Category Archives: GREEN ENERGY

DEMOCRATS AGAIN WANT TO BAN YOUR GAS APPLIANCES!

Bans on gas stoves come back as Democratic cities and states continue war on gas appliances

The Biden administration tried and failed to enact a federal ban on gas stoves, and then denied the plans, convincing media “fact-checkers” to call it a “right-wing conspiracy.” A federal court shot down Berkeley’s ban on natural gas hookups, but undaunted, the movement to ban gas stoves lives on with “creative” laws that may avoid the legal pitfalls that killed Berkeley’s law.

A new law went into effect in Colorado earlier this month requiring health warning labels on gas stoves, similar to those placed on cigarette packages. It’s one example of multiple efforts, primarily in blue states, to stop consumers from using gas-powered appliances in their homes.

After a Biden administration official in 2023 alluded to the possibility of a ban on gas stoves in the name of public health, legacy media outlets produced a number of “fact checks” insisting the Biden administration wasn’t going to ban gas stoves. They claimed the whole idea was just a “right-wing conspiracy.”

Conveniently, most of the “fact checks” ignored the many local and state efforts in Democratic strongholds to accomplish the same goal. Time Magazine published a January 2023 “fact check” calling Republican opposition to such bans on a state-level a “right-wing culture war,” comparable to “family values and religion.”

According to Time, “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed back against the notion that Republicans are the ones engaging in culture war over gas stoves.” During a speech, the Republican told supporters that Democrats and the media are trying to stoke the issue. “They want to do it, I mean, let’s be honest,” DeSantis said of the calls to ban gas-fueled stoves. “You start to see the narrative kick into gear, CNN segments saying how it’s causing asthma in kids. They start propagating the narrative.”

“The whole campaign is just an attempt to ban fossil fuels at the end of the day. So it’s just kind of one plank in a larger strategy,” Energy analyst David Blackmon, author of the “Energy Transition Absuridities” Substack, told Just the News.

State senator: “Only fair to warn people”

Colorado State Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation, told Canary Media — an activist publication that receives funding from anti-fossil fuel groups — that “it’s only fair to warn people” that gas stoves might have health impacts.

“Like other gas-burning appliances and gasoline-burning cars, gas ranges spew noxious compounds such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides,” Canary Media reported.

Under the law, a warning label must be affixed to gas stoves, warning consumers that they need to “understand the air-quality implications of having an indoor gas stove.” Using a link or QR code, the labels direct consumers to a state website that tries to convince buyers the appliance will possibly kill them or cause illnesses.

The information on the website relies primarily on federal government websites, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concerning potential health impacts from poor indoor air quality. However, there is no scientific consensus supporting such claims.

Anti-gas activists have regularly touted studies that found potential health risks from using stoves powered by fossil fuels, only to ignore flaws in those studies or the other studies that found no such link. In 2020, UCLA researchers produced a report claiming that gas stoves pose risks of respiratory illness, cardiovascular diseases, and premature death, especially among children, the elderly and low-income renters.

However, a study in 2023 by the California Restaurant Association, which lobbied against bans on natural gas hookups, found several issues with the UCLA report that led to flawed comparisons. “Had the UCLA Report made the correct comparisons, it would have concluded that there are no adverse health impacts from indoor use of natural gas appliances,” the study stated.

The UCLA study was funded by the Sierra Club, which has received $1 billion through Bloomberg Philanthropies. That money came from billionaire Bloomberg as part of a campaign called “Beyond Carbon,” which seeks to stop consumers from accessing energy from fossil fuels.

No significant association with asthma, but plenty of political ties

The controversy over a federal ban on gas stoves by the Biden administration followed the publication of a study by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), which found that 12% of current childhood asthma cases in the US can be attributed to gas stove use.

Less than a month after the RMI study was published, Bloomberg News interviewed Consumer Public Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. about the alleged health impacts from gas stoves, asking if the commission would take action. Trumka told Bloomberg that “products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Critics of RMI’s gas stove study argue that the quality of the data it used was poor because it didn’t factor in the findings of a 2013 study by the International Study of Asthma and Allergies, which is considered the most comprehensive global study on the topic to date.

Last year, a major study published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet conducted an extensive meta-analysis of the health risks — meaning an examination of scientific literature to determine overall trends in the findings of multiple studies on the topic — from using gas stoves compared to electricity and other fuels. The Lancet study found no significant association between natural gas and respiratory illnesses such as asthma. It even found a lower risk of bronchitis compared to the use of electric stoves.

The Colorado website that consumers will be directed to by the warning labels makes no mention of these studies, instead presenting health consequences as a foregone conclusion.

“It’s strictly a political campaign with a political strategy, and they believe this is a winning issue,” Blackmon said.

Beyond Berkeley: The push to ban gas stoves is back

In 2020, Berkeley, California, became the first city in the U.S. to ban natural gas hookups in new construction. The California Restaurant Association sued the city, arguing the ban was preempted by federal law. Ultimately, federal courts agreed, and the law was never allowed to go into effect.

However, according to the Grist, a publication that also receives funding from several anti-fossil fuel activist groups, some cities and states are looking for “creative” ways to sidestep the legal challenges that killed Berkeley’s anti-stove laws, which include emissions targets, building codes, and limits on indoor air pollution.

In July, a federal judge ruled that a New York law banning natural gas connections in new homes and buildings doesn’t conflict with federal law. A coalition of building and trade associations wrote to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in June, asking her to file legal challenges to the law.

“The gas ban violates core constitutional principles of interstate commerce by attempting to dictate national energy usage through state-level restrictions. It burdens domestic energy production, raises costs on middle-class homeowners, and compromises energy reliability and economic freedom,” the coalition wrote in their letter.

Despite a large body of research disputing claims that gas stoves pose significant health risks to consumers, activists are looking for avenues all across the U.S. to stop people from using the appliances. While the Biden administration failed to enact a federal ban on gas stoves, these local and state efforts may prove successful.

WE GOT LIMITLESS CLEAN ENERGY RIGHT UNDER OUR FEET-LETS USE IT!

Fervo Energy

The Secret to Unlimited Energy Is Beneath Our Feet—And It Could Power Earth for Millions of Years

If the U.S. could tap into just 2 percent of the geothermal power beneath Earth’s crust, it could supply more than 2,000 times our total annual energy consumption.

A new type of geothermal power plant has sprung up in the Nevada desert. It started with the drilling of two deep bore holes to a depth of about 1.5 miles through rocky sediment and sandtone, where temperatures were up to 380 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the drills dug sideways, tunneling a 3,250-foot horizontal passage between the two shafts.

Next, engineers injected water into one of the holes at a pressure so high it cracked the hot rocks deep underground. The water then flowed through the gaps, absorbing the intense heat, before gushing through the horizontal passage, creating a sort of underground reservoir. As the water flowed between layers of hot rock, it continued accruing heat. Finally, the water pumped back out of the second well—now at about 375 degrees Fahrenheit—back to the surface where it can be used to power businesses and homes.

