Germany Comes to Grips with Reality

Germany has long been a bugbear of ours at The Pipeline, because it has spent more than a decade pursuing the most utopian approach to the environment in the developed world. Dubbed die Energiewende (meaning "the energy transition/turning point"), this series of policies and regulations has been ordered toward getting that nation of 83 million people off of all traditional energy sources (oil, natural gas, even nuclear), and completely replacing them with so-called "renewables," and in a much shorter time span than any other similarly disposed country.

That being the case, you will imagine our surprise at seeing reports of the surprisingly hard line that Germany's ruling coalition government — which includes that nation's Green Party — has begun taking against environmentalist protestors. The center of this crackdown has been the tiny, uninhabited hamlet of Lützerath in western Germany, whose handful of structures had been scheduled to be demolished as a nearby coal mine expanded into the area. Unfortunately for all involved, before this plan could be executed Lützerath became a cause célèbre for environmental activists from Deutschland and beyond. A few thousand of them (though the exact numbers are disputed) occupied the area, refusing to leave for well over a year. According to a particularly melodramatic report in the New York Times,

The activists... prepared themselves to defend the half dozen houses and farmyards with their bodies. They barricaded themselves in a complex of barns and other structures. They erected and occupied tall watchtowers. They carved out a tunnel network. They nested in the branches of 100-year-old trees.

As you can imagine, the increasing media attention eventually attracted everyone's favorite environmentalist publicity hound:

(Thunberg was eventually arrested, though the arrest appears to have been staged for propaganda purposes.)

Eventually the authorities had enough and decided to move in. Here is more from the NY Times:

The fight for Lützerath was long, but the end, when it finally came, was quick. In a matter of days this past week, more than 1,000 police officers cleared out the hundreds of climate activists who had sworn to protect the small village, once home to 90 people but no church, which was scheduled to be razed as part of a sprawling open-pit coal mine in western Germany.... For years, environmental activists had hoped to forestall the fate of Lützerath — possibly the last of hundreds of villages in Germany to fall to open-pit mining since World War II. For a while, it seemed that the activists would succeed.

That report's lyrical tone, which makes it sound like they're describing the Fall of Berlin, is ridiculous, although typical of the Times' overwrought, dishonest ideological bent. But the above also serves to downplay the clashes between activists and the police, which became intense at times, judging by footage on the ground:

(The headline above reads: "Attack on the police. The so-called 'friendly' protest in Lützerath.")

These are shocking images, especially since just a short time ago the combatants in this conflict were natural allies. For years now the German government has been working on behalf of these activists to create artificial energy scarcity, with the expectation that wind and solar would step in and fill the void. That had the unintended (though foreseeable) consequence of increasing the country's addiction to Russian natural gas. When the war in Ukraine (and the still-unexplained sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines) forced them to go another direction, they had no choice but to lean on domestically produced (and carbon intensive) coal. Even the Green Party can see that they can't afford to give that up now.

Which is to say, they've been forced to accept the fact that they've painted themselves into a corner and now they're stuck. Perhaps this will teach them a lesson about the dangers of utopian thinking. But chances are, once the war ends and energy markets stabilize a bit they'll get right back to driving the country into the ground. And, as history shows, utopian thinking is what Germans do best, and most dangerously.

'Climate' Scam in Oz Goes from Bad to Worse

As a major producer and exporter of thermal coal and natural gas, with lots more to be tapped, Australia is well placed to ride out the forlorn pursuit of renewables. Instead, Australia’s governments fancifully see themselves leading the daring quest to save the planet. Accordingly, policies of uncommon futility and inanity ensue. Two prime examples came to malodourous fruition in the lead up to Christmas. Christmas gifts, if you will, for a population which richly deserves all that it gets having swallowed the climate scam hook, line and sinker.

The Energy Security Board (ESB), just one of a multiplicity of climate-change authorities, had an integral part in the derring-do. Alas, though full of activists, the ESB didn’t stay the course. Bizarrely, common sense won out. The ESB oversaw a scheme, called the “capacity mechanism,” intended to ease Australia through the transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar. The scheme calls for payments to energy providers in order that they might have capacity at the ready when renewables failed to deliver. Natural gas was very much in the mix, as you would expect, as also was coal for the time being. A detailed design of the scheme was to be delivered to federal and state governments in early 2023.

Spot the problem? The envisaged use of fossil fuels in the transition is not nearly pure enough for these clean-climate times. And, last August, the ESB was given a damn good telling off by pedigreed greens and lost its carriage of the capacity mechanism – sullied and shamed by its continued flirtation with coal and gas. Each state decided that it would do its own thing and that thing did not include “dirty” coal or gas.

