Why Do We Swallow What Big Oil and the Green Movement Tell Us?
by Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times) … Because our continued addiction to fossil fuels is bolstering Vladimir Putin’s petrodictatorship and creating a situation where we in the West are — yes, say it with me now — funding both sides of the war.
…
The greens are trying to fix a real, planet-threatening problem, even if their ambition exceeds their grasp. The oil and coal companies know that what they are doing is incompatible with a stable, healthy environment. Yes, they are right that without them there would be no global economy today. But unless they use their immense engineering talents to become energy companies, not just fossil fuel companies, there will be no livable economy tomorrow.
…
Today, the European Union is drawing up a plan to break its addiction to Russian oil and gas by 2027, but, in the meantime, Putin is laughing all the way to the bank. As CNN reported in April, citing a report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air: “Russian revenues from fossil fuel exports to the European Union soared during the first two months of the Ukraine invasion” — to $46.3 billion. That was more than double the value of Russian energy imported by the E.U. during the same two-month period a year earlier.
That was not because the E.U.’s volume of imports doubled. Higher oil and gas prices accounted for most of that increase. In other words, Putin starts a war that creates instability, which drives up oil prices, so he makes twice as much money exporting roughly the same amount of oil.
…
Indeed, the whole world owes Germany a huge debt for driving down the price of solar panels and wind turbines through the subsidies and tax incentives it created. In Germany, wind turbines, solar panels and other renewables covered 54 percent of power consumption this past January and February — which is AMAZING. In 2021, renewable energy sources accounted for only about 12 percent of total U.S. energy that was consumed.
…
If you can’t install the transmission lines — to get that sun and wind power from the vast open spaces where it is generated to the big urban areas where it is needed — and if you cannot set aside more land to install the scale of solar and wind farms you need to replace coal, gas or nuclear, it doesn’t matter that your renewables are cheaper on a per-kilowatt-hour basis.
And today transmission is a huge problem in the U.S. and Europe, where many people don’t want wind farms, solar fields, electricity lines — or natural gas pipelines — in their backyard.
…
Meanwhile, ever since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the big oil companies have basically said in each successive crisis: Sure, we need more clean energy, but you have to understand — it doesn’t scale. Right now, we’re in an emergency, so we just need to drill more. You hear the same refrain today, which is why we’re in danger of wasting yet another oil crisis and never breaking our fossil fuel addiction.
…
The greens need to up their deployment game. “That means tripling solar installation rates, roughly doubling long distance transmission lines, doing everything possible to accelerate the electric car transition and starting to roll out renewable hydrogen for industry,” said Hal Harvey, chief executive of Energy Innovation, which helps companies and countries transition to clean fuels. And we need to do this rapidly and intelligently, “while protecting local ecosystems.”
The fossil fuel companies, Harvey told me, “need to change their business model so that it is compatible with life on earth — while they still have a chance.” READ MORE
California’s electrical grid has an EV problem (Yahoo! Finance)
Why electric scooters in India keep going up in flames — A spate of battery fires could complicate the country’s green agenda (Washington Post)
