Tag Archive for: solar panels

Biden’s Signature Climate Law Has A Major Achilles’ Heel — And Dems Are Making It Worse

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President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill is being held back by a lack of comprehensive permitting reform, the absence of which enables environmentalist lawsuits that impede green energy projects subsidized by the legislation.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) contained hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize green energy projects nationwide, but the bill did not include significant reform to the permitting process that would expedite construction timelines and insulate developments from environmental legal challenges. Unless Congressional Democrats can negotiate a permitting reform package with Republicans in an election year, these problems will continue to dog the IRA’s implementation, energy policy experts and stakeholders told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

After solar and wind developments have been built, they need to be connected to the grid via transmission lines to feed power into the grid. Permitting reform would speed up the lengthy paperwork process for that transmission, as well as provide developers an additional layer of protection against environmental lawsuits that also disrupt the construction of green energy developments.

However, that reform has not happened yet, thanks in part to Congressional Democrats’ inability to agree among themselves on what that reform should look like to counter Republican proposals, according to E&E News.

“I think that not having any transmission reform is a huge barrier to implementing the IRA,” Isaac Orr, a policy analyst for the Center for the American Experiment who specializes in energy policy, told the DCNF. “I think there was an understanding that permitting reform was necessary in order to implement a lot of the things Democrats wanted as soon as they got the IRA … It’s a physical reality that you need the transmission in order to incorporate all this new capacity on the grid.”

The lack of reform has left numerous green energy developments open to legal challenges filed by environmental groups, who often will pursue similar legal strategies adopted by opponents of fossil fuel infrastructure projects in the past.

For example, a coalition of tribes and environmental organizations are suing to block a massive $10 billion transmission project in Arizona, while different coalitions have taken to court to allege violations of environmental laws on the part of offshore wind developers building wind farms in waters off the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts. Elsewhere in the country, conservation groups have continued the years long fight against Wisconsin’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line by suing the government to stop construction.

“Reforms aimed at streamlining the federal government’s permit decision-making process and discouraging frivolous litigation have the potential not only to improve regulatory efficiency but also to bring about greater certainty and predictability in the offshore wind sector,” Erik Milito, the president of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA) told the DCNF. “Litigation, particularly around alleged National Environmental Policy Act deficiencies, has been a significant hindrance for offshore wind projects. A robust U.S. offshore wind market relies on confidence and certainty in the permitting and regulatory process, which is essential for fostering growth and ensuring the success of these projects, much like any other major infrastructure endeavor.”

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading advocate for comprehensive permitting reform, has tried to advance legislation to expedite the permitting process and minimize opportunities for litigation to gum up timelines for all kinds of energy projects.

In total, there are no fewer than ten different permitting-related bills in Congress and two major regulatory initiatives underway on the federal level, but progress on streamlining the permitting process is still very sluggish, according to Utility Dive.

“All of these things, the Clean Water Act, the way the National Environmental Policy Act is now run … you can’t get anything built because of these statutes,” Mike McKenna, a Republican strategist with extensive experience in and around the energy sector, told the DCNF about Congressional gridlock on permitting reform.

“So we are about a year into you’re what I think is going to be a seven- or eight-year process, where everyone on the Left starts figuring out, ‘Oh, my goodness, these guys were right, You can’t build any of this stuff.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Energy responded to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Blue States Are Stripping Rural Counties Of Ability To Prevent Green Energy Takeover Of Their Communities

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PODCAST: Great Reset Menu—GMO Food, Bugs and Solar Panels

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I am the expert. You will believe me and support me. If you disagree, you will go to jail. Do I tell the truth? NO!  Do I get to make up my own facts regardless. Yes! After all I am from the government and we will now decide your future. You will now get rid of all fossil fuels and all of their products. You will eat what I tell you. Everything I decide you want will be in a 15 minute walk from your home.  Say hello to your new police force of illegal aliens who will make sure you stay in your zone, your new prison.  Are you hungry? You may have to move to Afghanistan where the Taliban converted the heroin producing poppy fields to food while in America we convert our food to solar farms.

