Frank Lasee
Try to figure out what year these news stories are from: “Reduced the amount of ammonia made in Antwerp and Ludwigshafen.” “Because of the high price of natural gas, British fertilizer plants have to close.” “Diesel is in short supply and prices are going up, so truck stops are rationing.” You would be wrong if you said 2022. All of those date back to September 2021.
In reality, the energy crisis started to happen late last year, but was decades in the making.
When you add up the long-term overinvestment in unreliable renewables, the shutdown of nuclear plants around the world after the Fukushima disaster, and the drop of more than 50 percent in oil and gas investments from 2014 to last year, from $700 billion to $300 billion, you have everything you need to start a global energy crunch.
Don’t think that the United States is safe from the crisis. We have a lot of great resources here at home, but we’re moving toward disastrous Europe green policies. In the last few years, the United States has shut down nuclear and coal plants too soon.
The fossil fuel industry doesn’t want to put money at risk by expanding when the Democrats keep threatening to destroy it. Since Truman, no president has leased fewer federal lands for oil and gas. Even worse, most of the new power being added to the grid comes from wind and solar, which aren’t reliable.
What does this add up to? The energy and electricity industries in the United States are weak, fragile, and expensive. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association said over the summer that one in six U.S. homes, or about 20 million, are behind on their utility bills.
Since last year, electricity prices have gone up by 233 percent in some parts of the country. The North American Electricity Reliability Corporation has warned that blackouts are becoming more likely to happen in a large part of the country.
Don’t forget the northeast. Even though the Marcellus Shale Formation is close to the mid-Atlantic states, the area doesn’t have the pipelines to bring natural gas from it because “green” policies have stopped them. People in New Hampshire now pay twice as much for electricity as they did before, and businesses pay three times as much. The rest of New England will soon follow.
But the United States doesn’t have to be like Europe. Instead of doubling down on the “energy transition,” the U.S. should stop being shocked by the harsh realities of the outside world and commit to energy realism. Our economy can’t keep going without energy.
What should we do?
First, more hydrocarbons are needed. Whether you like it or not, fossil fuels provide 80% of our energy. We need to cut the red tape getting permits so that more pipelines can be built faster. We should also get rid of all taxes on carbon, which make our energy more expensive. And we need to give the fossil fuel industry more federal land to use. And get rid of the Renewable Fuel Standard, which is a costly waste of money.
Second, we must set the atom free. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission have set extreme safety standards. The NRC’s process for approval takes too long. It must be changed so that it has fewer and clearer standards and approval processes are faster and less expensive.
Third, we have to make our grid stronger. When built in large numbers, wind and solar power can ride for free on the reliable power plants that can be called on at any time to keep the grid running. Also, wind and solar often tend to stop making power when it is most needed.
The Energy Information Administration says that when California was on the verge of blackouts, wind and solar energy production dropped sharply. After sundown, natural gas stepped in to save the day. It provided more than half of needed electricity. Oh, California imports 30% of their electricity.
With this plan, we have to go against the green mob, which wrongly thinks that anything other than wind and solar is a threat to humanity’s very existence. The choice should be clear: one path leads to freedom and plenty, while the other leads to tyranny, shortages, and high prices.
We can live in a country where bureaucrats decide when we can use our washers and dryers to save our poorly run infrastructure, or we can live in a country where we are free to do what we want.
We’re already years down the first path, and the Inflation Reduction Act will make it worse: it makes us even more reliant on unreliable electricity from wind and solar, raises taxes on oil and gas, gives the EPA almost unlimited power to limit fossil fuel use, and completely ignores nuclear.
It’s not too late to go in a better direction.
The wind, solar, batteries, and now “green” hydrogen path makes no sense because it is wildly expensive, will make electric grids even less reliable, and won’t change the weather or climate, which is why these trillions are being wasted. And worst of all it will limit our freedom to live the way we would like.
The time for pro-energy American policies is now.
