Here's why ESG fails and ICE wins

Imagine the power grid drain and cost for a fleet electric big rigs. Their battery packs weight in at 8000 pounds and they need 2 packs. That’s 16000 pounds. Grids cannot support that power draw.

All the ESG fuss over higher CO2 levels being caused by the Industrial Revolution and the need to spend trillions of dollars to save the planet are not based on pure scientific facts. The ESG crowd picks and chooses little snippets of fact and then blows them out of proportion. They make dire predictions based on incomplete science. The science is not even fully understood yet as the interaction between CO2 levels, the sun's energy hitting the earth, the earth's orbit, and ocean temperatures all come into play.

CO2 makes up just 0.04% of the earth's atmosphere. That's not 4%, it's 0.04%. Humans are responsible for about 3% of that number. Earth's current CO2 is currently at 410ppm. The chart below is history of the earth's CO2 levels that does not start in the 1800's as most ESG data will. In the 1800's the earth just emerged from a mini ice age, so yes, you guessed it... temps have been climbing since then.




Here's a link to an article showing how complicated it to tie temps, CO2, oceans, and the earth's orbit all together into a climate change model. 
today.oregonstate.edu/news/study-may-solve-long-standing-mystery-why-atmospheric-co2-was-lower-during-ice-ages

Excerpt:

Electrifying US long haul trucks will require 504 TWh a year. But that won’t be the hardest part.
The energy needed to support electric semis is enormous, from a generation perspective. However, it is the transmission and distribution angle that makes this challenge daunting for utility planning.

Published Dec. 1, 2022

www.utilitydive.com/news/electrifying-us-long-haul-trucks-will-require-504-twh-a-year-but-that-won/636684/

The path forward is murkier, though, for long-haul trucking. Due to their low efficiency, high vehicle miles travelled and large batteries, these vehicles require a tremendous amount of energy to complete interstate trips. Some simple back-of-the-envelope math illustrates the magnitude of this problem. Currently there are 4 million Class 8 trucks that drive, on average, 63,000 miles annually. While some regional trucks travel 30,000-40,000 miles in a year, other Class 8 tractors travel five times that amount.

Based on their size, these vehicles would require roughly 2 kWhs for each mile driven — the current specs for Tesla’s Semi. Combining these figures results in long-haul trucks requiring 504 tWh annually in the U.S. (double California’s 2021 generation) if they were all to electrify now.

Between 2021 and 2022, the cost of electricity in the U.S. rose 13%.. WELL above Biden's overall inflation surge in the CPI. Many of those price surges are due to demand from charging EVs. If your neighbor with the EV is claiming that his EV is cheaper to fuel than your gas powered car, remember that he's partially responsible for increasing the cost of running your dishwasher and Biden's people are enabling that.

Green Technologies Cause Massive Waste and Pollution

BY IER - JULY 22, 2021
www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/green-technologies-cause-massive-waste-and-pollution/

Electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines result in a massive amount of waste and pollution. China is responsible for half of the total electric vehicles in the world—a number that is growing rapidly. About half of its retired batteries are not disposed in an environmentally sound way, causing significant waste and pollution problems detailed below. Batteries can be recycled but the cost is high, as it is with solar panels, which can contain hazardous materials. Most solar panels end up in landfills as do wind turbines, whose large blades are a major factor in their disposal. The United States does not have a policy for recycling these green technologies, which means that U.S. landfills can expect to see a massive increase in disposed materials from them as President Biden seeks to implement his net-zero carbon plan for all U.S. energy by 2050.

Battery Waste and Pollution

China is a major market for electric vehicles. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, by the end of May 2021, the number of electric vehicles in China is estimated to be 5.8 million, accounting for about half of the total number in the world. Due to favorable incentives compared to petroleum vehicles, the number of electric vehicles in China increased 17 percent between 2014 and 2020, reaching 1.37 million.

Accompanying the production and sale of new electric vehicles is the rapid development of the battery industry and the massive increase in retired batteries. The service life of new electric vehicle batteries is about 5 to 8 years, meaning batteries need to be recycled or disposed of in that time frame. In 2020, the cumulative retired batteries in China reached 200,000 tons (about 25-gigawatt hours) and is expected to increase to 780,000 tons (about 116-gigawatt hours) by 2025—a multiple of almost 4 in just 5 years. Over half of those retired batteries are not recycled properly and instead are sold to small factories at high prices, who are not expected to dispose of them in an environmentally sound fashion.

