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When will our leaders admit that achieving net zero will cost trillions and is unachievable?

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From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

It was only a matter of time before the green bandwagon of pipe dreams crashed into the Jones family’s 12-year-old internal-combustion-engine people carrier with an almighty bang. The net zero target has vast social and economic costs, costs so dizzying, so deleterious to our way of life that few of its proponents have bothered to find out what they are. Well, I have, and it’s terrifying.

You may have missed it, but at the G20 summit, Rishi Sunak just breezily wrote a £1.62 billion cheque from the UK to the Green Climate Fund to “support the world’s most vulnerable to deal with the impact of climate change… And this government will continue to lead by example in making the UK, and the world, more prosperous and secure”.

Was there really nothing better at home to spend that money on, Prime Minister? You know, all those special needs children whose funding your government just cut by 20 per cent, or are 1.9 million kids struggling with talking/understanding language insufficiently “vulnerable”? How about building a couple of new hospitals and creating bursaries for 1,000 desperately-needed nurses? Or maybe put up some new houses to deal with the pressure of the 606,000 immigrants you allowed into our country last year against the very specific wishes of the majority of the population?

Sorry, you’ll have to forgive me for not understanding how our gravely indebted country can afford to splash the cash on grand, almost certainly corrupt and futile, international eco-projects: maybe helping British people during a cost of living crisis doesn’t earn sufficient greenie points with Sunak’s globalist mates?

Honestly, I wanted to slap him. No, Prime Minister, “leading by example”, as you call it, will not make the UK more prosperous and secure. The credulous pursuit of net zero by 2050 will leave us exposed and vulnerable, and very cold. We are already far too dependent on energy from other countries who are busy fleecing us for our folly. The UK pays Norway a deafening £14 billion a year for gas while our PM struts on the world stage, boasting that Britain is leading the world in “decarbonising”. Like a man snipping the cords of our last remaining parachutes while bragging that we’ll hit the ground before anyone else.

Yes, Marjorie, I’m aware that most of this stuff is deadly dull and we’d really rather not think about hydrocarbons, whatever they are. But we absolutely have to focus now before the eco-zealots who have captured almost our entire political class do irreparable harm. Take a recent report from Offshore Energies UK which warns that, by 2030, unless a fortune is invested in new North Sea exploration and production facilities, the UK will be reliant on other countries for 80 per cent of our gas and 70 per cent of our oil. In what world is that secure? It sounds criminally stupid to me.

It gets worse. Steven, a Telegraph reader who has worked as a geologist around the North Sea for a quarter of a century, says that new investment has been scared off by the EPL (Energy Profits Levy, the additional 35 per cent on oil and gas profits imposed by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt). “Before the EPL, my company ranked the UK below Pakistan on the above-ground (political) risk,” says Steven, “Not any more. Our economic models play out over 20 years. You simply cannot change taxes halfway through the game.” Steven says the UK is now “completely uninvestable”. Bountiful natural resources beneath our silver seas remain untapped so the clever fellows on the Climate Change Committee can pat each other on the back. 

Boy, it really is going to be squeaky-bum time in 2030. That’s also the date when the UK bans the production of cars and vans that use petrol and diesel. “Madness,” according to Karl McCartney, the Conservative MP for Lincoln and a long-time member of the Transport Select Committee. “The Government’s electric vehicle (EVs) target is unrealistic and dangerous,” he says. “It needs to be scrapped – and fast.” (The EU has already pushed back its target to 2035 while President Macron says “France has done enough”.)

I interviewed Karl for this week’s Planet Normal podcast and he explained how government policymakers have been “led by the nose by green zealots and the metropolitan elite – the EV evangelists, as they have been called”. Karl, a delightfully sensible chap from Ellesmere Port, points out that there are 35 million vehicles on the road, a very small proportion are electric, and they’re not all going to be replaced in seven years’ time. Not when the average salary of Karl’s constituents buys them an eight-year-old diesel or petrol Ford Mondeo instead of a Tesla, and not when there’s no place to charge it even if they could afford an EV. There is already a shortage of electricity in Lincoln. People down South, the MP reckons, have no idea how much those in areas with very little public transport rely on the private car.

“I have spoken about this to senior colleagues and they know it’s madness,” Karl says. Even some members of the Cabinet are concerned, but no one dares challenge the sacred consensus. “It seems our government’s policies are based on green virtue-signalling and oneupmanship,” he despairs.

Karl had a big hand in the Transport Committee’s Fuelling the Future report which was published in March. “We remain concerned that the Government has not fully thought through, or properly responded to, our scepticism about expecting ordinary motorists to bear the financial burden of transitioning to all-electric vehicles,” the report said, “We maintain that it is realistic and fair to expect a significant number of motorists to continue using hybrid or conventional-engine cars for years ahead. Synthetic low-carbon fuels that can be used in these engines without expensive modifications should be supported as a halfway house for a significant number of private car owners.”

There was a “woeful response” to that report from the Department of Transport. According to Karl, this was “an opportunity for the Government to climb down and save face,” but realism and practicality – a grasp of the impact of your deluded, undeliverable policies on millions of lives – are unwelcome in the net zero Cloud Cuckoo Land where much of our ruling class snoozes. They’ll wake up soon. The vandalism of Ulez cameras in London will be as nothing compared to public anger when people realise the bill for net zero will run into trillions.

Even if you believe, as most of us do, that a transition to cleaner greener energy is highly desirable and will surely come in the long term (the end of the century seems a realistic goal), you can still be alarmed by this crazy groupthink and its wilful blindness to looming consequences. Covering half of Lincolnshire in solar-panel farms, and paying American firms huge subsidies to produce electricity when we should be producing food on good, productive land – who voted for that?

Not very long ago, this country went into Covid lockdowns without a proper cost-benefit analysis and with politicians bamboozled into believing there was only one possible course of action, instead of listening to a range of possibilities. I’m afraid we are in great danger of repeating that historic error. The Government should repeal the net zero legislation and switch its focus to achievable adaptations over a longer timeframe instead of coercing and bullying the British people into altering their lifestyles in order to hit a meaningless, unattainable target. 

A bold change of tack may well yield electoral dividends, giving disillusioned Conservatives something we can actually vote for. “My polling suggests scepticism of expensive net zero commitments unites the 2019 Tory coalition,” says Prof Matt Goodwin. So both Red Wall and Blue Shires have well-founded doubts about the green bandwagon of pipedreams; they’ll be sticking with their internal combustion engines, thanks. 

At the G20, the Prime Minister said he wanted the UK to be a world leader. Marvellous, Rishi, but who wants to be a world leader in shooting ourselves in the head?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/09/12/net-zero-will-cost-trillions-and-is-unachievable/

Net Zero Fail: UK Government to Forcibly Switch Your Appliances Off

From Watts Up With That?

First published JoNova; Imagine needing government permission to turn up your winter heating when you catch Covid, or pleading with bureaucrats to allow you to heat more rooms in your house. But don’t call it energy rationing.

Turn on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads

…

By Nick Gutteridge,
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
4 September 2023 • 9:04pm

…

The Government insisted it was “in no way asking people to ration electricity” and that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.

In official guidance, ministers have said the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges and car chargers is key to delivering net zero.

“They enable consumers to shift their electricity usage to times when it is less costly for the energy system,” the document states.

…

The Energy Bill includes powers for ministers to “mandate that electric heating appliances and EV chargepoints must have smart functionality, prohibiting the sale of non-smart devices in Great Britain”.

…

Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet and head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to scrap the entire section on smart appliances from the legislation.

He said the Government was “admitting a shortage of electricity with its plans to limit supply to households and businesses through smart appliances, peak pricing penalties and reliance on irregular renewables”.

…Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/04/brits-urged-turn-on-heat-pumps-wind-is-blowing-net-zero/

Can there be any remaining doubt that claims renewables are cheaper and better than the alternatives are total nonsense?

Even if reducing CO2 emissions is important to you, there are better zero emissions alternatives to useless renewables.

Places with access to nuclear energy don’t have to ration energy. If anything, such places serve as a nexus of industry, business which take advantage of cheap energy surpluses.

Take the Welsh island of Anglesey. They used to have a nuclear power plant, Wylfa nuclear power station, which supported local industry. As far as I know nobody supplied by that plant was asked to ration energy. Instead, the nuclear plant supported Anglesey Aluminium, which employed 540 people. The Aluminium smelter was mothballed in 2016, shortly after the last reactor was shut down in 2015. I’m not sure how many people the power plant employed, but that’s a lot of jobs for a small rural community to lose.

There is some talk of replacing the nuclear reactor, but so far it’s all talk.

I once visited Anglesey, spent a week in a vacation unit. When I visited the nuclear power plant was still operating, you could see the bustle of industry. Good memories, everyone I met was nice – one of the friendliest places in Britain.

There is no doubt all of Britain could radically reduce emissions and keep energy bills under control, by transitioning to nuclear power. Suggestions nuclear is too expensive or impractical are absurd. France managed a transition to over 70% nuclear energy in the 1970s. OK it might have taken a little longer than a decade, but not much.

I believe British engineering would be up for the job, but if there is a shortage of key skills, I’m sure France would do a deal, lend Britain some of their top nuclear engineers, so Britain could copy France’s 1970s energy transition.

Meanwhile the people of Anglesey, of everywhere in Britain, make the best of it, with an increasingly detached government telling them on top of all the eye watering heating bills, ULEZ charges and hardship they’ve endured, Net Zero now means the government wants you to surrender control of your home appliances to politicians, powers which politicians assure us will never, of course, be used.

Don’t call it energy rationing.

Correction (EW): h/t CampsieFellow – Anglesey, not Anglesea

Update (EW): Smart meters could communicate with smart appliances via your household electrical wiring, which bypasses any need for you to configure your smart devices to your WIFI. Before WIFI became ubiquitous in homes, a common alternative to physically wiring up your house with ethernet cables were powerline network adapters, special network adapters which turned your household electrical wiring into a data network. I suspect this is how smart meters will be instantly connected to any smart appliances you purchase, to allow your power company or Whitehall bureaucrats to impose limits on your use of your own appliances.

Following California’s Renewable Energy Lead Guarantees Rocketing Power Prices & Blackouts

From STOP THESE THINGS

In their sillier moments, the wind and sun cult point to places like California or Germany as prime examples of energy Nirvana. Then come the facts. California and Germany have most certainly led the charge in backing heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar, but they’ve also led the charge on rocketing power prices and power rationing.

California suffers the highest power prices in the Lower 48 (excluding Alaska and Hawaii): US 30 cents/per kWh, which compares rather unfavourably with the prices enjoyed in Utah, which average US 12 cents/per kWh. Utah’s cheap prices and consistently reliable supply are no mystery: 61.8% is generated using coal, 24.7% using natural gas; a trivial 8.1% is generated (on average) by solar and a minuscule 1.9% is generated (on average) using wind.

Likewise, there is no mystery as to why California suffers the highest prices and routine load shedding and blackouts: in 2018, California had 80 GW of installed generation capacity encompassing more than 1,500 power plants; with 41 GW of natural gas, 26.5 GW of ‘renewables’ (12 GW solar, 6 GW wind), 12 GW of large hydroelectric, and 2.4 GW nuclear. Since then, California’s continued to add even more wind and solar capacity, with inevitable results.