No coal, please, we're Australian.

At this point, sane people might think that they're being gaslighted. Surely, a shortfall of wind and sun must be met with a flow of baseload power. Logically, that’s where gas-fired peaking plants might fill the breach. Apparently not. Pumped hydro is envisaged, though it is missing in action. Batteries are envisaged, though their effect is trivial in the scheme of things. Green hydrogen is envisaged, though it is pipedream. Finally, interstate power swaps are envisaged; based on massive overbuilding of not-yet-built wind and solar farms and thousands of not-yet-built kilometres of transmission infrastructure. And, still, what will happen during evenings of extensive wind droughts? Cold candlelit suppers ahead.

It’s senseless. But, best to remember, when it comes to climate policies, it’s never so bad that it can’t get worse. And so it is that Australia’s government, headed by Anthony Albanese of the far left of the left-wing Labor Party, recently had a well-worn idea which had proved popular among the apparatchiks in communist Eastern Europe.

Natural gas and coal prices have soared in recent times, as they have throughout the world. Consequently, the Australian Department of Treasury forecast that electricity prices would rise by 56 percent over the period to June 2025 and gas prices by 44 percent. What to do, when you’ve foolishly promised repeatedly that electricity prices would fall? Encourage new supplies of coal and gas? For example, give the go ahead to the Narrabri project which promises to deliver vast quantities of coal-seam gas to the domestic market. Certainly not. To wit, a spokesperson from Santos commenting on the continuing impasse:

Since 2012, Santos [Australia’s largest producer of natural gas] has spent more than $1.5 billion trying to get our Narrabri Gas Project approved and developed; a project that is 100 percent committed to the domestic gas market.

Heck, more dirty gas is needless when socialist economics has the answer. When prices rise too much for comfort impose price caps. Consequently, without meaningful consultation, the federal Government rushed through legislation before Christmas; titled, in true newspeak fashion, the Energy Price Relief Plan. This capped the price of gas at A$12 per gigajoule for one year with a permanent regime to ensure gas prices are set on “reasonable cost-plus basis.” Whatever that means in Newspeak.

Of course, the legislation also gives the government power to compel gas producers to supply gas at the capped price. Socialists have their playbook and know how nasty profiteering capitalists will try to wriggle out of supplying their products at below market value. Separately, the states of Queensland and New South Wales have agreed to cap the price of black coal to $125 per tonne and lose royalties; in exchange for lots of free federal money.

Role model for the future.

To show how far-gone things have gotten rotten down under, the head of Treasury Steven Kennedy supported the idea of price controls. No surprise that he was recognized in 2016 for outstanding public service in the area of climate-change policy. Climate activists have infiltrated every aspect of Australia’s public life.

Kevin Gallagher, CEO of Santos, described the legislation as a form of "Soviet-style nationalization.”

[It] will result in companies needing fiscal stability agreements with the government before new gas supply projects can take investment decisions in order to secure capital, just as would be the case if they were operating in Argentina, Venezuela or Nigeria.

Meg O'Neill, CEO of global oil and gas producer Woodside and chairman of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, made the point that price controls will lessen investment and drive supply out of the marketplace. I wonder where she got that strange idea. Probably from economics 101. In any event, it doesn’t seem to have yet penetrated the minds of the geniuses who form the Labor government’s brain trust. Woodside claimed that contractual talks to supply gas to twenty customers had been suspended. Shell made a similar point. Not surprising. How can supply contracts be finalized when no one knows what the regulated price will be in twelve months’ time?

Socialists wear mind-limiting blinkers. How else to arrive at simplistic solutions and think them sublime? Unseen effects of their superficial solutions, as the 19th-century French Economist Frédéric Bastiat put it, are studiously ignored. The rest of us are condemned to live them out. "Where did you put the heavy sweaters and candles Ma?"

Decolonize the Green Movement!

It doesn't take a lot of effort to find places where the Left's rhetoric and ideals fail to align with their real-world actions. Their years of pearl clutching about election denialism after making a celebrity of election denier Stacey Abrams and, more recently, selecting election denier Hakeem Jeffries to replace Nancy Pelosi as Democratic House Leader are examples which come immediately to mind.

