GWPF Newsletter - New Report: Green Energy Economy Is Simply ‘Impossible’

China Boosts Coal Mining Capacity Despite Climate Pledges

In this newsletter:

1) New Report: Green Energy Economy Is Simply ‘Impossible’
Mark P. Mills, Manhattan Institute, 26 March 2019
 
2) China Boosts Coal Mining Capacity Despite Climate Pledges
Reuters, 26 March 2019

 
3) New Study: US Shale Revolution Is Saving Tens Of Thousands Of Lives Every Year
Mark Perry, AEI Carpe Diem, 25 March 2019
 
4) U.S. Senate Unanimously Votes Down Green New Deal: Blue Collar Democrats Join Republicans
Daily Mail, 26 March 2019
 
5) Ignore Climate Alarm: Nepal Sets New Record In Wheat Harvest
Nepali Sansar, 26 March 2019
 
6) New Book: Global Polar Bear Population Estimated At Close To 40.000
Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, 26 March 2019 
 
7) Joe Oliver: Climate Alarmists Are Keeping Poor People In The Dark — Literally
Joe Oliver, Financial Post, 27 March 2019 

Full details:

1) New Report: Green Energy Economy Is Simply ‘Impossible’
Mark P. Mills, Manhattan Institute, 26 March 2019

Hydrocarbons — oil, natural gas, and coal — are the world’s principal energy resource today and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. Wind turbines, solar arrays, and batteries, meanwhile, constitute a small source of energy, and physics dictates that they will remain so. Meanwhile, there is simply no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo — a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”

A movement has been growing for decades to replace hydrocarbons, which collectively supply 84% of the world’s energy. It began with the fear that we were running out of oil. That fear has since migrated to the belief that, because of climate change and other environmental concerns, society can no longer tolerate burning oil, natural gas, and coal—all of which have turned out to be abundant.

So far, wind, solar, and batteries—the favored alternatives to hydrocarbons—provide about 2% of the world’s energy and 3% of America’s. Nonetheless, a bold new claim has gained popularity: that we’re on the cusp of a tech-driven energy revolution that not only can, but inevitably will, rapidly replace all hydrocarbons.

This “new energy economy” rests on the belief—a centerpiece of the Green New Deal and other similar proposals both here and in Europe—that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency.

But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information.

In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics—not clever software.

This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”

Among the reasons:

* Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.

* Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%.

* Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%.

* The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced.

DOWNLOAD paper ( PDF)

Full post
 
2) China Boosts Coal Mining Capacity Despite Climate Pledges
Reuters, 26 March 2019

BEIJING (Reuters) - China added 194 million tonnes of coal mining capacity in 2018, data from the energy bureau showed on Tuesday, despite vows to eliminate excess capacity in the sector and to reduce fossil fuel consumption.



Total coal mining capacity in the country was at 3.53 billion tonnes per year by the end of 2018, according to a statement from the National Energy Administration (NEA). That compares to 3.34 billion tonnes at the end of 2017.

The NEA said that excludes 1.03 billion tonnes per year of approved coal capacity currently under construction and 370 million tonnes per year under trial operation.
Additionally, the NEA has approved another seven coal mining projects with a combined capacity of 22.5 million tonnes per year since the beginning of 2019.

However, the total amount of coal mines in China declined to 3,373 in 2018 from 3,907 in 2017, the NEA said in the statement, as Beijing has been phasing out small and ineffective coal mines in eastern regions and expanding capacity in the west

Full story
 
See also GWPF Report The Road from Paris: China’s Climate U-Turn (pdf)



For all its green talk, China is sticking to fossil fuels

While leaders of western countries fret about their greenhouse gas emissions in Katowice, China is forging ahead with new projects and investments in coal and gas. According to a new paper from the Global Warming Foundation (GWPF), the Communist Party’s survival depends on delivering economic growth and cleaner air.

As the report’s author Patricia Adams explains:

“The Chinese have spent a lot of money on renewables without results on anything like the scale required. So despite their continuing outward support for the green agenda, China is actually going all out for fossil fuels. The Communist Party’s grip on power depends on it.”

As a result, analysts expect China’s coal production to continue to grow, with increases of 10 percent likely in the next two years. Such changes dwarf any reductions that are likely in western countries.

