From THE DAILY CALLER

ROBERT SCHMAD
CONTRIBUTOR

The Democratic-controlled California Senate and Assembly opposed a loan that would extend the lifespan of the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, Newsweek reported Friday.

Democrats in the California state legislature voted Thursday to cancel a $400 million loan proposed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that would help keep the state’s Diablo Canyon nuclear facility open until 2030, five years longer than its current expiry date, according to Newsweek. Nuclear energy produces zero carbon emissions and the Diablo Canyon plant in particular produces 9% of the energy used by California’s nearly 40 million inhabitants, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).

California lawmakers cited estimates claiming that keeping the plant open past its current 2025 closing date could cost nearly $12 billion as their reasoning for opposing the loan, the Associated Press reported. Pacific Gas & Electric, the company operating the plant, pushed back on these estimates, saying the extension will cost $8.3 billion and argued that “the financial benefits exceed the costs.” (RELATED: Org That Wants To Cut Carbon Emissions Sues To Close Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Plant)

“The budget process for the state is ongoing, so it would be premature for us to comment,” Pacific Gas & Electric told the Daily Caller News Foundation when asked about the legislature’s vote.

The legislature’s move against the loan brushes up against one of Newsom’s top priorities, aggressively increasing the proportion of California’s energy that comes from renewable sources. Newsom and the legislature established goals in 2022 for the state to reach 90% renewable electricity by 2035, 95% by 2040 and 100% by 2045.

Newsom previously opposed extending the lifespan of the plant, though changed his position, reportedly because he wanted to avoid widespread blackouts like the ones that hit California in August 2020, according to the AP.

The DOE in April approved a $1.1 billion credit payment to keep the Diablo Canyon Power Plant open past 2025 after conducting an environmental assessment and concluding that the plant “complies with Federal, state, and local environmental regulations, requirements, and agreements and operates using best management practices.”

Nuclear power plants do not directly produce carbon emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, the volume of nuclear waste produced by American nuclear plants in a given year would fill less than half the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, according to the DOE.

Despite the risk assessment and the lack of carbon emissions, environmentalist groups like the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility joined California Democrats in opposing the loan to extend the nuclear plant’s lifespan, according to Newsweek.

Newsom is pursuing ways to reduce emissions in California beyond saving the Diablo Canyon plant, including by pushing for a ban on the sale of gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. The infrastructure required to support the transition to electric vehicles could cost anywhere between $6 billion and $20 billion, according to a study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

California under Newsom has also made large investments into solar and wind energy. Many of the solar companies the state fed funds to, however, now face bankruptcy.

The California governor’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

Dr. Benny Peiser and I have now begun our 2024 GWPF U.S. speaking tour. Yesterday we appeared for an event at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, Texas. Between in person and online, we understand that over 400 people attended the event. (I believe that video of this event will be posted at some point on the TPPF website, but I don’t find it there yet.). Tonight we will be speaking at the 3 West Club, 3 West 51st St. in New York City, at 6 PM.

As mentioned previously in my post two weeks ago announcing tonight’s event, the title is “Europe’s Net Zero rebellion, European elections, and the coming U.S. reckoning.” Benny will cover the European piece of the subject matter, while I am taking on the “coming U.S. reckoning.” I’ll give you here a brief preview to whet your appetite.

The reason I use the term “reckoning” is that people in positions of authority, who have no idea what they are doing, in their zeal to eliminate “carbon emissions,” have set up mandates and goals that are completely irreconcilable. As a matter of physics or economics or both, the things that have been mandated to occur cannot all be accomplished at the same time, let alone within the time frames specified, or at anything close to affordable cost. Some time soon, a reckoning is inevitable.

Many examples of the irreconcilability can be cited, both at the federal level and among blue states that have eagerly sought the mantle of “climate leader” without ever doing even a cursory investigation of feasibility. For this preview I’ll focus on one particular example: the mandates in New York that dispatchable natural gas power plants be closed at the same time that demand on the grid dramatically increases from simultaneous mandates for electric cars and electric building heat.

New York has multiple agencies involved in the supposed energy transition. A Climate Action Council, plus an agency called NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Agency) actively promote the development of wind and solar generators as the wave of the future, without knowing or caring how it will all work. Then there is the New York Independent System Operator, NYISO, that is responsible for making sure that the grid works. NYISO knows full well that the various mandates cannot be achieved simultaneously, but they also recognize that that view is not in favor politically at the moment. So NYISO puts out documents that seem on their face to be saying that everything is fine; but if you read between the lines, you realize that they are sounding the alarm.

Here is NYISO’s document called the “2023-2032 Comprehensive Reliability Plan,” issued November 28, 2023. Read it without a skeptical eye, and you might come away at first thinking that all is well, or at least close to it. Phrases like “meets all currently applicable reliability criteria . . .” are sprinkled around. Yes, there are references to things like “a variety of risk factors to the long-term plan,” and the possible need to keep some natural gas peaker plants around longer than might be hoped, but that is only “as a last resort,” and only until some “permanent solution” is in place.

