Gazprom significantly boosts natural gas supplies abroad in 2021
RT | March 15, 2021
Russian energy major Gazprom’s gas exports to non-CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries increased by 28.3% since the beginning of the year to 42.9 billion cubic meters, the company said.
That is “9.5 billion cubic meters more than in the first 2.5 months of last year,” according to Gazprom.
The company pointed out that the high demand for gas was due to the cold start of the calendar spring this year. “We continue to provide gas to domestic and foreign consumers on a full-scale basis,” it said.
Gazprom’s supplies particularly rose in Turkey (by 80.5%), Romania (77.7%), Finland (74.2%), Serbia (61.5%) and Bulgaria (52.1%). Gas deliveries to Germany and Greece also saw a boost of 28.7% and 24.5%, respectively.
The company said that in the first two weeks of this month, gas supplies to Turkey increased 11.5 times compared with the same period last year. Exports to China via the Power of Siberia mega gas pipeline regularly exceed Gazprom’s daily contractual obligations. The actual volume of supplies from March 1 to March 15 was 3.2 times more than in the same period of 2020, it said.
Distorting the Levelized Cost of Electricity
By Don Dears | February 16, 2021
The levelized cost of electricity was, for decades, an honest method for comparing the cost of electricity generated by different methods.
With the advent of wind and solar generation, there has been a continuing effort to demonstrate they are competitive with coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants.
Because the cost of electricity, based on LCOE calculations, for wind and solar were always higher than the cost of electricity from coal, natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) and nuclear power plants, efforts were made to adjust the LCOEs so that wind and solar would seem to be competitive.
It should be noted that the media would seize and promote any LCOE number, no matter how contrived, purporting to show that wind and solar were competitive with traditional methods for generating electricity.
An early attempt at “adjusting” LCOEs was done by Lazard.
A previous PowerForUSA article, Misleading Costs for Wind and Solar, showed how Lazard used contrived capacity factors (CF) to calculate LCOEs favorable to wind and solar.
The media, even the Wall Street Journal, fixated on these manufactured LCOEs to report that wind and solar were competitive with traditional methods for generating electricity.
Few, if any, reporters looked into how these LCOEs were calculated.
We now have history repeating itself.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) published a joint report on December 9, 2020, showing that LCOEs for wind and solar were competitive with traditional methods for generating electricity.
In its conclusion, the report said:
“Renewable energy costs have continued to decrease in recent years and their costs are now competitive, in LCOE terms, with dispatchable fossil fuel-based electricity generation in many countries.”
But the truth is buried in the report, where it said:
“With the assumed moderate emission costs of USD 30/tCO2, their costs are now competitive…”
In other words, wind and solar are competitive if fossil fuel power plants are penalized by using a $30 per ton charge for CO2 emissions.
The IEA and NEA report is misleading in at least two respects.
- First, its stated conclusion omits the fact that fossil fuel power plants are penalized by including a charge of $30/ton of CO2 in the LCOE calculation.
- Second, the tables in the report omit references that LCOEs for NGCC and coal-fired power plants include a $30 charge for CO2 emissions.
The end result is that reporters, and the media in general, can report that wind and solar are competitive with fossil fuel power plants … which is patently misleading.
Even so, none of the purported lower cost calculations ever account for the fact that wind and solar require backup or storage, which adds to their costs. These real costs are never included in LCOE calculations.
It could be concluded that the IEA and NEA are intentionally misleading the public by burying the facts deep in their report, and omitting them from the report’s conclusion.
The truth remains: Wind and solar are more expensive than coal-fired and natural gas power plants for generating electricity.
They are also unreliable and can’t provide electricity when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. Freezing temperatures and snow can result in blackouts.
Nicaraguan Coffee Farmers Are Thriving, Contrary To Claims
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 8, 2021
You would think that a publication calling itself Christian would actually place a premium on telling the truth. Sadly it is only propaganda that matters to the Christian Science Monitor :
Jinotega, Nicaragua
Maria Gonzalez knows that growing coffee in Nicaragua’s northern mountains – as she has done since she was a little girl – gets harder and harder each year.