The Australian’s Nick Cater showers a little more rain onthe wind and sun cult’s parade, below.

Why California dreamin’ is a renewables nightmare
The Australian
Nick Cater
21 August 2023

There was little comfort for price-conscious electricity consumers following the news that Australia is partnering with California to drive action to fight global warming.

Global collaboration was critical to deal with “the biggest threat faced by the Indo-Pacific region”, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said last week, making it clear she regards the climate crisis to be at least as dangerous as the emergence of a hostile superpower.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen told ABC Radio National listeners the partnership began with his meeting with California Governor Gavin Newsom a year ago.

California and Australia share a lot in common, he said. About half of California’s energy came from renewables. “Their EV policy is very advanced,” he said. “Governor Newsom made clear to me that he was keen to collaborate on things like EV charging and joint learning.” There are indeed many things we can learn from California about energy policy. The first is that wind and solar power are punishingly costly.

California has the country’s fourth-most expensive electricity, according to the latest data from US Energy Information Administration. California residents pay US30 cents per kilowatt hour – almost three times more than customers in Utah.

A second lesson is that California has some of the least reliable electricity in the US. The California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s power grid, was forced to issue an emergency alert during a hot spell last September, pleading with customers to turn off their appliances to stop the grid crashing.

A third “joint learning”, as Bowen called it, is that transmission lines should be kept as short as possible. A recent California auditor’s report cited power lines as the cause of six of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires since 2015.

And joint learning number four is that Australia needs nuclear power.

Seven years ago, Newsom predicted that Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear power station, would close by 2025. Last year he signed a bill committing $US1.4bn to keep it open.

A fifth lesson is that expensive, unreliable electricity is a great way to kill jobs.

A Hoover Institution study found that companies left California at the rate of seven a month between 2018 and 2021. They included American Airlines, Chevron, Uber, Tesla, Kaiser Aluminium, Hewlett Packard and Oracle.

California used to be where the nation’s downtrodden fled to find work. Today it has the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate.

Bowen’s claim on the ABC that “about half” of California’s electricity comes from renewables – including 27 per cent from solar energy – should have been fact-checked. Over the past 30 days, solar has generated 20 per cent of CISO’s power. Natural gas generated 48 per cent and nuclear 8 per cent. California’s much-hyped batteries, which renewable energy tragics insist will be the answer to our prayers, contributed 0.1 per cent. That was only marginally higher than the amount provided by solar panels at night.

It’s not that there’s been any shortage of investment. Generous subsidies have attracted corporates because that’s what subsidies do.

Yet there is no viable means of reducing the current emission intensity of its grid from the current level of around 270g CO₂eq/kWh to anything close to the world’s best practice of less than 30g CO₂eq/kWh.

Australia has even more work to do. Carbon emissions from electricity generation have been running at around 500g CO₂eq/kWh for the past 12 months. Yet Bowen insists we’ll be up among the world’s leaders by 2030 on the road to becoming “a renewable energy superpower”.

He may well have been referring to this column on the radio last week when he noted that “it’s pretty fashionable for the column inches of a couple of newspapers in Australia at the moment to say our targets are too ambitious, that we won’t get to 82 per cent renewables”.

However, he insisted: “I disagree with that. It is ambitious, but it’s also achievable.”

Bowen’s target is achievable, if not by 2030 then at least by 2035, providing he picks a better role model than California.

His opposite number, Coalition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, turned to Wyoming for inspiration in a well-informed article in The Australian last week.

Wyoming, a coal state, has a population about the size of Tasmania and produces almost 12 times more energy than it consumes.

It’s the second-biggest net energy supplier after Texas. Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state since 1986, accounting for about two-fifths of all coal mined in the US. The state holds nearly two-fifths of US coal reserves at producing mines.

Wyoming was the eighth-largest crude oil-producing state in the nation and the 10th-largest natural gas producer.

The Wyoming state government read the writing on the wall some time ago, and has sought to diversify the energy economy to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. It leaned heavily into wind but, even as a sparsely populated state, the dream of being powered by wind turbines soon collided with the reality of energy density. The competition for land with farming and nature has provoked a widespread backlash, as in Australia.

Wyoming has jumped ahead of the pack, becoming an early adopter of the latest generation of nuclear small modular reactors. A demonstration unit will be built at a retiring coal power plant in Kemmerer, with the assistance of $US2bn from the Biden administration.

It will be the first Natrium reactor to be commercially deployed, storing heat in molten salt to boost its power from 345 MWe to 500 MWe for as long as 5.5 hours to serve peak demand or fill in for times of lower renewable generation.

It is on track to be completed by 2030, when Snowy Hydro 2.0 is due to come online, and some years before any likely completion of offshore wind generators in Australia.

Wyoming is set on a course to transition from coal straight to nuclear, a journey jurisdictions such as Ontario and Finland have already completed. The good people of Wyoming are unlikely to suffer from Power Bill Stress Disorder, a form of anxiety now commonplace in California and Australia.

They will be free to indulge, should they wish, in reverse virtue-signalling, knowing they have achieved what the great woke state in the West could only promise.
The Australian

The sensible Swedes are all in on nuclear generation, too.

Germany Falling Way Short Of Meeting E-Vehicle Targets…”Major Problem With The Trend”

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin on 30. August 2023

Experts: Traffic light misses e-car targets – ZDFheute

New, internal combustion engine (ICE) cars are planned to be eliminated from German streets by 2030, when Germans will have to purchase electric vehicles when buying a new car. That’s what the government plans.

But today Germany’s Blackout News site reports that there’s “a major problem with the trend of new car registrations.” It appears the figures are falling way short of the targets.

