From the NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin

Denial of failure in Germany…leaders insist e-car production plants are needed (even though cars aren’t selling).

By KlimaNachrichten

This drama about the battery factory has entered the next round. NDR German public broadcasting reports on the closure of the main plant in Sweden.

There is more bad news from battery manufacturer Northvolt: The insolvency administrator has announced that battery cell production in Skellefteå in northern Sweden, Northvolt’s main plant, is to be shut down. It is to be completely shut down by 30 June – if no buyer can be found by then. This means that the company will completely cease production in its home country. However, the search for a new investor is still ongoing, according to reports. There are also potential buyers for the various business areas within the Northvolt Group. ‘The talks and negotiations are ongoing and are at various stages,’ said insolvency administrator Mikael Kubu in the press release.”

In Germany, the conservative-green coalition state government in Schleswig-Holstein remains surprisingly still optimistic about the planned plant in Heide. Perhaps it has to be, given the sums that the state and federal government have guaranteed and already paid.

According to a spokesperson for the German Northvolt subsidiary, the events in Sweden have no impact on the planned site in Heide (Dithmarschen district). Northvolt Germany is formally independent of Northvolt AB in Sweden and is therefore not affected by the insolvency proceedings for the time being. The search for investors is continuing, according to the spokesperson. There is great interest in the site near Heide. Insolvency administrator Mikael Kubu in Sweden had not yet commented specifically on the German subsidiary.

Despite the insolvency of the Swedish parent company, construction is continuing at Heide. Currently, the focus is more on the infrastructure on the construction site.

Despite the bad news from Sweden, many members of parliament from Schleswig-Holstein still see the opportunity for the site in Dithmarschen. ‘There will be an investor, I am very confident about that,’ said Lasse Petersdotter (Green Party) to NDR Schleswig-Holstein. Lukas Kilian (CDU conservatives) spoke of Northvolt’s ‘silverware’. ‘If you can sell something, then you have to look at this location and develop it further,’ he said. ‘We have the green electricity, we have the good connections, we have the experts there.’

Kianusch Stender (SPD socialists) expressed a similar view: ‘Over 100 hectares of levelled building land with planning permission already in place. We have virtually everything we need. This is a prime piece of land for any investor.’ Bernd Buchholz (FDP free democrats) was somewhat less euphoric: ‘The chance for Heide really only lies in a strategic investor who is able to operate a battery cell production facility themselves.’

Economics Minister Claus Ruhe Madsen is also in favour of Heide: ‘There are reports that say we need up to 30 production sites in Europe. And we naturally want to ensure that one of them is in Schleswig-Holstein,’ he said.”

How is all this supposed to work? Where has the money gone? How well was it checked in advance?
Northvolt has practically no production and no more customers.

From THE MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

On Thursday (May 22) the House of Representatives passed, by a narrow margin of 215-214, what is referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive compendium of taxing and spending measures that can now seek to avoid the filibuster in the Senate on grounds of being a “budget reconciliation.” The BBB is well over a thousand pages long (go here for full text), and covers a huge range of subjects.

Most summaries of the BBB that I have seen never get to the important subject of subsidies for so-called “green” energy — wind turbines, solar arrays, grid-scale batteries, hydrogen production, and so forth. That is understandable given the large number of important issues covered in the bill. However, the green energy subsidies are a gigantic issue. They consist of generous tax credits for wind and solar facilities that have been around for a long time, plus a barrage of subsidies and handouts created by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In a post that I wrote at the time of enactment of the IRA, I linked to an analysis that estimated the green energy handouts of just the IRA alone at approximately $370 billion (although I noted that the IRA handouts were un-capped and could end up being far more than that).

Since the wind and solar generators can never contribute meaningfully to the electrical grid, the hundreds of billions in subsidies are basically a dead weight loss to the economy and the people. Getting rid of them needs to be a top priority for the Republican Congress. And yet there has been serious doubt as to whether the Republicans could muster the political will to rescind them. So I thought I would take my own look at the bill to see how they are treated.

Somewhat to my surprise, the BBB as passed by the House appears to repeal and rescind essentially all of the green energy handouts from the IRA. The IRA had added a collection of new sections to the Clean Air Act to create various massive funds for handouts to “greenhouse gas reduction” efforts. Go to section 42101 et seq. of the BBB (you will need to scroll down a long, long way to get there), and you will find that one by one these handouts will be repealed. Excerpt:

SEC. 42101. REPEAL AND RESCISSION RELATING TO CLEAN HEAVY-DUTY 
              VEHICLES.

    (a) Repeal.--Section 132 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7432) is 
repealed.
    (b) Rescission.--The unobligated balance of any amounts made 
available under section 132 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7432) (as 
in effect on the day before the date of enactment of this Act) is 
rescinded.

SEC. 42102. REPEAL AND RESCISSION RELATING TO GRANTS TO REDUCE AIR 
              POLLUTION AT PORTS.

    (a) Repeal.--Section 133 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7433) is 
repealed.
    (b) Rescission.--The unobligated balance of any amounts made 
available under section 133 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7433) (as 
in effect on the day before the date of enactment of this Act) is 
rescinded. . . .  

And the bill continues for section after section of same, with successive parts relating to things like a “greenhouse gas reduction fund,” a “low emissions electricity” program, a fund to address “air pollution in schools,” a fund for “diesel emissions reductions,” and so forth.

