From Heart of Liberty Portfolios
Don Harrison
I keep a spreadsheet with links to informative articles I have read on ESG and climate change. I typically attach key words to each link so I can easily search out a topic when needed for reference. When it comes to the climate change debate, “absurdity,” “mendacity,” “grift” and “tyranny” make frequent appearances. But the star of the show seems to be “fantasy.”
Last month, the always perspicacious Mark Mills penned an excellent piece in City Journal titled “When Politics and Physics Collide.” (1) It is a comprehensive indictment of the magical thinking that permeates the lemming-like rush to EVs, Net Zero and the bulk of “green” technologies.
Here is a sprinkling of the points he makes in his damning analysis:
100 percent of everything in civilized society, including the favored “green energy” machines themselves, depends on using hydrocarbons somewhere in the supply chains and systems.
Through regulatory fiat, the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly announced rules effectively mandate that more than half of all cars and trucks sold must be electric vehicles (EVs) by 2032. That will demand, and soon, the complete restructuring of the $100 billion U.S. automobile industry.
A seminal paper from the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated a fourfold to 40-fold increase in global mining would be needed for a variety of common energy minerals. A more recent paper from Yale looked at a suite of 15 rare minerals required for “full decarbonization” and reached similar conclusions: the supply of various key “rare earth” elements would have to increase 60- to 300-fold.
It is no exaggeration to say that the realities of solar silicon fabrication mean that solar subsidies and mandates have induced eager Californians to festoon their roofs with transmuted coal – because China has a 90 percent market share producing solar silicon on its coal-fired grids.
The total direct and induced spending on the energy transition could easily exceed $5 trillion before a decade passes, or sooner, if advocates prevail. For context, the entirety of World War II cost the U.S. roughly $4 trillion (in today’s dollars).
Read the whole article, and you will probably come to ask yourself the same question I have been asking for quite some time: how can investment management companies continue to insist that ESG investing meets their fiduciary obligations when most of the sustainability agenda is physically, economically, and politically unattainable?
1) https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-magical-thinking-behind-the-energy-transition
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Don Harrison, creator of Heart of Liberty Portfolios, is the President of Capitalist Investment Services and a Branch Manager and Financial Advisor with Raymond James Financial Services. Heart of Liberty Portfolios — first choice for investors who want to rid their portfolios of ESG. https://heartofliberty.com/home
Rent seeking, subsidy mining scams.
I have been trying to chase down the Fantasy of “Excess Power” from wind and solar projects. How much is there? When is it available? What will it cost? But there is actually no information on that. It is just a Buzz Word meant to tease people into believing that it exists. They want it use it for Direct Air Capture of CO2 and then production of E-Fuels from the captured gas. Wow, what a concept. But truly a Fantasy if there ever was one.
Both DAC and E-Fuel are continuous processes that cannot be turned on and off at the whim of a breeze or whenever the sun peaks out. They must be run 100% of the time if simply to make money for their investors but more so as it takes time to start up and shut down chemical processes.
DAC will require at least 3 MW-h of energy per kg of CO2 captured.
To capture 1 million MT of CO2/yr and reduce it to hydrocarbon fuel will require 1,581,333 MW-h of energy and produce abut 8,500 bbl/day of fuel products. This will require 1,704 MW of continuous power or the output from 620 wind turbines (at 25% capacity factor). The wind turbines would cost between $2.5 and $4.4 billion and take 440 square miles of land area. And this doesn’t include the cost of the DAC/Reverse Water-Gas Shift (rWGC)/Fischer-Tropsch reactor/upgrading which will be another $4-8 Billion. All for 8,500 bbl/day of fuel. We consume 16 million bbl/day of fuel, so do the math.
And then consider that every politician has already spoken for all the renewable power, let alone the “Excess Power”, so where will all this power come from and what will it cost. No one knows as this is simply a fantasy and not worth thinking through to the logical conclusion.
