thinking is not very crisp. The only way price rises is if demand sustains it. Supply or lack thereof is irrelevant if it is a product that is not wanted. If demand drops, price drops as well.
In a market economy with free competition, if a new product is introduced, it can only penetrate the market by being cheaper or better than competitive products. Demand responds to the perceived value of the product, moderated by the cost signal. Each consumer makes an implicit, for the most part unconscious cost/benefit decision with each purchase. We probably all drive a car that is not the model we would drive if money were no object. The one we settled on had an acceptable cost/benefit ratio.
The electricity fed into the grid by an SMR is indistinguishable from the electricity fed into the grid by a brown coal power plant as far as the end-consumer is concerned. So in reality the SMR manufacturer cannot command any higher price at all. The only thing they can do is sustain low profit margins or losses as they work to drive the costs out of their processes and eventually become profitable selling at the market price.
Well, of course the other thing that they can do is lobby the government to get a subsidy, a loan guarantee, a guaranteed sale at an above-market price, a tax or onerous regulation on the competition, etc., etc. In that scenario they do not need to do any engineering work driving cost out of the manufacturing process, just go back to the restaurant and lobby the bureaucrat again to increase the subsidy.
Look, the bottom line is that France already demonstrated that this is an entirely feasible project using 50-year old technology. It’s silly to argue that something that was done already can’t be done again.
France has no any reliance on wind and/or solar power.
Can not subsidize both.
Germany went large in wind and solar, then had to drop nuclear.
Small nuclear power is as wasteful as wind and solar… also riskier.
Can not compete even with the big nuclear.
Why go small when big is far better, economically and otherwise?
cheer
“Tim, without wishing to be contentious with you, your thinking is not very crisp. The only way price rises is if demand sustains it.”
The first IBM PC’s that came on the market were expensive and their price went up as the demand grew – until manufacturing (i.e. supply) increased to meet demand.
“In a market economy with free competition, if a new product is introduced, it can only penetrate the market by being cheaper or better than competitive products. Demand responds to the perceived value of the product, moderated by the cost signal. “
Or it can be the only available product, e.g. the IBM PC.
“The electricity fed into the grid by an SMR is indistinguishable from the electricity fed into the grid by a brown coal power plant as far as the end-consumer is concerned. So in reality the SMR manufacturer cannot command any higher price at all. The only thing they can do is sustain low profit margins or losses as they work to drive the costs out of their processes and eventually become profitable selling at the market price.”
You are saying the exact same thing I did. “sustain low profit margins or losses as they work to drive the costs out of their processes” or until they can ramp up production to meet demand.
Tell me again whose thinking is not very crisp?
“onerous regulation on the competition”
Which is exactly what is happening today.
I never said that SMR use was not possible. I said the unit costs would be high until supply met demand. Costs *will* increase until the supply (production) is ramped up enough to meet demand – demand driven by government regulation.
What happens when a hurricane causes a major refinery to go off-line. Gas prices don’t stagnate or go down. They go up until production is high enough to meet demand. SMR production will be no different.
Again you miss the point. In the case of Rolls Royce, and their consortia, the râison d’etre of the consortium is precisely to ensure that the skill sets are all in place. RR has been building reactors in factories for 50 years. Its been building gas turbines for power generation since the 1970s. Its been building safety control systems for reactors a long time too.
There is nothing intrinsically difficult about building a reactor anyway. A boy scout built one in his garden shed.
What is difficult is doing it safely – but that has always been the case, and RRs reactors have never had issues in the submarines in which they were installed.
I have no memory of excessive costs in the telephone network as technology changed. Rather the reverse in fact. That was why the technology was adopted. To save costs.
And its a different case. we are not deploying reactors in every home (sadly) but in perhaps ten to twenty sites.The installation engineers need know no more about what goes on inside them than the plumber who installs a gas boiler. In the end they are simply a heat source.
“he râison d’etre of the consortium is precisely to ensure that the skill sets are all in place”
The amount of labor they can afford to bring on line has to match what their production is. Otherwise labor costs escalate with no return on the investment the excess labor causes.
