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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 02/01/2022

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Biden's Green New Deal is having trouble finding happy homes around the country.

Forbes (1/27/22) column: "Of the many whoppers that renewable-energy promoters use while advocating for huge increases in the use of wind and solar, the most absurd claim is that building massive amounts of new renewable energy capacity won’t require very much land. Indeed, that assertion is often made by climate activist Bill McKibben...Despite the many false claims about the land intensity of renewables, the physics and the math don’t lie. The incurably low power density of wind and solar energy means that they require cartoonish amounts of land. Furthermore, the notion that there are plenty of rural towns and counties who just can’t wait to have forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines and oceans of solar panels inflicted upon them is nothing more than rank propaganda...The latest updates to the Renewable Rejection Database show that in 2021 alone, 31 communities rejected the encroachment of the wind sector. The database also shows that between 2015 and 2021, 323 communities from Hawaii to Maine have rejected or restricted Big Wind."

"The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2030, 'you’ll own nothing and be happy.' I for one find it difficult to imagine that most Americans will find themselves living more joyful, fulfilling, and prosperous lives when car ownership is a luxury of the rich—and average people are reliant upon someone else (least of all government) for their transportation."

– Brady Bowyer, Free The People

It didn't have to be like this...

Real Clear Energy (1/31/22) op-ed: "The European energy crisis is poised to go from very bad to unimaginably worse. While all eyes are on Ukraine and Russia, Europe’s energy woes are largely self-made, not due to outside forces. Europe has made its own bed, disassembling dispatchable fuel diversity by closing well-operating coal and nuclear power plants. In doing so it has deepened its already troubling reliance on an insecure and volatile natural gas market dominated by Vladimir Putin. Europe is, in fact, more dependent on Russian gas today than it was when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014...Despite ongoing efforts to push remaining coal capacity aside, coal is playing an essential role in navigating the crisis. As Bloomberg reported just this week, “Coal will play a vital role in helping to keep the lights on in Europe this winter'…In Germany, coal also showed its importance in November and December, with power generation rising 16% from a year earlier. And in Spain, a coal plant forced into retirement three years ago has been given new life to keep the lights on and reduce gas consumption. There’s no getting around it. Europe’s energy crisis is a failure of policy and a clear case study of the danger of disassembling the stability that comes with fuel diversity in a misguided, rushed and irresponsible approach to the energy transition. The warning for American energy and climate policy is impossible to miss. Whether policymakers learn the right lessons remains to be seen."

Freedom Molecules are saving lives in Europe and the anti-people people are not happy about it.

Master Resource (2/1/22) blog: "A flotilla of U.S. LNG carriers are steaming to Europe to help rescue the UK and other nations who have discouraged natural gas under climate policy. Far from hiding this development (it is an affront to the climate narrative), the Biden Administration faced the facts with ill-fitting net zero language...With our 'freedom molecules' rescuing Europe, environmental elitists are working against the natural-gas-export industry. 'LNG exports are harming Americans now,' states the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in a Motion to Intervene in regard to an expansion of a Freeport LNG facility in Texas. Their protest is couched in consumer terms (less supply for home consumers), but the real motivation is to lower U.S.-side prices to keep more natural gas in the ground."

California politicians don't want to produce energy in their backyard, but they are happy to import it from countries where environmental protection is an afterthought.

Scientific American (1/31/22) reprts: "The Los Angeles City Council last week voted unanimously to ban new oil wells and phase out existing ones, a move leaders in the nation's second-most populous city called essential for health reasons. The council declared oil wells "non-conforming" with the city's land use requirements. A city commission now will study how to phase out more than 5,200 existing oil and gas wells. It could be done quickly for some, but others might take as long as 20 years, according to Councilman Paul Krekorian, a key backer of the oil drilling ban...LA County is second only behind Kern County as a center of oil drilling in the Golden State. The LA City Council ban is limited to oil wells within city limits. However, the LA County Board of Supervisors, which oversees unincorporated county areas, is working on a similar move, said Bahram Fazeli, director of research and policy at Communities for a Better Environment, a citizen activist group. There are 5,229 known oil and gas wells in the city of LA. Of those, 704 are active."

Hey, we need a study that trashes gas stoves to fit our narrative. Who can we call?

Oil Price (1/31/22) reports: "Gas stoves may find themselves the next target of climate activists after a study published by the American Chemical Society highlighted methane leaks that occurred while the stoves were not in use. The study looked at 53 households with gas stoves in California and found that three-quarters of their methane emissions occurred while the stoves were not used. According to the authors, “Using a 20-year timeframe for methane, annual methane emissions from all gas stoves in U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 500,000 cars.'...Scientific American noted that Lebel, who is a doctoral student at Stanford, is also a senior scientist with PSE Healthy Energy, a nonprofit often critical of the fossil fuel industry."

Luckily, IER is here to set the record straight. And we did it faster than you can boil water on a...wait for it...gas fired stove.

IER (1/31/22) blog: "Based on a study of a paltry 53 homes in California, researchers with Oakland-based Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSEHE) and Stanford University estimated that stoves emit between 0.8 and 1.3 percent of the natural gas they consume as unburned methane with three-quarters of these emissions occurring when the devices are shut off, suggesting leaky fittings and connections with gas service lines. The flawed research is to support banning natural gas appliances, as some cities in California and elsewhere have done for new buildings, as well as others debating converting existing buildings that consume natural gas to electricity, despite the extremely high costs to do so. The current study draws its conclusions by incorporating inflated methane emissions and claiming health impacts from emissions of nitrogen dioxide, a federally regulated pollutant...Attempts to force government policy changes on the basis of flawed studies performed in unnatural conditions mislead the public, and should be called out when they are cited by proponents of such changes."

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $88.65
Natural Gas: ↓ $4.73
Gasoline: ↑ $3.37

Diesel: ↑ $3.73
Heating Oil: ↑ $274.28
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $89.84
US Rig Count: ↑ 720

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