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National Grid Surrenders, Dumping Fossil Energy in NY-MA by 2050

If you still live in New York or Massachusetts and National Grid is your utility company, now is the time to move. Preferably to another state. National Grid has finally waved the white flag of surrender to the leftist mob that demands the elimination of all fossil energy. National Grid will force its customers to quit using fuel oil and “non-renewable” natural gas by 2050 at the latest–forcing its customers to use electric heat pumps instead. By our estimates, National Grid customers can expect to pay 4-5X more than anyone else for their energy. Escape while you can!
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NE Renewables Complain to FERC About Grid Auctions Favoring NatGas

The left always fights dirty. One of their favorite tactics is to demand a change in the rules of the game when they are losing. Free enterprise, allowing the best companies and best solutions to win based on economics, doesn’t work in the world of leftwing radicals. They seek to skew things–change the rules–tie a 50-pound weight on the back of the runner next to them in order to give themselves an advantage in a race. Which is exactly what’s happening in New England, where UNRELIABLE renewables (solar and wind) are complaining to FERC and FERC’s Chairman, Richard “Dick” Glick, a former wind lobbyist, that electricity auctions are awarded to natgas-fired power plants instead of so-called renewables because natgas is 100% reliable and renewables are not. Time to change the rules.
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Net-Zero Mirage Exposed – Wind & Solar “Parasitic” to Carbon Energy

For over a year the oil and gas industry has been swept up in net-zero carbon emissions mania. We can provide countless examples of M-U drillers and pipeline companies jumping on the net-zero carbon bandwagon (see our stories here). Last September we brought you a contrarian viewpoint from Paul Driessen, a senior policy advisor for CFACT (Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, a Washington, D.C. think tank), taking aim at ESG, or environment, social, and governance programs like net-zero carbon (see The ESG Emperor has No Clothes – Will Anyone Else Say So?). We have another terrific column to share with you today, pointing out net-zero is a “mirage” and that solar, wind, and other so-called renewables are parasites of carbon-based energy.
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Ukraine Crisis Forces Liberals to Get Honest About O&G, Renewables

A Forbes article caught our eye and we had to do a double-take. Two liberals from the Left Coast, professors at the University of Washington, Seattle, wrote an honest and transparent article about how the crisis in Ukraine is making their fellow liberals take an honest, probing look at the policies they advocate for. Renewables, which the two profs support, are not enough to power the world today. Not in the real world of 2022 with Vlad Putin threatening to overrun half of Europe.
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Dan Rice’s Renewable Energy SPAC Moving to Houston, TX

In December 2020, Dan Rice IV, former CEO of Rice Energy and a member of the EQT board of directors, launched a “blank check” acquisition firm, called Rice Acquisition Corp., to invest in various energy ventures. Dan found that something-to-invest-in just a few months later in the form of acquiring and merging together Archaea Energy and Aria Energy into a single company focused on providing renewable natural gas (RNG) and “green” hydrogen (see Dan Rice Bets $1 Billion that Landfill Gas is the Next Big Thing). With the merger done, the new company (using the Archaea Energy name) is moving from Pittsburgh to Houston, Texas. Because of the move, the company needs a new chief financial officer and a chief legal officer.
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PA Sen. Yaw Proposes Selling Solar Credits to Fund Well Plugging

click for larger version

Pennsylvania has already received the first $25 million payment from the so-called infrastructure bill, a down payment on what will eventually be $330.6 million (see PA Receives First $25M (Out of $104M) to Plug Orphaned Wells). The money will be used to plug old abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells across the state. However, even the eventual $330 million will not be enough to plug an estimated, mind-blowing 560,000 abandoned wells in the Keystone State. Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw has an ingenious proposal to help fund even more well plugging–by using Solar Renewable Energy Credits, or SRECs.
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The Cost to Dump Fossil Fuels & Use 100% Renewables? $131 Trillion

One of our favorite Forbes website contributors, David Blackmon, has penned another fabulous column. This one looks at the chatter and debate surrounding “the energy transition”–as if it’s a foregone conclusion that we must dump the use of all fossil fuels within the next few years and transition to so-called renewables, or the planet is toast. Blackmon tackles one aspect of this debate that is seldom discussed: the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels to 100% renewables. The cost is so big, it’s incomprehensible.
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Exposing the Abject Lie of “Energy Transition” from Fossil Fuels

The left incessantly chatters about a so-called energy transition that’s “already underway” and “arriving any year now.” The transition is from using fossil fuel energy, which has led to the greatest advancements in civilization since we emerged from living in caves, to replacing fossil energy with so-called “renewables” including unreliable wind and solar. It’s pure fantasy that we will dump the use of fossil fuels anytime soon–within the next 100 years. But the lie is spreading nonetheless. How about checking in on how the “transition” is actually going, using real numbers and hard data.
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NETL’s Brian Anderson Continues to Push Biden Anti-Fossil Fuel Plan

