It takes a few nights freezing or boiling in the dark for Westerners to recognise how critical energy is to their lives, health and safety. Helpfully, the grand wind and solar ‘transition’ is providing just that kind of opportunity for reflection. Whether it’s mass State-wide blackouts – as wind and solar ‘powered’ South Australians experienced in September 2016, or routine power rationing – which is experienced everywhere intermittent wind and solar are attempting to make any significant contribution to power generation. The bureaucrats and boffins in charge euphemistically refer to controlled blackouts as ‘demand management’. Which ordinarily coincides with sunset and/or calm weather and periods of high demand, such as blizzards or heatwaves.

Depriving entitled Westerners electricity, and charging them a small fortune for it when it is available, is integral to a model by which wealth is transferred to government backed crony capitalists and the poor and vulnerable are left to suffer.

The story of cheap and abundant energy is the story of Western Civilisation; a story of scientific and social progress; bound up in the creation of wealth released by the development of our ability to harness and utilise energy.

At a time when human-hating neo-Marxists (cloaked in purportedly ‘green’ clothing) are trying to guilt trip us all about the source of the peace and prosperity that we enjoy, Dr John Constable has thrown down the gauntlet with the aim of encouraging us all to fight to preserve the energy systems we have developed over centuries and to thereby maintain the wealth, strength and resilience of the societies that we live in.

In this video (transcript follows), Dr Constable delivers an unanswerable truth: the history of Western Civilisation is the history of our ability to harness and utilise the energy sources around us, efficiently and effectively, and for the benefit of all.

Energy and the Poverty of Nations
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Net Zero Watch
Dr John Constable
12 March 2024

If we recognise how energy sources differ, we can understand how Europe and then the rest of the world became so prosperous. More importantly, we can begin to see why Western societies now seem to be unravelling.

Transcript

The sources of energy around us vary enormously in quality. They were not created equal. Some fuels are much more powerful than others. If we recognise how energy sources differ, we can understand how Europe and then the rest of the world became so prosperous. More importantly, we can begin to see why western societies now seem to be unravelling. But to grasp how fuels differ and why it matters, we need to start with physics, with the laws of thermodynamics, the ground rules of how the universe and everything in it works.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe as a whole is becoming more chaotic and disorderly. We can reverse that tendency locally by doing work. This work produces temporary order, and when that order makes things better for us we call it wealth. Wealth then is an improbable ordered state of the universe that serves our needs. And doing work to make wealth requires energy.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of energy. The first law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe’s total quantity of energy is unchanging. It won’t run out. But the second law steps in once again and says that energy declines in quality over time. It spreads out, becomes more dissipated, random, and less useful. So doing the work we require to make wealth needs fuels of high quality, high energy density.

For example, the energy in a candle. As it burns, it releases light and some heat. It creates a small island of order in the surrounding chaotic darkness by which a person can read, for example. The energy released isn’t destroyed, but it does become less useful as it spreads out into the wider universe. High quality energy becomes low quality energy and is unavailable to do much or any further work. And when the energy stored in the candle is exhausted, the flame goes out and chaos returns.

Plants and animals are also temporary islands of order. The energy that sustains them being derived either directly from the giant candle we call the sun, or indirectly by eating other organisms. But humans have developed the ability to do work with energy from sources other than food.

At first, these fuels were organic, mostly wood, and they allowed humans to develop moderately complex agricultural societies. But organic energy flows are only of medium thermodynamic quality and are unreliable varying from year to year.

Their quantity is also limited by the available land. Consequently, societies that depend on them are generally poor and vulnerable to external shocks. Such societies are also narrow with very little free choice. The low quality of the organic energy sources means that most of the energy produced is consumed by farming and forestry itself.

Economies based on agriculture struggle to accumulate wealth outside their energy sector with the result that they are generally poor. And since most of the wealth they can create, improved land, tools, skilled employees, draught animals, is in the agricultural and forestry sector. The aristocrats who owned the land enjoyed huge socioeconomic power while almost everyone else worked as low-income labourers whose social and geographical mobility was limited to say the least. But from the late mediaeval period in North-Western Europe, the fuel supply began to expand and diversify in a novel way.

Initially, this involved burning peat, particularly in the Netherlands, but Britain uniquely adopted coal in quantity, and by as early as 1700, it was 50% of energy supply. No other country had achieved anything like this before. Coal is solar energy rendered in the form of complex organic molecules, mostly from plants, but also compressed by gravitational forces and chemically transformed by the resulting temperatures further elevating its energy state.

