Energy News Beat

Berlin has agreed to spend €16 billion to build four major natural gas plants to meet electricity demand in a major overhaul of the country’s energy grid.

In a statement Monday, officials said the new strategy came “in addition to the consistent expansion of renewable energies,” and was key to ensuring steady power supplies “even in times where there is little sun and wind.”

The ruling coalition reached the decision following talks between Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party and the economy minister, Green Party politician Robert Habeck. The deal provides for a market-based capacity-boosting mechanism to expand electricity generation by 2028.

The government has described the fossil gas power plants as “modern, highly flexible and climate-friendly” because they will be capable of conversion to use clean-burning hydrogen gas produced from renewable sources. The plants are projected to produce up to 10 gigawatts of electricity. Tenders for the projects will begin soon.

German energy firm Uniper, which expects to be involved in the construction, said it was “relieved” that the coalition had reached a political consensus on the new plants, adding that “swift action is urgently needed because the approval process and the actual construction of power plants and storage facilities will take several years.”

Environmental groups remain skeptical, however, with Greenpeace denouncing the strategy as a “perfect example of how the hype around hydrogen is just a smokescreen for more fossil gas.”

Similar schemes elsewhere in the EU have also prompted a backlash from climate activists. Last week, French energy giant Engie was given approval to build a 500 megawatt gas plant near the city of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, even though some 2,000 residents had signed a petition opposing the scheme. Engie insists the facility, on the site of a former coal-fired generator, will be a “hybrid plant” and could be converted to use hydrogen in future.

Germany shut down its final three nuclear reactors last April, despite warnings that it would cause more fossil fuel to be burned. Last year, a report from Berlin’s own climate agency said the country was likely to miss its target of cutting greenhouse emissions by 65 percent by 2030.

In September, Scholz dismissed calls from his own coalition to restart the reactors in light of the energy crisis, declaring: “Nuclear energy is over.”

Source: Politico.eu

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China has opposed green projects by the UN’s flagship climate fund because their documents mentioned the risk of forced labour in the Chinese-dominated supply chains of solar panels.

At a meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), China’s board representative Yingzhi Liu objected to six projects because their risk assessments highlighted the potential of forced labour use in the production of solar panels.

The programmes, which included efforts to help vulnerable communities in Sierra Leone, Benin and Laos cope with the impact of climate change, were eventually approved following a majority vote.

China manufactures four-fifths of all the world’s solar panels, having a near-total monopoly over the production of some silicon parts which form the core of solar cells.

Forced labour allegations

Beijing has faced multiple accusations of using forced labour practices in solar panel manufacturing. Concerns have focused particularly on the Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government has committed “serious human rights violations” against the Uyghur population, according to a UN report.

Xinjiang is the source of up to two-fifths of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon, a key raw material in the solar panel supply chain.

In 2021 academics at Sheffield Hallam University said that the biggest polysilicon producers in the region reported their participation in “labour transfer” programmes administered “in an environment of unprecedented coercion”.

The Chinese government disputes the presence of forced labour in its supply chains, arguing that employment is voluntary.

Chinese opposition

At this week’s GCF board meeting, China’s Yingzhi Liu said he opposed “the unsubstantiated allegations of so-called forced labour allegations in the solar supply chains” included in the project documents.

“It is unacceptable to have this sort of presumption of guilt and stigmatisation of the PV [photovoltaic] supply chain”, he added. “Chinese PV should be treated in a fair, just and non-discriminatory manner in GCF projects”.

Small islands struggle to get help from UN’s flagship climate fund

None of the project documents seen by Climate Home News mentioned China or Chinese companies directly.

Potential forced labour risks in relation to the supply chains of solar panels featured in the ‘environmental and social action plans’ that accredited entities are required to submit in their funding applications. The assessment allows project developers to rate potential risks and suggest ways to minimise them.

Laos project

Among the proposals the Chinese board member took issues with was a project by Save the Children Australia to strengthen the climate resilience of the health system in Laos, one of Asia’s poorest countries.

The documents submitted to the board said that Save the Children “understands the risk of forced and child labour with procurement of these systems [solar panels]” and will manage the risk through the procurement process.

China’s Belt and Road gets ‘green’ reboot and spending boost

Despite regarding the proposal as “good” overall, Liu opposed it for “singling out so-called forced labour” in the solar panel supply chain. The same happened with five more projects.

“They are all good projects with a high impact that will bring benefits,” he added at the end of the session.

Technical requirements

In response to Liu’s remarks, a representative of the GCF told board members that the fund “requires accredited entities to undertake due diligence to make sure there is no forced labour in primary supply chains”, in line with the performance standards set out by the International Finance Corporation – an arm of the World Bank.

The GCF added that all references made to forced labour are “technical” and “have no political dimension”. It also highlighted that the same risk assessments are applied to all supply chains and are not limited to the solar energy sector.

Climate Home found forced labour risks mentioned in projects not involving solar energy submitted to this week’s board meeting.

A proposal to increase climate-friendly rice production in Thailand included forced labour among the potential risks. The project proponents wrote that “although forced labour or child labour is not reported to be a serious problem in rice farming, measures need to be taken to inhibit these practices”. China did not object to that proposal.

Source: Climatechangenews.com

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Energy News Beat

A convoy of two nuclear icebreakers and two polar-class heavy lift vessels is making slow but steady progress through Russia’s Arctic waters carrying the final modules for the second train of Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project.

Heavy-lift vessels Audax and Pugnax, operated by Singaporean Red Box, loaded two 10,000-ton prefabricated modules at the Penglai shipyard in East China in early January. After passing through the Bering Strait the vessels met up with Russia’s newest and most powerful nuclear icebreaker, Arktika, in the Chukchi Sea.

However, challenging pack ice conditions made for slow progress with the company making limited headway for more than a week. During one 24 hour period the vessels covered less than 5 nautical miles.

Russian ice charts show 10/10 ice coverage with average mid-winter 1st year ice.

“The difficulty in making progress is certainly due to the compressed hummocky pack ice, which forms compression ridges in which it is very difficult to move forward, even for nuclear-powered icebreakers,” explains Hervé Baudu, Arctic shipping expert and Chief Professor of Maritime Education at the French Maritime Academy (ENSM).

AIS vessel tracking data shows Arktika repeatedly traveling back and forth between the two cargo ships.

“It is going back and forth to create a lead to free them from the compression of the floes. But the leads have to be short because they close up quickly, which is why the icebreaker has to go back and forth so often,” Baudu continued.

Sentinel-1 SAR imagery of the Long Strait south of Wrangel Island on February 3, 2024 showing the lead or channel in the sea ice created by the convoy. (Source: Copernicus Sentinel data, 2024)

In order to speed up the voyage Atomflot, operator of Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet, dispatched a second vessel. Nuclear icebreaker 50 Let Pobedy linked up with the convoy late last week and is now leading the way ahead of Arktika and with Audax and Pugnax following behind.

“50 Let Pobedy is coming as reinforcement so that each icebreaker can escort one of the cargo ships,” concluded Baudu.

The convoy is currently passing through the East Siberian Sea, putting it around 3,000 nautical miles from its destination near Murmansk.

The four vessels are currently the only for ships operating in the eastern reaches of Russia’s Northern Sea Route, where ice thickness routinely measures 1.5m during winter.

Audax and Pugnax are carrying key modules enabling Novatek to complete the second train of its Arctic LNG 2 project. A third module is simultaneously taking the long-way round aboard heavy lift vessel Hunter Star via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope.

The supply and transfer of the liquefaction technology contained in the modules has been sanctioned under the EU’s 5th sanction package from April 2022.

All three ships are expected to deliver their cargo to Novatek’s assembly yard outside Murmansk in late February.

Malte Humpert is a Senior Fellow and Founder of The Arctic Institute. His research focuses on Arctic geopolitics, Northern Sea Route shipping and shipping scenarios, and China’s political and economic interests in the region.

