Subsidized Company, Supplying Subsidized Industry (Which Is Based On Subsidized Junk Science) Files For Bankruptcy

via NoTricksZonehttp://notrickszone.com

“Do we have the next Solyndra at hand?”

I had to shake my head when reading the recently published Fox News report: Another taxpayer-funded energy company files for bankruptcy.

Image cropped from Aquion Energy.

Hat-tip: Indomitable Snowman

According to Fox News, Pennsylvania-based Aquion Energy had received “a $5.2 million stimulus-tied grant” (not a loan) from the U.S. federal government and that the company had once been “touted as a rising star in the energy storage business”. It even attracted “an investment from Microsoft founder Bill Gates“.

On Wednesday Aquion Energy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“North American Company of the Year”

Fox News adds:

In January, the company was named ‘the North American Company of the Year Award’ at the annual Cleantech Forum in San Francisco…”

This is a classic example of how a house of cards gets built and begins to collapse. It should remind us of what can happen whenever bureaucrats and politicians get so caught up in a pie-in-the-sky idea that they literally become deaf to technical, scientific and economic reason.

Multi-tiered subsidy debacle

There was certainly no lack of warnings from skeptics that renewable energies (mainly sun and wind) were fraught with daunting technical and economic obstacles, and that the technology for overcoming these obstacles still remained decades out into the future.

But green energy proponents wanted to hear none of it, and so embarked on a blind and reckless money give-away of the sort never seen before. Already trillions have been earmarked worldwide — one trillion in Germany alone.

Today the green energy subsidy folly has since made its way down through multiple supply tiers as the government funds tens of billions of dollars to prop up the junk science that tells us us we need the green energies, which in turn also receive hundreds of billions in subsidies. This in turn has led to billions in subsidies made to companies claiming to have the technologies for overcoming the technical hurdles that the rest of us had long warned about.

What’s next? As expected these companies are now folding. It was a scam all along, as they were never as close to solutions as they led many of us to believe. Now the government will have to subsidize the many workers who are losing their jobs, at least for awhile, as scheme implodes on itself. What a folly.

Driven by rampant cronyism

Naturally almost everyone supports funding for the development of new energy technologies, but there is a huge difference between pitch-forking tax dollars, by the billions, into a huge crony feeding trough, and wisely and strategically allocating precious funds to the right places.

Unfortunately the green industry has been one driven by cronyism, and not technical or scientific merit — and certainly not economics. It has been a huge bonanza for very few at the great expense of the common good. The hundreds and hundreds of billions wasted would have been far better invested elsewhere.

The storage solutions come from the past, not the future

When it comes to efficient energy storage, putting a man on the moon is in fact easy compared to finding a new way that stores energy even a fraction as well as a chunk of coal, a bottle of gas, or can of petroleum does. In fact we find the storage solution millions of years in the past in the form of fossil fuels, and not the shady, over-hyped half-baked technologies of today.

There are all kinds of future energy storage solutions out there. But so far most of them hold little or no promise of even coming close to being economical. It’s going to take years or decades to develop them, and we have to be smart about how we do this. We cannot continue pouring money on something that will never work.

Yet, until bureaucrats wake up to this truth, expect many more Solyndras and Acquion Energy debacles in the years ahead.

via NoTricksZone http://notrickszone.com

March 11, 2017 at 01:06AM

Weekend Unthreaded

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Back Soon…

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March 10, 2017 at 10:58PM

OPEC Is Losing The Shale Battle

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

The prospect of rising US shale production threatens to undermine the efforts of OPEC, which now looks at risk of having ceded market share for no substantial price gain.

The feeling of restrained optimism that imbued a major energy conference last week was short-lived.

Oil and gas executives in Houston for CERAWeek, an annual conference that draws thousands of energy professionals, expressed confidence in their ability to drive down operating costs to counter lower commodity prices.

The mood, though still cautious, was much lighter than a year earlier when prices were hurtling toward US$30 per barrel.

Now, it seemed, oil markets had entered a period of relative stability amid output declines in some regions.

But on Wednesday, as if in cruel jest, oil prices took their steepest single-day dive in months.

Higher-than-expected inventory data in the U.S. helped push down futures contracts for West Texas Intermediate by five per cent, settling at a 2017 low of US$50.28. On Thursday prices dipped below the US$50 threshold, wiping out hopes that an agreement by OPEC and non-OPEC countries to curb supplies had put a “floor” on prices above the US$40 range.

The drop in prices underscored the seemingly endless uncertainty that has hobbled the industry in recent years, causing companies to dramatically reorient their corporate structures.

“You have to put a business model in place that embraces the volatility,” said ConocoPhillips Co. CEO Ryan Lance.

“We know what to do when prices are higher—the real question is what do you do when prices are back in the US$40-or-so level.”

The lowering of break-even costs dominated discussion. In particular, executives focused on the economics of oily shale basins in the U.S., where production has boomed in recent years despite stubbornly low prices.

“Turning to the U.S. oil and gas industry, it’s just as important to note that our [OPEC’s] collective efforts to reduce global market volatility directly benefit the U.S. industry, which is the bellwether of the global industry,” Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi minister of energy, industry and mineral resources, told energy executives at the conference.

With less capital, Lance said his company is keeping its production flat. Like other oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., Conoco has focused their portfolios around big projects in U.S. shale basins with faster return cycles.

Many, however, are speculating how much U.S. shale would continue to grow—and whether that growth could adversely impact producers. Continental Resources Inc. CEO Harold Hamm said increasing shale output could “kill” oil markets if producers continue to efficiently pump out more and more crude.

That discussion was particularly focused on the Permian Basin in northwest Texas and southeast New Mexico.

Vicky Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum Corp., speculated that Permian production could in coming years reach as high as four or five million barrels per day, up from around 2.2 million bpd today.

The prospect threatens to undermine the efforts of OPEC, which now looks at risk of having ceded market share for no substantial price gain.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 10, 2017 at 08:07PM

EPA Chief Calls Paris Agreement ‘A Bad Deal’ Amid Internal White House Struggle

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)http://www.thegwpf.com

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt weighed in on an issue the Trump administration has been silent on since taking the reins of government in January. Pruitt said the Paris climate agreement was “a bad deal” that should have been treated by the Obama administration as a treaty, instead of an executive agreement.

“I happen to think the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, or the Paris Agreement, if you will, should have been treated as a treaty, should have gone through senate confirmation,” Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning. “That’s a concern.”

Pruitt’s comments, first reported by Reuters, is the first time a top Trump administration official has weighed in on the agreement since January. Most reporters, however, focused on Pruitt’s remarks that carbon dioxide is not a “primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

One former EPA transition team member was pleased with Pruitt’s remarks. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has long been a critic of the Paris agreement.

Pruitt’s remarks come amid reports of an internal struggle over whether or not to stay in the United Nations global warming pact, which President Barack Obama made the U.S. party to in 2016 without Senate consent.

One one side, Ivanka Trump, White House adviser Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are urging Trump to stay in the Paris agreement, sources told Politico and The New York Times.

Such reports came on the heels of news Kushner and Ivanka “intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier draft of the executive order” on the EPA’s climate regulations, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Ivanka and her husband Kushner “have been considered a moderating influence on the White House’s position on climate change and environmental issues,” WSJ reported.

White House adviser Steve Bannon opposes staying in the Paris pact, according to reports. Bannon wants to exit the deal, fulfilling a major promise President Donald Trump made on the campaign trail.

“We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs,” Trump said in a May campaign speech.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

March 10, 2017 at 08:07PM