Will Reality Force a Climate Crisis Mid-Course Correction?

[By: G. Allen Brooks]

Earth Day, April 21, 2021, featured a climate crisis conference of 40 world leaders led by U.S. President Joseph Biden.  The virtual conference brought together the leaders of the world’s 17 largest economies and greenhouse gas emitters.  It also included leaders of other countries especially vulnerable to the impacts from climate change.  Their job was to showcase the steps they are charting to reach net-zero carbon emission economies.  

Climate discussions this year culminate with the U.N. COP26 gathering in November to further the Paris Agreement.  In that regard Biden announced a more aggressive U.S. emissions reduction target, in keeping with his mandate to govern through a climate change lens.  The U.S. now targets cutting its emissions 50% from 2005 levels by 2030, up from 25%.  Hopes for China announcing new targets were dashed, as President Xi merely reiterated his 2060 net zero goal, allowing emissions to increase until 2030.  Although China is investing heavily in renewable energy, it continues to add to its fivefold lead in coal-fired generating capacity over second place United States.  

A major disappointment was Mexico, which backtracked on its emissions target, as the country’s new president views energy differently from his predecessor.  It should provide cheap power and substantial employment.  That favors fossil fuels.  While an old-fashioned view of energy policy, it is beginning to resonate elsewhere.  

Renewable power is cheap, at least when generated.  What inflates its total cost is the need for backup dispatchable power and the challenge of integrating it into the grid.  When fully costed, renewable power is expensive, which explains why electricity in those states most aggressively mandating green energy have the highest power bills in the nation.  

Electricity costs are becoming so debilitating in Germany, the leading European proponent of wind and solar power, that relief is being demanded.  Government’s first step involves socializing renewables’ cost by shifting tariffs and fees from ratepayers to the federal budget.  The second step involves allowing retired wind turbines (those shut down when their subsidies expire) to compete in auctions for new contracts hoping to drive down prices with older assets.  

The escalating cost of electricity from increasing reliance on renewables is threatening Germany’s economy and its social fabric.  In March, Daniel Wetzel of the German newspaper Die Welt published an article based on the draft report of Germany’s Federal Audit Office on the state of Energiewende (Germany’s energy transition).  According to Wetzel, the report warns: “If things continue like this, Germany as a business location is in danger.  The costs are out of control – and there is a growing threat of an electricity shortfall.”  The government auditors say that Energiewende is a “danger for all of Germany.”  Such a powerful statement should be heeded, but polls favor a Green Party victory in the upcoming September elections, which will give them a mandate to continue these policies.  Support for those policies grew with Germany’s Constitutional Court recent ruling that the lack of energy policy clarity is a threat to human rights.  

Challenging the green movement is Steven Koonin’s new book Unsettled documenting the uncertainties of climate science.  He shows how climate facts, analyses and projections are distorted by the media, politicians, and importantly, climate scientists, including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and various U.S. climate assessment groups.  Koonin’s 45-year-long career as a scientist, climate modeler, and participant in IPCC and U.S. climate assessments enables him to explain what is known, unknown and uncertain about climate science, refuting the narrative of “settled science.”  Koonin details when actual science and uncertainties were summarily dismissed or ignored by the IPCC since they did not fit the orthodox view.  His book joins those by other environmental scientists who are now skeptical of projections based on climate models that cannot replicate climate’s past but are claimed to accurately predict its future.  These scientists are attacked because they advocate mitigation, adaption, and nuclear power, rather than the “settled” solutions.  

Germany’s problems are mirrored in the U.K. and reflect the economic and operational problems of renewables.  A new International Energy Agency report sets forth a narrow path to reach a net-zero emissions world.  It requires no new investment in fossil fuel supply projects, an end to the sale of internal combustion engine cars by 2035 and a fourfold increase in the deployment of solar and wind power by 2030 compared to last year’s record level.  In our view, more renewables will create greater energy havoc and will not happen on the IEA’s timeline.

This report follows another IEA report highlighting the sorry state of the critical minerals industry that renewables rely upon.  In fact, the IEA says that without nuclear power, net zero is unattainable.  If correct, it raises questions about the narrow path plan.  It takes, on average, 16 years from discovery to delivery of new mineral supplies.  Without them, we will fail to meet the 2035 date for electrifying the world’s auto fleet.  Another reality is that one in five California electric vehicle buyers return them for gas-powered cars!  The cost and charging hassle prove too much.