Frank Lasee is the president of Truth in Energy and Climate. He is a former Wisconsin state senator and former member of Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. The district he represented had two nuclear power plants, a biomass plant, and numerous wind towers. He has experience dealing with energy, the environment, and the climate. See more from Frank at www.truthinenergyandclimate.com
Since the 1st Green politician was voted into a western government.
I had to go to Germany, Munich for training courses on American made equipment, in the early 1970s. An outstaning memory is the number of cars with “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” stickers in the back window, so that aspect has at least a fifty year history.
Can’t speak for the rest of the world but in the U.S., energy prices began to do their Hockey Stick rise back in January 2021, just after inauguration day. And California started back with the adoption of their “Clean Energy Act” and the proliferation of Ruinables within the state.
This chart only goes to May of 2021 and $3.00 per gal national average
But, of course we all know where it has risen to in 2022
Jan 21, 2021…inauguration day.
And of course it’s still over $6.29 in the people’s republic of California
That sentiment was in the US in the 1970s as well. Same people, different country.
One of the few times I’ve heard a politician make sense. That must be why he is no longer a state senator – too much sanity.
We need all the sane politicians to get back into office to take back our country. Run again Frank.
The World Started To Run Out Of Everything in 2022
The world is running out of fuel / energy – and it’s totally a political “shot ourselves in the foot” problem.
There’s plenty of fuel but no one is digging it up because of the total absence of political support – just the opposite – Western politicians are constantly telling investors not to invest in any form of fossil fuel business – and make it their stated objective to destroy such businesses as soon as possible.
So we get wilful interference in capital markets, anti-energy legislation, denial of mining and exploration permits, Biden ceremonially cancelling the Keystone pipeline on his first day in office etc. etc.
Breaking News Shocker – No capitalists are willing to invest in 50 year projects that can be simply shut down on the whim of the next eco-zealot (or his wife) who get voted into power.
While some Western leaders are trying to get some infrastructural action going, they seem surprised by the apathy of investors ?
https://publicenergynumberone.com/2022/02/19/forget-inane-media-preoccupations-and-pay-attention-the-world-is-running-out-of-fuel-we-are-all-going-to-pay/
The eco-loons are hell bent on destroying our way of life and our scientifically ignorant spineless politicians are letting them have their way.
Well those chickens are starting to come home to roost.
A shortage of energy means a shortage of everything – get your head around that – if you will.
And because of the political destruction of the free market (in energy production) there is no self regulating mechanism to fix it.
The price of gas can quadruple and you can be sitting on a vast reserve – you would be powerless to chip in and deliver.
UK is sitting on vast reserves of gas unavailable to them because of a ban on fracking – that’s a political problem – not a supply problem.
In 2022 we began to see shortages of all sorts of things – like computer chips – this was blamed on the upsurge after Covid – but that does not pass any test of logic. The capacity was there before Covid but has failed to ramp up to prior levels. Why ?
The real problem is that the manufacturers of high purity silicon have ramped down or stopped production or are relocating to China – why? – it’s a high energy process and energy is way too expensive in the West to continue.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/24/european-green-energy-crisis-crushing-metal-silicon-production/
Similar problems exist with all metal production, cement and fertilizer (the production of precursor Ammonia consumes 2% of world energy production).
China is burning coal to produce cheap reliable power – while paying lip service to efforts to mitigate or move to Nett-Zero – while at the same time castigating the West for not doing enough and subverting democracy by funding left leaning eco-groups to demand action.
They must be smiling – they are doing more damage to Western industry than could be accomplished by a sustained bombing campaign – without firing a shot.
Paraphrasing what Lenin said – the West will hang itself and provide the rope to do it.
In 2022 we have the energy crisis “caused” by the war in Ukraine – the crisis had started long before the war. The war and Putin’s use of energy as a weapon merely accelerated it.
https://joannenova.com.au/2021/05/if-an-adversary-wanted-to-destroy-manufacturing-they-could-hardly-have-done-a-better-job/
We deserve to be in this mess –“Apathetic Bloody Planet – I’ve Got No Sympathy” Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz — The Vogon Captain in charge of overseeing the destruction of the Earth to make way for a Galactic Hyper Expressway – Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy – by Doug Adams.
