Southeast Asia at Energy-Climate Crossroads
By Vijay Jayaraj | RealClear Energy | August 10, 2022
Southeast Asia is at the crossroads of choosing between a climate agenda hostile to fossil fuels and the energy security its population desperately needs.
Central to the question is the use of coal. The fuel is especially critical in the production of electricity for the 700 million people of the 10 countries making up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Electricity demand in Southeast Asia grew by 22 percent between 2015 and 2021, greater than the global average. The International Energy Agency predicts that “energy demand in the region is set to grow by around 3 percent a year to 2030, with three-quarters of the increase being met by fossil fuels…The net oil import bill, which stood at $50 billion in 2020, is set to multiply in size rapidly.”
Contributing to the energy bill is the global phenomenon of inflation. In June, the highest rates of inflation in ASEAN were in Thailand (7.7 percent), Vietnam (3.4 percent), Philippines (6.1 percent) and Indonesia (4.3 percent), mainly due to rising energy and food prices.
Adding to the pressures of higher demand for electricity and more expensive fuel is growing pressure from international political bodies to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Propositions such as the Paris agreement and the net zero agenda have captured the imaginations of the political elite with ASEAN countries within the grasp of the climate-crazy octopus.
Disregarding fossil fuels’ contribution to its economic growth in the last decade, Vietnam has espoused the net zero pledge. In its new National Power Development Plan, the country indicated its desire to reduce “coal-fired plants to less than 10 percent of the total capacity by 2045,” in addition to halting construction of new coal plants. With nearly 70 percent of all electricity coming from fossil fuels, Vietnam has absurdly declared war on coal.
Vietnam is ranked at a dismal 134th in global ranking for per capita energy consumption. Its “peak demand during 2022 – 2025 will rise by 2,830 megawatts (MW) annually on average while power generation will increase by only 1,565 MW per annum.” The decision to reduce coal consumption at this juncture is suicidal, running counter to the country’s objective of economic growth.
However, not all ASEAN countries have been as irresponsible as Vietnam. Because of the post-pandemic increase in energy demand, many ASEAN members are reversing decisions to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
Among them is Indonesia, one of the biggest producers of coal in Asia and a major exporter to other countries. Indonesia is reporting a 4 percent increase in coal mining during the 2nd quarter of 2022 following a ban on Russian coal. A further increase is expected to be prompted by a broader ban to be instituted by the EU in August. Indonesia’s largest energy infrastructure company has now acquired a Thai state-owned energy firm, expanding its coal mining business to Thailand and ensuring continuous coal production there.
Some in ASEAN are installing innovative fuel-saving artificial intelligence systems in their coal plants to make them more efficient, thus indicating that their reliance on coal power is here to stay.
Perhaps, the ASEAN countries will model neighboring India and China, which continue to increase fossil fuel consumption to meet energy demand. China, for example, approved a coal mine project worth $458 million in the Inner Mongolia region as recently as July.
The worst mistake would be to decommission ASEAN coal-fired power plants. Even the economic powerhouses of Europe like Austria, Germany and the UK have reopened coal plants to ensure energy security.
If common sense prevails, most ASEAN countries will adopt clean-coal technology, which provides remarkably low pollutant emissions and less dust. In fact, its safety and efficiency are so recognized that Japan is exporting its technology to other countries. India, which is the second largest consumer of coal, has opened a National Centre for Clean Coal Research and Development.
A 2020 report by the CO2 Coalition, found that clean-coal technology “virtually eliminates health hazards from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter,” thus reducing the outdoor pollution problem that is so common in low-income and mid-income economies like those in ASEAN.
Still in the grip of energy poverty, ASEAN countries that deprive themselves of affordable fossil fuels risk becoming the next Sri Lanka.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
Saskatchewan warns Trudeau’s federal Nitrogen agents could be arrested
By Keean Bexte | The Counter Signal | August 21, 2022
Saskatchewan Minister Jeremy Cockrill has sent a warning to the Trudeau government that officers sent by Ottawa will be arrested if they continue to trespass on farmland to test nitrogen levels.
