A Bright New Energy Dawn In The UK

October 20, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 15 Comments

It was just a couple of weeks ago — October 3 to be precise — that I reported that the long-running “net zero” political consensus in the UK was finally “crumbling.” In the intervening two-plus weeks, the slow crumbling has turned into a rapid collapse.

The biggest roadblock for opponents of a green energy transition in the UK has been that the Conservative Party, which should have been the natural home of opposition to net zero, has instead long (and foolishly) allied itself with the net zero cause. In June 2019, the Conservatives (under Prime Minister Theresa May) put through an ambitious amendment to enhance the net zero targets of the 2008 Climate Act, and then proceeded to a general election that December where they won a substantial majority of 365 seats (in a parliament of 650). In subsequent years, a parliamentary faction in the House of Commons called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group struggled to get to about 50 or so Conservative members, who were far outnumbered by the opposing faction of the same party called the Conservative Environment Network. The UK voters had surely demonstrated their climate virtue.

But unfortunately things did not work out quite as they had anticipated. Energy bills accelerated until, as reported in the Telegraph on September 30 and then here on October 3, UK electricity bills have become the highest in the world. De-industrialization has set in and worsened. Britain’s last primary blast furnace steel works at Port Talbot closed in September 2024. A final rolling mill at Scunthorpe, now under Chinese ownership, threatened to close earlier this year until the government intervened. Similar reports of factory closures come regularly from all energy-intensive industries.

On October 6, immediately after my prior post, the Conservatives held a party conference in Manchester. One of the speakers was Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary. Her speech was an incredible breath of fresh air, and marked a dramatic u-turn from prior Conservative energy policy. The title was “Energy Is Prosperity.” Some excerpts:

In the last few decades, we’ve lost sight of a simple truth. Energy is a good thing. Conservatives know that great eras of British growth and prosperity happen when we have an abundance of cheap, reliable energy. . . . [E]nergy is not just part of the economy. It is the economy. It feeds into the costs of every business, every journey, every loaf of bread. . . . That’s why right now, the cost of energy is one of the biggest problems we have. It’s a stealth tax that is making us all poorer. And it’s killing our industry.

The Conservatives have finally figured out that the net zero agenda is a program to make the people poorer in sacrifice to the climate religion. More from Coutinho’s speech:

[H]ere’s the problem with the Left – they’re infected with a poverty mindset. They believe that Britain has a duty to make itself poorer on the altar of Net Zero. And they think that ordinary people should be the servants of their climate targets. So, take air conditioning. In America, nearly every single home has air con. Here in Britain? Just 5%. But Sadiq Khan’s London Plan effectively bans air con in all new homes - why? Because it uses too much energy. Rather than people fitting into the Government’s policy on energy, I believe a Conservative energy policy should serve the needs of the people.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I suspect that opposition to a program of intentional impoverishment of the people ought to be an electoral winner. The Labour Party and its Energy Minister, Ed Miliband, continue even now to claim that building more wind turbines will make electricity cheaper. But that claim is based on pretending that huge costs of intermittency, backup, storage, and transmission don’t exist. It has taken a long time for the reality of those costs to become clear, but the truth is now out.

The change in direction from the Conservative Party has come none too soon. On October 10, Bretibart News reported that the UK’s grid manager, National Energy Systems Operator, was forecasting reduced safety margins for electricity generation this winter, at the same time as the Labour government proceeds with dynamiting coal plants that could still be used for backup. The headline is “‘Tight Days’ For Electricity This Winter Says Network Operator as UK Presses on With Dynamiting Potential Backup Power Stations.” Excerpt:

Most notable was the revelation that the gas supply margin this winter is the lowest in years and down by 34 per cent over last year, a change [National Gas] attributes to the dwindling supply of gas being extracted from the North Sea. . . . 1960s-vintage power plants were brought online on command to cover tight margins several times in recent winters. Yet they have now all powered down for good, cut off from the national grid and are being demolished. Indeed, just days before today’s announcement of potential “tight days”, fresh footage of some of the final coal-powered power stations in the UK being dramatically dynamited was published.

I’m not going to predict that Britain will definitely experience major blackouts this winter. But the risk is far higher than it was just a few years ago, and that risk will continue to increase in coming years, until Britain can get itself to build more dispatchable generation, which in anything less than 15 years means natural gas or coal.

And it is not just the Shadow Energy Minister who has caught on. In today’s New York Post there is an op-ed by Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative Party leader and prospective PM should the Conservatives win the next election. (It is not obvious that they will do so, since the next election could be years away, and another party called Reform UK — also net zero opponents — leads both Labour and the Conservatives in the polls.). Ms. Badenoch’s op-ed covers multiple topics, including immigration and the Middle East as well as energy. Here are some things she has to say on the topic of energy:

[A] place I agree with this White House is on energy. Cheap energy is the foundation of a growing economy. No serious politician can talk about putting money in people’s pockets if they’re also doing things that make energy bills more expensive. . . . [I]n Britain, Labour ministers are so obsessed with chasing net-zero targets that they’re making life harder for ordinary families. . . . We’re sitting on North Sea oil and gas, yet the government refuses to grant new licenses.  We’re now in the crazy position of importing gas from our near-neighbors Norway, who are getting stuck into those same oil fields in the North Sea.

The Conservatives came close to destroying the party by joining the Left’s net zero crusade. The current u-turn may or may not be enough to save the party. However, adding the Conservatives’ position in the polls to that of Reform UK would indicate that opposition to net zero is now close to if not an absolute majority electoral position. That represents an enormous swing in a few short years.

In The UK The Net Zero Consensus Has Crumbled

October 03, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian  

Here in the U.S., ever since the push to “de-carbonize” the energy system to “save the planet” from global warming got going in a big way 20 or so years ago, there has always been a critical mass of skeptics strongly pushing back. I count myself among them. Another prominent example is the CO2 Coalition, an organization of about 200 scientists and intellectuals who dissent from the climate orthodoxy. Large portions of our Republican Party — recently approaching near unanimity — have also joined the dissent from climate orthodoxy.

But over in Europe, the same has not been true at all; and it has particularly not been true in the UK. There, at least until very recently, there was a near total consensus across the political spectrum in favor of mandatory reductions in carbon emissions, with an ultimate goal of zero emissions. In 2008, the then-Labour-controlled UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act, setting a mandatory target for reduction of “greenhouse gas” emissions in the energy system of 80% by 2050. The vote in Parliament in favor of this Act and its mandate was 463-3 in favor. In 2019, Parliament amended the mandatory target to increase the required greenhouse gas reduction to a full 100% by 2050 — in other words, full “net zero.” That amendment passed by acclamation without any recorded dissent. This time, Theresa May was the Prime Minister, and her Conservative Party held a comfortable majority in the Parliament.

A lonely exception to the UK’s total climate consensus has been the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a small think tank founded in 2009 by Lord Nigel Lawson and Benny Peiser. (I serve on the Board of its American affiliate.). For many years, literally nobody listened to us.

We dissenters have long warned that the “net zero” fantasy was doomed to failure. A new centrally-planned energy system based mostly on intermittent wind and sun would inevitably prove to be wildly expensive, and would never be able to replace 100%, or even close to that, of the existing system. They didn’t believe us.

Well, let’s take a look at where the UK finds itself today.