“There is nothing intrinsically difficult about building a reactor anyway. A boy scout built one in his garden shed.”
ROFL! And I’m sure it met all the safety requirements to get insurance for use in a commercial setting!
“I have no memory of excessive costs in the telephone network as technology changed. Rather the reverse in fact. That was why the technology was adopted. To save costs.”
You have no memory yet you are willing to state facts about it?
I worked in engineering and long range planning for several transitions. SXS swithes to No. 5 Crossbar. N-carrier to T-carrier. No. 5 Crossbar to No. 1ESS. No. 1ESS to Northern Telecom and Seimens digital switches. The costs for the newer technology *always* grew until production could be ramped up to meet demand.
The conversions were done to reduce OPERATING costs. Capital investment in the older equipment was a sunk cost, there was no lowering that with newer equipment. It always cost *more* capital to put in the newer equipment. Then you could write off the older tech and attrition the staffing (i.e. labor costs) to lower ongoing operating costs.
Of course capital outlays levels, i.e. prices, always went down sooner or later. But, again, that didn’t lower the capital investment you spent on the first units which always initially went up before they went down. You still had to earn on that early investment based on *its* cost, not on later costs.
Again, that is not the intention.
I can’t remember whether it is 5 or 6 manufacturers – or consortia – that are now actively developing SMRs, but enough to provide competion and prevent massive profits.
No one knows what the supply is, because only one customer has to date ordered one – if memory serves.
Your arguments could equally have applied to wind turbines 20 years ago.
In short either SMRs can be built to a viable cost, or they cant. Sober engineering firms believe they can and are betting their futures on them.
“developing”
not producing
“only one customer has to date ordered one”
How does pharma recoup development costs?
“Your arguments could equally have applied to wind turbines 20 years ago.”
The *did* apply to wind turbines 20 years ago when they were first being developed and produced.
“In short either SMRs can be built to a viable cost, or they cant. Sober engineering firms believe they can and are betting their futures on them.”
I’ve never argued differently.But those first production units *are* going to have higher prices than later units. Guaranteed.
Great article, the other key ingredient in an energy death-spiral is war, as nations fight for fuel, causing further disruption to supply, causing further conflict, etc.
Maybe in a few years time we will be laughing bitterly at the trivial concerns of our “leaders” about warmer weather.
Did you (did anyone actually) believe the shinanigans in the sand pit were about terrorism?
I doubt it!
Quote:”Do you rip off your shingles before finding…..“The Madness runs much deeper – how about ‘Biomass‘
IOW Do you burn your roof rafters & joists, window-frames and furniture in order to keep warm?
Warmists do: under the impression they’ll be ‘saved‘
They also think that:
Burning soil in order to grow sugar is a Good Idea
Poisoning said soils, themselves and everybody, with Roundup (##) in order to grow ever more ever better sugar is = ‘Good‘
Quote:”What on earth is going on in western leaders’ minds”
Answer: Selfishness, greed, lack of original thought, political correctness (##) and virtue signalling
Quote:”it was obvious that the world would one day run into a hydrocarbon supply crunch”
Absolutely and right back to short-termism and greed in all its manifestations, esp, Power, Control and Money
The True Insanity was in burning the stuff, especially oil – it is far and away too useful and valuable for making other stuff.
OK, windmills might make electricity but electricity doesn’t make the plastic insulation covering the wires and cables that the windmill needs to carry away its electricity and put it into your car – and your car needs for pretty much everything even before we get into food preservation, storage and delivery.
Where Is The Plastic Replacement?
## Roundup has gotten a ‘Bad Rap’ as something that supposedly causes cancer.
Have a scratch around inside Roundup. You’ll realise that it causes myriad more worser things, much more serious things.
It poisons us just as effectively as it does plants.
And I, me Peta of Newark would assert is where this Climate Insanity originates.
