From The MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN
June 07, 2021 / Francis Menton
As we all know, predictions can be difficult, especially about the future. On the other hand, sometimes it’s just a matter of distinguishing the reality on site from the pure self-deception.
Right now we have two visions competing for the reigning official prediction of the future of energy. One of these visions, which predicts the rapid demise of fossil fuels, is already fully visible during a virtual summit of the American Clean Power Association. The summit started today and will last four days through Thursday June 10th. The speakers are a who’s who of “clean energy” glitterati, starting with essentially all of the leading US Democrats. OK, President Biden is not speaking; but then again, he doesn’t come out much in his youth these days. But the list of speakers includes Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, as well as all of the leading “climate” officials in the Biden administration (Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Climate Officer John Kerry, White House climatologist Gina McCarthy) and many representatives from “Awake” Corporate America (e B. Andrew Steer of the Bezos Earth Fund, Anne Finucane of Bank of America). And on and on. You get the idea. These people are our better ones, and insofar as they are not the “experts” themselves, we can be sure that they are closely connected to the real experts through direct brain connections.
The other vision of the energy future can be described as “on-site reality”. The on-site reality may not seem like a vision of the future, but then you realize that a large energy project can take many years – often 10 or more – from conception to production. If a project is to really be a meaningful part of the energy future in about 10 years, it should be in full swing.
So let’s take a look at the two visions:
The American clean power vision.
I’m definitely not going to spend my time listening to any of these presentations, but you can get a pretty clear idea of where we are going by looking at the titles of the panels at the virtual meeting. Consider several examples. The large panel today was entitled “The Road to 100% Clean Energy by 2035”. You will likely recognize the benchmark of 100% clean electricity by 2035 as the target that Biden first set during the campaign and that he recently reaffirmed as president. When the President says we will do this, and when all of his main servants in charge of distributing the money are here watching us, then everyone will say that of course we are going to achieve this goal.
On Wednesday, the main event is a panel called the US Offshore Wind Developer Interview Series. This has about eleven moderators. It seems that all of them are representatives of one or the other wind turbine construction company who want to rub virtual elbows with the big politicians who determine who gets how much subsidies and tax breaks. A good conclusion from the core of the panel would be, “We can cover the oceans with these things if you just give us an unlimited barrage of federal funds.”
There are also a number of “on-demand” presentations that appear to have been pre-recorded and that you can watch at any time. A representative example is entitled “A Comparative Look At Utility-Scale Wind And Solar Across The US”
And so on. Basically, it is a crowd of subsidy seekers who gather to tell the police that they can provide all of the “clean energy” one could want if enough money is given away. Technical problems? Feasibility problems? These are certainly not mentioned.
The reality on site
Let’s start with the offshore wind situation in the USA The New York Times actually has a cover article on this today with the headline “Offshore wind farms show what Biden’s climate plan is against”. First of all, how many offshore wind turbines do you think the US has so far? The answer is in the first paragraph of the article: “The United States has exactly seven”. It’s rather embarrassing. So how are we going to turn this around in the future?
The Biden administration wants up to 2,000 turbines in the water in the next eight and a half years.
Does that sound like a lot? In fact, it is next to nothing – except for the fishermen and shippers and / or wealthy homeowners by the sea who are struggling with all their might to block everything. With 2 MW of power per wind turbine (optimistic), 2000 of them could be good for 4000 MW of power. At 8760 hours a year, this means that the 2000 turbines could generate around 35,000 GWh of electricity if they were operated all the time; but of course not – a capacity factor of 40% would be optimistic again. That would give you 14,000 GWh of electricity from the 2000 wind turbines (at random times and requires a full backup, but that’s another problem). According to the EIA, the US consumes about 3.8 million GWh of electricity annually, so with luck, those 2,000 theoretical offshore wind turbines will generate about 0.36% of our electricity by 2030 – if we start a crash program to build them today .
In fact, the expansion of offshore wind farms in the USA is currently ineffective. The Times article focuses on a particular bottleneck, namely that the installation of these offshore turbines requires huge specialized vessels, and there are none in the US
The largest ships built in the U.S. designed for offshore construction are roughly 185 feet long and can lift around 500 tons, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in December. It’s way too small for the huge components that Mr. Eleysley makes [offshore wind turbine] Team worked with. . . . The US shipping industry has not invested in the ships needed to transport large wind turbines because there have been so few projects here.
Okay, but Europeans have built thousands of offshore wind turbines and have many of these specialized construction vessels. Why don’t you just hire them? There is a simple answer: it is prohibited by what is known as the Jones Act, a US law that bans the use of foreign flag ships for any domestic shipping in the United States.
There are plenty of other bottlenecks as well, ranging from environmental audits to endless litigation and more. But this one bottleneck alone has apparently brought offshore wind development in the USA to a complete standstill for the time being. The Times concludes:
These difficult questions cannot be solved simply by federal spending. As a result, it could be difficult or impossible for Mr Biden to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector by 2035 and achieve net zero emissions across the economy by 2050 as he would like.
So you put offshore wind in the category of things that just don’t happen on the ground in the current reality. What then happens in reality on site? A few days ago, in a post from the Russians, I took note of a gigantic new Arctic oil project. So that’s a thing. How about some coal. Yes, a lot of it is being developed right now, with private money and outside of the US, so there is little or nothing the Biden administration or environmental litigation parties can do to stop this. The Times of India has an article dated June 5th with the headline “India, Australia, China, Russia are pushing for ‘massive’ coal expansion”. Abstract:
Coal producers are actively tracking 2.2 billion tons per year on new mining projects around the world, up 30 percent from current production levels, according to a new report from Global Energy Monitor on Thursday. The first of its kind examined 432 planned coal projects worldwide and found that a handful of provinces and states in China, Russia, India and Australia are responsible for 77 percent (1.7 billion tons per year) of new mining activity.
And the move away from oil? It doesn’t happen on the ground either, unless the governments of the USA or Europe deliberately suppress it, in which case other countries are ready to intervene. Not only Russia, but also all OPEC countries are in decline to give up oil and basically ridiculed the USA and Europe for their folly. Bloomberg posted a post on June 3rd entitled “OPEC Leaders Mock IEA’s ‘la-la-land’ 2050 Net Zero Roadmap”. Abstract:
The world’s largest petrostats rejected calls for a swift move away from oil and gas, warning that starvation of the investment industry would harm the global economy. If the world were to follow the International Energy Agency’s controversial roadmap of stopping investment in new fields immediately to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, “Will the price of oil rise to $ 200? Gas prices will soar, ”said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak. His warnings were reiterated by the energy ministers of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who said they would continue to expand their oil and gas facilities and warn others of the consequences of starvation in the cash industry.
In the real world, thousands of independent actors, both private and government, are ready and able to meet fossil fuel needs and make a lot of money in the process. Now the Democratic Poles in the US are so arrogant they think they can push the water uphill.
Read the full article here.
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