The Telegraph had the story on September 30: “Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world as net zero costs rise.” (The link goes to a Yahoo re-publication of the piece that avoids the Telegraph’s paywall.). Excerpt:

New data published on Tuesday showed the price paid by UK industry for power was 63pc higher than in France and 27pc higher than in Germany. Britain is also the second-most expensive country in the world for household electricity, with billpayers paying twice as much as those in the US. . . . Cornwall Insight also warned on Tuesday that household energy bills will jump by £100 in April. The figures will increase pressure on the Energy Secretary, who has been accused of driving up electricity costs by adding green levies on to bills to fund renewables. This includes billions of pounds in subsidies for carbon capture and wind farms, which have contributed to the UK paying the highest power prices in the world.

Ed Miliband, the UK’s climate zealot Energy Secretary referred to there, is quoted attempting to shift the blame for recent net-zero-related energy price increases to — Margaret Thatcher!

[Miliband] told The Guardian: . . . “The truth is, the reason why people’s living standards are stuck, why growth has been so low and public services are on their knees, is … trickle-down economics from the 80s, which left us with huge inequality and austerity in the 20s.”

Good luck with that, Ed. But elsewhere in the UK, people are starting to catch on. Although he won’t say it out loud, even Miliband himself may be starting to catch on.

The political party currently leading in polling for parliamentary voting intentions in the next prospective UK election is Reform UK — a party only formed in 2021. (According to the most recent (September 26) poll from Politico EU, Reform UK leads with 30% of expressed voting intent, followed by Labour at 20%, Conservative at 16%, Liberal Democrats at 15%, and Greens at 10%.). Reform UK has made undoing the net zero mandate its second biggest issue after immigration. Reform UK lays out its platform in a document on its website titled “Our Contract With You.” They don’t mince any words. From page 8 of that document, headed “Net Zero is Crippling our Economy”:

Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure. . . . We must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets. CRITICAL REFORMS NEEDED IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS: Scrap Net Zero and Related Subsidies. Ditching Net Zero could save the public sector over £30 billion per year for the next 25 years. Scrap Annual £10 Billion of Renewable Energy Subsidies. Achieve this through equivalent taxes on them. Renewables are not cheaper. Our bills have increased dramatically in line with the huge increase in renewables capacity over the last 15 years.

Nor is Reform UK the only party to break ranks with the prior consensus. New Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has also recently pledged to repeal the Climate Act mandates. From Politico EU, October 2:

Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has pledged to ditch the U.K.’s flagship climate law if they get back into government, in the latest signal that the party is firmly walking back on net zero commitments. . . . The Climate Change Act was ushered through parliament under Labour’s last term in power by then Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in 2008. It was backed by consecutive Conservative governments and was even tightened up by former Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019 to make the U.K.'s 2050 net zero target legally-binding.  However, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has promised to scrap it, blaming the law for pushing up energy bills and creating bureaucratic delays. “Climate change is real. But Labour’s laws tied us in red tape, loaded us with costs, and did nothing to cut global emissions,” Badenoch said.

And meanwhile, inside both the Liberal Democrats and the governing Labour Party, while they continue to talk the talk of pure climate religion, cracks are definitely starting to appear.

The Lib Dems have sought to position themselves as the most pure of all mainstream parties on climate issues. Notably, the Lib Dem platform has long called for net zero by 2045, thus five years ahead of the official Labour target of 2050. But at the Lib Dem party conference just held on September 22, members voted to ditch the earlier date and to align with the Labour target of 2050. From Politico EU, September 22:

The Liberal Democrats have scrapped their 2045 net-zero target and aligned with the Labour government's 2050 goal instead. Members passed a motion at the party's conference in Bournemouth Sunday, which supports “the U.K.’s existing net-zero framework and 2050 target.” This replaces the pledge, which had been party policy since 2019, to achieve net zero by 2045.

And even within the governing Labour Party, home of zealot Energy Minister Miliband, reality is slowly catching up. From Politico EU, September 25:

UK energy chief eyes an oil and gas loophole. . . . The U.K. government has quietly handed ministers new powers to reverse flagship climate promises and approve new drilling for fossil fuels.  Under new guidance drawn up in Whitehall, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband can give weight to the “wider benefits to the interests of the nation,” alongside environmental concerns, when deciding the future of controversial oil and gas fields.  Miliband has long insisted the U.K. must wean itself off high-polluting fossil fuels produced in oil and gas heartlands off the Scottish coast and embrace clean energy, like solar and wind power. But experts believe the new powers, buried in guidance published this summer by Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, provide a loophole to approve more drilling. 

It’s rather odd to see them calling oil and gas drilling a “loophole,” since the whole point of net zero has been to drive oil and gas entirely out of the energy system.

The simple conclusion to be drawn is that the inevitable cost impact of chasing the impossible net zero dream has caught up with its proponents. With soaring costs now crippling British industry and crushing consumers, net zero has become electorally toxic. Miliband can try blaming Thatcher or oil companies or whoever he wants, but at some point the voters aren’t that stupid.

It may be a while until the next election, but when it comes, I would expect it to be the death knell for net zero in the UK.

Energy Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land -- Part III

March 16, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

JP Morgan Chase — that’s the largest bank in the country. It has been headed for almost 20 years by celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon. For much of the 20 years, Chase and Dimon have been known for their fealty to woke orthodoxies, at least in their official pronouncements. For example, here is a Forbes piece from October 2020 citing Dimon on the subject of “systemic racism.” 

 

(Pithy quote: “Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. . . . It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”)

The fealty to woke orthodoxies has in the past extended in particular to the subject of “climate change.” In April 2021 JPM put out a big announcement of plans to facilitate investment of some $2.5 trillion in what they called “climate action and sustainable development.” In October 2021, JPM joined the so-called Net Zero Banking Alliance, then being organized by the UN (led by Mark Carney), promising to starve fossil fuels of investment capital in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

But meanwhile, over at J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, they have a guy named Michael Cembalest, who currently has the title Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy. For some 15 years, Cembalest has put out an annual Report called the Annual Energy Paper. I have covered a couple of Cembalest’s prior reports, here for 2021, and here for 2022. The titles of both those posts included the words “Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land.” Cembalest is just out with the 2025 version of his Annual Energy Paper, so consider this to be Part III of this series.

These Reports by Cembalest are far from perfect. At a basic level, the Reports accept the ideas that there is a real energy transition going on, that it is somehow important, and that use of fossil fuels must eventually be eliminated. I don’t know if Cembalest really believes those things himself, or if accepting them for purposes of your public reports is the price of holding a highly-paid job at JPM. Either way, while I consider the failure to question those ideas to be a major flaw of these Reports, that failure does not prevent Cembalest from taking a serious and realistic look at many aspects of the supposed energy transition that are completely failing.

I’ll start with a couple of sections of this year’s Report that I consider to be the strongest: those covering hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Hydrogen

Cembalest’s section on hydrogen, beginning at page 45, is titled “Frydrogen: the cancellation of green hydrogen projects when exposed to the sunlight of energy math.” The reason for use of the word “fry”: 

“[M]any hydrogen projects are being fried (terminated) since the energy math didn’t work.”

Cembalest quotes Hanns Neubert in the June 2024 German MIT Technology Review:

“Electrolyzers, which do not exist, are supposed to use surplus electricity, which does not exist, to feed hydrogen into a network that does not exist in order to operate power plants that do not exist. Alternatively, the hydrogen is to be transported via ships and harbors, which do not exist, from supplier countries, which - you guessed it - also do not exist.”