Full paper
 
3) New Study: Us Shale Revolution Is Saving Tens Of Thousands Of Lives Every Year
Mark Perry, AEI Carpe Diem, 25 March 2019

The American shale gas revolution has contributed to a 53% decrease in natural gas prices which has helped to save tens of thousands of deaths every year, new paper finds

Here’s the abstract of the March 2019 NBER paper “Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality“:

This paper examines how the price of home heating affects mortality in the US. Exposure to cold is one reason that mortality peaks in winter, and a higher heating price increases exposure to cold by reducing heating use. It also raises energy bills, which could affect health by decreasing other health-promoting spending. Our empirical approach combines spatial variation in the energy source used for home heating and temporal variation in the national prices of natural gas versus electricity. We find that a lower heating price reduces winter mortality, driven mostly by cardiovascular and respiratory causes.

And here’s the conclusion (emphasis added):

This paper finds that winter mortality is lower when the price of heating is lower. To put the estimated elasticity of all-cause mortality with respect to the price of heating of 0.03 in context, the price of natural gas relative to electricity fell by 42% between 2005 to 2010. Our findings imply that this price decline caused a 1.6% decrease in the winter mortality rate for households using natural gas for heating. Given that 58% of American households use natural gas for heating, the drop in natural gas prices lowered the US winter mortality rate by 0.9%, or, equivalently, the annual mortality rate by 0.4%. This represents more than 11,000 deaths per year.

This effect size is large enough that it should not be ignored when assessing the net health effects of shale production of natural gas. The findings also highlight the health benefits of other policies to reduce home energy costs, particularly for low-income households.

Bottom Line: The American shale gas revolution illustrated above by the 57% increase in natural gas production in the US since 2006, which contributed to a 53% decrease in natural gas prices has helped to save tens of thousands of deaths every year. Likewise, any increase in average winter temperatures would similarly reduce winter mortality in the US and around the world. In contrast, how many lives would be lost if the Green New Deal was implemented and energy prices from inefficient windwills and solar panels dramatically increased?

Full post
 
4) U.S. Senate Unanimously Votes Down Green New Deal: Blue Collar Democrats Join Republicans
Daily Mail, 26 March 2019

The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal as expected on Tuesday with not a single senator voting ‘yes’ for the progressive star’s signature policy initiative.



The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal as expected on Tuesday with not a single senator voting ‘yes’

Ocasio-Cortez defended herself after the defeat and argued she encouraged the Democratic senators to vote ‘present’ instead of in the affirmative.

‘I encouraged them to vote present, along w/ others. McConnell tried to rush the #GreenNewDeal straight to the floor without a hearing. The real question we should be asking: Why does the Senate GOP refuse to hold any major hearings on climate change?,’ the self-described socialist explained in a tweet responding to the lack of Democratic votes.

‘The GOP’s climate delaying is costing us lives + destroying communities. Iowa, Nebraska & many in the Midwest are catastrophically flooded right now, in one of the 1st major climate change disasters of 2019. A #GreenNewDeal urges us to pursue a plan on the scale of the problem,’ she added.

Democrats slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for holding a ‘sham’ vote on the matter – it was a non-binding resolution, meaning it had no force of law, and needed 60 votes to advance in the legislative process, which was an impossible task given Democrats only have 47 votes in their corner.

Most of the Democrats voted ‘present’ in protest while Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, who represents the red state of West Virginia; Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona; and Doug Jones of Alabama voted no, as did Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats.

The final vote was 57 nays and 43 present. 

Full story
 
5) Ignore Climate Alarm: Nepal Sets New Record In Wheat Harvest
Nepali Sansar, 26 March 2019

After a rich paddy harvest in Nepal, the country is all set to create a new record for wheat harvest.



The Himalayan nation’s wheat harvest is likely to exceed 2 million tons this fiscal year as a result of good weather during winter, said a senior government official.

The all-time high wheat harvest comes in succession to a bountiful paddy harvest last summer.

According to Nepal Agriculture Ministry Chief Statistician Krishna Regmi, this year’s harvest is expected to record a 7 percent increase as a result of good winter rainfall.

The wheat bounty is likely to increase farmer incomes, reduce Nepal’s import bill and cool down inflation.

Moreover, it will further propel the government’s targeted growth rate of 8 percent as Nepal is primarily dependent on farming. The Nepal Government will soon announce crop production estimates for 2018-19.

Full story
 
6) New Book: Global Polar Bear Population Estimated At Close To 40.000
Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, 26 March 2019 

It’s long past time for polar bear specialists to stop holding out for a scientifically accurate global estimate that will never be achieved and determine a reasonable and credible ‘best guess’. Since they have so far refused to do this, I have done it for them. My extrapolated estimate of 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible.

In 2014, the chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) emailed me to say that their global population size number ‘has never been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.’