According to Cockrill, Trudeau’s government has been unlawfully sending federal employees onto Saskatchewan farmlands to test for nitrogen levels without the consent of landowners.
In the letter, the Minister raised multiple complaints from Saskatchewan farmers that raised “serious concerns about Government of Canada employees, in clearly marked Government of Canada vehicles, trespassing on private lands.” The farmers reporting these trespasses made clear that these government agents did not request permission to access the land and were not in any other manner given consent to access it.
Minister Cockrill further pointed out to the Trudeau government that these actions constitute a breach of the Saskatchewan Trespass to Property Act, and warned that these actions could carry with them serious penalties, including fines of up to $200,000 and up to six months in prison.
By sending this letter, the Saskatchewan government has provided a clear order to the Trudeau government to cease and desist with any unlawful trespasses and warned them that should it continue, their employees could face arrest and prosecution.
What is more concerning to some than the actual trespass are the motivations of the federal agents. According to the land owners who confronted the federal agents trespassing on their land, they were told that the purpose of them being there was to test the water in the farmers’ dugouts to measure nitrate levels.
For those following recent news in the agricultural world, this is being seen as connected to the Trudeau government’s recently announced policy to reduce the use of fertilizer on Canadian farms by 30%. This policy has been widely criticized by farmers across the country and by provincial governments in the Western provinces.
Some observers have said that there is reason to suspect that these actions are the first steps in replicating the attacks on farmers that have provoked widespread unrest in the Netherlands and other places in Europe.
While the federal government has not yet confirmed it, there is speculation that the water sampling we now know is underway, will be used as baseline measurements to enforce reductions in fertilizer usage going forward.
All of these factors have led Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to demand an explanation from the Trudeau government as to what exactly they were up to.
How the US controls Lebanon’s energy supply
The US is leveraging Egypt’s gas supply to pressure Beirut over US-brokered maritime border talks with Israel
By Yeghia Tashjian | The Cradle | August 19 2022
Consider the chaos in Europe today caused by a sudden reduction in Russian gas supplies.
Now imagine the catastrophic state of Lebanon’s energy sector after two years of fuel shortages, limited foreign currency with which to purchase new, urgent supplies, and US-sanctions on Syria impeding Lebanon’s only land route for imports.
After decades of stalled reforms, Lebanon is running out of time and money.
In June 2021, a lifeline was handed to the country in a deal struck with Baghdad to supply two Lebanese power stations with Iraqi fuel. The agreement, which was due to expire in September 2022, has recently been extended for one year.
But while there are short and long term solutions available to remedy Lebanon’s energy crisis, the two main options are both monopolized by US policymakers with stakes in regional geopolitics.
The first option involves transporting fuel to Lebanon via the Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP), whereby Egypt will supply gas through Syria. Although the proposal was originally an American suggestion, this fuel route requires US sanctions waivers that have not yet been approved by Washington.
The second option is for Lebanon to extract its own gas supply from newly discovered fields off its coastline. This too depends entirely on US-mediated, indirect negotiations with Israel to resolve a maritime dispute over the Karish gas field in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Accessing its own gas supplies will go a long way to guarantee Lebanon’s own energy security, while providing the state with much needed revenues from exports.
However, the success of either project depends largely on the status of US-Lebanese relations at any given moment. The two options are also inextricably linked to each other: Washington is pressuring Beirut to compromise with Tel Aviv on the maritime border dispute before agreeing to “green light” Cairo’s gas exports via Syria, which is in turn heavily sanctioned by the US’s “Caesar Act.”
While Washington is playing a leverage game, Lebanon is slowly collapsing.
Gas from Egypt
Under the agreement signed with Cairo, 650 million cubic meters of natural gas will be exported annually via the AGP. As it turns out, the actual supply of gas, as per the World Bank’s conditions, awaits US approval to exclude Egypt from sanctions imposed on the passage of goods through Syria.