There is a long list of some 12 insurmountable obstacles standing in the way of a green hydrogen economy. My favorite:

The green hydrogen economy barely exists despite mountains of taxpayer subsidies promoting supply. In the US, for example: a production tax credit of $3 per kg is equivalent to $91 per MWh based on the energy content of hydrogen (i.e., greater than wholesale electricity prices which averaged between $30 and $50 per MWh in 2024).

(Note that the $91/MWh tax credit for green hydrogen is just the subsidized portion of the cost of making the fuel; the $30-50/MWh wholesale cost of electricity includes all elements of making the electricity, not just the fuel.)

CCS

In a section on CCS on page 19 of the Report, Cembalest correctly takes note of the fact that after decades of hype, CCS has gone absolutely nowhere. He calls the CCS “citation-to-usage ratio” (that is, the number of citations of CCS in academic papers divided by the actual operating capacity of CCS facilities) “the highest ratio in the history of science.” A chart shows current U.S. capacity of operating CCS facilities at about 0.1% of CO2 emissions. If all planned facilities actually get built (highly unlikely based on experience), then the percent of emissions captured would go to around 0.8% of emissions.

Another interesting chart shows that CCS facilities that have been built capture far from all of the CO2 emissions from the plant in question, despite consuming substantial portions of the energy production of the plant. Here is a portion of that chart:

Capturing 55-75% of the emissions of a coal power plant is never going to satisfy the environmental zealots. So what’s the point?

OK, those were the strong parts of the Report. Let’s get to the fundamental flaw.

Solar power

The biggest theme of this year’s Report is “Heliocentrism.” The title of the Executive Summary of the Report is “Heliocentrism and the speed of the energy transition.” Why the term “heliocentrism”?  

“For purposes of this paper, heliocentrism refers to the view that rapid growth in solar power and energy storage are at the heart of the energy transition, and that new investment in complementary thermal power generation is no longer required.”

Cembalest says that there are “believers in heliocentrism,” apparently lots of them, and lays out their case for them:

Believers in heliocentrism point to rapid growth in global solar capacity which more than doubled over the last three years. If BNEF projections are correct, solar capacity will double again from 2024 to 2027. Solar is now the dominant form of global capacity additions, comprising 60% of new capacity in 2024 and by our estimates ~75% in 2027. According to Carbon Brief, the International Energy Agency underestimated solar capacity growth for years and has been trying to catch up as shown below. Globally, the combination of wind and solar power generation has soared past nuclear and should surpass hydropower in 2025.

Cembalest then states that “there are a couple of ‘buts’ to keep in mind.” That’s putting it mildly! As the “buts,” Cembalest mentions that solar facilities have annual capacity factors in the range of 15-20%, and that producing electricity from solar panels does not solve the issue of non-electrified uses of energy, like transportation, industry, and most space heating. Fair enough. But he never gets to the biggest problem, which is dealing with the problem of intermittency as the penetration of solar generation into the grid increases.

The problem of energy storage is barely mentioned. There is this on page 5:

EIA analysts I spoke with cite a “staggering” amount of battery storage being added to the US grid: another 38 GW by 2027 on top of 22.5 GW already in place. This suggests that some natural gas peaker and baseload plants could eventually be displaced.

Well, how “staggering” is that? It’s really discouraging that Cembalest does not even use the correct units for describing battery capacity (which are watt-hours rather than watts). But assume that we are talking about standard 4-hour lithium-ion batteries. A few minutes of simple arithmetic would show that this “staggering” amount of storage is a tiny fraction of what would be needed to back up a predominantly solar electrical grid. The U.S. used 4,086 TWh, or 4,086,000 GWh, of electricity in 2024. Dividing by 8760 (hours in a year), that’s 466 GWh every hour. 38 + 22.5 GW of batteries would total 60.5 GW, times 4 hours’ duration would come to 242 GWh of storage. So, about half an hour’s worth. Full backup of a predominantly solar grid would take about 500 to 1000 hours of storage. So the “staggering” 242 GWh is around 0.05% - 0.1% of the storage that would be needed. An almost meaningless amount.

Cembalest’s conclusion is that while solar generation is increasing rapidly, it is only increasing “linearly,” which is not nearly fast enough to overtake all fossil fuel generation in any short number of years. Thus, “[A]s a general principle, . . . the US and Europe are a long way off from no longer needing both baseload and backup thermal capacity.”

Well, sorry Mike, but you’ve missed the big picture. If you had done the arithmetic, you could easily have seen that solar is not just “a long way off” from powering the grid without thermal backup; solar is never going to be the main source energy for a developed economy. You owed it to your clients to tell them that this can’t work, and there is a Green Energy Wall coming; but you failed.

Meanwhile, there is at least some reason to think that JPM at the highest levels has finally started to see reality and re-think its green energy commitments. Just in January, JPM quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance. Maybe by the time next year’s Report rolls around, the shackles will have been taken off Mr. Cembalest, and he can give his readers a dose of the truth.

New York Takes A Stab At A Green New Deal Demonstration Project: The Case Of Ithaca

March 20, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

 Many political jurisdictions claim to be on a path to eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide from their energy systems. Notable examples include California and New York in the U.S., and the UK and Germany in Europe. The Biden administration during its term in office even claimed to have set the entire U.S. onto a path toward what they called “net zero.” But so far none of these places has gotten anywhere near the goal. Indeed, as of today, many hundreds of billions of dollars into the effort, not one of them has even issued a detailed engineering plan of how this is supposed to be accomplished.

For reasons expressed in some dozens of posts on this blog, with the exception of a vast expansion of nuclear energy, I don’t believe that this “net zero” thing can actually be done, at least without entirely impoverishing the people. However, I’m completely willing to be proved wrong. For many years, I have been calling for a Demonstration Project to prove whether or not an economically-developed community is capable of achieving zero carbon emissions, or anything close to that (example here from 2022). Surely, if the entire U.S. can be expected to accomplish “net zero” in response to a government command, then it should be simple to build a working “net zero” Demonstration Project for a small town of, say, a few tens of thousands of people.

I’ve even proposed the perfect place as my candidate to be the guinea pig for the “net zero” demonstration: Ithaca, New York. After all, Ithaca is the most exquisitely climate virtuous place in what is already a deep blue state. It is home to two thoroughly left-wing academic institutions (Cornell University and Ithaca College), with their thousands of radical left-wing climate activist faculty and students. These people should leap at the chance to show the rest of the world how this “net zero” thing can be done. Also, the population (approximately 50,000) is in about the right range for a net zero demonstration project. (Note that the 50,000 is the combined population of the City of Ithaca and Town of Ithaca. Yes, for reasons known only to the geniuses of New York State local governance, Ithaca consists of two independent adjoining municipalities, a City and a Town, sharing the same name.). If “net zero” doesn’t work in a small place like this, the loss of investment could be large, but not catastrophic.

And in fact, when it comes to talking the talk, Ithaca would appear to be at the forefront of the green energy transition. Back in June 2019, the Ithaca City Common Council unanimously adopted what they called the “Ithaca Green New Deal.” A few months later, in March 2020, the Ithaca Town Council, also unanimously, adopted their own “Green New Deal Resolution.” Although there are differences, the Town’s Resolution incorporated much of the language of the City’s Resolution word-for-word. Not to be caught standing still, the next year, 2021, the City of Ithaca went a step further and announced that it would electrify all of its 6000 buildings. They didn’t actually use the words “demonstration project,” but clearly the key elements were now in place. Should we check in on how it’s going?