Source: Gcaptain.com

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Britian’s latest subsea interconnector, the 1.4 GW Viking Link with Denmark began commercial operations at the end of December. Initially its capacity will be limited to 800 MW until internal grid reinforcement in Denmark is completed, since if it ran at full capacity the link would risk overloading the Danish network in the West Jutland region. Expansion of the 400 kV grid along Denmark’s west coast will enable Viking to operate at full capacity, with the first part of the West Coast Link from the German border to Endrup expected to open in Q1 2025. Analysts at S&P Global Commodity Insights forecast net flows to average around 500 MW from Denmark to Britain until February 2025. The Viking Link is the longest subsea power cable in the world at 765 km.

“Great news today as the new Viking Link interconnector starts to transport energy between Denmark and the UK, under the North Sea. The 475-mile cable is the longest land and subsea electricity cable in the world and will provide cleaner, cheaper more secure energy to power up to 2.5 million homes in the UK. It will help British families save £500 million on their bills over the next decade, while cutting emissions,”
– Claire Coutinho, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

The news of yet another interconnector between GB and other nations has been widely celebrated, but is it really such good news? Regular readers will know I am sceptical that interconnectors can be relied upon to deliver imports when needed. Under Capacity Market rules, interconnectors only need to be operational during times of system stress – they do not need to be importing, and there are no mechanisms to force imports if the capacity has been sold to market participants for the purposes of exporting (although exports can be stopped). If both markets at each end of the cable have simultaneous system stress then, technically, there would be price competition between them to secure imports, but in reality it is expected that system operators would intervene to float the cable, meaning power would not flow in either direction.

Back in 2020 I looked at the behaviour of our interconnectors with the Continent and found that during periods of high GB winter demand, the country often exports electricity: Britain exported electricity to Continental Europe during 13% of the hours with the top 5% of demand since the beginning of Winter 2020, while exports accounted for 16% of all hours over that period. (Considering Winter 2019, which was less affected by covid effects, Britain exported electricity to the Continent in 18% of all hours and 12% of the hours with the highest 5% of demand.)

I have updated this analysis for 2022 and 2023 and found that across the two years, Britain exported in 23% of the top 5% of hours with the highest demand (I sorted all the hours in the period by demand, highest to lowest and then looked at the top 5% of hours to determine the levels of imports and exports – in 23% of these hours, GB was exporting).

For 2023-23 I also looked at wind output in GB and also its connected markets (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway and Denmark) as well as Germany. Although there were no flows between GB and either Denmark or Germany during the period, the supply and demand balance in these countries impacts both the connected countries and GB, and therefore I included them in the analysis.

In the past couple of months I have been providing a client with daily market updates for GB, looking at demand, imports and wind generation. What I noticed was that during periods of high wind generation in December and January, GB also attracted significant electricity imports, however during the cold spell when wind generation was lower, imports were also lower and exports higher. So, I decided to see whether this was part of a wider trend. Taking my two year dataset, I considered the times when wind generation was high (above one standard deviation from the mean) or low (below one standard deviation from the mean).

In 11% of hours there was high wind in both GB and the other countries, and in 13% of hours wind was low in all countries – that is significant, as 13% is close to one day per week. During 8% of hours it was windy in all countries and GB imported, and in 5% of hours it was not windy in all countries and GB exported. GB exported in 7% of hours when it had low wind generation and received imports in 13% hours when it had high wind generation (regardless of the wind levels in the other countries).

The data don’t entirely support the anecdotal evidence of the past couple of months, but nor do they suggest that interconnectors provide reliability in times of high GB demand. It’s likely that the high volume of overall exports in 2022-23 was due to the specific challenges in France and Norway during 2022 when large parts of the French nuclear fleet were offline due to the stress corrosion problem and Norway faced 20-year reservoir lows in its hydro-dominated electricity system.

But the French fleet is aging and this was the second time in six years that a systemic problem had taken large parts of the fleet out of action. The French nuclear regulator has indicated it may not be the last time. Meanwhile, while Norway’s reservoirs may not see such lows again for some time, the country has gone notably lukewarm on exporting electricity since it opened its interconnectors with Britain and Germany in 2021. Not only has the country amended its Energy Act to allow it to restrict exports if it is experiencing domestic system stress, it has proposed a further amendment to allow restrictions in case of potential domestic shortages.

“We must have control that we have enough power in Norway. The bottom line for this is our own security of supply. We must be sure that we always have enough water in our reservoirs. There must always be electricity in the socket and we must have enough power for our industry,”
– Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway

In addition, the Norwegian Finance Minister, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, has said two of the interconnectors between Norway and Denmark (Skagerrak 1 and 2) should not be replaced when they reach the end of their lives in the next year or so. While Energy Minister Terje Aasland, takes a different view, each minister appears to reflect the position of their party (the current Norwegian Government is a coalition between Vedum’s Centre Party and Aasland’s Labour Party). This comes after Norway refused to licence the proposed 1.4 GW NorthConnect interconnector between Norway and Scotland last year. Norway is also considering taxing electricity exports in a bid to keep domestic electricity prices down. 70% of Norwegians believe that high power prices in the country are caused by cross border power cables, creating political opposition to greater interconnection with neighbouring countries.

”The [Norwegian] Centre Party believes there is no reason to renew the licenses. This is our clear primary position. We believe the time is over for large, new offshore cables,”
– Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, Norwegian Finance Minister

In addition to concerns over the economic and political risks of interconnectors, there are also physical risks. Since the start of the Ukraine war, the focus has been on deliberate acts of sabotage after the Nord Stream and Balticconnector gas pipes, however there have also been instances of accidental damage to subsea power cables, notably four of the eight cables of IFA-1 which were damaged by a ship’s anchor in 2016.

The overall expected availability of interconnectors is captured in the Capacity Market de-rating factors. The Government took a more conservative approach than had been recommended by National Grid ESO and the Panel of Technical Experts (“PTE”) which scrutinises the annual Electricity Capacity Reports (“ECR”) by National Grid ESO.

“Interconnector analysis has always been challenging. Firstly, because of their nature: they are transmission links but inject energy resources into the GB network like generators. Secondly, because an assessment of their contribution under stress events is quite hypothetical as there is an absence of sufficient historical evidence on flows under stress. As a consequence, the resource contribution and derating factor analysis is essentially model-based,”
– Panel of Technical Experts: Report on the National Grid ESO Electricity Capacity Report 2023

According to the PTE, the data analysis in the 2023 ECR shows that interconnector imports are modelled to be less than 40% of the total interconnector capacity for over 15% of tight hours. However, 80% of total capacity is available for around 70% of GB tight hours. France has a greater correlation of tight hours with GB than any of the other markets.

Each year the vulnerability of the GB power system grows as reliable thermal and nuclear generation is replaced with intermittent renewable generation, primarily wind. However, wind lulls can both coincide with periods of high system demand (anti-cyclonic weather systems characterised by cold, still weather in winter and hot, still weather in summer) and can be extensive, lasting for days or even weeks, certainly beyond the capacity of any currently existing batteries to back up. So far, there has not been a system stress event, triggering delivery under Capacity Market rules, but each year the risk of that increases, however, the performance of interconnectors in such an event is, as the PTE recognises, is entirely “hypothetical”.

A combination of high weather correlation, political sensitivities and physical risks could all threaten the ability of Britain to attract imports at times of need. Relying on interconnectors could prove to be a huge gamble and one we only know we have lost when it is too late.

Source: Watt-logic.com

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Energy News Beat

ENERGY REALITIES EPISODE #97 – SPIRIT COOKER

Highlights of the podcast:

00:34 – Spirit Cooker
03:28 – The consequence of growth of EVs.
07:05 – Problems with electric cars
09:56 – Some countries are defining EVs as the only car types and their territories
14:19 – Biden’s LNG decision is a win for Political symbolism, not the climate.
16:49 – The United States LNG industry
18:51 – The E-mail Scandal
21:13 –  Volvo had cut off all funding for its electric vehicles production
23:12 – Heavy machinery for farming purposes runs on diesel.
24:33 – About green hydrogen
26:31 – The European solar industry is in a state of massive crisis
32:24 – The EVs that are being ripped apart for their copper.
34:08 – The West has put so much of its political capital into the idea of electric vehicles.
36:41 -The lithium in Chile
42:23 – Oil firms forced to consider full climate effects of new drilling, following landmark Norwegian court ruling.
46:05 – Coal fired capacity
48:26 – Sales in the US of EVS

 

 

The Podcast Hosts for The Energy Transition

Armondo Cavanha LinkedIn:
Irina Slav, Energy Writer LinkedIn:
David Blackmon, Consultant, Writer, speaker, podcaster, miner of absurdities LinkedIn:Tammy Nemeth, Energy Consulting Specialists LinkedIn: Stu Turley, CEO, Podcast Host, Legend in his own mind LinkedIn: 

Blubrry Podcast:

 

 

ENERGY REALITIES EPISODE #97 – SPIRIT COOKER

 

Armando Cavanha [00:00:03] Energy Realities 97 spirit cooker. We are live on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. Good morning. Good afternoon to all.