The AGP is already a functioning pipeline that has supplied Lebanon with Egyptian gas in the past, but operations were halted in 2011 when Syrian pipelines were damaged during the country’s armed conflict.
Under the deal, Egypt will pump gas through the pipeline to supply Lebanon’s northern Deir Ammar power plant, which can then produce 450 megawatts of electricity – adding four hours of additional electricity supply per day. It is a modest but necessary improvement over the barely two hours of electricity currently provided by the state.
The World Bank has pledged to finance the deal on the condition that the Lebanese government implements much needed reforms in the electricity sector, which has created tens of billions of dollars in public debt.
The Syrian equation
For the Syrian government, the arrangement is perceived as a diplomatic victory as it confers ‘legitimacy’ to the state and represents a step toward its international rehabilitation. The AGP deal was also hailed by Syrian Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources Bassam Tohmy as one of the most important joint Arab cooperation projects.
According to Will Todman, a research fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the agreement is “a win for the [Bashar al-]Assad government. The deal represents the first major move toward Syria’s economic integration with the region since Arab Spring protests shook Syria in March 2011, halting previous integration efforts.”
However, due to US Caesar Law restrictions, no concrete progress has been made over the past months. Amman and Cairo have both requested guarantees from Washington that they will not be subject to sanctions – to no avail. US President Joe Biden has yet to make a final decision on whether the plan will be considered a violation of sanctions on Syria.
Linking the Egypt deal with Israel talks
In order to create a certain interdependency in the region to minimize the possibility of new conflicts with Israel, the US is attempting to link the Egyptian gas deal with the ongoing, indirect, maritime negotiations between Tel Aviv and Beirut.
Amos Hochstein, the State Department senior adviser on energy security, who acts as chief mediator on the disputed maritime border between Lebanon and Israel, said after arriving in Beirut on 14 June that the US side will look at the final agreement between Egypt and Lebanon to evaluate the sanctions compliance of the natural gas project.
This means that Washington is linking the fate of the gas deal to the maritime dispute with Israel to exert additional pressure on Lebanon.
On 14 October, 2020 – just two months after the Beirut port blast which severed the primary transportation route for seaborne Lebanese imports – Lebanon and Israel began the long-awaited US-mediated talks to demarcate their maritime borders, under the supervision of the UN.
The framework agreement announced by both countries at the time was the most serious attempt to resolve the maritime dispute and secure gas drilling operations through diplomatic means.
However, there are many challenges that can slow or even derail these negotiations.
According to Lebanese estimates, the country has 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore, and is in urgent need to begin drilling to save its ailing economy.
Israel is also in hurry to resolve this dispute as it wants to finalize the negotiations before September 2022, when the Karish gas rig is expected to begin production. The concern is that if a deal is not signed by then, Hezbollah may take action to halt Israel’s extraction altogether – until Lebanon is able to extract its own fuel from those waters.
Resolution or conflict
Last month, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah reiterated warnings against Tel Aviv in the event that Lebanon is prevented from extracting its own resources in the Med. “When things reach a dead-end, we will not only stand in the face of Karish… Mark these words: we will reach Karish, beyond Karish, and beyond, beyond Karish,” he cautioned.
Initially, Lebanon took a maximalist position on its maritime borders with Israel: the main dispute was around the percentage both countries should share in the disputed 860 square kilometers, which covers Lebanon’s offshore gas Blocks 8, 9 and 10.
It is worth mentioning that Lebanon does not enter these negotiations from a position of strength and is in dire economic need to unlock foreign aid and begin the flow of potential gas revenues.
Meanwhile, the arrival this summer of the British-based Energean, an oil and gas exploration company, which will begin a drilling operation close to the Karish gas field, has sparked tensions between both countries, prompting US envoy Hochstein to race back to the region on 13 June.
