Tag: infrastructure

Are the cover-ups and corruption at the power station that’s Britain’s biggest green hoax – and burns 27 million trees a year – finally about to be exposed?

Since it began to change from burning coal 15 years ago, Drax has got through the equivalent of 300 million trees. Most – and currently all – of this wood was imported from North America because we just do not grow enough here. You would have to burn the entire New Forest every two years just to fuel this one power station.

Drax is strangely reluctant to boast about its unique activity. In a lengthy statement released this week to justify its wood burning, its spokesman managed to avoid using the words ‘wood’ and ‘tree’ altogether, preferring to talk about ‘biomass’.

‘We understand that we need to do more to demonstrate that the biomass we use is genuinely sustainable and that we are taking the necessary steps to operate our business responsibly,’ said the spokesman.

Drax is Britain’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, another record the company refrains from mentioning. It produced nearly 12 million tonnes of the gas in 2023, which is significantly more than when it was burning coal.

That is not counting the emissions from the diesel trucks that bring the trees from the forests to where they are turned into pellets; from the diesel-powered ships that bring the pellets across the Atlantic; or from the trains that finally bring the fuel from the Tyne to Drax.

Incredibly, Drax’s 12 million tonnes of emissions are not included in Britain’s carbon accounts. They are deemed to be emitted in Canada and America – even though the combustion happens in North Yorkshire.

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An independent energy expert explains how the UK’s “Net Zero” strategy will result in blackouts by 2030 – how the solution is nuclear and how natural gas could have reduced bills for decades

The UK plan is to shut down natural gas and so remove the back up to intermittent “renewables”.

Gas and nuclear rely on turbines rotating at 3,000 rpm to produce 50 cycles – renewables produce direct current – requiring an adjustment to convert to the alternating current used by the grid.

From here:

Gas powered electricity accounts for at leas 50% at all times. The Marxist lunatics want to turn it off by 2030.

Here is a 47-minute video:

Will blackouts come to Britain?

On 8 January 2025, wind provided just 2.5 GW (out of the claimed 17 GW) and imports of electricity from overseas interconnectors could only provide 5.7 GW – demand was for 47 GW.

Loss of load probability was 29% – it is usually zero – meaning power blackouts were possible.

NESO = National Energy System Operator – a quasi-autonomous non-government organisation – QANGO – formed when the Marxist Labour government bought out the grid assets from National Grid plc – with taxpayers money a few months ago.

Demark had to defer maintenance in order to supply 700 MW (not GW) from Demark – thy dd the UK a favour – the Danes were under no compulsion to send the electricity over.

All about “where did the reserves come from and how much back-up is available?”

Prices on 8 January 2025 reached £5,500 per MW – normally 120-150 per MW – a power company made a few million pounds in a few hours – why would not ALL power companies take advantage of the price?

Don’t forget, the flip side, if the power from wind turbines is not needed, “curtailment fees” are paid to the wind turbine operator – for NOT producing energy!

The YouTube write-up says this:

“Did the UK only narrowly avoid a blackout last week? Freddie Sayers is joined by energy analyst Kathryn Porter to break down the National Grid numbers and find out how Net Zero might cause blackouts by 2030.”

The solution is to get KEPCO (South Korean Electricity Company) to build 8 nuclear power stations in the UK over the next decade and let everyone make out like bandits!

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Analyzing Ukraine’s Attempted Drone Strike On TurkStream’s Russian Infrastructure

Here are five observations about Kiev’s latest provocation in terms of the bigger picture.

Russia accused Ukraine of attempting a drone strike against one of TurkStream’s gas compressor stations, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as “energy terrorism” while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that the US greenlighted it in order to obtain an energy monopoly over the EU. This comes less than two weeks after Ukraine cut off Russian gas exports to Europe across its territory. Here are five observations about Kiev’s latest provocation in terms of the bigger picture:

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1. This Isn’t The First Attempted Ukrainian Attack Against TurkStream

Ukraine tried to destroy this pipeline at least three times in late 2022 alone, with two of its failed sabotage attempts being analyzed here and here, but this is the first time that it tried using drones. What this shows is that TurkStream remains a priority target for Kiev, yet strangely enough, this hasn’t led to a downturn in ties with Ankara as proven by their continued military cooperation that even includes a drone factory. The latest attempted attack therefore isn’t expected to harm their relations either.

