Energy
Flat copper, EV glut, imploding wind power equal green crash
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
Large fissures are appearing in the ‘Green Transition’ story climate crusaders tell themselves. They are trying to foist it on a reluctant public and skeptical business world. One recent such crack is the carve-out on carbon taxes for heating oil in the politically-fickle Atlantic provinces. Provincial premiers are trying to get the same treatment for other fossil fuel heating fuels.
Yet, politicians who still hew to the Climate Crisis orthodoxy remain unrepentant. Montreal’s city council has announced that all new buildings of three stories or less will not be permitted to use natural gas heating. Taller buildings would face the ban later. Several cities and states in the United States are also trying to restrict natural gas use. Their efforts seem desperate.
A recent U.K. study concluded that heat pumps are much more expensive than employing natural gas (also true in Canada), and resistance heating is even worse. Due to the study and public pushback, the planned U.K. heat pump mandate was cancelled – and ‘Net Zero’ postponed beyond 2035.
Extreme policy adopted by voting-block-pandering politicos notwithstanding, other constituents of the artificially-sustained Green Transition show signs of weakness. For some, notably wind power, outright impending collapse looms.
Wind turbine companies’ share prices have slumped. The main reason is that wind power contracts are being cancelled in many places. A large project off the New Jersey coast is the latest example. Component and material costs are the main culprits. They caused wind developers to raise requested electricity prices to unaffordable levels, and higher interest rates made capital costs rocket skyward. Recent revelations about the high costs of recycling wind turbine blades have soured governments and the public on this dubious ‘alternative energy’.
Electric vehicles, ‘EV’s’, are another darling of the climate lobby. There is now a large accumulation of unsold EV’s on dealer lots, not just in North America but in China. It takes a very large ‘rebate’ to get anyone to consider buying one – an indication of fundamental unpopularity.
It takes many minutes to recharge the battery pack at a ‘supercharge’ station; or, sometimes, hours at a regular charging station. The former is expensive, the latter is an unacceptable time and opportunity cost for owners. The bigger issue is a woeful lack of chargers for highway driving yet over reaching politicians are pushing a fantasy ban on gasoline vehicles by 2035. Forget that, it won’t be happening.
However, the best indication that the Green fever dreams of excitable politicians and disingenuous so-called Climate activists are becoming a nightmare is the price of copper. Slow expansion of copper production and the increasing demand for it in Green Transition technologies such as EV’s, wind turbines, and solar panels and for all the grid connections and upgrades that they entail should force the copper price to soar. Yet, it is just about where it was three years ago.
Mining companies are reluctant to buy or develop new copper deposits, or expand existing operations, with no visibility for a substantially higher copper price. Costs have risen, too, and particularly for fuel and financing, making future positive returns look implausible.
Energy consumers, households and businesses, are rejecting the hysterical climate extremism that attempts to compel the use of uneconomic and unreliable energy forms and technologies, and the rejection of proven, affordable ones. Politicians should listen, and change.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
From the Fraser Institute
At a time of persistent cost of living pressures and mounting worldwide geopolitical tension, it’s not surprising that energy issues are in the spotlight in Canada and beyond.
Earlier this year, the Trudeau government decided to freeze its carbon tax for home heating fuels in Atlantic Canada in the face of ferocious opposition to further tax hikes from premiers, local communities and MPs in the region. Smart politicians understand that Canadians today are attuned as never before to energy prices, including fuel prices at the pump.
With policymakers in Canada and elsewhere also preoccupied with climate change, we are exposed to sharply conflicting narratives about the future of energy. In one corner are those who spy a rapid and epic shift away from the fossil fuels that still supply 80 per cent of the world’s energy. In the other corner are skeptics who doubt that the dominant place of fossil fuels in the energy system will soon disappear.
As the debate continues, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is an important source of well-grounded information. It provides regular updates on trends in energy supply and demand, both in the United States and globally. EIA forecasts deserve attention given the agency’s solid track record of predicting energy market developments.
On crude oil prices, the EIA now believes the main U.S. benchmark price will hover between US$85 and $90 per barrel over 2024-25. That’s good news for Canada, as crude oil ranks as our number one export. In its May 2024 market update, the EIA observes that “the startup of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion… will alleviate existing distribution bottlenecks and allow for a gradual increase in oil production.” While one would never know it from scanning federal government news releases, Canadian oil production and export volumes are set to climb over the rest of the decade. And Canada’s energy-based export earnings will also receive a sizable boost once shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG) commence from LNG projects nearing completion in British Columbia.
Meanwhile, the EIA sees global oil consumption increasing further, after dipping briefly during the pandemic, reaching 105 million barrels per day by 2026.
Globally, there’s little evidence that consumers are turning away from petroleum and other liquid fuels, contrary to the claims of some Canadian politicians and environmental groups. Amid endless chatter about energy transitions and governments allocating gargantuan sums to an expanding hodgepodge of programs to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the world collectively still depends on oil and other carbon-based fuels for the vast majority of its energy.