I can think of a few I’d like to feed to the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal…
Make sure you have your towel.
As long as you know where your towel is, it’s all good. Oh and handy to have a Babel fish.
That seem a naive way of looking at it. A great many politicians are on the front line, urging on destruction.
China, smiling? They’re laughing their heads off.
JF
Can you blame them? Human rights violations aside (ask Jan 6th prisoners about that) the country has the right, like any other, to make life better for its citizens. Given the rank stupidity of the west, it would seem foolish not to take advantage of it.
What the west perceives as better might not be what the Chinese consider better. By and large, for example, they don’t care about surveillance. And when you have a city the size of Shanghai with 23.4 million people, getting on for half the population of England, it’s got to be really difficult, for example, to identify repeat criminal offenders by conventional means. The low crime rate and the high sense of safety when walking the streets at night tend to suggest something is working.
I can’t say I understand the Chinese lack of caution over government surveillance but it doesn’t seem as though they are all being herded into concentration camps.
China is for the CCP. In the People’s Republic, the people don’t matter.
Chinese politicians permit enough wealth generation to keep the population from rioting. Everything else is reserved for the politicians.
They never have and never will care about the actual people.
wrong. the trick is having housing and food cheap enough that nobody is homeless or starving.
in china i enjoyed every freedom i wanted to enjoy.
and streets were safe AF
As is Putin and the rest of our enemies.
Ken, the biggest threat is not climate change but ignorant and incompetent eco-zealots in positions of power.
Stop making sense.
There is no ban on fracking in the UK. What happened was following an earth tremor of 2.9 on the Richter scale blamed on Cuadrilla’s exploratory drilling, the limit was lowered to 0.5.
The British Geological Society states “The driving forces for earthquake activity in the UK are unclear.”
That makes sense I guess? We don’t know what causes earthquakes in the UK, but it’s definitely fracking!
The 0.5 limit was imposed arbitrarily to halt fracking for political reasons, it makes no scientific sense as it has been described as equivalent to dropping a bag of shopping on the ground. We should therefore stop people shopping for fear they might drop a bag.
2.9 on the Richter scale might, emphasis might cause a few teacups to rattle for a matter of seconds but not much more. Three years ago there was a tremor of 3.3 on the Richter scale 4km from Dorking in the UK, a well populated area of nearly 18,000 people. 394 reported it.
In 2022 we began to see shortages of all sorts of things – like computer chips – this was blamed on the upsurge after Covid – but that does not pass any test of logic. The capacity was there before Covid but has failed to ramp up to prior levels.
do you know how silicon is booked at TSMC. 28% of the market
Beyond wafer foundries, wire bonding, substrates, materials and testing were all seeing shortages or delays
making chips is a months long process say 7nm. thats 93 metal layers
at 1 layer per day is 3 months to fab the die then assembly and test is 2 weeks
The crux is that none of this has any effect on
the weather.
not the crux, just a minor detail as actually having any effect on weather/climate is irrelevant.
Al Gore and Mann’s accursed hockey stick.
One of the key components missed in the list of negative impacts brought to us by Green Energy Zealots, is the death of billions of people across the world from starvation and hypothermia.
The total collapse of the ecosphere due to massive tree felling, will automatically happen as people desperately try to keep warm to survive in the Northern winter. That unavoidable outcome from banning fossil fuels, will ensure the few hundred millions across the world, who survive this Green energy madness, will have few natural resources to fall back on in time of crisis. As they grub a miserable living barely remembering a once thriving world, they will reflect and wonder, how did it get to this and who are the lucky ones?
World energy systems were disrupted as a response to data which was adjusted to match climate change theory.
So this crash has its beginning in 1998 or even earlier.
JF
(walks off singing ‘hide the decline…’)
‘We should also get rid of all taxes on carbon, which make our energy more expensive.’
If you do that, surely that leaves a whole in govt revenue. How much of a hole? How would you recoup the missing tax revenue?
