From MasterResource

“What we have is one-way bureaucratic command-and-control making poor decisions with funding derived from captive consumers and one-sided radical agendas. Accordingly, the environmental zealots demonize fossil fuels, while maintaining that only wind and solar are ‘green’ enough to ‘save the planet.’ This itself is greenwashing.”

Like Rob Bradley’s “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’” (see Part I), my colleague Tom Tanton wrote a major piece about the over-regulation of the rare-earth extraction industry in the U.S.: “Dig it!  If you want more information on the importance of rare earths within the U.S economy, this would be a good place to start.

The long-term feasibility of this transition to renewables simply assumes sufficient raw materials exist for it at all. Professor Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) has studied these issues, probably more extensively than anyone else and thinks not. Professor Simon Michaux took on these issues via the following ground-breaking work:

It’s Time to Wake Up – The Currently Known Global Mineral Reserves Will Not Be Sufficient to Supply Enough Metals to Manufacture the Planned Non-fossil Fuel Industrial Systems

The upshot of Professor Michaux’s work is that “we need a new plan” as there are not enough raw materials to sustain this transition nor can recycling or reprocessing mining waste make up for the shortfall.  Since the success of free market economies is predicated upon informed citizens, I urge you to visit Professor Michaux’s website or, at a minimum, view the following YouTube:

Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels.

 Dr. Michaux also has several PowerPoint presentations that can be downloaded from his website. I recommend starting with the following:

While Michaux’s information is invaluable, be warned that taking it all in is akin to drinking from a fire hose. But I guarantee, it will be worth it.

While it is likely that at least some technical process and raw materials discoveries will be made to improve the supply of rare earth minerals required for all-renewables-all-the-time, there is at least one more category of problems to consider:  What are the environmental and social consequences of this transition to “clean energy” relative to traditional fuels.

There are many previous articles in my MasterResource archives (https://www.masterresource.org/category/krebs-mark/) that summarize the environmental and “social justice” problems of government’s forcing of renewables, some of which I wrote or co-wrote with Tom Tanton. These articles referenced total economic costs (in the trillions of dollars in the U.S. alone); child/slave labor used to extract raw materials and then process/manufacture them into renewable energy systems; environmental aftermath, etc. The latter included the highly toxic waste streams associated with lithium extraction and processing on the typically poverty-stricken local communities where such operations are routinely conducted. “Environmental justice” for me but not for thee.

Seabed Strip Mining

Getting back to seabed strip-mining; it seems the assumed GHG reductions of this transition to renewables are significantly undermined by their own unique forms of environmental aftermath. Not only does it take massive amounts of fossil fuels to produce renewable energy systems, but the harder it gets to secure raw materials, the more GHG’s will be emitted for this transition to “clean energy.” As Professor Michaux puts it, “minerals become the new oil.” Or as Daniel Yergin titled the energy transformation: “Big Oil to Big Shovels.”

One case-in-point: a Real Clear Wire article dated November 18^th 2022 titled Seabed Mining Will Help Break China’s Grip on Critical Minerals by Tom LaTourrette, senior physical scientist and interim director of the Community Health and Environmental Policy program at the RAND Corporation (a government funded think tank).  

The article makes the case for developing new resources for raw materials needed for the “clean energy transition” from seabed mining independent from China. I do not discount that such resource potential exists and can lessen the dominance of China in these markets, but I do question whether the cure is worse than the disease in terms of effectively mitigating a new kind of ostensible climatic apocalypse.

The GHG emissions related to seabed mining are a major penalty against the manufacturing of renewable energy systems and the subject requires further scientific research.  In addition to the GHG releases from the highly energy intensive nature of seabed mining and extraction, policy shouldn’t overlook the fact that seabed extraction requires acute disturbances of ocean sediments that represent the largest (by far) sequestration reservoir for carbon and methane on the planet. 

Such processes are akin to strip mining the ocean floor with largely unknown ecological impacts. Moreover, GHG emissions are but one form of environmental aftermath associated with seabed mining. A Google search for the term “environmental impacts of seabed mining” indicates the extent of such issues.  The following lists a choice few of these references:

1. Deep-sea Mining FAQ
2. Understanding the impact of deep-sea mining
3. Deep-Sea Mining Could Help Meet Demand for Critical Minerals, But Also Comes with Serious Obstacles
4. A Climate Solution Lies Deep Under the Ocean—But Accessing It Could Have Huge Environmental Costs
5. Is deep-sea mining a cure for the climate crisis or a curse?