But there are darker examples. For instance, if you've spent any time in the presence of Leftist academics over the past quarter century, you have likely observed their obsession with colonial imperialism, which they contend to be among the greatest evils ever perpetuated by man. Though the major western empires were dismembered over the course of the 20th century, the Left's fixation on imperialism is justified by the claim that that system has left indelible marks on both the imperialists and their former colonial subjects to this day. And yet, as Michael Schellenberg has pointed out, a form of imperialism is still alive and well...  and being practiced by prominent Left-leaning environmentalist governments:

The narrative is that imperialism is, by its very nature, exploitative, that it consisted of, in Shellenberger's words, "rich nations taking raw materials from poor nations and leaving behind poverty rather than development." While the historical reality might be more complicated than that presentation suggests, the modern day geo-political reality perfectly matches this critique. Keen-for-Green Germany is paying African nations not to use coal to help save the planet... and then using the coal itself.

Shellenberger goes on to argue that this is tantamount to bribing the "corrupt" leaders of poor nations to keep their countries poor, while publicly lying about what they're doing and why:

Sounds like some of the worst excesses of colonial imperialism.

Here's another example -- perhaps the only institution which is worse than imperialism in the Leftist mind is slavery. Now, slavery is a grave evil, and its extirpation in the wake of the Civil War is among the glories of our nation. (Of course Leftists hate when you point out that it is thanks to the Republican Party that this came about.) But, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the Civil War, and the ratification of the 14th Amendment, progressives insists on using it as a cudgel to batter every opponent, whether or not their ancestors had anything to do with slavery, and as a condemnation of the nation itself.

Historically, slavery was colorblind.

But its worth noting that slavery still exists in the world today, not just in failed states like Libya (thanks to Barack Obama and Hillary "We came, we saw, he died!" Clinton's decision to back the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi), but in places like the People's Republic of China. And yet, "progressives" love China, and openly argue it should be a model for the west. Moreover, China is the world leader in solar panel construction, and solar panels are central to the Left's vision of the future. Consequently, they have an incentive to look the other way.

And yet it is becoming increasingly clear how central slavery is to the production of solar panels. According to Andrew Follett,

In 2021, a shocking 42 percent of the world’s production of the kind of silicon used to manufacture solar panels took place in areas of China known to employ slave labor, and China’s dominance of the solar market is expected to continue to grow.... Slave labor is also used for the mining, smelting, and slicing of silicon into the wafers used in panels that convert sunlight into energy — processes for which China has over 95 percent of the existing global industrial capacity.

Amazingly, when Biden Administration "climate czar" John Kerry was asked about China's use of forced labor in the process of producing solar panels he replied that that was “not my lane.” The hypocrisy is not only astounding. It is also commonplace.

The 'Energy Transition' Will Be Delayed a Bit

Perhaps the most scandalous aspect of environmental ideology is that its religious fervor for the Malthusian apocalypse requires its high priests to ignore data and science. The actual monitoring data for core environmental problems such as air and water quality, deforestation, and other genuine problems show that most environmental problems are improving all around the world, most conspicuously in prosperous nations that have market economies, embrace technological innovation, and protect property rights and the rule of law.

Presenting these data, from credible sources as various as Human Progress, Our World in Data, or Environmental Progress, or figures such as Bjorn Lomborg or Matt Ridley (to name just two), sends environmentalists into a rage of denunciation. For environmentalists, good news is bad news, akin to depriving a fundamentalist fire-and-brimstone preacher of original sin.

This is true even of the grand-daddy of all environmental scares: "climate change." The latest official “consensus” scientific estimates of climate change have been backing away from the most dire climate disaster predictions of a decade ago, though the media never notice, and the relentless climate campaign won’t admit it.

Malthus: Doomed, I tell you, doomed.

It is not just more congenial, but essential, that environmentalism suppresses all data that does not support the urgency of their latest disaster scenarios. The most scandalous example came this week with news that BP (formerly British Petroleum) is weighing whether to discontinue its annual “Statistical Review of World Energy.” This fabulously useful report, which BP has published for 71 years, provides detailed trend data for every country in the world in downloadable spreadsheets, enabling analysts to conduct independent analysis easily, often noting findings that BP omits to highlight in its own write-up. Surprise: BP’s data turns out to be uncongenial to the renewable energy cheerleaders. Therein lies a tale.

Why would BP think of abandoning this well-regarded report, which can’t be a huge expense or labor for a multinational of its size and expertise? The Reuters report that broke this story hints at the problem:

The report has been seen by some BP executives as detrimental to the company's new direction, sources told Reuters... "Put simply, it (Statistical Review) is bad PR," one company source said. The company has in recent years also cut its ties with several oil and gas associations and has sought to raise its profile as a clean energy provider.