“According to Stefan Bratzel of the Center of Automotive Management (CAM) in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany is likely to fall well short of the government’s target of having at least 15 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2030,” reports Blackout News. As of January 1, 2022, 48,5 million passenger cars were registered in Germany. Only 1.2 million are electric battery type vehicles, which the government is pushing.

“The purchase of an electric car is currently supported by the federal government with up to 4,500 euros. However, as of Sept. 1, this subsidy will no longer apply to commercial buyers, who account for two-thirds of new registrations,” Blackout News adds. “From January next year, the maximum subsidy will be 3,000 euros.”

Consumers are still far from being convinced by what electric vehicles have to offer. They are costly, don’t really save CO2 under Germany’s current electricity supply mix, are inconvenient to charge and remain plagued by limited range.

The market share of battery-powered cars in new registrations is expected to fall to 12 percent from September and so far make up only 2.4 percent of all vehicles on the road. In fact this year, Germany is projected to sell fewer electric vehicles than last year.

Other problems hampering the sales of electric cars, according to Blackout News, include uncertainty surrounding government subsidies, consumers delaying purchases due to high prices, inflation and interest rates.

To meet the electric car sales target this year, 750,000 new cars of this type would need to be registered, but experts say a figure of just 450,000 new registrations “are realistically possible”.

“On the current growth trend, an inventory of 7 to 8 million electric cars would be reached by 2030 – just half the government’s planned amount,” reports Blackout News.

Another problem hampering progress on reaching the targets is that some buyers are thinking that it’s their last chance to acquire an internal combustion engine car and so are opting not pass up the opportunity to do so. After 2030, owners of ICE vehicles will still be allowed to continue operating them – until the car reaches the end of its life.

Also, political opposition to the ban of ICE cars is growing, and so it’s not even sure that new registrations of ICE vehicles will be stopped at all in 2030. Many don’t believe it’s even technically feasible.

The potential looming auto industry fiasco

From BOE Report

By Terry Etam

Growing up on a farm, an initial mechanical obsession of mine was tractors (don’t laugh until you’ve tried one – think you feel unassailable in a 4×4 F-150? You have no idea), quickly followed by cars. They are so central to everything, and represent freedom, in a sense. The auto industry has been a passion ever since, my head hopelessly stuffed with useless trivia that only gearheads appreciate.

There have been painful episodes along the way, including watching beloved automakers at times make unfathomably stupid decisions. The entire US auto industry ran itself onto the rocks of bankruptcy a decade and a half ago, their smug executives shouting about their respective superiority right up until the infamous day that the three bonehead leaders of the big US auto manufacturers all flew from Detroit to Washington on the same day in separate private jets to beg Washington for bailouts. 

Times change, and these days it’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for that bungling brigade. Consider the tight wire act they’re being forced to walk on, with the only safety net being the precarious support of governments barrelling full speed ahead towards an energy transition strategy that first and foremost burns all the bridges behind. Governmental transition plans with respect to autos will work against some very big odds, or will be a spectacular failure. 

While the Biden administration recently spoke of increasing corporate average fuel economy standards significantly in coming years – a great development, more on that in a minute – the greater winds of change are clearly towards outlawing internal combustion engines (ICE) both in North America and in Europe. Canada and many western European countries have firm deadlines, as does California, and what California does, the rest of the US often follows emissions wise.

Imagine then what it’s like for North American/European auto manufacturers to see news headlines like this: EVs Are Piling Up on Dealer Lots as Supply Outpaces Demand. No more piffle about supply chain woes hindering EV sales, something else is going on. 

On top of that are grim results for those vehicles actually sold. In the second quarter of 2023, Ford lost $72,000 on every EV sold. While the latter is ‘sort of’ normal for new car platforms – and EVs are nothing if not new platforms – what isn’t normal is for highly-touted/media-frenzy revolutionary new autos like the Ford Mustang Mach E EV to be selling under 3,000 units per month in the US as it is in 2023, two years after introduction (US sales peaked over 5,000 units per month shortly after introduction). In the second quarter of 2023, Ford sold 14,843 EVs (out of 513,662 vehicles sold by the company overall), a fairly meagre total considering the capital invested and the marketing campaigns. In the minds of most consumers, it seems an EV means a Tesla, and there is scant interest in anything else no matter the marketing hyperbole.

Problems compound further. Western countries and auto manufacturers are piling into new battery plant investments, trying to emulate Tesla. Well, guess what… many of the materials going into those batteries will have to come from China, who controls most of the world’s critical mineral processing facilities. China is itself, of course, setting out to build as many batteries as possible. Given their home field advantage with raw materials and the cost advantages noted by western automakers, what chance will western automakers have to compete?

And then it gets even worse from there. Think Cuba. 

Cuba and the US have had their differences, as would any neighbourhood where adjoining neighbours are fierce capitalists and fierce communists. While the ideological fervour may be fading – Cuba is no longer as commie as it was, and the US is, well, like an ideological but malfunctioning fireworks show. Regardless, Cuba has not had access to modern automotive technology since the 1960s. As a result, streets still are full of ancient American cars, held together forever.

There is no reason to think that won’t happen in the US, Canada and western Europe when the new-ICE ban comes into effect. Some segments of the population will go with the regulatory-mandated flow, while a great many will hold onto what they know, trust, and love. Short of a miracle battery breakthrough, many will simply not trust EVs in cold weather and/or instances where battery power doesn’t cut it.

Should that happen, it will place a damper on new EV sales, or at minimum remove a potentially significant slice of the new car market. But the luddite old coots (as they will be known) hanging onto their ICE pickup trucks will be but a tiny worry in American automakers’ viewpoint; the central dominating terror in their eyes will be Chinese competition.