To summarize, oceans are a vital carbon sink, absorbing up to a quarter of global carbon emissions each year in their deep sediments. Strip-mining the ocean floor will likely upset this balance and harm ocean ecosystems in general.

There is not enough scientific evidence to date to conclusively assess the risks associated with deep ocean strip mining. What is known is that sediments that can be miles in depth, must be sucked up and then filtered to screen out large solids that may contain valuable minerals. Then, the filtered sediments are simply dumped overboard. This will likely release significant amounts of carbon and possibly methane (hydrates) too. Silt plumes may disrupt food chains necessary for much of the world’s creatures.

Much Energy Required, Front Pollution

The energy required for powering the mining equipment and the resulting emissions are also significant. Assuming the operators of seabed mining equipment are required to pay for the “social cost of carbon” (SCC), the cost effectiveness of the process may be negative. All for what?  To reduce “global lukewarming?”

Betting the farm on “clean energy” increasingly appears to be a bad bet both economically and environmentally. Unless of course, you are the government and are betting with “other people’s money” and get to grow your empire.

Are avid environmentalists willing to accept the ecological risks associated with deep-sea strip mining to attain their “green energy” transition agenda? “Out of sight is out of mind,” right? Apparently, they are willing to take such risks, as evidenced by their “eyes shut” approach to child slaves in mining. The following excerpt is from the fifth article in the above list. It further indicates the answer is yes:

We are living in a world where more and more people want to have the latest cellphones as well as electric vehicles and wind and solar power plants that will help in achieving net zero emissions. And these require metals like cobalt and manganese.

On its own, recycling these metals is unlikely to provide the ingredients we need for these devices, so mining is going to be important. On land it is associated with all sorts of problems and eventually there will be a push for deep-sea mining – and in the end it will happen.

Conclusion

I do not advocate that consumers should be deprived of material goods such as smart phones. Nor should they be deprived of affordable energy. I do advocate that, since all forms of energy have negative impacts, to make energy sustainable decision-making should be well informed, transparent via sound (vs. politicized) science–and consumers should be well-informed about both the pro’s and the con’s of such alternatives. 

Conversely, what we have is one-way bureaucratic command-and-control making poor decisions with funding derived from captive consumers and one-sided radical agendas. Accordingly, the environmental zealots demonize fossil fuels, while maintaining that only wind and solar are “green” enough to “save the planet.” This itself is greenwashing. It’s back to Robert Bradley’s “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’”.

ADDENDUM

1. Mark Krebs presentation to Cooler Heads about “Beneficial Electrification”
   https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Biden-Administration-policies-to-
   eliminate-personal-consumption-of-fossil-fuels-FINAL09JAN23-.pptx
2. Robert Bryce’s “Power Hungry” Podcast: Simon Michaux
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QzSlXEEyw8

————

This concludes a two-part post (Part I yesterday).

Mark Krebs, a mechanical engineer and energy policy consultant, has been involved with energy efficiency design and program evaluation for more than thirty years. He has served as an expert witness in dozens of State energy efficiency proceedings, has been an advisor to DOE and has submitted scores of Federal energy-efficiency filings. His many MasterResource posts on natural gas vs. electricity and “Deep Decarbonization” federal policy can be found here. Mark’s first article was in Public Utilities Fortnightly, titled “It’s a War Out There: A Gas Man Questions Electric Efficiency” (December 1996). Recently retired from Spire Inc., Krebs has formed an energy policy consultancy (Gas Analytic & Advocacy Services) with other veteran energy analysts.

Depriving your economy of reliable and affordable power is the fastest way to wreck it. Which is the very thrust of the policy that has been adopted by every country currently obsessed with subsidised wind and solar.

The rent-seekers behind the greatest economic and environmental scam in history, still contend that there are millions of groovy Green jobs in the offing, if only we keep shovelling billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies in their direction. Although, all the evidence suggests otherwise.

The concept of destroying wealth (and indeed entire functioning cities) to ‘create’ new jobs is known in economics as the ‘broken window fallacy’. The notion being that, if every window in a city were simultaneously smashed, there will be thousands of new jobs for glassmakers and glaziers created by reason of the urgent necessity of their replacement.

