In this newsletter:
1) Slowest start to hurricane season in 30 years
Craig Bannister, CNS News, 29 August 2022
2) Central Pacific coral reef shows remarkable recovery despite two warm-water events
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, 6 July 2022
3) La Niña – phenomenon causing unprecedented monsoon rains in Pakistan
Samaa TV, 14 July 2022
Samaa TV, 14 July 2022
4) Climate Scientists in 2015: Warming Indian Ocean weakens monsoon and reduces rainfall
Nature, 17 June 2015
Nature, 17 June 2015
5) Benny Peiser: Europe no longer has a ‘diversified energy system’
Sky News Australia, 30 August 2022
6) Thanks, Boris: UK inflation could top 22% as energy prices soar, Goldman Sachs warns
CNBC, 30 August 2022
7) Allison Pearson: Boris can never be forgiven for sacrificing Britain to his net zero fantasy
The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2022
8) Editorial: We’ve been too slow to fix this gas crisis
The Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2022
CNBC, 30 August 2022
7) Allison Pearson: Boris can never be forgiven for sacrificing Britain to his net zero fantasy
The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2022
8) Editorial: We’ve been too slow to fix this gas crisis
The Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2022
9) Europe must brace for five to 10 years of hardship, Belgian prime minister warns
The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2022
10) ‘Matter of national destiny’: China’s energy crisis sees the world’s top emitter investing in more coal
The Conversation, 29 August 2022
11) Michel Kelly-Gagnon: The high costs of climate 'justice' through lawfare
Financial Post, 30 August 2022
The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2022
10) ‘Matter of national destiny’: China’s energy crisis sees the world’s top emitter investing in more coal
The Conversation, 29 August 2022
11) Michel Kelly-Gagnon: The high costs of climate 'justice' through lawfare
Financial Post, 30 August 2022
Full details:
1) Slowest start to hurricane season in 30 years
Craig Bannister, CNS News, 29 August 2022
The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is off to its slowest start in 30 years, forcing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to slightly decrease its predicted likelihood of an above-normal season.
Craig Bannister, CNS News, 29 August 2022
The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is off to its slowest start in 30 years, forcing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to slightly decrease its predicted likelihood of an above-normal season.
Halfway through the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through November 30, there have been no hurricanes and only three named storms, none of which have met the official definition of a "tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 74 mph (64 knots) or higher."
A typical hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven of which qualify as hurricanes, including three classified as “major.”
Since 1966, there have been only five other hurricane seasons with as little activity at the halfway mark.
In its initial prediction, published in May, NOAA declared:
* A 65% chance of an above-normal season,
* A 25% chance of a near-normal season, and
* A 10% chance of a below-normal season.
But, given the absence of even a single hurricane three months in, NOAA has now slightly adjusted its forecast.
“NOAA still expects above-normal Atlantic hurricane season,” the revised forecast insists, lowering the likelihood of an above normal season to 60%, while increasing the probability of a normal season to 30%.
Even with zero hurricanes, NOAA was loathe to increase the likelihood of a below-normal season (10%).
“[D]espite what you may have heard, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. In fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900, Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg noted in a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.
Nonetheless, some media outlets continue to defend and promote the worst-case predictions, and invoke the specter of climate change in the process.
The Atlantic’s “luck is likely to run out soon,” Axios reported on Friday, claiming that “everyone” agrees that the 2022 hurricane season will be above-normal, or worse:
“The Atlantic hurricane season to date has been unusually quiet, with not a single named storm since July 2, a feat that last occurred in 1982. However, our luck is likely to run out soon, scientists tell Axios.”...
“The forecasts for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season have been unanimous, with everyone from the federal government to university forecasting groups calling for an above average or much above average season.”
Hurricanes “are becoming more damaging due to human-driven climate change, which is causing tropical storms and hurricanes to grow more intense” as the “obstacles” to hurricanes get out of the way, Axios contends.
But, as Hot Air has reported, the “Number and strength of hurricanes stubbornly fail to increase.”
“There is no global trend in the number of tropical storms or hurricanes during the past 50+ years,” Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue agrees.
As for the effect of climate change, a study by The Global Warming Policy Foundation concluded that “[T]here is little evidence that global warming has resulted in more hurricanes, or more intense ones in recent years.”
“On the contrary,” the study finds: “available evidence confirms that hurricane and major hurricane frequency has been similar in many prior periods.”
2) Central Pacific coral reef shows remarkable recovery despite two warm-water events
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, 6 July 2022
The largest global coral-bleaching event ever documented struck the world’s oceans in 2014 and lasted until 2017.
The onset of this abnormal whitening condition spawned widespread gloom-and-doom news reports about its calamitous effect on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and more general predictions of coral reef extinction by 2050.
But a new 10-year study from Palmyra Atoll in the remote central Pacific Ocean shows that reefs outside the reach of local human impacts can recover from bleaching.
“One year after each bleaching event, we did see signs of coral decline at some of the sites, but within two years this was restored,” said Adi Khen, a Scripps Oceanography PhD candidate and lead author. The research team of current and former members in marine ecologist Jennifer E. Smith’s laboratory saw only a small net change in the reef’s coral and algae populations after a decade. Khen, Smith and four co-authors published their results in the journal Coral Reefs.
“This is a testament to the resilience of Palmyra’s reefs in the context of climate change and demonstrates the capacity for recovery in the absence of local stressors,” Khen noted. “Because we have this long-term time series, we’re able to see perspectives from before and after disturbances.”
With support from The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Smith launched a long-term monitoring effort in 2009 at Palmyra Atoll, located 1,300 kilometers (about 805 miles) south of Hawaii. Palmyra is an American territory populated only by visiting researchers and support staff. As one of the remote Northern Line Islands, it is unaffected by local human impacts such as fishing, pollution, coastal development, and tourism. Palmyra provides a natural laboratory for monitoring how ecosystems change over time in response to climate warming events.
“During the warming event that occurred in 2015, we saw that up to 90% of the corals on Palmyra bleached but in the year following we saw less than 10% mortality,” Smith reported. “Measuring not just death and destruction but measuring recovery is really important. Seeing the recovery is where we can learn what might help inform future management.”
Full story
See also Peter Ridd: The good news on coral reefs (pdf)
5) Benny Peiser: Europe no longer has a ‘diversified energy system’
Sky News Australia, 30 August 2022
A typical hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven of which qualify as hurricanes, including three classified as “major.”
Since 1966, there have been only five other hurricane seasons with as little activity at the halfway mark.
In its initial prediction, published in May, NOAA declared:
* A 65% chance of an above-normal season,
* A 25% chance of a near-normal season, and
* A 10% chance of a below-normal season.
But, given the absence of even a single hurricane three months in, NOAA has now slightly adjusted its forecast.
“NOAA still expects above-normal Atlantic hurricane season,” the revised forecast insists, lowering the likelihood of an above normal season to 60%, while increasing the probability of a normal season to 30%.
Even with zero hurricanes, NOAA was loathe to increase the likelihood of a below-normal season (10%).
“[D]espite what you may have heard, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. In fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the continental U.S. has declined slightly since 1900, Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg noted in a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.
Nonetheless, some media outlets continue to defend and promote the worst-case predictions, and invoke the specter of climate change in the process.