2. Neither Turkiye Nor NATO As A Whole Cares About This Provocation

Turkiye’s stance is difficult to understand, but it either doesn’t believe Russia’s claims of Ukraine attempting to attack TurkStream or it inexplicably believes that it has more to gain from continuing to arm Ukraine in spite of these provocations than to cut it off in response. As for NATO, while member state Hungary condemned this as a violation of its sovereignty due to the country’s partial dependence on that pipeline’s exports, the bloc as a whole predictably doesn’t care since it’s anti-Russian to the core.

3. Ukraine Wanted To Complete Russia & The EU’s Pipeline Decoupling

Ukraine’s motive was to destroy the last operating pipeline between Russia and the EU, which it believed would then make it more difficult for them to enter into a meaningful rapprochement after the conflict ends while also depriving the Kremlin of revenue for financing its ongoing special operation. It was essentially meant to complement September 2022’s Nord Stream terrorist attack in the sense of serving as a geopolitical power play for influencing Europe’s post-war future.

4. Was This A Rogue Deep State Operation Or Was It Approved By Biden?

The first scenario would align with the hypothesis posited here last spring regarding Ukraine’s attacks against Russia’s early warning systems, which were thought to be a desperate attempt at escalation that was later brought under control, while the second would align with the Nord Stream II precedent. Lavrov already blamed the US so the question is the extent to which its elected government was aware of this. The answer will help predict whether or not Trump’s return to office next week will make a difference.

5. How Might Trump React To This Development After Returning To Office?

Building upon the above, rogue deep state behavior would be more difficult for Trump to rein in if he was against what they did, but the precedent of Biden (or rather those who control him) being able to stop Ukraine’s attacks against Russia’s early warning systems suggests that it’s not impossible. On the flip side, it can’t be ruled out that he might support sabotaging TurkStream in order to obtain an energy monopoly over the EU and/or leverage over Turkiye, in which case more such attempts might follow.

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The Truth About America’s Crumbling Infrastructure

Signs that we were once a truly great nation are all around us.  Previous generations of Americans handed us the keys to the most magnificent domestic infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now it is literally falling apart all around us.  Thousands of bridges are structurally deficient and there have already been some very high profile collapses.  Hundreds of thousands of miles of highways and roads in the United States are in very poor shape.  Aging sewer systems are leaking raw sewage all over the place, and children are being slowly poisoned by lead pipes that desperately need to be replaced.  The power grid is hopelessly overloaded and is extremely vulnerable.  Meanwhile, our ports, our dams, our subway systems, our bus terminals and our airports are crumbling right in front of our eyes.  The truth is that our nation’s infrastructure says a lot about who we are.  

So what does America’s crumbling infrastructure say about us?  Sadly, it says that we are a rusting, crumbling, decaying leftover from a better, more prosperous time.

When Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration told us that “investment in U.S. infrastructure as a share of GDP has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s”…

Public investment in U.S. infrastructure as a share of GDP has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s. The World Economic Forum now ranks the United States 13th when it comes to the overall quality of infrastructure.

So Congress passed a bill that gave the Biden administration more than $100,000,000,000 to spend on fixing our infrastructure.

Honestly, I have no idea what they did with all that money.

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5G Technology May Lead to the Collapse of Power Grids

Amid the digital revolution, the world is witnessing the dawn of an era that promises lightning-fast internet speeds, seamless connectivity and the integration of technology into every aspect of everyday life. The rollout of 5G technology has been hailed as the harbinger of this new age, with its capability to transmit data up to 1,000 times faster than its predecessors.

