A tough time for grifters

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DAILY ENERGY NEWS | 01/23/2023

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Even with the subsidies and set-asides in the Manchin-Biden Inflation Act, solar projects continue to be canceled.

MSNBC (1/18/23) reports: "A major project that was years in the making is not moving forward in McCracken County. The groups behind a proposed solar farm are pulling out. The permit for the project was originally granted in November. The plans included a 60 megawatt solar facility on 615 acers of land along New Liberty Church Road in McCracken County. Wednesday night, the McCracken County Board of Adjustment held a public hearing to discuss McCracken County Solar LLC and it's parent company, AES Clean Energy, formally withdrawing their confidential use permit for any plans for the solar facility project. The meeting was brief. McCracken County Judge Executive Craig Clymer expected that after the companies surrendered their permit. AES would only share a statement about pulling out of the project, which reads: 'The construction of the project has been delayed because of ongoing Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) interconnection study delays.' Clymer says inflation played a role in the cancellation as well. 'It turned out, as you said, it's been a passage of time since then. With inflation and different supply chain problems, that sort of thing, their cost to produce the power they say will be much greater than the contract price they agreed to sell it for to Big Rivers,' he says."

"When we invest in climate, we invest in families, in communities, in opportunity and prosperity for all people. When we invest in climate, we build a safer, cleaner, healthier, more just, and more prosperous country. When we invest in climate, we invest in America."

– Vice President Kamala Harris

🎵Rule, Britannia...Britannia rules the waves, Britons never never never shall be slaves! (Except to Chinese batteries) 🎵

Benchmark Source (1/17/23) reports: "The collapse of battery startup Britishvolt will halve the UK’s future battery production capacity, dealing a blow to the country’s hopes to build a homegrown industry to supply its carmakers. The UK-based company had planned to build a battery factory in the North East of England with a total capacity of 38 gigawatt-hours a year. The entirety of the UK’s cell capacity pipeline is now set to come from China’s Envision, which plans to build a 35 GWh plant in Sunderland. The UK was already set to be a bit-player in Europe, but without Britishvolt the country is now forecast to account for just 2.3% of Europe’s 2031 battery production capacity. 'Britishvolt’s demise only now leaves China-based Envision as the saviour of the UK’s ambition to be a leader in electric vehicles,' Simon Moores, Benchmark’s chief executive, said. 'The UK is in desperate need of more.' Prior to the collapse of Britishvolt, the UK accounted for 0.6% of the global battery pipeline capacity set to come into production by 2031. It is now even lower at around 0.3%."

Timber!

Bloomberg (1/23/23) reports: "On a calm, sunny day last June, Mike Willey was feeding his cattle when he got a call from the local sheriff’s dispatcher. A motorist had reported that one of the huge turbines at a nearby wind farm had collapsed in dramatic fashion. Willey, chief of the volunteer fire department in Ames, 90 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, set out to survey the scene. The steel tower, which once stood hundreds of feet tall, was buckled in half, and the turbine blades, whose rotation took the machine higher than the Statue of Liberty, were splayed across the wheat field below. The turbine, made by General Electric Co., had been in operation less than a year. 'It fell pretty much right on top of itself,' Willey says. Another GE turbine of the same model collapsed in Colorado a few days later. That wind farm’s owner-operator, NextEra Energy Inc., later attributed it to a blade flaw and said it and GE had taken steps to prevent future mishaps. A spokesperson for GE declined to say what went wrong in both cases in a statement to Bloomberg. The instances are part of a rash of recent wind turbine malfunctions across the US and Europe, ranging from failures of key components to full collapses. Some industry veterans say they’re happening more often, even if the events are occurring at only a small fraction of installed machines. The problems have added hundreds of millions of dollars in costs for the three largest Western turbine makers, GE, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens Energy’s Siemens Gamesa unit; and they could result in more expensive insurance policies—a potential setback for the push to abandon fossil fuels and fight climate change."

Not everyone has it so bad...

Daily Mail (1/19/23) reports: "Warning the world that it is on the brink of disaster has been lucrative for Al Gore. His wild prediction at Davos that Earth faces 'rain bombs' and 'boiling oceans' is just his latest in decades of climate alarmism. At the same time, the former VP has been at the forefront of green technology investment that has seen his wealth balloon to an estimated $330 million. Four years after losing to George W Bush in 2000, Gore set up Generation Investment Management with former Goldman Sachs Managing Director and close friend David W. Blood. The mission statement of the investment firm, where Gore collects $2 million in a monthly salary, is to back companies that are making strides towards going green. The firm is worth around $36 billion. He proudly said of his role at the fund, when it launched, was that of a figurehead saying: 'I'm not a stock picker.'...In 2004, when the firm launched, Gore was lecturing about the perils of climate change, including once at the premiere of the heavily criticized climate disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow...All the while, the Tennessee-native was making millions while lecturing the world on how humanity was losing the war against climate change. He told the World Economic Forum in 2020: 'This is Thermopylae. This is Agincourt. This is Dunkirk. This is the Battle of the Bulge. This is 9/11. We have to rise to the occasion.' "

Energy Markets

WTI Crude Oil: ↑ $82.07
Natural Gas: ↑ $3.47
Gasoline: ↑ $3.42

Diesel: ↑ $4.62
Heating Oil: ↑ $350.44
Brent Crude Oil: ↑ $88.46
US Rig Count: ↓ 864

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