Why would a detailed, data-rich report on actual energy trends be “bad PR” for a major oil company? Back in 2000, BP formally rebranded its company initials to stand for “Beyond Petroleum,” accompanied with a $200 million ad campaign conceived by Ogilvy and Mather, featuring splashy public pledges to "go green" to fight climate change. In the immediate term this meant becoming predominantly a natural gas company and phasing out of oil exploration and production along with new investments in wind and solar power.

BP quietly abandoned the “Beyond Petroleum” rebranding after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 made a mockery of its virtue-signaling pretensions. It also quietly sold off its money-losing wind and solar power divisions, and suddenly returned to expanding oil and gas production.

But BP lately has returned to the fold of climate hysterics, and is once again pledging to become carbon-neutral by 2050 if not sooner, and a full partner in the “energy transition” that is the fever dream of the climate campaign. And that’s where the Statistical Review of World Energy becomes an inconvenience and PR problem: BP’s data show that the “energy transition” isn’t happening. While we are inundated with headlines and advocacy group celebrations of the rapid growth of “renewable energy,” the data show that hydrocarbon energy—especially coal—has been increasing more than renewable energy for the last decade.

Meanwhile, a mountain of energy lies right beneath your feet.

In 2021, BP’s figures show global coal use grew by 6.3 percent, while oil consumption increased 6.1 percent, and global greenhouse gas emissions rose 5.9 percent. Coal accounted for 51 percent of total new electricity generation around the world, and coal even grew in the U.S., after falling (irony alert!) during the Trump administration.

The data for 2022 (BP’s report comes out every year in June) are likely to be even more dismal for the greens, as the disruption of the world’s energy supply has exposed the green energy fantasy. Coal use everywhere is soaring. Right now Germany has a higher electricity carbon footprint than coal-heavy Poland, which is wisely resisted the romantic nonsense of the greens. No wonder the climate campaigners would like to see this bad news suppressed.

The return to energy reality the Ukrainian War has prompted merely sped up the inevitable consequences of green energy diktats by a decade. Suppressing the data demonstrating this reality isn’t going to change that. If BP dumps their annual report to appease their in-house climate campaigners, hopefully a more clear-headed energy company such as Liberty Energy will want to take it over.

When Your Enemy Threatens to Kill You, Believe Him

What more do you need to hear from the Rutabaga-in-Chief?

Also, Chump of the Year:

Sen. Joe Manchin Saturday demanded President Biden apologize for saying coal plants "all across America" will be shut down, in a scathing statement just days before crucial midterm elections.

"President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs," Manchin, D-W.Va., said. "Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden and instead believes he does not understand the need to have an all in energy policy that would keep our nation totally energy independent and secure."

Dear Rump Part of Virginia taken as a spoil of war from rebel slave state Virginia during the Civil War: think on your sins.

UPDATE: This statement from the White House circus janitors who have to clean up after Dementia Joe is priceless:

President Biden knows that the men and women of coal country built this nation:  they powered its steel mills and factories, kept its homes and schools and offices warm.  They made this the most productive and powerful nation on Earth.  He came to the White House to end years of big words but little action to help the coal-producing parts of our country.  Working closely with Senator Manchin, a tireless advocate for his state and the hard-working men and women who live there, President Biden has helped get this part of the country back to work:  the unemployment rate in West Virginia was 6.2% the last month before Joe Biden took office; now it is down to 4%.  The President’s plans are already bringing new energy and manufacturing jobs to the region, and in the years ahead, will continue to create new jobs with projects like hydrogen energy generation.  In fact, through the Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities, President Biden has already delivered more than $23 billion to energy communities across the country.

The President’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense.  The President was commenting on a fact of economics and technology:  as it has been from its earliest days as an energy superpower, America is once again in the midst of an energy transition.  Our goal as a nation is to combat climate change and increase our energy security by producing clean and efficient American energy.  Under President Biden, oil and natural gas production has increased, and we are on track to hit the highest production in our country’s history next year.  He is determined to make sure that this transition helps all Americans in all parts of the country, with more jobs and better opportunities; it’s a commitment he has advanced since Day One.  No one will be left behind.

White House to the American people: who are you going to believe, us or your lying ears?

 

The Greens' Cloud Cuckoo Land

And so into their fantasy world they go. Demolishing reliable coal-power stations and subsidizing intermittent sources of power. Bad enough that Western governments have swallowed the line that climate Armageddon is on the horizon. Worse, much worse, is what they’re doing about it. They seem unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. Two recent developments in Australia add to the overwhelming evidence that Western governments are living their deluisions. Of course, there are many more than two such developments. I’ve just picked two of them at random. The first concerns the Liddell coal power station in the Hunter region in the state of New South Wales (NSW).