Chinese EV auto companies currently enjoy a 25 percent cost advantage in the manufacture of EVs, according to US automakers. Add that fact to the current stranglehold China has on critical minerals processing, and domestic auto manufacturers would be out of their minds not to be at least somewhat frightened.

But it gets even worse from there. North American and European automakers are being forced to abandon further development of ICE vehicles, because they have been assured by western leaders that those are doomed, and to suggest otherwise is to engage in modern blasphemy punishable by the worst of all possible punishments – public shaming and accusations that they don’t care about the planet.

Chinese automakers have no such compunction. They operate in a different universe. They will build what they have to and want to, including EVs and ICE and hamster-drive if they so choose. 

Consider the meaning of Chinese vehicular manufacturing independence. The world currently purchases something like 100 million vehicles per year. The US, formerly the predominant market, is seeing its share slide to something like 15 percent. Europe likewise is shrinking. 

But developing country demand is skyrocketing, and most developing countries have not declared China to be an industrial enemy. China will build what those markets want, and will not give even a fraction of a single hoot about western demands to eliminate gasoline and diesel. There are too many mouths to feed.

Western auto manufacturers that go all-in on EVs, as demanded by their governments, will find that they no longer can even dream of global domination; their home markets will be a money pit of massive proportions.

In case anyone cares, and it doesn’t seem that they do when energy transitions are discussed, this will all work out the absolute worst for lower income people. Ordinarily, the auto market provides options for lower economic classes with vehicles that are no longer in favour. For example, in periods of high gasoline prices, consumers that can afford to switch up will tend to go for more fuel efficient vehicles, and the market can get flooded with inefficient ones – which has the effect of pushing down prices of these out of favour beasts, putting them within reach of poorer people. The fuel costs may be higher, but at least they can buy wheels.

That likely won’t happen this time around, if we see people buy ICE vehicles and then hoard them for as long as they can. In fact, things are terrible already for lower income people looking to buy older used cars – prices have skyrocketed for those as well. 

Used cars are expensive, new cars are hideously more so, and EVs are, thus far, mostly toys of the wealthy with multi-car garages, or well paid urbanites that can afford to use them where they really shine. Again, we can see where China is twelve steps ahead; many popular EVs in China are tiny, cheap EV runabouts that don’t have massive range, but get the job done. No such option is available here in North America, few in Europe, and if they do show up on these shores, it is a safe bet they will be of Chinese origin, because they’re the only ones that can make money at it.29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html

One last bit of drizzle for the day. Recently, Toyota announced that they had made breakthroughs in solid state batteries; by 2026-27 they expect to have EVs on the road that can charge far faster, with batteries that don’t overheat and catch fire, and with more range. It truly is an exciting development (companies have teased us with solid state batteries for years, including one Lamborghini model that incorporated a tiny supplemental one more as a fashion statement than anything). I would be happy to buy a solid state Toyota EV if it lives up to its promise and is cost effective. 

The problem is, if the new Toyota tech is as good as hoped (and Toyota brings much needed credibility to the idea), then what happens to all the existing EVs, to all the existing battery plants now being funded at a cost of hundreds of billions, to all the money being spent on lithium ion battery development/processing/etc.? It is normal for new technology to overtake old and outdated items, but these massive current investments will not have had any chance to recoup the investment. Ford may have lost $72,000 on each EV sold in Q2 2023, but that could be acceptable if they went from selling 14,000 EVs per quarter to a million. 

But what if that is as good as it gets? What if they never see sales of these lithium-ion EVs rise to the levels needed to recoup even a fraction of that investment? What if they build them and no one comes?

In that scenario, there is at least one silver lining – poor people might have an amazing choice of today’s EV crop, at very modest prices indeed. 

In a sane world, automakers would morph first into hybrid vehicle manufacturers, which can make pretty much everyone happy. That’s why Biden’s proposed new fuel efficiency standards would be important; we should be striving for higher mileage, low hanging fruit instead of utterly demolishing the old ICE world. Besides that logical point, hybrids are far, far better for the environment from a materials availability perspective. Toyota calculated that they could make 90 hybrids for the same battery material that goes into a single EV, and that those 90 hybrids over their life could offer electrical motivation of a magnitude no single EV could even hope to. Plus, the energy transition is being hobbled by lack of critical metals/minerals; why not pursue the biggest bang for the buck while the world sorts through exactly what additional resources are available, and where, and when?

But sanity is forbidden in the west. It is EV or nothing. Infrastructure be damned. Investment be damned. Popular demand be damned. 

The only western auto company I’ve seen that is keeping their feet on the ground and their wits about them is Toyota, who is openly stating that there is a future for ICE, a future for hybrids, and that maybe hydrogen fuel cells will be the power of choice. Hats off to them for, if nothing else, courage.

The scenarios above are, of course, possibilities, and maybe probabilities, but not certainties. But the odds of big trouble for western automakers are significant and ignored at our peril. No one wants to see forlorn Big Three auto execs having to climb into those private jets for that humbling ride again.

Energy conversations should be positive and, most of all, grounded in reality. Life depends on it. Find out more in  “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com. Thanks!

Read more insightful analysis from Terry Etam here, or email Terry here.

EV Fantasia hits multiple speed bumps

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

This week, newspapers in the UK appear to be full of Carmageddon headlines.

Thanks to NetZeroWatch and Ballyb, for the compilation of EV warning signs on the road to West Debacle.

The big advantage of an EV used to be the cheap fill but that’s all changed in the least year with the energy crisis. If the workers can’t afford to turn on the oven to cook a Sunday Roast, they can hardly afford to power up a car.

In a bit of a bombshell last week, Volkswagon admitted that people weren’t buying their electric cars, quaintly referring to this phenomenon as “strong consumer reluctance”. Sales were so bad though, 30% down on forecasts, that they have closed the factory at Emden, Germany for six weeks and are sacking 300 out of 1,500 staff.