We then come to the following chart, presented at page 6 with little comment. Oh wait, it shows a big drop in “existing supply” in 2025 — next year — due to the forced closure of some of these natural gas plants, and expected demand then being right in the middle of a part of the bar labeled “deficiency.” That’s rather soon. Oh, it seems that (after this document was issued) they have just delayed the closure of those natural gas plants. Crisis averted, for the moment. Then in 2026 there is an addition to supply, shown in blue, representing the opening of a new transmission line to import hydro power from Quebec. But that’s only about 1 GW of additional capacity, out of 11+ GW of so of peak demand. By 2031, we are back to projected deficiency, which becomes more serious every year — and could be much larger depending on how fast demand grows with all those new mandates.

But the killer is the supposed “long term solution.” You have to get all the way to page 52 to find out that they have no idea what that might be, and even then it is written in code:

With high penetration of renewable intermittent resources, DEFRs are needed to balance intermittent supply with demand. Resources with these characteristics must be significant in capacity. . . .”

“DEFRs”? What are those? They are the elusive “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resources.” Just like fossil fuel plants, they can be turned on and off on command to meet demand, but they make no carbon emissions. Voilà — problem solved! Oh, wait — if such a thing existed, wouldn’t we be using it already?

Although they never say it in quite these words, the entire plan post-2030 relies on something that has not yet been invented or deployed at scale. What might it be? Nuclear? That is completely blocked in New York by a hostile political and regulatory environment, and would take at least 15 years to deploy if we started on a crash program today. “Green” hydrogen? That costs something like 20 to 50 times what natural gas costs, and would require an entire new infrastructure of production facilities, pipelines, and power plants, none of which exists or is under construction or even in a serious planning stage. Batteries? Batteries just to get through one calm night (16 hours) would cost about the same as the entire New York State annual budget. Batteries to be sufficient to provide full back-up to a grid without fossil fuels (500 – 1000 hours of average usage) would cost a multiple of New York’s entire GDP.

So in fact, there is no real plan. You can see New York hitting the wall in that chart. The mandates are in place. We march forward, until we can’t any more.

We learn things through experience and by association.   When people whom we respect repeat nonsense over and over then we will tend to come to believe this information – even if it makes no sense, and especially if we have no first-hand experience of it to the extent that we can’t know otherwise from first-hand experience.

When on a boat, offshore at the Great Barrier Reef it is difficult to know exactly how far away the land is, and flat farmland could just as easily present as mangrove swamp.

We are told over and over that agriculture and the natural environment are incompatible, and we are taught to despise farming and to love corals.  It is likely that most people who know this, and feel very strongly about this association, have no experience of either corals or farming.

The SS Yongala Shipwreck is a 110m long former steel passenger and freight steamer which sank during a cyclone in 1911, not far from the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the Burdekin River that drains a catchment replete with sugarcane and beef cattle.

It is arguably one of the ten best dive sites in the world, known not for its reliably good visibility but rather its super-sized marine life especially the great diversity and size of its fish, rays and sharks.  There are also beautiful corals, especially soft corals including Gorgonia fans.

A little over a month ago I had the opportunity to dive the SS Yongala wreck.  Then just ten days ago by coincidence I had the opportunity to fly over this same region in a commercial Qantas jet and I made sure I had a window seat on the side of the plane likely to give me a best aerial view.

I did manage to photograph sugarcane farms just to the west of this famous dive site.

You can’t see the corals or the big fish in these photographs because they are under the sea, to the east of the Burdekin River’s mouth that you can see in some of these photographs.

Over the last twenty years new heroes have emerged on both the left and right of politics and they have redefined what is acceptable to believe, particularly when it comes to the natural environment.   Many of them were and are quite mad, but this has not limited their popularity not even on the right of politics.

It is seared into my memory, I can still remember where I was on Wednesday 6^th June 2001, and how that day unfolded – World Environment Day over twenty years ago.   That was the beginning of the end for local environment groups in Queensland as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched a massive campaign, that redefined how we came to view farming along the Queensland coast.  The organisation already had the support of relevant environment ministers from the left and right of politics at the state and federal levels.  From the very beginning their approach was top down and had nothing to do with evidence or science.

We are social creatures, and our communities have always been organised into hierarchies.

Australia is a constitutional monarchy, and the WWF has always had the support of the British monarchy, that has actively played a role including in the administration of that organisation.

Prince Philip (late husband of the Queen) was the first-ever president of WWF-UK from 1961-1982 and Prince Charles took over that role in 2011, etcetera.  His cousin the current Dutch King (Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands) took more of an interest in WWF internationally and was particularly committed to the ‘Save the Reef’ campaign that was launched in Townsville on World Environment Day in 2001.

I am beginning to dig out my papers from this time, and it is interesting to see which James Cook University professors signed up to which nonsense consensus statements that year.  This had everything to do with being fashionable and nothing to do with science.