The short answer: It’s a complete joke.

First, let’s take note of some of the official goals. From the City of Ithaca Green New Deal resolution:

RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca adopts a goal to meet the electricity needs of City government operations with 100% renewable electricity by 2025. . . .  

RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca hereby adopts a goal of achieving a carbon neutral city by 2030. . . .  

RESOLVED, That the City of Ithaca endorses the following actions to achieve these goals: Create a climate action plan (CAP) in 2020 to provide details on how to achieve the Ithaca Green New Deal, and update the CAP regularly. . . .

And then there’s this, not found (at least today) on the City of Ithaca’s website, but reported on January 29, 2025 at the website of WSKG, the Ithaca PBS affiliate:

In 2021, the small city of Ithaca announced it would electrify all of its 6,000 buildings.

And how exactly was Ithaca going to electrify 6000 buildings within a few short years?

[Ithaca planned to achieve building electrification] with the help of one key partner: a technology company called BlocPower, whose then-CEO Donnel Baird said the company would make the mass electrification process fast and affordable. “There’s a lot of expensive engineering and financial and workforce development costs,” Baird told Ithaca’s common council in 2021, after it approved the mass electrification plan. “Our job is to remove all of that friction.”

OK, those were the goals. Now for the progress toward achieving them. If you go to the website of the City of Ithaca today, everything seems great:

Ithaca is leading the world. On June 5th, 2019, the City of Ithaca Common Council unanimously adopted the Ithaca Green New Deal resolution, a government-led commitment to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030 that focuses on addressing historical inequities, economic inequality, and social justice. Two years after the resolution was signed, Ithaca established itself as a world-leader in climate mitigation planning and continues to pave the path forward as a blueprint for other cities across the U.S. and the globe.

But how about some actual facts on the ground. Let’s start with that building electrification thing. From that same January 25 WSKG piece:

[I]n recent months, BlocPower has quietly deserted its electrification and workforce training programs in Ithaca and several other cities, according to municipal leaders and organizations that worked with BlocPower. . . . In Ithaca, BlocPower ended its collaboration with the city after completing the electrification of only 10 buildings, according to Ithaca’s current sustainability director, Rebecca Evans. Last November, the company furloughed its Ithaca staff members and ended all partnerships in the city, Evans said.

6000 buildings, 10, whatever. Here is a picture from WSKG of “sustainability director” Rebecca Evans: 

 

 So, Ms. Evans, how about the big Climate Action Plan by which Ithaca will instruct the ignorant world how to get to carbon neutrality? Here’s another piece from WSKG, this one from several months ago (October 2024) reporting on recent revisions to the Plan. Excerpt:

The [Green New Deal] resolution . . . charged city staff with creating a formal climate action plan that would outline how the city would achieve those goals. Ithaca's sustainability director, Rebecca Evans, wrote in a post on LinkedIn last month that she recently decided to scrap the version of that plan she had been working on. The decision, she said in an interview with WSKG, does not change the goals of the Green New Deal, but instead reframes the city’s approach of how it will achieve its commitments. Evans said that rather than prioritizing reducing emissions, the new plan will prioritize helping residents adapt to living in a warming world, while also working towards the city’s emissions-reduction goals. That could include providing residents with better access to social services, like housing and job training, and improving the city's emergency response and electricity reliability.

Got it — They’ve given up on reducing emissions. And how about the City’s promise to get 100% of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2025? Are they really doing that right now? I can’t find a recent report, but there’s this from back in December 2011:

Beginning in January [2012], the City of Ithaca will purchase 100% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources. Under a new agreement with Integrys Energy Services of New York, Inc., Ithaca will purchase Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) certified by Green-e Energy for all of its electricity.

Aha! It’s the magic of “Renewable Energy Certificates.” Apparently, those make it possible to get your electricity from wind turbines and solar panels on completely calm nights. If you are willing to believe it. Al Gore would be proud.

In short, everything about Ithaca’s Green New Deal is either a scam, or has been quietly abandoned, or both.

Here in New York City we have our own building electrification mandate called “Local Law 97” that is said to require some 50,000 buildings to convert to electric heat and cooking by 2030. Does anybody really think we can make any more progress toward such a goal than Ithaca?

Amicus Brief Filed In Glen Oaks Village Owners v. City Of New York

February 23, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

 

Back at the beginning of the year, I had a post titled “New York On The March To Climate Utopia.” The post took note that everything about New York State’s vision for a zero-emissions economy and for “climate leadership” was in the process of falling apart. Its contracts for vast off-shore wind farms to replace fossil fuel generation had either been completely canceled (the majority) or rebid at much higher and uneconomic prices (the minority). Its two contracted facilities to produce “green” hydrogen to back up the intermittent wind and solar had run into financial difficulties and were likely to fail. Its one big contracted high-capacity transmission line to bring the imaginary upstate wind and solar electricity to downstate markets had also been canceled, without stated reason but almost certainly because of unworkable economics.

 

I illustrated the piece with this picture of Wile E. Coyote in the role of New York State, having run off the cliff and about to fall to the bottom of the canyon:

 In the few short weeks since that post, you would think that it would be almost impossible for the situation of New York’s utopian climate plans to have gotten any worse. But in fact the situation has gotten worse — much, much worse.

On January 20, President Trump was inaugurated, and he immediately went to work dismantling federal support and subsidies for “green” energy. By this January 20 Executive Order, Trump “temporarily” withdrew all of the Outer Continental Shelf from leasing for wind power projects. That appears to nix most, although perhaps not all, of New York’s offshore wind plans. (Although the pause in leasing is said to be “temporary,” there is no commitment that the leasing will ever resume.).

Also on January 20, Trump signed another Executive Order titled “Unleashing American Energy.” That one, in Section 7, ordered an immediate halt to all disbursements of subsidies to “green” energy projects under the Inflation Reduction Act or Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act:

All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), . . . and shall review their processes, policies, and programs for issuing grants, loans, contracts, or any other financial disbursements of such appropriated funds for consistency with the law and the policy outlined in section 2 of this order.

It is highly likely that New York was relying on receiving many billions of dollars under these Acts to prop up its wind, solar, transmission and green hydrogen schemes. Again, the pause from this EO is only “temporary,” but in all likelihood these funds will never come back during the Trump presidency, and probably ever.

Meanwhile, New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act) remains on the books. That statute commands the complete restructuring of New York’s energy economy to reach “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a most immediate first deadline of 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030. They never had a credible plan to achieve that, but they pretended they were going to do most of it with the big offshore wind buildout. Now that that is dead, they don’t even have a fake plan.

And also meanwhile, New York City’s statute known as Local Law 97 also remains on the books. That’s the statute that mandates that all residential buildings in excess of 25,000 square feet convert to electric heat by 2030 — the same year that the State’s Climate Act mandates 70% of electricity generation from “renewables,” of which the large majority can only come from non-existent wind and solar. Thus we have the City mandating a huge increase in electricity demand by 2030 at the same time that the State is mandating dismantling our existing reliable electricity generation with no credible plan to replace it.