However, lurking beneath the surface of this technological marvel is a threat that could very well jeopardize the future – an insatiable appetite for energy that could consume up to 1,000 times more power than today’s networks.

According to a 2018 article in IEEE Spectrum, “A lurking threat behind the promise of 5G delivering up to 1,000 times as much data as today’s networks is that 5G could also consume up to 1,000 times as much energy.”

This stark reality is brought to the forefront by the sheer scale of the infrastructure and hardware required to support 5G, including the proliferation of small cells, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, cloud computing and an explosion of internet-connected devices.

One 5G base station is estimated to consume as much power as 73 households, and the energy demand is set to skyrocket. A 2019 report by the Small Cell Forum predicts that by 2025, the number of installed small cells will be 70.2 million, with 13.1 million of those being 5G or multimode small cells.

Radoslav Danilak, a prominent figure in the tech industry, has warned that data center energy consumption will double every four years. “Consumption will double every four years,” he asserted, highlighting the exponential growth in energy requirements. This exponential growth in energy consumption is not just limited to data centers but extends to every component of the 5G network, from base stations to small cells and core networks.

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Finnish Commandos Seize Russia-Linked Ship After Undersea Cable Cut

Finland has seized the ship which is being accused of cutting of an undersea cable connecting electricity to Estonia, allegedly on behalf of Russia, given that the vessel was carrying Russian oil. Finnish authorities and Western officials have described the damage to the Estlink 2 electricity cable as the result of “aggravated criminal mischief”.

EU officials have characterized the incident as part of Russia’s hybrid warfare against NATO, with a European Commission statement describing the cable severing as “the latest in a series of suspected attacks on critical infrastructure.”

The vessel in question was observed traversing the same area where the cable damage occurred near in time to the incident. Four additional telecom cables were disrupted – one linking Finland and Germany and three between Finland and Estonia.

Finland’s coast guard boarded the suspect vessel on Thursday:

Finnish police said in a statement that the coastguard crew boarded an oil tanker in Finnish waters early on Thursday. Authorities named the vessel as the Eagle S, and said it was registered in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific.

When it was detained, the ship was sailing from Russia’s Saint Petersburg to Port Said in Egypt, according to online marine tracking website, MarineTraffic.

According to MarineTraffic, the ship was owned by United Arab Emirates-based vessel management company, Caravella.

The European Commission in its statement additionally accused the Eagle S ship of being part of Russia’s energy sanctions-busting ‘shadow fleet’.

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Data Centers Are Eating the Grid Alive

The future of data centers is about to make a huge draw on the power grid. According to a DOE-backed report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, U.S. data center energy use could nearly triple by 2028, eating up as much as 12% of the country’s electricity. Why? Blame AI and its insatiable hunger for powerful chips and energy-guzzling cooling systems.

Currently, data centers are responsible for a modest 4% of U.S. power demand. But with AI servers becoming the star of the show, the power draw has already doubled since 2017. The GPU chips that are needed to run complex machine learning algorithms are pushing the limits of what the grid can handle. And then there is the heat they generate, causing cooling systems to work overtime.

The report warns that this growth could strain electrical grids, spike energy prices, and raise a few eyebrows about the climate impact. Researchers are calling for better transparency around energy use and efficiency improvements, but Big Tech isn’t exactly eager to spill the tea on their proprietary power habits.

And don’t count on renewables to ride to the rescue just yet. A study last month highlighted that scaling up solar and wind power isn’t happening fast enough to keep up with this demand surge. Plus, when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, the grid still needs fossil fuels to back it up.

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Data Centers Are Sending Global Electricity Demand Soaring

The global electricity demand is expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades, largely due to an increased demand from tech companies for new data centers to support the rollout of high-energy-consuming advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). As governments worldwide introduce new climate policies and pump billions into alternative energy sources and clean tech, these efforts may be quashed by the increased electricity demand from data centers unless greater international regulatory action is taken to ensure that tech companies invest in clean energy sources and do not use fossil fuels for power.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report in October entitled “What the data centre and AI boom could mean for the energy sector”. It showed that with investment in new data centers surging over the past two years, particularly in the U.S., the electricity demand is increasing rapidly – a trend that is set to continue. 