In order to provide Lebanon with some much-needed leverage and accelerate negotiations, Hezbollah dispatched three drones towards the Karish gas field on 2 July. The operation sought several results: to test Israeli military responses to the drones, to scare off the private company contractors working on the rig, and to motivate both Tel Aviv and Washington to step up and strike a deal.
The operation achieved its goals. Israel’s military now can’t rule out the possibility that the Lebanese resistance movement will launch additional attacks on the gas field in the near future, or provoke Israel in a different manner – if the maritime dispute is not ironed out, and soon.
Beyond the Mediterranean Sea
The negotiations have also been impacted by international developments, chiefly, the war in Ukraine and the growing energy crisis in Europe. Sweeping western economic sanctions on Moscow’s economic interests have dried up Russian exports to the continent, driving Europe to seek alternative sources of energy, few of which are readily available.
In May 2022, the US and EU unveiled a plan to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels and in June, the EU and Israel signed an agreement to export Israeli gas to Europe. These external factors have further motivated the US and Israel to hasten the negotiation process with Lebanon, all of which are overshadowed by the aforementioned US pressure on the Lebanese government.
Energy expert Laury Haytayan believes that linking Lebanon to regional energy projects makes it harder for Lebanon to go to war with Israel. Haytayan told The Cradle: “Lebanon needs gas, Israel needs stability, and the US wants to give both what they want.”
It is important to recognize that a final maritime demarcation agreement also means defusing the tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border, which may require a broader US-Iranian agreement, something that is unlikely in the short term.
If the gas deal is successful and the US approves the Egyptian energy exports, the move will only increase US leverage over Lebanon when it comes to future negotiations on energy security.
It is in Lebanon’s interest to ensure that one party, the US, does not continue to hold all the cards related to its vital fuel needs. A recent offer from Iran to supply the country with monthly free fuel was tacitly accepted by Lebanon’s prime minister and energy minister, but needs work. Other states have offered to build power generation plants to enhance the nation’s infrastructure and efficiency.
But with Lebanon so deeply affected by Washington’s whims – and punishments – it isn’t at all certain that the country can steer itself to these more independent options.
The US and Israel have never been this highly incentivized to solve the maritime dispute. If the deal fails, Hezbollah may proceed with military action, especially before the conclusion of political ally President Michel Aoun’s term this Fall.
Furthermore, the gas issue may turn into a contentious domestic political issue ahead of Israel’s November parliamentary elections. In that instance too, a military conflict between Israel and Hezbollah may be triggered.
The only solution is to strike a deal, get gas flowing, and avert war. Will saner minds prevail, or will the region’s high-stakes geopolitical competition continue to escalate blindly? More importantly, can Washington bear to allow Lebanon the breathing space after three years of severe economic pressure to control Beirut’s political decisions?
Crisis Government
eugyppius | August 20, 2022
To reduce energy consumption in the face of the looming German gas crisis, Economics Minister Robert Habeck has proposed a bizarre set of indoor temperature ordinances that continue the pattern of direct state interventions in the everyday life first established by mass containment.
Workspaces where hard physical labour is performed are not to be heated above 12 C, under the new rules. Those involving moderate labour while standing will have their temperatures capped at 16 C, and moderate labour while sitting at 17 C. Places where light labour is performed standing, will be permitted temperatures as high as 18 C, while white-collar office spaces where everybody sits and types will be permitted nothing warmer than 19 C. The heating of hallways and other common spaces will be outlawed, as will certain kinds of restroom water heaters. There will be a general ban on using electricity or gas to heat private pools, and shops will be ordered to keep external doors closed at all times. Political pressure is growing for similar ordinances limiting gas consumption in residences.
While some doubt that these rules can be enforced, German police have already proven effective at enforcing pandemic-era contact limits in private homes. And even if indoor temperatures are never systematically checked by authorities, I’m pretty sure that the simple prospect of unannounced inspections and fines will be enough for most employers to declare a third season of home office, with the added prospect of offloading higher gas prices onto their employees.
