The problem with trying to jam through transformative economic policy with 50 votes and the Vice President is that states will resist. Gregory Meyer reports in the FT: Republican-led state capitols are considering bills that would punch holes in President Joe Biden’s green revamp of the US electricity system by promoting fossil fuels or piling costs on to renewable energy. The proposed legislation reverses a dynamic that played out over the past four years, when lawmakers in states controlled by Democrats moved to counteract Donald Trump’s climate rollbacks. One analyst described a “Biden … [Read more...]
China’s Coal War with Australia
China is locked in a diplomatic brawl with Australia over an independent global inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, writes Chuin-Wei Yap of The Wall Street Journal. He writes (abridged): China’s ban on Australian coal imports is intensifying a crisis in its coal market, which is battling surging prices, supply shortages, conflicting policy goals and a cold winter. Locked in a diplomatic brawl over Canberra’s call for an independent global inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, Beijing imposed an informal ban around September that forced boatloads of Australian coal to languish at sea. … [Read more...]
Are EVs as Carbon Friendly as we are Told?
Writing in the WSJ, Holman Jenkins makes the case that electric vehicles may not be the climate savior that the green crowd would have you believe. Passenger Vehicles Account for 7.5% of all emissions If the Environmental Protection Agency is right, the average light vehicle racks up 11,500 miles a year and sits idle 96% of the time. The World Resources Institute says passenger vehicles account for 7.5% of all emissions, but this includes buses, taxis, etc. Rental cars average 31,000 miles. Other fleet vehicles average 23,000 or more. Heavy trucks average 63,000 miles. One finding that … [Read more...]
Does Solar + Storage = a Clean Power Future?
In Nevada, plans are being made for a 475-megawatt solar array with a 540 megawatt-hour battery system. The plan to build the massive installation north of Las Vegas is the largest ever for Nevada. Brian Eckhouse reports for Bloomberg: Clean-power companies are racing to develop solar projects with batteries capable of providing grids with power after sundown. A key reason is more and more states -- including Nevada -- have committed to ban fossil fuels from power generation over the next several decades, but they’ll need more than intermittent solar and wind power to do it. Solar … [Read more...]
Volkswagen is About to Get its Own Gigafactory
When Tesla began building its gigafactory, the company's fans in the analyst world fawned over it. Now though, it is becoming clear that not only Tesla can have a gigafactory. The much longer established Volkswagen is preparing to build its own gigafactory in Germany. Electrek's Phil Dzikiy reports: Northvolt, a battery startup founded by two former Tesla executives, announced a $1 billion equity capital raise for its battery gigafactory in Sweden, in addition to a planned 50/50 joint venture with Volkswagen on another gigafactory in Germany. The funding, led … [Read more...]
Are Green Energy Backers Out Over Their Skis?
According to Mark Mills at The Wall Street Journal, it's likely that the world will be using hydrocarbons for quite some time. He writes: The prevailing wisdom has wind and solar, paired with batteries, adding 250% more energy to the world over the next two decades than American shale has added over the past 15 years. Is that realistic? The shale revolution has been the single biggest addition to the world energy supply in the past century. And even bullish green scenarios still see global demand for oil and gas rising, if more slowly. If the favored alternatives fall short of delivering … [Read more...]
Green Dreams and Gas Nightmares in the Northeast
There's an ocean of natural gas in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale formation, but you wouldn't know it based on the paltry natural gas infrastructure running from the area into the nearby population centers of the Northeast. Despite troves of cheap natural gas only a short way away over land, 20% of New England's natural gas is delivered via expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments to Boston's Everett LNG terminal. Freight Waves, an industry journal, reports that in Westchester County, New York, nearly on top of the Marcellus Shale play itself: Con Edison (ED: NYSE), a New York utility … [Read more...]
Your Survival Guy: Out of Gas in Newport, Now What?
Your Survival Guy: Out of Gas in Newport: 80% back on the Grid Your Survival Guy: Out of Gas in Newport Day 5 (and 5 to go) Your Survival Guy: Out of Gas in Newport Day 4 Your Survival Guy: Out of Gas in Newport Now that Newport, RI is back on the natural gas grid, I want to share with you a conversation I had with an owner of a successful natural gas operation. He said that the problem basically comes down to the fact that the green movement is spending the money and has politicians in its back-pocket. The utilities aren’t spending the money for political messaging. As a … [Read more...]
Your Survival Guy: Out of Gas in Newport
Update: Read more about Day 4 of Newport's gas outage here. You may have read that Newport, RI lost natural gas service Monday, impacting 7,000 customers and approximately 10,000 people. It’s reported that a single faulty valve froze at National Grid’s distribution center dozens of miles north in Weymouth, Massachusetts, causing the system’s pressure to drop significantly. Newport is located at the end of this gas line system, making it most vulnerable to a loss in pressure. Imagine your head being Weymouth and your foot being Newport and you get the idea. Monday morning was … [Read more...]
Is Solar and Storage Competitive with Gas Peakers in Minnesota?
A recent report published by the Energy Transition Lab at the University of Minnesota's Institute of the Environment suggests that a mix of renewable energy and lithium ion storage could be competitive in price with natural gas "peaker" turbines. The peaker turbines fire up during the times of highest demand on the grid. The electricity they produce is some of the most expensive. The high cost of peaker electricity coupled with the rapidly falling cost of renewables and batteries may combine to make the solar + storage combination less expensive than the natural gas fired peakers. MIT … [Read more...]
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