The Atlantic’s “luck is likely to run out soon,” Axios reported on Friday, claiming that “everyone” agrees that the 2022 hurricane season will be above-normal, or worse:
“The Atlantic hurricane season to date has been unusually quiet, with not a single named storm since July 2, a feat that last occurred in 1982. However, our luck is likely to run out soon, scientists tell Axios.”...
“The forecasts for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season have been unanimous, with everyone from the federal government to university forecasting groups calling for an above average or much above average season.”
Hurricanes “are becoming more damaging due to human-driven climate change, which is causing tropical storms and hurricanes to grow more intense” as the “obstacles” to hurricanes get out of the way, Axios contends.
But, as Hot Air has reported, the “Number and strength of hurricanes stubbornly fail to increase.”
“There is no global trend in the number of tropical storms or hurricanes during the past 50+ years,” Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue agrees.
As for the effect of climate change, a study by The Global Warming Policy Foundation concluded that “[T]here is little evidence that global warming has resulted in more hurricanes, or more intense ones in recent years.”
“On the contrary,” the study finds: “available evidence confirms that hurricane and major hurricane frequency has been similar in many prior periods.”
2) Central Pacific coral reef shows remarkable recovery despite two warm-water events
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, 6 July 2022
The largest global coral-bleaching event ever documented struck the world’s oceans in 2014 and lasted until 2017.
The onset of this abnormal whitening condition spawned widespread gloom-and-doom news reports about its calamitous effect on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and more general predictions of coral reef extinction by 2050.
But a new 10-year study from Palmyra Atoll in the remote central Pacific Ocean shows that reefs outside the reach of local human impacts can recover from bleaching.
“One year after each bleaching event, we did see signs of coral decline at some of the sites, but within two years this was restored,” said Adi Khen, a Scripps Oceanography PhD candidate and lead author. The research team of current and former members in marine ecologist Jennifer E. Smith’s laboratory saw only a small net change in the reef’s coral and algae populations after a decade. Khen, Smith and four co-authors published their results in the journal Coral Reefs.
“This is a testament to the resilience of Palmyra’s reefs in the context of climate change and demonstrates the capacity for recovery in the absence of local stressors,” Khen noted. “Because we have this long-term time series, we’re able to see perspectives from before and after disturbances.”
With support from The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Smith launched a long-term monitoring effort in 2009 at Palmyra Atoll, located 1,300 kilometers (about 805 miles) south of Hawaii. Palmyra is an American territory populated only by visiting researchers and support staff. As one of the remote Northern Line Islands, it is unaffected by local human impacts such as fishing, pollution, coastal development, and tourism. Palmyra provides a natural laboratory for monitoring how ecosystems change over time in response to climate warming events.
“During the warming event that occurred in 2015, we saw that up to 90% of the corals on Palmyra bleached but in the year following we saw less than 10% mortality,” Smith reported. “Measuring not just death and destruction but measuring recovery is really important. Seeing the recovery is where we can learn what might help inform future management.”
Full story
See also Peter Ridd: The good news on coral reefs (pdf)
3) La Niña – phenomenon causing unprecedented monsoon rains in Pakistan
Samaa TV, 14 July 2022
The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has blamed La Nina for the recent relentless rain in the country.
La Nina, which literally means little girl in Spanish, is a weather phenomenon that refers to cooler than normal ocean surface temperatures in the Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean; this, in turn, causes heavy monsoon in our part of the world.
Currently, together with negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), La Nina is expected to render “above-normal precipitation” in July.
The low-pressure formation in the atmosphere of Pakistan is all set to welcome rains from high-pressure areas in the Indian Ocean, colloquially called, negative IOD.
Predictions are that the first half of the monsoon season, July 1 to Mid-August, will be wetter compared to the second half of the season which ends in September.
Moreover, heavy showers are likely to cause inundation in both hilly and plain areas as per the outlook shared by the PMD.
It is also worth noting that the phenomenon usually persists for two years but this time climate scientists, associated with the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), warn that La Nina is likely to continue up to 2023.
Full story
Samaa TV, 14 July 2022
The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has blamed La Nina for the recent relentless rain in the country.
La Nina, which literally means little girl in Spanish, is a weather phenomenon that refers to cooler than normal ocean surface temperatures in the Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean; this, in turn, causes heavy monsoon in our part of the world.
Currently, together with negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), La Nina is expected to render “above-normal precipitation” in July.
The low-pressure formation in the atmosphere of Pakistan is all set to welcome rains from high-pressure areas in the Indian Ocean, colloquially called, negative IOD.
Predictions are that the first half of the monsoon season, July 1 to Mid-August, will be wetter compared to the second half of the season which ends in September.
Moreover, heavy showers are likely to cause inundation in both hilly and plain areas as per the outlook shared by the PMD.
It is also worth noting that the phenomenon usually persists for two years but this time climate scientists, associated with the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), warn that La Nina is likely to continue up to 2023.
Full story
4) Climate Scientists in 2015: Warming Indian Ocean weakens monsoon and reduces rainfall
Nature, 17 June 2015
Nature, 17 June 2015
"Our analysis found that the summer monsoon rainfall is decreasing over central South Asia – from south of Pakistan through central India to Bangladesh."
At a time when drought is looming over India, a new study brings in more grim news on the monsoon rains crucial for the country's economy.The study led by Roxy Mathew Koll at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune says rapid warming in the Indian Ocean is playing an important role in weakening the monsoon circulation and rainfall1.
Using long-term observations and climate model experiments, the authors provide “compelling evidence that the enhanced Indian Ocean warming potentially weakens the land-sea thermal contrast, dampens the summer monsoon circulation, and thereby reduces the rainfall over parts of South Asia,” Koll told Nature India .
Land-sea temperature difference in summer and sea surface temperatures are two major drivers of the Indian monsoon. The former drives the monsoon circulation towards the subcontinent while rising ocean surface temperature leads to greater moisture availability in the atmosphere due to increase in evaporation and moisture holding capacity of air. "Ideally, the increased land-sea temperature contrast and moisture availability should increase the monsoon rainfall," Koll said.
"However, our study has shown that is not the case for the Indian monsoon." For their analysis, the IITM researchers used observed monsoon rainfall data from 1901-2012 from the Indian Meteorological Department and other sources.
"Our analysis found that the summer monsoon rainfall is decreasing over central South Asia – from south of Pakistan through central India to Bangladesh," the researchers report. "The decrease is highly significant over central India where agriculture is still mostly rain-fed, with a reduction of up to 10-20% in the mean rainfall."
According to the report, this reduction in rainfall is primarily contributed by a strong warming in the Indian Ocean. "The surface warming in the Indian Ocean, especially in the western regions, have reached values of up to 1.2°C during the past century, much larger than the warming trends in the other tropical oceans,” says Koll.
Full story
see also Madhav Khandekar: Floods and droghts in the Indian Monsoon - Natural variability trumps human impact (pdf)
At a time when drought is looming over India, a new study brings in more grim news on the monsoon rains crucial for the country's economy.The study led by Roxy Mathew Koll at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune says rapid warming in the Indian Ocean is playing an important role in weakening the monsoon circulation and rainfall1.
Using long-term observations and climate model experiments, the authors provide “compelling evidence that the enhanced Indian Ocean warming potentially weakens the land-sea thermal contrast, dampens the summer monsoon circulation, and thereby reduces the rainfall over parts of South Asia,” Koll told Nature India .