Meanwhile, the UK is speeding towards the 2030 EV mandate five years faster than the rest of the world, and the backlash is growing. A Daily Mail poll finds only 1 in 4 people think it’s a good idea to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Fully 53% of people don’t like it. Is the UK a democracy or not? Manufacturing and industry leaders are using words like “ruinous” and talking of “the end of UK car production.” They’re warning that 800,000 UK jobs are at risk. Nothing about this makes sense. EV’s are a lousy way to change the weather. No one even knows if EV’s will reduce carbon dioxide.

At the moment in the UK 36 cars are fighting over every public charging site. Electricity demand is expected to double in the UK due to EV’s yet there is no plan to provide the extra capacity. Perhaps the real plan is to get half the country onto electric buses…?

The electric car ‘revolution’ is a disaster before it’s begun

Politicians are forcing electric cars on a public that doesn’t want them

Ben Marlow, The Telegraph

The electric car revolution is stalling, of that there can no longer be any doubt. It has left the big global carmakers floundering…

But it’s the setback at VW that stands out, raising serious questions about whether politicians are making the catastrophic mistake of forcing electric cars on a public that doesn’t want them.

Think about it for a second: an entire industry not only forced to abandon a product that the vast majority of people still want and use, but also bullied into channelling all its resources into making something on a colossal level that there simply isn’t the market for – at least not within the horrendously short timeframe that is being imposed on car manufacturers.

It’s industrial self-sabotage and a commercial, economic and social catastrophe in the making.

Mandating EVs is an “assault on the working class” says Joel Kotkin.

EV owners are wealthier, the cars are more expensive, and mandates will put owning a car out of reach of the unwashed masses…

This rush to electric cars is a colossal mistake

Spiked Online

Replacing the massive $3 trillion global car industry is an extremely high-risk economic gamble, particularly for the West.

In simple terms, the push for EVs represents an assault on the working class. Two-thirds of all EV owners have incomes in excess of $100,000.

EV mandates are also likely to force up the price of now restricted traditional cars. In the meantime, greens will demand higher fuel prices to reduce drivers’ consumption of the demon petrol. Ultimately, as even the Washington Post recently admitted, electric vehicles are hastening a return to conditions not seen since the early 20th century, when the automobile was a luxury item. ‘New cars, once part of the American Dream, [are] now out of reach for many’, it notes.

Just to repeat… None of this makes sense. Even if people have a religious fixation on climate change, this isn’t the path to salvation:

Economist Bjorn Lomborg calculates that a wholesale shift to EVs will lead to a reduction of global temperatures of no more than 0.0002 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

Kotkin asks “who benefits”:

So, who wins here? Certainly not middle- or working-class families for whom climate change barely registers as a primary concern.

…the biggest winner is China.

Today, China produces twice as many EVs as the US and the EU combined. Its leading EV maker, BYD, is now the world’s largest. Its electric-car exports are expected to almost double this year, helping it to overtake Japan as the biggest car exporter worldwide, according to the South China Morning Post.

China has control of much of the worlds rare metals. Giving up an industry with a century of expertise and mass public support for a new high risk industry that depends on foreign supply lines needs some explanation. No one believes we’re doing it to fix the weather.

——————-

Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His latest book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is out now. Follow him on Twitter: @joelkotkin

Image by OpenIcons from Pixabay  |  Das Logo der Marke Volkswagen Nutzfahrzeuge   | VW EV Photo by Vogler,

There was a young climate-change tzar,
Bought a brand new all E.V. car,
Found that very few joints,
Had quick charging points,
Means this car can’t venture too far.

–Ruairi

The EV Kool-Aid acid Test

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

In his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, author Tom Wolfe portrayed Ken Kesey as a man seeking to create a new religion. Kesey’s followers and peers — the “Merry Pranksters” – sought to create a new society based on psychedelic transcendence. Actually, it all started thanks to a CIA-sponsored drug study in which Kesey was given LSD.

Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, apparently finds driving an electric vehicle to be as thrilling as one of Kesey’s LSD trips. In a recent social media post, she announced, “Once you’ve experienced an [electric vehicle] and all it has to offer – the torque, handling, performance, capability – you’re in!”

The euphoria of EV zealots is rarely challenged directly by little things like facts – like the fact that the vast majority of people just do not want one. A recent Rasmussen survey found that 52 percent of American adults think EVs are not practical compared to just 25 percent who think otherwise; the rest are just not sure. Ten years ago, 19 percent favored EVs – that’s a 6 percent jump in a full decade.

According to the 2022 Deloitte Global Automotive Study, more than two-thirds of Americans said their next vehicle would not have any electrification, while only 5 percent saw their next vehicle as an EV; 17 percent would consider a hybrid car. In Southeast Asia, China, and India, majorities also had no desire for an electrified vehicle.

Automatic transmissions were introduced into motor vehicles in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Seven decades later, nearly half of all new models offered in the U.S. were still available with either an automatic or manual transmission. Yet by 2016, only 3 percent of U.S. vehicles were manual vehicles compared with 80 percent in some European and Asian countries.

There has never been a federal mandate requiring all vehicles to use only automatic transmissions. Yet the U.S. government, the governments of several states, and governments worldwide have already demanded that non-electric vehicles be banned from sale within the next seven years. Soon after, such vehicles may not even be allowed on highways and streets.

These totalitarian measures have been inflicted upon unwilling citizens of supposedly democratic nations in the name of “climate change,” despite a dreadful lack of legitimate evidence that the EV mandates are achievable, let alone practical, all things (including production capacity) considered.