The plant, which began operating in late 2023 to keep Google’s Nevada data center running, is the first of at least three geothermal stations Houston-based Fervo Energy is planning.

Earth’s 24/7 thermal power complements other renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Yet it has one distinct advantage—a core of magma that will stay liquid for billions of years, making geothermal energy both reliable and virtually unlimited. Industry estimates say that at least 20 percent of the entire world’s energy needs could be fulfilled for the foreseeable future if we could capture just a tiny fraction of geothermal heat that dissipates constantly from Earth’s molten nickel and iron core.

Worldwide, geothermal powers only 0.34 percent of the world’s energy sources. However, that figure is growing as technology overcomes the challenges of deep drilling. The future of geothermal energy could be unlimited if we continue to innovate ways to capture the power inside Earth’s crust.

Fervo’s method of extracting heat from the Earth is based on the fracking technology that shoots water into rock to release oil and gas from the ground. But instead of disturbing fossil fuels, it’s a sustainable method that simply uses Earth’s powerful interior oven to heat water to a “supercritical” temperature, which means the water gets extremely hot without boiling, because the intense pressure keeps it in liquid form. Unlike other power plants, this one doesn’t turn the water from deep underground into steam that will rotate a turbine and generate electricity. Instead, this system uses that hot water, called “brine,” to heat up and vaporize another batch of water. At that point, the vapor spins a turbine to make electricity. The brine is sent right back underground, where it reheats and returns to the surface, forming an efficient, closed loop system.

It’s different from typical geothermal power plants that need to drill down six or more miles to access temperatures that are 400 degrees Fahrenheit or more. One of the Fervo system’s unique features is the horizontal pipeline system, which efficiently heats water passing through rocks, eliminating the need to drill truly deep crust that gets hotter than 400 degrees. Like other geothermal plants, this system can also store energy like a large battery, and scale its electricity output up or down as needed.

Traditional geothermal power plants have long been built near tectonic plate boundaries—places like Iceland, Indonesia, and New Zealand—where volcanic activity brings heat close to Earth’s surface. In fact, geothermal energy powers about a third of Iceland’s electricity needs and about 90 percent of its homes. To succeed in accessing heat far from tectonically active areas, engineers are co-opting existing technology, the way Fervo borrows techniques from fracking.

For example, Quaise Energy, a spinoff from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, designed a novel drill using existing technology. Needing to drill deeper to reach heat in cooler sections of crust means boring for miles through dense, ever-hotter rock. Before long, the heat and the rock’s changing textures can deform drill heads, though they’re typically made of tough metal alloys that contain tungsten and titanium. Quaise got around this problem with drills that can shoot and vaporize stubborn rock with concentrated millimeter-wave beams that are over a megawatt in power, about 10¹² times more efficient than a laser beam. This millimeter-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is wedged between longer microwaves and shorter visible light waves, is typically used to heat plasma for fusion generators. So far, the Boston-based company has completed some successful tests, and is now planning to bore a hole 12.4 miles deep over 100 days. At these depths, the temperature will likely be around 932 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to provide a practical source of geothermal energy.

Meanwhile, a new Fervo plant under construction in Utah could produce more than 100 times as much power as its 3.5-megawatt Project Red Nevada test plant which is now powering Google. The new facility should produce about 400 to 500 megawatts per hour, enough to support the annual electricity needs for more than 400,000 average homes, Quinn Woodard Jr., director of Fervo’s surface facilities, tells Interesting Engineering.

According to Utah Forge, a Department of Energy (DOE) field lab, if the U.S. could capture just 2 percent of the geothermal power from two to six miles beneath Earth’s crust, it could supply more than 2,000 times our total annual energy consumption. The Geothermal Technologies Office of the DOE aims to achieve a carbon-free electricity grid by capturing 60 gigawatts of Earth’s thermal power by 2050. Whenever it happens, geothermal could become a cornerstone of global energy for generations to come.

FAKE CLIMATE COSTS ARE CONSTANTLY BLAMING BIG OIL FOR TRILLIONS IN LOST WEALTH BY CONSUMERS–WHAT A CROCK OF BS!…

Media shows no scrutiny of study claiming oil companies made the world $28 trillion poorer

These articles made no mention that the methodology used in the study that spawned considerable coverage was developed for the purpose of supporting climate lawsuits against oil companies. The study’s authors also worked with a lawyer who works at Sher Edling, a law firm that stands to profit from climate litigation.

A new study published in the journal Nature concludes that the world would be $28 trillion richer if we hadn’t used fossil fuels. Were it not for the “extreme heat” fossil fuel companies are causing, the researchers from Dartmouth College explain, we’d have a much wealthier planet.

With such dramatic conclusions, multiple outlets in the legacy media breathlessly reported the findings. A report in CBS News quotes celebrity climate scientist Michael Mann supporting this type of research. A D.C. court recently sanctioned Mann in his libel suit against two bloggers, saying he “acted in bad faith when they presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury and the Court.” CBS News’ report makes no mention of this.

“Extreme weather events continue disrupt [sic] communities and strain finances,” a report on the study in The New York Times states. The lead paragraph in a report in the Associated Press compares using fossil fuels, which are the basis for over 80% of the globe’s energy and thousands of consumer products, to using tobacco. The study, Associated Press climate reporter Seth Borenstein claims, will “make it easier for people and governments to hold companies financially accountable.”

These articles fail to mention that the methodology used in the study wasn’t developed by impartial researchers dedicated to following science. The methodology, it turns out, was developed by anti-fossil fuel activists whose aim is to support climate lawsuits against oil companies. The study’s authors also consulted with a lawyer who works at a law firm that stands to profit from climate litigation.

“Attribution science” designed for lawsuits but robust

The study’s conclusion is based on what’s called “attribution science,” which was developed by a group of climate activists specifically to help advance litigation against oil companies. One of the leading organizations driving this approach is the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative. In an article about the field, its co-founder, climatologist Friederike Otto told Politico in 2019, “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.”

Otto explained in a Concordia University interview last year that this field of science is part of a legal strategy to arm plaintiffs in lawsuits against oil companies with a scientific basis for their complaints. The Associated Press article quotes Otto, who didn’t take part in the Dartmouth study, stating that “all the methods they [the Dartmouth researchers] use are robust.” The reporter then characterized the WWA as a “collection of scientists who try rapid attribution studies to see if specific extreme weather events are worsened by climate change.”

In 2022, the Associated Press received $8 million in funding from anti-fossil fuel advocacy groups, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. The outlet said that these are just “philanthropy partners,” and it maintains editorial control over its content.

White men need not apply

In an interview in a British feminist publication Womanthology, Otto argued that it’s important to have women doing climate research: “Who ‘does science’ is a hugely important issue, so if climate change is worked on exclusively by white men, it means that the questions asked are those that are relevant to white men.”