(I note the financial markets are unhappy at UK govt unfunded tax cuts)
Lol..unfunded tax cuts.
“How would you recoup the missing tax revenue?”
How about practicing a little belt tightening. There’s a lot of waste in government spending.
Growth. RE the Laffer Curve
Yup
We would get more tax income off the additional finished products made using that cheaper energy as well as the resulting job growth.
Beyond waste, most government spending is nothing more than vote buying, and should be gotten rid of.
Only someone totally ignorant of economics would use the term “unfunded tax cuts”.
Stop the idiotic waste of money that is the drive to unreliable wind and solar.
You would “recoup the missing tax revenue?” by cutting subsidized renewable energy payouts. Far less taxes required.
6,000 civil servants are facing redundancy. That’s a start.
To recover the carbon taxes all we need to do is cancel the subsidies for renewables which are costing the taxpayer £12Bn a year (at least).
Tax cuts are not unfunded. That’s a stupid talking point. But then again…
griffy is worried about this month’s welfare check.
Griff, I’m sure your too dense to understand that inflation is a tax.
Bonus point rah – inflation is a tax on liquidity – the government “prints” money (by many varied machinations) which diminishes the purchasing power of your money.
Thereby reaching into your pocket and extracting some of your cash by sleight of hand.
Damn right – inflation is a tax.
You mean, leave a hole, right? The solution is to cut cost of government.
Nuclear’s problem is funding it.
The UK govt is pro nuclear and has active plans for it on named sites. It just can’t get anyone to build them, due to inability to fund them such that construction produces a return on investment.
In the US my state has 2 nuclear power plants built in the 70s. How did they get funded 🤔
Which is of course due to regulatory red tape and ecofascist protesters doing anything and everything possible to make construction impossible. Try building a Nuclear Power Plant in the U.K. and see just how fast XR Blocks the process
Nothing has a funding problem if it can demonstrate a reasonable ROI.
The UK governments nuclear stance has been negative since the Bliar and Broon years. Businesses aren’t interested in investing because there is no energy policy in the country and hasn’t been for generations. Every time a new government is voted in what little policy we do have lurches aver more greenward.
Why would they bother investing in UK nuclear when China is building more nuclear power stations than the rest of the world combined that they can profit from?
China’s nuclear energy program went on the backburner a few years ago, but I believe they have been ramping up again, with some 7 reactors in the pipeline?
One of the commonly used arguments by the anti-nuke zealots is the claim that it can take up to a decade (excluding approvals) to actually get a plant to critical. China can build them to critical in under half that time.
Nothing more reliable than griff and his lies.
The only reason why nuclear is expensive is because of the lawsuits and over regulations you anti-nuclear nut cases cause.
you can’t hide from the increase in demand caused by heatwaves. California needed 2GW more power than its previous record this year.
that needs attention no matter how you supply it.
you can’t hide from the increase in demand caused by heatwaves.
Of course you can!
A few examples:
Plan your grid nameplate overcapacity to meet all reasonable possible contingencies.
Schedule & coordinate planned maintenance of plant during historically known periods of low peak demand.
Decommission unreliable sources of energy and penalize contracted energy delivery failures.
Employ competent engineers with planning experience in this field.
Leave decision making to said engineers and bar politicians from decision making process.
California imported 31% of it’s energy needs from neighbouring states last year. California has an apparent 31% under-capacity within the state due in part to the closure of FF generation and utilization of weather dependent Wind and Solar.
Griff. We all know you’re a greentard. No need to keep proving it.
Griff need say more
What evidence is there of this. The Guardian?
There is no trend in heat waves, not in California, not anywhere.
California has a growing population and they have more stuff that uses electricity. When I grew up in Los Angeles, most people had one, maybe two window air conditioners, and those were only turned on a couple times a year. Now everyone has full house units that are on all the time.
One more time, griff, show us the data where any location, anywhere, had a heat wave in accordance with the WMO definition, or even the watered-down Met Office definition.
