Tag: green energy

World’s Poor in for Hard Time as Pope Leo Backs Green Agenda and Net Zero

On matters of Catholic dogma, the Popes claim to be infallible. But on the science around climate change and the political Net Zero lunacy they frequently talk out of their pontifical posteriors. Who can forget the late Pope Francis’s claim that humans are causing earthquakes, a suggestion that only the whackiest of climate alarmists can utter. Alas, the new Bishop of Rome is also capable of ruminating out of his rear end with Pope Leo XIV recently giving us his ‘world is burning’ sermon. At a recent ‘green’ mass at his summer estate in Castel Gandolfo, he added: “We must pray for the conversion of so many people inside and outside of the church, who still don’t recognise the urgency of caring for our common home.”

As a ‘lapsed’ Catholic, your correspondent has been the beneficiary of many such ‘conversion’ prayers. Fear works well if you are a schoolboy sitting at the feet of Sister Agnes, headmistress of St Anselm’s primary school in Dartford, with the fires of hell promised for missing mass on Sunday and the numerous Holy Days of Obligation. Papal fears of a world burning due to excessive holidays in Benidorm are a bit tame. After all, it has been done to the far limits of stupidity by the UN activist-in-chief Antonio Guterres. Come on Leo, I can’t help thinking, you can do better than that.

Needless to say the new Green Pope is all-in on the fake science of weather attribution. “We see so many natural disasters in the world, nearly every day and in so many countries, that are in part caused by the excesses of being human, with our lifestyle.” One can only pray that the new Pontiff gets around to reading the latest scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where little or no human involvement is observed in almost all natural weather events, now and forward to 2100. He might care to consider that deaths from natural disasters have plunged by 95% over the last 100 years, while the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to a remarkable 15-20% ‘greening’ of the planet.

Wearing green vestments for his special mass in the new ecological education centre at the summer residence, Pope Leo urged the world to recognise what he called the urgency of the climate crisis, and “hear the cry of the  poor”. But the poor are not crying, at least not for the rich Western elite fantasy of Net Zero. Many in the developing world see hydrocarbon use as the key to lifting them out of grinding poverty. They are aware of the enormous increase in staple crops that has occurred over the last 60 years due to the use of hydrocarbon-enabled fertilisers. They can feel the extra food in their bellies – to deprive them of the natural stored energy of the Earth at this stage in their development would, in Sister Agnes’s often spoken words, be wicked.

Keep reading

Dep’t of Energy says continuing Biden-era energy policies will increase blackout risk by 100-fold

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released its annual “Resource Adequacy Report,” earlier this month, and it warns that blackouts are coming if the country carries out the Biden-era plan to retire fossil fuel power plants. That is not sitting well with climate activists. 

The report’s executive summary opens with a declaration that the U.S. possesses “abundant energy sources and capabilities such as oil and gas, coal, and nuclear.” It warns that the speed at which utilities are retiring fossil fuel-powered generators and replacing them with unreliable and intermittent wind and solar power threatens to increase the risk of power outages by 100X in 2030. 

“This report affirms what we already know: The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement. 

The Biden-Harris administration’s report in April 2024 under then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm took on a noticeably different tone. Their executive summary warned that relying on fossil fuel resources to meet reliability requirements is “risky,” and natural gas generators should be replaced with hydrogen or fitted with carbon capture, a technology DOE engineers warned wasn’t affordable or scalable. Granholm’s report mentioned climate change 14 times, but the Trump administration’s report doesn’t mention it at all.

Keep reading

Woke Netherlands Is Rationing Electricity as the Power Grid Is Overwhelmed and the Kingdom Is Focused on ‘Cutting Emissions’

Go woke, go ‘broken power grid’.

Around the world, the unreliability of the new power-generating technologies and the unwise rush towards ‘net-zero’ goals are leading the countries most invested in these ruinous policies into deep power supply troubles.

After blackouts in Spain, Portugal and parts of France two months ago, now it’s the ultra-liberal kingdom of the Netherlands that is reaping the electricity shortage that they sowed with their woke agenda.