Back in 2022, a group of co-op owners and boards in Queens brought a case in the New York State courts seeking to get the City’s Local Law 97 declared invalid as “pre-empted” by the State’s Climate Act. The case goes by the name Glen Oaks Village Owners, Inc. v. City of New York. Since it started, the case has been tied up in motions and appeals. Initially, the trial court (in New York we call that the Supreme Court) dismissed the case, finding no pre-emption. However, the Appellate Division, First Department, reversed and ordered the trial court to consider whether there was pre-emption. Rather than going back to the trial court, the City decided to try to appeal to the Court of Appeals, our highest court, to get the dismissal re-instated. The case has just concluded briefing in that court.

On Friday, my co-counsel Cam Macdonald and I filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of a group of parties including some co-op owners and a not-for-profit called New Yorkers for Affordable Reliable Energy. The amicus brief argues that the Climate Act and Local Law 97 are in irreconcilable conflict because the State via the Climate Act has no plan or ability to provide the electricity that would be needed to enable compliance with the City’s Local Law 97. Here is a quote from our Summary of Argument:

The irreconcilability [of the two laws] arises from the simultaneous mandates in Local Law 97 and the Climate Act. First, Local Law 97 mandates that large residential buildings in New York City convert to electric heat by 2030. Meanwhile, the Climate Act requires 70 percent of the state’s electricity come from “renewables,” also by 2030.

The latter mandate requires replacing always-available fossil fuel electrical generation capacity with intermittent wind and solar electricity generation, Wind and solar cannot provide continuous electricity supply. Intermittency threatens buildings that have converted to electric heat with losing heat for extended periods in the dead of winter.

The Climate Act, and a “Scoping Plan” developed under it, contain no credible plan to provide the additional reliable electricity needed to heat all large New York City buildings, as Local Law 97 mandates.

I don’t yet have a link for this amicus brief, but I will plan to update this post when a link becomes available.

The Court of Appeals has a chance here to save New York City and its residents from their own folly. It may or may not take advantage of the opportunity. If it takes a pass, and reinstates the dismissal of the case, Local Law 97 will still fail within a few years at most. It’s just that, in that scenario, a lot of people stand to get hurt.

From The Director Of Net Zero Watch

December 29, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Net Zero Watch is an affiliate of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate-skeptic think tank. (Another affiliate of the Global Warming Policy Foundation is the American Friends of the GWPF, the organization of which I am the President and a board member.). The specialty of Net Zero Watch is poking holes in the UK’s insane pursuit of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions. The Director of NZW is Andrew Montford.

A few days ago (December 23), Montford issued a brief end of year statement that gives a good summary of where we are now in the climate wars. I thought that I should feature the statement here on Manhattan Contrarian. Here is the statement in full, with a few key lines highlighted by myself:

As another year draws to a close we can look back with some satisfaction on the changes in the political and economic landscape over the last twelve months.

We are not nearing the end of the climate emergency madness, but I think it’s fair to say we are at the beginning of the end – it is now clear that Net Zero is doomed, that the western world will return to rational energy policies, and that we will be completely vindicated.

There is a long road still to travel, and we shouldn’t expect the entrenched climate cult to suddenly collapse. Instead, we would expect the Net Zero timescales to be extended – see the story about the Canadian government below – and then, over the years, the targets themselves to be watered down, and then ignored, if not cancelled entirely.

There is a great deal still to do to make this happen. The UK government, and Ed Miliband in particular, appear set on economic suicide, and civil society will need to make it clear to the Labour party that their pursuit of this end will lead to their political annihilation. Limiting the damage done along the way will be a huge task, and a very difficult one, given the size of Mr Starmer’s majority. But we must try, for the sake of everyone who lives on these islands.

And we must also start to turn our thoughts to how we put the UK’s energy sector back onto a rational footing – how we reverse out from the dark and dangerous cul-de-sac into which successive governments have driven us. Escaping all the political, diplomatic, legal and economic entanglements will be no simple task, and we will need all the help we can get.

So finally let me publicly thank everyone who financially supports our efforts. We remain on a tight budget, and we are therefore enormously grateful.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year.

Andrew

I second Andrew’s sentiments, and of course also wish to see rational energy policy for the U.S. as well. We have every reason to think we are going to get that, or at least something close to it, with the incoming Trump administration.

Incredibly, the GWPF is moving toward “complete vindication” of its position with an annual budget of under $500,000. This compares to the annual budgets of the big enviro climate cult organizations in the range of hundred of millions of dollars each. (Examples: EDF $255 million for 2023; NRDC $244 million for 2023; Sierra Club $168 million for 2022; and there are dozens more, not to mention the government’s infinite checkbook.). Like the Kamala Harris campaign, they can blow through hundreds of millions of dollars in mere months, but their message of constant scare-mongering has gradually worn out.

For more from NZW, go here. For more from the GWPF, go here.

More Reasons For Cautious Optimism About The Demise Of The Green Energy Fantasy

December 23, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

My post on Saturday noted one big reason for optimism that the green energy fantasy is coming to the end of its run: the first country, Germany, has apparently begun to hit the green energy “wall.” Although Germany has never consistently reached even 50% of its electricity production from wind and solar, its ability to continue its green energy dreams has stalled: its electricity prices have soared, its manufacturing sector has been seriously undermined, its economy is in recession, and recently its green-promoting government has fallen. Its failed example now stands for others to see and avoid.

And as I look around at developments since the election, I see a number of other reasons to reinforce my cautious optimism. Maybe it’s that the political environment has changed, and maybe it’s that some people are starting to recognize that you can’t beat the laws of physics; and maybe it’s some of both. Here are examples:

Banks and investment firms quitting net zero “alliances”

On Saturday’s post, commenter William Bell asked “Who, exactly, is preventing third-world inhabitants from using wood, charcoal, coal, petroleum derivatives, and/or natural gas for fuel and by what means?” Apparently Mr. Bell, and maybe many others, is unaware of the many “alliances” of banks and investors seeking to starve fossil fuels of investment capital, and thus prevent third-world countries (and everybody else) from continuing to use them. Most of these groups are somehow directed and overseen by the UN. Examples of these groups include the Net Zero Banking Alliance (“Bank-led, UN-convened”), the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, and Climate Action 100+. I’m sure that I have not got them all. The members are, or have been, a who’s who of all the biggest banks and investment firms in the world.

The Center Square reports here on December 20 that two rather significant banks, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, have just quit the NZBA:

Not soon after the general election, and within two weeks of each other, two major financial institutions have left a United Nations Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). This is after they joined three years ago, pledging to require environmental social governance standards (ESG) across their platforms, products and systems. 

House Judiciary Committee issues report accusing large money managers of running a “climate cartel”

On December 13, the House Judiciary Committee issued a Report titled “Sustainability Shakedown: How a Climate Cartel of Money Managers Colluded to Take Over the Board of America’s Largest Energy Company.” The Report documents the process by which the Climate Action 100+ alliance, “emboldened” by encouragement from the Biden/Harris administration, orchestrated replacement of three board members of Exxon in May 2021. The collusive actions of the largest investment firms and proxy advisors are described as a “cartel” clearly violative of the antitrust laws.

Red state AGs sue investment firms for antitrust violations for colluding on “climate” issues

Maybe it’s coincidence, but shortly before the issuance of the Judiciary Committee Report, an antitrust suit was brought on November 27 by eleven red state AGs, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, accusing participants in the investment industry of collusive conduct in enforcing “climate” and other “ESG” goals. The defendants in the case include the three largest money managers, Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street. From Bloomberg Law, November 27:

BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group Inc. and State Street Corp. were sued by a group of states led by Texas for allegedly breaking antitrust law by boosting electricity prices through their investments, in the highest-profile lawsuit yet against the beleaguered ESG industry. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 10 other states claim the money managers, as part of their green agenda, combined their market clout and membership in climate groups to pressure coal producers to cut output.

