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Tag: clean energy
Joe Biden

Biden Oversees Booming Growth In Oil Production (But Clean Energy Too)

Donald Trump recently warned that Joe Biden would lead us into World War II, a conflict that ended almost 80 years ago. Another world event he may not be current on is America's boom in oil production — never mind the green energy revolution.

"We are going to drill, baby, drill," Trump said on a recent Fox News town hall.

Actually, America is now pumping oil in record amounts. The U.S. now accounts for one in every eight barrels produced in the world. Prices are coming down, too.

As for Biden's clean energy program, it foresees a transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels. It also recognizes we're not there yet.

An essential piece in the move toward green energy is a switch-over to electric vehicles from the gasoline-powered kind. This is a worldwide phenomenon that the Biden administration has joined through a variety of subsidies.

In China, EVs are expected to reach 38 percent of total car sales this year, versus 13 percent of new purchases in the U.S. China is experimenting with vehicle-to-grid technology that would, amazingly, enable cars to feed electricity back into the system when demand surges. America should take notice.

In Trump's backward ideology, clean energy programs are a "new scam business." Trump is bashing the new technology at a time when U.S. automakers have planned $100 billion in electric car investments. Apparently ignorant of new developments, he keeps saying that EVs are "too expensive" and they "don't go far enough."

Dan Neil, car columnist at The Wall Street Journal, acknowledges some past glitches with EVs but then offers an update on Trump's claims. People who actually drive one of the new models, Neil writes, are finding it "quicker, quieter, more refined and responsive, more efficient, more connected and cheaper to operate than its gas-powered equivalent. ... After a few miles in an EV, going back to internal combustion feels like returning to whale-oil lamps."

Charging has already become easier as Biden's program to build half a million public fast chargers bears fruit. Other carmakers, meanwhile, have adopted Tesla's charging standard, enabling their EVs to use Tesla's supercharging network.

"Pretty soon range anxiety will be returned to neurotics," Neil adds.

As for the prices on EVs, they are expected to plummet in short order. Tesla is expected to soon introduce a Model 2 priced at only $25,000.

But in Trump world, everything has to be turned into a culture war. U.S. automakers consider these attacks worrisome, and so should their workers.

"I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are," Ford Motor Co.'s executive chair Bill Ford said.

By the way, Americans remain free to buy gas-powered vehicles. But many are looking at plug-in hybrids as well.

The boost in U.S. oil production is coming largely from the usual parts of oil country: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. It reflects improved technology rather than an expansion in the number of rigs. In other words, companies are now extracting more oil from the same location, which means they can obtain it more cheaply. Oil producers are not complaining.

"Companies are making money and investors are making money," Bloomberg's energy columnist, Javier Blas, said. "So everyone is loving it."

The people who are not loving it are the Saudis. U.S. shale oil is growing and making money at the same time, Blas adds, and "this is what really terrorized OPEC."

Is it possible that America is reducing reliance on foreign oil while also addressing the planetary need to move toward clean energy? It is possible, and it's also happening. Biden's America is enjoying a boom in both.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Internet Slays Joe Manchin Over Dumb Comments That Fossil Fuels Can Produce Clean Energy

Internet Slays Joe Manchin Over Dumb Comments That Fossil Fuels Can Produce Clean Energy

United States Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) on Wednesday claimed that oil can be used to generate clean power as the nation transitions to renewables sources of energy.

"For us to be strong, to be the superpower of the world, we should develop here in North America a North American energy alliance with Canada and basically Mexico and the United States as one continent basically that could be the energy hub," Manchin told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe.

"We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can make sure that we produce the cleanest resources basically from fossil but also be able to segue into a cleaner environment with the technology and investments that it'll take to transition," Manchin continued.

"I think we can do both, but we have to maintain. You can't do just one and not the other and think we're gonna be fine. And that's what we're running into – the conundrum here. We should be ramping up production," Manchin added. "We should be out there doing everything we can to maintain our independence but be able to backfill everywhere we can. And if we don't get Europe up and loaded for next winter, for the summer when they've depleted all their reserves, there's gonna be a big problem coming."

Manchin – a wealthy coal magnate who drives a Maserati and lives on a yacht while representing one of the poorest states in the country – is a lone voice among the Democratic Senate caucus when it comes to retrofitting the American energy grid to tackle climate change. He killed President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan in part because of its provisions that called for investments in renewables. Manchin also refuses to consider amending the filibuster, which Republicans used to obstruct the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Twitter blasted him for touting the very industry that is padding his pockets and poisoning our biosphere.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

To Fight Russian Aggression, Build More Clean Energy Capacity

To Fight Russian Aggression, Build More Clean Energy Capacity

Russian attacks on Ukraine have spiked the already high price of oil. But going up with that are the economic incentives to ditch this primitive fuel — the environmental reasons being well known.

Russia provides about 40 percent of Europe's imported gas, and its squeeze on supply has forced some factories to cut back on production. The case for moving to renewable energy grows only stronger.

