US Wind Power Fraud: It’s Coal, Gas & Nuclear That Powers the Land of the Free

America’s resurgent prosperity is partly the product of its recent shale oil and gas revolution.

From sea to shining sea, the US is awash with cheap gas; adding to its already abundant supplies of coal.

With electricity prices around one third the cost paid in wind and solar obsessed Australia, anyone promoting that pair in the Land of the Free might be regarded with acute suspicion.

In this first piece, Robert Bryce singles out New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo as public enemy, number one. For reasons that soon become apparent.

Andrew Cuomo’s wind farm won’t fly without fracking
The Wall Street Journal
Robert Bryce
18 May 2018

New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo led the cheer squad last month when the Interior Department announced it would begin allowing offshore wind turbines to be built in the shallow waters between New Jersey and Long Island. Mr. Cuomo had recently announced a $6 billion plan to build 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030, with the costs passed on to bill payers. But though Mr. Cuomo portrays himself as a champion of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, his simultaneous opposition to a New York City-area nuclear plant exposes his wind plan as a mere play for progressive prestige.

Mr. Cuomo isn’t the only Northeastern governor with windy ambitions. Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker signed a bill in 2016 committing his state to develop 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2027, and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy decreed in January that the Garden State would aim for 3,500 megawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.

But Mr. Cuomo is working the hardest of all to maximize his climate-change credentials. Sitting next to former Vice President Al Gore in 2015, he signed a document committing New York to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions 80% before 2050.

For all his bluster, however, Mr. Cuomo made it clear in January 2017 that his true priority is pleasing environmentalists, not cutting emissions. That was when he gleefully announced that the nuclear-powered Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., which provides abundant low-cost electricity while producing zero carbon-dioxide emissions, would close by 2021.

Activists like to urge climate-change skeptics to “do the math” on emissions and temperatures – so let’s start by looking at Indian Point’s output. The twin-reactor 2,069-megawatt plant, which sits on the banks of the Hudson River a few dozen miles north of Times Square, produces about 16,600 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year. That’s about a quarter of New York City’s consumption.

Given the troubled history of offshore wind projects like Massachusetts’ ill-fated Cape Wind, it is far from certain that Mr. Cuomo will succeed in building the full 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind capacity proposed in his outline. But even if he does, New York’s emissions are still likely to rise, because the proposed offshore capacity won’t come close to replacing the energy generated by Indian Point.

Comparing Mr. Cuomo’s wind proposal with a pending offshore project allows us to estimate the amount of power it will generate. The proposed South Fork wind project is a 90-megawatt facility scheduled to be built near the eastern end of Long Island. That project – which is opposed by local fisherman – is expected to produce 370 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year. In other words, each megawatt of capacity at South Fork will annually produce about 4.1 gigawatt-hours. If the same ratio holds for Mr. Cuomo’s plan, its 2,400 megawatts of capacity will produce about 9,840 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year. That’s only about 60% of the juice New Yorkers now get from Indian Point.

This simple arithmetic shows that while Mr. Cuomo and his green allies are touting offshore wind, the premature closure of Indian Point will leave New York with a big gap in its electricity sources. What will fill the hole? The short answer, as was revealed by the New York Independent System Operator last December, is natural gas.

If Indian Point closes as scheduled, the NYISO expects its output will be replaced by electricity from three gas-fired plants now under construction, including the 678-megawatt CPV Valley Energy Center in Wawayanda, N.Y., the 1,020-megawatt Cricket Valley Energy Center in Dover, N.Y., and a 120-megawatt addition to the Bayonne Energy Center in New Jersey.

The irony here is colossal. Mr. Cuomo, who banned hydraulic fracturing despite the economic boon it has created in neighboring Pennsylvania, and who has repeatedly blocked construction of pipelines, is making New York even more dependent on natural gas, which will increase its carbon emissions. At the same time, he has mandated offshore wind projects that will force New Yorkers to pay more for their electricity, even though the state already has some of the nation’s highest electricity prices.