Liddell is being closed down prematurely in April next year. Incidentally, Eraring, the largest power station in Australia (at 2.3GW), also in NSW, will close prematurely in 2025. The Australian Energy Market Operator expects more early closures. On cue, it’s been announced that the closure of Loy Yang, supplying 30 percent of the state of Victoria’s power, will be brought forward ten years to 2035. No odds are being offered on bets it will close earlier than that. It’s all part of the continuing shutdown of coal power stations in Australia. Meanwhile, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, et al, are still building them, and using heaps of Australian coal to power them. What to do? Weep.

Back to Liddell. It is to be replaced—for no good reason—by intermittent wind and solar. Intermittency; there’s the rub. Firming required. And, for the continuing avoidance of any doubt, to the extent of 100 percent. Envisaged to fill part of the gap is Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro. It’s way behind schedule, way above budget, and not nearly as effective as claimed.

Liddell on the chopping block: icky old energy.

Then, risibly, there are batteries. To illustrate, it’s claimed that the largest battery in Australia, the 450MWh Big Battery in Victoria, can power over one million dwellings for half an hour. There are 2.5 million dwellings in Victoria and, of course, commerce and industry besides. Powering the whole state would leave the Big Battery flat after about 5 minutes. And then, from somewhere, it has to be charged up again. Enough said. Finally, there is the effective, if partial, firming coming via a new 600MWh gas-powered plant to be built by Snowy Hydro Limited, near and named after the small town of Kurri Kurri in the Hunter region of NSW. Sense and realism at last you might think. Think again.

Initially, the Labor Party was against Kurri Kurri. Fossil fuel and all that. But now in government, with responsibility to keep the lights on, it’s come around. But not without the dreaming in tow. It insists that the gas plant must run on 30 percent green hydrogen from the outset, scheduled for December 2023, and on 100 percent by 2030 or sooner. Enter Paul Broad, the (now ex-) CEO of Snowy Hydro Limited. Let him tell it: "While hydrogen is a wonderful opportunity, it is many, many years away from being commercial."

Not what the Government wanted to hear. Green dream interrupted. Broad resigned in August. Wanted: new CEO willing to suspend reality, live in dreamland, and conjure up commercial quantities of green hydrogen.

The second development comes out of the state of Queensland. The Labor Party is the governing party in Queensland. It runs a green-obsessed government. No surprise there. Governments of all six Australian states and its two territories and the nation itself are green-obsessed; including those (in NSW and Tasmania) run by the pretend-center-right Liberal Party. In fact, there’s no difference to speak of. We don’t have the grand variety that Ron DeSantis and some of his fellow Republican governors (and Republican legislators) bring to the United States. And they say size doesn’t matter.

The Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk (locally pronounced as Pala-shay), announced her green dream under the heading of the “world’s biggest pumped hydro for Queensland,” on September 28. Some of its elements:

On the drawing board: clean green power!

Apropos coal. Snapshot, October 7, 6.15pm, coal power is supplying 78 percent of Queensland’s electricity; 5,588MW out of 7,201MW (natural gas 14 percent, hydro 4 percent, wind and solar 2.6 percent). In case she’s missed it, someone might remind the Premier that 2035 is only thirteen short years away. Rome wasn’t built in thirteen years. And neither are new dams, pumped hydro stations, green hydrogen plants, many square miles of wind and solar farms, and the accompanying transmission infrastructure. But she won’t listen. Her reality is in her head and her head is in the clouds:

This plan is about cheaper, cleaner and secure energy for Queenslanders…It is about turbo-charging new investment in new minerals, batteries and manufacturing…Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy…This plan makes Queensland the renewable energy capital of the world.

Queensland is only the third largest Australian state. Population 5.3 million. Yet, destined to become the renewable energy capital of the world? If you say so Ms. Palaszczuk. Clearly her (world domination) plan is delusional. Something the climate activists in the bureaucracy thought up. It’s a reverie with no practical possibility of being realized; at least the building part. It’s quick and easy to blow things up; like, say, coal power stations. And what then, I wonder?

Time to panic. Leap for the lifeboats. But where to head?  Maybe you speak Chinese. No green dreams there; just the realistic ambition of world domination, this one backed up by a two-million-man army and gunboats. Nothing green about that.

Which Came First? The Idiots or the Eggs?

I recently noticed a dwindled supply of eggs at the local supermarkets. Various reasons have been given. For instance, it’s claimed that hens lay fewer eggs in cold weather and, perplexingly, despite global warming, it’s been uncommonly cold on the range in south-eastern Australia. Put that together with a rising preference for free-range eggs and Bob’s your uncle, fewer eggs for sale. Maybe.