Here we go again, confusing the programmed masses with reliable and factual information.
We are creating a mental health crisis by standing up to the brainwashing by the ideologists.
In case it’s needed….
(/sarc)
“They want it use it for Direct Air Capture of CO2 and then production of E-Fuels from the captured gas.”
Not to mention the vast amount of “excess power” that will be needed to charge up the industrial scale battery systems. I suspect such excess power will never exist.
Somebody tell ‘em, utopia is an ideal
IIRC, “Utopia” literally means “no such place.”
I firmly believe in attainable sustainability so naturally watermelons should cancel themselves-
Think before you click – and three other ways to reduce your digital carbon footprint (msn.com)
You know it makes sense lefties.
When reality is inescapable, even the greenest of green energy acolytes have to deal with the realities.
As an example, this nugget excerpted from the recent Canadian Defence Force’s “NORAD modernization and the North” publication –
Climate Change and its Destabilizing Impacts on our Arctic and North –
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors for the Canadian Arctic in
order to provide the clean energy necessary to support NORAD modernization and to stabilize local energy infrastructure needs.
Supply clean, firm, dispatchable power and heat in extreme conditions, with years in between refuelling;
What – no windmills and/or solar panels like the US are planning for their Antarctic base?
Oh Canada
“The effect of a carbon tax is simply to make all things more expensive because all things use hydrocarbons.”
As has happened in the State of Washington.
Women, children, poor most impacted.
Today’s gasoline price in central WA : $4.30/ gal.
Only CA and HI are higher. {best I can tell this morning}
Carbon tax is pretty much the same as church tithes previously paid to save one’s soul. Tithes used to be mandatory, but with decline of traditional religions we are now told we must pay “to save the planet”.
Very insightful. Separate energy producing from energy consuming and you get a whole different view of the problem.
Governments are subsidizing energy consuming technology because it is the easy part. They assume that energy production, the hard part, will then solve itself.
In reality the politics has placed the cart before the horse. EVs are fancy carts that rely on a tired old horse to provide the power.
100 percent of everything in civilized society, including the favored “green energy” machines themselves, depends on using hydrocarbons somewhere in the supply chains and systems.
YES! And how can the faithful not see it!? Willful ignorance, and dangerous.
like all organized religions!
Amazing disclaimer at the end.
Standard.
True. Still amazing all the Is that were dotted and Ts that were crossed.
Sad, but in the investment business today, government mandated.
4 succinct infographics about copper use which might help in social media commentary regarding the use of nuclear power in meeting Net-Zero/Energy-Transition targets:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1032713003519847/posts/6235374966586932/
What will Net Zero be made from?
Unobtainium.
It really is that plain to see.
Net Zero is not the goal, it is more like promise of the second advent of Christ, the wait for which could be eternal. The second advent of Christ will not happen, but this has not prevented church from collecting funds for two millennia.
Good one! May have to use that one in a future post
None of the green aspirations are unattainable”, they’re just ambitious!
Ultimately, Rhetoric is no substitute for reality (Thomas Sowell)
Does anyone have a good source for the energy/CO2 costs of producing solar panels that would support the above?
Thanks in advance.
One is constantly bombarded with the repurposed word, “renewable.”
What does renewable mean? The green advocates have selected a definition that means inexhaustible supply, which is one of the many definitions.
First off, all electrical energy production requires an energy input, coal, gas, oil, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc. The pundits want to create the illusion that the so-named renewable energy technologies are akin to perpetual motion. They are not.
Within the matrix of definitions, all energy production is renewable.
By definition, of course solar and wind are renewables much like renewing a prescription, a driver’s license, or a magazine subscription. Insert more money and get the renewal, the extension.
By another definition, of course solar and wind are renewables. The sun goes away, the electricity goes off. The sun comes back and electrical output is renewed, brought back to life. Same for wind. Hydro only requires more rain to refill the reservoir.