“But people most affected by climate change are not white men” he said, “so if all these other people are effectively excluded from the scientific process, the problems we have to face in climate change will not be properly addressed and you will not find solutions for how to best transform a society,” Otto said.

Otto didn’t explain how extreme weather events — whether they’re impacted by carbon dioxide emissions or not — specifically seek out people according to their gender and race.

Attempts to distribute blame company by company

On his “The Honest Broker” Substack, Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., retired professor of environmental science at the University of Colorado-Boulder, explained that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations consortium of the world’s leading climate researchers, disputes that single events can be attributed to climate change.

“Scientists cannot answer directly whether a particular event was caused by climate change, as extremes do occur naturally, and any specific weather and climate event is the result of a complex mix of human and natural factors. Instead, scientists quantify the relative importance of human and natural influences on the magnitude and/or probability of specific extreme weather events,” the IPCC states in its AR6 report.

The Dartmouth study attempts to distribute blame on how specific oil companies have allegedly contributed to the claimed $28 trillion in damages globally. According to the study, Chevron caused as much as $3.6 trillion in “heat-related losses” between 1991 and 2020. ExxonMobil is, according to the study, responsible for $1.91 trillion and adds that Saudi Aramco is responsible for $2.05 trillion.

The lead researcher of the Dartmouth study, Dr. Christopher Callahan, told Just the News that it is an “unfortunate misreading of the IPCC’s conclusion.” “Our research does not argue that a given heat wave was entirely caused by an emitter, but that emitters have increased the intensity of a heat wave that may have occurred naturally,” he said.

Callahan noted that the IPCC also states that “scientists can now quantify the contribution of human influences to the magnitude and probability of many extreme events,” and that “attributable increases in probability and magnitude have been identified consistently for many hot extremes.”

“Our findings are entirely in line with this consensus,” Callahan said.

Tactical science

In his article, Pielke wrote that attribution science was developed as a response to the failure of the IPCC’s conventional approach to reach a high degree of confidence with detection and attribution of trends in the frequency and intensity of most types of extreme weather events. Pielke argues that climate change due to human activities does pose a risk and shouldn’t be ignored. However, he wrote, “The importance of climate change as an issue does not mean that we can or should ignore scientific integrity.”

Pielke calls attribution science a form of “tactical science,” which is research done specifically in service to political and legal aims. He said such research is not necessarily bad research, but because it serves an agenda, it deserves greater scrutiny, especially by journalists reporting on these studies and especially those studies that aren’t peer-reviewed.

For example, the WWA produced a study claiming that last year’s deadly Hurricane Helene was made 500 times more likely due to carbon dioxide emissions. CNN reported on the study but never mentioned it wasn’t peer-reviewed. The Dartmouth study was peer-reviewed.

Feedback from interested parties

The researchers of the Dartmouth study consulted with a lawyer from a firm representing plaintiffs who are suing oil companies. The acknowledgments list Michael Burger, a lawyer of counsel at Sher Edling. The firm is heavily involved in litigation against oil companies, particularly lawsuits that blame them for damages stemming from weather-related events.

The firm has been accused of being part of a dark money campaign, The Washington Free Beacon reported, and it was the focus of a Congressional probe in 2023, seeking more information on the “wealthy liberals” who are funding the lawsuits “aimed at bankrupting oil and gas companies.”

Callahan, the lead researcher of the Dartmouth study, said he and co-author Dr. Justin Mankin are solely responsible for the entire article. He said the research benefited from feedback from many people, including litigants and judges.

“Neither of us are involved in climate litigation, and we do not stand to financially gain from these lawsuits,” Callahan said.

Training judges

The Dartmouth study also acknowledges participants in the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), an initiative by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). While the project bills itself as a neutral organization providing “training” to judges overseeing proceedings in climate cases, a report last year from the American Energy Institute (AEI) argued that CJP is influencing judges in favor of the plaintiffs in these cases.

The ELI told Just the News in September that the AEI report is “full of misinformation,” and insisted it doesn’t take stances on individual cases or advocate for specific outcomes.

The Dartmouth study lists in the acknowledgments Jessica Wentz, associate director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and also cites her research. The Sabin Center is affiliated with Columbia University’s Columbia Climate School and Columbia’s law school.

In 2016, Wentz helped coordinate a petition to the Philippines Commission on Human Rights requesting an investigation of human rights violations by the “carbon majors” — meaning oil companies — on the theory that they are causing climate change and the assumption that human rights laws are in play.

Today, oil companies, tomorrow, the world

It’s hard to square the Dartmouth study’s conclusions — which is that oil companies are costing society trillions — when the data show that in the time the globe has been exponentially increasing its use of fossil fuels, GDP has rapidly increased in that time.

Another point that critics have noted about the study is that it focuses solely on the alleged impacts of oil companies. Large emitters not included in the study include steel producers, auto manufacturers, utilities and cattle ranchers, but the study didn’t calculate how much wealthier the world would be without steel, cars, electricity and beef.

Callahan said that the research could later inform studies to go after other industries. “The goal of our research is to develop a flexible framework that can be applied to any emitter. Existing work has estimated emissions attributable to major fossil fuel firms, which includes gas, coal, oil, and some cement producers, and our research used these existing estimates as a starting point and proof-of-concept. Further research could easily apply our approach to electric utilities, the agricultural or transportation sectors, and so on,” he said.

Legal experts critical of climate litigation have warned that there’s nothing about the campaign that couldn’t eventually target every industry producing the products everyone consumes, as just about every large industry uses excessive amounts of energy, the bulk of which comes from fossil fuels. If these lawsuits are successful, critics explain, the billions in settlements will be passed down to consumers.

Multnomah County, Oregon, filed a lawsuit seeking damages from a heat dome event in 2021, which the county claims was the fault of oil companies. The event wasn’t the worst heat event in recorded history, which was 119 degrees set in 1898, long before large amounts of fossil fuels were being consumed. The county, however, blames oil companies for the 72 people that died during the 2021 event. In November, the county amended its complaint to add a natural gas utility to its list of defendants.

As this type of research develops, it’s likely the list of companies said to be costing us trillions in the course of providing consumers with the products they need or willingly buy and enjoy every day will expand.

PRESIDENT GUTS THE FEDERAL EV FLEET, SELLING IT ALL!

The free ride for Biden’s EV mandate comes to a screeching halt.

The word has come down from on high: Shut down the power, and sell the fleet.

The Trump administration’s General Services Administration is set to pull the plug on all EV charging stations in federal buildings nationwide. In addition, the agency plans to off-load newly purchased EVs from the federal vehicle fleet.

Shutting this down isn’t just about saving pennies; it’s a signal. The Trump administration is pumping the brakes on the whole EV push, big time.

Tell me again how Trump’s in the tank for Elon?