Land-sea temperature difference in summer and sea surface temperatures are two major drivers of the Indian monsoon. The former drives the monsoon circulation towards the subcontinent while rising ocean surface temperature leads to greater moisture availability in the atmosphere due to increase in evaporation and moisture holding capacity of air. "Ideally, the increased land-sea temperature contrast and moisture availability should increase the monsoon rainfall," Koll said.
"However, our study has shown that is not the case for the Indian monsoon." For their analysis, the IITM researchers used observed monsoon rainfall data from 1901-2012 from the Indian Meteorological Department and other sources.
"Our analysis found that the summer monsoon rainfall is decreasing over central South Asia – from south of Pakistan through central India to Bangladesh," the researchers report. "The decrease is highly significant over central India where agriculture is still mostly rain-fed, with a reduction of up to 10-20% in the mean rainfall."
According to the report, this reduction in rainfall is primarily contributed by a strong warming in the Indian Ocean. "The surface warming in the Indian Ocean, especially in the western regions, have reached values of up to 1.2°C during the past century, much larger than the warming trends in the other tropical oceans,” says Koll.
Full story
see also Madhav Khandekar: Floods and droghts in the Indian Monsoon - Natural variability trumps human impact (pdf)
5) Benny Peiser: Europe no longer has a ‘diversified energy system’
Sky News Australia, 30 August 2022
The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Benny Peiser says Europe’s energy crisis has been “accelerated” by the war in Ukraine but it started “long before that”.
Mr Peiser said the main reason is Europe no longer has a “diversified energy system”.
“We’ve essentially more or less shut down coal, which means the only energy that can back up increasing levels of renewables is natural gas,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“And so therefore the demand for natural gas has gone through the roof and we are unable to diversify to other sources because in Britain, for instance, most old coal-fired power plants have been blown up.”
Watch interview here
6) Thanks, Boris: UK inflation could top 22% as energy prices soar, Goldman Sachs warns
CNBC, 30 August 2022
LONDON — U.K. inflation could soar above 22% next year if energy prices continue their upward spiral, U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs warned.
In a research note dated Monday, Goldman said headline inflation could peak at 22.4% and gross domestic product could drop by 3.4% if energy costs keep rising at their current pace.
It comes after British households were hit with a projected 80% increase in their energy bills in the coming months, taking the average annual household bill to £3,549 ($4,197) from £1,971 and exacerbating the country’s existing cost-of-living crisis.
Britain’s energy regulator announced Friday that it would raise its main cap on consumer energy bills from Oct. 1 to keep pace with rising wholesale gas prices, which have surged 145% in the U.K. since early July.
Ofgem is due to recalculate its price cap again in three months. However, Goldman said that if prices remain “persistently higher,” another 80% hike could be possible.
“In a scenario where gas prices remain elevated at current levels, we would expect the price cap to increase by over 80% in January ... which would imply headline inflation peaking at 22.4%,” Goldman economists, led by Sven Jari Stehn, said in the note.
If, however, energy prices moderate, U.K. peak inflation is likely to hit 14.8% in January, Goldman’s commodity strategists predicted — well above the 13.3% forecast by the Bank of England earlier this month.
The bank also said that the U.K. was likely to fall into a recession in the fourth quarter. It forecast that the U.K. economy would contract by -0.3% on a non-annualized basis in the fourth quarter of this year, followed by -0.4% and -0.3% in the first and second quarters of 2023, respectively.
“We now expect the deepened cost-of-living crisis to push the U.K. economy into recession later this year,” the note said.
Goldman’s outlook is the latest gloomy forecast for the British economy, with Citi predicting last week that U.K. inflation would breach 18% in January 2023.
7) Allison Pearson: Boris can never be forgiven for sacrificing Britain to his net zero fantasy
The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2022
Mr Peiser said the main reason is Europe no longer has a “diversified energy system”.
“We’ve essentially more or less shut down coal, which means the only energy that can back up increasing levels of renewables is natural gas,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“And so therefore the demand for natural gas has gone through the roof and we are unable to diversify to other sources because in Britain, for instance, most old coal-fired power plants have been blown up.”
Watch interview here
6) Thanks, Boris: UK inflation could top 22% as energy prices soar, Goldman Sachs warns
CNBC, 30 August 2022
LONDON — U.K. inflation could soar above 22% next year if energy prices continue their upward spiral, U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs warned.
In a research note dated Monday, Goldman said headline inflation could peak at 22.4% and gross domestic product could drop by 3.4% if energy costs keep rising at their current pace.
It comes after British households were hit with a projected 80% increase in their energy bills in the coming months, taking the average annual household bill to £3,549 ($4,197) from £1,971 and exacerbating the country’s existing cost-of-living crisis.
Britain’s energy regulator announced Friday that it would raise its main cap on consumer energy bills from Oct. 1 to keep pace with rising wholesale gas prices, which have surged 145% in the U.K. since early July.
Ofgem is due to recalculate its price cap again in three months. However, Goldman said that if prices remain “persistently higher,” another 80% hike could be possible.
“In a scenario where gas prices remain elevated at current levels, we would expect the price cap to increase by over 80% in January ... which would imply headline inflation peaking at 22.4%,” Goldman economists, led by Sven Jari Stehn, said in the note.
If, however, energy prices moderate, U.K. peak inflation is likely to hit 14.8% in January, Goldman’s commodity strategists predicted — well above the 13.3% forecast by the Bank of England earlier this month.
The bank also said that the U.K. was likely to fall into a recession in the fourth quarter. It forecast that the U.K. economy would contract by -0.3% on a non-annualized basis in the fourth quarter of this year, followed by -0.4% and -0.3% in the first and second quarters of 2023, respectively.
“We now expect the deepened cost-of-living crisis to push the U.K. economy into recession later this year,” the note said.
Goldman’s outlook is the latest gloomy forecast for the British economy, with Citi predicting last week that U.K. inflation would breach 18% in January 2023.
7) Allison Pearson: Boris can never be forgiven for sacrificing Britain to his net zero fantasy
The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2022
We have already contributed billions to this elite pipe dream and now we must suffer the hardship caused as it darkens into a nightmare
Did you by any chance drop the metaphorical marmalade on to Monday’s front page when you read that Boris Johnson, in a farewell message to “safeguard his legacy”, will insist that Britain must not give up on net zero in favour of “short-term fixes” to tackle the cost of living crisis? Me, I dropped the kettle. No loss, as it will soon cost more than caviar just to turn it on. “Beluga cheaper than bath time!” will make the headlines before long, mark my words.
Apparently, our departing Prime Minister thinks everything his Government has done in renewable energy will make sure that “in the medium and long term, we will be more self-reliant and that will ease costs for consumers”. Short term not looking that clever though, is it? Thousands of businesses which cannot afford their stratospheric electricity bills are about to be sacrificed on the altar of the green religion.
How vainglorious does COP26 UN Climate Change Conference look now with its airy promises that windmills, solar panels, heat pumps and the like would somehow seamlessly fill the gap left by fossil fuels? (Details TBA.)
How delusional the official pride we were showing global leadership by so speedily reducing our puny one per cent contribution to the planet’s CO2 emissions and setting the arbitrary target of 2050. Who knows, perhaps China, India and the other monster belchers have been slow to adopt our net zero fanaticism because they realised that, without adequate alternatives, it would destroy their economies and end up with one in four citizens saying they won’t dare turn on the heating this winter. Which is precisely where a callous green agenda has got our country: Save the Planet, Freeze a Pensioner!