One of the miracles of capitalism is the way in which the pattern of demand is mirrored by the pattern of production and supply, day in and day out. No-one controls it. Trying wouldn’t work. It’s too complex; too ever-changing. Of course, what Hayek called the pretence of knowledge will forever persuade intelligent fools, like the Davos crowd, that it can be controlled and managed from on high. Point all you like to shortages and queues for the staples of life in command-and-control regimes. The fools are not for turning. Like the Lady, sans the sense.

Juxtapose capitalism and shortages of staples, e.g., eggs or infant formula in the U.S., and you know something has gone badly wrong. Perhaps hens do lay fewer eggs in colder weather, I’m insufficiently bucolic to know. But you can bet your life that when there are material shortages, you’ll be able to find government regulations and bureaucrats wielding them. In the case of eggs, the likely culprit is egregious Covid lockdowns, which led to hens being culled when restaurants and cafes were prevented from opening and, thus, buying eggs.

The cause of all our misfortune.

Governments and their apparatchiks apparently think they can abruptly stop economic life and then just turn it back on again. Having insufficient hubris is not one of their shortcomings. And so it is that they believe they can defy physics and market forces and produce 24x7 base-load power using wind and solar as the principal sources. You might demur. Surely shortages and blackouts will occur with increasing frequency and length? Not in their modelling world, they don’t.

The Australian government is legislating a reduction in CO2 emissions by 43 percent (versus 2005) by 2030. Numbers of countries have put their climate targets into law. Canada, the U.K., Denmark, among others. Mostly it’s a net-zero-by-2050 law. The Australian law has the advantage of reaching its denouement when most of us are still alive. I dare say some of us have only an academic interest in what governments promise to do by 2050.

The laws are exercises in Canutism with a hint of Descartes. We say, therefore it shall be. But will it? Reducing emissions of CO2, and now, fashionably, nitrous oxide by extolling the virtues of bugs over beef, will be achieved only by replacing efficient fossil fuels with unreliable renewable energy and by switching our culinary tastes towards entomophagy. Leaving aside the delights of locust-eating, energy deprivation lies ahead and not too far ahead.

Good for the planet, too.

Coal-power capacity is being turned off in Australia. Twelve power stations have closed in the last ten years; none commissioned. Sixteen power stations with a total capacity of 23GW remain in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Incidentally, no surprise, China has approximately 1,064GW of coal power. Australia’s NEM times 46 and rising.

Liddell coal-power station at 1.5GW will be turned off next year. Eraring at 2.8GW in 2025. That will leave less than 19GW in the NEM. And, we are told by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to expect more early closures. Why? The fleet is aging, in poor repair, and facing crippling fair-weather competition from wind and solar. Apparently, intermittent renewables, short-life batteries, yet-to-be-built pumped hydro and expensive natural gas will fill the breach. Hypothetical Hydrogen in due course.

Recent flooding of mines in northern New South Wales caused a shortage of coal. Natural gas prices spiked. AEMO stepped in to regulate gas prices and to temporarily suspend the market for wholesale electricity. Governments, federal and state, went in a trice from demonising coal to unabashedly calling for more, as I covered in a previous Pipeline piece. You will notice that blackouts and threatened blackouts, wherever occurring, are blamed on untoward weather or external events.

Uncommonly cold weather in Texas icing up turbines. Extremely hot weather in California, home to Death Valley. Then there’s the Ukraine and Putin’s energy price hikes. These are mere harbingers of what lies ahead as coal is driven from the system and onerous legal obstacles impede or prevent the development of new oil and natural-gas projects. A tipping point is on the horizon in Australia and no doubt elsewhere. We won’t have to wait until 2030.

Oops.

Coal power can’t survive for much longer. Can’t compete with wind and solar on windy sunny days. And legislating emission targets, ineffective in itself, will make it even harder for new oil or gas projects to survive lawfare. Whether any new project is consistent with the legislated target for emissions will become subject to evolving common law. Activist lawyers will have a field day. Woke judges will delight in having an iron-clad rationale for siding with well-organised, well-funded, indefatigable green litigants. Game over; except, that is, for the realities of life. Apropos a warning from my friend Rafe Champion, who closely monitors these things, writing in the Spectator:

If we lose more fossil fuel capacity from the grid, Australia’s power supply will fail every time there is not enough wind or solar power available to meet the peak demands at breakfast and dinnertime. The records show quite clearly that these renewable energy droughts happen often and there will not be enough power.

Envision an upward sloping line depicting demand for electricity through time and a downward sloping line depicting declining capacity to deliver 24x7 base-load power sourced from fossil fuels. Once the lines cross, the pain begins. Windless days and sunless nights will quickly drain the batteries flat and reveal a yawning gap.