Michael Munger details how the same woolly-headed thinking is being applied by those who would have us believe that there is nothing but upside in wrecking our reliable and affordable energy supplies and replacing them with costly and unreliable, weather-dependent wind and sunshine-dependent solar.

Green Energy is the Modern “Broken Window”
American Institute for Economic Research
Michael Munger
19 December 2022

John Goodell studied literature at Berkeley, then got an M.F.A. at Columbia. He has edited Zyzzyva, a literary magazine in San Francisco, and been a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Pretty impressive.

None of that qualifies him as a climate scientist or economist. So it’s surprising that web searches yield hundreds of solemn, even pious, invocations of Goodell’s economic wisdom:

In reality, studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.

I have not been able to find a source; the quote itself has become self-recommending, using authority by reference: “studies show…” My good friend Russ Roberts often inveighs against the “studies show” formulation, but I think we have to give Goodell credit here. Studies really do show that dismantling, preferably destroying, the existing energy grid really would create jobs. The question is, why is maximizing jobs something we want to do?

Frederic Bastiat famously showed that destroying wealth creates jobs, in his discussion of the broken window fallacy. But there was a broader context for Bastiat’s observations on the seen and the unseen: a serious proposal that all of Paris should be burned down. Yes, because it would create jobs. Really.

Bastiat referred to research (“studies show!”) done by a fellow Frenchman on this score:

What will you say, disciples of good M. Chamans, who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild? (From The Broken Window)

Now, it appears that Bastiat was having a little fun; Auguste Louis Philippe de Saint-Chamans (1777-1860) was a viscount and a high-level French government official. Viscount de Saint-Chamans had argued that London’s “Great Fire” (1666) had led to substantial net economic gains; he had not said anything about Paris.

Still, the point was portable: the increased use of resources, and substantial bump in construction employment, had increased economic activity in England by the equivalent of 25 million French francs. France should not be allowed to fall behind on the “destroy wealth to create jobs” race. Bastiat was just taking the Viscount at his word, improving the French economy by burning and rebuilding Paris.

It is worth reproducing Bastiat’s argument, from Economic Sophisms, at some length:

I originally thought that we might base a great deal of hope on fire, without neglecting war or pestilence. To start fires at the four corners of Paris with a good west wind would certainly ensure the population the two major benefits that the protectionist regime has in view: work and high prices, or rather, work by means of high prices.

Do you not see what an immense impetus the burning of Paris would give to national industry? Is there a single person who would not have enough work to last him twenty years? How many houses would there be to rebuild, items of furniture to restore, tools, instruments, fabrics, books, and pictures to replace! I can see from here the work that will move step by step and increase by itself like an avalanche, for a worker who is busy will give work to others, and these employ yet others…

What constitutes our wealth? Our needs, since without needs there is no wealth; without disease, no doctors; without wars, no soldiers; without court cases, no lawyers and judges. If windows did not break, glaziers would be gloomy; if houses did not crumble, if furniture was indestructible, how many trades would be held up! To destroy is to make it necessary for you to replace. To increase the number of needs is to increase wealth….

Either you believe that wealth consists in having more while working less, and therefore you allow [goods and products] to enter, or you think that it consists in having less with more work, and in this case, you burn Paris.

One wonders what Bastiat would say about the current movement now in vogue among those who propose to increase jobs by destroying all the production, transportation, and power-generation capital devoted to fossil fuels. Burn all the gas-powered cars? Jobs! Tear down all the oil and gas-powered power plants, so we have shortages of electricity? So many jobs!

Once you are duped into believing destruction is productive, almost everything that a rational public policy would label as a cost becomes, by some judo move of seraphic intuition, a benefit. If need is wealth, then it makes sense to outlaw fossil fuels immediately, because of all the jobs created trying desperately to provide basic transport and energy.

The problem is that jobs are not wealth. Wealth is access to the goods, products, and services that make our lives better. It is true that “studies show” that wiping out all our productive wealth based on fossil fuels efficiently would create jobs. Those “studies” are among the best arguments against doing anything of the sort.

If my choices are to have wealth but no job, or to have a job but no wealth, I’d rather have the wealth. But we don’t have to choose: we can have both wealth and jobs, if we don’t go around breaking all the darned windows.
American Institute for Economic Research