Our Marxist Affirmative Action graduates of experts have worked hard to develop your new menu: GMO Food, Bugs and Solar Panels.

You will eat as you are told or face the consequences. Welcome to the new Marxist/Communist/Globalist America.

Think this won’t happen?  Think again.

Florida used to be in the top 5 states producing a variety of food products. Today as I travel through Florida where I used to see corn, peanuts, tomatoes and citrus, I now see solar and wind farms.  So I ask you Gov DeSantis, what do solar panels and wind blades taste like?  Today when all we hear is, there will be food shortages, I want to know, why are you cutting food production? We need more food not less? Why are you cutting CO2 when you know it is needed for plants aka our food? Oh I forgot, “Less people, less problems.”

As I was investigating the stupidity of cutting food production when more food is needed I discovered:

The OBiden administration with the help of the RINOS is subsidizing energy companies guaranteeing them a 10% profit while hamstringing them with regulations and insane permitting so they are forced to turn to inefficient, ineffective expensive renewables.  By outlawing or over regulating appliances and vehicles that rely on natural gas and fossil fuel Globalists insure the fact that their donors who have invested in Green will recoup their investment. We the people will be overcharged.  We will receive overly expensive, inefficient, ineffective electricity and products made with slave labor. (Think Sound of Freedom). Some of those children depending on the country they wind up in, go to the cobalt mines so the Globalists can get their expensive EV batteries.

Of course they tell you this must be done to save the planet and protect Mother Earth (GAIA) You must sacrifice for the common good. You must do your part to make up for all the destruction HUMANS caused Mother Earth.  Wait a minute, No one asks, What harm? I didn’t cause hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, etc. I guess Affirmative action graduates never learned fossil fuel is necessary to produce about 1000 products including solar panels and wind turbines.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) Globalists, Humans are users. Their addiction is to CO2.  WEF will tell the school children that use of CO2 will cause the destruction of Mother Earth (GAIA). Students will force their parent to abstain from fossil fuel or pay a fine.  OBiden even said he didn’t know why the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was named that when it was really all about funding Green projects.

Globalists will either bankrupt corporations or regulate them out of business or will pay them a subsidy for Green. Globalists will make up new categories to restrict humans and business.  Social Credits aka Personal Carbon Allowance (PCA) for humans and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) scores will give credits or take credits.  Not enough credits, too bad no food or gas for you. As long as we allow the WEF to think they  are the experts the humans will be forced to listen and obey. WEF messages in elementary school so by the time students are adults, they will believe CO2 is destroying the planet, while wind and solar are reliable.

WEF/Globalists/DNC/RINOS know batteries, wind and solar won’t work in extreme cold or heat? WEF doesn’t care. I haven’t figured out how to get solar panels on a jet so they will still have their gas vehicles, jets and ships run on fossil fuel..  Bottom line: Globalists do not want us mobile or talking. Mobility and free speech are freedom and that is out of the question.

Why would you want to make this country dependent on what’s going on in China? In Florida seems as though our absentee, part time Governor taking a full time salary,  DeSantis, would rather hand Florida to China than feed the Florida taxpayer.  Under his public service commission, Florida has no real common sense energy policy. The plan brought to you by the Affirmative Action graduates will give you the inefficient, part time  renewable wind and solar. According to Mike Davis,  $8.6 billion, in the last 3 years spent on solar farms with about $6 billion going to China Chico for solar panels and for battery storage. 16 years of solar plant conversions by the State will cost about $600Billion+ to China instead of American inexpensive reliable natural gas.

Floridians are already stretched with a 29% increase.  By the target of 2045  energy will be  4 times what you pay now. As for Ron’s donors Nextera, PSE, etc. they are covered with a 8 to 10% guaranteed return on that Capital spend to destroy Florida’s current sensible energy plan. The only guarantee Floridians have is all of the energy policies in Florida are pro China. and we will have 70% unreliable energy guaranteeing brownouts, blackouts and higher rates. Why would anyone vote for this policy for America?

Florida rate payers have seen approximately 29% rate hikes in their existing electric bill. Florida currently has 74% of usage of natural gas to generate electricity and natural gas is at record lows. But instead of rates going down or remaining the same they have gone up 29% in order to fund this extremely expensive program of renewables that only comprise less than 4% of our energy today. By 2045 we will be down to less than 30% of stable energy. Instead Floridians will be using 70% of unstable renewable energy. Imagine how lovely it will be during a Heat Alert , or dangerous thunderstorm both which we in Florida have been experiencing for the last 3 months. Do solar panels work when the sun doesn’t shine?

Since I am not an affirmative action graduate I know nothing will work. So we will go back in time when we had NO air conditioning in Florida. Better buy your fans and generators now.

We already have energy shortages today. So we are replacing inexpensive American natural gas with expensive Chinese solar panels and wind blades and lithium-ion batteries. Who is DeSantis paying off with this stupid policy which is harming Floridians? Nextera is one of his largest donors, why are we not surprised?  Florida is only the Sunshine State 80% of the time what happens when it’s cloudy? Florida is only windy part time what happens when there’s no wind? OBiden wants to use Bill Gates’ technology to block the sun. Will solar panels work?

Look at your electric bill times it by 4. Still want to vote for DeSantis?

How much land will be lost to solar farms instead of food? Not to worry, since there is no place to dispose of those useless panels that stopped working, they will be on the menu. Ketchup anyone?

Please read and share Mike Davis article…

Is America Worth Saving?  Its up to you.

Get your kids out of the indoctrination clinics masquerading as Public Schools. Check out goflca.org  MicroSchools.

Remember: Everything is connected. Nothing is random, Everyone follows the same plan. ALL PLANS ARE BASED ON LIES. Globalists must control opposition. Globalists must take away our voice.

Globalists only care about MONEY, POWER and CONTROL. Don’t give them yours. Boycotts work. Stop using their services and products.  Vote the RINOS out. Vote with your fingers and with your wallet. There is a lot you can do.

©2023. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Asian Hornet, Cousin Of Infamous Murder Hornet, Found In United States For First Time Ever

Show: Sat and Sun 7AM ET and 9PM ET on AmericaOutloud.com

Podcasts and Articles: Karenbschoen.com, karenschoen.substack.com,

‘Dead Without Water’: Massive Desert Solar Projects Are Sucking Up Groundwater, Angering Locals

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Massive solar development projects in Southern California have strained local water availability, threatening desert ecosystems and angering residents who have been impacted by the strain on the water supply, according to an Inside Climate News report.

The small communities around Desert Center, California, depend on naturally-occurring underground water reserves, known as groundwater aquifers, but the water-intensive development process for large solar projects has caused groundwater levels to fall, according to Inside Climate News. Crucial local water wells have dried up and land beneath homes has sagged as a result of development activity, while desert ecosystems have been damaged as well, according to Inside Climate News.

Locals complain that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the corporations driving the developments in California’s Colorado Desert have not allowed them to provide sufficient input in the decision-making process for the developments, according to Inside Climate News. Despite the BLM’s assurances that “renewable energy development on BLM-managed public lands will continue to help communities across the country be part of the climate solution, while creating jobs and boosting local economies,” residents say that they have not reaped much benefit from the solar projects while the strain on their groundwater supply has intensified, according to Inside Climate News.

“No one took into consideration a community lived out here,” said Teresa Pierce, a resident of a nearby community who has helped to organize other locals to respond to the resource scarcity and solar developments, according to Inside Climate News.

Developers rely on the groundwater aquifer because there is no other feasible water supply in the area, rendering transport of water from other locations to the development sites prohibitively expensive, according to Inside Climate News. The development has depleted the water reserves for local communities like one trailer park which a property manager said would be “dead without water” if the local scarcity continues to worsen, according to Inside Climate News.

Another local who has two palm trees and no house on his property saw his electricity bill go from $15 to $1,800 in just one month, as his electric irrigation pump that keeps the trees alive worked much harder to reach underground water reserves that have fallen due to the development’s extensive use of the groundwater supply, according to Inside Climate News. Drilling new, deeper water wells can cost up to $100,000, according to Inside Climate News.