This combination of evolved organic complexity and long periods of gravitational pressure produces a concentrated fuel of exceptional thermodynamic quality. When burned, it delivers high temperatures and a tremendous capacity to do work. The result of using coal was a sustained long-term increase in wealth of a kind that was new in the human record.

Previous organic economies had occasionally become quite rich, but they eventually hit obstacles and slipped back or failed completely. With coal, Britain, and then the rest of the world just kept on going. That exponential increase in wealth from high-quality fuels led to a society that could withstand external shocks that would’ve been catastrophic for earlier populations. It was the beginnings of modernity. And that modernity was seen most clearly in Britain’s socio-economic structure. The coal industry grew, yes, but because it produced such a large surplus of energy, the rest of the economy could grow still more.

Manufacturing and commerce came to dwarf the energy sectors. The relative power and wealth of landowners declined, but they were replaced not by co-barons, but by people making and selling things. This too was unprecedented in the human record. Britain as Napoleon observed, had become a nation of shopkeepers. Shopkeepers, however, who were now rich enough to fight and win a major international war against one of the largest organically fuelled empires in Europe. Moreover, the British population now had choices. They could leave the land, start their own businesses and live where, and increasingly as they wished. They were rich and free.

Living standards improved, literacy rose, crime rates even declined. And Britain became a tolerant, trusting civil society and a much healthier and better place to raise a family. Population increased sharply. And because that population was on average richer, it was less risk-averse and became innovative and experimental. Creating yet more positive feedback. Wealth creates freedom, which creates more wealth, which creates yet more freedom and still more wealth. And it was the high energy state of coal that put the world on this path to sustained growth in human well-being.

High quality fuels, coal, oil, gas, and more recently, fissile uranium, have delivered an increase in human welfare unprecedented in previous history and pre-history. Which is why the attempt over the last 20 years to switch to wind and solar power is so dangerous. Renewables are diffuse and of low thermodynamic quality. They can’t do much work or create much wealth.

Our history shows that societies based on such fuels are necessarily poor and constricted. It is concentrated energy sources alone that can deliver human freedom and flourishing. There is a lot at stake here. Going back to fuels of inferior physical quality will mean the reversal of the gains in societal complexity of the last 500 years, taking us back to a narrow society in which the energy sector dominates, and the rest of the economy is starved of wealth.

Investment in wind and solar is vast reducing investment elsewhere and greatly increasing consumer energy costs. This is why the United Kingdom’s total energy consumption has fallen by 28%, and our electricity consumption by 22% since 2005 when the costs of renewables became significant. Some will talk of energy efficiency, but that is just false comfort. Our collapse in consumption has nothing to do with efficiency, which reduces the cost of using energy and therefore increases demand. Put another way, you can always find a use for some extra energy. Nobody is ever going to say, for example, that child mortality is low enough.

Falling energy consumption is the result of the high cost of collecting, converting and delivering diffuse low-quality energy such as wind and solar. It threatens a return of poverty, a constriction of opportunity, and a downward spiral of negative feedback. As our energy consumption falls, we become poorer and less free, making us still poorer and less able to afford to use energy.

In my view, this is already tangible. Infrastructure is decaying, living standards for all but the very rich are falling. Our economy has become risk-averse while our society is increasingly coarse, tense, sectarian, mutually suspicious and criminal. No wonder that many young people are reluctant to raise families. They can’t even afford houses. The good life is slipping away. The candle is going out. Chaos is returning. Power is shifting back to those who own land in the energy sector.

But there is no need to despair. It is not too late to put the UK on a physically, thermodynamically sound energy footing. Gas and nuclear for both electricity and industrial heat are the best medium-term choices. High efficiency coal should not be ruled out. Oil will continue to be essential for transport for the foreseeable future.

We need to correct course while we are still sufficiently rich to be competent and environmentally sensitive engineers. But that window of opportunity is closing fast. We are rapidly becoming poorer and the poorer we become, the more difficult, painful, and dirty the return to high quality fuels will be. Everything that humans value is in jeopardy. We haven’t a moment to lose.
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The elephant in the room that policymakers refuse to talk about is that renewables only generate electricity but cannot manufacture any products for today’s materialistic society.

