A wind farm in Glenrock, Wyoming. AP
Michael Lee
Every area of the U.S. could be in danger of experiencing power outages this summer amid a push to convert to renewable energy sources while taking traditional sources of power offline.
“I think the entire country is incredibly vulnerable, because the entire country is facing a huge energy shortage and I don’t think there is any place that is truly safe,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director at Power the Future, told Fox News.
RECORD-HIGH GAS PRICES DRAIN TEXAS COUNTIES FUEL BUDGET
But some argue that renewable energy sources are not the problem, instead pointing to climate change-driven heat waves that stress the grid beyond its limits, regardless of what source of energy is used.
“Climate change is fueling extreme heat, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes,
which is overtaxing America’s outdated power grid,” Climate Nexus said in an analysis earlier this month, citing a North American Electric Reliability Corporation report that argued “extreme temperatures, ongoing drought, and supply chain issues could strain
the power grid in vast regions across the country.”
The analysis noted that there is a “growing rate of record-breaking climate events,”
which it argued contributes to both climate change and the stress it places on the grid.
“Fossil fuels are both a root cause and exacerbating influence on these blackout events,” the analysis reads. “The extraction and burning of oil, gas, and coal are the primary drivers of climate change, while outdated fossil infrastructure accompanied by wild market volatility have made these fuel sources expensive and unreliable.”
But Turner argues that there are few rewards for the environment
when grids switch over to wind and solar.
“The notion that they have baptized themselves as green is a joke,” Turner said.
“They use more fossil fuels in the production, installation, and then the redundancies
of wind and solar than if they just burn those fossil fuels directly to make electricity.
So, the idea that they’re green is just purely a lie.”
“It just amazes me that we look at this, we look at all the data, and politicians are still hell-bent on pushing renewable energy when it’s proven to be nothing but a failure,” he added.
Turned said that the U.S. was already the cleanest country in the world before the push toward renewable energy sources.
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“We all want clean air and clear water and a clean earth. No one does it better than the United States of America. By far we are the cleanest nation on Earth,” Turner said, adding that the switch from reliable energy sources will “plunge entire neighborhoods into darkness.”
He pointed to other examples of countries that have been ahead of the U.S. on switching to wind and solar such as Germany, arguing that people there have still yet to see any benefit from the transition.
“Germany pays the highest electricity price for the developed world. …
they pay almost five times what we do for electricity,” Turner said.
The move towards renewables has also caused Germany to be dependent on Russian natural gas to fill the void in their capacity, while the country has even begun to bring some coal plants back online. They have also resorted to buying energy from neighboring France, which produced over 80% of its electricity with nuclear power.
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Turner believes nuclear energy could be a solution in the U.S. as well, but he notes that a move to more nuclear energy would receive plenty of pushback.
“Nuclear is absolutely one of the strongest solutions. Nuclear is absolutely a viable solution that has the smallest footprint,” Turner said. “The biggest problem nuclear has against it is there is a very aggressive and very effective fear campaign.”
Turner placed much of the blame for the current situation on the Biden administration, considering President Biden’s renewal of the push to switch the country over to wind and solar. But energy prices are now soaring as families already deal with decades-high inflation, leaving little hope for relief in the near future.
THIS IS AMERICAN ENERGY’S BIGGEST THREAT
“Natural gas right now is trading at probably more than three times what it should,” Turner said. “There are runs on natural gas, we have a huge shortage of it and the price
is insane. Coal is probably four times what it should be, and these are all the results of Biden’s energy policies.”
The rush to convert to renewable energy has not been limited to Democratic administrations, with Republican-run Texas having outage issues amid a transition
to wind power. A winter storm last year caused widespread outages across Texas, with many of the windmills that failed being deliberately turned off, so they wouldn’t freeze. The problem was exacerbated because the state lacked adequate backup from natural gas plants to keep the lights on in many communities.
“It’s bipartisan stupidity,” Turner said. “It was Republican governors of Texas who for years pushed renewable energy mandates. If that can happen in Texas, then we’re doomed as a country.” “There was no backup. Why? Because Republican governors bought into this lie that all we need is wind and we’ll be fine,” Turner said.
Texas’ vulnerability to outages has already started to show this year,
with the state needing to dip into power reserves already this month
amid a surge in demand.