With a looming threat of power cuts due to the UK’s scary reliance on imported gas, Alok Sharma, the COP26 president, looks increasingly like a naïve fool (others have used pithier epithets). In a video message recorded as he was about to trigger the demolition of SSE’s Ferrybridge coal power plant, Sharma recently boasted: “The UK is on the march in consigning coal power to history. In 2012, around 40 per cent of our electricity was generated from coal. Today, it is less than two per cent and by the end of 2024 we will have eliminated coal entirely from our electricity mix.”
Bravo, Alok. I’m sure the British people will be thrilled to know that you have almost eliminated the fuel which provided abundant cheap energy for them and their forefathers. In an irony almost too bitter to swallow, several hundred million pounds are being spent on keeping a couple of the evil coal-powered stations, which Alok somehow hasn’t got around to blowing up, on standby. Because the alternatives are still much too unreliable. On Monday, despite all those whirring forests of turbines and the sun-loungered miles of solar, green renewables were contributing just 16 per cent of our needs. About enough to put the kettle on, if you hadn’t dropped it and were now saving energy by heating water in a billy can over a smouldering heap of bio-renewable Twiglets.
The British taxpayer has already contributed billions to this elite pipe dream and now we must suffer the hardship caused as it darkens into a nightmare. In a scathing editorial, The Wall Street Journal warned its American readers: “The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet that goal, Britain has grown hostile to domestic energy exploration banning shale-gas fracking and slapping windfall-tax profits on North Sea oil and gas producers that will deter investment. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hurt, but the UK’s policies made its citizens vulnerable to global shock.” How humiliating to be held up as such a cautionary tale.
Like many posh Englishmen before him, Boris’s blood is stirred by the romance of noble causes in foreign climes (Lord Byron fought for freedom in Greece while having a mad, bad and dangerous reputation at home). Boris has been moved to heartwarming eloquence by the plight of Ukrainians. The problems of families shivering in Petersfield, Pontypool and Pitlochry seem to leave him cold. An oblivious Carrie Antoinette might well advise: “Let them wear thermals, darling!” It smacks of levelling down, not up.
Saying that Britain needs to rethink its net zero timetable does not make you a climate change denier. Cleaner, greener energy is a worthwhile aim so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of human health and happiness.
I don’t mourn the passing of coal-fired power. How could I? Coal killed my grandfather. He was 13 when he went down the mine, along with so many boys in South Wales in the 1920s. It was unimaginable to me, when I was old enough to ask him about it in my own teens, that a child would walk a few miles across the fields before starting a shift that meant wriggling on his belly, shunting himself along by his elbows, through a low, narrow tunnel to the coal-face where he would extract the black gold with a pickaxe. The worst thing was he had no complaints. You have never met a more cheerful being. When he was taxed by his granddaughter with how hard and exploitative the work must have been, he always laughed, rubbed his hands together (as if starting a fire) and said: “Champion days, Allison fach, champion days!”
The coal dust got him in the end, of course it did. Pneumoconiosis claimed all the men who had started that dirty work as boys when they reached their 50s and 60s, except my “Dat” who, as a young miner, discovered he had a voice. An astounding and beautiful instrument, it won him the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen against all-comers from Italy, Germany and Russia. Miraculously, the singing had expanded Dat’s lungs. He used to take my hand and lay it on his diaphragm to feel how deep into his torso the air could go. The breath of life, it propelled him just over the three score years and ten that his beloved Bible promised.
As he lay dying of lung cancer, I found a recent letter in the dresser drawer from the Coal Board, responding to my grandfather’s request for compensation. Next to his dear name (none dearer to me) it said: “Fit for light work.”
So we shouldn’t feel nostalgic, not one bit, for an industry that brought about the painful, premature deaths of so many. Yet, I’m equally sure my grandfather would be bewildered that the coal which provided him and his mates with a damn good wage was to be replaced by nothing but a lot of hot air.
It’s so selective, this green religion. The race to develop new technologies that will decrease our dependence on fossil fuels ushers in new hazards that it’s convenient for the eco-warriors to ignore. Metals such as lithium and cobalt are needed to make the lightweight batteries for electric cars and for storing power from wind and solar plants. Who gets those elements out of the ground, then? Oh, look! Sixty per cent of cobalt and lithium comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo where unregulated mines use children as young as seven as miners. “The children breathe in the cobalt-laden dust that can cause fatal lung ailments.” Now, why does that sound familiar?
So, at long last, after putting up with so much green fantasy, the heart lifts to hear that Liz Truss has tuned into the new “energy realism”. Even the Germans are taking their coal stations out of mothballs. Prime Minister Truss will approve a series of oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea as soon as she enters Number 10 to try and claw back some of the energy security our country so recklessly threw away.
Instead of using his final speech to call for Britain to press on with an unachievable net zero target, some acknowledgement would be welcome from our Prime Minister that jumping out of a plane without a parachute was a pretty bonkers idea. Further impoverishing the poorest, who spend the largest proportion of their income on energy, to give wealthy zealots a warm glow of self-righteous satisfaction. Really, Boris, is that the legacy you want?
8) Editorial: We’ve been too slow to fix this gas crisis
The Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2022
Did you by any chance drop the metaphorical marmalade on to Monday’s front page when you read that Boris Johnson, in a farewell message to “safeguard his legacy”, will insist that Britain must not give up on net zero in favour of “short-term fixes” to tackle the cost of living crisis? Me, I dropped the kettle. No loss, as it will soon cost more than caviar just to turn it on. “Beluga cheaper than bath time!” will make the headlines before long, mark my words.
Apparently, our departing Prime Minister thinks everything his Government has done in renewable energy will make sure that “in the medium and long term, we will be more self-reliant and that will ease costs for consumers”. Short term not looking that clever though, is it? Thousands of businesses which cannot afford their stratospheric electricity bills are about to be sacrificed on the altar of the green religion.
How vainglorious does COP26 UN Climate Change Conference look now with its airy promises that windmills, solar panels, heat pumps and the like would somehow seamlessly fill the gap left by fossil fuels? (Details TBA.)
How delusional the official pride we were showing global leadership by so speedily reducing our puny one per cent contribution to the planet’s CO2 emissions and setting the arbitrary target of 2050. Who knows, perhaps China, India and the other monster belchers have been slow to adopt our net zero fanaticism because they realised that, without adequate alternatives, it would destroy their economies and end up with one in four citizens saying they won’t dare turn on the heating this winter. Which is precisely where a callous green agenda has got our country: Save the Planet, Freeze a Pensioner!
With a looming threat of power cuts due to the UK’s scary reliance on imported gas, Alok Sharma, the COP26 president, looks increasingly like a naïve fool (others have used pithier epithets). In a video message recorded as he was about to trigger the demolition of SSE’s Ferrybridge coal power plant, Sharma recently boasted: “The UK is on the march in consigning coal power to history. In 2012, around 40 per cent of our electricity was generated from coal. Today, it is less than two per cent and by the end of 2024 we will have eliminated coal entirely from our electricity mix.”
Bravo, Alok. I’m sure the British people will be thrilled to know that you have almost eliminated the fuel which provided abundant cheap energy for them and their forefathers. In an irony almost too bitter to swallow, several hundred million pounds are being spent on keeping a couple of the evil coal-powered stations, which Alok somehow hasn’t got around to blowing up, on standby. Because the alternatives are still much too unreliable. On Monday, despite all those whirring forests of turbines and the sun-loungered miles of solar, green renewables were contributing just 16 per cent of our needs. About enough to put the kettle on, if you hadn’t dropped it and were now saving energy by heating water in a billy can over a smouldering heap of bio-renewable Twiglets.
