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via JoNova
October 16, 2024 at 09:11AM
Nick Pope
Contributor
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted a law Monday that will empower state bureaucrats to monitor and dictate inventory levels at oil refineries in an attempt to prevent gas price hikes.
Newsom signed ABX2-1, which will enable regulators to require oil companies to keep a minimum level of fuel on hand and permit the California Energy Commission (CEC) to mandate refiners to make plans to provide resupply during outages for maintenance. While proponents say the bill is a key step to prevent major corporations from gouging consumers with artificially high prices at the pump during periods of low supply, industry interests have slammed the bill as political hostility directed at the oil and gas industry.
“With this new law, big oil companies are now responsible for stabilizing prices at the pump. It’s a critical accomplishment, but our work is not done,” California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat, said of the new law. “I will continue to fight to lower the cost of living, because housing, groceries and everyday necessities must be more affordable for all Californians.” (RELATED: Blue State Dems Throw Wrench In Plan To Extend Life Of Zero Emission Power Plant)
Andy Walz, a senior executive at Chevron, slammed the new bill in a Tuesday letter to state lawmakers. Chevron opted in August to move its headquarters out of California, a decision that Walz described as motivated in part by California’s unforgiving business environment.
“Chevron is concerned by the recent Committee and Assembly passages of ABX2-1 and seek to address some of the inaccurate and flawed arguments made by its proponents. As the Senate prepares to vote, it is crucial that it makes a fact-based decision. The political posturing that has characterized these proceedings must stop, including baseless and frankly ridiculous claims that the industry is engaging in price gouging,” Walz wrote in his letter.
Walz added that “the claim that regulation is justified because ‘price spikes are profit spikes’ is misleading” and that “these statements about price spikes also overlook that supply shortages are an outcome of California’s regulatory policy and fail to reflect the energy industry’s cyclical nature.” The Western States Petroleum Association, a trade association, also ripped the new law, saying that “regulators remain fixated on controlling businesses with more taxes, fees, and costly demands” in a Monday statement.
California currently has the highest gas prices of any state in the U.S., according to AAA gas price data. While many California Democrats blame corporate greed and manipulation for those prices, stringent environmental regulations and taxes on energy producers are primarily responsible for driving up those costs, energy experts previously explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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via Watts Up With That?
October 16, 2024 at 08:02AM
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Britain remains “critically vulnerable” to future energy crises, experts have warned.
The country’s high dependency on gas for heating and electricity generation has left us more exposed than other European countries to swings in market prices, according to a commission set up by Energy UK, Citizens Advice and the Confederation of British Industry.
The report was published hours after a backstop system designed to prevent blackouts was mobilised for the first time in two years as Britain’s power grid battled low winds and nuclear outages.
The surprise notice for the capacity market, which sends a warning to Britain’s electricity generators, was issued by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) just after midday on Monday.
It told generators to be ready to bring online back-up systems for when demand spikes at 4:30pm amid fears the amount of spare power capacity had grown unacceptably small compared to demand.
However, the notice was later withdrawn just after 2pm.
Tuesday’s report from the Energy Crisis Commission found that Britain was “dangerously underprepared” for the 2021 and 2022 energy crisis, when the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up the price of gas.
At one point, before a massive £150bn intervention was pledged by the Government, a typical household could have seen its annual bill rise from around £2,000 per year to £3,500 per year.
In the event, costs were capped at £2,500 per year. But even this had “catastrophic” consequences for poorer households, the commission found, with nine in 10 households cutting back their energy use and 7.5m falling into fuel poverty.
At the same time, one in 10 businesses were forced to temporarily cease operations to shield themselves from the eye-watering cost of energy.
The commission found the impact of price rises could have been cushioned if more homes were properly insulated and the UK had more gas storage capacity.
They also said the Government spent more money than it needed to because of poorly designed support schemes and a lack of investment over many years in infrastructure such as gas storage.
In a report, the commission said: “Keeping bills down for everyone over the coming years and decades means reducing our dependence on gas and its volatile pricing; increasing the production and distribution of clean homegrown power; and making more of our homes and businesses energy efficient.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/14/blackout-prevention-plan-activated-britain/
Quite why Citizens Advice have co-wrote this report is beyond me.
And none of them seem to have realised the contradiction of calling for more renewable energy, when it was the intermittency of wind power which triggered the blackout warning earlier this week.
They recommend more insulation, but have not bothered to do a cost/benefit analysis to see whether it would actually be worth it. Nor have they said who should pay for it.
By far the biggest factor behind our high dependency on gas is the forced shutdown of all of our coal power capacity. It is still not too late to build a new fleet of ultra clean coal power plants, just as Germany has been doing. It is worth noting that in Germany coal accounts for 16% of primary energy consumption – here it is just 3%. Conversely gas makes up 33% of our total energy, compared to 24% in Germany.
They call for more gas storage, which seems illogical when Net Zero will shut gas down anyway. In any event the value of the Rough storage facility has always been overstated; at a capacity of 100 bcf, it would only hold enough to supply demand for about 16 days. It would have made no difference at all to gas prices in 2021/22.
Finally it should be pointed out that even during 2022, when gas prices spiked, we were still paying out CfD subsidies to renewables. In other words renewable energy was still more expensive than gas power.
In any event, you don’t plan your energy policy around the off chance that there might be a war somewhere in the world, sometime in the future.
https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cfd-generation-and-avoided-ghg-emissions
Gas prices may be volatile, but renewables will leave us with permanently higher prices.
FOOTNOTE
At least Jim Watson admits that bills will rise if we invest in more renewables:
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via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 16, 2024 at 07:49AM
By Paul Homewood
London: 16 October 2024
A new dawn for Net Zero policy?
Net Zero Watch welcomes Jenrick’s robust stance on decarbonisation
Campaign group Net Zero Watch has welcomed Robert Jenrick’s declaration that the binding targets in the Climate Change Act will have to be revoked. Mr Jenrick’s comments were made in an interview at the weekend. He said that he wanted to cut emissions, but not by deindustrialising, and that legally binding carbon budgets would have to be done away with.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
“Mr Jenrick’s comments are very welcome, and we hope that they represent the start of a return to energy rationality in the Conservative Party.”
But Mr Montford warned that Conservative divisions on energy and climate policy are still highly problematic.
“The next leader of the Conservative Party will have to make a compelling case for amending the Climate Change Act so that it will become a binding manifesto pledge.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 16, 2024 at 05:19AM