The BLM was aware that its approved solar projects on public lands may have been using too much water from the area’s underground water reserves by its own standards, but the agency has advanced the projects nonetheless, according to former BLM employees cited by Inside Climate News.

Beyond the problems posed by the strain on the groundwater aquifer for humans, solar developments have overtaken many small bodies of water across the desert which formerly provided critical habitat space to the animals inhabiting the desert region, according to Inside Climate News.

The BLM has approved seven utility-scale developments in the region spanning about 19,000 acres already, with more projects under consideration, according to Inside Climate News. Another 120,000 acres are available for development in the region surrounding Desert Center, according to Inside Climate News.

The Biden administration has publicly touted its spending and regulatory efforts designed to protect 30% of America’s lands and waters from development by 2030. The administration also heavily promotes solar panels as part of its larger “green” energy agenda.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin Cracks Down On Chinese Solar Panels, Undermining The Green Agenda

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The secret story behind the Green New Deal: Metals Needed for Carbon Neutrality in Short Supply

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Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric car batteries are made from some of the most hard-to-get metals on earth— dysprosium, neodymium, manganese, cobalt, and lithium. According to UK scientists, the current annual global production of cobalt needs to double by 2050 to produce the electric vehicles required to just satisfy British climate targets. Another study found that if countries were to meet the Paris accord and keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, demand for cobalt and lithium would exceed the current supply by 2022 and 2023, respectively.

China leads the world in rare earth metal production (a group of 17 chemical elements), supplying 90 percent of the export market. The United States purchases 80 percent of its rare earth metals from China, despite having the resources to produce its own supply. These metals could be extracted profitably in the United States, but are not because of our restrictive and redundant environmental regulations.

Current Production, Reserves, and Prices for Major Metals

According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, global production of rare earth metals in 2018 totalled 167 thousand metric tons, with China producing 72 percent of the world’s production. China also controls 38 percent of the world’s reserves, which total 117 million metric tons. China’s reserves are the largest at 44 million metric tons, followed by the United States and Brazil, each with 22 million metric tons, and Russia with 17 million metric tons.

Global production of graphite totals 896 thousand metric tons, with China supplying 71 percent. Graphite reserves total 307 million metric tons with China and Brazil each controlling 24 percent.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo produced the most cobalt in 2018 at 112 thousand metric tons—a 71 percent share of the 158 thousand metric tons produced. Cobalt reserves total 6.6 million metric tons, with the DR Congo controlling 52 percent. However, there are ongoing problems with environmental and child labor issues in the DR Congo; labor abuses linked to cobalt mining have been widely documented by human rights groups and by media organizations across the world.

Australia and Chile lead the world in lithium production with 27 million metric tons and 16 million metric tons, respectively, produced in 2018 from a total of 62 million metric tons. World reserves of lithium total almost 14 million metric tons with Chile controlling 58 percent.

Lithium prices set a record high in 2018 at $14,656 per metric ton—21 percent higher than in 2017. Cobalt prices totaled $72,923 per metric ton in 2018—30 percent higher than in 2017.

U.S. Dependence on Foreign Metals

China leads the world in producing and exporting minerals and metals, supplying many that are critical to U.S. manufacturing, technology and energy production, and national defense. Many critical metals are on U.S. federally-owned lands, including manganese, cobalt, nickel, graphite, aluminum, and several of the rare earth metals. The United States is 100 percent import-reliant for 18 minerals—14 of them are considered “critical” by the Department of Defense or the Department of the Interior.

The United States has a duplicative and inefficient system of regulatory permits and oversight that governs domestic mining. Generally, the U.S. mining industry is faced with a regulatory system that forces them to wait seven to 10 years to obtain a mining permit, compared to Canada and Australia where the process takes two to three years, which limits our nation’s ability to capitalize on our mineral wealth. The United States needs to retool our permitting process so that minerals from U.S. public lands can fuel our advanced energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing technologies, which would increase U.S. manufacturing and its position in the global economy and reduce our dependence on foreign imports.

