Free Republic

There's not enough power to flood the roads with electric vehicles, but DemocRATs don't and probably are counting on it. In perfect Democratic Party form, the Biden administration has dropped another government burden on the private sector. Two days ago, the White House rolled out “the toughest-ever” automobile emissions standards. The objective, of course, is to force Americans to buy the cars that the ruling class wants them to drive. There’s a big problem here, though – the grid won’t be up to the task of keeping tens of millions of electric vehicles charged. The headline from a Bloomberg story...

Japan is stepping up efforts to have local authorities approve the restart of the world’s biggest nuclear power plant, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility north of Tokyo... Next week, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ken Saito, is expected to ask the local governor of the Niigata prefecture to approve the restart of the power plant.. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Japan closed all its nuclear power plants that underwent rigorous safety checks and inspections. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa has been offline since 2012, while the Nuclear Regulation Authority in 2021 barred the plant’s operator, utility Tepco, from operating the...

Olympic athletes are going to be on the hot seat this summer in Paris. Not just metaphorically; the Paris Olympic Committee wants this Olympics to be the greenest ever (take that, Classical Greeks!), and one of the measures they have taken is to build the Olympic village without any air conditioning. There will be no air conditioning in athletes' rooms at #Paris2024, which pledged to host the ‘greenest ever’ Olympic Games. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo spoke to @Reuters about the city's plans to keep athletes cool https://t.co/Js9skXtWoF pic.twitter.com/uVBMusztdi— Reuters (@Reuters) March 14, 2024I think this is one virtue signal that...

Electric vehicle start-up Fisker is exploring bankruptcy, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Fisker’s stock plunged this week as investors worry about the company’s ability to survive amid a cash crunch. The auto company also said it would slash 15% of its workforce. The Wall Street Journal reported: Electric-vehicle startup Fisker FSR -55.88%decrease; red down pointing triangle has hired restructuring advisers to assist with a possible bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter. Fisker, which recently warned that it risked running out of cash this year, hired financial adviser FTI Consulting and the law firm Davis Polk...

A foundry in Hibbing, Minn., is closing, citing rising electricity rates as the primary reason. Northern Foundry in northeast Minnesota, the Star Tribune reports, will be shutting down and laying off 91 employees. “Minnesota Power's repeated electricity rate increases ... mean Northern Foundry pays substantially more per kilowatt hour than MTI's other facilities,” the foundry’s parent company, Metal Technologies Inc., said in a statement, according to the Star Tribune. Minnesota has been pursuing an aggressive effort to transition its electrical grid away from fossil fuels, and last year, the state passed a law committing to 100% renewable energy by 2040....

For a number of years, I’ve been observing demands of activists and promises of politicians that we transition our electrical grid to being supplied mainly by the intermittent renewables, wind and solar, with all large dispatchable sources (fossil fuel and nuclear) banished. Early on, I thought it was obvious that such a transition would inevitably mean that the only way to make the grid function full-time would be energy storage — on a vast scale never before contemplated or attempted. How much storage, and at what potential cost? This is actually an arithmetic problem, somewhat cumbersome but conceptually very elementary,...

There’s no such thing as a wind or solar ‘farm’, just an ugly industrial siteIn a story filled with all the standard climate alarmist narratives, USA Today recently reported on the rising movement by local governments in the United States to refuse to permit unwanted wind and solar industrial sites in their jurisdictions. After setting the stage by parroting the Biden administration goals of “100 per cent clean energy by 2035, a goal that depends on the building of large-scale solar and wind,” USA Today points to the reality that such big, intrusive, ugly, and destructive industrial sites have been...

Another Biden program bites the dust, this time his big push to encourage everyone to buy an electric vehicle (EV). Meanwhile, Biden keeps going on vacation (as if he REALLY cares about middle America). Cars and light trucks are seeing declining YoY sales in January (-0.7%) as M2 Money growth remains negative. Automotive News was the first to report Ford Motor Co. halted shipments of all 2024 F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks for an undisclosed quality control issue just weeks after slashing production volumes for the EV model due to sliding demand. Last month, Ford announced plans to slash the...

By commissioning expensive and inefficient wind and solar electric generating facilities, India may have dug the grave of its own efforts to save the critically endangered great Indian bustard. Erected to avert a faux climate crisis, the so-called renewable machines and their attendant transmission lines are helping to drive one of Earth’s largest flying birds to the brink of extinction. Avian aficionados such as myself have long bemoaned prioritizing wind and solar technologies at the expense of endangered species. Yet, the relentless push for needless climate solutions seems to ignore this as “green energy” installations and avian fatalities increase in...

Banks, governments, and businesses would face failure due to the essential role of fossil fuels in the economy.Critical infrastructure like electricity, internet, and trade systems would collapse without fossil fuel support.Agriculture and home heating would become inefficient and inaccessible to many, leading to widespread social upheaval.It is now popular to talk about leaving fossil fuels to prevent climate change. Pretty much the same result occurs if we run short of fossil fuels: We lose fossil fuels, but it is because we cannot extract them. Practically no one tells us about the extent to which the current system depends upon fossil...