Grid operators in Texas insist that they have the resources in reserve to power the state through the coming summer months, while Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples said the state “has excess capacity available when plants are online and renewables are able to put power on the grid.”
But Turner is skeptical, arguing that policymakers should start pushing back against the “green agenda.”
“It takes an awful lot of political courage to say ‘this is all just a load of nonsense, right?,’” he said. “These are failed technologies, very expensive technologies, made in Chinese slave camp technologies, and they’re not green, that’s the biggest lie.
“My question for the Biden administration or any other governors is, why do you continue to go down this path?”
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The climate hawks’ list of disappointments is growing longer as the global energy crisis and Europe’s imperative to cut ties with Russia send some of the world’s greenest governments into the embrace of fossil fuels.
The war in Ukraine has required President Joe Biden and other Western leaders who support aggressive green measures to make compromises to avoid energy shortages this winter and to ensure the overall security of their energy supplies, even while they maintain that it is necessary to replace fossil energy with renewables.
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That means, at least for now, governments are seeking out more of the fossil fuels they would prefer to phase out quickly, leading to a major letdown for environmental interests.
Conclusions from the recent summit of the Group of Seven’s heads of state show that green policy preferences and, pointedly, the preferences of Biden and his fellow European leaders, are being outmatched by the demands of the global energy crisis.
The leaders’ newest Tuesday communique, which lays out how the members resolve to tackle major geopolitical problems, endorsed the public financing of natural gas projects
in limited circumstances.
The communique emphasized the “exceptional” circumstances of the energy crisis and acknowledged “that investment in [the natural gas sector] is necessary in response to the current crisis.”
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said separately that “large investments in gas infrastructure in developing countries and elsewhere” would be needed.
G-7 nations had a month earlier committed to ending direct public support for unabated fossil fuel projects internationally, meaning those unaccompanied by emissions-capturing technologies, by the end of this year. At the COP26 climate change conference in November, all of the leading industrial nations except Japan made a similar commitment.
The EU is scrambling to find ways to reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas, which over the last few years has provided more than a third of the bloc’s total gas imports, in an effort to cease funneling money to Russia and become less vulnerable to energy “blackmail.”
That effort includes seeking out new import partners, such as the United States and Qatar, that can provide Europe with more liquefied natural gas. But it also involves supporting new gas projects in the developing world, especially Africa.
The endorsement of gas sparked a backlash from green-aligned groups,
which accused the G-7 of walking back a commitment it made just a month
before and transgressing the Paris Agreement.
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About Kamila Godzinska,
I am highly ambitious, results-driven, and able to adapt to any environment.
I am a truly international individual, proficient in six languages (and learning a seventh). My higher education has provided me with an excellent understanding of the political, economic, and cultural situations and developments in the post-communist countries of Europe and Eurasia. I am experienced in conducting policy-oriented research on issues relating to the global energy transition. She conducts research and analysis to inform policy briefings, reports, and presentations, focusing on fossil fuel producing countries.
In particular, she conducts research on Russia’s political economy and the way it shapes its energy transition and broader climate policies, as well as potential avenues for climate cooperation between the UK and Russia. Kamila has previously worked as a research assistant for the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum; the International Multimodal Communication Centre at the University of Oxford; and the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich. She was also a Fellow of the Monterey Summer Symposium on Russia.
Kamila holds an MPhil degree in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Modern Languages and Cultures (French and Russian) from Durham University. In her spare time, Kamila enjoys travelling, hiking, practicing yoga, learning languages, dancing salsa, singing, and playing the piano.
Kamila Godzinska, a London-based researcher at independent climate change think tank E3G, called the endorsement of gas infrastructure a “short-sighted and relatively ineffective way of boosting the resilience of global energy systems.”
Kamila Godzińska | Facebook
Kamila Godzinska (@GodzinskaKamila) / Twitter
Kamila Godzinska (@kamilasplates) • Instagram
| Powering Past Coal Alliance
Powering Past Coal Alliance Global Summit, co-hosted by Minister Wilkinson, shows global momentum toward the phase-out of coal and strengthens resolve to accelerate action | Markets Insider (businessinsider.com)
Kamila Godzinska on Twitter: “Planning and building new LNG infrastructure takes years, and the year of opportunity on the EU market is 2022, not beyond. LNG projects planned now with the EU market in mind will risk becoming stranded, and the capital invested may not be recovered due to long payback periods.” / Twitter
Kamila Godzinska, a London-based researcher at independent climate change think tank
Kamila Godzinska MPhil Student, 2018-2020 | Russian and East European Studies
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Environmentalist disappointments adding up with West’s turn to fossil fuels
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Kamila Godzinska – Search (bing.com)
Power-Past-Coal-1.pdf (lapfforum.org)
Future of EU gas demand – E3G
Godzinska noted the general timeline for LNG terminal construction and delivery is between three and five years. “These projects will have no effect on the crisis right now,” she said.