For governments to impose unwanted mandates – and for giant automakers to meekly fall into line, despite the wishes of their customers – suggests that the EV mandate mania is born of religious fervor.

The first EV mandate was issued in 1990 in California, which continues to push the envelope to force the rest of America to conform to Los Angeles standards. As of 2021, 42 percent of the nation’s 1 million U.S. electric vehicles were registered in California.

General Motors, which has partnered with the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. since 1998, delivered 2.3 million vehicles in China in 2022, a third of which are zero-emission vehicles. Still, GM, which relies on the Chinese market to stay afloat, cannot sell cost-competitive EVs in the United States (outside California).

The ebullient Barra even admits that “Battery costs are still not at a point where you can get to the mass market, which is this $30,000 to $40,000 vehicle, that’s what the bulk of new car sales are, frankly, around the globe.”

To be sure, price and range perceptions are major reasons cited for people unwilling to risk buying an EV as their only transportation [78 percent of U.S. EV owner households also have a second gasoline-powered vehicle]. But for those who have not drunk the EV Kool-Aid, there are multiple other reasons.

A recent study by the American Automobile Association found that the range of electric vehicles can fall by up to 25 percent when made to carry heavy loads. Another study by Recurrent found that EVs can lose up to 35 percent of their range in freezing conditions. One can only imagine the loss of range when carrying a heavy load in freezing weather.

Parking EVs is another concern, especially for the large number of drivers who do not have covered garages in which to charge their vehicles. The charging infrastructure is far from adequate to meet current and future needs, especially if these mandates come to pass. Another problem is that multi-story parking garages are incompatible with battery-heavy electric vehicles, according to the Institution of Structural Engineers.

Many underground parking garages have banned electric vehicles over fire concerns – because even if such fires are rare, fire brigades lack the proper equipment to extinguish lithium-ion battery fires. Because of the chemical reactions, a lithium-battery fire can continue for days, putting nearby vehicles at risk and making the facility unusable for even longer. Such a fire under a commercial building could destroy the entire structure.

These and many other nitpicking concerns over EVs are among the reasons people in Europe and the U.S. are not sold on the vehicles their governments insist they MUST purchase – or walk. Yet perhaps the biggest reason to slow down on EV mandates is that their increased use compromises the electric grid.

A new study by the Pacific Research Institute found that California will fall more than 21 percent short of the power generation levels required to support the state’s EV mandate. The Golden State has moved to phase out coal and natural gas plants in favor of wind and solar energy that rely on favorable weather conditions to operate anywhere near full capacity.

The immovable object (the energy shortfall) is about to meet the unstoppable force (the California green energy and EV mandates). As the PRI says, California will have to rapidly expand its power generation or risk facing “acute electricity shortages” in the near future. And, as California goes, we have been told, so goes the nation.

Kool-Aid, anyone?

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

  • Duggan Flanakin
  • Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
  • A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, “Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout.”

Telegraph’s EV Fan Gets A Shock!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

If you need a good laugh, read on!

I am not the first man to have cried in an Ikea car park and I won’t be the last. But at that moment I might have been the only one weeping tears of pure frustration.

At the wheel of my battery-powered Skoda Enyaq, I pulled into the car park, where my satnav had indicated several electric charging points. Seeing them, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. A delivery van was parked at an angle, splayed across three spaces so it didn’t stick out into the road. Another car was in the final slot, charging patiently. There was no room at the power inn.

I banged my head against the steering wheel and wondered what to do. After driving around at various speeds, idling in traffic and looping back on myself, I didn’t have the required range remaining in the battery to reach another charging point. Ikea was my last charge saloon.

It wasn’t the only setback I’d had that morning. I was due to drive from my home in north London to my in-laws outside Petersfield, Hampshire. On a good day, the  journey takes about an hour and 45 minutes, but I had allowed three hours to give me plenty of time for a top-up charge before leaving the capital.

When I set out, the sun shone in the sky, the birds sang in the trees and all was rosy with the world. Although I was down to my last 35 miles or so of current, I had plenty of mileage to reach a charging station.

Or so I thought. Using the car’s in-built charger finder, I plotted a course to a juicy looking one in north London. When I got there, I found the machines completely inert. No problem, I thought, popping in another charger to the navigation system, I still had plenty of margin for error.

It was also out of service. The attendant shrugged apologetically, but I didn’t get the impression he minded much. So by the time I reached Ikea the game was up. I had no choice but to wait. When I finally got to plug in and saw how long it would take to charge to a level to complete my journey – much longer than the best-case scenarios I had planned in my head – I texted the family to say I would be late.

I had wanted to see what it was like being an EV person, and was grateful to Skoda for offering me one. At the start of the week I had never driven one before. My wife and I were never big car people, which is to say I only learned to drive in my mid-20s and do so sparingly. After its catalytic converter was stolen last year, we were forced to write off our trusty old Honda Jazz. With two young children, we reasoned we would probably need a car at some point, but we didn’t want to go crazy. Like all self-righteous millennials, we vaguely thought our next vehicle would be an EV, but we weren’t quite sure when to pull the trigger or which to get.

We don’t have off-street parking, so charging would be more problematic than it would if we had a driveway and a home charger. And used EVs were even more expensive than other second-hand cars, the prices of which had been sent through the roof by Covid-related shortages of factory-fresh models.

The pitiful state of charging in the UK is hardly the car’s fault. The Enyaq was satisfying to drive: fast, responsive, comfortable, spacious and quiet. The driver aids alone were a revelation, especially the computer game-style head-up display in the windscreen, invisible except to the driver, telling you where to turn.

Sadly my Ikea experience was not the only charger issue. Later in the week, having driven the family here and there around the countryside, I decided to stock up on charge for the way home. A five-minute petrol stop with a baby and a toddler can be disruptive enough; I didn’t want to experience a half-hour – or longer – recharging stop.

