32 Comments

Please look into and report on how much the reduction in price of renewable hardware has been driven by three factors during the last decade: decreasing cost of capital, decreasing cost of energy inputs and reduced cost of low-cost labor.

Goehring & Rozencwajg, (The Distortions of Cheap Energy) (https://f.hubspotusercontent40.net/hubfs/4043042/Content%20Offers/2021.Q4%20Commentary/2021.Q4%20GR%20Market%20Commentary.pdf, see pp 6-8) suggest that the first two of these inputs declined greatly during the 2010-2020 decade. I have also been struck by reports that wind developers are adamantly opposed to paying prevailing (union-level) wages for tower installation workers as they say it will "ruin their economics".

Expand full comment

"It is widely known that adding intermittent electricity-generating sources to an electricity grid can substantially destabilize it."

Is it? It's known to those of us that can think logically and at least make some honest attempt to try to understand how things work, but I would suspect if you put this question out as an open poll you'd be surprised how few people are actually aware of that, and that they basically voted for it.

Expand full comment

curious what you think about kathy woods comment that petroleum will go the way of whale oil?

Expand full comment

The worst part about this is the government stepped in, preventing the public from learning the folly of current policy. I'm not a fan of the Chinese government, but they seem to be on a path of letting Evergrande hit the windshield, which will be a lesson to every highly leveraged company in China. Until we have *serious* pain (like the Texas energy incident), the general public will not learn (and even then, some will not learn). Politicians need the support of the people to turn the corner on the warming debate and restart investment in nuclear, which seems to be the only viable way forward.

Expand full comment

“worst part … preventing the public from learning the folly…”

You read the article, and the particular consequence that was about to happen due to scarce methane? It was not some high heating bills or a Netflix outage. The chilled food supply was about to fail for the UK. Ease back a bit.

Expand full comment

A population removed from the soil, that yells about "green" energy!, allows itself to be masked and locked inside, will get what it deserves.

Expand full comment

Thanks for that. It’s good to see another side of the energy disaster brewing around the world. Germany and California are next in line, with trillion dollar failure plans coming to fruition. One quibble: natural gas should not be considered baseload. It’s just in time delivery means problems like the Texas blackout can happen, without considering price. Fuel on site matters.

Expand full comment

Now that you've had a look at the UKs gas-fertiliser-co2-food domino effect, could you take a look at the UKs truck driver shortage now too please? That's just as bat shit crazy when you see that the road haulage industry were warning months and years ago of impending doom too.

Expand full comment

Supply chains of CO2... Slighlty offtopic, but I would be very interested to hear your take on power-to-x systems (especially those that recycle CO2 to methanol, keyword: the methanol economy) as the foundation stones of our future global energy system...

Expand full comment

Fundamental problem with power-to-x as a replacement for nat gas is that nat gas is always going to be cheaper than power-to-x.

Expand full comment

As per usual, Mankind demonizes the very element it needs for it's existence. Laughable, really...Way to go, Oligarchs!!!

Expand full comment

As per usual, the people by the river complain about "flooding" threatening their lives. Laughable, really. Water is the most essential necessity to human survival.

Expand full comment

As per usual, snarky repetitive remarks from clueless people are just SOOOO germane these days...

Expand full comment

While your self referential rhetoric is appreciated, you did fail to address the central point of my comment. An element needed for existence can also be destructive to existence when it is allowed to overproliferate, and demonizing such excess is not laughable, really.

Expand full comment

Ahh, how eloquent...Yes, Water is essential. Yes, too much of it is a bad thing which is pretty obvious, thank you. Too little of an essential element is just as bad, but, do I really have to spell that out for you? Apparently so, because you seem, and I use that term loosely because I don't know you from a hole in the ground, to be in the camp that there is too much CO2, a physical impossibility because CO2 makes up and always will make up 8% of our Earth's atmosphere. If you care to show me the Giant, encapsulating structure which is supposedly causing an increase in Atmospheric CO2 levels, then, please, show me such a structure...If not, you know what you can do with your Climate Alarmism...

Expand full comment

Most food is transported with standard refrigeration technology, only some of which relies on C02, let alone dry ice. From my read, the meat industry is much more concerned about C02 for slaughtering than for transport issues.

Expand full comment

Agree with the general tenor with this, although it's worth pointing out that the UK doesn't source its gas from Russia. It shouldn't be overlooked that another key underlying factor is poor regulation of natural monopolies. The energy price caps clearly haven't helped the energy suppliers, although no doubt they would have "returned" any safety margin to investors long ago (that financialization problem again). The UK needs to ask why it is beholden to a US fertilizer company for a critical product. It's not like there's even a trade agreement there.

Expand full comment