It arose today that the Dutch are now rationing electricity.

Their overloaded power grid can’t take the pressure of rapid electrification and ‘ambitious climate goals’ (a.k.a. the Church of Climate Change policies).

Daily Mail reported:

“More than 11,900 businesses are stuck in a queue for access to the network, alongside public buildings including hospitals, schools and fire stations.”

The present crisis comes as the Dutch concentrate efforts ‘to cut carbon emissions’.

“After shutting down production at the massive Groningen gas field last year, the Dutch government has pushed a fast transition to electric heating, solar power and battery storage.”

The national grid did not grow to demand, creating widespread bottlenecks, and increasing costs.

“Officials estimate €200 billion will be needed by 2040 to expand grid capacity. Electricity prices are already among the highest in Western Europe, and Dutch households face yearly tariff increases of up to 4.7 percent for at least the next decade.”

Citizens are asked not charge e-bikes and electric cars during the peak usage hours between 4pm and 9pm.

“The Netherlands has been one of Europe’s most aggressive adopters of green policies, aiming to cut emissions in half by 2030.”

Keep reading

Kathy Hochul’s only slowing down the suffering from her green-energy lunacy

Gov. Kathy Hochul finally admits the state’s “climate” goals are impossible to meet for now, but she offers no reason to trust she won’t continue to pursue them to appease green extremists, at huge cost to regular New Yorkers, if she wins re-election next year.

The climate law demands the state achieve 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040, but it’s still burning as much carbon as ever; its faltering (but hugely expensive) alternative-energy gains aren’t even enough to keep up with expected increases in demand.

The gov is making the smallest possible concession to reality, while dodging as much blame as she can: “We cannot accomplish what those objectives were back in before I became governor in a time frame that’s not going to hurt ratepayers,” she announced this month. “So, we’re slowing things down.”

Mind you, she’s burning ever-more of your dollars (via taxes and utility bills) on costly offshore wind projects, still blocking new pipelines, still preventing new-home natural-gas hookups and making non-electric vehicles more expensive.

She’s simply admitting that it’s not remotely enough, even though it keeps driving New York electricity costs through the roof. (Even roofs with solar panels on top!)

Keep reading

Net Zero to Cost Taxpayers £800 Billion, Warns OBR

Britain’s move to a Net Zero economy will cost taxpayers more than £800 billion over the next two decades, the OBR – the UK’s fiscal watchdog – has said. But even this is based on implausibly generous assumptions, say critics. The Telegraph has the story.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said Government plans to limit climate change will cost the public purse £30 billion every year until at least 2051, as tax revenue from the sale of petrol and diesel fuel dries up.

This includes nearly £9.9 billion of spending every year on tech investments – for example updating the electricity grid – as well as £20.5 billion in revenue losses from declining fuel duty from petrol cars, as electric vehicles (EV) become more common.

Investments in green technology will initially make up most of the Net Zero cost before lost tax receipts become the bigger factor, the OBR said.

“In the next decade, expenditure accounts for the bulk of the fiscal cost, particularly public investment in residential buildings, removals and surface transport, which start to decline from 2036 to 2037,” it said.

While the sums are significant, the fiscal cost of Net Zero has been revised down from £1.1 trillion since the OBR last reviewed it in 2021. The watchdog said this was because of fuel duty freezes leading to lower lost receipts and a higher-than-expected uptake of EVs.

It also assumes the Government will spend less on the transition after the Climate Change Committee revised down the costs across the whole of the economy.

Keep reading

The Green Lobby’s Dishonest Crusade for Solar and Wind

You wake up to an alarm, flick on the light, brew coffee, and drive to work. Every step requires energy – the stuff that shares the coin of physical reality with matter, the E in E = MC2.  It keeps homes warm, food fresh and economies running. 

Supplying 80% of the world’s primary energy, coal, oil and natural gas make up the lifeblood of modern civilization. Yet, there continue to be calls for the abandonment of these fuels without any feasible, scalable replacement in sight. 

It is dishonest for “green” lobbyists to claim that electricity from wind and solar can replace fossil fuels, when currently most of the energy used in the world is not even in the form of electricity.