The CEO of the Portuguese utility EDP made this point on CNBC Europe. "These are (indigenous) ... resources — wind, solar — that we have in Europe," Miguel Stilwell de Andrade said. "We need to accelerate (their development) and do it much faster."

Americans, meanwhile, can dismiss conservative claims that President Joe Biden has set back America's "energy independence." Policies to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energy have hardly shut off the flow of domestic oil and gas. Actually, the U.S. became the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas this year.

On a related topic, Biden's infrastructure bill set aside $6 billion to stop the premature retirement of nuclear plants. Another $2.5 billion is going for work on advanced nuclear technologies. Biden backed this zero-carbon energy source while fighting off some opposition from the left.

Germany's outsized dependence on Russian oil resulted from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's unwise decision years ago to shutter her country's nuclear plants — and replace that source of power with Russian natural gas. (Imagine Europe launching its largest fossil fuel project in the year 2022.)

In retaliation for Russia's assault on Ukraine, Germany has suspended approval of Nord Stream 2, an underwater pipeline designed to transport Russian natural gas to Germany. Good for the new chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

Some Europeans are reportedly dealing with the convulsion in fuel prices by installing solar panels and burning wood for heat. Hooray for solar. (Boo for wood-burning, though understandable in an emergency.)

Clean energy means more energy, which, when added to improving green technology, eventually means less-expensive energy. By 2020, solar already provided cheaper power than that from plants fired by coal or natural gas in most countries, according to the International Energy Agency.

The U.S. has just passed the milestone of 200,000 megawatts of utility-scale clean energy capacity, according to the American Clean Power Association. Do you know which state installed the most wind and solar power capacity last year? Texas.

Natural gas prices were, of course, surging before Russia started pummeling Ukraine. That reflected an upturn in demand as the COVID-19 pandemic started to retreat.

But companies in Europe that had made long-term agreements for renewable energy at fixed prices found themselves in a far better place, The Wall Street Journal reports. Orange SA, the huge French telecom company, for one, is securing power from nearby solar and wind farms, as well as its own installations. It plans to obtain half its energy from renewable sources in three short years.

Such businesses, George Bilicic, head of power and energy at the investment banking firm Lazard, said, "should be better positioned than others given current fossil fuel price spikes."

Steep gas prices are, of course, a great selling point for electric cars, not that they need it at this point.

Moving the world away from fossil fuels would erase Russian President Vladimir Putin's biggest nonnuclear weapon. After all, oil and gas accounted for 39 percent of Russia's budget revenue and 60 percent of its exports in 2019.

We, on our part, must make major investments in power grids to accommodate the diverse types of low-carbon energy. But there's nothing like international turmoil at the hands of a distressed country run by an unstable leader to provide a major push in that direction. Let's get pushed.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Solar panels

Renewables Best Coal As America's Second Largest Energy Source

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced that renewables generated 21 percent of all electricity in the country for 2020. Renewable energy sources like biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind accounted for 834 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of the nation’s power last year. That falls just behind natural gas, which generated 1,617 billion kWh or 40% of all energy in the U.S. The news comes from a report released in July that the EIA shared again last week as the year winds down and we look towards 2022. The agency believes that coal-fired electricity use likely rose this year due to rising natural gas prices, increasing about 18 percent compared with 2020. This will likely push coal to be the second-most used energy source in 2021.

It’s highly unlikely that the trend of coal surpassing renewables will continue into 2022. For one, coal-fired electricity has been on the downturn since 2007 when it peaked at 2,016 billion kWh and was the largest source of energy until 2016, most likely because natural gas has replaced much of coal’s capacity. According to another EIA report, dozens of coal-fired plants have been replaced or converted to natural gas since 2011. Some of those decisions made by power companies are in order to comply with emissions regulations, like the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which was unveiled in 2011.

In the following years until 2019, Alabama Power Co. converted 10 of its generators at four Alabama coal plants to comply with the standard, which took effect in 2016.As for renewables, the EIA believes their power generation will rise 7% this year and another 10% next year. The agency also forecast that 2022 will be another year in which renewables are the second-most-used energy source, making 2020 not an anomaly, but a possible sign of trends to come. It’s anyone’s guess what 2022 will hold in terms of emissions, primarily because it’s unclear how deeply the pandemic will continue to affect the power industry.

Graph Shows Alterative Energy Beating Coal in 2021

images.dailykos.com


A report released on December 22 by the EIA shows that 2020 saw a substantial decrease in carbon dioxide emissions due in part to a warmer winter season and factors exacerbated by the pandemic, including more people working from home and traveling less, plus industry slowdowns resulting in lower commercial building activity. One of the long-term factors cited by the EIA was a trend in declining natural gas production. This resulted in a decrease in emissions of 11 percent in 2020, or 570 million metric tons compared to 2019. Such declines in emissions haven’t been seen since 1983, shortly after an amended Clean Air Act was implemented requiring cars built in 1981 and beyond to comply with lower emissions standards. More stringent emissions goals, such as the Biden administration’s push for 50 percent of new vehicles to be electric by 2030, could see a similar reduction that puts the U.S. one step closer to reaching its goal of net-zero by 2050.