It is most curious, how this totally new catastrophe should call forth some of very same measures demanded by the Corona pandemic. Not only will home office return, but municipal pools will close again and cities will be kept dark at night, a de facto limitation on evening mobility that might well encourage some places to reimpose the curfews last seen in the winter of 2020/21. Meanwhile, some of the very same spaces recently commandeered for excess hospital capacity and mass vaccination will be repurposed as heated shelters for the old, the sick and the poor.
Not any unified plan, but rather a long series of contingencies, have caused the German gas crisis. Yet the steadfast refusal of the Scholz government to consider any course of action that might ameliorate the shortage, always with a new excuse, grows every day more unsettling.
There’s the obvious explanation, that the Greens in government are merely taking advantage of this opportunity to achieve their higher goal of restricting fossil fuel consumption, as they’ve always wished. But I think there might be another, deeper way to understand this too. I suggest that we’re seeing here the emergence of a new political style, which you might call Crisis Governance—or, as a friend put it, “the continuation of Corona policy by other means.” One of my core themes here has been the deepening demobilisation of western states, as power is diffused downwards from the political apex into the bureaucratic institutions, the press and major corporate enterprises. The great advantage of this power-sharing is a near-total uniformity of political views that it has inspired across the socio-cultural elite, but it comes at the cost of initiative, coordination and strategy. Crises seem to be one of the only ways our new, demobilised states can overcome their paralysis and act to further any kind of positive political programme.
More at A Plague Chronicle.
German Electricity Prices Spiraling Out Of Control… Tripling Since 2000… Blackouts, Unrest Loom
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | August 19, 2022
Sun and wind don’t send any electric bills, the green energy swindlers used to tell us.
Changing over to sun and wind energy would cost only one euro a month more, Germany’s former Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin once promised. All we had to do was accept their master plan.
Today the swindle is uncovering, and it may be too late to avert the massive damage that’s coming our way.
At Facebook, Helmut Bauer posted the most recent chart depicting Germany’s electricity rates for end-consumers. It’s a blood bath:
Electricity prices for German end-consumers, in eurocents per kilowatt-hour. Source: BDEW, Verivox.
What a mess; they’ve reached 41 cents a kilowatt-hour and it’s about to get much worse – especially for the people who can least afford it. Expect social unrest to boil over the months ahead as prices and shortages inflict pain on the poor. We’re in uncharted territory.
Hey, not to worry: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised that police will not open fire on demonstrators.
German Official Trashes Cost of Living Protesters as “Enemies of the State”
Says they’re extremists who want to overthrow the government
Getty Images
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | August 17, 2022
A top German official has trashed people who may be planning to protest against energy blackouts as “enemies of the state” and “extremists” who want to overthrow the government.
The interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Herbert Reul (CDU), says that anti-mandatory vaxx and anti-lockdown demonstrators have found a new cause – the energy crisis.
In an interview with German news outlet NT, Reul revealed that German security services were keeping an eye on “extremists” who plan to infiltrate the protests and stage violence, with the unrest being planned via the Telegram messenger app, which German authorities have previously tried to ban.
“You can already tell from those who are out there,” said Reul. “The protesters no longer talk about coronavirus or vaccination. But they are now misusing people’s worries and fears in other fields. (…) It’s almost something like new enemies of the state that are establishing themselves.”
Despite the very real threat of potential blackouts, power grid failures and gas shortages, Reul claimed such issues were feeding “conspiracy theory narratives.”
However, it’s no “conspiracy theory” that Germans across the country have been panic buying stoves, firewood and electric heaters as the government tells them thermostats will be limited to 19C in public buildings and that sports arenas and exhibition halls will be used as ‘warm up spaces’ this winter to help freezing citizens who are unable to afford skyrocketing energy bills.
As Remix News reports, blaming right-wing conspiracy theorists for a crisis caused by Germany’s sanctions on Russia and its suicidal dependence on green energy is pretty rich.