In both Chronic Depression of our brains & nervous systems from eating sugar and also subclinical Autism Spectrum Disorder from eating food grown in soils containing Roundup
(Nutrient deficiency, esp of metals like Fe, Mg, Li, Cu, Co, Mn, K also Iodine and Selenium)
Where its creators, Monsanto, should be in the very deepest of Very Deep Shit is in The Humongous Lie they told everyone about it ‘breaking down/neutralising‘ when it contacts soil/dirt
We all now know it doesn’t – that very fact because the gene for Roundup resistance was found in plants growing in an outfall stream/ditch coming off a Roundup factory
Just saying – Please do not derail the thread because of it.
Take it away, Check it out, Mull it over, Chew it over but if you find its got Roundup in it, spit it out pronto
You are finally losing it, Peta.
Did she just refer to herself in the third person? Oh, that’s never a good sign.
Good one Peta.
🙂
cheers
“Do you rip off your shingles before finding out if new ones are available? It’s painful to watch those that do”
In England – at least – that headline is funny
“Shingles (Herpes zoster) is an infection that causes a painful rash. Get advice from 111 as soon as possible if you think you have it. “
And before anyone starts moaning, that comes from the holy NHS
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/shingles/
I just had a shingles jab. Dam me, lovely nurse but she left me with
…the biggest purpliest bruise I’ve had this year.
I thought it was chicken pox, not herpes. Oh. Apparently its both…
It’s a secondary infection – usually.
I had chickenpox as a young boy, but I’ve not had shingles.
Get THAT vax. Shingles suck. I had the vax after having Shingle because unlike the China virus you CAN get shingles multiple times, in different areas.
3 years latter and I still get discomfort on my side from where the rash was.
Well that sorta makes it hurt a bit less. So thanks.
Apparently after a bit of net surfing, the chicken pox virus in childhood gives a raging infection and is very infectious and goes after a high fever in a few days, mostly. In later life it can reappeaqr as shingles and it’s really rather nasty if it does, taking weeks to go, and being not very good for you in all sorts of ways.
It’s the same virus, manifesting in different ways.
You’ve not had it yet. It mainly strikes when you are older. A relative of mine didn’t get the shingles until age 90. And it was a nasty case of it. You really don’t want to get it.
Further to my comment below, it is interesting to consider the possible timescales to developing new energy resources. If – and it is a big if – small modular reactors end up taking less than five years to come on stream, and given the abundance of stockpiled nuclear fuel – in the UK at least – then nuclear might be the fastest investment-to-market time of any primary energy source.
And actually end up requiring the least extra infrastructure – windfarms need offshore DC cables and beefed up grids where they come ashore. Gas and oil fields need pipelines laid. SMRs can be sited close to where demand is – no extra grid required.
Rolls Royce SMRs are based on nuclear submarine reactors
Well very very loosely, yes, in the sense that both are small PWR type units.
But I think the subs are under 50MW, and the RR SMR is going to be 470MW. Also I doubt that the commercial recators will use the highly enriched fuel that many subs do.
“are based on ”
Do I really need to explain that further? I sincerely hope not.
“very very loosely, yes, in the sense that both are small PWR type units.”
Do I really need to explain that further? I sincerely hope not.
There is a whole ream of issues associated with this. I’ll mention just one – grid frequency stabilization. You don’t have to worry about that on a submarine – but you do in a nationwide grid. How do you maintain grid frequency when the number of generators goes up exponentially?
Its called electronics. Wind energy converters and solar all synchronise to the grid frequency – some by generating at the right frequency and some DC wecs and solar use power electronics to generate grid voltage and frequency,
That is the main problem of instability of wind and solar.
Electronic systems, computerised or not, or even smart ones, can’t correct that Instability factor.
Electronics can only follow, they can’t lead and they can’t control the frequency.
Once an instability gets into the system, “electronics” only makes the problem worse. Only mass is capable of creating stability.