Rising temperatures are spoiling harvests when berries ripen too fast and a coffee leaf disease wiped out about half of the region’s crop between 2012 and 2014, killing most of Ms. Gonzalez’s plants.
Just as her new plants were starting to flourish, whipping winds and torrential rains from hurricanes Eta and Iota last November uprooted the bushes and shook the unripe berries to the ground.
With an initial hard few years now stretching into a decade, coffee farmers like Ms. Gonzalez face a tough decision: stay loyal to their coffee crop or find a new way to survive.
“I’m experimenting with a lot of things because if I see that one is doing better, I’ll stick with that,” she said. “And if not, we’ll be there fighting for our coffee.”
A coffee picker carries sacks of coffee cherries at a plantation in the Nogales farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua January 7, 2016.
Soaring temperatures in Central America due to climate change are forcing farmers to pull up coffee trees and replace them with cocoa, spurring a revival in the cultivation of a crop once so essential to the region’s economy.
This article could hardly be further from the truth.
Coffee production in Nicaragua has been rocketing in recent years, and is double what it was a couple of decades ago:
Nicaragua Coffee Production 1961-2019
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
Of course, there are inevitably years when harvests are poor, but the decline in output between 2012 and 2014 was no greater than many other years since 1961.
It is estimated that harvest losses from the two hurricanes, which frequently hit Nicaragua, will be between 10% and 15%., taking output back to 2017 levels. Again, drops of this magnitude are commonplace in Nicaragua.
And far from the Jinotega region being particularly vulnerable as claimed, it is recognised as the best in a country noted for the quality of its coffee:
https://enjoyjava.com/nicaraguan-coffee/#:~:text=%20Here%20are%20the%20major%20coffee-producing%20regions%2C%20as,fruity%20notes%20and%20expected%20flavor%20profile…%20More%20
The simple fact is that coffee plantations are thriving in Nicaragua.
Shame on the Christian Science Monitor for peddling lies.
For all its international posturing and boasting, the US can’t even take care of its citizens
By Helen Buyniski | RT | March 3, 2021
Though marketed as ‘the shining city on the hill’ envied by all other nations, America is rapidly proving to its own inhabitants and the world that not only can it not keep its own people safe – it can barely keep them alive.
Between the Covid-19 pandemic and the disastrous economic fallout engendered by government responses to that outbreak, the US has proven itself shockingly incapable of actually functioning in any way its peers might consider “normal.” Whether it’s keeping the lights on in American households, providing healthcare that cures rather than kills, educating children, or merely standing out of the way while residents try to build a life for themselves, Washington has demonstrated a profound, almost malignant ineptitude at the simplest tasks, so much that one might ask if it actually wants to perform them at all.
Dozens of Texas residents perished amid the massive snowstorm that seized the state last month. The storm knocked out the electric grid and left over 4 million residents with neither heat nor light. The state’s electricity vendors added insult to injury by slapping customers with absurdly high electric bills (some over $10,000) as the utility’s money-grubbing equivalent of “surge pricing” kicked in – all in a state where energy can literally be pulled out of the ground.
Texas is only one state, though – surely the rest of the country can’t be so horrifically incompetent when it comes to something as basic as electricity? But oh no, out West, there’s always California bidding to fail bigger and better. The Golden State’s own power supplier PSE&G was sued for starting the wildfires that destroyed entire neighborhoods in 2017 and 2018. Indeed, PSE&G has been blamed for more than 1,500 fires since 2014 alone and is in the process of declaring bankruptcy after being sued by over 70,000 of its victims, including the entire city of Paradise. It’s so inept when it comes to not burning down the state that for years it has shut off power – often for extended periods – during the summer, lest its equipment trigger still more wildfires.
OK, but surely such travesties are rare? It’s not like the US government just goes around displacing people from their land deliberately? Yet Georgia man Tim Leslie is living through that Kafkaesque nightmare of his own right now after having bought a plot of land in Polk County to homestead and raise animals with his family. Because they haven’t built their house yet, they’re (legally) living out of a trailer on that land – or were, until the police forced them to abandon their animals and move to a proper RV park. It’s difficult to imagine a community so free of crime that it wouldn’t have benefited from the cops finding something else to do during the hours spent harassing the Leslie family, but victimizing law-abiding citizens is much easier than going after criminals.