That’s the kind of green record a high-profile Democrat might use to run for the White House – which appears to be Mr. Cuomo’s only real priority.
The Wall Street Journal

If it looks like a zealot and sounds like a zealot, then …

As we noted above, Americans are being driven by a fossil fuel renaissance, despite plenty of bluff and bluster about the wonders of wind and sun.

Carpetbaggers like, Elon Musk have profited handsomely from the myth that nature’s wonder fuels will soon not only power everyone’s homes, but our vehicles, as well.

The trouble is that Musk’s ‘brilliance’ as a businessman is limited to kidding governments to hand over other people’s money: lots and lots of other people’s money.

Here’s Robert Bryce, again.

Bad news for green energy lovers: US oil & gas are booming
New York Post
Robert Bryce
17 May 2018

Another day, another spate of headlines about the growing mess at Tesla.

Last week, the electric carmaker announced that its head of engineering, Doug Field, was taking a leave of absence to “spend time with his family.”

That news came just a few days after the company announced dreadful first-quarter financial results. As usual, the company posted a huge loss (nearly $785 million) and the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, promised that Tesla will soon — really soon, and he means it this time — begin churning out Model 3 cars by the thousands.

But the media’s infatuation with Tesla is overshadowing a story that’s far more important than the number of electric cars, solar panels and batteries that Tesla may (or may not) be producing.

Two days before Tesla announced its first-quarter results, the Energy Information Administration reported that US production of both oil and natural gas are at record levels.

In February, oil output hit 10.2 million barrels per day and gas production hit 87.6 billion cubic feet per day. The fact that US oil and gas companies are producing such prodigious quantities of energy — and by doing so, are saving consumers billions of dollars per year — should be headline news.

As my colleague at the Manhattan Institute, Mark P. Mills, has noted, the shale revolution has turned the US into an energy superpower. The combination of horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other technologies, he says, has resulted in “the fastest and biggest addition to world energy supply that has ever occurred in history.”

How big is that addition? Over the past decade, merely the increase — I repeat, just the increase — in US oil and gas production is equal to seven times the total energy production of every wind turbine and solar project in the United States.

Climate-change activists like to claim that renewable energy can power the entire economy and that we should “do the math.” I couldn’t agree more — on the math part. In 2008, US oil production was about 5.2 million barrels per day. Today, it’s about 10.2 million barrels per day. In 2008, domestic gas production averaged about 55.1 billion cubic feet per day. Today, it’s about 87.6 billion cubic feet per day.

That’s an increase of about 32.5 billion cubic feet per day, which is equivalent to about 5.5 million barrels of oil per day. Thus, over the past decade, US oil and gas output has jumped by about 10.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Let’s compare that to domestic solar and wind production which, since 2008, has increased by 4,800 percent and 450 percent, respectively. While those percentage increases are impressive, the total energy produced from those sources remains small when compared to oil and gas.

In 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration, US solar production totaled about 77 terawatt-hours and wind production totaled about 254 terawatt-hours, for a combined total of 331 terawatt-hours. That’s the equivalent of about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day.

Simple division (10.5 divided by 1.5) shows that since 2008, the increase in energy production from oil and gas is equal to seven times the energy output of all domestic solar and wind.

This surge in hydrocarbon production has resulted in huge benefits to the US economy. Over the past half-decade, foreign and domestic companies have invested about $160 billion in new chemical-manufacturing facilities in the United States. A 2016 study by IHS found that lower natural-gas prices have created about 1.4 million jobs and increased disposable income by about $156 billion.

Those real-world gains are being lost amid the neverending hype over Tesla and Musk, who during the May 2 briefing referred to a “solar-battery-powered mega charger” and claimed that Tesla drivers can “have sort of like a mind meld with the car.”

The punchline here is obvious: chatter about mega chargers and mind melds captivates the masses. But the most consequential energy story in America isn’t happening at Tesla, or other “green” energy companies. It’s happening in the oil and gas business.
New York Post

Another Musk sell: carpetbagger and expensive friend.