Griff cannot show us a proper paper that demonstrates that heatwaves, as claimed by known alarmists, are becoming hotter, longer and more frequent.
Look at simple temperature data over decades and you will not find, overall, significant change in heatwave “threats”.
Show us your work, Griff. I have showed mine many times. Geoff S
p.s. oh no, my automatic spell corrector keeps changing Griff to Geoff. What an evil commie plot. Must watch Dr Strangelove movie again for mental reinforcement.
When you add up the long-term overinvestment in unreliable renewables, the shutdown of nuclear plants around the world after the Fukushima disaster, and the drop of more than 50 percent in oil and gas investments from 2014 to last year, from $700 billion to $300 billion, you have everything you need to start a global energy crunch.
Nailed it!
The subsidized renewable energy industry is responsible for actively undermining the conventional power grid and thereby leading to underinvestment in the latter. This will inevitably lead to a rise in energy unit prices from conventional sources – due to the economy of scale – thereby confirming the fiction propagated by the eco-loons that unreliables are becoming economically more competitive with the passage of time!
It’s analogous to a restaurant owner competing with a similar restaurant where the meals are taxpayer funded for a large portion of the week. Most of the cost overheads remain extant but customer volumes are reduced because of the unfair competition. He will be forced to adjust his prices to reflect the new reality and will struggle to remain in business!
How about making those who are pushing the hardest for renewables pay the most on a sliding scale? The politicians that are earning 2.5 times the average wage should be paying a much higher amount for energy and their wealthy supporters a considerably higher amount.
Better idea. Immediately re.ove all government mandates, tax certs and subsidies for non-dispatchable wind and solar ‘power.’
And let the return to sanity begin.
By the end of the 1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as dramatically as once believed. This was particularly galvanized by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Eventually, more than 120 reactor orders were ultimately cancelled and the construction of new reactors ground to a halt. Al Gore has commented on the historical record and reliability of nuclear power in the United States …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reactors_in_the_United_States
As far as I know, Al Gore has not commented on the “historical record and reliability of” windfarms and solar cells.
Al Gore is a 💩
Crude, but accurate.
Speed,
History says otherwise. I was in the nuclear fuel cycle industry after 1970. The dominant change was in the number of ignorant nutters campaigning against it. Like the extinction rebellion far today. This led to extremely heavy regulation if this industry that vastly increased costs, so a slow down of new builds. The fundamental economics remain very competitive and attractive to this day, like coal fired electricity with cheaper fuel.
The peaceful generation of electricity by nuclear fission has been extremely safe, reliable, engineered by top people and essentially free of any fundamental drawbacks.
It is wrong of authors like we have here to use the term Fukushima disaster in relation to nuclear. A huge earthquake caused a huge tsunami that exposed a design weakness in the placement of generators for standby electricity. No people were hurt. The impression that it was a nuclear disaster is false. It was a natural disaster that had nothing to do with global warming, nuclear energy, climate change or existential crisis. Geoff S
This may seem unrelated but in reality it goes right to the heart of the problems by showing what can be done when government is focused on the welfare of the people. The point being almost all of our serious energy problems could be turned around quicker than we can imagine if good governance reins.
Holy Cats, They Did It – The Temporarily Rebuilt Sanibel Causeway Opens Allowing Emergency Vehicles to Reach Sanibel Island – The Last Refuge (theconservativetreehouse.com)
I can’t recall the date but it all started when the UN set up the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The gross misinformation put out by this political organisation, riding rough shod over the scientific community, provided the basically FALSE platform from which the Greens now attack the fossil fuel industry.
The Nuclear aspect is different and is more based on feeding off the basic fear of the unknown, the consequences being due to the Media in its chase for Scary Stories and Clickbait income.
The FACT that Nuclear has been proved to be the SAFEST energy generator yet devised by Man on the basis of energy per capita per death, never gets any traction in people’s minds is due to it being rarely published.
I have no idea when it started; but suggest that the Nuclear Industry has been beset by negative prejudices since from its start; which is why it is now so smothered with a plethora of often unnecessary compliance legislation.