Policing – once the pride and joy of the world’s largest prison state – has itself deteriorated rapidly. New York City endured a major surge in crime thanks to the shutdown, while cops who might have been able to stop it were ignominiously tasked with guarding Mayor Bill de Blasio’s virtue-signaling “Black Lives Matter” mural or (somewhat schizophrenically) detailed to clobber the odd BLM protester. The NYPD even punished its own officers for public display of Trump fandom while real crimes went ignored and unpunished. (New York also released hundreds of supposedly low-level convicts last year “because Covid,” only for the public to learn they were guilty of much more serious offenses, with many ending up right back in the clink after committing further crimes. It’s an ominous state of affairs indeed for the country with the most prison inmates per capita in the world, and those numbers are almost guaranteed to further explode thanks to law enforcement’s new fixation on “domestic terrorists” – a group defined so broadly as to include anyone who’s expressed opinions outside the ever-narrowing mainstream.
Maybe the US is just focusing its efforts on combating the Covid-19 pandemic? Americans may spend more on healthcare than any other first-world country, but it wasn’t getting much for its money even before Covid. When the pandemic hit, all hell broke loose in many states, and when hospitals were barred from seeing ‘normal’ patients for lucrative procedures, they instead turned to ventilating anything that moved in order to get reimbursed by the government – even though 88 percent of those intubated died. Governors didn’t beg for lifesaving treatments – indeed, they banned some. Instead, they pleaded for ventilators, all while shunting Covid-infected patients into nursing homes where they would go on to decimate the helpless population.
If this is how the US treats its sick, what about its children? Despite some scientists confirming vanishingly few kids are falling ill, major teachers’ unions refuse to return to the classroom, never mind how poorly most children have been shown to learn over a distance model. In some areas, the shutdown of schools revealed a problem the US had been covering up for a while – the need to feed the millions of destitute children who rely on their schools not just for learning, but for free meals their families can’t afford. At the same time, these kids’ parents spent hours lined up in the cold for free groceries from the nearest food bank, and millions remain out of work or severely underemployed, many dangling on the verge of eviction. Sorely-needed stimulus checks never arrived for many, whose only recourse now is to claim the check on their taxes in the hope of maybe getting reimbursed later.
Most of these problems could be solved with some smart policies and a fraction of the infusion of cash that has already gone out to large corporations. But there’s wars to fight, and no evidence the ruling class wants its domestic problems fixed anyway. Instead, it seems to take sadistic pleasure in gaslighting Americans to within an inch of their sanity, insisting the rest of the world wants to be just like us. After all, it’s not like we can fly there to check.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram
IMPERIAL WASTE
By Paul Robinson | IRRUSSIANALITY | March 3, 2021
Imperialism is big gigantic waste of money. Let’s start with that.
A couple of news items caught my attention this week that illustrate this point, but before getting on to them, we first need to make a bit of a detour and try to determine imperialism’s roots.
It’s harder than it might seem. For instance, historians have a real problem explaining late nineteenth century imperialism, in which European powers conquered large parts of the globe, most notably in Africa. All sorts of explanations have been generated, but few stand up to a lot of scrutiny.
Particularly implausible are the theories of socialist thinkers, the most famous of which is Lenin’s Imperialism: The Last State of Capitalism. The socialists’ idea was that capitalism generates lots of surplus capital that it can’t get rid of because it is suppressing the wages of its own workers and so denying itself investment opportunities at home. Instead, capitalism exports its surplus, for which it needs colonies – thus imperialism.
The problem was that, like a lot of Lenin’s stuff, the theory was total hogwash. First, capitalist economies had no shortage of investment opportunities at home; and second, they didn’t need colonies to invest abroad. The British, for instance, invested far, far more in Latin America, which they never conquered, than in Africa, which they did.
Furthermore, imperialism was, generally speaking, loss-making. Colonies had to be defended and administered, but they tended to be economically undeveloped, and so didn’t generate much revenue. There was a reason why the Brits were so happy to let the Canadians become self-governing – they were fed up having to pay for a frozen piece of wasteland that only produced some fur and lumber.