TotalEnergies pauses major wind farm in the waters off New York and New Jersey

Also on November 27, French energy giant TotalEnergies announced that it was “pausing” its major Attentive Energy off-shore wind project in the Atlantic Ocean off New York and New Jersey. In his announcement of the “pause,” Total’s Chairman specifically attributed the action to the anticipated policies of the incoming Trump administration. From Offshore, November 27:

TotalEnergies has reportedly paused development of the Attentive Energy wind farm it planned to build off the coast of New York and New Jersey, CEO Patrick Pouyanne said Tuesday at an energy industry conference in London. “I have decided to put the project on pause,” TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanne said at the Energy Intelligence Forum, according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters. The decision is one of the first tangible signs of a halt in investment in renewable power sources due to the anticipated policies of the incoming Trump administration. Trump has vowed to stop offshore wind energy development “on day one” of his next term starting in January 2025.

The new Trump administration is still almost a month away from taking office, but already the anticipation of its arrival is having the positive effect of driving some of the parasites into hiding.

There are many more such positive developments out there. I’ll see if I can assemble a few more before year’s end. Meanwhile, I’m as hopeful as I’ve ever been that the green energy mania is fading.

Why There Will Never Be A Zero Emissions Electricity System Powered Mainly By Wind And Sun

September 21, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

“Net Zero” — That’s the two-word slogan that has been adopted as the official goal of every virtuous state or country for decarbonizing its energy system. The “net” part is backhanded recognition that some parts of the energy system (like maybe air travel or steelmaking) may never be fully de-carbonized. Thus some kind of offsets or indulgences may need to be accepted to claim achievement of the goal.

But the “net” thing is not for the easy parts of decarbonization. And by the easy parts, I mean the generation of electricity, and the powering of anything that can be run on electricity or batteries. In electrifiable parts of the energy system, there is to be no tolerance for “net”; only “zero emissions” will do. The official line is that zero emissions electricity is easy and cheap because it can be provided by the wind and sun.

The official line is wrong. As the build-out of these wind and solar generation systems continues to progress, it has become increasingly obvious that there will never be a zero-emissions electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun.

The reason should be obvious to everyone although, for some reason I cannot understand, it is not. The reason is that the intermittency of wind and solar generators means that they require full back-up from some other source. But the back-up source will by hypothesis be woefully underused and idle most of the time so long as most of the electricity comes from wind and sun. No back-up source can possibly be economical under these conditions, and therefore nobody will develop and deploy such a source.

This issue has already arisen in many places, as increasing generation from wind and sun has put natural gas power plants into back-up mode, running half or less of the time.

Now consider how things are supposed to proceed as we move to zero-emissions electricity. First, we build more and more wind and solar facilities. Second, we disallow natural gas or any other hydrocarbon fuel as the back-up. Now the back-up must itself be zero-emissions, and also dispatchable. In New York, our regulators have devised the acronym DEFR (“Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource”). Several possibilities have been suggested as the DEFR, the main ones being nuclear, hydrogen, and batteries. All possibilities for the DEFR that have been suggested share the characteristic that they don’t exist today at anything close to the scale that will be needed to fully back up an electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun. In other words, somebody will have to make a huge investment in one or more of these things on a grand scale if we are to have an electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun.

Given New York’s political environment, the regulators who have raised the need for the DEFR have generally buried their discussion of the subject deep in lengthy documents. Roger Caiazza, the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York, has done yeoman’s work in digging up and highlighting these items. Roger has created a “Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource Page” where he has accumulated the key information.

For example, we have the Scoping Plan of the Climate Action Council, which Roger describes as “the ‘official’ Hochul Administration strategy description of the Climate Act transition.” The document is some 800+ pages of text plus appendices. Somehow, Roger made it to page 49 of Appendix G, where he found this quote:

During a week with persistently low solar and wind generation, additional firm zero-carbon resources, beyond the contributions of existing nuclear, imports, and hydro, are needed to avoid a significant shortfall; Figure 34 demonstrates the system needs during this type of week. During the first day of this week, most of the short-duration battery storage is quickly depleted, and there are still several days in which wind and solar are not sufficient to meet demand. A zero-carbon firm resource becomes essential to maintaining system reliability during such instances. In the modeled pathways, the need for a firm zero-carbon resource is met with hydrogen-based resources; ultimately, this system need could be met by a number of different emerging technologies.

Here is the Figure 34 that they mention:

It may be a little hard to read, but the dark gray is what they label the “Zero-Carbon Firm Capacity Need.” The width of that dark gray section gets up to well over 20 GW during the illustrated low wind/sun week. For reference, New York State’s current average electricity usage is well less than 20 GW. Meanwhile, even during this low wind/sun week there are times when this DEFR is not called on at all, and other times when it is called on for only a few GW.

So without saying so in as many words, they are telling us that as part of a predominantly wind/sun system we will need to build DEFRs of capacity equal to or greater than our entire current average electricity usage. But if the electricity system is powered mainly by wind and sun, then by definition the DEFRs are only going to operate a minority of the time. We will have now built an entire fleet of new nuclear power plants capable of fulfilling our entire peak electricity demand. Or maybe it’s an entire fleet of new hydrogen power plants of same capacity, or an entire fleet of grid-scale batteries of same capacity, only to keep them idle most of the time.

These are extremely capital-intensive facilities, which can only hope to be economical if they are operated to as much of their capacity as possible. Instead the proposal is that will be intentionally kept idle most of the time.

Who is going to make the investment in these DEFRs that will be kept mostly idle. Certainly, no private investors will do it without enormous government subsidies.

And if we were to build an entire system of these DEFRs capable of supplying all of our electricity needs to back up worst-case wind/sun lulls, wouldn’t it make far more sense just to leave out the wind and solar generation and go with the DEFRs all the time? Of course it would.

At some point this is going to become too obvious to ignore.

Don't Be Fooled: Kamala Is A Zero-Carbon Green Radical

September 03, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

What is Kamala Harris’s position on any important policy issue? It’s not so easy to figure out. She studiously avoids interviews and reporters’ questions. Go to Harris’s official campaign website, and it’s almost entirely about raising money, without a word about what she stands for. Back when she was in the Senate (January 2017-January 2021), and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2019-20, she made many definitive statements on various subjects (all in accord with the radical left wing of the Democratic Party). Now, it’s silence. Unidentified campaign spokespeople imply that her previous positions are no longer operative; but what is the new position?

One example of this phenomenon that has received some attention this past week is Harris’s position on “fracking,” that is, drilling for oil and gas in solid rock formations via the hydraulic fracturing process. As reported in Forbes on August 30, back in 2019, at a CNN town hall, Harris stated rather unequivocally, “[T]here’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” But when, in her one interview since being nominated, CNN asked her on August 29 if she had changed her mind, she answered rather ambiguously “I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020,” and continued, saying that “we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” Forbes went looking for what Harris was referring to as what she made clear “on the debate stage in 2020,” and all they could find was a statement in the vice-presidential debate that Joe Biden “will not end fracking.” So is that Harris’s current position?