Irina Slav [00:00:13] Good morning.

David Blackmon [00:00:14] Hello.

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:15] Hello, everybody.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:17] David, please let me start with you, Spirit Cooker. but

David Blackmon [00:00:21]  sure, put me on.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:22] Expectation of this expression. Sorry.

David Blackmon [00:00:26] Put me on the spot. Here we go. Let’s let’s explain this.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:29] Yes, please.

Irina Slav [00:00:31] Please.

Armando Cavanha [00:00:32] Please go ahead.

David Blackmon [00:00:33] Well,  spirit cooker. So, last week, we got the big news that, the replacement for John Kerry as the white House climate envoy. Excuse me. Forgotten the term, will be none other than long time Democratic Party activists. John Podesta, who, unfortunately for America, shows up with a significant role in every Democratic administration for the last 30 years. Mr. Podesta, the whole spirit cooker thing, as Mr. Podesta famously, I don’t know if he’s if she’s still his girlfriend, but he had a girlfriend, several years back when all his emails leaked and created such a problem for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, who was, in fact, a witch who engages in spirit cooking practice, which is a form of devil worshiping. And, and so. He got.

Irina Slav [00:01:37] I’m sorry, what.

David Blackmon [00:01:38] He did with that associate said, oh, yes, this is all well documented fact. And and Mr. Podesta, thanks to photos taken in his residence that have been leaked online, has a very large collection of, satanic, works of art, in his home. And, so he, he is, well associated with that facet of our society. This is who our new, climate envoy who will be traveling the world on private jets, just like John Kerry did to, make speeches at climate conferences, like, I guess Cop 29. And if Biden gets reelected, then, you know, the World Economic Forum, confab in Davos each year. And I think that’s perfectly appropriate. But, quite honestly, in fact, I predicted the day Carey announced he was resigning in mid-January that John Podesta would be his replacement. It’s, it’s he’s actually the perfect representative for this administration.

Armando Cavanha [00:02:43] Yeah. But, the other interpretation for this expression. spirit cooker.

David Blackmon [00:02:48] Spirit cooker. Well, I don’t know, maybe that’s proper. I haven’t bothered to, go out to Wikipedia and see. I’m sure Wikipedia has a very long and detailed page of the, but.

Armando Cavanha [00:03:00] The the great  yeah, sure, sure. Stuart. Please.

Stuart Turley [00:03:05] I got an easy one. For any man that gets married. Their spirit is cooked as soon as they’re married. Sorry.

David Blackmon [00:03:15] That is

Irina Slav [00:03:17] Roles, right?

Armando Cavanha [00:03:19] Okay. Tammy, please. Apparently, EVs, bring some symptoms to the society. What do you see? The tandem consequence of growth of EVs.

Tammy Nemeth [00:03:33] Well, we we saw a few headlines, which I’m sure we’ll be talking about a little bit later, about the unintended consequences of electric vehicles. But first of all, is that the weight of the vehicles are so huge that it makes it difficult for safety issues with respect to guardrails, which I will be talking about. And, and not just the weight for, for things like that, but for roads and the wear and the, the tires. And then we’ve got the unintended consequences of the materials that, are comprised in the, in the EV. So they use a lot of copper. There’s a lot of copper in their charging stations. And on the West Coast there’s been gangs of thieves going around, cracking open the Chargers and stripping out the copper. And what’s really fascinating is that the copper, is then taken to a metal recycler. It’s recycled. It’s sent back to China, where it’s put into a new charger and then sent back to to California or wherever, where it’s then stolen again, and the cycle repeats itself. So what is the economy? It’s a circular economy, for sure, but but it’s one of these unintended consequences where it increases crime. You know, if you think about it, that. Or because these thieves are going around and stealing the copper. Now, of course, there was lots of other crime going on with with SUVs. And before it was Mercedes, with the little logo on the front and people were stealing things and so on. And there’s obviously normal car thefts, but I think one of the unintended consequences is this, because there is such a, a reliance on these minerals and materials that are worth quite a lot right now that people, some people, choose to embark upon a life of crime in order to, have a benefit from from those things.

David Blackmon [00:05:40] Hey Tammy. You know, the good part, though, is if they just limit their thievery, to the state of California and limit their individual thefts to no more than $995 worth of copper, then they won’t be prosecuted for it. You know, I mean, so, you know, that’s the key to that whole scam is just do it in California and be careful exactly how much you steal on each occasion. And you can just keep doing it forever.

Armando Cavanha [00:06:07] Up to $1,000.

Tammy Nemeth [00:06:10] Up to. 1,000. Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:06:11] Just under this, with this, the new pricing, that’s as far as you can steal. Then David, is the size of this pen I’m holding.

Armando Cavanha [00:06:19] Oh my God. Impressive, Irina. Oh, we know that you are an expert in planning. And, what if planners what if you planners do most these days? Number one, promote research, science and education. Number two, provide subsidies. And I see that this.

Irina Slav [00:06:46] Is the latter. I’m afraid, I don’t think that there’s been a whole lot of planning from what we have been hearing and reading lately about EVs, what Tammy said. And she’ll talk about it more later when we get to the headlines. But it seems to me that with all these problems with electric cars popping up every day, it seems really reports of problems with EVs have increased substantially in the past couple of months or so. And winter is one reason, because turns out, EVs do not perform as well as they should in winter, and people are suddenly surprised, even though people, other people have been warning about it. Now we have revelations about the wear and tear of tires on on roads, because EVs are so much heavier and their tires wear out more quickly. And this particle emissions from these tires. And the guardrails problem and the destruction of roads because of their weight. And let me tell you that I know exactly how road destruction looks, when you suddenly increase traffic on a stretch of road. Because we recently had such a case on the road that passes via a village that leads into town. I don’t know if you remember, there was some protests from the coal power plants. And protesters closed off the highway, so traffic had to be redirected. Well, not two lane road.  and we’re having a massive increase in potholes.

Armando Cavanha [00:08:30] Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:08:31] Because of that sudden increase in traffic, including by trucks. So imagine millions of heavy of thems, EVs, going on roads. There will be road destruction. And on and on and on. It seems that the planners of the evil revolution that continues to be just about to take off, but is not taking off, did not plan for any of these things. Not that they were secrets or, you know, discoveries to be made. All of these things should be calculated in advance. They just they just. I think they just said we’ll just spend some money on chargers and on subsidies, and we’ll just ban other cars. Job done.

Tammy Nemeth [00:09:21] And it will happen and it will happen.

Irina Slav [00:09:23] It will, it will happen. Yeah. People will want to buy them. Oh, yeah. Incidentally, the insurance rates are through the roof, EVs. And nobody wants to buy a secondhand EV.

Armando Cavanha [00:09:35] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:09:36] It’s all working out. Just just fine.

Irina Slav [00:09:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally fine.

Armando Cavanha [00:09:42]  Great to, conclude this first.

Irina Slav [00:09:45] Good talk to you too.

David Blackmon [00:09:46] Hello, Patrick. Good to see you.

Armando Cavanha [00:09:48] Hello. Let’s see it. Stuart, before we go to the headlines, I would like to ask you the following. Some countries are defining EVs as the only car types and their territories. For instance, I have, example here. My question for you, before we go to the headlines, Stuart, is the U.S. ready to do the same?