So, imperialism doesn’t make a lot of sense from the point of view of the national interest, broadly defined. But it does make sense to certain minority interests within an imperial society. There are medals and promotions to be won by the military; there are contracts for the military industrial complex; and there’s also money to be made by all sorts of other entrepreneurs willing to hang on the imperialists’ coattails. If these people and groups have outsized political influence – through control of the media, financial support to politicians, or whatever – they can distort politicians’ and even the entire population’s understanding of the national interest. And thus the nation gets dragged into foreign endeavours that enrich and empower a few but do nothing at all for the people as a whole.
Which brings me on to this week’s new stories, both of which involve staggering waste of government money on military and imperial adventures.
The first story concerns the Canadian navy’s program to build a new generation of warships. This was originally budgeted as costing $14 billion. Now the parliamentary budget officer has announced that the cost has leapt to a mind-blowing $77 billion, and that the total could go up even more if the project experiences further delays (which, let’s face it, is quite likely).
Going over-budget is hardly unusual in the world of defence procurement, but a leap from $14 to $77 billion is more than a bit off the charts. Imagine what you could do with $77 billion. Apart from putting it back in taxpayer’s pockets, think of what you could do for healthcare, education, or the condition of the country’s indigenous people, many of whom don’t even have access to drinkable water. And then think of what benefits you’re going to get from $77 billion worth of warships. Or rather, think of how you would suffer if you didn’t have those ships. Would anyone invade Canada? Would the world collapse into chaos? Would any of you not directly involved in building or manning them even notice??? No, no, and no.
This is a scandalous and appalling waste of the nation’s wealth. Yet it’s passed almost unnoticed. We live in a world of pandemic economics, in which money appears to grow on trees, budget deficits have ballooned to simply incomprehensible proportions, and the loss of $70-odd billion just slips by without causing so much as a blink of an eye. Clearly, something isn’t right.
And then there’s story number two. This is the latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a person whose work I have mentioned many times before. SIGAR audits the money spent by the United States in Afghanistan, and it’s a litany of waste and corruption on a scale that … well, I’ve already used the word mindblowing, so I won’t say that it blows the mind, but you get the point, it involves a lot, a real, real lot, of money flushed down the toilet of Afghanistan for no obvious benefit.
Anyway, SIGAR’s latest report, which came to me in an email, says the following:
–This report is the result of a congressional request of SIGAR to summarize all capital assets in Afghanistan paid for by U.S. agencies that SIGAR has found in its prior work to be unused, not used for their intended purposes, deteriorated or destroyed.
— The capital assets reviewed for this report were funded by DOD, USAID, OPIC, and the State Department to build schools, prisons, a hotel, hospitals, roads, bridges, and Afghan military facilities.
— Of the nearly $7.8 billion in capital assets reviewed in its prior reports, SIGAR identified about $2.4 billion in assets that were unused or abandoned, had not been used for their intended purposes, had deteriorated, or were destroyed.
— By contrast, SIGAR found that more than $1.2 billion out of the $7.8 billion in assets were being used as intended, and only $343.2 million out of the $7.8 billion in assets were maintained in good condition.
— Most of the capital assets not used properly or in disrepair or abandoned are directly related to U.S. agencies not considering whether the Afghans wanted or needed the facilities, or whether the Afghan government had the financial ability and technical means to sustain them.
— This waste of taxpayer dollars occurred despite multiple laws stating that U.S. agencies should not construct or procure capital assets until they can show that the benefiting country has the financial and technical resources, and capability to use and maintain those assets effectively.
Quote:
— “SIGAR’s work reveals a pattern of U.S. agencies pouring too much money, too quickly, into a country too small to absorb it,” said Special Inspector General John F. Sopko. “The fact that so many capital assets wound up not used, deteriorated or abandoned should have been a major cause of concern for the agencies financing these projects. The lesson of all of this is two-fold. If the United States is going to pay for reconstruction or development in Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world, first make certain the recipient wants it, needs it and can sustain it. Secondly, make certain before you spend the money there is proper oversight to prevent this type of waste.”
