Natural gas and nuclear stand out as the most sensible energy options for the future.
via CFACT
August 21, 2024 at 01:55AM
Month: August 2024
I just read the following article and came across the paragraph below, in it.
Switzerland offers prize money to get munition out of lakes – BBC News
"Even on the glaciers, now receding amid the impacts of climate change, the melting ice is revealing spent and live ammunition left over from high mountain training which took place decades ago." – Clearly those glaciers must have grown in the decades prior to the recent receding, suggesting that the climate must have cooled in the twentieth century after the munitions were left there, thus showing that the recent warming is not unprecedented, but part of a cycle of warming and cooling.
via climate science
August 21, 2024 at 01:34AM
This post updates the financial troubles of Denmark’s Orsted, recent BOEM auctions, and pushback against Maryland governor Wes Moore. Today, operational offshore wind capacity is less than 50 megawatts versus the Biden-Harris Administration goal of 30,000 MW by 2030.
Orsted
Denmark’s Orsted, the worldwide leading offshore wind developer, recorded a $575 million loss in the second quarter. In part, the loss is the result of disappointing developments in the U.S.
The company has delayed commercial operation of its 704-MW Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut from 2025 to 2026. Orsted’s ambitious U.S. offshore wind program has been lagging, despite solid support (subsidies, permits) from the Biden administration.
A year after an Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) auction for Gulf of Mexico leases failed to attract significant interest, BOEM continues to delay another attempt to find adequate bidders off the east coast.
Reuter’s summarized Orsted’s issues:
Orsted’s impairment losses also related to its Ocean Wind project in the United States whose development it halted last year, an increase in U.S. interest rates, and its decision to cease development of its green e-methanol FlagshipOne project, which was due to open in Sweden next year. Shares in Orsted, once a green investor favourite, ended down 7.2%, having fallen as much as 9.3% earlier. They remain at less than one-third of their value since peaking in early 2021.
BOEM Auctions
In March, BOEM solicited interest in another Gulf of Mexico auction, which resulted in industry yawns. The agency stated on July 26th that it:
received 25 comments in response to the March 2024 [Proposed Sale Notice], with one company expressing interest in participating. As a result, BOEM is cancelling this sale due to a lack of competitive interest. BOEM may decide to move forward with a lease sale at a future time, based on industry interest.
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BOEM last week (Aug. 14) held a lease sale for the Mid-Atlantic region, off Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia with takers.
Norway’s Equinor Wind won a provisional lease for 101,443 acres some 26 nautical miles off Delaware for $75 million. Dominion Energy’s Virginia Electric and Power subsidiary won a provisional lease for 176,505 acres 35 miles off the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay for $18 million. Six companies participated in the auction.
The Equinor lease is not far from where Baltimore-based US Wind has a federal lease for a proposed two-phase, 2-GW project off Maryland’s Ocean City. BOEM last month (July 29) issued a final Environmental Impact Statement for the Maryland project. Maryland has also issued renewable energy certificates for the US Wind project.
US Wind, reports BOEM,
proposes to install up to 114 turbines, up to four offshore substation platforms, one meteorological tower, and up to four corridors for offshore export cables, which would make landfall in Delaware Seashore State Park. The lease area is approximately 8.7 nautical miles offshore Maryland and approximately 9 nautical miles offshore Sussex County, Delaware, at its closest points to shore.
US Wind, in partnership with Spain’s Haizea Windgroup, is also developing a plant to make monopile foundations for wind projects at Baltimore’s Sparrows Point, once the home of Bethlehem Steel when it was the world’s largest steel mill. According to the company
“Sparrows Point Steel is poised to become the best offshore wind heavy logistics and fabrication yard on the East Coast. Haizea’s depth of knowledge and expertise will cement Maryland’s role as a hub of offshore wind manufacturing in the U.S.”
MD Gov. Wes Moore vs. Critics
Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore last week (Aug. 16) faced opponents of his aggressive push for offshore wind in Ocean City. Local TV station WBOC spoke to Moore about growing local opposition on the eastern shore of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. Earlier in the month, Moore signed a memorandum of understanding with BOEM to open up more offshore federal land to wind development. Last year, Maryland passed a new law expanding the state’s goal for offshore wind development to 8.5 GW.
Moore told WBOC, “You’re talking about being able to power three million homes in the state of Maryland and turn us into a net exporter of clean energy. That’s exciting, it’s new jobs, it’s new opportunities.”
Many people on the Eastern Shore, particularly those who depend on the Chesapeake Bay for a living, see burgeoning wind farms as a potential disruption to their ways of life. Jimmy Hahn, an Ocean City area commercial fisherman, told the TV station, “They’re trying to steal our grounds, they’ve stolen our bottom, they’ve stolen the area that we fish in, their last resort is to buy the place where we sell our fish at and once they accomplish that we have nowhere else to work.”
Moore responded, “All those conversations have to happen with local leaders, it has to happen with local communities. There has to be measures of both transparency and accountability as to what we’re hoping for and what we’re going to achieve.”
Vineyard Wind: Yellow Flag
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has given Avangrid a yellow flag to continue limited work on its Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast.
BSEE shut down the 804-MW project last month following the failure of a 351-foot blade on one of its turbines, spreading debris widely to beaches on nearby Nantucket Island and as far as mainland beaches on Cape Cod. Reuters reported that the Interior Department agency last week (Aug. 13) confirmed the updated shutdown order, while Avangrid and blade maker G Vernova continue to investigate the cause of the massive blade failure.