Published March 25, 2024, at America Out Loud NEWS

Ronald Stein  is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”

Regardless of the intermittent weather, the electrical grid is expected to deliver continuous and uninterrupted electricity no matter what the weather to support computers for hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, and telemetry, that all need a continuous uninterruptable supply of electricity.

Yet, policymakers continue to subsidize wind turbines and solar panels (with taxpayers’ money) for the generation of electricity that do not work most of the time.

I find it amusing that twenty-three states have adopted goals to move to 100 percent clean ELECTRICTY by 2050.

Of the six electrical generation methods, wind and solar cannot compete with hydro, nuclear, coal, or natural gas:

• Wind and solar generate occasional electricity.
• Hydro, nuclear, coal, and natural gas generate continuous uninterruptible electricity.

The elephant in the room that no policymaker wants to discuss is that:

• Neither wind turbines nor solar panels can replace the supply chain of products from crude oil that are the foundation of our materialistic society demanded by the 8 billion on this planet.
• Occasional electricity generated from wind and solar CANNOT support computers for hospitals, airports, offices, manufacturing, military sites, and telemetry, that all need a continuous uninterruptable supply of electricity.

Interestingly, all the components of wind turbines and solar panels are also based on the products made from fossil fuels.  Thus, in a fossil-free society, we’re decaying back in the 1800’s as there will also be NO electricity. Life was short and hard for the common man just a few hundred years ago!

Sarcastically, or more realistically, these are a few boomerang impacts of a society free of crude oil:

1. Without oil, a significant loss of billions of lives of the 8 billion on this planet from starvation, diseases, and weather-related fatalities because of shortages of food, medications, and products, and a reduction in transportation infrastructures, that are all based on the components made from fossil fuels!
2. Without oil, we would drastically reduce the homeless population as all the tents and sleeping bags utilized by the homeless are all made from fossil fuels! The homeless will need to live like the cavemen in a non-materialistic society like that in the pre-1800’s.
3. Without oil, we would drastically reduce the unfunded pension liabilities associated with those that retire early from business or start collecting Social Security in their mid-60’s, and collect pensions well into their 80’s, as few people would live beyond their 40’s!
4. Without oil, a smaller number of colleges would be needed because there would be no need for doctors for hospitals, or engineers for infrastructure development, that are all based on the components made from fossil fuels!

As a refresher for those pursuing net-zero emissions, wind and solar do different things than crude oil:

• Wind turbines and solar panels do not work most of the time, as they only generate occasional electricity AND manufacture NOTHING for society as renewables cannot make tires, insulation, or fuels for commercial and military aircraft, merchant ships, and the space program.
• Wind and solar cannot make any of the more than 6,000 products now in our materialistic world.
• Crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity but when manufactured into petrochemicals, is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800’s.
• We’ve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for jets, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800’s.
• If the world governments want to rid the earth of crude oil usage, what’s the back-up source that can manufacture refrigerators, tires, asphalt, X-Ray machines, iPhones, air conditioners, and the other 6,000 products that wind and solar CANNOT manufacture?
• Crude oil use is essential to human flourishing for the foreseeable future.  The pursuit of “net zero by 2050, without first identifying the crude oil replacement to support the supply chain of products now demanded by those in developed countries, would be one of the most destructive developments in human history.
• Without crude oil, there would be nothing that needs electricity!! Everything that needs electricity to function is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, from computers, iPhones, telemetry, and HVAC units!!
• Until a crude oil replacement is identified to manufacture products for society, the world cannot do without crude oil that is the basis of our materialistic “products” society.

We should be careful with what we wish for. From the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:

• You can’t rid the world of crude oil and continue to enjoy the products and transportation fuels that are currently made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil.

The few wealthy countries of the United States of America, Germany, the UK, and Australia represent about 6 percent of the world’s population (515 million vs 8 billion) are mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions.

Germany, the first country to go “green” with an electricity generation transition to renewables, now has electricity rates that are among the highest in the world, and threatens to be an unaffordable, unrealizable disaster, according to the government’s own independent auditors.

Looking beyond the few wealthy countries setting environmental policies for the other 94 percent of the world’s population, billions still struggle to meet basic needs. The poorer on this planet may never be able to enjoy the materialistic living styles of those in wealthier countries.