The report states that in the U.S., annual investment in data center construction has doubled in the past two years alone. China and the European Union are also seeing investment in data centers increase rapidly. In 2023, the overall capital investment by tech leaders Google, Microsoft, and Amazon was greater than that of the U.S. oil and gas industry, at approximately 0.5 percent of the U.S. GDP.

The tech sector expects to deploy AI technologies more widely in the coming decades as the technology is improved and becomes more ingrained in everyday life. This is just one of several advanced technologies expected to contribute to the rise in demand for power worldwide in the coming decades. 

Global aggregate electricity demand is set to increase by 6,750 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030, per the IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario. This is spurred by several factors including digitalization, economic growth, electric vehicles, air conditioners, and the rising importance of electricity-intensive manufacturing. In large economies such as the U.S., China, and the EU, data centers contribute around 2 to 4 percent of total electricity consumption at present. However, the sector has already surpassed 10 percent of electricity consumption in at least five U.S. states. Meanwhile, in Ireland, it contributes more than 20 percent of all electricity consumption.

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Utility Companies Are Run By Technocrats Obsessed With Control Over Energy

Starting in the early 1930s, the Technocracy movement was obsessed with control over energy. The first two requirements laid down for Technocracy in 1934 were (1) Register on a continuous 24-hour-per-day basis the total net conversion of energy and (2) By means of the registration of energy converted and consumed, make possible a balanced load.” You could easily see this exact wording on your modern energy bill.

As I wrote in Technocracy’s Necessary Requirements,

Conversion of energy means creating useable energy from stored energy like coal, oil or natural gas; when they are burned, electricity is generated. Hydroelectric and nuclear also convert energy. There were two reasons to keep track of useable energy: First, it was the basis for issuing “energy script” to all citizens for buying and selling goods and services. Second, it predicted economic activity because all such activity is directly dependent upon energy. (Note that Technocrats intended to pre-determine how much energy would be made available in the first place.)

Once available energy was quantified, it was to be allocated to consumers and manufacturers so as to limit production and consumption. Technocrats would have control of both ends, so that everything is managed according to their scientific formulas.

The modern Smart Grid, with its ubiquitous WiFi-enabled Smart Meters on homes and businesses, is the exact fulfillment of these two requirements. The concept of “energy web” was first revitalized in 1999 by the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA) in Portland, Oregon. A government agency, BPA had a rich history of Technocrats dating back to its creation in 1937. The “energy web” was renamed Smart Grid in 2009 during the Obama Administration. Note that Smart Grid was a global initiative that intended to blanket the entire world with this new energy control technology.

If America were to face this reality, these Technocrat charlatans would be thrown into the dustbin of history. Unfortunately, policy leaders like Heartland Institute are blind to it. — Technocracy News & Trends Editor Patrick Wood.

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

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FBI thwarts man’s alleged plan to attack Nashville power grid with explosive-laden drone

A Columbia, Tennessee man allegedly attempted to fly a drone packed with explosives into an energy facility before the FBI stopped him from destroying the critical infrastructure, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In a press release, the DOJ said 24-year-old Skyler Philippi was arrested and charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted destruction of an energy facility.

“As charged, Skyler Philippi believed he was moments away from launching an attack on a Nashville energy facility to further his violent white supremacist ideology – but the FBI had already compromised his plot,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said. “This case serves as yet another warning to those seeking to sow violence and chaos in the name of hatred by attacking our country’s critical infrastructure: the Justice Department will find you, we will disrupt your plot, and we will hold you accountable.”

The DOJ said Philippi told a confidential human source (CHS) in June, that he wanted to commit a mass shooting at a YMCA in the Columbia, Tennessee area.

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