This post reports on two new instances of people applying a little critical thinking to the issue of using so-called “green” hydrogen as an essential piece of a future de-carbonized energy system. This is a subject that I have previously addressed, here in a post of June 13, 2022, and here again in my energy storage Report of December 1, 2022. The two new pieces covered in this post are (1) a February 1 Report for the Manhattan Institute by Jonathan Lesser titled “Green Hydrogen: A Multibillion-Dollar Energy Boondoggle,”, and (2) a February 13 article in the Washington Examiner by...

Lawmakers in New York City may soon ban Tide detergent pods and other laundry and dishwasher products under a bill introduced this month. According to the New York Post, the “Pods Are Plastic Bill” would make it illegal to sell laundry detergent pods and laundry sheets that are made with polyvinyl alcohol. Fines for selling these products would begin at $400, double for a second violation, and $1,200 if violated more than two times.Reportedly, the bill, if it became law, would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2026.The bill, introduced by City Councilman James Gennaro (D) last week, is part...

Lloyd Austin underwent an invasive surgical procedure called a prostatectomy for his prostate cancer. He was readmitted to the ICU ward of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center seven days later, on January 1st, due to complications caused by a severe infection. It appears he was septic. He concealed his inability to carry out his duties from Biden, Congress, the Pentagon, and his Deputy Secretary, Dr. Kathleen Hicks. On January 4th, finally becoming aware of Austin’s hospitalization, security adviser Jake Sullivan notified Hicks, who was on vacation in Puerto Rico. Even though Biden continued to back Austin, Austin was already...

Starting this month, 145,000 Wyoming ratepayers will make a down payment on what's projected to add up to billions of dollars in additional costs. Regulators recently approved Black Hills Energy's new $1.1 million surcharge on utility bills to research the viability of adding controversial carbon capture technologies to coal-fired power plants. Rob Joyce, acting director of the Wyoming Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the rate increases are due to the state's mandate for utilities to continue burning coal. "The people who benefit from these kinds of policies are the legislators who are connected to legacy fossil fuel companies, utilities...

Next time pop star Taylor Swift starts waxing all pious about saving the planet, maybe someone can ask her about those two private jets she traipses around on a plume of carbon compounds to get around the planet. According to Gizmodo: Flying from Tokyo, Japan back to the U.S. to get to the Super Bowl and watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce play was very important to pop superstar Taylor Swift—so important that she apparently had a second private jet on standby. The existence of a second private jet for Swift, who was in Tokyo giving a series of concerts, was...

Today, Joe Biden is cracking down on manufacturing, but I bet he doesn’t have the scientific data to give credibility to the new policies, but he doesn’t care. He is bending over for the green pushers. Here’s this, from Fox News:Biden’s latest climate rules crack down on manufacturing, ignoring industry warnings of economic devastationBiden admin’s actions will ‘grind permits to a halt for a large portion of our country’The Biden administration finalized regulations severely tightening restrictions on fine particulate matter that the manufacturing and energy sectors are legally allowed to emit, an action that industry said would have devastating economic...

Woof, the news just keeps getting grimmer and grimmer for Danish offshore energy behemoth Ørsted...and it's great.Thanks to a heads-up this morning from HotAir regular John Clark, I have had an encouraging time digging into what's looking damn near like a collapse of one of the biggest names in the wind farm business. It bodes some serious ill for the entire sector.You all know from reading my posts that Ørsted has had a miserable twelve months, thanks to a number of circumstances. Most of them stem from contracts agreed to based on overconfidence in continued government largesse, cheap financing, low...

New Mexico may be small in terms of population, but we are the second-largest producer of oil. We punch well above our weight when it comes to American energy. That’s starting to be a problem for President Joe Biden. New polling data shows Biden’s support in our state plummeting. With an approval rating of just 41% and a disapproval rating of 57% (according to a new Public Opinion Strategies poll), Biden finds himself 16 points underwater (in New Mexico). This decline is particularly worrying for the president, given that he won New Mexico by a comfortable 10-point margin during the...

If you are at all interested in matters of climate and energy, you have probably read hundreds of articles over the past few years about the inevitability of the coming energy transition. A piece of the claimed inevitability is that all good and decent people support this transition as a matter of moral urgency; but it’s not just that. Nor is it just that government backs the transition with all its coercive powers, from subsidies to mandates to regulations. No, most importantly, the transition is said to have become inevitable due to unstoppable economic forces. Wind and solar are now...

Biden’s obsession with so-called “green” energy policies is thus costing the United States on two fronts. At home, American producers are struggling under a regulatory onslaught and open hostility from the White House – despite literally keeping the country’s lights on this winter. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are taking full advantage of this weakness abroad, as China in particular seeks to step in and fill the void left by decreased U.S. energy exports. Amid the cold snap that gripped the nation in early January and sent temperatures plummeting below zero for millions of Americans, the country’s power grid largely held up...