None of this is surprising. The “dense” energy provided by fossil fuels is greatly valued by consumers and remains difficult to replace with other primary energy sources. Fossil fuels have played a central role in economic development since the dawn of industrialization. That will not change anytime soon.
Which is why the EIA doesn’t expect much progress in reducing GHG emissions in the coming one or two decades. In its recent comprehensive forecast, it projects that “global energy-related… emissions will increase through 2050” under almost all of the policy scenarios it models.
How can that be, with all of the political attention being given to climate change in many countries? Because rising populations and incomes, particularly in China, India and other emerging economies, “will offset the effects of declining energy and carbon intensity on emissions.” And also because outside of the electricity sector, there simply aren’t enough reliable cost-effective non-fossil fuel energy sources to satisfy the world’s still growing need for energy.
Author:
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
A new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a nonprofit dedicated to the study of the impact of government regulation on global energy resources, finds that U.S. inventories of oil and natural gas have experienced stunning growth since 2011.
The same report, the North American Energy Inventory 2024, finds the United States also leading the world in coal resources, with total proven resources that are more than 53% bigger than China’s.
Despite years of record production levels and almost a decade of curtailed investment in the finding and development of new reserves forced by government regulation and discrimination by ESG-focused investment houses, America’s technically recoverable resource in oil grew by 15% from 2011 to 2024. Now standing at 1.66 trillion barrels, the U.S. resource is 5.6 times the proved reserves held by Saudi Arabia.
The story for natural gas is even more amazing: IER finds the technically recoverable resource for gas expanded by 47% in just 13 years, to a total of 4.03 quadrillion cubic feet. At current US consumption rates, that’s enough gas to supply the country’s needs for 130 years.
“The 2024 North American Energy Inventory makes it clear that we have ample reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal that will sustain us for generations,” Tom Pyle, President at IER, said in a release. “Technological advancements in the production process, along with our unique system of private ownership, have propelled the U.S. to global leadership in oil and natural gas production, fostering economic benefits like lower energy prices, job growth, enhanced national security, and an improved environment.”
It is key to understand here that the “technically recoverable” resource measure used in financial reporting is designed solely to create a point-in-time estimate of the amount of oil and gas in place underground that can be produced with current technology. Because technology advances in the oil and gas business every day, just as it does in society at large, this measure almost always is a vast understatement of the amount of resource that will ultimately be produced.
The Permian Basin has provided a great example of this phenomenon. Just over the past decade, the deployment of steadily advancing drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies has enabled producers in that vast resource play to more than double expected recoveries from each new well drilled. Similar advances have been experienced in the other major shale plays throughout North America. As a result, the U.S. industry has been able to consistently raise record overall production levels of both oil and gas despite an active rig count that has fallen by over 30% since January 2023.
In its report, IER notes this aspect of the industry by pointing out that, while the technically recoverable resource for U.S. natural gas sits at an impressive 4.03 quads, the total gas resource in place underground is currently estimated at an overwhelming 65 quads. If just half of that resource in place eventually becomes recoverable thanks to advancing technology over the coming decades, that would mean the United States will enjoy more than 1,000 years of gas supply at current consumption levels. That is not a typo.
Where coal is concerned, IER finds the US is home to a world-leading 470 billion short tons of the most energy-dense fossil fuel in place. That equates to 912 years of supply at current consumption rates.
No other country on Earth can come close to rivaling the U.S. for this level of wealth in energy mineral resources, and few countries’ governments would dream of squandering them in pursuit of a political agenda driven by climate fearmongering. “And yet, many politicians, government agents, and activists seek to constrain North America’s energy potential,” Pyle says, adding, “We must resist these efforts and commit ourselves to unlocking these resources so that American families can continue to enjoy the real and meaningful benefits our energy production offers.”
With President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump staking out polar opposite positions on this crucial question, America’s energy future is truly on the ballot this November.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
NIH Quietly Altered Definition For Gain-Of-Function Research On Its Website, Former Fauci Aide Confirms
Fortis et Liber: Alberta’s Future in the Canadian Federation
Elon Musk-backed doctor critical of COVID response vows appeal after court sides with medical board
Healthcare workers obtain partial win against Bonnie Henry in BC Supreme Court
-
Energy2 days ago
Fossil fuels not going away anytime soon
-
International2 days agoBiden DOJ authorized FBI to use ‘deadly force’ if needed during raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate
-
Agriculture1 day agoThe China – Russia “Grain Entente” – what is at stake for Canada and its allies?
-
Bruce Dowbiggin1 day agoThe Most Dangerous Man In Canada: Emmanuel Goldstein Reborn
-
Automotive2 days agoEV transition stalls despite government mandates and billion-dollar handouts
-
Business1 day agoTrudeau’s environment department admits carbon tax has only reduced emissions by 1%
-
Great Reset1 day agoDr. Robert Malone reacts to Klaus Schwab’s resignation: ‘Resistance is not futile’
-
International1 day agoRep. Paul Gosar grills Biden official on government funding of underage ‘gender transitions’