“Reul, like the country’s federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, is attempting to tie right-wing ideology and protests against Covid-19 policies to any potential protests in the winter.”
“While some on the right, such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD), have stressed that the government’s sanctions against Russia are the primary factor driving the current energy crisis, they have not advocated an “overthrow” of the government. Instead, they have stressed the need to restart the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, end energy sanctions against Russia, and push for a peaceful solution to end the war.”
Indeed, energy shortages and the cost of living crisis are issues that are of major concern to everyone, no matter where they are on the political spectrum.
To claim that people worried about heating their homes and putting food on the table this winter are all “enemies of the state” is an utter outrage.
As we highlighted last week, the president of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, said energy crisis riots would make anti-lockdown unrest look like a “children’s birthday party.”
“Mass protests and riots are just as conceivable as concrete acts of violence against things and people, as well as classic terrorism to overthrow it,” Kramer told ZDF.
EU gas prices are seven times higher than in US
Samizdat | August 18, 2022
European natural gas prices are trading at levels equivalent to about $70 per million British Thermal Unit (BTUs), which is roughly seven times higher than prices in the United States, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing Lipow Oil Associates.
Analysts told the outlet that Europe’s natural gas crisis is contributing to higher prices in America, noting however that it’s not the main driver. US natural gas prices have surged to levels unseen since 2008, closing at $9.33 per million BTU on Tuesday.
“Higher global prices are trickling down to the US. Natural gas has become a global commodity with the emergence of LNG,” said Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital Advisors.
The United States has stepped up its exports of LNG to Europe in an effort to mitigate the impact of declining flows from the continent’s major natural gas supplier, Russia.
“Every spare molecule we can find, we are shipping to the Eurozone,” Robert Yawger, vice president of energy futures at Mizuho Securities, said.
European gas prices have quadrupled since the start of the year on thinning Russian flows. This week, the cost of gas futures on the TTF hub in the Netherlands exceeded $2,600 per thousand cubic meters for the first time since March. Prices are forecast to spike 60% this winter, exceeding $4,000 per thousand cubic meters.
EU electricity costs more than double since June
Samizdat – August 16, 2022
Power prices across the EU jumped to a fresh record high on Tuesday, as natural gas costs climbed further on falling supply from Russia, data from the European Energy Exchange AG shows.
Benchmark day-ahead prices in Germany advanced to €490.79 ($497) per megawatt-hour, from June’s average of €218.03, according to market data provider Nord Pool.
The current prices are almost six times higher than in August 2021.
The EU’s energy market is rattled by fears over whether power plants will be able to provide enough electricity this winter amid the tightening gas supply.
Gas prices in the region have quadrupled this year, driven by the drop in deliveries from Russia due to Ukraine-related sanctions and technical setbacks. EU countries have been trying to diversify imports by buying more liquefied natural gas (LNG), as well as increasing supplies of pipeline gas from Norway, Algeria and Azerbaijan. However, according to the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, the bloc is “approaching the limits of what extra gas” it can buy from “non-Russian sources.” Meanwhile, France has increasingly turned to nuclear power to generate additional electricity, while other EU states have been reviving coal-fired plants.
Nevertheless, according to Rystad Energy analyst Fabian Ronningen, there are no signs of the “extreme” price rally abating, as the additional nuclear, hydropower and coal capacities aren’t enough to offset the effects of diminishing Russian gas supplies.
“Prices will continue to increase towards the winter, on the condition that the supply situation from Russia is not improved. That is still the big joker and will continue to be a price driver in the power market,” he told Bloomberg.
Cost of keeping Britons out of energy poverty revealed
Samizdat | August 15, 2022
The UK government will need to spend a further £12 billion ($14.5 billion) on a support package for households to keep pace with higher-than-expected energy prices, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said in a report on Monday.
According to the research, the money is required if the government still wants to provide the same level of aid it set out this spring.
