Energy Independence

While the plant’s production is still in its early days, its launch has had a considerable effect on Finland’s energy prices, lowering the electricity spot price in the country from €245.98 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in December to €60.55 per MWh in April, a reduction of more than 75 percent, according to physical electricity exchange, Nord Pool.

Low demand for natural gas has sent Europe’s benchmark gas prices towards a sixth consecutive weekly loss—the longest run of weekly losses since 2020.

They sold the oil, spent the money, and now cannot afford to refill it with the debt ceiling about to be hit.

At the end of 2022, more than 10,000 energy projects—most of them solar—were waiting for permission to connect to grids

Difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth - 6 months

A market capitalization that exceeded $150 billion days after a blockbuster public trading debut in late 2021 now stands at less than $12 billion after a 93% stock wipeout, reflecting almost no value beyond the company’s cash hoard.

“While trucks represent only 6% of the vehicles on California’s roads, they account for over 35% of the state’s transportation generated nitrogen oxide emissions and a quarter of the state’s on-road greenhouse gas emissions,”

It will ban natural gas hookups in most new residential and commercial buildings under seven stories beginning in 2026.

By 2029, that will extend to larger industrial and commercial properties as well.

The latest EPA proposal would mandate ‘carbon capture’ at power plants. A study by MIT showed that carbon capture raises the cost of electricity from 30% to 50% depending on the type of plant. Another study by Australia’s Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis however showed that prices could actually climb as high as 95% to 175%.

Imagine your power bills doubling? That will be the final blow for millions of Americans.

"It's crazy to shut down nuclear power" says @elonmusk. But crazy is the point. Anti-nuclear is not a pro-environment stance; it is an anti-human, anti-industrial stance. So crazy is a feature not a bug.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/86643

Having spent many years working in American academia, I learned that the “publish or perish” mentality (especially among “major” universities) is real. Government grant money is lusted for and is in no way insignificant. The problem is, politically correct articles are essential. There exists no chance of publication if orthodoxy is challenged; tenure might be denied and jobs might be lost. The pressure to conform is enormous.

“For many, hailing a fully autonomous ride with Waymo may be the easiest way to access an EV,"

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/86388

Let's start with his assets

They have already gone after gas stoves, gas cars, and even air conditioners. Now they are coming after incandescent light bulbs.

Anything that’s cheap, convenient, and liked by millions of Americans lands on their radar eventually. There is just no end to it.

While gas made up almost exactly 40 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2022, the share of renewables just surpassed 20 percent, comparable to coal and nuclear - showing that there is a long way to go still for renewable energy.

The Berlin initiative to make the city climate neutral by 2030 was led by rich, upper class youths like Luisa “Longhaul” Neubauer. But Berliners, having been harassed for months by activists gluing themselves to the streets and blocking traffic, saw the folly of the initiative and the high costs it would entail politically and financially. They decided resoundingly they’d wanted no part of it.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/85570

A Norwegian arms manufacturer said that a TikTok data center is eating all the electricity in the region, meaning that the company cannot keep up with the surging global demand for ammunition.

Experts are increasingly commenting on the massive demands of big tech companies, and how energy usage by their data centers is causing issues for other industries.

"We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos," Morten Brandtzæg, the CEO of Nammo, said in an interview with the Financial Times.

Brandtzæg said that the demand for artillery rounds was 15 times higher than normal — a trend driven by the war in Ukraine, which has featured heavy artillery use.

Ukraine, for instance, would like to increase its daily usage of rounds from 6,000 to 65,000, he said.

Insider couldn't immediately establish whether Nammo shells are being used in Ukraine — its customer base, as described in a 2021 annual report, is overwhelmingly EU and NATO states, which have been making mass donations to Ukraine since Russia invaded.

However, in the area of Norway where Nammo operates, its defense work gets no priority over any other users of electricity.

Power is provided on a first-come, first-served basis, according to Elvia, the energy provider in the Raufoss region of Norway — an area around 120km north of Oslo.

The energy company told the FT that it has no spare capacity for Nammo to hike its output as it has already been promised to TikTok. A spokesperson told the FT that if Nammo does order more capacity, it will "take time" before that can be achieved because the network needs to be "strengthened."

The taxpayer's pay for his gas and jet fuel, so Biden does not care if prices are high

"That’s another problem—this is a regulatory program that’s very long in the tooth and you’re getting to the point where clothes washers—this might be the fifth time they’ve been regulated," Lieberman added. "So we’re really chasing after diminishing or nonexistent marginal returns."

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/85388

Our fuel companies will now be paying for fuels in Kenya shilling

MHe argued that the infrastructure around wind and solar will not only fail, “but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment and be entirely unnecessary”.

He shows that at a wind speed of 20mph, the power produced by a wind turbine is 600 watts per square metre at full efficiency. To deliver the same power as the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant – 3,200 million watts – it would require 5.5 million square metres of turbine swept area.

It is noted that this should be quite unacceptable to those who care about birds and other environmentalists. Of course, this concern does not seem to have materialised to date. Millions of bats and birds are calculated to be slaughtered by onshore wind turbines every year. Meanwhile, off the coast of Massachusetts, work is about to start on a giant wind farm, complete with permits to harass and likely injure almost a tenth of the population of the rare North Atlantic Right whale.

When fluctuations in wind speed are taken into account in Allison’s formula, the performance of wind becomes very much worse. If the wind speed drops by half, the power available falls by a factor of eight. Almost worse, he notes, if the wind speed doubles, the power delivered goes up eight times, and the turbine has to be turned off for its own protection.

Draining oil from the strategic reserve is a short-sighted and dangerous choice that will impact America's energy security at times of global uncertainty. In an effort to halt inflationary forces, Biden released a huge amount of crude oil from the SPR to artificially suppress fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.

To date, Biden has dumped more SPR on the market than all previous presidents combined reducing the reserves to levels not seen since the early 1980s. In spite of how I feel about the inefficiencies of this program, it does serve a vital role. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of a country's ability to rapidly increase its domestic flow of oil. This defensive action protects its economy and adds to its resilience.

Biden's actions have put the whole country at risk. Critics of his policy pointed out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed for use in an emergency not as a tool to manipulate elections.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/85171

Western nations are increasingly adopting plant-based energy sources, such as soybean or canola oils, or even animal fats, in a move to reduce carbon emissions by transitioning away from fossil fuels. This shift has presented a profitable opportunity for vegetable and palm oil producers to redirect some cooking oil supplies toward the transportation sector rather than their traditional use in food production.

Oooops

Over the weekend, a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale was discovered washed ashore near Chic’s Beach which is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed to Fox News Digital on Monday. According to local news outlets, there was no immediate cause of death and the whale didn't appear to have any entanglement marks.

The discovery of the beached right whale came just two days after a humpback whale was found dead along the shoreline in Cape Charles, Virginia, and five days after a dead humpback whale was found off the coast of First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach.