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MORNING ENERGY NEWS | 04/21/2021
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** What we're missing in the federal government is people who understand and stick to their actual job descriptions.
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The Hill ([link removed]) (4/19/21) reports: "The Treasury Department on Monday announced its plans to fight climate change through fiscal policy and create a new office to chart an economically beneficial path away from fossil fuel energy. The department said Monday it will create a 'Climate Hub' led by John E. Morton, a former Obama administration official and climate finance expert, that will coordinate climate-related initiatives across the entire Treasury Department. 'The steep consequences of our actions demand that the Treasury Department make climate change a top priority,' said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a Monday statement. 'Finance and financial incentives will play a crucial role in addressing the climate crisis at home and abroad and in providing capital for opportunities to transform the economy.' The creation of the Climate Hub is the first major step in Treasury’s long-anticipated
push to use its immense power to drive investments toward projects that will fight climate change, reduce carbon emissions and prepare the economy for climate-related risks."


** "While we cannot control nature, we can tend to our vulnerabilities. In fact, that is what many countries have already done, which is why the number of people who die from natural disasters keeps dropping. As the poor grow richer and freer, the trend will only get stronger."
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– Joakim Book, HumanProgress ([link removed])

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Forget jobs. Forget lifting people out of poverty. Forget everything you knew. Weather is the state religion.

** Politico ([link removed])
(4/21/21) reports: "Jigar Shah was a green finance legend, the founder of the pioneering solar firm SunEdison and then the billion-dollar green infrastructure firm Generate Capital. He was overseeing Generate’s investments in more than 2,000 sustainable projects, while co-hosting the top-rated climate podcast on iTunes. He certainly wasn’t looking for a job, especially an obscure government job running a loan program that had basically stopped making loans. But Shah agreed to take over the Department of Energy’s long-dormant loan office, because he believed that President Joe Biden was deeply committed to the clean-energy revolution, and that the growing urgency of climate change had created an all-hands-on-deck emergency. If the federal government was really going to launch an all-out war against the greenhouse-gas emissions that are broiling the planet, Shah was willing to enlist...Jane Flegal , the senior director for industrial emissions at CEQ, 'The assumption is that climate isn't
just aligned with the economic agenda, it is the economic agenda.'"

Will Joe hold the line?

** Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ([link removed])
(4/19/21) reports: "As progressive Democrats in Congress planned to reintroduce the Green New Deal resolution, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined the head of the mine workers’ union on Monday to call for federal funding for fossil fuel technology like carbon capture, slammed proposals for a carbon tax, and said efforts to ensure a “just transition” to renewable energy ring hollow to many Appalachian coal miners. But Mr. Manchin — the key vote in a 50/50 divided U.S. Senate — gave his fellow congressional Democrats a big lift in another way: He announced he would co-sponsor legislation that worker advocates consider the biggest expansion of labor organizing rights in more than 80 years. Mr. Manchin, during a virtual conversation with the National Press Club in Washington, said the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, was key to 'level the playing field' for workers seeking to organize, particularly in emerging tech-driven and clean energy fields. The bill, passed by the House in
March, would classify independent contractors as employees, prevent employers from permanently replacing striking workers and impose financial penalties on employers that interfere with organizing efforts."

Surging economic activity all over the globe is good, actually.

** The Guardian ([link removed])
(4/20/21) reports: "Carbon dioxide emissions are forecast to jump this year by the second biggest annual rise in history, as global economies pour stimulus cash into fossil fuels in the recovery from the Covid-19 recession. The leap will be second only to the massive rebound 10 years ago after the financial crisis, and will put climate hopes out of reach unless governments act quickly, the International Energy Agency has warned. Surging use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, for electricity is largely driving the emissions rise, especially across Asia but also in the US. Coal’s rebound causes particular concern because it comes despite plunging prices for renewable energy, which is now cheaper than coal. Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, and one of the world’s leading authorities on energy and climate, said: 'This is shocking and very disturbing. On the one hand, governments today are saying climate change is their priority. But on the
other hand, we are seeing the second biggest emissions rise in history. It is really disappointing.'"

Energy Markets


WTI Crude Oil: ↓ $61.76
Natural Gas: ↓ $2.68
Gasoline: ~ $2.87

Diesel: ~ $3.07
Heating Oil: ↓ $185.92
Brent Crude Oil: ↓ $65.72
** US Rig Count ([link removed])
: ↓ 514

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