The few in the developed countries have come a long way in the last few hundred years from the zero emissions society that existed before the 1800’s when:

• There were no products for heating, cooling, or irrigation to prevent weather related fatalities and injuries before the 1800’s.
• Life longevity was about 40 years of age before the 1800’s.
• When people were born, they seldom traveled more than 100 miles from their birthplace before the 1800’s.
• There was no medical industry before the 1800’s.
• There were no electronics, computers, or iPhones before the 1800’s.
• There were no transportation infrastructures before the 1800’s.
• There were no tires or asphalt to support transportation infrastructures.
• There were no airplanes and thus no airports before the 1800’s.
• There were no cruise ships nor merchant ships, other than sailing vessels before the 1800’s.
• There were no military ships or planes before the 1800’s.
• There were no coal fired power plants before the 1800’s.
• There were no natural gas-powered plants before the 1800’s.
• There were no hydro or nuclear power plants before the 1800’s.

At the recent climate summit gathering in Dubai that attracted more than 70,000 from around the world that enjoy their materialistic lifestyles, as well as more than 600 emission-spewing private jets, the president of the United Nations Climate Change Conference  COP28, Sultan Al Jaber stated that a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”, i.e. back to the pre-1800’s !

Ronald Stein P.E.

Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.

Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.

Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.

From The DAILY CALLER

NICK POPE

CONTRIBUTOR

President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill is being held back by a lack of comprehensive permitting reform, the absence of which enables environmentalist lawsuits that impede green energy projects subsidized by the legislation.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) contained hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize green energy projects nationwide, but the bill did not include significant reform to the permitting process that would expedite construction timelines and insulate developments from environmental legal challenges. Unless Congressional Democrats can negotiate a permitting reform package with Republicans in an election year, these problems will continue to dog the IRA’s implementation, energy policy experts and stakeholders told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

After solar and wind developments have been built, they need to be connected to the grid via transmission lines to feed power into the grid. Permitting reform would speed up the lengthy paperwork process for that transmission, as well as provide developers an additional layer of protection against environmental lawsuits that also disrupt the construction of green energy developments (RELATED: Blue States Are Stripping Rural Counties Of Ability To Prevent Green Energy Takeover Of Their Communities)

“I think that not having any transmission reform is a huge barrier to implementing the IRA,” Isaac Orr, a policy analyst for the Center for the American Experiment who specializes in energy policy, told the DCNF. “I think there was an understanding that permitting reform was necessary in order to implement a lot of the things Democrats wanted as soon as they got the IRA … It’s a physical reality that you need the transmission in order to incorporate all this new capacity on the grid.”

The lack of reform has left numerous green energy developments open to legal challenges filed by environmental groups, who often will pursue similar legal strategies adopted by opponents of fossil fuel infrastructure projects in the past.

For example, a coalition of tribes and environmental organizations are suing to block a massive $10 billion transmission project in Arizona, while different coalitions have taken to court to allege violations of environmental laws on the part of offshore wind developers building wind farms in waters off the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts. Elsewhere in the country, conservation groups have continued the yearslong fight against Wisconsin’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line by suing the government to stop construction.

“Reforms aimed at streamlining the federal government’s permit decision-making process and discouraging frivolous litigation have the potential not only to improve regulatory efficiency but also to bring about greater certainty and predictability in the offshore wind sector,” Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) told the DCNF. “Litigation, particularly around alleged National Environmental Policy Act deficiencies, has been a significant hindrance for offshore wind projects. A robust U.S. offshore wind market relies on confidence and certainty in the permitting and regulatory process, which is essential for fostering growth and ensuring the success of these projects, much like any other major infrastructure endeavor.”

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading advocate for comprehensive permitting reform, has tried to advance legislation to expedite the permitting process and minimize opportunities for litigation to gum up timelines for all kinds of energy projects.

In total, there are no fewer than ten different permitting-related bills in Congress and two major regulatory initiatives underway on the federal level, but progress on streamlining the permitting process is still very sluggish, according to Utility Dive.

“All of these things, the Clean Water Act, the way the National Environmental Policy Act is now run … you can’t get anything built because of these statutes,” Mike McKenna, a Republican strategist with extensive experience in and around the energy sector, told the DCNF about Congressional gridlock on permitting reform.

“So we are about a year into you’re what I think is going to be a seven- or eight-year process, where everyone on the Left starts figuring out, ‘Oh, my goodness, these guys were right, You can’t build any of this stuff.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Energy responded to requests for comment.

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