The British taxpayer has already contributed billions to this elite pipe dream and now we must suffer the hardship caused as it darkens into a nightmare. In a scathing editorial, The Wall Street Journal warned its American readers: “The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet that goal, Britain has grown hostile to domestic energy exploration banning shale-gas fracking and slapping windfall-tax profits on North Sea oil and gas producers that will deter investment. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hurt, but the UK’s policies made its citizens vulnerable to global shock.” How humiliating to be held up as such a cautionary tale.
Like many posh Englishmen before him, Boris’s blood is stirred by the romance of noble causes in foreign climes (Lord Byron fought for freedom in Greece while having a mad, bad and dangerous reputation at home). Boris has been moved to heartwarming eloquence by the plight of Ukrainians. The problems of families shivering in Petersfield, Pontypool and Pitlochry seem to leave him cold. An oblivious Carrie Antoinette might well advise: “Let them wear thermals, darling!” It smacks of levelling down, not up.
Saying that Britain needs to rethink its net zero timetable does not make you a climate change denier. Cleaner, greener energy is a worthwhile aim so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of human health and happiness.
I don’t mourn the passing of coal-fired power. How could I? Coal killed my grandfather. He was 13 when he went down the mine, along with so many boys in South Wales in the 1920s. It was unimaginable to me, when I was old enough to ask him about it in my own teens, that a child would walk a few miles across the fields before starting a shift that meant wriggling on his belly, shunting himself along by his elbows, through a low, narrow tunnel to the coal-face where he would extract the black gold with a pickaxe. The worst thing was he had no complaints. You have never met a more cheerful being. When he was taxed by his granddaughter with how hard and exploitative the work must have been, he always laughed, rubbed his hands together (as if starting a fire) and said: “Champion days, Allison fach, champion days!”
The coal dust got him in the end, of course it did. Pneumoconiosis claimed all the men who had started that dirty work as boys when they reached their 50s and 60s, except my “Dat” who, as a young miner, discovered he had a voice. An astounding and beautiful instrument, it won him the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen against all-comers from Italy, Germany and Russia. Miraculously, the singing had expanded Dat’s lungs. He used to take my hand and lay it on his diaphragm to feel how deep into his torso the air could go. The breath of life, it propelled him just over the three score years and ten that his beloved Bible promised.
As he lay dying of lung cancer, I found a recent letter in the dresser drawer from the Coal Board, responding to my grandfather’s request for compensation. Next to his dear name (none dearer to me) it said: “Fit for light work.”
So we shouldn’t feel nostalgic, not one bit, for an industry that brought about the painful, premature deaths of so many. Yet, I’m equally sure my grandfather would be bewildered that the coal which provided him and his mates with a damn good wage was to be replaced by nothing but a lot of hot air.
It’s so selective, this green religion. The race to develop new technologies that will decrease our dependence on fossil fuels ushers in new hazards that it’s convenient for the eco-warriors to ignore. Metals such as lithium and cobalt are needed to make the lightweight batteries for electric cars and for storing power from wind and solar plants. Who gets those elements out of the ground, then? Oh, look! Sixty per cent of cobalt and lithium comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo where unregulated mines use children as young as seven as miners. “The children breathe in the cobalt-laden dust that can cause fatal lung ailments.” Now, why does that sound familiar?
So, at long last, after putting up with so much green fantasy, the heart lifts to hear that Liz Truss has tuned into the new “energy realism”. Even the Germans are taking their coal stations out of mothballs. Prime Minister Truss will approve a series of oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea as soon as she enters Number 10 to try and claw back some of the energy security our country so recklessly threw away.
Instead of using his final speech to call for Britain to press on with an unachievable net zero target, some acknowledgement would be welcome from our Prime Minister that jumping out of a plane without a parachute was a pretty bonkers idea. Further impoverishing the poorest, who spend the largest proportion of their income on energy, to give wealthy zealots a warm glow of self-righteous satisfaction. Really, Boris, is that the legacy you want?
8) Editorial: We’ve been too slow to fix this gas crisis
The Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2022
Green activists insist that nothing has changed and that achieving net zero should remain the overriding aim of energy policy. It is an argument that will struggle to survive the winter.
This time last year, Britain was preparing to host the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow. The public were implored to go “one step greener”, by not washing dishes before they were put in the dishwasher. Governments competed to show off their net zero credentials. The meeting itself turned out to be something of a damp squib, with most observers considering its achievements to be minor. But that hasn’t stopped the great caravan of NGOs, activists and green politicians from continuing to perambulate the world, participating in an endless series of summits, events and symposiums that too often create more heat than light.
Now, heat is precisely what swathes of the world are running out of. Liz Truss, the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race, is expected to make one of her first acts as prime minister the granting of new licences for North Sea oil and gas, part of a scramble across Europe to secure dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. It would be a sensible move. There is a risk this winter not only that energy bills are unaffordable, but that there is not enough energy full stop.
It may, however, be too late. New production is unlikely to come onstream this year, and it will only be making up for projects that were shut down prematurely. Other countries have been quicker to address deficiencies in their energy strategies, with even Germany making strides towards refilling its gas storage.
Moreover, will the industry even respond to this change in the political climate? Politicians may no longer like to be photographed, smiling, as yet another fossil fuel power station is demolished, but the ideology that helped bring us to this point has not gone away. Net zero is written into law, while banks and other financial institutions face pressure not to invest in new oil and gas projects. Sky-high prices ought to be incentive enough for energy firms to pump billions into fossil fuel extraction. That many may hesitate to do so is almost entirely because it remains official policy for these projects to be shut down forever in a few years’ time.
Saving the planet is a laudable aim, but the costs of doing so have to be set against other priorities – including the basic requirement that the UK has enough heat and light to function. Green activists insist that nothing has changed and that achieving net zero should remain the overriding aim of energy policy. It is an argument that will struggle to survive the winter.
This time last year, Britain was preparing to host the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow. The public were implored to go “one step greener”, by not washing dishes before they were put in the dishwasher. Governments competed to show off their net zero credentials. The meeting itself turned out to be something of a damp squib, with most observers considering its achievements to be minor. But that hasn’t stopped the great caravan of NGOs, activists and green politicians from continuing to perambulate the world, participating in an endless series of summits, events and symposiums that too often create more heat than light.
Now, heat is precisely what swathes of the world are running out of. Liz Truss, the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race, is expected to make one of her first acts as prime minister the granting of new licences for North Sea oil and gas, part of a scramble across Europe to secure dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. It would be a sensible move. There is a risk this winter not only that energy bills are unaffordable, but that there is not enough energy full stop.
It may, however, be too late. New production is unlikely to come onstream this year, and it will only be making up for projects that were shut down prematurely. Other countries have been quicker to address deficiencies in their energy strategies, with even Germany making strides towards refilling its gas storage.
Moreover, will the industry even respond to this change in the political climate? Politicians may no longer like to be photographed, smiling, as yet another fossil fuel power station is demolished, but the ideology that helped bring us to this point has not gone away. Net zero is written into law, while banks and other financial institutions face pressure not to invest in new oil and gas projects. Sky-high prices ought to be incentive enough for energy firms to pump billions into fossil fuel extraction. That many may hesitate to do so is almost entirely because it remains official policy for these projects to be shut down forever in a few years’ time.
