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Energy

The 7 most important truths about our energy future

Published

5 months ago

17 minute read

From EnergyTalkingPoints.com

By Alex Epstein

At Jordan Peterson’s ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) conference I was asked to share the most important truths about our energy future.

I boiled it down to 7. Understand these and you’ll be a better thinker than 97% of energy or climate “experts.”

GIM 7 most important truths

Energy Truth 1

To decide what to do about fossil fuels and other forms of energy, we must carefully weigh their benefits and side-effects.

  • When evaluating what to do about a product or technology—e.g., a prescription drug—we need to carefully weigh the benefits and side-effects of our alternatives.

    But most “experts” just focus on fossil fuels’ negative climate side-effects.

  • It is particularly crucial to weigh any negative climate side-effects of continuing fossil fuel use against the climate mastery benefits that come with them, as those benefits can neutralize or overwhelm negatives.

    E.g., more energy powering heating and cooling, irrigation, building, etc.

  • Example of fossil-fueled climate mastery overwhelming negative impacts: drought.

    Any contribution of rising CO2 to drought has been overwhelmed by fossil-fueled irrigation and crop transport, which have helped reduce drought deaths by over 100 times over 100 years as CO2 levels have risen.1 drought deaths

Energy Truth 2

Fossil fuels for the foreseeable future will remain a uniquely cost-effective (affordable, reliable, versatile) and scalable source of energy.

  • Myth: There are no real benefits of continuing fossil fuel use because it can be rapidly replaced by mostly solar and wind.

    Truth: Fossil fuels are and for decades will remain uniquely cost-effective: affordable, reliable, versatile—on a scale of billions of people in thousands of places.

  • Myth: Fossil fuels are being rapidly replaced in an “energy transition” to solar and wind.

    Truth: Fossil fuel use is 80% of the world’s energy and still growing despite 100+ years of aggressive competition and 20+ years of political hostility and massive solar and wind favoritism.2 primary energy consumption by fuel

  • Myth: Fossil fuel use will soon rapidly decline because countries know “green” energy will be cheaper.

    Truth: Countries that care most about cheap energy are pro-fossil fuels.

    E.g., China, which uses mostly coal to produce “green” tech, has over 300 planned new coal plants designed to last over 40 years.3

  • Myth: Solar and wind are growing fast by outcompeting fossil fuels with superior economics.

    Truth: Solar and wind are growing fast only when given massive government preferences—mandates, subsidies, and no penalty for unreliability—along with crippling government punishments of fossil fuels.

  • Myth: Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.

    Truth: For the overwhelming majority of the world’s energy needs, solar and wind either can’t do what fossil fuel can—e.g., non-electricity energy uses such as airplanes or cargo ships—or are far more expensive.4

  • Myth: Solar and wind electricity is getting so cheap that it will lead to rapid electrification of the 4/5ths of today’s energy that is not electricity.

    Truth: When you factor in full cost of the 24/7 life support that unreliable solar and wind electricity need, they are far more expensive.5 TX freeze 2021

  • Fossil fuels are uniquely able to provide energy that’s low-cost, reliable, and versatile on a scale of billions of people. This is due to fossil fuels’ combination of remarkable attributes—fossil fuels are naturally stored, concentrated, and abundant energy—and generations of innovation by industry.
  • There is currently only one energy technology that can match (actually exceed) fossil fuels’ combination of naturally stored, concentrated, abundant energy: nuclear. Nuclear may one day outcompete all uses of fossil fuels, but this will take radical policy reform and generations of innovation and work.

Energy Truth 3

The more cost-effective and scalable energy is, the more human beings can flourish on this naturally deficient and dangerous planet.

  • Myth: The Earth will be a highly livable place—stable, sufficient in resources, and safe—as long as we don’t impact it too much.

    Truth: Earth is very inhospitable—dynamic, deficient, dangerous—unless we have the productive ability to transform and impact it to be abundant and safe.