Stuart Turley [00:10:15] Excuse me while I get airsick. I’m going to get my airsick bag and just come over here and and then throw up. I’ll be right back in just a second. No, this is terrible. There. There’s only two reasons people are doing this. And I want to ask a question of our live listeners out there over Christmas. Did anybody else besides me have a family fight with somebody that is a, electric car, renewable zealot? When I told them that they were an idiot and and the family Christmas was ruined at that particular moment. I just said you’re you’re an idiot. Okay. So when we take a look at the EV, why did Ford cut it out? So Biden’s in, enrichment. Excuse me? Backing the unions and going out there. And then the unions are all losing their jobs because the American people are waking up, and, Irina. It’s also tied in Tammy. It’s tied to the farmers. There is a great awakening going on when we’re tired of having these green New Deal shoved up our nose in it. I that’s why I said no. And so I didn’t want this to turn into a family gathering where you guys ostracized me. And so, and so when we sit back. Armando, what a great question. Because, when you look at Toyota, Toyota is going nuts with their, hybrids. I, Rina, and I have talked about hybrids for a long time. I’m in on a hybrid. Let me have my. Yeah, yeah, I am. Give me a hybrid. I’m all in, but I gotta have a 350 pickup to tow. You know, everything I need. So I’m going to have a hybrid in my 350 Ford pickup just because I can. Anyway, there’s a great awakening, Armando. And a quick, quick answer. I also do not want to be driving down the road like that guy I saw on Twitter or X with a Apple headset on, playing, driving a cyber truck going, okay, he’s letting the truck drive with an Apple headset on. I’m sorry, I that’s worse than my wife putting makeup on. Sorry.

Armando Cavanha [00:12:51] Yeah. That’s great.

Tammy Nemeth [00:12:52] I’m waiting for there to be a hybrid tractor because with respect to farming, they keep telling. Like, what I hear in Canada is that you can use these electric tractors, and they are writing these stories about somebody with a little hobby farm, has an electric tractor, and he gets all of two hours of work out of it, and then he’s got to recharge for ten hours or some ridiculous thing. How does that work for like seeding, where you got to get the crop in and harvesting when you got to get it off before weather changes, but you have to wait for charging. And how is that going? How are you going to get the tractor back to your yard? And so is there going to be a hybrid tractor? That’s what I would like to know. Is there research going on.

Stuart Turley [00:13:34] Oh but it can’t work in in Washington state because David, didn’t Washington State just ban all outdoor, blower leaf blowers, lawn mowers? Tractor.

David Blackmon [00:13:47] Wow. Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise me. That’s the California move. And it’s the West Coast, so that’s why I don’t doubt that at all.

Armando Cavanha [00:13:55] Okay. Okay. Let’s start going to. David, please, your headlines, the first one.

David Blackmon [00:14:03] Well, I picked this one. I have to admit, it’s it’s purely self-centered because I read this editorial in the Washington Post last week, written by the left wing zealots on the editorial board at the Washington Post titled, Biden’s LNG decision is a win for Political symbolism, not the climate. And I read that, and I just marveled at the fact that it read just like something I have written. And what I’ve written. They’re making the exact same points against the LNG, permitting delay that I have made and the Telegraph and the the Daily Caller and in Forbes, and at my Substack. And, this is the first time I can remember being in full and complete agreement with the editorial board at the Washington Post, which, frankly, makes me want to rethink exactly my opinion on this decision ought to be because, you know, that’s dangerous territory being. I just thought it was ironic and, that just it just really, I think. Puts puts a kind of a period on. On the fact that or the reality of just how awful and counterproductive that decision by the Biden White House truly is for not not just for the LNG industry, but for the United States as a reliable trading partner. It’s really, just a, sop to the left wing, climate alarmists, funders of Democrat, political campaigns and nothing more than that. And, you know, when you’ve lost the Washington Post editorial board, President Biden, you have lost.

Tammy Nemeth [00:15:47] If I can add there, like within minutes of that part of that decision being made, the environmentalists in Canada were saying, let’s stop LNG in Canada, even though we haven’t even exported anything yet. So it you know, the because I think it’s supposed to come online this later this year or something, the very first one on the West Coast, but they’re like, oh, maybe we should be reconsidering because America is doing this like, oh my gosh, that didn’t take long.

Armando Cavanha [00:16:13] And David, how do you see Europe dependance on this LNG from the US.

David Blackmon [00:16:19] Well, and that’s the nub of the whole thing, right? I mean, Europe, because of, Putin’s war in Ukraine, has, lost access to Russian natural gas on which countries like Germany and some others have become so reliant. And, their alternative was to go to the LNG markets and, and rapidly build out their own import capacity and re gas capacity for LNG. And, they become, highly dependent on the United States LNG industry for their economic, you know, growth there and in Europe, many of those countries. And so, you know, you have the United States, which has historically, really outpaced most of the rest of the world in terms of, having a predictable, regulatory legal structure and predictable enforcement of the laws and regulations, on the books and investors from all over the world and trading partners from all over the world have invested trillions of dollars over the year in the United States and its economy, based on that faith of the predictability and consistency of the laws and regulations and the faith that they know the government is going to enforce those laws and regulations in an even handed way. This decision is just like the the day one decision by President Biden to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. Yet if there’s severe damage to both of those concepts and is going to have the impact inevitably, loss of trading partners, loss of billions of. For dollars in investments in the U.S. economy and a destruction of the United States reputation as a reliable trading partner. And those things are terrible for the country. And, you know, the people in the Biden administration have to be fully aware of it.

Tammy Nemeth [00:18:24] So Patricks

David Blackmon [00:18:26] Yeah. Go ahead Tammy.

Tammy Nemeth [00:18:27] No. Go ahead David.

David Blackmon [00:18:30] LNG is a pole to keep Europe’s tent erected until they sort out a plan to move ahead with renewables. Yeah. Well, and that could be forever.

Irina Slav [00:18:40] Probably will be.

David Blackmon [00:18:42] You know, I mean, all of our lifetimes anyway.

Armando Cavanha [00:18:48] David, your second, headlines, please.

David Blackmon [00:18:51] Biden taps Podesta. Yeah, we talked about that earlier. The second part of that headline is, is really interesting. And I touched on it. We did go, but didn’t really go into detail. People will remember the email scandal, Hillary Clinton’s email server that was kept on the.

Armando Cavanha [00:19:10] private computer.

David Blackmon [00:19:11] Right. It’s, kept, the server was in the bathroom, actually, of, of a third party server company in Colorado Springs, Colorado, I think. And it caused a real scandal in the midst of the presidential campaign in 2016. Well, the emails that leaked publicly were John Podesta’s from John Podesta’s account, and he and Hillary Clinton had traded thousands, literally thousands of emails while she was secretary of state in the Obama administration. And a lot of those communications showed a great deal of coordination in the, in, the project during the Obama years. And it ended up selling 20% of United States uranium reserves to Russia. Okay. Russia, which the Democratic Party wants you to believe is the sworn enemy of the United States and the biggest danger to our society. And, so I you know, that’s kind of ironic, too, is Podesta is one of these, Washington, DC creatures, who, despite being embroiled in a series of scandals, really over the past 30 years, always manages to fail upwards. You know, he’ll get involved in a scandal, he’ll lose the current job he’s got in. 2 or 3 years later, he reappears in a in a different Democratic administration at a higher level job. And, you know, so here he is now. He’s are unelected, unconfirmed by the Senate climate envoy.

Tammy Nemeth [00:20:42] Yeah.

Armando Cavanha [00:20:45] Perfect. Because David anniversary this week, he has a chance to have to have three headlines.

David Blackmon [00:20:54] Was this mine?

Armando Cavanha [00:20:56] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:20:57] So, Volvo. Yeah. Yeah. Volvo cut off funding. Well, I was on a radio. I do a Monday afternoon radio program, and, the host kind of caught me off, off guard last week, with this story. And, he had kind of misread the story, saying that Volvo had cut off all funding for its electric vehicles production. What it really cut off funding for was for Polestar, a third party joint venture that it was involved in with a Chinese EV maker for the last, what, 28 years? Polestar was created in 1996. It was one of the very earliest, pure electric vehicle companies, that went into business eight years before Tesla did. And has been yeah, really not much of a success, and has never really made any money. And finally, I guess, Volvo ended up getting some of its management ended up getting so much pressure from its investors. They finally decided to abandon Polestar, the Chinese company whose name I’m going to forget here, will now become the 100% owner of Polestar Star. So, you know, I mean, if you buy a Polestar, just recognize you’re supporting now the Chinese Communist Party.