How much real money do these things add up to in the aggregate? That is a difficult figure to get a handle on. As indicated above, the total of green energy handouts in the IRA was estimated at the time of its passage at $370 billion. But in the New York Times of Thursday, May 22, we find a chart with an estimate that is far larger for how much would be rescinded by the BBB:

According to this chart, the government had announced some $829 billion of “low-carbon energy investments” since the IRA, of which $320 billion had already been spent, and $529 billion remained “pending.” So it looks like the BBB, if it makes it through the Senate, will be undoing over $500 billion in wasteful green energy spending.

And then there is the separate issue of tax credits for the production of electricity using wind and solar. These things have been around for long periods — since 1978 for the so-called “investment tax credit” for both solar and wind, and since 1992 for the so-called “production tax credit” for wind. The BBB would impose a deadline of 60 days from enactment of the bill for start of construction of any project to qualify for the credits, and a 2028 deadline for completion of any such project. Believe it or not, those deadlines would be likely to mean that these tax credits would effectively be ended immediately except for projects that have already qualified. This is from the website of Utility Dive, May 22 citing analysis from investment bank Jeffries:

The bill terminates the 48E investment and 45Y production tax credits for non-nuclear clean energy projects placed in service after 2028, with no phaseout period. Projects must begin construction within 60 days of the bill’s enactment — likely later this year — to be eligible for the credits. . . . [T]he truncated eligibility window leaves a “near impossible” pathway for non-nuclear developers to qualify for the 48E and 45Y credits, Jefferies said.

Over at Reuters, we find lamentations for the prospective end of the green energy boom and all of its endless benefits to the people. For example, Reuters quotes one Abigail Ross Harper of the Solar Energy Industries Association:

“If Congress does not change course, this legislation will upend an economic boom in this country that has delivered an historic American manufacturing renaissance, lower electric bills, hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs, and tens of billions of dollars of investments primarily to states that voted for President Trump.”

Well, Abigail, what kind of a “boom” only comes into being when there are hundreds of billions of government dollars to support it, and disappears immediately when the handouts are withdrawn? It’s the kind of boom that is a massive wealth destruction, and that needs to be ended as soon as possible.

Essay by Eric Worrall

This festival was reportedly dominated by visions of imaginary apocalypse, including climate crisis films.

Cannes Film Festival Power Restored After 5-Hour Outage Across South of France With Foul Play Suspected, Closing Ceremony to ‘Proceed as Planned’

By Ellise Shafer
May 24, 2025 3:06am PT

The city of Cannes was hit by a five-hour power outage on Saturday morning ahead of the film festival’s awards ceremony, with electricity finally returning around 3:30 p.m. local time. Despite the technical challenges, a festival rep previously told Variety that the closing ceremony would “proceed as planned” after the Palais des Festivals “switched to an independent power supply.”

According to Franceinfo, the cause of the outage may be foul play with two arson acts reported overnight and several power lines pylons were discovered to have been sawn off in the Alpes-Maritimes.

…

Read more: https://variety.com/2025/film/festivals/cannes-film-festival-power-outage-awards-ceremony-1236409107/

What is this mysterious “independent power supply”? Western media sources might be coy about naming the agency which rescued Cannes, but on this occasion the French media were up to the challenge of reporting the news.

Power failure in Cannes and in the Alpes-Maritimes: “serious acts of degradation” are at the origin of the incident

Two arsons were reported, while three pillars of an electric pylon located in Villeneuve-Loubet were then sawn Saturday morning.

Article written byfranceinfo
France Televisions
Published on 24/05/2025 12:17 Updated on 05/24/025 16:30

…

From generators at the Palais des Festivals

This incident had consequences on the Cannes Film Festival, which must end in the late afternoon with the presentation of the Palme d’Or. The screening of the film Sirât was interrupted on the Croisette on Saturday morning, reports France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (New window), which also reports disruptions in the city and at the station. But the situation is improving in the city since AFP journalists noticed the resumption of traffic lights around the Palais des Festivals in the early afternoon.

The palace is currently powered by generators – three groups will be used for the proper holding of the closing ceremony at 6 p.m.

Read more (French, translated by Apple): https://www.franceinfo.fr/faits-divers/direct-panne-de-courant-a-cannes-et-dans-les-alpes-maritimes-des-actes-malveillants-sont-a-l-origine-de-l-incident_7269978.html

What makes this more amusing, the 2025 Cannes film festival, which owes its successful conclusion to portable fossil fuel power, was dominated by depictions of imaginary apocalypse – including the fake climate crisis.

It’s the end of the world and the Cannes Film Festival does not feel fine

BY  JAKE COYLE
Updated 1:33 AM AEST, May 20, 2025

CANNES, France (AP) — “Is this what the end of the world feels like?”

…

As much as Cannes basks in the Côte d’Azur sunshine, storm clouds have been all over its movie screens at the festival, which on Monday passed the halfway point. Portents of geopolitical doom are everywhere in a lineup that’s felt unusually in sync with the moment. Tom Cruise, in “Mission: Impossible – Final Awakening,” has battled the AI apocalypse. Raoul Peck, in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” has summoned the author’s totalitarianism warnings for today. Even the new Wes Anderson (“The Phoenician Scheme”) is about an oligarch.

…

It’s not just geopolitical tremors quaking on movie screens in Cannes. Climate change and natural disasters are on the minds of filmmakers, too, sometimes in the most unlikely of movies.

…

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/cannes-2025-doom-gloom-movies-mood-ff276fba43706e6ac48833112795ffc4

There is no news yet on the identity or motivation of the pylon saboteurs. They might have been metal thieves – metal theft is a serious problem in Europe. But who knows, perhaps they were just ordinary people who were fed up with unwatchable films which lecture the audience about the director’s woke delusions.