Fleet cheat

The GSA is the agency that keeps the federal government’s buildings humming and manages a massive fleet of about 650,000 vehicles.

Under Biden, the GSA went all in on EVs — ordering over 58,000 zero-emission rides and installing thousands of charging ports nationwide. The goal? Electrify everything by 2035.

But now, with Trump back in the driver’s seat, the GSA is hitting the brakes hard. It is pulling the plug on hundreds of charging stations — think 8,000 plugs going dark — and off-loading those brand-new EVs faster than you can say “range anxiety.”

The reasoning? These assets aren’t “mission critical.” Translation: The GSA doesn’t think EVs fit the government’s real priorities.

Free ride

Let’s break this down. These chargers weren’t just for government vehicles and federal employees; they were being used for personal EVs, too. We’re talking Denver Federal Center, VA sites, military bases, and other places where federal employees could cop a complimentary charge for their personal vehicles.

The free ride is over. And GSA is unloading its electric vehicle fleets, too. No word yet on whether the government is selling them cheap or just parking them in some giant government lot. Either way, this is a seismic shift. The Biden administration spent billions of your tax dollars to push this green dream, and now the GSA has yanked the emergency brake.

And let’s not kid ourselves — shutting this down isn’t just about saving pennies; it’s a signal. The Trump administration is pumping the brakes on the whole EV push, big time.

War on the green agenda

It’s no secret that President Trump is not a fan of Biden’s EV mandate. He’s already paused $5 billion in public charger funding and nixed plans for more federal EVs. This is war on the green agenda. Biden’s team dropped BILLIONS of dollars of your money to electrify everything by 2035.

The GSA is responsible for managing federal assets including a fleet of approximately 650,000 vehicles. Under the Biden administration, it embarked on a plan to transition to zero-emission vehicles. That included the procurement of over 58,000 EVs and the installation of more than 25,000 charging ports. It never came anywhere close to achieving those figures though, and this new directive puts that plan to a swift end.

It’s not clear where all those unwanted EVs will go. Technically, the GSA could simply take the vehicles out of the fleet and put them into storage rather than sell them at a loss.

It’s also uncertain how the agency will replace the vehicles being phased out; possibilities include purchasing new gas-powered models or reallocating older ones from retirement. I hope they reuse the older ones and stop wasting our tax dollars.

Waste management

Three years ago, the Biden administration gave out a total of $7.5 billion in grants for states to develop EV charging infrastructure; since then, only about a dozen charging stations have been built nationwide.

This is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Carmakers need to shift gears and stop cranking out EVs that are not selling and sitting on dealer lots. Making what their customers want rather than what is mandated will return the profits they once enjoyed.

$9 TRILLION WASTED ON STUPID RENEWABLE UNATTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PRODUCTION AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE!

Despite $9 trillion spent on net zero goals, fossil fuels to remain dominant energy source: report

Modern prosperity is tied to certain industrial products, including chemicals, steel, cement, food and paper, according to the J.P. Morgan report. Approximately 80% of the energy inputs for these products is fossil fuels.

While the legacy media often reports that the world is rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, a new report from J.P. Morgan shows that narrative is simply not correct. Since 2010, $9 trillion has been spent globally on wind, solar, electric vehicles energy storage, electrification and power grids, but despite this expensive effort — mostly at taxpayer expense — the share of final energy consumption by carbon-free energy sources is advancing by approximately a scant 0.3% to 0.6% per year.

Michael Cembalest, Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy for J.P. Morgan, explains in “Heliocentrism,” the 15th annual energy paper by the investment firm, that the reason fossil fuels remain the dominant source of energy is that modern prosperity is tied to certain kinds of industrial products, including chemicals, steel, cement, food and paper. Approximately 80% of the energy inputs for these products are fossil fuels. JPMorgan Chase is the world’s fifth largest bank by total assets, with $3.9 trillion as of 2023.

“As things stand now, modern prosperity is highly reliant on fossil fuels,” Cembalest said in a podcast on the report. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., retired professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, estimates on his “The Honest Broker” Substack that at the current pace, the world will not be carbon free until sometime after the year 2200.

Solar accounts for 2% of total final energy

Cembalest notes that solar capacity, both utility scale and rooftop, is exploding and represents two-thirds of new generation capacity. It will reach about 75% of all new generation capacity for the rest of the decade.

“There’s a lot of people that are so focused on the growth in solar power that they believe that solar power, typically bolted on with some energy storage, can represent the dominant share of where we get our energy from,” Cembalest said.

Solar accounts for approximately 6% of global electricity generation. However, electricity is only about 33% of the total energy people consume, according to the paper, and by some estimates it’s only about 20%. Translating all that solar power to a share of final energy consumption, which includes all forms of energy, solar is only 2% of total final energy and will grow to 4% to 5% by the end of the decade.

“While that’s impressive growth from a low base, we obviously need to be more focused on the other 95% of where we’re going to get our final energy consumption from and rather than just the solar on its own,” Cembalest said.

Heliocentric

This misperception about the energy transition is why Cembalest, he explained, chose the “Heliocentric” title, referring to the idea that the sun revolves around the Earth, as opposed to the other way around. While completely accurate, the concept was resisted for centuries as opponents and even the Holy Roman Church insisted the science was settled. It was not until the mid-1500‘s that the theory was generally adopted.

“While we should be trying to decarbonize as much as we possibly can, we have to be realistic about the pace at which this can be done,” Cembalest said.

He disputed other predictions of a rapid industrial transition to renewable energy. He said such transitions can happen, and as an example, he pointed to the transition from open hearth furnaces to basic oxygen furnaces in steel production that began in the 1960s and 1970s and took 20 years to complete. That new technology, Cembalest explained, reduced steel production times to 10% of what they were, which allowed for a reduction in 80% to 90% of energy costs.

“When you have a transition that can pay for itself, like this, it can happen rapidly, but that’s not the case with the transition [to non-carbon energy] that we’re experiencing now,” he said.

Transmission and brownouts

Cembalest noted other impediments in the transition to non-carbon energy sources. These include the cost and time it takes to build transmission lines. Electrification, which seeks to transition away from gas-powered appliances to those powered by electricity, runs up against the fact that natural gas is much cheaper than electricity. Cembalest said this is true globally and not just in the U.S.

He also noted that as the U.S. has increased its share of renewables on the grid, reserve buffers, which is the amount of electricity generation required to meet demand during peak times, have been shrinking. “We’re getting more and more close to the point where we might have some kind of brownout situation,” he said.

The findings of the Morgan report are in line with the latest edition of the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy,” which found that coal, natural gas and oil remained the dominant source of energy in 2023, and coal consumption and production hit record highs.

While renewables are seeing growth, these analyses show that like it or not, fossil fuels are going to be with us for many decades to come.