In May, former UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that the government’s aim was to make up for half of the cost of energy price increases to households. The effect of that support has shrunk as energy costs continue to soar. In May, energy prices were expected to rise by 95% in 2022-23, but are now expected to rise by 141%, according to the report.
The IFS said the cost of living is now expected to be 11.3% higher this financial year than last, with inflation peaking in the last quarter of 2022 at 13.1%.
The think tank warned that the poorest households will experience inflation of an “eye-watering” 18% in October due to energy price growth, compared to 11% for the richest households.
“The government is still playing catch up as inflation and the cost of energy continue to spiral upwards,” IFS Director Paul Johnson said. “Just achieving what they wanted to achieve back in May will cost an additional £12 billion, and a package on that scale will still leave many households much worse off.”
There is No Food Crisis – If Only We Stopped Burning it as ‘Green’ Biofuel
BY DAVID CRAIG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 8, 2022
We’ve all been bombarded daily with horror stories about how food prices are being forced up and hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest risk starvation because the Russian invasion of Ukraine has prevented exports of grain and sunflower oil.
Well, let me give you some figures our politicians and the mainstream media don’t want to mention. They don’t mention these figures because these figures undermine the disastrous global-warming, climate-catastrophist, Net-Zero policies being forced on us by our rulers.
The U.S. produces abut 384 million metric tonnes of corn each year and around 50 million tonnes of wheat. Ukraine produces about 38 million tonnes of corn each year and around 33 million tonnes of wheat. Around 20 million tonnes of Ukraine’s wheat is exported each year.
Conclusion 1: The U.S. produces an awful lot more food than Ukraine.
But let’s look at how all the USA’s corn and wheat is actually used. Over a third of the USA’s corn – that’s more than 128 million tonnes of the USA’s corn production – is used to make biofuels rather than being used for human consumption.
It’s more difficult to find out how much of the U.S.’s 38 million tonnes of wheat is used for biofuels, but it may be as much as a quarter. However, we do know that in the European Union, 12 million tonnes of grain, including wheat and maize, is turned into ethanol – around 7% of the bloc’s production. It’s estimated that this is enough food to feed around 150 million people if it wasn’t being used for transport fuel.
Also just in the EU, 3.5 million tonnes of palm oil is used to make biodiesel. That’s almost the amount of sunflower oil coming out of Ukraine and Russia combined.
Conclusion 2: We’re burning food rather than using it to feed people.
You may have noticed that last year the petrol you buy changed from something called ‘E5’ to ‘E10’. E5 petrol is petrol containing 5% biofuel and E10 is, of course, petrol containing 10% biofuel.
According to calculations done by scientists at Princeton University, if the U.S. and Europe were to decrease their use of ethanol made from grain by 50% – that would mean just moving back from E10 petrol to E5 petrol – they would effectively have sufficient extra crops to replace all of Ukraine’s exports of grain.
If our rulers were to completely scrap the biofuel mandates they have imposed on us, the world would be awash with food and food prices would fall significantly. Then the only reason for hungry people would be distribution problems caused by mismanagement, corruption and conflict.
When the EU first mandated that 2.5% of all fuel sold in the EU should be made from biofuels, worldwide food prices shot up – wheat, for example, doubled in price – and the UN’s Rapporteur for Food said: “It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces food stuff that will be burned into biofuel.”
He further argued that biofuels would only lead to further hunger in a world where an estimated 854 million people – one out of six in 2007 – already suffered from the scourge; 100,000 people died from hunger or its immediate consequences every day; and every five seconds, a child died from hunger
We’re now at 10% biofuels and, if I have understood correctly, following new climate change legislation passed in the U.S. last week, the biofuel content of petrol may be increased even further. This will mean diverting more potential food to fuel production at a time of world food shortages and rocketing food prices.
This is madness. But it get worse. Biofuels are less efficient than fossil fuels – you get fewer miles or kilometres per litre or gallon and they damage car engines more than fossil fuels. Moreover, the huge amounts of energy required to produce biofuels mean that they are probably more environmentally-damaging than fossil fuels.