In my new book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, I contend that this situation will probably never change, so it’s time to stop holding out for a scientifically accurate global estimate and generate a reasonable and credible ‘best guess’.

Recent surveys from several critical polar bear subpopulations have given us the information necessary to do this.

These new numbers make it possible to extrapolate from ‘known’ to ‘unknown’ subpopulations within so-called ‘sea ice ecoregions’ (defined in 2007 by polar bear scientists at the US Geological Survey, see Amstrup et al. 2007), as shown below, to update old estimates and generate new ones for never-studied areas.

Since the PBSG has so far refused to take this step, I took on the challenge. I contend that an estimate of about 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible. See the graph below from my new book:

This new estimate for 2018 is a modest 4-6 fold increase over the 10,000 or so bears that existed in the 1960s and after 25 years, a credible increase over the estimate of 25,000 that the PBSG offered in 1993 (Wiig et al. 1995).

However, my new estimate is much larger than the improbable figure of about 26,000 (range 22,000-31,000) offered by PGSG biologists in 2015 (Regehr et al. 2016; Wiig et al. 2015). The scary question is this: what do Arctic residents do if there are actually as many as 58,000?

See my new book (Crockford 2019) for the full rationale and references used to arrive at this figure.



Full post

see also Andrew Bolt interview with Susan Crockford on Sky News


 7) Joe Oliver: Climate Alarmists Are Keeping Poor People In The Dark — Literally
Joe Oliver, Financial Post, 27 March 2019 

It is impossible to elevate people in dire need to a decent standard of living without cheap electricity


Residents are seen in the village of Hanuabada in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where just 13 per cent of the country’s population has access to electricity, Joe Oliver writes. -- Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

I recently returned from a Petroleum and Energy Summit in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG), which put into stark relief the moral imperative of developing fossil fuels, especially for the poorest people in developing countries. By implication, it reinforced the profoundly unethical stand of climate-change alarmists who are working to rid the world of hydrocarbons, irrespective of the harm to economic growth, employment and a decent standard of living for billions of people.

A mere 13 per cent of Papua New Guineans have access to electricity. The government’s goal is to extend electrification to 70 per cent by 2030, an ambitious precondition to substantially raising GDP per capita above its current $2,400.

PNG is far behind in electricity usage among larger Asia-Pacific countries. There is a strong correlation between GDP and energy consumption, which requires affordable power sources. Energy mix varies considerably in the region and has been critical to growth. For example, coal supplies 64 per cent of energy in Australia and 55 per cent in Indonesia, while gas represents 63 per cent in Thailand.

PNG imports heavy fuel oil and diesel for 40 per cent of its energy, but does not access its abundant coal reserves. Yet coal is an important source of inexpensive energy in south-east Asia. Over 2,500 coal plants, with total generating power of around 2,000,000 megawatts (mw), are operating or in development in Asian signatory countries of the Paris Accord. For context, Canada’s 100 largest generating stations have a combined capacity of 100,829 mw.

PNG is now debating development of its coal resources. It will take into account safety and economic advantages for its citizens. It should not consider global climate consequences because they will be infinitesimal.

Over a billion people lack access to electricity and another billion and a quarter have insecure access. It is impossible to elevate people in dire need to a decent standard of living without very inexpensive electricity. Depriving them of the opportunity to escape grinding poverty would be inexcusable, without an existential justification.

Alarmists claim to have that justification. However, failed predictions about temperature change, disappearing polar bears, ice melting, islands sinking into the sea and extreme weather events have seriously undermined their scare tactics and moral preening. The evidence simply does not substantiate the apocalyptic prophesies. Nobel prize winner and theoretical physicist Richard Feynman commented that “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” He could have added, it doesn’t matter how many people agree with you.

The climate is always changing. Doubling Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions increases the temperature by 1.1 degree Celsius and secondary effects have not multiplied that number. Increased GHG makes plants more drought resistant and increases arable land. Human beings contribute to raising emissions, but it is unclear how much warming is anthropogenic. Extreme weather events have not increased, according to the IPCC.

There is no satisfactory explanation for why temperatures have risen, fallen and remained flat during the last century of steadily increasing emissions. Since our grasp of climatology is obviously imperfect, we cannot claim that the science is settled.

These comments may set alarmists’ hair on fire, because religious-like conviction does not tolerate conflicting evidence. Unrealized forecasts should induce modesty rather than intensify certainty.

We should responsibly develop the resources we have been blessed with because we owe it to our countrymen in the here and now. Also, economic growth can finance science and adaptation, which offer the best opportunity for breakthroughs in innovative technology and environmental protection.

Full op-ed

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.