Hopefully the new Small Modular Molten Salt Technology will break through all this bureaucratic wall to an era of common sense.
I can’t recall the date but it all started when the UN set up the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
6th December 1988 The original UN resolution was number 43/53. Heading “Protection of global climate for future generations of mankind”
Coming from what appears to be an initiative from the government of Malta titled — “Conservation of climate as part of the heritage of mankind”
….and the rest they say is history………
What’s so clean about energy that does not produce to fit the need! Perhaps money laundering makes it clean! And calling something formed naturally fossil fuel does not make it fossil fuel.
One problem is the West has had massive influx of people that compete for everything citizens need overloading demand.
Since people don’t want green energy politicians create shortages and tax demand to force the change. The author is correct in the cause of the energy disaster. It is not the politicians job to decide what we need, And it is not their job to see we don’t get it.
It’s time to rev-up USA NG industry…frack-on, Pipe-on, pump-on and, ship-on to new LNG ports in Black Sea and through out EU and whoever else has high demand for NG. Brazil needs to get it’s head out of the sand hill built by Putin, and frack-on, Pipe-on, pump-on and, ship-on. Trudeau needs to pull his head out of the green sand and frack-on, Pipe-on, pump-on and, ship-on. Elon needs to pull his head out of the political sand and build the Next Gen Battery. Who needs space crap when the entire world needs a Next Gen Battery (a real one not a market slogan) so households can generate their own power and distribute it on demand, efficiently, safely and profitably. All households need real capital in order to be less dependent on Kings, Tsars, Tech Moguls, Corporate and political megalomaniacs. Less dependency means less fear, less fear means less vulnerability to mass propaganda manipulation, less manipulation means greater liberty for creative pursuits in solving problems locally.
EU Frack on!! See what happens when you leave the dirty work to a poor nation living under decades of corrupt dictatorship like Russian? Deals with the devil don’t pay off in the long run.
Air France 447 flight was from Brazil to Paris, not only with a Devon and French LNG teams but Brazil’s LNG and Brazilian Petrobras team on board when is slammed into the Atlantic. Right now Brazil is is a huge importer of LNG drawing away supply for the EU. Makes no sense, they have huge shale gas deposits in shallow water off shore.
Everything Biden and Europe have done has ensured high energy prices in the future. Until there is assurance of competitive supply alternatives in the future, this dynamic will persist.
Genuine threat of real production & capacity increases are necessary to put pressure on OPEC+. Also are necessary to give credibility to an eventual switch away from fossil fuels.
https://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/opec.html
https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronshem/status/1578045050759544832
They need the threat of lower prices in the future to increase production now.
Producer need assurance they will be profitable when prices drop in the future if they invest in capacity now.
In our world with all it’s cares about green issues and climate change, wowkiness and a bunch of other stuff that does not have local peoples best interests in mind, people like Putin can run rough shod cutting corrupt deals with politicians, who likewise don’t have their people’s best interests in mind. Good examples, Germany and Brazil. They should have just built their LNG industry and ports…just like the rest of the EU should have. The EU should have defended the LNG ports planned in the Black Sea instead of wimping out of Putin. If the EU had done what it needed to do as it transitioned from Nuke power with LNG and our Presidents hadn’t stood in the way, the 2014 and 2022 Russian Invasions of Ukraine may not have happened.
I’m already hearing various green/socialist groups lamenting the fact that energy companies are privately owned. According to them, if only these important industries could be owned by government, all of our problems would go away.
Here in the UK the Labour party has a plan to do just that if they get into power. As if things couldn’t get any worse…
The issue of controlling the geographical hydrocarbon (and food commodities) markets of Eastern Europe, the EU and all of Asia is the global politique of our age. Clearly, it has been in operation since the immensity of shale gas became a reality 2008-2009. The global push has been to suppress market competition by politically suppressing global Shale NG supply and distribution . Factored into the issue of geographical Hydrocarbon markets for the bulk of the world’s population is the prospect of new technology that would empower homeowners and local communities with systems that can store and distribute their low electricity on demand in a safe, efficient affordable manner. There is no greater threat to the current global energy market than long term demand destruction such systems would cause. So there is a race on, to rack up profits before the technology emerges. Espionage and back rooms deals will not be able to suppress it forever as the race to develop this electrical storage tech is full- on and the media is not reporting a word about it.