Capitalism is akin to a living system; defying entropy by taking in complex inputs; constantly renewing itself, growing and developing. It’s resilient. But as with natural living systems, like us, for example, it needs energy. Deprive it of energy and it becomes listless, malnourished, dead eventually.

At one level it’s inexplicable that nearly all governments and their apparatchiks, believe they can starve capitalism of affordable and reliable energy and yet will it continue to thrive. However, it’s explicable if you inhabit a hypothetical world, as they do, in which modelling prevails. Modelling; configured and constrained to show how it will be done, not whether it can be done.

Another Big Win: the Court Clips Regulatory State's Claws

On its last day of the current session the Supreme Court by a 6-3 majority finally clipped the talons of the Environmental Protection Agency, denying the agency power to issue broad regulations regarding "climate change." In the process, the Court sent a warning shot to the administrative state and Congress: legislation on broad matters (“major questions”) must come from the legislative branch (Congress), not from the executive branch via "regulation." The decision upends decades of government rule by D.C. bureaucrats, a practice set in operation by Franklin D. Roosevelt who created and empowered some 70 offices and agencies under presidential control. The EPA was established by Richard Nixon in 1970.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that federal regulators exceeded their authority in seeking to limit emissions from coal plants in a decision that sharply curtails the executive branch’s authority to make policy actions on a range of issues without congressional direction. In a blockbuster 6-3 decision penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped when it devised the Obama-era regulatory scheme, known as the Clean Power Plan. The plan had been challenged by West Virginia and others.

The court said that when federal agencies issue regulations with sweeping economic and political consequences—in this case, rules to address climate change—the regulations are presumptively invalid unless Congress has specifically authorized the action.

The case, which must certainly be electrifying the D.C. poohbahs, is West Virginia, et al v. EPA et al. It is a clear threat of a continuing unraveling of the administrative state. How big a deal is this? Far bigger than the earlier decision on abortion (Dobbs v. Jackson), which simply returned the power to regulate abortion to the states. This decision, however, does something arguably even more important to our democracy: it forces Congress to start taking its job seriously again.

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The case began six years ago and has continued through a series of shifts occasioned by a change in presidents, traveled upward to the Supreme Court following a number of court proceedings ,and clarified the capacity of affected parties to sue in the face of indefinite suspension of the regulation to which they object.  The issue was first joined when the Obama administration's EPA issued a plan for reducing carbon dioxide from power plants. Under this "Clean Power Plan," plants would get credits for generating more power from lower-emitting sources. A coalition made up of states and coal companies sued on the ground that the Clean Air Act, the purported authorization for these regulations, gave the EPA only authority to restrict pollution at steam-generating coal power plants, not to require power companies to adopt the government's choices of fuel.

Not so tough anymore.

The Supreme Court blocked enforcement of that rule. Then President Trump changed the rules. Under his administration EPA could only regulate emissions from individual coal-fired steam plants (the Affordable Clean Energy Rule). This shift was challenged by a different coalition made up of environmental groups. The new rules were struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, leaving the area open for the Biden administration to act.

It was feared the new administration would simply resurrect the earlier Obama approach and require a shift to so-called "renewables." As you might expect, leaving such matters to administrative agencies creates a kind of legal roller coaster, the very sort of thing impossible to contend with in industries that require extensive planning and tremendous capital outlays. Such a fear prompted this case. The West Virginia-led coalition contended that the EPA was seeking to dictate “the big picture of how the nation generates its electricity.” Which was, of course, true.

Like the abortion ruling in Dobbs, this decision is a return to federalism. In Dobbs the power to regulate abortions was returned to the states. In this case the power to regulate power plant fuel is returned to Congress. Imagine congressional debates and action now, in an era when "climate change" polls poorly, and will continue to do so because the costs—the price of gas, home heating, all transported goods—continue to rise as a direct result of  the energy constraints of this fantasy. The responsibility for such nonsense and the pain consumers endure would be squarely on them.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, doesn’t have to imagine.  He knows this is a disaster for his party. With a paper-thin majority in both houses (one currently in jeopardy in the tied Senate as senator Patrick Leahy currently is sidelined with a broken hip), a predicted red wave in November, and the country already in a recession, passage of a law to  curb inexpensive energy in order to meet a posited "climate emergency" is not likely.

Pelosi and Schumer: over a barrel.