Not to minimize the importance of the issue of fracking, but frankly it’s a distraction. The point of the distraction is to divert your attention away from the more important information, which is that Harris is a zero-carbon green energy radical. We actually know in great detail where Harris stands on issues of energy policy, because she’s the Vice President in the Biden-Harris administration. There has never been a word indicating that Harris has objected to any of her administration’s energy policies, and indeed she has gone along with all of them. So we can just look to the policies of the existing administration, and we will know where Harris stands.

The summary is that the three-and-a-half years of the Biden-Harris administration have been an unrelenting war on the hydrocarbon fuel industries, featuring some hundreds of initiatives to restrict, hinder and delay production and use of energy from these sources. Accompanying this war has been a simultaneous creation of vast slush funds in the hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars to support useless “green” energy projects of well-connected subsidy farmers.

Let’s just have a review of a few of the more important energy-related regulatory initiatives of this administration:

• Just a few months ago, on April 25, the Biden-Harris EPA finalized four massive new rules designed to force the closure first of coal and then of natural gas power plants. I covered the subject in this post on May 1. The most important of the new rules is one going by the title “New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.” It’s over 1000 pages long, but the main idea is to set limits for carbon emissions from the plants that are sufficiently low, and decreasing, so that over time no fossil-fuel plants can comply and they all must close. The rules leave a theoretical out if a plant can implement a “carbon capture and storage” system, but those don’t exist today, and probably never will exist, in a form that can be deployed economically. (You may be thinking, didn’t the Supreme Court in 2022 in West Virginia v. EPA strike down the EPA rule that purported to force the closure of all fossil fuel power plants? Yes, they did. But the rules cited here are the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to achieve the same goal with a slightly different regulatory approach and dare the Supremes to strike it down again. As with student loan forgiveness, they thumb their nose at the Supreme Court.)
• On October 6, 2022 I had another post covering a Report then just out by a guy named Joseph Toomey, who attempted to compile a comprehensive list of all the Biden-Harris regulatory initiatives to that point seeking to suppress fossil fuels. The Report is 35 pages long, and basically just lists all of the initiatives with a brief description of what they are about. Here’s a partial list of Toomey’s section headings, from my blog post: Canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline; Halting Lease Sales in Alaska’s ANWR; Placing a Moratorium on Drilling on Federal Lands; Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord; Proposing Energy-Inhibiting Budgets; Canceling Oil and Gas Drilling Leases; Initiating Punitive Government Investigations; Restricting Permian Basin Drilling Using Ozone Rules; Imposing Stricter Methane Emissions Rules. There are plenty more.
• Here’s another one from Toomey, also from my October 6, 2022 post, covering a subject that you may not be familiar with: [T]wo sections [of Toomey’s Report] are devoted to what Toomey calls the “refinery squeeze” — the collection of regulations and incentives that have driven a drop in US refinery capacity by about 5% just since 2020. It seems that multiple refineries have been incentivized to switch from refining petroleum to “biofuels” (i.e., ethanol), which takes their capacity down by some 90%. And then, the process of building a new refinery to replace lost capacity has become almost impossible. Toomey: “Observers cite onerous environmental regulations and permitting red-tape hurdles as the primary reasons for avoiding new refinery permit applications.”
• Then there is the Biden-Harris regulatory plan to suppress and ultimately eliminate the internal combustion engine car. I reported on that in this blog post of June 8, 2024. Massive new regulations on emissions and fuel economy standards (from EPA and NHTSA respectively), proposed in April 2024, had just gone final at the time of my post. The effect of these new rules: “The agencies know full well that they are forcing a transition to EVs that customers do not want. How fast must the forced transition be? This piece from Atlas EV Hub from March 25 estimates that EPA’s Rule by itself will force EV sales to be up to 69% of new vehicle sales by 2032.”
• The Biden-Harris administration has also dragooned every federal agency, even those with no remotely-related jurisdiction, to get into the climate game. Famous examples include the SEC and the Fed. The SEC’s massive and burdensome “climate disclosure” regulation, proposed back in 2021 and finally issued in March of this year, seeks to drive companies out of the fossil fuel business by making the disclosure obligations too onerous to deal with. The rule is probably unlikely to survive in the courts, but clearly Kamala Harris supports it, so once again it tells you where she stands.

And those are just highlights among hundreds of similar initiatives.

And finally, don’t forget the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, otherwise known as hundreds of billions of dollars, or maybe it’s trillions (uncapped, so nobody knows) of tax credits and subsidies to the “green” energy industries like wind and solar and batteries. Did Harris support it? Actually, as you may remember, the vote in the Senate was a tie, and Harris stepped in to cast the tie-breaking vote. So in fact, she is personally responsible for this piece of legislation, undoubted the single biggest waste of money ever enacted by Congress — and that’s really saying something.

At every turn, Kamala Harris has done everything in her power to further expensive, wasteful, and useless green energy and suppression of hydrocarbon fuels. By her actions, it is clear that she is a zero-carbon green energy radical.

The Zero Emissions Grid Demonstration Project Follies

August 10, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

I claim credit for being the first person to demand a demonstration project to show how a zero emissions electrical grid is supposed to work, before trying to build such a thing for our entire population of three hundred million as involuntary guinea pigs.

How could it be that lots of others haven’t been demanding this for years? It’s like everyone has lost their minds. Before climate hysteria set in, the idea of attempting an engineering project as enormous as a zero emissions electrical grid for the United States, or even for one state, without first having a functioning demonstration project, would have been completely unthinkable. But under the powerful sway of the fear of climate armageddon, the need for a demonstration project to prove feasibility never seems to occur to anybody. And thus trillions of dollars are getting spent — wasted — on facilities that anyone with a brain can easily see will never come close to providing a zero emissions grid — although building these facilities will greatly drive up the cost of electricity to consumers.

Let me then welcome an important new voice to the still tiny chorus of those demanding a demonstration project. The new voice is Congresswoman Harriet Hageman of Wyoming. (Ms. Hageman is the woman who took out the former Wyoming Congresswoman, Liz Cheney, in a primary in 2022.). Here is a picture of Ms. Hageman from her website:

Ms. Hageman went public with her demand at a town hall held this past Tuesday, August 6, in Jackson, Wyoming. She proposed that the ultra-liberal town of Boulder, Colorado, step up as the potential guinea pig. Wyoming-based news source WyoFile had the story on August 7, with the headline “Hageman proposes a Boulder, Colorado, fossil-fuel-free experiment.” Excerpt:

[Hageman] proposed a pilot project that would strip Boulder, Colorado, a progressive enclave, of its fossil fuel infrastructure — all to be replaced with windmills and solar panels on the city’s open space. “The pilot project is, you take out all their gas stations,” she said to a crowd of about 70 people in the Teton County Library. “We take away all their internal combustion engines — cars. We take away all of their highways and streets, because that’s all oil-and-gas-produced.” . . . “They’ve been a no-growth city for decades,” Hageman said, “so they have a lot of open space around them. We fill out open space with windmills and solar panels, and we’ll see if we can actually run a city of 100,000 people [with] no fossil fuels whatsoever.”

According to WyoFile, Hageman’s remarks drew a response of “applause and laughter” from the supportive crowd in Jackson. However, the WyoFile reporter took the proposal to a City Councilman in Boulder named Mark Wallach, and asked for comment. Wallach was not amused. Here is Wallach’s reaction:

“One of the things that makes people so leery of politics and politicians is when people make ridiculous suggestions like that,” [Wallach] said in a telephone interview with WyoFile. “Nobody on the Boulder Council suggested we can do without all the fossil fuels at this point,” he said. “We make efforts to do better — to recognize that climate change is real and we do things we can do to combat it.”