  • The more energy is cost-effective—affordable, reliable, versatile—and scalable to billions of people in thousands of places, the more people can use machines to produce the values they need to flourish on this naturally deficient and dangerous planet.
  • Thanks to today’s unprecedented availability of cost-effective energy (mostly fossil fuel) the world has never been a better place for human life. Life expectancy and income have been skyrocketing, with extreme poverty (<$2/day) plummeting from 42% in 1980 to <10% today.6 Poverty headcount

Energy Truth 4

Given that the vast majority of the world is energy-poor, the world needs far more energy as quickly as possible.

  • The world needs much more energy.

    Billions of people lack the cost-effective energy they need to flourish. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. 1/3 of the world uses wood or dung for heating and cooking. Much more energy is needed.7 primitive biofuel use

  • Myth: Poor countries will “leapfrog” fossil fuels and go right to solar and wind.

    Truth: No rich country has been able to abandon fossil fuels even at huge cost, while every dramatic increase in wealth has involved fossil fuels: Japan, Singapore, South Korea, China, etc.

    Poor countries are not guinea pigs.

  • The desperate lack of life-giving, cost-effective energy means that any replacement for fossil fuels must not only provide energy to the 2 billion who use significant amounts of energy today but to the 6 billion who use far less. Rapidly eliminating fossil fuels would be mass murder.
  • Summary: Fossil fuels are a near-term irreplaceable source of the scalable energy humans need to flourish.

    With fossil fuels billions more people can have the opportunity to flourish. Without them, billions of energy-starved people plunge into poverty and early death.

Energy Truth 5

Any negative climate side-effects of our massive fossil fuel use so far have been completely overwhelmed by their climate mastery benefits—as evidenced by the 98% decline in climate disaster deaths over the last 100 years.

  • Myth: We are more endangered than ever by climate because of fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions.

    Truth: We have a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths due to our enormous fossil-fueled climate mastery abilities: heating and cooling, infrastructure-building, irrigation, crop transport.8 climate disaster deaths

  • Myth: Even if climate-related disaster deaths are down, climate-related damages are way up, pointing to a bankrupting climate future.

    Truth: Even though there are many incentives for climate damages to go up—preferences for riskier areas, government bailouts—GDP-adjusted damages are flat.9 weather losses

Energy Truth 6

Mainstream climate science predicts levels of warming and associated climate changes that human beings can continue to master and flourish with.

  • Myth: Even if we’re safe from climate now, we can expect future emissions to lead to disaster.

    Truth: Since today’s unprecedented safety exists after 100+ years of rising CO2, and with 1° C warming, we should be skeptical that further CO2 rises will somehow overwhelm us.

  • Climate mastery is so powerful that for CO2 emissions to be apocalyptic enough to justify rapid fossil fuel restriction, let alone elimination, they’d need to have unprecedented impacts like:
    • Seas rising feet per decade
    • Storms becoming 2 times more powerful

    Science shows nothing like this.

  • Myth: Future warming is ominous because heat-related death is already such a catastrophic problem.

    Truth: Even though Earth has gotten 1°C warmer, far more people still die from cold than heat (even in India)! Near-term warming is expected to decrease temperature-related mortality.10 fewer cold deaths

  • Myth: Future warming is ominous because it will be worst in hot areas.

    Truth: The mainstream view in climate science is that more warming will be concentrated in colder places (Northern latitudes) and at colder times (nighttime) and during colder seasons (winter). Good news.11 warming pattern

  • Myth: Future warming will accelerate as CO2 levels rise.

    Truth: Mainstream science is unanimous that the “greenhouse effect” is a diminishing effect, with additional CO2 leading to less warning.

    Even IPCC’s most extreme, far-fetched scenarios show warming leveling off.12

  • Myth: We face catastrophically rapid sea level rises, which will destroy and submerge coastal cities.

    Truth: Extreme UN sea level rise projections are just 3 feet in 100 years. Future generations can master that. (We already have 100 million people living below high tide sea level.)13 sea level projections

  • Myth: Hurricane intensity is expected to get catastrophically higher as temperatures rise.