Scrapping the biofuels mandates in the U.S. and EU isn’t something that would take years or months to implement. It could be done this week and the results – more food availability and falling food prices – would happen immediately.
So, why won’t our rulers do this? Moreover, why do they seem to be moving in the opposite direction – by pushing ever more food into fuel production?
It could just be utter incompetence. Or it could be fear of a storm of criticism by the ever more vociferous climate-catastrophist lobby. It could be that they are trapped by their own save-the-planet virtue-signalling. Or it could be the classic reaction of politicians and bureaucracies – the more evidence emerges that their policies are misguided, the more they double down on those policies as they can never admit that they got it wrong.
However, for the conspiracy theorists, there’s a fifth possibility – that our rulers are acting together to deliberately restrict food production, push up food prices and impoverish us all as a means of increasing their control over us.
You can choose which of the five possibilities – incompetence, fear of the climate catastrophists, feeling trapped by their own subservience to the climate-catastrophist cult, doubling down on misguided policies or conspiracy against us – you believe is the most credible explanation of the current food crisis.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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The Invasion Of Panama And The Proclamation of a Lone Superpower Above The Law
By Matt Peppe |Just the Facts Blog | December 14, 2014
Before dawn on December 20, 1989, U.S. forces descended on Panama City and unleashed one of the most violent, destructive terror attacks of the century. U.S. soldiers killed more people than were killed on 9/11. They systematically burned apartment buildings and shot people indiscriminately in the streets. Dead bodies were piled on top of each other; many were burned before identification.
The aggression was condemned internationally, but the message was clear: the United States military was free to do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, and they would not be bound by ethics or laws. … continue
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- Israel is Having a Party After the Capture of Nicolás Maduro
- The US Has Invaded Venezuela to ‘Fight Drugs.’ Are Colombia and Mexico Next?
- Israeli police shoot dead Palestinian from Bedouin village in Negev
- Trump Says Venezuelan Vice President Will Pay Higher Price Than Maduro if She Disobeys US
- Climate extremists claim responsibility for blackout affecting 50,000 households
- USA seizes Maduro, but nothing is guaranteed regarding Venezuela’s future
- US facing second Vietnam in Venezuela – expert
- If Americans Knew
- Shadowy Israel-linked org is poaching Gaza’s best doctors – Not a ceasefire Day 86
- Israel And Its Supporters Deliberately Foment Hate And Division In Our Society
- ADL’s J7: Biweekly Jewish Nationalism Think Tank
- Israel gives war profiteers sole control of life-saving Gaza aid: Report
- Once Again, the New York Times Sells Israel’s Genocide in Gaza as Law Enforcement
- Israel Accuses Zohran Mamdani of Antisemitism for Reversing Orders Adams Gave Under Indictment
- Israel’s NGO ban a “cynical and calculated attempt” to starve Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 85
- Controlled Dissent: The Hidden System That Broke Charlie Kirk
- Four major dynamics in Gaza War that will impact 2026
- Stunning Victories and Rising Repression: a look back at the global student movement for Palestine in 2025
- No Tricks Zone
- Expect Soon Another PIK Paper Claiming Warming Leads To Cold Snaps Over Europe
- New Study: Human CO2 Emissions Responsible For 1.57% Of Global Temperature Change Since 1750
- Welcome To 2026: Europe Laying Groundwork For Climate Science Censorship!
- New Study Finds A Higher Rate Of Global Warming From 1899-1940 Than From 1983-2024
- Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue Warns “Germany Won’t Make It” If Winter Turns Severe
- Merry Christmas Everybody!
- Two More New Studies Show The Southern Ocean And Antarctica Were Warmer In The 1970s
- Der Spiegel Caught Making Up Reports About Conservative America (Again)
- New Study: 8000 Years Ago Relative Sea Level Was 30 Meters Higher Than Today Across East Antarctica
- The Wind Energy Paradox: “Why More Wind Turbines Don’t Always Mean More Power”
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