I’m a great fan of SIGAR, but there’s something about his work that really frustrates me. He’s been saying this stuff for years, but nothing ever changes. The money keeps flowing, and keeps getting squandered. There should be ‘proper oversight’ SIGAR says, but surely by now he’s got to have woken up to the fact that it’s not going to happen. It’s like all he can say is, ‘do all this stuff better’, but can never bring himself to say, ‘Stop doing it! It’s a gigantic boondoogle.’
To be fair, that’s not an auditor’s job, and I guess that he can’t go beyond his legal remit. But you see what I’m saying. This isn’t something you can solve by introducing better processes. It’s rotten to the core.
Unfortunately, it continues, and continues, and continues. And so it is that our profligate military and imperial adventures impoverish us all, while bringing us absolutely diddly squat in return for our money. Back in the day, I was taught that the essence of democracy is accountability. Judging by this, we’re not democracies at all.
But I’ll give the final word to two-times winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, General Smedley Butler. ‘War is a racket’, he said.
How very true.
Russia triples gas supplies to China via Power of Siberia pipeline
RT | March 1, 2021
Russia’s energy major Gazprom said on Monday that it had pumped more gas to China in February via the Power of Siberia pipeline than it had initially planned, more than tripling supplies compared to the same month last year.
“The export of gas to China through the Power of Siberia gas pipeline continues to grow. Supplies regularly exceed our daily contractual obligations. The actual monthly volume of supplies in February is 3.2 times more than in February 2020,” Gazprom said in a statement.
The 3,000km (1,864 mile) cross-border pipeline started official deliveries of Russian natural gas to China in 2019. The so-called eastern route’s capacity is 61 billion cubic meters of gas per year, including 38 billion cubic meters for export. Last year, Gazprom supplied 4.1 billion cubic meters of gas to China via the Power of Siberia. It plans to boost exports by an additional six billion cubic meters.
The agreement on gas supplies via the Power of Siberia pipeline was reached in 2014, with Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) inking a 30-year contract. It is Gazprom’s biggest-ever agreement and the first natural gas pipeline between Russia and China.
Russia is set to further increase supplies of piped gas to China, including via the Power of Siberia 2 project. This second pipeline entered the design stage last year, and will be capable of delivering as much as 50 billion cubic meters of gas once it’s finished. Gazprom intends to become China’s biggest natural gas supplier, accounting for more than 25 percent of Chinese imports by 2035.
Russia must ditch ‘poisonous’ US dollar says Foreign Ministry as Moscow moves toward Chinese currency
RT | February 25, 2021
Moscow must act urgently to cut its reliance on American financial systems, including the use of the dollar, one of the country’s top diplomats has said, pointing to a wave of sanctions from Washington against the Russian economy.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the Bloomberg business news network that it was essential to preempt hostile confrontation with new President Joe Biden.
“We need to barricade ourselves against the US financial and economic system to eliminate dependence on this toxic source of permanent hostile actions,” he said. “We need to cut back the role of the dollar in any operations.”
Earlier this week, American media reported that the White House was preparing to unveil a package of punitive measures against Moscow in the wake of a worsening diplomatic row over the jailing of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. One senior administration official told POLITICO that, “suffice it to say, we won’t stand by idly in the face of these human rights abuses.”
At the same time, in a speech delivered to the Munich Security Conference last week, Biden announced that he was intent on challenging “Russian recklessness and hacking into computer networks in the United States and across Europe and the world has become critical to protecting our collective security.”
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Finance in Moscow reduced the share of US dollars and euros in the currency structure of its National Wealth Fund from 45 percent to 35 percent. Instead, it has taken on more Japanese yen and increased the proportion of assets held in the Chinese yuan by 15 percent. State investors retained a 10 percent stake in the British pound.
According to officials, the changes are aimed at “increasing profitability and diversifying the investment risks of placing funds of the NWF.”
Fortunate Global Greening
By Zoe Phin | February 16, 2021
NASA offers a data product called a Vegetation Index. This can be used to track how green the Earth is.