Conclusion

The United States needs to develop its critical metals and remove its reliance on foreign imports, particularly from the Chinese, who are leaders in rare earth metals and graphite production. These metals are used in many technologies and in national defense systems. To become self-reliant the United States needs to modify its regulatory permitting system and oversight. The sooner we can remove our dependence on these critical metals from foreign interests as we did for oil and natural gas, the better our nation with be economically and militarily. Otherwise, we risk dependency on other international actors for minerals at much higher rates than the United States was ever dependent upon OPEC.

Further reading on the global supply of rare earth metals is available here.

Further reading on the environmental impacts of rare earth metal production in China is available here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s Why Californians Pay Way More for Gasoline Than Everyone Else

EDITORS NOTE: This IER column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Obama Keeps Telling Renewable Energy Lies

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Imagine you wanted to get in your electric car and drive a considerable distance. It wouldn’t take long for your car to run out of power, so you would have to have another car, one using gasoline, to drive behind you to make sure you reached your destination.

That’s a description of “renewable energy”, wind and solar, in America today because they both require backup from traditional energy sources such as coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. And “renewable energy” based on “free” sun and wind power costs more to produce and purchase. Need it be said that the sun does not always shine consistently everywhere or at night and that the wind does not always blow?

Within twenty-four hours of one another I received a news release from the Governor’s Wind Energy Coalition celebrating the election of a new chairman and vice chairman, and read a CNN news article saying that “The White House wants to put more returning servicemen and women to work manufacturing and installing solar panels” as part of “his growing list of climate actions meant to combat global warming.”

That list was a twelve-page long, single-spaced White House fact sheet. The White House seems to think that the states can do something about “climate change”, but the climate is measured in decades and centuries, not whether it is going to rain next Monday which is something we call “the weather.” And just as you can do nothing about the rain, neither can you do anything to affect the climate decades from now.

The White House has a problem. There is no “global warming.” Even if you change the name to “climate change”, the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle for the last eighteen years.

For the past 5,000 years humans have, as often as not, “done something” about the climate by moving somewhere else it was less of a bother and threat or found ways to adapt. Other than prayer, there was and is nothing humans can do about Mother Nature.

Most surely, getting veterans to manufacture solar panels is about as lame and stupid an idea as the President has proposed in the last 24 hours. Does the name “Solyndra” ring a bell? It was one of several solar farms that, along with wind farms went belly-up, leaving investors and consumers with nothing but the sunlight and passing breezes.

Indeed, the best news of late has been that the U.S. Senate has rejected a proposal to extend the federal wind Production Tax Credit (PCT) for another five years. The wind producers have benefitted from it for three decades. The federal subsidy to wind-energy producers expired along with other tax breaks at the end of 2013, but was retroactively extended through 2014 as part of the Cromnibus budget bill passed last December.

The PCT was intended to provide what was a then-new energy industry a helping hand, but it kept being extended and the industry benefitted as well from renewable energy mandates (REM) in 29 states and the District of Columbia. They require that a specific amount of electricity be purchased from renewable energy, wind or solar, producers. All that managed to do was drive up the cost of electricity to consumers. This is what happens when politicians get involved.

That’s a good reason to wonder why there is a Governors Wind Power Coalition in the first place. It consists of 23 Democratic and Republican governors from every region of the nation “working together to develop the nation’s wind energy resources”, but the nation doesn’t need wind energy which produces an unpredictable amount as opposed to traditional resources such as coal.

At the same time the President is talking about solar and wind power, his administration is pursuing a relentless “war” on coal that is forcing the primary source of electricity in America, coal-fired plants, to shut down. If that doesn’t sound like treason, then consider too that the U.S. is the greatest producer of oil and natural gas in the world and we have at least two century’s worth of known coal reserves. We have absolutely no need for wind or solar energy.

When Obama gave his State of the Union speech in 2014, solar power represented a pathetic 0.2 percent of the U.S. electricity supply according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. According to the Energy Research Institute, in 2013 wind power provided 1.6% of all the energy consumed in the U.S.

There isn’t a single good reason for either wind or solar power in an energy powerhouse like the United States. They are both costly, unpredictable, and a threat to a number of animal species. Neither the science, the cost, nor the recent history of “renewable energy” provides a single good reason to force Americans to pay for this “green” failure.

© Alan Caruba, 2015