Tammy Nemeth [00:22:18] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:22:20] They’re cool looking cars, though, just like all the EVs. They’re always cool looking. So you got that going for you. In Arizona, driverless car companies submitted applications for permits for them to operate on freeways. Yeah, I know wrong with that.

Tammy Nemeth [00:22:35] No, no.

Armando Cavanha [00:22:36] That’s great. Okay. Irina our, our planning expert. Please go ahead.

Irina Slav [00:22:47] Could I just please, first, there’s a question from, from a listener.

Armando Cavanha [00:22:51] Sure, sure.

Irina Slav [00:22:53] Well, LinkedIn user, I don’t know if I could. Thank you. So the question is, do the farmers in Europe even have a farm in your choice where they aren’t taxed as much as those mobile use diesel, which I imagine is that’s through the nose in the EU. Like gasoline. I don’t know if they have a choice. I have heard that, heavy machinery for farming purposes runs on diesel. So they have to, to to buy diesel to, run their machines. Well, the protests are about ostensibly is planned by some European governments. France, notably. And Germany notably to cut and eventually phase out the subsidies that they provide, farmers with for their diesel fuel. This diesel for farmers is subsidized, and they want to reduce the subsidies and eventually phase them out because, you know, the Green New Deal and let’s go, all electric, even in farming. So yes, I don’t know about Joyce, but I don’t think they have a choice. They have subsidized diesel and they are afraid they’re going to lose it, which is why they are. Protesting because they won’t survive. It’s as simple as that. Supermarkets are buying cheap and selling expensive, and farmers are on the brink of survival, thanks in no small part to the European Union’s green policies. Yeah, I hope that answers the question. I don’t know what regenerative braking would be, but I’m willing to agree. I think Mihai knows what he’s talking about. So about green hydrogen. My favorite fuel cell. So green hydrogen is the only viable route for aviation and shipping. It’s a smashing headline, because you can just visualize all the ships and airplanes running on green hydrogen, which is not exactly what the author is saying. He also, by the way, is an advocate for, green hydrogen. But she made some quite, quite rational points, such as the point that green hydrogen is very expensive to produce, and the process of producing it is not very energy efficient, which suggests that production will inevitably be limited for a very long time to come. So her suggestion is that we do not use green hydrogen indiscriminately for every, industrial sector, but rather those sectors that can be electrified should be electrified, and we should reserve what green hydrogen we could produce for the impossible to electrify sectors such as shipping and aviation. As she she. She says that acknowledging the limitations of green hydrogen and acknowledging that the fact that it will be a very long time before we can scale up weight, by we, I mean Europe can scale up hydrogen green hydrogen production to any levels that will be meaningful, you know, to use in any industry. Still, she says that is the only viable route radiation in shipping, which I am not sure is the case, to be honest.

Armando Cavanha [00:26:26] Great. Let’s go to the other one, please. Irina this yours?

Irina Slav [00:26:31] Yes. The European solar industry is in a state of massive crisis. That’s not funny at all, because nobody could have predicted it.

Armando Cavanha [00:26:43] Right.

Irina Slav [00:26:46] Basically, this is the problem. There’s a lot of produce, but unsold, solar panels in Europe. And they have no chance of being sold because they’re a lot more expensive than Chinese panels, which are very competitive in terms of quality and especially in terms of price. And even those are sitting in warehouses because there’s not enough demand for solar panels in Europe right now, but because European manufacturers of solar panels have much, much higher production costs. Their survival is now in question, and the industry is proposing that the European Union sets up a special fund to buy out all these panels that have already been produced. So, you know, to allow the industry to survive, that’s totally not government intervention in an industry to keep it alive artificially. Of course. And yeah, there was a very funny reminder by one of these industry insiders saying that the Chinese are selling below production costs. Yes, they are selling below your production costs because your production cost is very, very high because you’re producing your panels in Europe.

David Blackmon [00:28:13] Isn’t the solution, though, to find a segment of the population that the solar panel manufacturers can enslave for the free, free labor like China?

Irina Slav [00:28:24] No

Armando Cavanha [00:28:24] Oh my God.

Irina Slav [00:28:25] No they will. They still have to pay for the energy they would use in the manufacturing process.

Armando Cavanha [00:28:33] In Brazil, we call this this procedure local content or market protection.

Irina Slav [00:28:38] Yeah yeah.

David Blackmon [00:28:39] Yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:28:40] Yeah for sure.

Armando Cavanha [00:28:42] Yeah. Great. Thank. Irina.

Tammy Nemeth [00:28:45] By the Way, the the LinkedIn user is Travis Lynn. So thank you.

Irina Slav [00:28:50] Hi Travis. Thanks for the question. Great question by the way.

Tammy Nemeth [00:28:53] And pseudo scientist has a couple comments here I thought I would just put on David do you want to read those out.

David Blackmon [00:29:01] Buying an EV is backing communism. It kills the West economy. And ultimately China imports 75 to 85% of their oil. They need EVs and want the West to finance its tech.

Tammy Nemeth [00:29:14] Yeah, maybe. But they also want to kind of take over the industry. Right. So if you have, putting out of business the the Western automakers and now there’s all these calls to say, oh, Chinese EVs are really cheap, let’s import them in. And now in the UK, they’re saying, well, this could be a problem because of security issues with respect to all the cameras. And it’s it’s, processing data everywhere it goes and all this kind of thing. So now there’s hesitation to, to, to import the Chinese EVs. And then pseudo scientist also has a comment here about the hydrogen.

David Blackmon [00:29:53] Declare their ships like carriers is the answer. Sure. But then many will convert nuclear powered container ships on to carrier. I’m not sure what that means.

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:03] Can you imagine container ships fueled by

Irina Slav [00:30:06] Powered by Nuclear.

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:07]  I guess it’s better than the wind that they’re trying to go back to.

Irina Slav [00:30:12] Oh, that would with with.

David Blackmon [00:30:15] With the nuclear power on, the container ships be a problem when they’re carrying EVs? That light on fires that you can’t put out?

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:24] I know I was thinking about that, you know. My gosh.

David Blackmon [00:30:27] I’m not sure that be a hazard.

Irina Slav [00:30:29] It has to be set of goods, very, very guardrails.

David Blackmon [00:30:33] I doubt the whole that’s.

Irina Slav [00:30:34] Not going to be expensive at all.

Stuart Turley [00:30:36] What about a hydrogen carrier that blows up like the Hindenburg in Texas? We call that blowed up

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:46] That would be bad. And then Patrick has a couple of questions here about uranium.

David Blackmon [00:30:53] How much of the uranium made it to around the U.S, uranium that we sold to the Russians. I assume that Hillary Clinton, facilitated that deal. You know, I don’t know. I think that’s a good question. Somebody ought to it.

Tammy Nemeth [00:31:09] Yeah, it’s true. They do. It does have chemical markers.

Stuart Turley [00:31:11] Well, considering, Patrick, great question. I think with the billions of dollars that the US administration has allowed, Iran, was it 80 billion? Tammy, you talked about, I think with, it used to be 40, 400,000 barrels per day when President Trump was in office. They’re up to, I think, 3.5 million, 3.4 million barrels per day because the sanctions don’t work as intended, as Irina says, which I love that phrase. They never work as intended. And I have a t shirt here with that. And, so, I think it’s pretty funny that, you have if they, they could afford the, the uranium if they did. Patrick. How’s that for an answer?

Armando Cavanha [00:32:07] Yeah. Tammy please go ahead with our first headline.

Tammy Nemeth [00:32:12] Okay. So this is what I was talking about before, but one of these unintended consequences that there’s this increase in green crime. And I forgot to mention that it’s not just the EV chargers and the EVs that are being ripped apart for their copper. It’s also wind turbines in remote locations where they go up there and they break into the they sell or whatever and strip out the copper. And they also do it to the solar panels and the cables that go to the, to the solar arrays. So, yeah, copper theft is a big deal now because the price of copper has gone up so high. And there there is a bit of a growing shortage, or at least projection of shortages for copper, for the, energy transition, the forced transition. Yeah

Armando Cavanha [00:33:01]  they do they cut the lines and and bring the material.