$27 BILLION FRAUD AND FRAUD AND BIDEN LIES AND DECEPTION ABOUT MADE UP GRANTS TO CRONIES IN LAST DAYS OF BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, SOMEBODY HAS TO GO TO JAIL

A New Beltway Mystery: Follow the Biden EPA Money

by James Varney, RealClearInvestigations

When the Biden administration announced $27 billion in environmental grants last April, it set the clock ticking on a predicament: how to get the unprecedented sums for the President’s envisioned NetZero future out the door before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30?

The task was complicated by the fact most of the money – $20 billion – would go to just eight nonprofits that, like the Environmental Protection Agency itself, had never handled such gargantuan grants.

In hindsight, it’s easy to suspect that corners were cut, or laws were broken, or, at the very least, extraordinary measures were taken.

Those possibilities are clearly on the mind of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he tries to unravel what happened to Inflation Reduction Act spending that the Biden White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the EPA decided to expedite before the November election – an effort that included moving the roughly $20 billion to a private institution, Citibank, away from oversight of the Treasury Department.

On Wednesday, Zeldin moved to terminate the arrangements as the enriched nonprofits have filed lawsuits looking to protect their grants. The battle has thrust into the spotlight what had been a rather quiet attempt by the Biden administration to spend the $27 billion.

The money was put into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a new entity born in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats pushed through Congress without any Republican support.

“This bold investment will not only deploy clean energy and combat the climate crisis but also improve health outcomes, lower energy costs, and create high-quality jobs for Americans,” Biden’s EPA declared when seeking applications for the grants, “all while strengthening our country’s economic competitiveness and ensuring energy security.”

The grants, unveiled April 4, 2024, came with its built-in deadline to push the money out just months away. So a political deal was struck between the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and EPA, current agency officials told RealClearInvestigations. As a hedge against future administration attempts to curb the program, the deal classified the now-suspect $20 billion in a novel way making it hard to track.

Zeldin has asked the EPA’s inspector general and the Department of Justice to investigate the unorthodox arrangement.

“I think it will be an uphill battle to recover the money, but it’s impressive to see Trump and Zeldin running with it,” said Daren Bakst of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has labeled the Greenhouse Gas money “slush funds.”

“Even if you look past the entities that receive the money, or how they figured out how to get the money to them, this is a setup that is prone to corruption, abuse and cronyism regardless of party,” Bakst said. “The whole thing looks questionable.”

The process began before the April 4 announcement. In December 2022, Jahi Wise, an executive with the Coalition for Green Capital, joined EPA as a senior adviser. In July 2023, the EPA published a request for proposals from applicants to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

The fund was broken into three parts. The two largest, the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA), received huge sums, totaling $20 billion. Notably, as RCI reported last October, grants went to nonprofits that had paltry assets, had been granted their nonprofit status only the month before, or had people associated with them that had previously served various federal or state Democratic administrations. For example, the Coalition for Green Capital, Wise’s former outfit, was awarded $5.1 billion.

Three weeks later, an arrangement was made between OMB and EPA in which the money was designated “non-exchange” rather than “exchange” – a first for EPA funds, according to current officials. That label allowed for the money to be moved to recipients in lump funds rather than parceled out over the length of the deals with the nonprofits, which in most cases were slated to run until 2029, 2030, or later, records show. It also called for an outside financial institution to manage the money, in part because the agency had zero experience in handling grants of this size.

Although the language in the Inflation Reduction Act dealing with the Greenhouse Gas funds does not use “shall,” the word Congress usually employs to indicate that something is required, the law did impose a deadline of Sept. 30 – the end of the fiscal year – EPA officials and legal experts agree.

On June 27, as the EPA was making its deals with the nonprofits, Biden had his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, and on July 21 Biden ended his re-election campaign and threw his support to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The Greenhouse Gas fund money remained unobligated at that point, according to EPA officials.

The deals were finally completed and the National Clean Investment Fund and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator money was obligated to the nonprofits on Aug. 16, according to a timeline provided to RCI. That left $7 billion, the portion that comprised the third component of the fund, Solar For All.

At that point, the $20 billion, though obligated, remained with the Treasury, officials said. A memorandum of understanding between EPA and the Treasury Department on moving the mountain of cash was not signed until Sept. 6.

Two weeks later, the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee held a hearing to learn more about EPA funding oversight, calling the agency’s inspector general Sean O’Donnell to testify. O’Donnell made clear he had never seen the maneuvers the EPA was making with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and said neither he nor his staff would be able to stay on top of it.

“I can’t say enough about how complex this system will be,” O’Donnell testified. “It’s like they created an investment bank. It’s fantastically complex. I think it’s unusual.”

Yet it was not until Nov. 12, three working days after Trump beat Harris in the 2024 election, that the EPA began talks with Citibank about taking control of the $20 billion, Trump administration officials told RCI. During those negotiations, on Dec. 5, Project Veritas released an undercover video of an EPA official laughing about what he considered an extraordinary process, likening it to “throwing gold bars off the deck of the Titanic.”

The Citibank arrangement effectively removing direct EPA oversight, and with interest on the $20 billion going to the grant recipients, was signed on Dec. 27, agency officials told RCI. The deal thus represents a carve-out for the two aspects of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that accounted for the $20 billion; the $7 billion comprising Solar For All remains with Treasury. The Trump administration has frozen that money, although some of it has already been distributed, according to federal records.

Critics of the spending said the timeline smacks of shady politics.

Steve Milloy, a skeptic of apocalyptic global warming, said he has received a government grant and his experience was profoundly different than the one enjoyed by Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund winners. His process was an uncomfortable one that lasted 10 months, he said.

“They crawled up my ass, and that was for a small grant,” he said.

The contrast is striking, in his opinion.

I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “It is fishy … I think they thought they would win reelection and panicked when they lost. It seems like all of this is being done without due diligence or accountability.”

‘Tip of the Iceberg’

Picking up on the “gold bars off the deck of the Titanic” video, Zeldin cited the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund as a dubious operation during his confirmation hearing Jan. 17, and he has been outspoken against it since becoming administrator. On March 2, he wrote to the EPA inspector general, urging him to look into the deals.

“These examples are the tip of the iceberg and suggest a deeply entrenched pattern of political favoritism, lack of qualifications, and other possibly unlawful allocation of taxpayer funds,” he wrote. “Disturbingly, these cases likely represent only a fraction of broader issues.”

Beyond questions about the money, questions also remain about the work it is meant to pay for, according to Zeldin and other EPA officials. None of the recipient nonprofits contacted by RCI, including the Climate United Fund, which got the biggest award of $7 billion, responded to requests for comment.

One stipulation of the Greenhouse Gas funds was that winners attract $7 of private investment for every $1 in federal money. The EPA told RCI that recipients submitted detailed plans in their applications, but could not say if that included specific financing arrangements. Former EPA Special Adviser Zealan Hoover told RCI last year that the goal was to create a market for these green banks through the size of the grants.