Well, Mark, what am I missing? If the good people of Boulder are demanding that the whole country be force-marched to a zero emissions future, why shouldn’t they be willing to step up themselves and show that the goal is feasible to achieve? A simple zero-emissions-grid demonstration project is all that it will take.

And, if I might make a suggestion to Ms. Hageman, there is no need to be punitive about this. The claim of the green energy advocates is that electricity from wind and sun are cheaper than electricity from hydrocarbon fuels, and that electric cars and electric heat will be cheaper and better than the cars and heat we have now. So there is no need to forcibly take away the cars and the gas stations. Just have them build the magical zero-emissions grid and, if they can do it, they will have plenty of electricity to power everything, and the gas-powered cars and gas stations will rapidly fade away.

The problem is that it is not going to be possible to build a zero-emissions grid. However, the people of Boulder clearly think that it is going to be possible, and I am perfectly willing to be proved wrong.

But my confidence that I am right only increases with time. The closest thing that the world has to an attempted demonstration project of a zero emissions grid continues to fail spectacularly. That would be the Gorona del Viento project on El Hierro Island in Spain’s Canary Islands.

I have written about the El Hierro project many times, and will not go into the full background here. Suffice it to say that El Hierro was absolutely intended to be a demonstration of a zero emissions grid. A facility of five large wind turbines and a massive pumped-storage hydro backup facility (Gorona del Viento) was built and opened in 2014. The website of Gorona del Viento continues to proclaim on its opening page: “An island 100% renewable energy.” Hah!

It’s an island of about 10,000 people. Average electricity demand is 4-5 MW, and peak demand is about 7.5 MW. Roger Andrews did an independent analysis of the project for the Energy Matters website back in 2017. They built wind turbines with nameplate capacity of 11.5 MW on a mountainside in the trade-winds zone — about the most favorable wind conditions in the world. The hydro storage facility has a capacity of some 270 MWh, which is about 54 - 68 hours of average usage. (By contrast, New York governor Kathy Hochul has a big storage initiative to spend about $10 billion to build one hour of storage.). Doesn’t it sound like El Hierro has what they need to make this work?

Here are the latest statistics from Gorona del Viento, for the full year 2023. The percent of electricity for the island supplied by the wind/storage system for the full year was 35%. The other 65% came from the backup diesel generator. The best month for the wind/storage system was July, when it supplied 62% of the island’s electricity. But then there was October, when it only supplied 10%.

How could they be failing so completely with so much excess generation capacity and a huge storage facility that no one in the world can duplicate? You’ll have to ask them. I’m just reporting the statistics they put out themselves.

This is the best that anyone in the world can do, at least so far. Boulder: it’s up to you to show how this can be done!

The Energy Transition Ain't Happening: "Green" Economy In Retreat

August 01, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

As mentioned in my recent post from July 20, there are many data points gradually accumulating as to the lack of progress toward the so-called “green” economy. It has long been clear to people who think about it that the energy transition to “net zero” is a fantasy that will not occur. But the question remains of exactly how the mania will come to an end. Will the net zero fantasies of the climate cultists proceed at full speed until they crash into a wall of physical reality (e.g., blackouts)? Or instead will these fantasies gradually retreat as governments respond to voter pressure over costs and convenience, and as investors pull back as it becomes clear that projects cannot succeed financially?

A July 30 piece from John Miltimore of the American Institute for Economic Research supports the second alternative. The title is “Why the ‘Green Economy’ Is Suddenly in Retreat—in EU, US, and on Wall Street.” Meanwhile New York, at least for the moment, remains hell-bent on moving toward a full-on crash.

Miltimore’s piece collects data from multiple sources — notably the recent EU elections, EU regulatory changes, and actions of major U.S. investors. The most significant item in the piece relates to the withdrawal of several of the largest U.S. fund managers from something called Climate Action 100+. Climate Action 100+ describes itself as “an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take appropriate action on climate change in order to mitigate financial risk and to maximize the long-term value of assets.” 

But it seems that in recent months some of the biggest investors have decided to change strategy. J.P. Morgan Chase and State Street have “pulled all funds” from Climate Action 100+ commitments, while their even larger colleague Black Rock “reduced its holdings and scaled back its ties to the group.” Miltimore cites a New York Times article from February quantifying the various withdrawals:  

“All told, the moves amount to a nearly $14 trillion exit from an organization meant to marshal Wall Street’s clout to expand the climate agenda.”  

$14 trillion is a big number in anybody’s book.

On the European front, Miltimore cites the results of the EU parliamentary elections in June together with various regulatory roll-backs both before and after those elections. He (fairly) describes the parliamentary election results as a “greenlash” against various Green parties, and particularly notes the disastrous result for the German Greens:

“In Germany, the core country of the European green movement, support for the Greens plunged from 20.5 percent in 2019 to 12 percent.”  

He then collects a list of various climate-related regulatory initiatives that have either stalled or gotten rescinded in the EU, including: new restrictions on the use of pesticides; proposed bans on PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances); restrictions on new industrial emission, (which ended up getting relaxed on industries and tweaked to exclude cattle farms altogether); and a new deforestation law. Meanwhile, efforts in various countries to ban combustion vehicles, restrict heating of swimming pools, and require electric heating of homes have led to serious popular push-back (if not yet to rescission of the regulations).

My comment is that much of Europe — particularly the UK and Germany — has already gone past the point where further significant emissions reductions can be achieved at reasonable cost. Further efforts to increase the percentage of “renewables” in electricity generation will lead to rapidly accelerating price increases. A reckoning can only be avoided by politicians backing off existing mandates.

New York remains well behind Europe in actually implementing the energy transition fantasy. Our Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, mandating the transition, was enacted in 2019, with the first significant deadline (70% of electricity generation from “renewables”) set for 2030. In 2019, 2030 seemed so far away. Now in 2024 we are at a point where, to meet the deadline, most to all of the facilities needed to achieve the “70 by 30” target would have to be under construction; but almost none of them are.

My July 26 post featured a Report that I co-authored that warns New Yorkers not to convert to electric heat until the politicians show that they have a credible plan to provide the necessary electricity. Even as my co-authors and I were writing that Report, our Public Service Commission was putting together its own Report (the “Clean Energy Standard Biennial Review”) (Item 30 on this PSC Docket). Here is a summary from PBS. Key quote:

New York is expected to ramp up renewable energy production in the coming years, but it’s unlikely to meet a key climate target, according to an official review released last week. The state’s climate law, passed in 2019, mandates that New York obtain 70% of its electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar by 2030, which would significantly help curb the state’s climate-warming emissions. However, New York will likely have generated only enough renewable energy to meet around 45% of its electricity needs by the end of the decade, falling far short of its commitment, according to the review by the Department of Public Service and the state energy authority.

Even the 45% figure cited there is a fantasy, and consists mostly of a power plant at Niagara Falls that pre-existed all of this energy transition claptrap. So far all of our politicians are in a state of denial. The only slight concession to reality is some talk of maybe postponing the 2030 deadline a few years, such as to 2033. The fact is that they will be no closer to meeting the 70% target in 2033 than they will be in 2030, and in fact it will never be met because (as pointed out in my Report) they need “dispatchable emissions free resources” that don’t exist and won’t exist.

So at least for now New York is racing forward to try to crash into the wall of reality at full speed.