Saving the planet is a laudable aim, but the costs of doing so have to be set against other priorities – including the basic requirement that the UK has enough heat and light to function. Green activists insist that nothing has changed and that achieving net zero should remain the overriding aim of energy policy. It is an argument that will struggle to survive the winter.
9) Europe must brace for five to 10 years of hardship, Belgian prime minister warns
The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2022
Western leaders are preparing for the possibility that Russian natural gas flows through the key Nord Stream pipeline may never return to full levels. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains what an energy crisis could look like in Europe, and how it might ripple through the world.
Russia is set to shut its key Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline Wednesday for maintenance, leaving Europe guessing again about whether supplies will restart, as temperatures fall and demand for the fuel grows.
Whatever the outcome, European officials and energy executives say the continent faces years of high energy prices and possible shortages as efforts to replace Russian imports clash with limited supplies elsewhere and regulations that discourage hydrocarbon usage.
Due to a drop in consumption this year, Europe is on track to secure enough gas to avoid outright rationing this winter. However, its governments are struggling to secure supplies for next year and beyond, despite wooing top producers from the likes of the U.S., Canada and Qatar.
Even if Nord Stream reopens Saturday as promised by Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC, few Western politicians and economists think Europe will receive enough Russian natural gas next year because of expectations that the economic war with Moscow will intensify.
Russia’s Gazprom will reduce gas deliveries to Engie SA because of a dispute over contracts, the French multinational utility company said Tuesday, without providing further details. Engie’s deliveries of Russian gas, which normally account for about 17% of its yearly supply, has dropped to less than 4%, or a monthly level of 1.5 terawatt hours.
Pipeline gas from other regions besides Russia is flowing at full capacity, leaving the continent relying on liquefied natural gas from farther afield to offset the shortfall. Many experts think it won’t be enough, condemning Europe to years of high energy prices that will dent consumers’ budgets, drive energy-intensive companies out of business, and deplete public coffers as governments seek to soften the blow on society.
Europe must brace for five to 10 years of hardship, said Alexander de Croo, the prime minister of Belgium, one of Europe’s major importers of LNG.
Faraway gas producers such as Qatar or the U.S. need at least two years to increase production to meet surging European demand. And because many European nations aim to cut fossil gas use in the long term, they have been reluctant to sign the long-term purchase contracts these producers insist on. Some gas-rich nations such as Canada can’t boost production because of their own climate-change legislation limiting carbon-dioxide emissions, including a ban on new production in Quebec, which sits on vast reserves.
In the short term, Europeans have acquired LNG on the spot market to meet gas shortages, mostly from Asian buyers who signed flexible long-term deals with U.S. exporters and have rerouted cargoes to Europe, where gas prices have soared. Benchmark European gas prices hit $100 per million British thermal units last week—up more than twelvefold from a year ago—before settling at $79.92 Monday. European natural-gas futures fell Tuesday as the European Union appeared on the cusp of filling its gas storage to sufficient levels to last through winter, and leaders said they would take measures to ease the continent’s energy crisis.
“For the past six months, Europe has become the demand center,” said James Huckstepp, a gas analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights.
While Europe looks unlikely to run out of gas in the immediate future, economists and many politicians fear current energy prices will test the region’s political stability and economic resilience if they hold at current levels.
Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at Cambridge University, said the shock reflects how Europe’s dependence on Russian energy became entrenched over decades.
“It’s not like these difficulties suddenly appeared, it’s just that Western politicians now scrambling for non-Russian energy sources find they are either in short supply, like LNG, or hard to come by, like oil,” she said.
EU nations are discussing proposals to cap electricity prices across the bloc. Some are also reconsidering years of environmental legislation to shut down nuclear power plants and reducing the use of fuels such as oil and coal.
Germany has said it would restart idled coal-powered electricity plants this winter to free up gas and is reviewing a decision to shut down its last three nuclear plants at the end of 2022. It isn’t yet dropping laws mandating an end to fossil fuel usage beyond around 2040, however, complicating its bid to secure LNG from Qatar, which insists on multidecade contracts.
Because of this, Germany could struggle after the winter to refill its gas stores, now almost 80% full, said Sigmar Gabriel, a former German economy minister.
Since the outbreak of the war, only one German utility, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, has signed a long-term LNG deal, with U.S. firm Venture Global LNG Inc. A spokeswoman for EnBW said that the company, which like most German importers had been using Russian gas, was refocusing on LNG.
Most long-term deals that U.S. exporters struck following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were with portfolio players such as Chevron Corp. and Shell PLC, which resell LNG under supply contracts or on a spot basis. As of mid-July, American export companies had sold 42% of contracted LNG to portfolio companies and just 17% to European buyers since March, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
While Europe easily outspent poorer nations—Bangladesh, for instance, is experiencing regular blackouts because of gas shortages—efforts by Japan and South Korea to stockpile LNG ahead of winter and a possible economic rebound from China as it emerges from lockdowns could increase competition for global LNG supplies and drive prices even higher, analysts said.
Even if more supplies were to become available in the short term, bottlenecks at Europe’s re-gasification facilities limit how much excess LNG cargoes the U.K. and parts of northwest Europe can absorb, consulting firm Rystad Energy said.
Germany doesn’t yet have a single LNG terminal to receive overseas shipments. The government has leased four floating terminals—giant ships that dock near industrial ports and can process LNG back into gas—and a fifth is being commissioned by a private consortium.
The five temporary terminals each have a capacity of about 5 billion cubic meters a year, meaning that they collectively couldn’t replace even half of the annual Nord Stream flow, which is used to supply countries across Europe. In addition, new infrastructure such as pipelines must be built to channel the imported gas toward consumers.
Mario Levesque, president of Utica Resources Inc., a gas exploration and production firm from Quebec that explored a supply deal with Germany, said that it would take at least 18 months for his company to procure vessels to ship a limited amount of gas to Europe.
“I don’t see big solutions for Europe,” said Mr. Levesque. “They are going to have to lower consumption.”
10) ‘Matter of national destiny’: China’s energy crisis sees the world’s top emitter investing in more coal
The Conversation, 29 August 2022
The energy crisis has seen Beijing shift its political discourse and proclaim energy security as a more urgent national mission than the green energy transition.
Two months of scorching heatwaves and drought plunged China into an energy security crisis.
The southwest province of Sichuan, for example, relies on dams to generate around 80% of its electricity, with growth in hydropower crucial for China meeting its net-zero by 2060 emissions target.
Sichuan suffered from power shortages after low rainfall and extreme temperatures over 40℃ dried up rivers and reservoirs. Heavy rainfall this week, however, has just seen power in Sichuan for commercial and industrial use fully restored, according to official Chinese media.
The energy crisis has seen Beijing shift its political discourse and proclaim energy security as a more urgent national mission than the green energy transition. Now, the government is investing in a new wave of coal-fired power stations to try to meet demand.
In the first quarter of 2022 alone, China approved 8.63 gigawatts of new coal plants and, in May, announced C¥ 10 billion (A$2.1 billion) of investment in coal power generation. What’s more, it will expand the capacity of a number of coal mines to ensure domestic supply as the international coal market price jumped amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
China is responsible for around a third of global carbon dioxide emissions, which makes this latest rebound to fossil fuels a climate change emergency.