Irina Slav [00:33:05] They cut the cables.

Tammy Nemeth [00:33:06] They cut the cables, pull them out, load them onto the truck, take it to the recycling place. And sometimes, like the article suggests, that in some instances they’re swaps for drugs or whatever instead of actual money. So it, you know, in order to keep it sort of under the radar.

Irina Slav [00:33:26] So you pay trucks with copper. It’s amazing.

Stuart Turley [00:33:32]  I have never heard of money laundering buy through drugs. How sad is that? I’ve written.

Tammy Nemeth [00:33:39] Oh, yeah. He’s pretty good. oh. If I can just say I found a stat here, Stu. And, in December 23rd, Iran, its crude oil production was 3.1 million barrels a day.

Stuart Turley [00:33:54] Thank you. I knew I loved you.

Armando Cavanha [00:34:01] Tammy, your second headline, please.

Tammy Nemeth [00:34:05] Well, I mean, the the West is, has put so much of its political capital into the idea of electric vehicles. But the way I see it is they a lot of the policy makers knew it wasn’t going to work. And the whole point is to get people out of their cars. I mean, if you read what they talk about, for example, in the UK absolute Zero plan, which was put forward by the Climate Change Committee, it’s all about very few cars. Whatever cars are out there will be ridesharing like Ubers or whatever. Those will be electric, but the people are supposed to be encouraged to walk. Number one, bike number two, take public transit. Number three. And if you must, call an Uber. So this is the sort of mentality behind a lot of the policies. But. When when the electric car sort of thing starts to fail because it doesn’t work in a cold climate and whatnot. You have to remember what some of the policy proposals out there, what the long term trajectory is, and that’s to get you out of your car.

David Blackmon [00:35:22] That’s and I completely agree with that. I fully endorse Tammy’s comment there.

Armando Cavanha [00:35:28] Yeah. Interesting point.

Tammy Nemeth [00:35:31] So can I add here Mihai has a comment about the hydrogen, irina.

Irina Slav [00:35:36] Right. Looking for clean, clean hydrogen is to replace the huge amounts of hydrogen already used as a chemical. So I agree, mostly producing coal, methane. And these are some huge amounts of hydrogen.

David Blackmon [00:35:50] Well, it’s not green.

Irina Slav [00:35:51] It’s not green. But you have to make the production capacity of green hydrogen like overnight, which is not going to happen. It’s really, really expensive. Still, even in Spain, which has some big plans for green hydrogen, I hear, because it has so much sun. But does it have the water? Is my question.

David Blackmon [00:36:13] Good question

Armando Cavanha [00:36:15]  Good question. Good question. Stuart, before we go to do your headlines, your sent to me, video, please let me share this.

Narrator [00:36:28] Just a positive lithium in the world. The lightweight metal is known as white gold because it’s essential for making rechargeable batteries that power things like computers, mobile phones and electric cars. The lithium here in Chile is locked away in underground salt water or brine. Billions of gallons of pumped to the surface every year, where it is left to evaporate and concentrate. It can take around 18 months for the brine to move through the series of ponds. The concentrated lithium brine is then processed into lithium carbonate, which is then taken to another factory near the coast, where it is purified into battery grade lithium. It can take more than a thousand gallons of brine to produce enough lithium for just one electric car battery.

[00:37:20] Stuart its your.

Stuart Turley [00:37:22] That’s that’s. That’s, that’s a little bit of an eco friendly system when you. I just love the theme. So spirit cooking could also mean that they gotta cook the brine, and then they have all them things down there. So it’s pretty pathetic when when we think about the child abuse, the ecology, ecological disaster. That’s my Oklahoma coming out. And so when you sit back and think about that guys, it’s just disgusting. How much ecological damage is done in the name of greenies?

Irina Slav [00:37:59] Yes.

Stuart Turley [00:38:00] David. I actually love the fact that you got a laugh out of that. I mean.

David Blackmon [00:38:07] You’re right, man. I mean, it’s it’s, you know, cool. But who how many what percentage of the American public do you think is even modestly aware of any of that? 1%? Maybe you’re.

Armando Cavanha [00:38:20] 10%.

David Blackmon [00:38:20] Lucky. I don’t know, 10% are. You know, I would suspect it’s substantially less than 10%.

Stuart Turley [00:38:28] You know, Patrick’s comment, the toxic waste from the lithium process is another issue not receiving attention. But for some of them, that is some of the biggest stuff with the renewables. When you have a, an EV that has the battery. And I know that Irene has talked about this and David and Tammy, you guys and Amanda, it is the you drive it, for 4,000 miles and you have to replace your tire. And then it is the battery that is $20,000 in the car. New car is 20, you know, $30,000. And you try to buy all these used EVs from Hertz that David was talking about. You’re going to have to say, here’s a $30,000 EV. And now you got to put in within a year, the, 30,000 to 40,000, for the battery replacement. But it’s the recycling and the end of life. You can recycle an Ice car and really do quite well on making the money when you munch it up, you know, peel everything out of it. It’s a nice system. There’s nothing that you can do on the solar panels other than ship it to Africa, like the slums that we are in my west and makes me airsick that these things are so toxic. And then a wind farm is, $800,000 just to remove the cement and steel with your carbon heavy at the end of life. And nobody is even paying for that. So that’s ruined the farmlands. My head’s exploding with the recycling thing.

Tammy Nemeth [00:40:13] Well, with the EVs, the batteries. I saw a program where there’s a couple of smaller companies that are trialing different ways in order to recycle the batteries to where they process it and separate it out. And, you know, that’s really energy intensive. Takes a long time. It’s very expensive. So I’m not really sure unless governments force companies to do it and make them pay for it. It’s it’s problematic how you do it. And there is actually a lot of waste, water and, and whatnot out of that as well. So I don’t know. It’s hit and miss. I think they still need to do more research. But this is another thing where it’s putting the cart before the horse. We want to have all this stuff, but the things aren’t there yet to make it so, so yet the governments are still pushing ahead 100%.

David Blackmon [00:41:04] But it’s just around the corner, just

Tammy Nemeth [00:41:06] Just Around the corner.

Irina Slav [00:41:07] So this way it’s easier. They’ve gone so far. They can walk it all back now. well they can but they don’t.

David Blackmon [00:41:14] They can. Yeah. But they’re going.

Tammy Nemeth [00:41:15]  Yeah. But their egos are now wrapped up in that and. Yeah. And reputation

Stuart Turley [00:41:18]  You know well. Oh sorry. sorry I’m sorry I view the market for hydrogen gas is an aerospace space X. There’s absolutely no need for earthlings to force the entire development world to converting to a green, blue, green hydrogen rainbow. That’s I in that, generation when we’re blessed with, boku. Yeah. Thank you. Irina. And, Oklahoma would be bohu, reserves, carbon, natural resources.

David Blackmon [00:41:53] Boku is a Louisiana word.

Stuart Turley [00:41:55] Oh. Thank you. But then I take it from the French.

David Blackmon [00:41:59] Yes.

Tammy Nemeth [00:41:59] Well, sure. Cool.

David Blackmon [00:42:00] Okay, dad. Joe. Sorry.

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:02] Space-x uses methane. All right. Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:42:08] But the other one, the one run by the Amazon guy uses hydrogen.

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:14] Bezos. Okay.

David Blackmon [00:42:15] Bezos. Yeah

Irina Slav [00:42:15] The Amazon.

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:17] Origin.

Armando Cavanha [00:42:18] Amazon guy.

Stuart Turley [00:42:18]  Armando you keep try? Yeah. You keep trying to bring this headline up. Oil firms forced to consider full climate effects of new drilling, following landmark Norwegian court ruling. Holy smokes, Batman. And when we sit back and take a look. Norway is I believe it’s the most used person per capita, of EVs because of their, great hydrogen that they I mean, the, hydro power they sell, they’re blessed with a lot of resources for low cost. And it makes sense in that kind of environment.

David Blackmon [00:42:59] I mean, population.

Irina Slav [00:43:01] Yeah. Tiny population.