You’ve gotten two pretty good answers. I can only emphasize that electronics simply can’t start up a grid that is in total blackout. They can sync to an existing signal but create their own sync signal? How? Suppose you have 50 individual nuke plants spread throughout a big city like Kansas City. For some reason the grid goes total blackout – e.g. everything trips off line because of some incident on the grid. Which nuke plant are you going to bring up first so the rest can sync to it. Once that plant gets going how does it keep from overload due to the demand that will appear instantaneously on the grid?
The more small nuke plants you have the more complicated the restoration plan will be,. And complicated infrastructure to implement that complicated restoration plan will be costly, VERY costly. And the more complicated that infrastructure becomes the more likely it will fail and dump the whole grid back to zero.
Even with large spinning masses it’s difficult to bring a grid back up from scratch. If it was easy you wouldn’t see the cascading failures we’ve seen on various grids over the past twenty years. And you could train monkeys to do it!
“Which nuke plant are you going to bring up first so the rest can sync to it“
You bring them all up simultaneously. GPS allows synchronization to the nanosecond.
If even one is late or is off frequency you will generate another grid event as the grid tears itself apart trying to compensate. You may think you can sync to the nanosec but even electronic switches have built in latency that is different from unit to unit. Meaning not everything will proceed exactly in sync.
You are so clueless its not even worth reasoning with you. I’ve seen generators being synched to the grid. Its simple unless you are a clueless clot.
Google ‘synchroscope’.
Been used since the 19th century.
Malarky! What you have seen are individual generators being synced to an already operating grid!
A synchroscope is used to tell when a generator is frequency matched to another generator, i.e. to the grid. A totally different scenario from trying to bring up multiple generators all at the same time on a single, non-operating grid.
We used synchroscopes back in the late 60’s in the university power lab to singe pairs of generators. One was *always* considered to the “grid” and the other was synchroized to it. If that “grid” generator was not operating at the proper frequency, i.e. no operating grid to synch it to, then you wound up with two generators synched to the wrong frequency. That was a simple scenario with a simple load being fed by the generator, a load not sufficient to cause either of the generators to trip from overload.
That is *NOT* the case with a grid fault that has kicked the entire grid to zero. You have to have a detailed plan on how to isolate loads allowing a generator to come one line without overload conditions and then you have to independently verify that the generator is operating at the proper frequency. Then you start bringing other generators on line sequentially verifying their proper operation and that there are no other grid faults that can cause a cascade failure.
Your assertion is not enhanced by starting off with an ad hominem followed by something that has no real relevance to the issue at hand. Try to do better.
Oh dear. You really have no clue. Replacing an all coal grid with an all nuclear one is really no step change at all, even if we have been through a nearly all gas one in the meantime.
The techniques for a black start temnd to rely in fact on using hydro to set the prequency, and then having the thermal plnats connect to that, but at more or less idle power so they are just ‘keeping up with the music’
Then as load is swtiched on, steam pressure is added to the turbines to take up the load.
“Oh dear. You really have no clue. Replacing an all coal grid with an all nuclear one is really no step change at all, even if we have been through a nearly all gas one in the meantime.”
Once again, you start off with an ad hominem and then proceed down an irrelevant path.
The issue is replacing coal generators with MULTIPLE small nuke reactors. The issue is that the more generators you have the more complicated the recovery process from a dead grid becomes. Replacing a large coal generator with a single large nuke is not an issue. Same for a single gas plant.
How do you switch on the load safely when you don’t know what caused the initial fault? Miss the cause and you just bring the grid down again in a second cascade. The 2019 NYC blackout was caused by a single protective relay in a single substation. The more small stations you have the more cross-connects you need to provide power to customers when a station has to be taken off-line for maintenance. Those cross-connects represent multiple failure points. So do the protective devices required to protect such a convoluted network.
You are trying to conflate the operation of single large generators with the operation of multiple small ones. And you haven’t identified the problems with the multiple smaller generators. You are just assuming there won’t be any differences in the two scenarios.
BTW, where do you get hydro-power in Kansas to use in synching the grid? Or Oklahoma? or Nebraska?
No, its called synchronism. No electronics involved.
The answer you may get to your question these days, by the euphorics;
Doubling down.