    Truth: Mainstream estimates say hurricanes will be less frequent and between 1-10% more intense at 2° C warming. This is not at all catastrophic if we continue our fossil-fueled climate mastery.14 hurricane projections

  • Myth: We face catastrophic increases in dangerous wildfires, an “Earth on fire.”

    While the media increasingly reports on fires and draws connections to warming, the world burns less than 20 years ago and far less than 100 years ago. Fire danger primarily depends on human mastery.15

  • Summary: Continuing fossil fuel use will lead to levels of warming and other changes that we can master and flourish with.

    Policy implications

    • Energy freedom —> CO2 levels rise, life continues to get better and better
    • Net zero —> CO2 levels rise more slowly, billions of lives ruined

Energy Truth 7

A policy of energy freedom, including but not limited to fossil fuel freedom, is the fastest path both to more plentiful energy and to more cost-effective alternatives.

  • What are “energy freedom policies”?

    Government actions to protect the ability of producers to produce all forms of energy and consumers to use all forms of energy, so long as they don’t engage in reasonably preventable pollution or endangerment of others.

  • Energy freedom policies include:
    • Protecting the freedom to develop fossil fuels and other forms of energy. E.g., deep geothermal development.
    • Protecting the freedom to use fossil fuels and all other forms of energy. E.g., “decriminalizing nuclear.”
  • Energy freedom policies are more likely to lead to long-term emissions reductions.

    Because they accelerate the rate at which nuclear and other alternatives become globally cost-competitive. (The only moral and practical way to reduce global emissions.)16 China and India increasing emissions

  • Fact: The 2 biggest instances of CO2 reduction have come from energy freedom policies:
    • Nuclear: Freedom led to cost-effective and scalable nuclear power until the “green” movement virtually criminalized it.
    • Gas: Freedom led to significant substitution of gas vs. coal.
  • “Net zero by 2050,” by failing to recognize the unique benefits of fossil fuels, is catastrophic when barely implemented and would be apocalyptic if fully implemented.

    Energy freedom gives billions more people the energy they need to flourish and unleashes truly cost-effective alternatives.

References

  1. UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

    For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 per year during the 2010s.

    Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

    Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, the population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

    Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.

    ↩

  2. Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy

    ↩

  3. As of July 2023, China has over 300 new coal-fired power stations in various planning and construction phases. Global Energy Monitor – Coal Plant Tracker, Coal Plants by Country (Power Stations)

    ↩

  4. Alex Epstein – The ultimate debunking of “solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels.”

    ↩

  5. U.S. Energy Information Administration – Hourly Electric Grid Monitor

    ↩

  6. World Bank Data – Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population)

    ↩

  7. IEA – Access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

    Robert Bryce – A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations

    ↩

  8. UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

    For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 per year during the 2010s.

    Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

    Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, the population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

    Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.

    ↩

  9. Roger Pielke Jr. – Weather and Climate Disaster Losses So Far in 2022, Still Not Getting Worse

    ↩

  10. Zhao et al. (2021)

    Bjorn Lomborg – Climate Change Saves More Lives Than You’d Think

    ↩

  11. NOAA – Climate change rule of thumb: cold “things” warming faster than warm things

    ↩

  12. IPCC AR6, WG1, chapter 4

    ↩

  13. IPCC AR6, WG1

    ↩

  14. NOAA – Global Warming and Hurricanes

    ↩

  15. Roger Pielke Jr. – What the media won’t tell you about … Wildfires

    ↩

  16. Reuters – Analysis: China no closer to peak coal despite record renewable capacity additions

    Reuters – India rejects net zero carbon emissions target, says pathway more important

    Alex Epstein – A pro-human, pro-freedom policy for CO2 emissions

    ↩

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Market Realities Are Throwing Wrench In Biden’s Green Energy Dreams

Energy

Market Realities Are Throwing Wrench In Biden’s Green Energy Dreams

Published on May 4, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

 

For two years now, I and others have been pointing out the reality that there is no real “energy transition” happening around the world. Two new items of information came to light this week that irrevocably prove the point.