The media said nothing about Shale Gas and for a decade the American people where unaware of the immense supply of shale gas that exists in PA, NY, OK and TX. Just as the media never reported Putin went to Brazil and effectively killed a potentially mammoth NG/LNG industry there with shady deals. Brazil has immense shale gas reserves available in shallow water offshore. Nor has the media said a word about the CNG Automobiles that are taking Asia by storm….NG is cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient that gasoline. Instead the media has tried to convince us that fossil fuel is running out, and that unworkable solutions are the only solution to prevent the world from running out. Big lie. And that lie has done nothing but to play into Putin’s hands and weaken the west. Real tech solutions are coming that will demand destruct Fossil fuel but it won’t be grid based… too corrupt. It will be people going off grid. The oil companies have been going state to state lobbying for carbon taxes and for anti-off grid legislation because they want to delay what they know is coming for as long as possible.
The only way to fix the problem is to partition the US Fossil fuel markets just has Putin has effectively done in Eastern Europe and Asia.. Brazil has enough NG to run it’s country for many centuries, why should we be selling LNG to Brazil? EU has tons of shale gas, why pay corrupt Putin’s Gazprom, who will not benefit his people with the proceeds. Lebanon and Israel cut a deal to exploit their gas fields…good deal. It’s time for local people to take heart and to get off the colluded mogul gravy train
Partition US energy and farm land markets:
What a statist mess! Are you a staffer for AOC?
Frank, Who cares about AOC. AOC is a fringe distraction. Obviously she does not have the interests of her people in mind other than government checks.
Frack-on full tilt …. and race as quickly as possible to the Next Gen Battery.
The last thing we need is our utilities Cartel and a totally colluded global energy market. We need to say good bye to the grid dude in our hearts and minds so we can say hello to the next great global economic expansion. We said good bye to Ma Bell we need to say good bye to OPEC and Gazprom and to our energy companies are making wind fall profits off colluded prices. It’s not about climate green its about wallet green.
Families and local communities need to get off the energy mogul gravy train. We need to be empowered to go off grid with electrical energy storage tech that works, is safe, efficient and affordable so we can use whatever input we like, oil, gas, solar, TEG cooling polymers… what ever. The green BS is that has inundated the US since 2014 has all been part of Putin’s Energy Cold War and with Putin and OPEC all those who have deep pocket interests in sustaining the status quo and thwarting our energy markets.
I get it , giant wind mill farms are stupid tax boondoggles. Everyone knows that…. the scale is too big and there is no way to store and distribute the electricity making it nearly useless and very expensive. I don’t care about grid solutions. I want a energy solution for my home and the business I would like to start if energy was cheap. I want to be off grid and energy secure in my own back yard thank you.
We need dirt cheap energy for our local economies to grow grass root not another cooperate scheme to sustain utter dependency. Cast off the lies.
The problem isn’t “green” energy; the problem is “grid” energy. Collectivization of anything should be immediately assumed to be a bad idea, but We the Slobs perceive we are getting lower prices from large-scale energy delivery. I posit that we are NOT. I posit that only the welfare class (and rural population) benefit, but the majority overpays. See before the “grid,” everyone supplied their own energy with independent power sources. Huh, sounds like freedom! But then our Fabian Overlords in the early 1900s sold us on the “grid.” It was originally funded by private equity, but that created a chaos of redundant power cabling, so the Fabians (aka US Corporate Oligarchy) nationalized the “grid” via massive regulation. That was always the plan. So the modern “grid” was built mostly with tax dollars. Today, its full cost is still masked by subsidies. Since that socialist beginning and the trillions of dollars in redistributed wealth, the consequence is that relatively zero R&D has been invested in independent power sources. For example, the crap home generators we have today are essentially lawn mowers without blades. Only recently has the engineer class tackled new, cost-efficient off-grid technology, but we wasted 100 years and now have to catch up. For example, Musk’s people have some good inventions–like solar cell roof shingles–but storage of solar relies on expensive and scarce lithium, so Musk cannot scale up to reduce unit costs. But imagine where we would be if Nikola Tesla himself had spent just 10 years on designing a more sustainable battery–just to humiliate Edison! Then, affordable solar shingles on every building–just the one invention–would have by the 1960s, reduced “grid” demand by at least 50%. Okay, so who’s with me? No one? Right, because you’re all a bunch of mollified government worshippers, and you don’t even know it and if you did, you wouldn’t care.