February 2000, [Source]
Although many are familiar with recent global greening, I prefer to always check the source data. And so I downloaded all of their available 16-day-increment data from 2000 to 2021. Here’s my result:
0.0936 –> 0.1029 is +9.94%
10% global greening in 20 years! We are incredibly fortunate!
I just wish everyone felt that way. But you know not everyone does. To the extent that humans enhance global greening is precisely what social parasites want to tax and regulate. No good deed goes unpunished.
Anyway, Enjoy 🙂 -Zoe
P. S. The Earth is ~29% land. A Veg Index of ~0.29 would mean all covered land is heavy vegetation.
China announces MASSIVE oil & gas discovery in Bohai Sea
RT | February 24, 2021
China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) revealed this week that its newly discovered oil and gas field in the Bohai Sea contains proven geological reserves of 100 million metric tons of oil and gas equivalent.
That makes Bozhong 13-2 one of the biggest crude oil production bases in the country, according to the company.
The new field is located 140 kilometers off the coast of Tianjin at an average water depth of 23.2 meters, according to Zhou Xinhuai, general manager of the oil exploration department at CNOOC. The Bozhong 13-2-2 well, where the reserve was discovered, was drilled and completed at a depth of 5,223 meters, and encountered oil pay zones with a total thickness of approximately 346 meters.
The well was tested to produce an average of approximately 1,980 barrels of crude oil per day. The company expects daily crude oil and natural gas generation from the well to reach 300 tons and 150,000 cubic meters, Zhou was cited as saying by China Daily.
The Bohai oilfield is likely to start production in 2023 and achieve a peak output of 1.2 million tons of oil equivalent.
According to industry experts, the Bohai Sea natural gas and oil discoveries will boost CNOOC’s annual output to above 80 million tons of oil equivalent by 2025.
The company said in 2019 that its Bohai discoveries contain 100 billion cubic meters of proven geological reserves of natural gas. It expects the increased capacity from the new finds to help meet the surging demand for natural gas in northern and eastern China and reduce the country’s reliance on costly imports.
China’s natural gas production reached 188.8 billion cubic meters in 2020, up 9.8 percent on a yearly basis, according to data by the National Bureau of Statistics. Natural gas imports rose to 102 million cubic meters, up by 5.3 percent on a yearly basis.
Russia expects to win big from rapidly expanding LNG market
RT | February 24, 2021
Global liquefied natural gas (LNG) is set to grow in the next three decades and will outpace the share of pipeline gas supplies, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak believes.
“What the market and analysts definitely agree on is that the LNG market will at least double by 2050,” Novak, who previously served as Russia’s energy minister, told the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) on Wednesday.
Gas is the most promising and environmentally friendly type of hydrocarbon fuel, according to the deputy PM. Given that Russia boasts one of the largest gas reserves, the growth of the LNG market opens up even more prospects for the country.
Russia is the fourth largest global LNG exporter. Last year, it boosted LNG production by over three percent to 30.5 million tons, while in 2019 its LNG output surged over 47 percent. Novak says that the country aims to increase its annual LNG production to 120-140 million tons by 2035, amounting to around a fifth of the forecasted global LNG production.
Most of Russia’s LNG comes from the Yamal LNG project, majority owned and operated by the country’s biggest privately owned natural gas producer, Novatek. There are several other projects that can help to further boost Russian LNG exports, including the Arctic LNG 2 project, the first line of which is set to be launched in 2023.
The Trump Energy Resilience Plan which Could have Saved Texas
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | February 20, 2021
Has Trump derangement syndrome cost Texan lives? Back in 2017, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed paying Coal and Nuclear Power Stations to keep at least 90 days worth of coal onsite, for disaster resilience.
At the time the resilience proposal was widely criticised as being a thinly disguised Trump scheme to pump government money into the coal and nuclear industries. But in hindsight, a bit more resilience might have saved Texas from days of painful electricity blackouts.
From 2017;
Rick Perry: DOE’s Coal, Nuclear Proposal Is ‘Rebalancing the Market’
Perry doubles down on arguments that the NOPR will protect Americans.