Electricity represents only about 20% of global final energy consumption. That means four-fifths of the world’s energy use comes from fuels that power ships, planes, trucks and industrial furnaces. Oil fuels vehicles, natural gas provides heat for homes and industry, and coal is critically important for the manufacture of steel from iron.

Demand for hydrocarbons is expected to exceed that of electricity for many decades.

You’ve probably heard it before: “Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.” This is a falsehood supported by a misleading metric – the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). When Mark Twain spoke of “lies, damn lies and statistics,” he had LCOE in mind.

LCOE purports to present an apples-to-apples comparison between various energy sources. However, the measure is meaningless because it ignores key costs such as those of providing backup power to compensate for the intermittency of solar and wind. Something must be available to step up when the wind and sun are not available for power generation.

While it may be true that sunshine and wind are “free,” converting them to a form of energy that works with modern power grids and integrating them into the 24-hour operation of electrical systems supplying millions of customers is difficult and expensive. 

A 2022 study by Robert Idel exposes LCOE’s flaws.

First, LCOE assumes constant output, but solar and wind produce only 20%-30% of their designed capacity, compared to 80%-90% for plants running on coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel.

Second, integrating solar and wind requires expensive infrastructure, including new transmission lines between population centers and remote industrial installations of wind turbines or solar panels or to natural gas plants standing by as backups. 

Third, LCOE ignores more subtle but, nonetheless, important operational considerations. For instance, as the output of solar and wind rises and falls with changes in the weather or daily westward progression of the sun, fossil fuel plants must ramp up or down, reducing efficiency and raising costs.

The rosy numbers of LCOE don’t reflect the reality of electricity bills. In California, where so-called renewables make up more than 50% of electricity generation, residential rates hit 30 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023 – more than double the U.S. average.

Higher energy prices infiltrate every corner of life – manufacturing, logistics, heating, cooling, farming, data storage and more.

Keep reading

Wind Turbine Blade Hospitalizes One Person After Crashing Onto Busy Interstate in Maryland

A wind turbine blade crashed onto I-70 in Maryland on Monday morning.

The Maryland State Highway Administration reported, “At approximately 5:30 a.m., a tractor trailer traveling westbound on I-70 was pulling a wind turbine blade that struck the guardrail causing the blade to go partially into the eastbound lanes.”

SHA added, “The blade was then clipped by a tractor-trailer traveling eastbound.”

The incident hospitalized one person and closed the westbound lane on I-70 for several hours.

A video of the incident was uploaded on X.

Per Fox 5 DC

A wind turbine blade detached from a tractor-trailer early Monday, blocking traffic in both directions of Interstate 70 in Washington County, Maryland State Police said.

The crash occurred around 5 a.m. near Exit 26 at Interstate 81 when the blade crossed the center median and landed in the eastbound lanes.

Maryland Department of Transportation traffic cameras showed the massive blade stretched across the highway. Officials say one person was transported by ambulance to Meritus Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.

Drivers experienced delays throughout the morning commute.

In the last year, Democrat Governor of Maryland Wes Moore, who is speculated to run for President, has signed legislation to create offshore wind energy off Maryland’s coast.

Keep reading

Blue states with net-zero emissions goals consider nuclear as hopes for 100% wind and solar fade

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), Monday directed the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop and construct a nuclear power plant of not less than one gigawatt. The new plant was needed, Hochul said in her announcement, in order “to support a reliable and affordable electric grid, while providing the necessary zero-emission electricity to achieve a clean energy economy.” 

It was a surprising announcement for a state that closed and dismantled the Indian Point nuclear power plant only five years ago. The consideration of nuclear in the energy mix is part of a pattern seen in other blue states committed to eliminating electricity generated from fossil fuels. California has now delayed the closure of its only nuclear power plant, and Michigan is looking to restart a previously shuttered nuclear power plant. 

In all three cases, it appears that the states are coming to grips with the reality that intermittent wind and solar backed up by short-duration, expensive grid-scale batteries won’t be enough to supply the power needs of the state, especially as AI places more demands on the grid. Still clinging to the hope of a fossil fuel-free grid, these states are looking to nuclear as a more politically tenable option. 