While it remains early in the process, it does not appear the groups will be able to hit that target. The Appalachian Community Credit Corporation, for instance, is supposed to get $500 million through the CCIA. On its website, however, it says it will use the money to create a $1.6 billion loan pool, which would be an investment ratio little better than 3-to-1.

The Virginia-based corporation did not respond to requests for comment.

It remains unclear how much money remains in the Citibank accounts and how successful Zeldin may be in recovering the money. Citibank declined comment.

‘The Whole Thing Seems Incestuous’

Some outside observers believe there are mechanisms to claw back the funds. An EPA official told RCI there is boilerplate language in agency contracts that allows “termination for a change in agency priorities,” and Milloy said federal agencies terminate contracts “all the time.”

In this particular case, while it does appear Zeldin could claw back money, the EPA may be legally bound to simply give it to another private financial institution rather than return it to the Treasury, said David Super, professor of law and economics at Georgetown University Law Center.

In addition, Super said, there is that deadline of Sept. 30, 2024.

“There, as here, there was both an appropriation and a deadline for getting the money out the door,” Super said, citing a 1975 Supreme Court ruling. “Any competent lawyer would have told EPA that, unless it wanted to go through the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act, it would be an unlawful impoundment of funds if it failed to spend all the money – and, if it was going to do that, it had to do so by September 30, 2024.”

Other groups that received enormous grants also did not respond to RCI’s questions or requests for comment, including the Climate United Fund, which got the single biggest award: $7 billion up front for an arrangement that is supposed to last through June 2029, federal records show.

Climate United Fund has announced spending $311 million of its grant, all of it on three projects last October and November. The largest of those was $250 million to buy electric trucks, according to the group’s website.

Previously, RCI reported on ties between some of the nonprofits’ key figures and the Biden or Obama administrations, and more of those have come to light since Zeldin pushed the issue into the spotlight last month. Many outlets have zeroed in on failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who was lead counsel for a group known as Rewiring America. That group, in turn, is one of the main components of a new group known as Power Forward Communities, an outfit with listed assets of $100 that obtained its tax-exempt status last March, just weeks before it was named the winner of a $2 billion grant.

Trump mentioned Abrams and the EPA award in his congressional speech last week, and liberal “fact check” groups sprang to action to label his comment false because the money did not go directly to Abrams. Abrams acknowledged being a part of Rewiring America, however, and said the group bought energy-efficient appliances for people in Georgia.

Power Forward Communities, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment, lists scores of other partners. One of those, the Green Door Initiative in Michigan, is led by Donele Wilkins, whom Biden appointed as a member of his Environmental Justice Advisory Council last June. In other cases, Power Forward Communities is partnered with groups that also have other public revenue streams, such as the Nevada Clean Energy Fund, which is funded also by the Nevada governor’s office and has received nearly $850,000 of its separate $155.7 million grant via Solar For All.

Similar ties have surfaced between the Biden administration and the Coalition for Green Capital.

“The whole thing seems incestuous,” said Bakst of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “When you see these short deadlines it really makes everything questionable, because when you rush something like this there will almost certainly be problems with it.”

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

USA POSTS RECORD OIL PRODUCTION IN SPITE OF BIDEN ADMINISTRATION HOLDBACKS

As diplomats convene at the United Nations’ COP 28 climate change summit, fossil fuel production and consumption are hitting new highs, and tanker owners are in prime position to profit from rising trade flows.

The Biden administration is a leading proponent of decarbonization, and wants to kill the US economic growth, yet the U.S. is pumping out record volumes of hydrocarbons thanks in great part to fracking to extract oil from rock!. America is on track to be the world’s largest producer and exporter of natural gas this year, as well as the leading exporter of refined products and liquefied petroleum gas.

There are also big wins — for energy producers and shipowners, not decarbonization advocates — on the crude oil front. The Biden administration is a leading proponent of decarbonization, yet the U.S. is pumping out record volumes of hydrocarbons.
The U.S. produced 13.2 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil in September.
Kepler: In January-November 2023, U.S. seaborne crude exports averaged 4million b/d, an all-time high and up 19% year on year.

The U.S. produced 13.2 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil in September, according to data released Thursday by the Energy Information Administration. That is the country’s highest monthly production level ever.

And not only is America producing more crude, it is exporting a larger share of the crude it produces, further boosting volumes aboard tankers bound for Europe and Asia.

Seaborne crude exports up 19% vs. 2022

Exports of U.S. crude were banned between 1975 and 2015. For 40 years, U.S. production could only be sold overseas if it was refined first, then exported as petroleum products.

The end of the ban dramatically increased market opportunities for U.S. production, thereby stimulating higher output — creating more business for oil companies and tanker owners.

That upward momentum continues. Seaborne crude exports are tracked by commodity intelligence provider Kpler. In January-November, its data shows that U.S. seaborne crude exports averaged 4 million b/d, an all-time high and up 19% year on year.

Exports in November averaged 4.45 million b/d, the second-highest monthly average on record, just slightly below the peak of 4.46 million bpd in March.

Volumes rise sharply to both Europe and Asia

The Panama Canal is wreaking havoc on many cargo supply chains, but it has virtually no effect on U.S. crude exports.

U.S. crude exports to Asia are loaded on very large crude carriers (VLCCs; tankers that carry 2 million barrels) via ship-to-ship transfers in the U.S. Gulf. VLCCs are too large to transit either the Panama or Suez canals; they use the Cape of Good Hope.

U.S. exports to Europe are shipped aboard Aframaxes (750,000-barrel capacity), Suezmaxes (1 million-barrel capacity) and VLCCs.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Europe has hiked its purchases of U.S. crude to help offset banned Russian supply. According to Kpler data, an average of 1.83 million b/d of U.S. crude flowed to Europe in January-November, up 26% from the 2022 full-year average.

Europe’s share of total U.S. crude exports has risen to 46% this year compared to 37% in 2021, the year prior to the invasion, while Asia’s share is 41%, down from 47% in 2021.

“In volumetric terms, the story has been all about Europe this year,” Reid I’Anson, senior commodity analyst at Kpler, told FreightWaves. “Europe continues to grow increasingly reliant on U.S. energy — not just LNG [liquefied natural gas] but across the board.”

Despite the pull of Europe, U.S. crude exports to Asia have also continued to escalate. According to Kpler data, exports to Asia are averaging a record-high 1.65 million b/d year to date, up 15% from last year and up 26% from 2021.

Rising volumes to Asia translate into profitable business for VLCC owners. Brokerage True North Chartering counted 40 spot VLCC cargoes loading in the U.S. Gulf in both October and November, matching the prior monthly high in April.

It is totally nonsense to think that the world can operate all necessary industry and electrical, food production and machinery without OIL. Add to it all he other products that use OIL: packaging, road building asphalt, and thousands of applications in manufactured products we use daily.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SHAFTS SENIORS: DIVERTS BILLIONS FROM MEDICARE TO ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Green Energy

Why Is Joe Biden Screwing Seniors To Subsidize Electric Vehicles?