Brian Anderson is director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and now the head of the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization, an effort to kill the use of fossil fuels (see NETL Flacks for Biden’s Kill Fossil Fuels Plan at M-U Event). We like Anderson and his role at NETL. We don’t like his new role of pimping for the Biden administration’s aim to end fossil fuels, which he did again in an interview with The Dominion Post.
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TC Energy Plans to Use All Renewable Energy to Power NatGas Pipes

Columbia Gas Transmission system map (click for larger version)

How’s this for weird? TC Energy, the former TransCanada, which owns extensive liquids and natural gas pipelines across North America, including the Columbia Gas Transmission interstate pipeline network that blankets PA, OH, and WV, plans to buy only so-called renewable electricity (from solar and windmills) to power all of its pipeline network in the U.S. and Canada–a network that flows fossil fuels. It makes no sense. If the product you flow is so bad for the environment you must use “renewables” to flow it instead of that product itself, why bother flowing it at all? Just close it down!
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NETL Flacks for Biden’s Kill Fossil Fuels Plan at M-U Event

As we told you in April, President Biden launched a new program to be funded with $109.5 million aimed at figuring out how to convince fossil fuel workers to be happy taking a huge pay cut and installing solar panels and windmills instead of making far more money in a far more meaningful job working in fossil fuels (see Biden Gives $109M to Research How to End Use of Coal, Oil & Gas). Dr. Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), headquartered in Pittsburgh, is leading the effort. He recently tried to sell Biden’s bill of goods at the recent Marcellus and Manufacturing Development Conference hosted by the West Virginia Manufacturers Association.
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Here’s What the World Looks Like with 100% Wind & Solar Energy

What would happen if there were a Green New Genie who could wave a magic wand and replace all oil and gas energy right now, today, with wind and solar energy instead. Yes, it’s impossible for many reasons, but let’s fantasize for just a moment. What if Alexandria Occasional-Cortex, and the petulant spoiled child Greta Thunberg, and John F. Kerry (a petulant spoiled adult) got their way? Poof! Here it is. Here is what it would look like…
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“Green” Energy is Snake Oil that Will Sicken PA – Gordon Tomb

Gordon Tomb, a senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation (Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank) has some strong words for those want to put all of PA’s energy eggs into the so-called renewables basket: “‘Green’ energy proposals are no economic therapeutic for Pennsylvania. They’re snake oil miracle cures that ignore the realities of physics–and people’s needs.” So begins a column by Tomb. It’s a verbal slap across the face to get the attention of people who either won’t, or can’t, think for themselves about the glaring failures of a policy to convert to all-renewable energy, and what a total conversion would mean for the state (a complete disaster).
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Biden Gives $109M to Research How to End Use of Coal, Oil & Gas

We’re kind of speechless and dumbfounded–but perhaps we shouldn’t be. Last week President Biden announced a new program to be funded with $109.5 million aimed at figuring out how to convince fossil fuel workers to be happy taking a huge pay cut and installing solar panels and windmills instead of making far more money in a far more meaningful job working in fossil fuels. Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), headquartered in Pittsburgh, will lead the effort. How enormously sad that Anderson, someone we greatly admire, is out in front selling Biden’s bill of goods–the end of fossil energy.
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O&G Drilling vs. Renewables Strip Mining – Which Hurts Planet More?

strip mining

From our earliest days of writing about the shale energy industry, we heard the phrase “every form of energy has its advantages and disadvantages.” We could not agree more. That includes so-called renewable energy. Did you know that it takes strip mining half a million pounds of dirt to get enough minerals to manufacture a 1,000-pound battery used in a single electric car? Right now almost all (90%) of that strip mining happens in other countries, like China and Russia. If we want to maintain our independence from our enemies (namely China and Russia), we have to restart strip mining here in the U.S. Like that’s going to happen anytime soon!
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Lack of Gas Pipes Means VT Heading for Elec Blackouts, LNG Imports

For years Vermont has made millions of dollars selling Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to other states–a scam that allows pretentious environmentalists to claim they’re helping out the environment when in fact they still burn the same fossil fuels and biomass (i.e. woodburning) as they always did by paying a fee, a REC, and absolving themselves of feeling bad about it. Think of modern-day RECs like the Catholic Church selling indulgences in the Middle Ages to absolve you of your sins, or at least lessen the punishment for your sins. RECs are the new indulgences of the post-everything era we live in now. Selling REC indulgences is about to go away for Vermonters, and it may lead to widespread blackouts.
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