More of what does not work, makes it better and merrier.
cheers
Oh purlease. Give it a break. It’s basic engineering. The reason grid stability is an issue to day is because we don’t have enough thermal plant on the grid.
Good grief stability is still even there with a million roof top solar panels!
You mean thermal plants with rotating mass? I have never said otherwise.
You mean nukes? Nukes are good for consistent base load. They are not good for varying load, either high peaks or low peaks. They can’t be the only answer.
Solar panels *have* to go through a DC-AC inverter if they are connected to the grid. Those inverters are dependent on an active grid for frequency stability.
smrs at 300MW are going to need grid connection, A water supply,. Cooling for condensing the steam. disposal when depleted. Just as standard size reactors. submarine reactors have plentiful water supply! In uk any infeed to the 240v grid above 5kw requires approval. 3100-400MW is something thet is not going to feed into the local 240V – ever – that 400 to 1600Amps at 240v!!!
Windmills need a grid connection too, ghoulfront. Even with a continent-spanning grid and building 5x the wind capacity needed if wind provided power 24/7 (hint: it doesn’t) there will still be times when wind will come up short. Nuclear has a capacity factor of 90% and almost all outages are planned. Big difference. You can run a country’s electrical grid on nuclear (France already comes close) but you can’t run one on wind. Figure it out.
france cannot control nuclear output to load follow. The still use alternative sources, germany uk and others to fill in the rapid response required to keep the grid stable
I did not say that WECS did not need a grid connection! I did not say wind and solar could provide by themselves a stable grid.
Ghoulfront, nuclear is always used as baseload power. That’s the power that runs at all times whether or not the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. It’s power that you can count on. Wind isn’t. Solar isn’t. You can’t load follow with unreliable renewables either, certainly not when it isn’t windy or sunny. Really don’t think you had a point – you seem to be stretching to find something, anything, to find a reason to support unreliables.
Nuclear is only used as baseload because its a more expensive way to provide variable demand. Not because its technically impossible.
Gas is cheaper to build, and, provided its only used occasionally, the fact that gas is expensive doesn’t stop it being cheaper overall than nuclear at low capacity factors.
At high capacity factors there is nothing except coal that is cheaper than nuclear, and that’s becoming less true with high coal prices.
France DOES control nuclear to load follow. Its perfectly easy, especially with fresh fuel. As the fuel gets poisoned with Xenon, they tend to not do that so much though.
The reaosns why one tends not to use nuclear to load follow are the same reasons as for wind and solar – when what you have is a high capital cost plant and very low to zero fuel costs, you want to get any income you can out of it.
Tell me how a nuclear submarine manages to travel at different speeds?
Golly, they have variable output reactors!
A windmill generator has a much better and flexible variable output than a SNR,
but still a wind farm has a very significant instability factor.
cheers
In proposition of energy production, the “farm” structural method, consists as a considerable instability production for/into the grid operations.
Either it been a wind, solar, coal, gas or nuclear…. farm.
Only diesel can still produce, in a “farm” structure method without faltering…. but still if parameters of diesel generators matched well with the farm capacity production.
As only for diesel power generation, the reserve capacity production of the “farm” can be utilized properly and efficiently enough.
Energy security clause does not really stand with farm energy production.
An electrical grid with diminished reserve production capacity, is an unstable grid…. insecure and prone to frequency volatility… at given moments.
Any energy production considered as small, can only be grid utilized in the consideration of “farm” production.
cheers
Couldn’r understand much of that, As near as I can tell, you’re unaware that many countries rely on natural gas turbines but very few use diesel.
Don’t “kill” your self over your ignorance…
It happens to the best of us.
You just not able to understand… the intricacy of your gambling.
Sorry, not meaning to offend, but in this you lack grit … really sorry for the directness.
Do not “kill”, or lynch yourself in account of the deficiency of your understanding.
It is just what it is… in the end of the day.
The strangle to make sense.
Please do forgive my directness… on this one particular issue… but you still have not what it takes.