Instead I headed to Petersfield Waitrose, where apparently there was a fast charger in the car park.On arrival I was greeted by a man on his way out of the car park. “It’s not working,” he told me. Like any man, I refused to believe this good faith advice until I had tested the machine for myself. He was right, it wasn’t working.

It started to rain, great sheets of it. I followed the map to another fast-looking charger, 10 miles away. There I found the same man, charging his car. He grinned at me.

I had always thought the whole point of a car is its predictability. Living in London, there is always a choice. Tube lines can be closed, railways replaced by buses, buses on diversion. Even walking you might get rained on.

There’s less choice in rural areas. Sometimes none. The advantage of a car is that apart from traffic, there aren’t as many surprises waiting in store. Yes, it’s expensive and polluting, but it does the job. Without our own charging point, an EV introduces new things to think about. That was the real lesson I learned from Ikea Wembley.

Flat pack can be irritating, but it’s nothing on a flat battery.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/comment/left-flat-by-my-electric-car-charging-experience/

It is amazing how often we read about EV drivers moaning about the lack of charging infrastructure. Who do they think is going to pay for it all? Why should the rest of us have to pay for it? And private businesses are not going to invest billions, when chargers will be sat idle for most of the time given the small number of EVs on the road.

Ed Cumming epitomises the London bubble mentality, when talks about “rural areas” being different. He does not seem to realise that for just about everybody living outside London, a car is a necessity, not a luxury.

His little problem visiting his in-laws may have been a minor inconvenience. For most of us who need cars everyday, especially those with no off road parking, problems like these will have a major impact on our lives.

Finally, A Solution to The Problem of Intermittent Power Generation — The “Virtual Power Plant”

From MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

 By Francis Menton

As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar sources is that they are intermittent. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t work for days on end. The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter. This poses a huge problem for central planners’ dreams of “net zero” electricity. Try to solve the problem with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you’re talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of dollars.

Not to worry. Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy solution to the problem of intermittency. Have you heard of it? It’s the “Virtual Power Plant.” I mean, today pretty much everything can be “virtual” if you want it to be. We have the “virtual” meeting, the “virtual” office, and the “virtual” school — even “virtual” reality. So why not a “virtual” power plant?

But, in the context of generating electricity, what does this business of “virtual” mean? Don’t you actually need to have something to produce the juice? A Manhattan Contrarian investigation now reveals that the Virtual Power Plant is exactly what you undoubtedly already suspect it to be: another new level of Orwellian doubletalk. “Virtual Power Plant” turns out to be another term for pointless enforced sacrifice in service to the climate cult.

If you have been paying attention, you probably have already noticed that this “Virtual Power Plant” thing is the latest talking point of the central planners. For those who have been paying less attention, let me provide a little sampling: here is the web page from the federal government’s Department of Energy (“Virtual power plants, generally considered a connected aggregation of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies, offer deeper integration of renewables and demand flexibility, which in turn offers more Americans cleaner and more affordable power”); a recent (2023) Report from the Rocky Mountain Institute (“Virtual Power Plants, Real Benefits: How aggregating distributed energy resources can benefit communities, society, and the grid”); a piece from Reuters, January 31, 2023 (“Explainer: What is a virtual power plant?”); a piece from Elektrek, September 2, 2022, informing us that none other than Tesla is in the middle of this new fad (“Tesla virtual power plant is rocketing up, reaches 50 MW”).

OK, then, this VPP thing has something to do with “a connected aggregation of distributed power resources.” What the heck does that mean?

Trying to get to the bottom of this, I come upon a piece from Utility Dive on May 5, and a Report from the Brattle Group with a May 2023 date. (You may recognize the Brattle Group as the people who put out the 2021 New York Power Grid Study that I criticized in this post on April 22.)

Both Utility Dive and the Brattle Group start out with excited descriptions of this VPP thing as some magical concoction to defeat the intermittency problem with almost no cost or sweat. From Utility Dive’s summary of the Brattle Group’s conclusions:

The net cost for a utility to provide resource adequacy from a virtual power plant is about 40% to 60% less than natural gas peaker plants and utility-scale batteries. Deploying 60 GW of VPPs “could meet future U.S. resource adequacy needs at $15-$35 billion less than the cost of the alternative options over the ensuing decade,” Brattle’s report said.

And it gets even more magical. From page 12 of the Brattle Group Report:

In fact, a VPP does not even need to generate power.

Wait a minute — what is a “power plant” that doesn’t generate any power? Let us in on the secret! We have to get that by working our way through a model set forth in the Report. In that model, the “Virtual Power Plant” derives its input (if you want to call it that) almost entirely from the following three things:

Smart Thermostats. A/C and electric heating are controlled to reduce usage during peak times. Customer comfort is managed through pre-cooling/heating. Smart Water Heating. Electric water heaters act as a grid-interactive thermal battery, providing daily load shifting and even real-time grid balancing. Home EV Managed Charging. EV charging is a large, flexible source of load that can be shifted overnight.

It’s “smart” thermostats, and “smart” water heaters, and “managed” EV charging. If I might, let me translate that into layman’s terms. On the coldest days of the winter, when the grid does not have enough power, first we will take the liberty of draining the power out of your EV battery. In the all EV utopia that we envision, you are now stuck at home. Then, we will remotely turn off your heat and hot water. Hey, it’s to save the planet!

In this vision, the convenience and comfort, let alone the physical safety, of the people are of no importance. No more the American dream, where you can improve your life by hard work. Now it’s to be forced sacrifice to satisfy the jealous gods of the pagan climate cult.

It’s one more front in the all-out war against your well-being now being waged by our government.