[Of course, at night we could go out en mass and shine LiPO flashlights at the solar panels. The trick is how and when to recharge.]
Burning dung or wood are also renewable. Wood merely requires waiting for the trees to grow. Dung merely requires vegetation and animals to eat the vegetation with dung being the output of digestion. Let it dry out, harvest it, burn it. Renewable energy.
In the same context coal, oil, gas, and nuclear are renewable. In this case it is the renewable definition of maintaining a constant supply.
Even a bicycle pedal electric generator is renewable. Get on the bike, pedal, shazam, electricity. Stop, no juice. To renew, start pedaling again.
Control the language, control the ideas.
K. Marx
We pragmatics and skeptics are only reinforcing the ideology by adapting and using their words and definitions.
Shame on us.
When my petrol gauge in the car says it is getting near empty… I can renew the contents of the petrol tank within 5 minutes.
If the gas in one of my gas hot water tanks runs out, I pick up the phone and the tank gets renewed, often within an hour.
As a coal fired power station uses coal, the supply from the mine is constantly renewed.
If the wind stops blowing.. I can’t do a thing about it…
If the Sun goes down… I can’t renew the energy I get from the solar panels until the next day, if it is a fine day.
Neither wind or solar are “renewable”.
Petrol and gas and coal are.
“By definition, of course solar and wind are renewables much like renewing a prescription, a driver’s license, or a magazine subscription. Insert more money and get the renewal, the extension.”
NO !!!
You cannot buy more “wind energy” if the wind isn’t blowing.
You cannot buy more “solar energy” at night or on a cloudy day.
Actually, for at least some investment fund and portfolio managers, ESG is a godsend. It is the excuse that always applies to failed investments … “It was ESG made me do it!”
There’s a good article by Vaclav Smil originally titled “Decarbonization Algebra” that neatly summarizes the insanity of the massive decarbonization agenda.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/carbon-cop26
Thanks!
At some point, people will realize that their standard of living has dropped dramatically due to politicians “fighting climate change”.
When that reaches a critical mass, politicians will deny that they ever considered such a proposal in the first place and were misquoted, taken out of context or that they “inherited” those policies from former office holders and it wasn’t their fault at all.
“At some point, people will realize that their standard of living has dropped dramatically due to politicians “fighting climate change”.”
I admire your optimism.
I am afraid the vast majority will never make this connection.
They will blame the “deniers.”
“The total direct and induced spending on the energy transition could easily exceed $5 trillion before a decade passes, or sooner, if advocates prevail. For context, the entirety of World War II cost the U.S. roughly $4 trillion (in today’s dollars).”
This is hardly a scare those for whom creating a huge investment cycle around green energy transition is the plan. The example of WWII also misses the target, after all WWII was a very profitable business for USA, it allowed the the US economy get out of depression and dominate the world economy for the next 40-50 years.
It was never about the numbers. But anyway, i feel that the media and politicians will blame global turmoil for any economic downturn. That will deflect attention away from failed green policies which will be abandoned over time. The same green policy politicians ( but not the few true believer greens) will then claim that they are realists and that they have to secure the people’s future, basically the same as the anti green politicians do now. Stealing the limelight so to speak. Then all the former mainstream green policies advocates will have switched saying they always thought it had gone too far. A bit like w Covid.
Until the next fabricated crisis or social justice agenda fills in.
Am I cynical of politicians? Absolutely.
The most sustainable solar energy : trees, grass and cows.
You make a great point about embedded fossil fuels used in the manufacture of goods. We need tools to give accurate carbon budgets to guide investment.
In fact, provide we don’t extinct ourselves (God forbid, but possible) then we may run out of cheap fossil sunlight (oil, gas and coal) sometime in the very distant future, and be forced to manufacture hydrocarbons. What irony, though I don’t think politicians understand irony. I think (and hope) this need won’t pose too much of a problem since by then fusion power should be available, and we will have an excellent replacement for sunlight energy, fossil or not.