Sorry, but you missed the point, enterily, simply due to the lack of necessary basic knowledge required.
Please, understand, not intending to offend or insult you… but it is how it is in the end of the day.
Even bunker oil became too expensive. Diesel is only ever used in extreme emergencies.
Its purely economics. Obviously hydro wind and solar are free fuel, but the cost of the generators is massive. Nuclear fuel is so cheap it might as well be free – all the cost is in the power station build out.
The economics of those above mean that they might as well be used all the time. No point in turning them down to save fuel. Except hydro. There is only so much rain, so hydro has a different place.
Then we get to the next cheapest fuel. Coal. Coal takes a long time to get up to temperature and a long time to cool down, so again, if you have coal, you tend to run it flat out for baseload. Not because it can’t vary, but because it costs money to vary it.
The next cheapest is natural gas. But a gas station can be up and down in a hour. So that makes it ideal for most load following – burn expensive gas when you need to.
Then next high cost used to be bunker oil – essentially tar left over from refined crude oil, that gets burnt in ships and so on because its cheap – or was cheap. No longer is it cheap. Very few oil powered stations still exist. And bunker oil is very similar to coal in terms of how fast it can be brought up and down, so its simply not very useful.
Then we have Diesel. Cheap to build a diesel power station, but impossibly expensive to run, so they are used as emergency backup only.
And oddly enough, hydroelectric has a similar profile.
In The UK when it rains heavily, the hydro stations will run flat out to avoid losing the rainwater over the spillways, but when it stops raining, they hold the water back for times of very high electricity prices when the precious water makes the most money.
The Green Mind confuses technical possibility with economics. Britain for example imports a large amount of nuclear power from France. Not because it has to, but because it is cheaper to turn off the gas power stations and import surplus French nuclear power at rock bottom prices.
France does indeed vary the output of its reactors. Especially in summer when the cooling rivers are warmer. And electricity demand is lower.
All the posts here indicate is that ArtStudents don’t understand the first thing about engineering, and nothing at all about economics.
I am sure they are jolly good at Expressing Their Inner Feelings, though, And Having Morally Impeccable Opinions, on anything they have zero knowledge of.
I think I have just defined what the American ‘liberal’ is.
“The Green Mind confuses technical possibility with economics. Britain for example imports a large amount of nuclear power from France. Not because it has to, but because it is cheaper to turn off the gas power stations and import surplus French nuclear power at rock bottom prices.”
————–
Green Mind what ever it confuses,it is far ahead into the utilization and profiteering of/from intricacies.
Britain imports large amount of nuclear, because it relies a lot in wind and solar, as it has invested heavily in that direction.
Thanks to Greenpeace UK dropping nuclear for wind and solar, and the UK Government following that dictating, now UK has to largely import from France
Greenpeace refused to go in bed with nuclear.
And instead went with wind and solar.
And that worked for them in UK and many other evolved developed economies, apart from France.
Good for France, but not so good for UK.
No way nuclear gets any blessings, or a chance from Greenpeace and the Green Blob unless by the very wasteful means of small nuclear.
cheers
Please? Do you really think engineers are as stupid as Greens?
There are already a load of old Magnox and AGR sites equipped with cooling water, grid connections and security fences. And planning permission for nuclear.
Ther are coal fired sites that could easily be adapted and gas sites. Cooling water is not necessarily an issue of being near a lake or river or te sea, Coolling towers recycle most of their water anyway.
And I have no idea why you are going on about voltage. Obviously the generators will be operating at whatever volatge is the optimum for cost, and transforners will be used to match to te 275kV grid backbone.
Just as for any coal or gas fires steam turbine and three phase generator.
I am alarmed by your ignorance.
It’s all going to collapse horribly. Politicians don’t understand that you can’t magic up something overnight just because they’ve waved their arms in the air.
The Western 4-5 year election cycle coupled with bi-partisan point scoring means there’s no long term planning. Energy and infrastructure is too important to be left to the whims of politicians who’ll change their mind at the drop of a hat depending on whether they think votes are in it or not.