LACEY JOHNSON NOVEMBER 02, 2017
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said a proposed rule to subsidize coal and nuclear plants is “rebalancing the market” to correct for the Obama administration’s support of renewable energy.
They “clearly had their thumb on the scale toward the renewable side,” said Perry, who spoke about his energy policy priorities with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and Axios CEO Jim VandeHei at an event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
The DOE’s request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) would upend decades of energy market policy by guaranteeing cost recovery for power plants with 90 days of fuel supply on-site — something that only nuclear power, a few hydropower sites, and some larger coal power plants can provide.
“If you can guarantee me that the wind is going to blow tomorrow, if you can guarantee me that the sun’s going to get to the solar panels…then I’ll buy into that. But you can’t,” said Perry.
The notice of public rulemaking, or NOPR, implies that there is a looming threat to grid reliability due to coal and nuclear power plant retirements. Its conclusions are largely based on an incomplete analysis of the 2014 polar vortex, which could have led to blackouts had several coal-fired plants now slated for closure not been available to serve the load.
The move has been widely criticized by clean energy advocates as politically motivated and factually unproven, and has drawn a backlash from major sectors of the energy industry.
…
Federal regulators rejected the plan, on the grounds that Rick Perry failed to provide enough evidence that retiring coal and nuclear plants was undermining grid stability. The plan was eventually dropped, after vigorous lobbying from gas and renewable energy groups.
Now that the scenario Rick Perry predicted has actually happened in Texas, it seems pretty obvious the Rick Perry was right about the risks. Nuclear power plants and fossil fuel plants which had access to adequate fuel supplies mostly stayed fully operational.
Why is government intervention required to ensure grid resilience?
Keeping several months worth of fuel onsite is a cost which does not contribute to company profits. The cost of all that reserve fuel represents money which could instead have been used to pay down capital debts, or pay out dividends to shareholders. Power companies which choose to wear this kind of expense are at a competitive disadvantage compared to power companies which run leaner operations, by running their reserves down to the bare minimum. The expense of keeping fuel in reserve impacts market share and company growth; consumers frequently flock to the lowest price energy service, without considering the long term consequences.
Rick Perry’s plan would have eliminated the financial penalty for keeping a fuel reserve onsite, by compensating power companies for the cost of maintaining substantial fuel reserves.
Given resilience payments seem to be a workable solution, will President Biden or Texas Governor Greg Abbott implement the 2017 Trump / Perry energy resilience plan, to ensure nothing like the Texas power outage disaster ever happens again?
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- A pause, not a ceasefire: Washington stalls, Tehran recalibrates
- US blockade crumbles as Iran turns to overland routes
- Hidden costs of US Iran war push total far beyond $25bn Pentagon claim
- Iran Will Respond With Long-Term Strikes to US Attack, Even If It Is Short-Term – IRGC
- Fear Is the Mind Killer
- Israeli strikes kill 10 in southern Lebanon, including 3 rescue workers
- Israeli military ‘failed on all fronts’: Poll
- US at a crossroads: Iran’s firm positions leave Trump no option but to capitulate
- Iran signals decisive response to end US maritime bullying, piracy
- Trump eager for off-ramp in war on Iran, but Netanyahu has him trapped: Former official
- If Americans Knew
- How Tony Dokoupil Became the Face of ‘Zionist Fanatic’ Bari Weiss’s CBS
- Far Right Israeli Settler Movement Enters Syria in a Push for “Greater Israel”
- ‘People Have the Right to Be Buried’: In Gaza, Thousands of Palestinians Remain Trapped Under Rubble
- Born during Israel’s genocide: Gaza’s child survivors bear the scars of war
- Who are the women and girls behind Gaza war’s horrific casualty toll?
- Beloved Gaza doctor detained “indefinitely” without charge – Daily Update
- By Week’s End, Trump’s War Will Be Plainly Illegal
- CBS News Reportedly Ousts London Bureau Chief Over Differences With Bari Weiss Over Gaza Coverage
- State Department Says US Is in Conflict With Iran ‘At the Request’ of Israel
- What ceasefire? Israel won’t stop killing in Gaza, Lebanon – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
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- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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