The Biden administration is more interested in pet projects, unsustainable green schemes, and ideological revenue redistribution than in the core functions of government.

The news of EV and green energy subsidies flew under the radar until a poll conducted in Arizona alerted voters there to the scheme. Fully three-quarters of Arizona voters polled (76 percent) said they didn’t know the Biden administration diverted money from Medicare “savings” to subsidize green projects, and by an 80-10 margin, respondents strongly opposed such a tactic.

The information came from a report by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), which

shows the inaccurately named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 diverted some $280 billion from Medicare’s prescription drug provisions to green tax credits and other leftist climate initiatives — instead of lowering prescription drug costs for seniors. The ATR report reveals the so-called Inflation Reduction Act as nothing more than a pork-laden payoff to cronies and an effort by the Biden administration to implement the Green New Deal.

EVs have had a rotten track record in recent years. Example after example shows what a terrible investment they are. In Florida, EVs caught fire in the aftermath of flooding from Hurricane Ian in 2022. Several EVs burst into flames and then reignited later. This year, a Tesla lost control and rolled down a boat ramp into the intercoastal waterway — the fire department reportedly had no choice but to let it burn itself out underwater. Fire departments are fully unprepared to deal with the types of fires caused by the interaction of rare-earth elements in EV batteries and exposure to water.

More to the point, EVs also represent a terrible fiscal commitment. One report indicates electric vehicles depreciate in value by roughly 50 percent over the first five years of their lives, significantly more than standard vehicles. This stands to reason, as the batteries are prohibitively expensive to replace and owners can expect to spend more on repairs to EVs than standard gasoline-powered vehicles. That helps to explain why they’re more difficult and more expensive to insure as well.

EVs don’t save the average consumer on refueling costs, either. The equivalent price of “refueling” an EV works out to approximately $17 per “gallon” in a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. That cost includes tax credits, rebates, subsidies to vehicle manufacturers, and regulations and mandates by various agencies.

EV owners experience the real sensation of “range anxiety,” in which the limited range of a battery charge, combined with a lack of charging station infrastructure outside of major metropolitan areas, leads drivers to wonder if they’ll get stranded somewhere with a dead car. Perhaps this explains why EVs have sat unsold by the thousands at car lots across the nation — not that you’d know it from listening to the corporate media. Holiday commercials continue to encourage viewers to buy that special someone a luxury electric SUV for Christmas, despite increasing reports of malfunctions, expensive repairs, deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and a thorough lack of consumer enthusiasm for these expensive new products.

The massive subsidies the Biden administration pays to the green energy industry overall seem to go into a giant rat hole, which makes using the Medicare drug savings to pay for them all the more insulting. For instance, one California-based luxury EV manufacturer, Lucid, loses $430,000 on each vehicle it sells. Ford also loses thousands on every EV it sells.

Despite all the problems, the Biden administration continues to subsidize the manufacture and sale of EVs to advance its decarbonization and net-zero goals. Green subsidies are far from trivial, with renewable energy receiving about three and a half times as much as the “fossil fuel” industry.

But the Biden administration is more interested in pet projects, unsustainable green schemes, and ideological revenue redistribution than in the core functions of government — and seniors hoping for relief on drug prices get screwed once again.

Jeff is an experienced communications professional who

EDIBLE OIL FROM SAWDUST!!!!

Why this startup is creating edible oil from sawdust

ÄIO’s fermentation process creates healthy, sustainable oils and fats by upcycling low-value industry organics.

Palm oil production hurts the environment and biodiversity, but it’s difficult to replace due to its remarkable productivity.

The Estonian startup ÄIO has developed a process to make fatty oils with yeast that thrive on sawdust.
Its founders hope the technology will replace palm oil and promote local economies to be more circular and sustainable.

Just because something is natural doesn’t necessarily make it sustainable. Consider palm oil. The product was widely adopted in the 20th century to replace purportedly less healthy oils and fats in foods. Odorless, semi-solid at room temperature, resistant to oxidation, and — most importantly — cheap, it’s now found in almost everything.

In fact, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that 50% of all packaged products contain palm oil. It’s in chocolate, pizza dough, and margarine. It’s also in cosmetics like lipstick, and personal care products, such as deodorant, shampoo, and toothpaste. We use it in cleaning products, in pet foods, and as a biofuel. The list goes on.

To meet the soaring demand, businesses around the world but especially in Southeast Asia are clearing tracts of rainforest to make room for palm oil plantations. The loss of such biodiverse habitat not only threatens close to 200 species, including the orangutan, it also throws millions of tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere (to say nothing of the industry’s well-documented worker exploitation).

Unfortunately, boycotting the product may not be a realistic option either, as the readily available substitutes may prove environmentally worse.

That’s because palm trees are remarkably productive. They create 2.94 tonnes of oil per hectare of land, far outpacing other vegetable oils. Sunflowers produce just 0.74 tonnes of oil per hectare, soybeans 0.46 tonnes, and coconuts a meager 0.23 tonnes. To maintain the current supply with these alternatives — to say nothing of increasing demand — would require dedicating vastly more total land to oil production.*

Rather than growing existing alternatives, it may prove more efficient to invent a new one. Estonian biotechnology startup ÄIO is doing just that.

A whole different yeast

ÄIO was founded in 2022 by Petri-Jaan Lahtvee and Nemailla Bonturi, a professor and senior researcher of food technology and bioengineering at Tallinn University of Technology, respectively. The two were initially part of a research group led by Lahtvee looking into biotechnology processes that relied on locally available resources.

After a year and a half of building and studying various processes, one stood out as special: a yeast created by Bonturi.

Conventional yeast are microorganisms that consume raw sugars from organic sources like corn, barley, or fruit. Through metabolism, they then convert sugars into various end products known as metabolites. And these are key to many of our favorite foods.

For example, baker’s yeast releases CO2 as a metabolite, and this is why bread rises. In beer brewing, yeast metabolizes sugars into CO2 and alcohol (more specifically, ethanol) during the fermentation stage.

Bonturi’s yeast works similarly; however, hers evolved to be robust and productive with raw materials far more challenging than corn. Her microorganisms can consume the sugar found in even sawdust and metabolize it into lipids chockablock in antioxidants and omega-3 — the building blocks of the animal fats and plant oils we eat every day.

This unorthodox yeast was nicknamed “the red bug” after the ruddy pigmentation of the resulting biomass. (Though Bonturi admits, the moniker is also a nod to her three favorite “Red Queens” — the character from Through the Looking Glass, the AI from the Resident Evil series, and the Red Queen hypothesis in evolutionary biology.)

“This microorganism was ‘architected’ by cultivating it through different selective pressures and letting nature do the work,” Bonturi said in an exclusive interview with Freethink.