Yup, dictatorships have a massive advantage.
probably why the global push is in that direction!
Terry Etam,
You say,
“So anyway, I’d always thought that the world would gradually come to the realization that weaning itself off hydrocarbons was much harder than most thought, and that the pace of both renewable development and hydrocarbon bashing would slow as reality sunk in.
Wow, was I wrong.”
Ditto!
Please see this item from 2006
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
Sorry, this post grossly misrepresents the energy business. Demand for oil and gas had been in a relatively stable annual growth mode for most of the last decade, with supplies also increasing at an equal or greater rate for most of the last 7 years. And prices cycling between $2 and $3 a gallon in most of the US.
Then COVID temporarily depressed demand last year, sending prices (and capital investments) on a steep decline that abruptly reversed in the fourth quarter of 2020. Global warmunism had zero effect on either side of the dips in demand and new investment last year.
The oil and gas business has always been cyclical, seemingly stable for years, but subject to sudden shocks on either the supply or demand sides. With world wide recessions as in 2020 and in 2008, demand drops. When OPEC successfully constrains supplies or a hurricane knocks out Gulf rigs and refineries, supply drops.
We’ve had all of the above in 2020-2021.
Warmunism is wrongheaded, but don’t blame it for the normal cycles in oil and gas supplies, demand, and pricing.
There is no “energy crisis” today. There is just the normal cycling of prices.
A real energy crisis is the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-1974 when drivers had to wait in mile-long lines for many hours to buy a couple gallons of gas. I was there then. This is no “crisis”.
“A real energy crisis is the OPEC oil embargo of 1973-1974 when drivers had to wait in mile-long lines for many hours to buy a couple gallons of gas. I was there then. This is no “crisis”.”
That’s a good point. We were much more dependent on Middle East oil back then than we are today.
The U.S. needs to get back to aiming for total oil independence. That will probably happen when we get Trump back in office.
Today, the much higher prices for gasoline are cutting into the disposable income of people, which lowers economic activity throughout the economy, because money spent on that economy will be spent on gasoline instead, and that reduces the GDP of the nation. For about every S0.80 increase in the price of gasoline, the U.S. GDP goes down by about one percent. One percent of U.S. GDP is a lot of money.
High gasoline prices contribute to inflation as everything you buy has to be transported, and if it costs more to transport because the gasoline price is higher, then you are going to get charged a higher price for the product you buy.
The lower the gasoline prices are, the better off we all are.
If my grocery store runs out of dill pickles I’m quitting my job, leaving my family, and moving to Tibet because the grocery store had no dill pickle chips. I just hope they have grocery stores with dill pickles when I get there!
Joe Biden says you should lower your expectations.
And he still manages to achieve well below those lowered expectations.
Here in the sane, non-council ruled world, they are delivered BEFORE the job starts and are parked on the street with the dumpster for the old ones.
Then we watch, uncomplaining, while our neighbor receives a home-saving new roof. Then we gush over how beautiful and neighborhood enhancing it is.
Anecdotal, but concerning: A friend is in the roofing business. He says they are ordering roofing materials now (October 2021) for delivery in July 2022.
I suspect prices have gone up, too.
From the article: “Germany and California are currently shuttering perfectly good nuclear facilities because of public hatred”
Is that why? Is the public in those places clamoring to have their nuclear reactors shut down, or is it just the radical leftist elites who are clamoring for this?
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx
It’s the radical leftists who are informed by the green press who are paid for by oil and gas interests.
Renewable energy cannot replace coal and gas. Nuclear can.
Cui Bono?
Who was Al Gore working for when he promised to deliver the Greens to them?
Gas.
Do they really want carbon-free transport of stuff and people? Carbon-free cooking and heating?
Okay, then: bring back horses of all sizes from Hackney ponies to Shires, include oxen in this effort because they were used as draft animals, too, and resign yourselves to doing a lot more walking than you used to do. This means that when you want fresh veggies and fruit, you have to put YOUR name and address on the Green grocer’s list so that he’ll know to stop by with a delivery and on what days. And you’ll have to remember that such things are seasonal so you can’t have oranges unless you have a personal conservatory where you can grow that exotic fruit.