“A focus on gas will detract attention and finance from cheaper and faster strategies that reduce gas demand and exposure to high prices. Those strategies include energy efficiency, electrification, and the expansion of renewables.”
Joe Biden’s Misguided Plan to Lower Gas Prices
The Biden administration and the G-7, as well as Europe more broadly, are pursuing
all of those green strategies more aggressively in response to the energy crisis, but not
to the exclusion of natural gas. The G-7’s communique was also one of the most explicit
endorsements favoring new gas infrastructure since the war started, but it wasn’t the first action.
Liberal media mocks Americans’ concerns on inflation – Bing video
The Biden administration and the European Commission set up a joint task force
in March with the mission of securing more LNG supplies for Europe. Biden committed
to helping supply the European Union with several hundred billion cubic meters of U.S.-produced LNG through 2030, and the task force acknowledged that new infrastructure would be built to facilitate that.
Environmental groups have been especially critical of that move for
“Locking in” more fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions with new gas projects.
The European Commission also set aside 10 billion euros for investment in “limited additional gas infrastructure” with its newest energy platform, and the commission just issued a joint statement with energy giant Norway endorsing the continued exploration and production of oil and gas on the part of the non-EU member.
Romain Louallen, a global policy lead at Oil Change International, described the agreement as a “moral failure” and said the EU’s response to the war is “leading to a new dash for oil and gas around the world at a time when the world should be urgently phasing out fossil fuels.”
In addition, governments in Europe are turning more readily to coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, in order to conserve gas supplies ahead of winter. In the U.S., frustration among environmental groups extends beyond Biden’s response to the energy crisis.
Biden pledged on the campaign trail to restrict drilling and leasing on federal lands and waters, and he sought to get the ball rolling by pausing all new leasing after taking office, but a federal court enjoined the leasing pause last summer.
The administration is currently appealing the ruling.
The Biden administration has since scheduled and carried out multiple oil and gas lease sales, citing the court’s injunction, but its environmental constituencies say it hasn’t done enough to thwart new leasing.
“There’s nothing in that ruling that said that they had to restart new leasing now,” Nicole Ghio, a senior fossil fuel program manager at Friends of the Earth, told the Washington Examiner.
Ghio, whose group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to stop the Interior Department’s largest-yet onshore lease sale, said the administration’s increase in leasing royalty rates and its reductions of available acreage are inadequate reforms.
“We’re seeing Biden break his climate promise,” Ghio said. “It is very true that industry benefits from huge subsidies in the leasing programs, such as artificially low royalty rates. However, raising royalties does not actually address the climate impacts of the leasing program.” The Supreme Court defined new limits to the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Environmental groups responded quickly by calling on Biden to wield his executive powers more aggressively to facilitate a faster transition away from fossil fuels and by calling on Congress to pass sweeping energy and climate legislation — something it has failed to do because of slim majorities, opposition from Republicans, and a lack of consensus among Senate Democrats.
Dutch farmers block highway amid nationwide protests – Search (bing.com)
Dutch farmers angered by government plans that may require them to use
less fertilizer and reduce livestock — blocked a highway as part of a day of
protests in the Netherlands on Monday (July 4).
Lydia Laird – I’ll Be Okay (Official Performance Video)
Give me peace when I am tossed and frightened, lost among the waves
Give me hope when I’m in doubt and fears are clouding up my faith
Would You come and move the mountains?
Cause I’m too weak to climb
Promise that You’re with me in this fight
Give me peace when I am tossed and frightened, lost among the waves
Give me hope when I’m in doubt and fears are clouding up my faith
Would You come and move the mountains?
‘Cause I’m too weak to climb
Promise that You’re with me in this fight
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(1) Blackouts this summer MSN – Search (bing.com)
(2) Blackouts this summer MSN – Search (bing.com)
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America’s divides are only growing (msn.com)