Sophisticated state failure

View this email in your browser

DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 03/11/2024

Subscribe Now

The sad state of the American automobile industry.

The Wall Street Journal (3/8/24) op-ed: "Normal market logic goes out the window when company leaders are indulged and even required to say fantastical, unrealistic things about the future. I’ve long borrowed the term 'sophisticated state failure' for the Western world’s energy policies. Because government must always be seen doing something, nonsense ideologies, even when spoken purely for effect, end up 'gamified' (made a game of) in government programs. Thus the Obama auto bailouts: They left Detroit permanently dependent on artificially inflated pickup profits to subsidize loss-making electric vehicles served up as a gesture by the political class. The resulting program, the Biden Transportation Department was legally obliged last year to admit, fails any cost-benefit test. Climatewise, the truth is even sadder. Dollar for dollar, subsidizing EVs for Americans is a subsidy to the rest of the world to use more fossil energy and cause more emissions, a reality that can’t escape political notice forever. Take Norway, portrayed in GM ads as EV heaven. As a Morgan Stanley research note first observed two years ago, Norway has seen no decline in oil consumption related to EVs, though users receive thousands of dollars in annually recurring subsidies and EVs accounted at the time for 64% of new-car sales. The reason is increased use and ownership of gas-powered cars, especially for trips that EVs aren’t suited for. Now comes an update from the natural-resource consultants Goehring & Rozencwajg that only darkens the picture. Despite some of the greenest electricity on Earth, a Norwegian still needs to get 45 years of use out of his imported EV battery (expected life 15 years) to offset the global CO2 cost of producing it."

"My concern is that the SCC framework can be manipulated to generate a wide range of outcomes. After reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) most recent update to the SCC (and previous attempts to reduce or raise it), it’s clear the EPA’s process presents a conflict of interest."

– T ravis Fisher, The Cato Institute

Remember kids, the green activists don't want anyone using energy for anything they don't like.

The New Yorker (3/9/24) op-ed: "In 2016, Alex de Vries read somewhere that a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy as the average American household uses in a day. At the time, de Vries, who is Dutch, was working at a consulting firm. In his spare time, he wrote a blog, called Digiconomist, about the risks of investing in cryptocurrency. He found the energy-use figure disturbing. 'I was, like, O.K., that’s a massive amount, and why is no one talking about it?' he told me recently over Zoom. 'I tried to look up some data, but I couldn’t really find anything.' De Vries, then twenty-seven, decided that he would have to come up with the information himself. He put together what he called the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, and posted it on Digiconomist. According to the index’s latest figures, bitcoin mining now consumes a hundred and forty-five billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which is more than is used by the entire nation of the Netherlands, and producing that electricity results in eighty-one million tons of CO2, which is more than the annual emissions of a nation like Morocco. De Vries subsequently began to track the electronic waste produced by bitcoin mining—an iPhone’s worth for every transaction—and its water use—which is something like two trillion liters per year."

Shot: Journalists are worried about funding potentially skewing research on agriculture that goes against hard-line environmental beliefs.

Washington Post (3/8/24) reports: "On campuses across the nation, students and faculty have passionately debated whether their universities should stop accepting fossil fuel money for research. But until recently, funding from the meat and dairy industries, which also contribute to climate change, had scarcely received any attention. That may be beginning to change. A study published in the journal Climatic Change late last month cast a critical eye on two agricultural research centers that focus on the livestock industry’s carbon emissions and, as recently as last year, got much of their funding from industry donations. Housed at the University of California at Davis and Colorado State University, the centers study new technology to shrink the climate footprint of the livestock industry while regularly messaging that Americans don’t need to eat less meat and milk, contrary to what some environmentalists say."

Chaser: The AP bragged about how they have two dozen journalists covering climate change thanks to lefty billionaire donors like the Rockefeller's.

The Associated Press (2/16/22) reports: "The Associated Press said Tuesday that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization’s largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants. The announcement illustrates how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry’s financial outlook has been otherwise bleak. The AP’s new team, with journalists based in Africa, Brazil, India and the United States, will focus on climate change’s impact on agriculture, migration, urban planning, the economy, culture and other areas. Data, text and visual journalists are included, along with the capacity to collaborate with other newsrooms, said Julie Pace, senior vice president and executive editor. 'This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,' Pace said."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $78.03
Natural Gas: ↓ $1.80
Gasoline: ↑ $3.40

Diesel: ↓ $4.03
Heating Oil: ↓ $262.91
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $82.08
US Rig Count: ↓ 656

Donate

Subscribe to The Unregulated Podcast

Subscribe to The Plugged In Podcast

Connect with us on Facebook

Forward to a Friend

Our mailing address is:
1155 15th Street NW
Suite 525
Washington, DC xxxxxx

Want to change how you receive these emails?
update your preferences
unsubscribe from this list