Tammy Nemeth [00:43:03] Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:43:04] Yeah. And and so, but here’s the it’s the first order, second order and third order magnitude of the, which I think that there is a failure in the, the energy transition, which is not necessarily a transition. And so as the Greens are losing power, you’re going to see more dramatic legal system problems that they’re going to put in it more and more regulatory issues. The legal system has been taken over by the left through the left’s academia world in getting that done. This is a whole systemic thing showing up. How can an oil company be responsible for scope three emissions, as this is leading to, when you’re drilling for oil and natural gas, but you’re going to have to get charged for the scope three emissions that you have no control over because, Britney Spears and the Swifties are flying around on hydrogen that’s made from natural gas is a green. Holy smokes. Thank you.

Irina Slav [00:44:17] What does what does full climate effects mean? Full part, It confuses me.

David Blackmon [00:44:25] It means whatever the spirit is physically.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:29] Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:44:29] Exactly. How how how could you know what the full climate effects are? They have to be a convenient consultancy to tell you exactly what these. Yes.

Stuart Turley [00:44:39] Exactly.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:39] Using, using, a forward looking scenario analysis to determine what your full climate effects are. Yeah.

Irina Slav [00:44:46] And it’s in the models.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:48] Right. And it models and it’s in alignment with the EU. New EU frag rules that come in that are in effect this this year.

Stuart Turley [00:44:58]  I think.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:59] It’s companies would have to fill this out. Anyway.

Stuart Turley [00:45:02] I think it’s the wealth transfer that they realize the wind farms are failing. The EVs are failing and forgive me from and David’s over there going looking at Stu’s, talking to the WEF they’re calling right now. Schwab is calling me, saying, hey, dude. So, you know, it’s a wealth transfer in the carbon tax, and this is a way to, again, the only way they’re going to keep power is the wealth transfer. Is that a fair statement? Guys are my smoking crack.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:34] It also puts private companies out of business. So then the only ones left are the state oil firms in developing nations or the Middle East. So

Stuart Turley [00:45:45] What she said.

Armando Cavanha [00:45:45] What what what, Stuart there. Second.

Stuart Turley [00:45:50] Okay, everybody, we were all sitting here talking about second order effects on EVs. And I kind of lost it. On whether David and I were going to go test the EVs, hitting guardrails on that story. But in order to increase, coal fired capacity by 2024 is the in the most in the last years. Tammy is you and I had talked about with a global energy monitoring thing. There are currently 6500, coal fired units. And when we look at under construction, there are 404 coal fired plants. There’s actually more than that. And I think you’re right. I’ve been checking their numbers. And you look at the, the, map on this and it’s, two in, in South Africa, five in South Africa. And then the rest of it is in India, Indonesia, Vietnam and China, Kazakhstan, Romania and Turkey are where the rest of the coal, all those 402 are coming in. It looks like me when I was a teenager with the red dots all over it where they were. You know, my acne was bad. And this looks like acne in this part of the world is just going nuts.

Irina Slav [00:47:14] Yeah, they need cheap energy. That’s the way to get it.

Tammy Nemeth [00:47:18] And their citizens want it and need it, right? Like it’s an election year. So the Modi government is like, well, people want reliable, affordable energy. The best way to do it is coal. Let’s build more coal. And what I find interesting is that I think it was last spring, India came out and said they were going to have a moratorium on new coal permissions. And then in the fall they said, well, I think we need to reconsider that. And then now we have this where they’re going to be approving more six times more than they have in the in the past. How many years? So where are the activists celebrating?

Irina Slav [00:47:57] Yeah. And they’re cutting state support for the transition of state oil. Oil firms too. Yeah. So apparently it can be done. You can. We consider you can change your mind. Look at India.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:11] That’s right. The people want affordable energy.

Irina Slav [00:48:14] Exactly. And.

Stuart Turley [00:48:16] And food.

David Blackmon [00:48:18] And new.

Armando Cavanha [00:48:22] Let me share with you. oh. Almost 8% of sales in the US of cars. Yeah. In 2023. Our EVs, it’s not a big number. In my opinion, David, you know, in my opinion, work would be much higher this number, but, small.

David Blackmon [00:48:42] Yes, but bigger numbers are just around the corner.

Armando Cavanha [00:48:47] Yeah. You’re right, you’re right.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:51] What does that include? Does that include the EV sales for for, rental car companies?

Armando Cavanha [00:48:57] Oh, probably. Yes. Yes.

Irina Slav [00:48:59] Oh, it definitely includes, the Chevy Bolt, which was discontinued late in the year.

David Blackmon [00:49:05] Sure.

Tammy Nemeth [00:49:06] Right.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:06] Yeah. So it’s not a big enough, but see, the the opposite vision, from, Mark Mills.

Irina Slav [00:49:13] That’s a very, very good story. I read this earlier.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:16] Yeah, that the brakes.

David Blackmon [00:49:17] Are.

Irina Slav [00:49:18] Very still pretty.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:19] Well, so still dead on arrival. Oh, my God. It’s a very strong statement, though.

Stuart Turley [00:49:26] Yes and

David Blackmon [00:49:27] Correct. And Mark has done a ton of work documenting that, by the way. Yes. You want a real source on the limitations of electric vehicles. Just take a look at what Mark Mills writes about.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:39] Whatever his focus on mining and, very, very important thoughts. Really

Irina Slav [00:49:43] Its great story, very informative.

Stuart Turley [00:49:46] Mark Mills is a cool cat. I’ve been interviewing him twice. And, he is he is a beyond rock star. I believe he’s at the Manhattan Institute. And.

Armando Cavanha [00:49:59] We invite him to come to our podcast.

Stuart Turley [00:50:02] Oh, I.

David Blackmon [00:50:03] Sure, probably do it. Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:50:05] Absolutely. He is a phenomenal, phenomenal man.

Tammy Nemeth [00:50:09] His knowledge on the whole minerals aspect of the transition is amazing. Really amazing.

Irina Slav [00:50:16] You should have him on the podcast.

Armando Cavanha [00:50:17] So going to the conclusions of people, batteries swapping is taking off in China and probably very soon in the US. I’m not sure they are talking seriously because. You need to go to the gym and to eat spinach to to replace 800kg, battery each day. I cannot understand this guy.

David Blackmon [00:50:47] Yeah, I. Don’t get that at all.

Stuart Turley [00:50:48]  I’m here to pump you up.

Tammy Nemeth [00:50:52] So the idea that you could just swap out your battery so you don’t have to worry about charging seems like a good idea on the surface. But let’s say you’ve bought your car and it’s new, and you go into a place and someone whose car is five years old has swapped out their battery. Now you have that old battery in your new car. I mean, how does that work? Right? But these you go into a slot where it’s only new batteries versus these ones are one year old, two year old, three year old. How does that work? Precisely?

Stuart Turley [00:51:25] I never thought I’d have to practice safe EV. Kind of like college dating. Holy smokes. Sorry.

David Blackmon [00:51:36] China and France have easy graveyards because no one knows for sure. Yeah, and then we’ve got EV graveyards in America, too. They’re just not quite the scale yet. Yet that they are in China. But they will be because because of this exact problem, no one, no one wants to buy the used ones. And no one knows how to safely dispose mainly of the batteries. The rest of the cars, you know, just metal.

Irina Slav [00:52:01] Metals

David Blackmon [00:52:01] Much.

Armando Cavanha [00:52:02] yeah. Another Comment. Oh. Sorry.

Tammy Nemeth [00:52:06] No. Go ahead. I think it was Joanna’s.

Stuart Turley [00:52:10] Joanna.

Armando Cavanha [00:52:11] John.

David Blackmon [00:52:12] Mark is at  TPPF. Yeah. TPPF Texas Public Policy Foundation is a great foundation. Really good think tank based in Austin. Really smart people there. Yeah, I know some of them. And they’re they’re really terrific.

Armando Cavanha [00:52:26] Thank you. Joana. Well, thank you so much for this nice conversation this Monday.

Irina Slav [00:52:33] Thanks. Always a pleasure.

David Blackmon [00:52:34] Thank you. Always fun. I can’t wait to rewatch this. I’m going to laugh for now.

Tammy Nemeth [00:52:41] Thanks To all the questions. That was awesome. Thank you.

David Blackmon [00:52:43]  Yes. Thanks, everyone.

Armando Cavanha [00:52:44] Thank you, thank you.