Keep reading

Green agenda is killing Europe’s ancestry

Western Europe’s new green regime reorders the continent through policies of territorial cleansing and restriction, replacing the lifeways of rooted peoples with a managed wilderness shaped by remote technocrats and mandated compliance. What arrives with the language of environmental deliverance advances as a mechanism of control, engineered to dissolve ancestral bonds.

In the soft light of the northern dawn, when the fog rests over fields once furrowed by hands and prayers, a quiet force spreads, cloaked in green, speaking in the language of “sustainability,” offered with the glow of planetary care. Across Europe, policymakers, consultants, and unelected “visionaries” enforce a grand design of regulation and restraint. The new dogma wears the trappings of salvation. It promises healing, stability, and ecological redemption. Yet beneath the surface lies a different pattern: one of compression, centralization, and engineered transformation. This green wave comes through offices aglow with LED light and carbon dashboards, distant from the oak groves and shepherd chants that once shaped Europe through destiny and devotion. Traditional Europe lived through the pulse of the land, its customs drawn from meadows, its laws mirrored in trees, its faith carried by the wind over tilled soil and cathedral towers.

The terms arrive prepackaged: “rewilding,” “net zero,” “decarbonization,” and “climate justice.” These sound pure, ringing with the cadence of science and morality. Their syllables shimmer with precision, yet behind their clarity stands an apparatus of control, drawn from abstract algorithms rather than ancestral experience. They conceal a deeper impulse: to dissolve density, to steer the population from the scattered villages of memory into the smart cities of control. The forest returns, yet the shepherd departs. The wolves are celebrated, while the farmer disappears from policy. Across the hills of France, the valleys of Italy, and the plains of Germany, the primordial cadence falls silent. Where once rose smoke from chimneys, now rise sensors tracking deer. Where once stood barns, now appear habitats for reintroduced apex predators. Rural life, the fundament of Europe’s civilizational ascent, receives accolades in speeches, even as its arteries are quietly severed.

The continent reshapes itself according to new models, conceived in simulation and consecrated in policy. Entire regions are earmarked for rewilding, which means exclusion, which means transformation through absence. The human imprint recedes, and in its place rises a curated silence: measured, observed, and sanctified by distance. The bond between man and land, established over centuries of cultivation, ritual, and kinship, gives way to managed wilderness.

Yet this wilderness unfolds without its own rhythm, shaped and maintained through remote observation and coded intention. It remains indexed and administered. Every creature bears a tracking chip. Every tree falls under statistical oversight. Drones scan the canopies. Bureaucrats speak of ecosystems the way accountants speak of balance sheets. The sacred space, once alive with sacrifice and harvest, turns into a green exhibit in the managerial museum of Europe.

Keep reading

City of Sydney BANS gas appliances for all  new homes: ‘Dirty fossil fuel that has no place in homes’

The City of Sydney council has banned gas appliances for all new homes and businesses built from January 2026. 

Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s council on Monday night unanimously adopted the motion banning gas from all new residential builds from December 31 to wean homes and businesses off the fossil fuel.

The council said the move would save each household up to $626 on their power bills every year. 

The change would see an update to development control rules for the use of electric stoves, ovens, heaters and coolers in all newly built apartments and houses. 

Gas hot water systems will still be permitted under the current regulations. 

‘We remain in a climate crisis, which means we need to pull every lever we have in order to keep reducing our emissions,’ Clover Moore said. 

‘To rely on gas means a continued cost for our hip pocket, a continued cost for our health and a continued cost for our planet. It is a price that we simply cannot afford to pay.’

It joins six other NSW councils which have already banned indoor gas appliances in new builds, while seven other councils are also working towards the same regulations.

The City of Sydney also proposed a ban on gas appliances in other developments including serviced apartments, new offices and hotels. 

Councillors voted on gathering public feedback on a plan which would ‘require’ the use of renewable energy in the developments if a ban on gas is passed. 

Keep reading