Also, all those know-it-alls will have to spend at least 36 months putting their money where their mouths are about carbon-free lifestyles, which means no more synthetics in clothing: wool, cotton, linen, etc., only, and I don’t give a crap if they’re allergic to it.
AND they’ll have to use solar resources to do their cooking… and even when Mother Earth News was promoting personal solar and wind energy usage back in the 1970s, the guy who ran that magazine said solar energy had too many limitations to make it practical for such things. Charging batteries and a few solar panels on the rooftop – maybe, but even back then, he said it was too limited.
It’s all talk, meant to scare you.
“What on earth is going on in western leaders’ minds”
Nothing !! …
they don’t have thoughts of their own (if they do they dear not voice them), they have to stick to the new script they are given at the daily briefings by ‘advisers’ who are in turn controlled by lobbyists, NGOs & party pressure groups.
A prime example is mop-head Boris
Watch ‘Yes, Prime Minister‘
on YouTube.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=yes+prime+minister&atb=v1-1&iax=videos&ia=videos
“Its closely observed portrayal of what goes on in the corridors of power has given me hours of pure joy” … Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher MP
There it is, the climate disaster lunatics and the media are a danger to society. Crimes are usually written into law because of damage done to persons and property yet there is no enforcement against harm being done where climate is concerned.
And why is any politician not held accountable for compelling law enforcement to stand down from protecting society from a few paid demonstrators or worse property damaging thugs and arsonists.
The left likes consensus when selling climate change but have no consensus for fuel and other supply shortages.
Welcome to the Michael Crichton scenario of energy policy chaos with many moving parts going wrong simultaneously and in sequence. Rapid shift to cheap natural gas is coming to an end and about to do a cliff dive. Policy dimwits will fumble around and waste more taxpayer money and blame others while not really making a dent in the chaos. Doubling down on renewables as a crisis fix will only make things worse because they don’t understand the drivers to begin with. Throw in the rapid pace of EV rollout and you have two layers of transition debacle all targeting consumers as the fall guy and another round of bailout for Detroit. Let’s not forget the Federal Reserve thinking in the previous energy debacle in the 70s/80s. In their minds this is all temporary as in 9 to 12 months of inflation at the most and much of it was caused by stimulus. And they will not admit there is a problem until much later when they are called in to fix their non problem with a hard recession. I don’t see how the Greens can sidestep the impact and blame this time. Better let Uncle Joe take family leave or sick time during all of this mess.
The old sayings are the best
Failure to plan is a plan to fail.
We have planned to fail
Doing well at it
Exactly. This is not a random event or chain of events.
We should cut the electricity from all those people who protest so vehemently at coal and try to shut down the mines. Let’s see how they like to live their lives without it at the touch of a button. They may – just may – change their minds and realise there is no better alternative except nuclear which takes DECADES to build.
Don’t just cut all their electricity. Take away all their clothes except those that are 100% wool or leather. Leave them just their cotton undies to wear in the middle of winter!
Who knew that some nonprofit interest in gain of function research at a multi-government funded lab could do so much. Other nonprofits in the Sierra Club did their part with the Climate Crusades.
nonprofit? Really, no one is making gain by it?
There are thousands of oil and gas wells that have been drilled in the USA on land and in its waters, which were good wells – but were then capped. Some were even filled full of concrete. In the Gulf of Mexico there are so many abandoned wells that many have been lost and/or the companies that drilled them are long gone.
How about instead of drilling more new wells, the oil companies are required to use the wells they drilled then capped? For wells drilled then the company is gone, locate them and auction them off – with a deadline for getting them into production. Miss the deadline and they get auctioned again – no refunds.
I had a neighbor rip out his 5 year old deck before pulling a permit for a new enlarged one. Turns out his old deck was the largest allowed. He then built a new one exactly the same as his old one.