Politico reports:" Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that 'just like last week’s dangerously misguided and abhorrent decisions on gun safety and abortion, the extremist MAGA Court’s ruling today in West Virginia v. EPA will cause more needless deaths — in this instance because of more pollution that will exacerbate the climate crisis and make our air and water less clean and safe.'" It's more likely, in my opinion, that the decision will lead to fewer opportunities for graft and the deaths of some Democratic careers. As professor  Jonathan Turley tweets,  

It is a curious sight of a congressional leader denouncing a decision that prevents the circumvention of Congress. It is a virtual statement of self-loathing like a player complaining of being sent back into the game by the coach... This is not the first time that Democrats have called for a president to usurp the authority of their own branch. It undermines the faith held by figures like Madison that ambition would combat ambition in the protection of the separation of powers.

Of course, in reality they are not complaining that they’ve been given more power. They know their side is not in a position to deliver what its green base demands. How far from reality is the Democrat saber rattling on this issue? This far according to Politico:

 Congressional Democrats whose efforts to pass legislation to fight climate change have been blocked for years — both by Republicans and, more recently, by Democrats’ own troubles unifying their razor-thin Senate majority — said their party must take action in response to the Supreme Court’s decision. However, the party has so far failed to garner the 50 votes in the Senate needed to move climate legislation amid resistance from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, and supporters see the next few weeks as the last chance to pass a measure.

It's not just the EPA which should be drawing in its belt. This is a significant reduction in the power and grasp of the administrative state. Professor Jonathan Adler notes: "This is also a warning for other federal agencies, including FERC and the SEC. It makes clear that if the federal government is going to take meaningful action to mitigate the threat of climate change (as it should) that action will have to come from Congress."

The Democrats can see the political chessboard as clearly as can I, that’s why you won’t see any debate on "climate change" legislation this year. Instead they’ll be demagoguing about packing the Supreme Court, something even their idol FDR was unable to pull off. Anything to avoid accepting public accountability, and thus scrutiny, for their actions.

China Upping Its Use of Coal

The joke's on you, suckers: as the United States and Europe struggle with energy shortages because they've restricted the use and production of conventional fuels, China ups its use of coal, doubtless laughing at the western idiots who bought the disinformational "climate change" hoax.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told representatives from its biggest coal-producing region, Inner Mongolia, that China "could not part from reality" and that it is "rich in coal, poor in oil and short of gas," Reuters reported.

China will make full use of coal as a vital part of its energy strategy, leaders and officials said during the nation's annual gathering of parliament this week, as it bids to balance economic stability with its longer-term climate goals. Following a speech by President Xi Jinping reiterating the importance of coal, delegates from across the country called for more investment in coal technology and new policies to shore up profits for coal enterprises.

Xi told a National People's Congress delegation from the top coal-producing region of Inner Mongolia that China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, was "rich in coal, poor in oil and short of gas" and "could not part from reality".

Reason, and economic reality, and "energy security" will overcome "green energy" fantasies every time. "Climate change" can wait indefinitely.

China to World: Take Your 'Global Warming' and Shove It

Climate change? What climate change? That's the attitude of China, a country not bent on national suicide, when it comes to the choice between reducing its "carbon footprint" -- an imaginary concept, but let that pass for now -- and keeping its people warm and its industries humming:

China, under fire for approving new coal power stations as other countries try to curb greenhouse gases, has completed the first 1,000-megawatt unit of the Shanghaimiao plant, the biggest of its kind under construction in the country. Its operator, the Guodian Power Shanghaimiao Corporation, a subsidiary of the central government-run China Energy Investment Corporation, said on Tuesday that the plant's technology was the world's most efficient, with the lowest rates of coal and water consumption.

Located in Ordos in the coal-rich northwestern region of Inner Mongolia, the plant will eventually have four generating units, and is designed to deliver power to the eastern coastal Shandong province via a long-distance ultra-high voltage grid. China is responsible for more than half of global coal-fired power generation and is expected to see a 9% year-on-year increase in 2021, an International Energy Agency report published this month said.

Good for China. As Covid-19 hysteria begins to fade in the West (which actually is hell-bent on suicide), look for the phantom menace of "climate change" to return to the Davos front-burner as the globalist totalitarians continue their war on their own nations. Because the Chinese don't care:

Beijing has pledged to start reducing coal consumption, but will do so only after 2025, giving developers considerable leeway to raise capacity further in the coming four years. A report published this month by researchers at China's State Grid Corporation said energy security concerns mean the country is likely to build as much as 150 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity over the 2021-2025 period, bringing the total to 1,230 GW.

In other words, kiss our carbon footprint, bite our emissions on the bum, and take your "global warning" and shove it. Amazing what totalitarian countries can get away with.