Irina Slav [00:52:46] Have a great day.

David Blackmon [00:52:47] All right. Have a great week.

Irina Slav [00:52:48] Bye bye.

Armando Cavanha [00:52:49] Bye bye.

Tammy Nemeth [00:52:50] Bye

 

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Natural gas storage — especially well-sited storage with lightning-fast deliverability rates — is taking on a new significance (and value) as LNG export facilities and power generators seek to manage their often-volatile gas demand. But developing new gas storage capacity is costly and, with only a few exceptions, it’s hard to make an economic case for greenfield projects. That reality has spurred a lot of interest among midstream companies in acquiring existing storage assets and, where feasible, expanding that storage. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss one of the biggest storage-acquisition deals to date: Williams Companies’ recent purchase of six facilities with a combined working gas capacity of 115 Bcf in Louisiana and Mississippi. (It’s not all that Williams has been up to on the gas-storage front.)

As we said in our Squeeze Box series last year, storage has long been a critically important balancing mechanism in the Lower 48 natural gas market. In the Pre-Shale Era and the early days of the Shale Revolution, the storage market was driven primarily by the intrinsic value of capacity — i.e., the need to sock away gas in the lower-demand summer months for use in the peak winter months. More recently, the value of storage is being driven almost exclusively by extrinsic economics — i.e., how flexible and responsive capacity allows market participants to manage supply and demand during short-term market swings. This flexibility and responsiveness have become more important criteria for ensuring reliability as LNG export terminals and an increasingly renewables-heavy power sector navigate frequent gas-demand fluctuations day to day — or even intraday — as well as high-stakes, extreme weather events like 2021’s Winter Storm Uri and the cold snap that gripped Texas in mid-January.

Take LNG export facilities. A number of factors can cause frequent and often-sizable swings in LNG feedgas deliveries: things like planned and unplanned pipeline or liquefaction-plant maintenance, intraday temperature fluctuations that can affect facility operations — even foggy weather that slows or stops marine traffic. As a result, operators often need to be able to call on incremental gas or inject volumes on short notice. Gas suppliers and pipelines can help manage the ups and downs, but they can’t always accommodate big swings in volumes equivalent to a large-scale liquefaction train. That’s where storage comes in.

In a similar vein, the increasing amount of variable-output renewable generating capacity that helps power the electric grid keeps the operators of gas-fired power plants on the edge of their seats — their facilities always need to be at the ready to either ramp up or ramp down their electric output to compensate for the ever-changing (and often unpredictable) output of wind farms and solar facilities. That means that generators often need reliable access to significant volumes of gas on very short notice. Again, nearby gas storage can provide a much-needed, much-welcomed assist.

With the heightened demand for flexible, responsive gas storage top of mind, Williams earlier this month closed on the $1.95 billion acquisition of a portfolio of six underground gas storage assets in Louisiana and Mississippi from an affiliate of Hartree Partners LP. The half-dozen storage facilities (green stars in Figure 1 below) have a total capacity of 115 Bcf and — just as important, and maybe more so — a combined injection rate of 5 Bcf/d and a combined withdrawal rate of 7.9 Bcf/d. Those “deliverability” numbers are extraordinarily high and therefore are of particular value to storage customers like LNG facilities and gas-fired power plants that need to either receive or send into storage large volumes of gas at the drop of a hat.

Figure 1. Gas Storage Assets Williams Just Acquired From Hartree (and Other Williams Assets).

Source: RBN

The post Smack Dab In The Middle – Williams Acquires Gas Storage Near The Heart Of LNG Export Demand appeared first on Energy News Beat.

 

Energy News Beat

Once a skeptic of nuclear energy, Energy and Technology Co-Chair State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, is now one of its staunchest supporters.

Steinberg told CT Examiner this week that, like many of his contemporaries, he questioned the benefits of using nuclear energy. But those concerns have been alleviated through research, talking to field experts and visiting nuclear facilities throughout the country. Steinberg visited a power plant in South Carolina in November while attending the National Council of State Legislators’ quarterly meeting.

“When I first came to the legislature, I didn’t know about energy. Like anyone else, I flipped the switch and the lights came on,” he said. “Then, we were a little skeptical of nuclear. We thought it was yesterday’s kind of energy. But as soon as I started doing my homework I discovered that nuclear was a viable option — it’s carbon free, and if you do a really good job managing the environmental and safety concerns, it really should be considered in the mix.”

Steinberg noted that nuclear power can “also reduce the risks of blackouts and brownouts.”

He also said he favors and would advocate for a third reactor at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford, the state’s only such facility.

The 2,073-megawatt Millstone site, owned by Dominion Energy, covers about 500 acres. According to the company, the plant produces enough electricity to power 2 million homes with low-cost and carbon-free electricity that helps the state fulfill its carbon-reduction goals.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, nuclear power provided 37 percent of in-state generation in Connecticut in 2022. Connecticut ranks among the 10 states with the highest share of electricity generated from nuclear power, according to the EIA.

Steinberg understands the timetable of having a third reactor — which could translate into powering even more homes — is up in the air. At best guess, he said, the process of placing a third reactor at the facility could take years, maybe more than a decade. However, Steinberg said, it’s something worth pursuing and investigating now.

“I know there are a bunch of obstacles related to nuclear, not just the environmental and safety ones, but the economic ones too,” the lawmaker said. “If you look at what has happened in Georgia and North Carolina, they’ve had huge overruns in traditional nuclear reactors, and they’ve abandoned the concept. We have not built a new nuclear reactor in the United States for a long time. There are genuine hurdles there. I am hopeful for small modular reactors [or SMR’s] which would use less concrete, which is one of the big expenses.”

Steinberg said he favors having an SMR at Millstone, but supports having a traditional reactor as well.

Currently, only Russia and China have SMRs in their plants, but the U.S. Department of Energy has said it wants to deploy SMRs at home by the end of this decade or by early 2030.

According to the Department of Energy, advanced SMRs offer numerous advantages over traditional reactors, including offering a relatively small physical footprint, reduced capital investment and the ability to be placed in locations not possible for larger nuclear plants. SMRs, the agency said, also offer distinct safeguards, security and nonproliferation advantages.

The practicality of having an SMR at Millstone in the short-term, Steinberg said, is wishful thinking.

“I would say, realistically, it might be 2040,” he said. “Maybe we could cut a few years off; that would mean some basic coalescence of the industry, which a lot of people are betting on. A lot of people want to see this happen.”

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection would have to approve any plans to have another reactor at Millstone.

In a statement, DEEP spokesperson Will Healey said, “The decision to possibly pursue adding an additional reactor to the Millstone facility is up to the site owner, Dominion. In our deregulated market, these kinds of decisions are market decisions to be made by the market participants, if they deemed it made business sense to do so. DEEP continues to explore opportunities and policy options to incent any low carbon sources of energy.”

Dominion, in a statement to CT Examiner this week, said it anticipates SMRs will be the wave of the future and is on board with such technology.

“As for nuclear technologies, Dominion Energy is exploring SMRs as an option in the next decade and beyond. This technology is still being developed and new advanced nuclear designs may be ready for large-scale deployment by the early 2030s,” the statement read. “SMRs provide the potential to expand capacity at existing nuclear sites. … Dominion Energy has a great history of providing carbon free energy to the state of Connecticut and we look forward to the opportunity to work with the Energy & Technology Committee and policymakers on constructive solutions to continue to operate the current units and to discuss the policy environment that would be necessary to take full advantage of the potential for nuclear power in meeting increased energy demand as well as the state’s decarbonization goals.”

Steinberg said there are many unknowns when it comes to the cost of reactors and, potentially, SMRs, but that It’s something to keep an eye on.

“The project overruns and the projects that have been tried in the United States in recent years are a cause for alarm,” he said. “They’ve gotten to the point where they can’t complete the project at a reasonable cost and they wouldn’t be able to recover. That is one of the reasons why some are not overly excited about jumping into the new nuclear facility [concept]. So, we need to get to a point where the economic formula for building a new plant makes sense so that it can attract investors.”

Source: Ctexaminer.com

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The post Steinberg Embraces Nuclear Energy, Supports Third Nuclear Reactor at Millstone appeared first on Energy News Beat.