She and Lahtvee then developed a fermentation process, one similar to brewing beer. They mix the red bug in large, stainless steel tanks with the sugars from sawdust or other upcycled organic sources. They add some heat to activate the yeast and let the microorganisms do their thing. Once fermentation is complete, they harvest and treat the lipid-rich biomass to create food-grade oil- and fat-alternative products.

ÄIO is currently focusing on three bespoke products. Its RedOil could be used as an alternative to vegetable and fish oils, or serve as a substitute for synthetic ingredients in cosmetics and lubricants in household cleaners. The company produces a powdered form for easy transportation and a “buttery fat” to replace lards and shortenings, as well.

“Our main goal is to replace palm oil,” Lahtvee said in the interview. “At the same time, we are working with precision fermentation of specialty lipids so that we can provide the chemical and physical properties that a customer needs, such as a specific melting temperature or taste profile.”

Think globally, act locally

ÄIO’s biomanufactured approach has several potential advantages over palm oil. For one, its powdered form can travel without risk of leaks, spillage, and loss. It can then be reconstituted on-site and emulsified to provide the consistency required for whatever product it is used in.

The yeast can upcycle “side streams” from many different industries, too. Side streams are the unwanted, low-value byproducts of industrial activities — think sawdust from lumber or weeds from agriculture. While ÄIO has focused mainly on sawdust, its versatility means the fermentation process can be implemented locally anywhere a compatible side stream is available.

Our technology contributes to the circular economy because it allows us to upcycle low-value products.

Petri-Jaan Lahtvee

“Our technology really contributes to the circular economy because it allows us to upcycle low-value products,” Lahtvee said. “It’s important to ensure food security, as well. Because our processes don’t rely on long supply chains, and you don’t have to transport specific goods to certain places, they can be locally produced.”

Finally, there’s the advantage of speed. It takes time to clear a dense rainforest, build a plantation, grow the palm trees, harvest the palm fruit, and then process it. The same can be said for raising animals for butter and lard. Conversely, microorganisms like yeast live on a far speedier time scale. This means ÄIO’s fermentation process has the potential to produce fats and oils far quicker once production is at scale.

All told, if RedOil replaced palm oil, Lahtvee and Bonturi estimate that their technology has the potential to “reduce land use by 74–97% and cut water consumption by up to 10 times,” as well as significantly curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Food for thought

ÄIO is currently testing its products in the food industry — where two-thirds of all the palm oil produced is currently used. The company is specifically targeting plant-based meat alternatives, where their oils and fats have the potential to deliver the same taste and mouthfeel as animal fats, something that vegetable oils don’t imitate well. It is also fundraising and fostering new partnerships.

To scale production, Lahtvee and Bonturi have constructed a small plant. The plant will begin producing 20 kilograms of fats and oils a week by the first quarter of 2024. This will hopefully demonstrate that the process is robust enough for industry-like conditions. Looking ahead, Lahtvee and Bonturi are in the pre-engineering phase for a demo plant, which would increase production to more than 750 tonnes a year. They hope the plant will be operational by 2026.

As always with a young company, challenges lie ahead. As Bonturi pointed out in our interview, new variables might arise when scaling up, and they’re working to prepare for them as best they can.

The company is in the process of applying for a novel food permit with the European Union. EU regulation defines any food “that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU” before May 1997 as novel — anything from a biomanufactured enzyme to chia seeds.

GREEN ENERGY SUBSIDIES-WASTE OF MONEY AND RAISE COSTS FOR CONSUMERS

Crippling Economic Costs of Green Energy Subsidies TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY!

The green energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have been justified by the Biden Administration as a booster of U.S. economic growth and jobs. But when the subsidies are tallied and the overall impacts evaluated, the IRA is a job and economic growth killer.

Under the IRA, the lion’s share of subsidies will be paid to wind and solar developers. The subsidies will not expire until electric industry carbon emissions fall by at least 75% below 2005 levels, after which they will gradually decrease. Even the most optimistic forecasts prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that this will not occur until at least 2046. Thus, the subsidies for wind and solar will continue unabated for decades. In total, the subsidies will far exceed what the U.S. government spent in today’s dollars to combat the Great Depression.

The single largest subsidy is the federal investment tax credit (ITC). Most wind and solar projects will be able to claim a minimum 30% ITC, plus be eligible for an additional 10% credit if the projects rely on domestic manufacturing for components.

The EIA’s optimistic forecast projects about 900,000 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics, 350,000 MW of onshore wind turbines, and 24,000 MW of offshore wind by 2046. If all of this generation is built, it will result in direct ITC subsidies totaling between $500 billion and $1 trillion, depending on construction costs. The greater the costs, the larger the subsidies. Although wind and solar proponents still claim costs are falling, the reality is the opposite. Offshore wind developers, especially, are clamoring to renegotiate contracts they signed previously, including guaranteed price adjustments for increasing costs, and relaxing the domestic content requirement so they can claim the additional 10% ITC.

Despite spiraling deficits – almost $2 trillion in the fiscal year that ended this past October – green energy subsidies will be financed with still more government debt. With the increase in interest rates to normal levels, financing costs will soar, adding an estimated $500 to $800 billion to the bill costs, almost as much as the subsidies themselves.

The envisioned spending and subsidies for green energy, several hundred billion dollars annually just for wind and solar generation, will distort energy markets. First, they will crowd out more productive private investment in the energy sector and reduce the resources available for more efficient forms of generation, especially small modular reactors. Second, as the deficit increases further, higher interest rates will crowd out private investment in more productive private sectors of the economy.

Along with the Administration’s push to “electrify” the economy, such as higher vehicle mileage standards that act as a de facto mandate for electric vehicles and proposed bans on natural gas appliances, the result, as has been experienced in Europe, will be soaring electricity prices. Those higher prices will reduce economic growth and employment, far more so than the green energy investments can boost it. Although the subsidies will benefit wind and solar developers, but the overall economic impacts for the country will be crippling.

One gauge of the adverse economic impacts of green subsidies is the cost to taxpayers to create the promised thousands of green energy jobs, especially for offshore wind. Using offshore wind developers’ claimed employment impacts, the average subsidy for each green job created will be over $2 million per year. Forcing taxpayers to pay millions of dollars each year for each job created, while claiming that doing so will bolster the U.S. economy, is Alice in Wonderland economics.

Politicians who promote green energy and their own short-term self-interests may prefer to ignore basic economic realities, but those economic realities will have their revenge. Eventually, the profligate spending on low-value green energy will collapse under its economic weight, having inflicted much socioeconomic damage.

Sadly, this is not an experiment that the U.S. needs to undertake; European experience and basic economics tell us all we need to know. The costs of keeping homes supplied with energy have increased significantly for homeowners wherever this ill-fated experiment was tried. But as the lyrics from the old song begin, “fools rush in …”

Is there anything the government does well to truly help its citizens? NO.

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