It is true that governments across the western world appear to be working to bankrupt their countries by pouring trillions of debt-funded dollars, Euros and British pounds into central planning efforts to subsidize renewables and electric vehicles into existence. That reality cannot be denied. The trouble is that no amount of debt money can turn the markets and the markets aren’t cooperating.

Despite all the government largesse that has spurred major additions of wind and solar generation capacity, those weather-reliant energy sources can’t even keep up with the pace of rising demand for electricity. As a result, the markets dictated that the world consumed record levels of coal, natural gas, oil and even wood during 2023. Yes, we are still burning vast amounts of wood for electricity, despite an alleged “transition” from wood to coal which began 500 years ago.

That is reality, dictated by the markets.

Two new bits of data came to light this week that pound the final nails into the coffin of the narrative around the energy transition. A report in the Financial Times, citing data compiled by Grid Strategies, reveals that the buildout of new high-voltage transmission lines in the United States slowed to a trickle in 2023, with just 55.5 additional miles installed. That collapse comes despite the Biden government’s recognition that a massive expansion of this type of transmission lines must happen to accommodate the demands of any true “transition” to renewables.

The Financial Times quotes a 2023 assessment by the Department of Energy that found that “regional transmission must more than double and interregional transmission must grow more than fivefold by 2035 to meet decarbonization targets.” DOE admits such a pace would add more than 50,000 miles of new transmission in just 11 years, which is almost 1,000 times the pace of adds during 2023. Yikes.

A crucial aspect of that DOE study to understand is that it was conducted before we began to understand the true magnitude of additional power demands that will result from the explosive growth of AI technology just now starting to come to full bloom. It was just this past January, at the WEF Forum in Davos, where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the audience he believes generation capacity on the grid will have to double over the next decade just to fill the AI demands alone. That is what is needed in addition to the rising demands for EV charging, industrial growth, population growth and economic growth.

The second piece of compelling data arising this week comes from a Bloomberg story headlined, “Data Centers Now Need a Reactor’s Worth of Power, Dominion Says.” The key thing to understand about this story is that the piece is only referencing the needs of planned new data centers being built in Northern Virginia to feed AI development in that tiny sliver of the United States.

This key excerpt from the story says it all: “Over the past five years, Dominion has connected 94 data centers that, together, consume about four gigawatts of electricity, Blue said. That means that just two or three of the data center campuses now being planned could require as much electricity as all the centers Dominion hooked up since about 2019.”

That is not just rapid growth, it is exponential growth in power demand from a single developing technology.

Demand growth needs such as this aren’t going to be filled by unpredictable, unreliable, weather-dependent generation like windmills and solar arrays. And let’s face it: The United States is not going to be able to continue expanding renewables without finding some way to create a massive expansion of transmission. Why build the generation if you can’t move the electricity?

What it all means is that all the grand Biden Green New Deal plans to shut down America’s remaining coal fleet and much of its natural gas generation fleet are going to have to wait, because the market will not allow them. That’s reality, and reality does not care about anyone’s green transition dreams.

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.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Economy

‘Gambling With The Grid’: New Data Highlights Achilles’ Heel Of One Of Biden’s Favorite Green Power Sources

Published on May 4, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By NICK POPE

 

New government data shows that wind power generation fell in 2023 despite the addition of new capacity, a fact that energy sector experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation demonstrates its inherent flaw.

Wind generation fell by about 2.1% in 2023 relative to 2022 generation, despite the 6 gigawatts (GW) of wind power capacity that came online last year, according to data published Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That wind power output dropped despite new capacity coming online and the availability of government subsidies highlights its intermittency and the problems wind power could pose for grid reliability, energy sector experts told the DCNF.

