Commentary
I borrowed the headline for this post from a fellow blogger, Francis Menton, who stays atop the global energy system better than anyone in his blog, Manhattan Contrarian. Regular readers may recall that I quote him frequently.
Like me, I believe many of you are concerned with the Biden administration’s fantasy agenda of transforming our nation, and the world, off fossil fuels in favor of renewables wind and solar.
In a paragraph from his recent post, Mention wrote, “The extremists may seem to have the upper hand at the moment, but the missing piece is that they have no idea how our energy system works, and they are demanding a replacement that has zero chance of success. It’s only a question of when and how it will fail, and how damaging the consequences of the failure will be.”
Every day we are seeing headlines like these, and it’s just the beginning:
“Solar-Panel Shortage Snarls U.S. Green-Energy Plans”
“Wind Power’s ‘Colossal Market Failure Threatens Climate Fight”
“Why America Doesn’t Have Enough EV Charging Stations”
What’s not being discussed is one of the key problems facing the future of renewables – battery storage. It’s what we will be depending upon with the intermittent generation of wind and solar. Periods of no wind, no sun. It is being drastically underestimated.
While the incompetent people moving us into renewables are concerned with transmission lines to connect communities, they have no idea what will be required for storage.
Even before a solar panel is installed or a wind turbine is placed, companies are faced with delays due to increased costs and sourcing from China. We have learned that China is attempting to circumvent import tariffs by routing their products through other Southeast Asia countries accounting for 80 percent of U.S. solar imports.
On the no-wind front, power and gas prices are going up in Europe due to falling wind speeds, evidence of a weakness in the EU’s energy infrastructure. There and in the U.S., finding landfills to accept the huge used blades is becoming another problem.
A friend of mine recently e-mailed me saying, “I’m not concerned about EV charging in the future. The industry will figure it out.” Oh, if that were the only thing we needed to be concerned about as we look at the scale of the energy problem we are facing, and what the loss of petroleum will mean across a wide spectrum of everyday consumer products. Obviously, he was referring to the fossil fuel “industry” figuring it out.
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says, “We are taking an important step to build a nationwide electric vehicle charging network where finding a charge is as easy as locating a gas station.”
While Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is promoting the purchase of EVs, too expensive for the average middle class family, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act provides an extra $3 billion to support access to EV charging for economically disadvantaged communities.
As we are taken down the yellow brick road to ruin with a $369 billion clean energy plan claiming it is an “investment” in our future, Biden & Co. has no conception of what will happen to our economy without fossil fuels. Sadly, they continue, knowing it won’t alter climate change one iota.
Why? It all stems from the left’s hatred, yes hatred, of the oil and gas industry, and they either have no conception what they are doing or they simply don’t care.
But they will not win. We were once energy independent and will be again, with oil beneath us in a number of states and the capacity to deliver it cleaner than any other country.
A Republican House, with our national security in mind, will make it difficult for Biden to continue his green new deal policies. Democrats, too, may be softening as their constituents are voicing concern over gas prices.
If you are wondering who I chose to receive my December Fool’s Day recognition, it again went to our 80-year-old President Biden. He just makes it so easy.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the University of Michigan’s win over Purdue University to officially become the 2022 Big Ten Champions, on the heels of the second consecutive win over THE Ohio State University.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