Hey Tom, Preach it brother.
Most don’t fully understand that Putin and others have been funding the US anti-fossil fuel propaganda machine because the USA is an energy competitor and the more the US can be twisted in it’s political knickers the better. This means no one understands the problems and nothing gets solved as we remain jabbering on in social media. All, while we are getting ready to have a clock cleaned tech wise.
Yeah who cares about the green BS that has fueled the left fringe… it is just a BS narrative funded by Russia. We need to sober up and understand what is really happening.
Great off grid electrical energy storage tech in my home that reduces my energy costs by 50-60% or more, would be incredibly empowering for local economies. First, it gives me the choice to burn NG or oil in micro turbine burners to heat my home and water while generating electricity and storing long term for on demand use and/or to augment electrical generation with TEG cooling polymers in my roof and solar. The issue isn’t green the issue is money, dependency vs independency, and opportunity to start small businesses in my home and local economy…. like green house, small manufacturing like welding and forging etc.
China is pouring big money to devise affordable, efficient, safe, demand electrical storage systems because they make sense. If there is tons of cash in R&D, then you know they’re coming. Once they come, it empowers a home owner like myself to generate my own electricity, store it for on demand distribution. I can use NG or oil in a micro turbine burner to heat my house and water, and generate electricity at the same time with no additional NG or oil input, and/or I could also use TEG Polymers in my roof or solar if it makes sense. Whatever I can do to avoid cartel prices, carbon taxes, or worries about fluctuating markets on the whim of a Saudi Prince and a sociopathic Tsar.
It is the prospect of fossil fuel demand destruction that this new wave of scalable electrical energy storage tech which is driving in part the current crisis. Who cares about broken wind mills and tax boondoggles and bad solutions to a false problem. The Next Gen Battery is coming. The oil companies know this , why else would they be fighting for carbon taxes and anti off grid state regulations.
Elon get your head out of the political sand and space and finally solve the battery issue.
Yeah, time for the grid to go and it will if people would let it.
Very fine article, short, written in plain language and lays out the truth for everyone. I can’t add anything to what he said.
The Crumbling Grid, the next great Tax Boondoggle.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-renewables-electric-grid/#:~:text=Consultancy%20Marsh%20%26%20McLennan%20estimates%20that,alone%20could%20cost%20%24700%20billion.
What Caused the Energy Crisis We’re in Now? When Did It Start for Real?
1977 or thereabouts.
That was when the Ice Age Cometh” propaganda hit Europe and North America. The Fear Campaign began way back then, but it wasn’t about Global Warming – exactly the opposite in fact. If you read the 1977/78 pseudo-scientific Climate Change panic reports and media releases you will discover they are amazingly similar to the “We’re Gonna Fry and Die” pseudo-scientific reports of the last two decades. Same authors, same ideology, same Fear.
At the time the media promoted it because it sold papers, people believed it and got scared, and politicians decided they needed to take action to show the people they “cared” (as if) and deserved their vote at the next election. Of course, money was no object, especially if it was someone else’s.
The best suggestion was literally out of this world – the placing giant mirrors in space to reflect extra sunlight on the northern hemisphere to melt snow and ice. How would it be going for Greenland right now if that happened?
Then the earth began to get warmer, so the narrative changed but the blame game was always the same.