“The updated suspension order still does not allow further blade installation or power production at this time, the companies said,” according to Reuters. Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova said they are removing portions of the damaged blade that remained on the wind turbine to remove risks of further ocean debris.
The post U.S. Offshore Wind: The Struggle Continues appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
August 21, 2024 at 01:10AM
Without the products and fuels made from crude oil, the energy policies of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the real existential threat to billions on this planet.
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.”
Published August 19, 2024 at: America Out Loud NEWS
“Renewables” such as wind turbines and solar panels ONLY exist to generate occasional electricity under favorable weather conditions, as they CANNOT make tires, toilet paper, iPhones, or any products or transportation fuels to support lifestyles and economies around the world!
Neither VP Kamala Harris nor Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are cognizant that all the parts of spacecrafts, EV’s, and for more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft more than 50,000 military aircraft , 23,000 private planes, and 33 million pleasure boats are made from the products based on derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
In addition, all those merchant ships, commercial and military aircraft, private planes, and pleasure boats, use transportation fuels manufactured from crude oil.
FURTHER, everything that NEEDS electricity to function, like iPhones, iPads, TV’s, computers, data centers, and X-Ray machines are made from the oil derivatives manufactured from raw crude oil.
It’s shocking that neither Harris nor Walz comprehend that electricity was developed AFTER the discovery of crude oil. Without the parts and components to be able to generate electricity such as insulation, copper wiring, computers, control panels, and air conditioning, there would be no electricity from any of the six methods used to generate electricity such as coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar.
Amazingly, neither Harris nor Walz have enough Energy Literacy to direct policymakers to write energy policies!
Policymakers have no comprehension that crude oil is virtually never used to generate electricity, but when manufactured into those petrochemicals that are the basis of more than 6,000 products, is the basis for virtually all the products that support Hospitals, Medical equipment, Appliances, Electronics, Telecommunications, Heating and Ventilating, and Communications systems.
In addition, crude oil is the basis of the various transportation fuels in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800’s, now being used in infrastructures like: Transportation, Airports, Pleasure aircraft and boats, Space programs, and Militaries.
None of today’s readers were around 200 years ago, but the world has already experienced a net-zero environment just a few centuries ago. Before the 1800’s, and before the discovery of oil, the world had NO crude oil, and obviously NO products or transportation fuels, and NO electricity and NO Tesla’s !! Life was hard and short.
Neither Harris nor Walz comprehend that no one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil to support today’s lifestyles and the economies!
Mandating “net-zero” emissions is frustrating without a backup plan to support the materialistic demands of societies and economies around the world for all the products and fuels made from crude oil, the countless initiatives for just “green “electricity from wind and solar have crippled entire sectors.
In addition, mandating “net-zero” emissions is further frustrating when those “renewable solutions” require the same crude oil to make ALL the parts and components for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV’s. Mandating EV’s, and electricity generation from wind turbines and solar panels, is mandating MORE USAGE of crude oil. Harris, Walz, and their following policymakers are oblivious to the fact that electricity came AFTER the discovery of oil 200 years ago.
Without a replacement to support the demand for a supply chain of products and fuels, the elephant in the room that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz do not want to discuss is that crude oil is the foundation of our materialistic society as it is the basis of all products and fuels demanded by present day humanity and the economies around the world that now sustains 8 billion people—ten times the population prior to the Industrial Revolution.
If Harris and Walz had read and understood, the recent book, “Clean Energy Exploitations” – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, they would NOT be supportive of China and Africa continuing their exploitations of people with yellow, brown, and black skin, and the environmental degradation to “their” lands, just for the wealthier developed countries to go “green”.
The book discusses the lack of transparency to the world of the green movement’s impact upon humanity exploitations in the developing countries that are mining for the exotic minerals and metals required to create the batteries needed to store “green energy”. In these developing countries, these mining operations disproportionately impact low-income communities and exploit child labor and are responsible for the most egregious human rights’ violations of vulnerable minority populations. These operations are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation.
It is both unethical, immoral, and hypocritical to continue financially encouraging China and Africa to exploit “their” poor with yellow, brown, and black skin, and financially support environmental degradation to “their” landscapes just to reinforce mandated EV’s, and subsidizing wind turbines, and solar panels in “wealthier country backyards”!
When Kamala Harris and Tim Walz look outside the USA, and the few wealthy countries attempting to go “green”, they will see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity. Today, politicians in the few wealthy countries are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity.
The World Health Organization estimates that 2 billion people in developing nations still cook using open fires or stoves burning wood, coal and animal dung. These fuels generate harmful indoor air pollution that kills an estimated 3 million people per year. The great news is that those products and fuels from oil are increasingly being used in poorer developing nations, reducing illness and death, and extending life longevity.
To rid the world of crude oil usage, there is no need to over-regulate or over-tax the oil industry, just STOP using the products and fuels made from crude oil! Simplistically:
- STOP making cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, farming equipment, medical equipment and supplies, communications equipment, military equipment, etc. that demand crude oil for their supply chain of products.
If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to openly support the destruction of the fossil fuel industry, they should start promoting present day humanity of the 8 billion on this planet, and the economies around the world, to STOP demanding the products and fuels made from Crude Oil !!!
The energy policies of VP Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz, without crude oil and the products and fuels made from oil, are the real existential threat to billions across our planet that may perish from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related fatalities.
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
In the event you are not yet on distribution, click this Link to Sign up for Energy Literacy from Ronald Stein
via Watts Up With That?
August 21, 2024 at 12:06AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 