cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/171978

Are we really expected to believe these companies are unable to borrow from traditional lenders:

• General Motors
• PG&E
• Ford

The line for Shah’s cash stretches to 150 companies seeking $127.7 billion in loans, ranging from new companies with unproven products to giants such as General Motors and PG&E, the California utility blamed for deadly wildfires. Funneling that much money to climate startups in a short time would be near impossible. Shah has begun writing bigger checks, including a record $9.2 billion commitment to a Ford joint venture making batteries in Tennessee and Kentucky.

The source of Shah’s financial firepower is the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, an overlooked piece of the Biden administration’s strategy to address climate change. Largely quiescent for almost a decade, the office is designed to finance businesses that are important to the country’s energy transition but unable to borrow from traditional lenders, often because their technology is seen as too risky or because the terms are too onerous.

This does not sound good.

The company announced on June 22 that between 15% and 30% of turbines installed by subsidiary Siemens Gamesa are currently suffering from component failure, prompting the company to withdraw profit estimates and sending stock plunging 36% in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. Christian Burch, CEO of Siemens Energy, said in a call with reporters Friday that “too much had been swept under the carpet” at the energy giant’s subsidiary and that the quality control issues were “more severe than [he] thought possible,”

“Electric cars will kill more than half of U.S. auto jobs and decimate the suppliers that they decimated already,” said Trump, who also called the Biden administration's climate initiatives “heartless and disloyal.”

The solar PV supply chain starts with polysilicon, a key raw material needed to create wafers. China is home to seven of the top 10 producers of polysilicon, which includes companies like Tongwei Solar and Asia Silicon.

Where China is most dominant though, is in the manufacturing of wafers and cells. This is partly because it’s more economical to make these components close to wherever polysilicon is being produced.

The second-largest producer of cells and panels is the APAC region (ex-China), at 12% and 15% of total capacity. However, according to U.S. officials, much of this output is actually owned by Chinese firms attempting to evade U.S. tariffs.

While these companies would normally be subject to higher tariffs, the Biden administration has paused any tariff increases for the next two years. This can be interpreted as a sign of the country’s dependence on China for clean energy infrastructure, which could prove problematic given China’s history of economic coercion.

For electric vehicles (EVs), this issue of critical mineral supplies is the key to everything. The main reason why EVs weigh so much more than gas and diesel powered cars is the prodigious amount of critical energy minerals that go into the making of the lithium-ion batteries that power them. The minerals required include lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite, all of which are recovered via hard rock mining operations.

But the U.S. and other countries in North America and Europe made a collective decision to essentially farm out the business of hard rock mining to developing nations and the processing of them to China in the 1980s as part of the environmental priorities of that time. As a result, most supply chains for these and other key energy minerals are under control of the communist Chinese government.

Local wells in the area have gone dry since the construction of multiple utility-scale solar projects near Desert Center—threatening the only water source for hundreds of people and a handful of local businesses. Solar farms typically don’t use much water when operating, but during construction, the law requires developers to mitigate dust—which can spread health problems like Valley Fever. That requires water.

Of the total of 422 reactors, 262 reactors have been in operation for 31 to 50 years. In other words, about 62% of all current nuclear reactors were connected to the grid between 1973 and 1992.

Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, endless state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.

And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.

"I think that the climate narrative has been hijacked by the World Economic Forum and by Bill Gates," Kennedy said. "Crises are used by elites within societies to consolidate their power, to diminish democracy, to constrict civil rights and human rights, and to impose top-down totalitarian controls."

"I think the climate crisis is being used in that way by those people," he added.

Kennedy proceeded to offer his solution to climate issues. "My approach to climate has always been a free market approach… we should use marketplace rules rather than top-down controls, we should reward the cheapest, most efficient energy sources," which he "generally" feels to be renewables

The country is suffering from a pothole crisis, with half as many filled last year compared to a decade ago amid an estimated £12 billion price tag to fill them all.

Road industry bodies have raised fears that electric cars could exacerbate the problem on residential roads. The number of electric cars being driven has tripled to 900,000 since 2019 ahead of the Government’s 2030 ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars as part of its net zero drive.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/156316

Green light to push forward with plans to build new nuclear plants in a country that voted 40 years ago to phase out atomic power.

Changing the target to “100% fossil-free” electricity, from “100% renewable” is key to the government’s plan to meet an expected doubling of electricity demand to around 300 TwH by 2040 and reach net zero emissions by 2045.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/148823

“Trying to shut down protesters’ use of Facebook is yet another example of the way that freedom of public assembly in NSW is being attacked by successive governments,”