Full post
11) Michel Kelly-Gagnon: The high costs of climate 'justice' through lawfare
Financial Post, 30 August 2022
The anti-energy left has weaponized consumer protection laws in the U.S. to punish oil and gas companies
The anti-energy left has weaponized consumer protection laws in the United States to punish oil and gas companies simply for carrying out their core business. If their lawfare succeeds, there will be serious repercussions for the energy security of North America and the West.
According to a recent Frontline story, at least 20 cities and states across the U.S. have filed lawsuits against energy industry companies over a variety of alleged infractions relating to climate change. Defendants include usual suspects like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and BP, but also the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association that represents oil companies.
This is, as the story notes, a “relatively new legal tactic,” and one favoured by left-leaning prosecutors and attorneys-general to inflict pain on perceived villains — and, one would imagine, stir up their own political base. The trend started (unsurprisingly) with a handful of California cities, and these were followed by reliably left-leaning attorneys-general in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Minnesota, among others.
Though each suit is slightly different analysts note that they are broadly modelled after common-law torts and statutes used in lawsuits against tobacco and pharmaceutical companies for allegedly misrepresenting the effects of some of their products to consumers.
In this case, the plaintiffs’ theory seems to be that energy companies had secret knowledge about the nexus between fossil fuels and climate change that they knowingly and maliciously hid from the public. The companies, for their part, sensibly point out that they have no special monopoly on climate science — quite the contrary! Furthermore, they point out that they sell their products within the confines of extensive and ever-tightening regulations set by various levels of government.
But this type of “climate justice” legal activism is picking up speed, both in the U.S. (the number one export destination for Canadian energy) and here in Canada as well. For example, Vancouver’s city council recently voted to fund a 2023 class-action lawsuit against so-called “Big Oil.”
Almost none of these cases has yet reached trial, and the one that did was — correctly, in my view — dismissed. But given the importance of the issues at stake and the political incentives involved I don’t expect the plaintiffs to quit any time soon, especially since the structure of the court system in the United States gives them a potentially decisive advantage. In particular, U.S. plaintiffs are arguing that these trials should happen in state and local courts, where they can shop around and cherry-pick more favourable jurisdictions.
American oil companies have countered that these cases need to be tried in federal, not state courts. As Phil Goldberg, special counsel for Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, told Pew in April 2022: “Climate policy is federal and regulatory in nature — not (something) that can be decided by state courts.”
I think Goldberg has it right and the anti-energy crusaders have it wrong. As a former U.S. Department of Justice official put it in a Legal Newsline piece, trying these cases in regional courts “would create a patchwork of legal standards that would directly impact national energy policy, which impacts not only domestic energy production but also foreign policy decisions.”
As if to underscore the obvious truth that energy policy is national (and international) policy, U.S. President Joseph Biden has spent the past year both promising to “decarbonize” the U.S. economy and chastising U.S. producers for not pumping more oil and gas to relieve rising prices that he blames on global events.
Indeed, at a time when energy costs are soaring, we need this type of legal activism like we need a hole in the head. Should any of the enormous damages sought by plaintiffs in these lawsuits ultimately be awarded the costs will almost certainly be passed on to consumers. And since through production and/or transportation costs the price of fossil fuels is embedded in the price of a lot of the other things we consume this would inevitably create even more inflation.
Furthermore, increasing costs for Canadian and American oil producers in such a discriminatory manner might also very well provide an unfair competitive advantage to oil producers from such genteel and human-rights-respecting countries as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia.
North American governments should not create a policy environment that disadvantages domestic producers in favour of foreign ones, so let us hope that this lawfare against energy companies fails. Policy-makers need to create an energy policy framework that is both comprehensive and predictable, as opposed to a grab-bag of different standards brought into being by ambitious prosecutors and attorneys-general who care more about pleasing their activist base than about energy security and economic vitality.
Michel Kelly-Gagnon is CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute and a senior fellow at the Atlas Network.
The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2022
Western leaders are preparing for the possibility that Russian natural gas flows through the key Nord Stream pipeline may never return to full levels. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains what an energy crisis could look like in Europe, and how it might ripple through the world.
Russia is set to shut its key Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline Wednesday for maintenance, leaving Europe guessing again about whether supplies will restart, as temperatures fall and demand for the fuel grows.
Whatever the outcome, European officials and energy executives say the continent faces years of high energy prices and possible shortages as efforts to replace Russian imports clash with limited supplies elsewhere and regulations that discourage hydrocarbon usage.
Due to a drop in consumption this year, Europe is on track to secure enough gas to avoid outright rationing this winter. However, its governments are struggling to secure supplies for next year and beyond, despite wooing top producers from the likes of the U.S., Canada and Qatar.
Even if Nord Stream reopens Saturday as promised by Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC, few Western politicians and economists think Europe will receive enough Russian natural gas next year because of expectations that the economic war with Moscow will intensify.
Russia’s Gazprom will reduce gas deliveries to Engie SA because of a dispute over contracts, the French multinational utility company said Tuesday, without providing further details. Engie’s deliveries of Russian gas, which normally account for about 17% of its yearly supply, has dropped to less than 4%, or a monthly level of 1.5 terawatt hours.
Pipeline gas from other regions besides Russia is flowing at full capacity, leaving the continent relying on liquefied natural gas from farther afield to offset the shortfall. Many experts think it won’t be enough, condemning Europe to years of high energy prices that will dent consumers’ budgets, drive energy-intensive companies out of business, and deplete public coffers as governments seek to soften the blow on society.
Europe must brace for five to 10 years of hardship, said Alexander de Croo, the prime minister of Belgium, one of Europe’s major importers of LNG.
Faraway gas producers such as Qatar or the U.S. need at least two years to increase production to meet surging European demand. And because many European nations aim to cut fossil gas use in the long term, they have been reluctant to sign the long-term purchase contracts these producers insist on. Some gas-rich nations such as Canada can’t boost production because of their own climate-change legislation limiting carbon-dioxide emissions, including a ban on new production in Quebec, which sits on vast reserves.
In the short term, Europeans have acquired LNG on the spot market to meet gas shortages, mostly from Asian buyers who signed flexible long-term deals with U.S. exporters and have rerouted cargoes to Europe, where gas prices have soared. Benchmark European gas prices hit $100 per million British thermal units last week—up more than twelvefold from a year ago—before settling at $79.92 Monday. European natural-gas futures fell Tuesday as the European Union appeared on the cusp of filling its gas storage to sufficient levels to last through winter, and leaders said they would take measures to ease the continent’s energy crisis.
“For the past six months, Europe has become the demand center,” said James Huckstepp, a gas analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights.
While Europe looks unlikely to run out of gas in the immediate future, economists and many politicians fear current energy prices will test the region’s political stability and economic resilience if they hold at current levels.
Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at Cambridge University, said the shock reflects how Europe’s dependence on Russian energy became entrenched over decades.
“It’s not like these difficulties suddenly appeared, it’s just that Western politicians now scrambling for non-Russian energy sources find they are either in short supply, like LNG, or hard to come by, like oil,” she said.
EU nations are discussing proposals to cap electricity prices across the bloc. Some are also reconsidering years of environmental legislation to shut down nuclear power plants and reducing the use of fuels such as oil and coal.
Germany has said it would restart idled coal-powered electricity plants this winter to free up gas and is reviewing a decision to shut down its last three nuclear plants at the end of 2022. It isn’t yet dropping laws mandating an end to fossil fuel usage beyond around 2040, however, complicating its bid to secure LNG from Qatar, which insists on multidecade contracts.
Because of this, Germany could struggle after the winter to refill its gas stores, now almost 80% full, said Sigmar Gabriel, a former German economy minister.
Since the outbreak of the war, only one German utility, EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, has signed a long-term LNG deal, with U.S. firm Venture Global LNG Inc. A spokeswoman for EnBW said that the company, which like most German importers had been using Russian gas, was refocusing on LNG.
Most long-term deals that U.S. exporters struck following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were with portfolio players such as Chevron Corp. and Shell PLC, which resell LNG under supply contracts or on a spot basis. As of mid-July, American export companies had sold 42% of contracted LNG to portfolio companies and just 17% to European buyers since March, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
While Europe easily outspent poorer nations—Bangladesh, for instance, is experiencing regular blackouts because of gas shortages—efforts by Japan and South Korea to stockpile LNG ahead of winter and a possible economic rebound from China as it emerges from lockdowns could increase competition for global LNG supplies and drive prices even higher, analysts said.
Even if more supplies were to become available in the short term, bottlenecks at Europe’s re-gasification facilities limit how much excess LNG cargoes the U.K. and parts of northwest Europe can absorb, consulting firm Rystad Energy said.
Germany doesn’t yet have a single LNG terminal to receive overseas shipments. The government has leased four floating terminals—giant ships that dock near industrial ports and can process LNG back into gas—and a fifth is being commissioned by a private consortium.
The five temporary terminals each have a capacity of about 5 billion cubic meters a year, meaning that they collectively couldn’t replace even half of the annual Nord Stream flow, which is used to supply countries across Europe. In addition, new infrastructure such as pipelines must be built to channel the imported gas toward consumers.
Mario Levesque, president of Utica Resources Inc., a gas exploration and production firm from Quebec that explored a supply deal with Germany, said that it would take at least 18 months for his company to procure vessels to ship a limited amount of gas to Europe.
“I don’t see big solutions for Europe,” said Mr. Levesque. “They are going to have to lower consumption.”
10) ‘Matter of national destiny’: China’s energy crisis sees the world’s top emitter investing in more coal
The Conversation, 29 August 2022
The energy crisis has seen Beijing shift its political discourse and proclaim energy security as a more urgent national mission than the green energy transition.
Two months of scorching heatwaves and drought plunged China into an energy security crisis.
The southwest province of Sichuan, for example, relies on dams to generate around 80% of its electricity, with growth in hydropower crucial for China meeting its net-zero by 2060 emissions target.
Sichuan suffered from power shortages after low rainfall and extreme temperatures over 40℃ dried up rivers and reservoirs. Heavy rainfall this week, however, has just seen power in Sichuan for commercial and industrial use fully restored, according to official Chinese media.
The energy crisis has seen Beijing shift its political discourse and proclaim energy security as a more urgent national mission than the green energy transition. Now, the government is investing in a new wave of coal-fired power stations to try to meet demand.
In the first quarter of 2022 alone, China approved 8.63 gigawatts of new coal plants and, in May, announced C¥ 10 billion (A$2.1 billion) of investment in coal power generation. What’s more, it will expand the capacity of a number of coal mines to ensure domestic supply as the international coal market price jumped amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
China is responsible for around a third of global carbon dioxide emissions, which makes this latest rebound to fossil fuels a climate change emergency.
Full post
11) Michel Kelly-Gagnon: The high costs of climate 'justice' through lawfare
Financial Post, 30 August 2022
The anti-energy left has weaponized consumer protection laws in the U.S. to punish oil and gas companies
The anti-energy left has weaponized consumer protection laws in the United States to punish oil and gas companies simply for carrying out their core business. If their lawfare succeeds, there will be serious repercussions for the energy security of North America and the West.
According to a recent Frontline story, at least 20 cities and states across the U.S. have filed lawsuits against energy industry companies over a variety of alleged infractions relating to climate change. Defendants include usual suspects like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and BP, but also the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association that represents oil companies.
This is, as the story notes, a “relatively new legal tactic,” and one favoured by left-leaning prosecutors and attorneys-general to inflict pain on perceived villains — and, one would imagine, stir up their own political base. The trend started (unsurprisingly) with a handful of California cities, and these were followed by reliably left-leaning attorneys-general in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Minnesota, among others.
Though each suit is slightly different analysts note that they are broadly modelled after common-law torts and statutes used in lawsuits against tobacco and pharmaceutical companies for allegedly misrepresenting the effects of some of their products to consumers.
In this case, the plaintiffs’ theory seems to be that energy companies had secret knowledge about the nexus between fossil fuels and climate change that they knowingly and maliciously hid from the public. The companies, for their part, sensibly point out that they have no special monopoly on climate science — quite the contrary! Furthermore, they point out that they sell their products within the confines of extensive and ever-tightening regulations set by various levels of government.
But this type of “climate justice” legal activism is picking up speed, both in the U.S. (the number one export destination for Canadian energy) and here in Canada as well. For example, Vancouver’s city council recently voted to fund a 2023 class-action lawsuit against so-called “Big Oil.”
Almost none of these cases has yet reached trial, and the one that did was — correctly, in my view — dismissed. But given the importance of the issues at stake and the political incentives involved I don’t expect the plaintiffs to quit any time soon, especially since the structure of the court system in the United States gives them a potentially decisive advantage. In particular, U.S. plaintiffs are arguing that these trials should happen in state and local courts, where they can shop around and cherry-pick more favourable jurisdictions.
American oil companies have countered that these cases need to be tried in federal, not state courts. As Phil Goldberg, special counsel for Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, told Pew in April 2022: “Climate policy is federal and regulatory in nature — not (something) that can be decided by state courts.”
I think Goldberg has it right and the anti-energy crusaders have it wrong. As a former U.S. Department of Justice official put it in a Legal Newsline piece, trying these cases in regional courts “would create a patchwork of legal standards that would directly impact national energy policy, which impacts not only domestic energy production but also foreign policy decisions.”
As if to underscore the obvious truth that energy policy is national (and international) policy, U.S. President Joseph Biden has spent the past year both promising to “decarbonize” the U.S. economy and chastising U.S. producers for not pumping more oil and gas to relieve rising prices that he blames on global events.
Indeed, at a time when energy costs are soaring, we need this type of legal activism like we need a hole in the head. Should any of the enormous damages sought by plaintiffs in these lawsuits ultimately be awarded the costs will almost certainly be passed on to consumers. And since through production and/or transportation costs the price of fossil fuels is embedded in the price of a lot of the other things we consume this would inevitably create even more inflation.
Furthermore, increasing costs for Canadian and American oil producers in such a discriminatory manner might also very well provide an unfair competitive advantage to oil producers from such genteel and human-rights-respecting countries as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia.
North American governments should not create a policy environment that disadvantages domestic producers in favour of foreign ones, so let us hope that this lawfare against energy companies fails. Policy-makers need to create an energy policy framework that is both comprehensive and predictable, as opposed to a grab-bag of different standards brought into being by ambitious prosecutors and attorneys-general who care more about pleasing their activist base than about energy security and economic vitality.
Michel Kelly-Gagnon is CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute and a senior fellow at the Atlas Network.
The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment