Which is the goal of the few, and will be the unexpected discovery by the stupid and ignorant
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Saturday morning theme music: the war on energy, and the Left’s determination to return Western Civilization to its pre-industrial state of poverty. Just because I’ve read all these articles doesn’t mean you have to, of course; it’s just collection of reports I read this week about my pet issue, so I’m putting some excerpts here for dipping into, with links to the full articles should you wish to see more.
Responding to China’s announcement of new Chinese/Central Asia partnership to develop new oil and gas resources, Jazz Shaw comments,
I sincerely hope that people will pay attention to this, though it should have been obvious all along. Up until now, China has been considered a “developing nation” in terms of carbon emissions, so most of the alarmists continue to turn a blind eye to the way they ignore restrictions being put in place by other nations. They scoff at the idea of paying into global climate funds. China has a population of 1.4 billion, as compared to the roughly 330 million in the United States. India has even more now and they don’t do crap all about climate change either beyond paying lip service to it.
Meanwhile, China is bringing new coal-fired power plants online every week. They’re building pipelines and expanding their oil and natural gas resources. Their energy needs are expanding as they grow and seek to displace the United States as a global superpower and they’re doing what it takes to power those efforts. Meanwhile, here in the United States, power plants are being taken offline with no plans to replace the lost energy. We’re being pushed into rolling blackouts and the government is coming to take away your gas stoves. And it’s all supposedly being done to prevent an increase in average global temperatures of one degree in the coming decades.
You are all being played for fools. The green energy mandates are making a small number of people very wealthy (not coincidentally, many of them are huge Democratic donors) while everyone else is being told they’ll have to make do with less energy, give up their air conditioning, buy electric cars, and all the rest of this madness. You could slash America’s already decreased “carbon footprint” in half and you’ll still never make up for everything that China, India, and other non-suicidal nations are putting into the air.
Consider the renewable electricity project called SunZia:
When plans for the SunZia project—a massive power line and wind farm in the Western U.S.—were first laid in 2006, Taylor Swift had just released a debut album and George W. Bush was president.
The project might finally receive a crucial permit this week.
That 17-year process underscores why some in Washington say there is a pressing need for an overhaul of the country’s rules for approving infrastructure projects.
As soon as Thursday, the project is expected to receive a green light from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management for a high-voltage power line, according to people familiar with the matter. The permit would allow the developer Pattern Energy to build the country’s largest wind energy project across three counties in rural New Mexico and deliver that electricity to large markets in Arizona and California.
Developers first applied for federal approval in 2008; environmental reviews started in 2009. In 2011, the project was “fast-tracked” by the Obama administration.
David Getts, general manager of Phoenix-based Southwestern Power Group, the original developer of SunZia, said that when the project was conceived in 2006, the company thought it would receive its permits in about five years.
“We didn’t honestly know enough to know what we were getting into,” Getts said. “And of course, here we are 17 years later.”
The project has not broken ground, after 17 years. It was fast-tracked. 17 years.
3. And Beege Welborn:
Just so we’re clear, NY has NO Plan B for replacing the power plants they’re shutting down.
This sounds fun.
Two weeks ago, the New York State legislature and the state’s looney tunes chief executive, Governor Kathy Hochul, got together to hammer out a final budget deal for the year. With everything else that goes on during those sorts of negotiations, they still found time to screw the citizens of the state over royally in the name of “climate change.”
As part of last week’s budget deal, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature ordered the New York Power Authority to shut down all its fossil-fuel plants in just seven years — even though gas-fired plants supply nearly half the state’s electricity.
At the same time, they banned gas (for stoves and heating) in all new buildings by 2029, forcing them to be all-electric.
And by 2035, the only new cars sold here must also be purely electric.
4. Hydro-power is doomed.
Major U.S. power source facing extinction thanks to red tape.
The nation's top hydropower trade group and energy developers are raising the alarm on the burdensome regulatory process facing new and existing projects, warning a reliable source of electricity for millions is at risk.
Hydropower — which supplies nearly 80,000 megawatts of the nation's power, or 6.2% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity and 28.7% of total utility scale renewable electricity, according to federal data — remains a key part of the nation's growing power grid, but stakeholders argue it faces regulatory hurdles far greater than those facing other carbon-free sources of electricity.
"Our concern is that, without greater clarity on the licensing process, both how long it's going to take for the process and how much it's going to cost for the process, a lot of asset owners are simply going to decide to surrender their license," National Hydropower Association (NHA) President and CEO Malcolm Woolf told Fox News Digital in an interview.
"What that means for the grid is a whole lot more instability just as we're adding variable wind and solar to the grid," he continued.
According to the Department of Energy, it takes developers of new hydro projects about five years on average to obtain an original license and operators of existing facilities nearly eight years to relicense. Further, up to 11 different federal agencies are involved in a typical hydropower licensing process including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which isn't involved in other renewable energy projects.
Meanwhile, about a third of the non-federal hydropower fleet has licenses that are set to expire by 2030 and another 20% between then and 2035. Woolf said without permitting reform that streamlines hydropower relicensing and licensing, facilities may be forced to shut down and energy developers may seek to invest elsewhere, jeopardizing the power of tens of millions of Americans.
"Now is when these companies are making the decisions about whether to relicense or not because they know that it's typically a seven or eight year process, but very often over a decade-long process," Woolf said. "For example, if there are concerns about the effect of a facility on a particular fish, you may need to do studies during multiple spawning seasons. All of those studies need to be complete before you submit your application that's due five and a half years in advance."
"So these decisions are being made now and an industry survey from last year showed that over a third of hydropower facility owners were actively considering decommissioning, considering license surrender," he added. "So, this is an issue that needs to be addressed now. It can't wait to future Congresses."
Overall, about 90% of projects seeking original licenses abandon pursuit of a license prior to license issuance, a report published by National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2021 determined. Generally, smaller existing facilities and proposed projects face the largest permitting hurdles, the report found.
But hydropower proponents note that renewable alternatives like solar and wind projects face a far less stringent permitting process and are intermittent, meaning they are highly dependent on favorable weather conditions. By comparison, hydropower is a dispatchable energy source and can be relied on to fill the gap during periods of high demand or low supply with operators.
"Wind and solar are great, but they're intermittent. We often use electricity when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing," Erik Steimle, the executive vice president of Florida-based energy developer Rye Development, said in an interview. "So, we need something that's reliable. And hydropower certainly is that — it's a 24/7 source of carbon-free electricity."
"It's no coincidence that areas of the United States that have some of the cheapest electricity are areas with a lot of hydropower that's existing."
(Related): BIDEN CONSIDERING TEARING DOWN KEY GREEN ENERGY SOURCE OVER ECO CONCERNS