The decrease in wind generation is the first drop on record with the EIA since the 1990s; the drop was not evenly distributed across all regions of the U.S., and slower wind speeds last year also contributed to the decline, according to EIA. The Biden administration wants to have the American power sector reach carbon neutrality by 2035, a goal that will require a significant shift away from natural gas- and coal-fired power toward wind, solar and other green sources.

A table depicting the decrease of wind power generation in 2023 relative to 2022. (Screenshot via U.S. Energy Information Administration)

“Relying on wind power to meet your peak electricity demands is gambling with the grid,” Isaac Orr, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment who specializes in power grid-related analysis, told the DCNF. “Will the wind blow, or won’t it? This should be a moment where policymakers step back and consider the wisdom of heavily subsidizing intermittent generators and punishing reliable coal and gas plants with onerous regulations.”

Between 2016 and 2022, the wind industry received an estimated $18.6 billion worth of subsidies, about 10% of the total amount of subsidies extended to the energy sector by the U.S. government, according to an August 2023 EIA report. Wind power received more assistance from the government than nuclear power, coal or natural gas over the same period of time.

“This isn’t subsidies per kilowatt hour of generation. It’s raw subsidies. If it were per kilowatt hour of generation, the numbers would be even more extreme,” Paige Lambermont, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “This is a massive amount of money. It’s enough to dramatically alter energy investment decisions for the worse. We’re much more heavily subsidizing the sources that don’t provide a significant portion of our electricity than those that do.”

“Policy that just focuses on installed capacity, rather than the reliability of that capacity, fails to understand the real needs of the electrical grid,” Lambermont added. “This recent disparity illustrates that more installed wind capacity does not necessarily correlate with more wind power production. It doesn’t matter how much wind you add to the grid, if the wind isn’t blowing at peak demand time, that capacity will go to waste.”

Wind power’s performance was especially lackluster in the upper midwest, but Texas saw more wind generation in 2023 than it did in 2022, according to EIA. Wind generation in the first half of 2023 was about 14% lower than it was through the first six months of 2022, but generation was higher toward the end of 2023 than it was during the same period in 2022.

In 2023, about 60% of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from fossil fuels, while 10% came from wind power, according to EIA data. Beyond generous subsidies for preferred green energy sources, the Biden administration has also aggressively regulated fossil fuels and American power plants to advance its broad climate agenda.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) landmark power plant rules finalized this month will threaten grid reliability if enacted, partially because the regulations are likely to incentivize operators to close plants rather than adopt the costly measures required for compliance, grid experts previously told the DCNF. At the same time that the Biden administration is effectively trying to shift power generation away from fossil fuels, it is also pursuing goals — such as substantially boosting electric vehicle adoption over the next decade and incentivizing construction of energy-intensive computer chip factories — that are driving up projected electricity demand in the future.

“The EIA data proves what we’ve always known about wind power: It is intermittent, unpredictable and unreliable,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the DCNF. “Any power generation source whose output is wholly dependent on equally unpredictable weather conditions should never be presented by power companies and grid managers as safe replacements for abundant, cheap, dispatchable generation fueled with natural gas, coal or nuclear. This is a simple reality that people in charge of our power grids too often forget. Saying that no doubt hurts some people’s feelings, but nature really does not care about our feelings.”

Blackmon also pointed out that, aside from its intermittency, sluggish build-out of the transmission lines and related infrastructure poses a major problem for wind power.

“Wind power is worthless without accompanying transmission, yet the Biden administration continues to pour billions into unreliable wind while ignoring the growing crisis in the transmission sector,” Blackmon told the DCNF.

Another long-term issue that wind power, as well as solar power, faces is the need for a massive expansion in the amount of battery storage available to store and dispatch energy from intermittent sources as market conditions dictate. By some estimates, the U.S. will need about 85 times as much battery storage by 2050 relative to November 2023 in order to fully decarbonize the power grid, according to Alsym Energy, a battery company.

The White House and the Department of Energy did not respond to requests for comment.

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