According to Professor Wu Feng at Beijing Institute of Technology, “A 20-gram cell phone battery can pollute three standard swimming pools of water, and if abandoned on the land, can pollute 1 square kilometer of land for about 50 years.” Compared to cell phone batteries, the pollution caused by the batteries of electric vehicles is far greater. Electric vehicle batteries contain cobalt, manganese, and nickel, which do not degrade on their own. Manganese, for example, pollutes the air, water, and soil, and more than 500 micrograms per cubic meter in the air can cause manganese poisoning.

Another major source of pollution in lithium-ion batteries is the electrolyte. The lithium hexafluorophosphate in the electrolyte is hydrolyzed in the air to produce phosphorus pentafluoride, hydrogen fluoride, and other harmful substances, which is a major threat to soil and water resources. Phosphorus pentafluoride is a strong irritant to human skin, eyes, and mucous membranes, and is also a very reactive compound that hydrolyzes in humid air to produce toxic and corrosive white fumes of hydrogen fluoride.

Li Yongwang, general manager of Synfuels China, indicated that the batteries of electric vehicles are likely to cause far more pollution than the exhaust pollution of petroleum vehicles because exhaust pollution can be controlled, while the cost of recycling electric vehicles is high and difficult. Once the total volume of electric vehicles reaches 10 percent of the total number of vehicles, major pollution problems are expected to be encountered. If the batteries are not properly handled during the recycling, dismantling, and processing stages, fires, explosions, heavy metal pollution, and organic emissions can result.

In 2020, the cumulative installed capacity of batteries in China reached 63.6-gigawatt hours, up 2.3 percent. According to Everbright Securities, from 2020 to 2060, the cumulative demand for lithium batteries will reach 25 terawatt-hours. Since 1-gigawatt hour of battery corresponds to 600 tons of lithium carbonate, the demand for lithium carbonate is expected to reach 15 million tons.

Disposal of electric vehicle batteries is a major problem and not all countries have adequately dealt with the problem, including the United States.

Solar Panels

Similar to electric vehicle batteries, the cost of solar panel recycling is high, resulting in solar panels ending up in landfills. It costs an estimated $20 to $30 to recycle one solar panel, which compares to a cost of $1 to $2 for sending that same panel to a landfill.

Solar panels are mostly made of glass, which has low value as a recycled material, but they also have small amounts of silicon, silver, and copper as well as heavy metals (cadmium, lead, etc.) that some governments classify as hazardous waste. Hazardous waste can only be transported at designated times and via select routes. Because solar panels are delicate and bulky, specialized labor is required to detach and remove them to avoid their shattering and polluting local areas.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)’s official projections claim that “large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s” and could total 78 million metric tons by 2050 based mostly on a 30-year life cycle for the solar panels. According to the Harvard Business Review, the volume of solar waste is expected to surpass that of new installations by 2031. By 2035, discarded solar panels could outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times, increasing the levelized cost of solar energy, a measure of the overall cost of an energy-producing asset over its lifetime. According to the Harvard Business Review, the levelized cost of solar could be four times the current projection when solar waste is factored into the calculation.

The U.S. government does not have a PV recycling policy and as such most solar waste ends up in landfills after cables and aluminum frames are removed. States have not been addressing the problem adequately, either. First Solar is the only U.S. solar panel manufacturer that has a recycling program, which applies only to its own products. The company has a global capacity of two million panels per year.

Wind Turbines

Decommissioning wind turbines includes the removal of all physical material and equipment related to the project to a depth of about 48 inches. Most of the concrete foundations used to anchor the wind turbines, however, are as deep as 15 feet. The concrete bases are hard to fully remove, and the rotor blades contain glass and carbon fibers that give off dust and toxic gases. While most (90 percent) of a turbine can be recycled or be sold to a wind farm in Asia or Africa, researchers estimate the United States will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years, a figure that does not include newer, taller higher-capacity wind turbines.

Wind turbine blades are made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass—similar to what spaceship parts are made from. Decommissioned blades are difficult and expensive to transport. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and must be cut up on-site before getting trucked away on specialized equipment to a landfill that may not have the capacity for the blades. Landfills that do have the capacity may not have equipment large enough to crush them. One such landfill cuts the blades into three pieces and stuffs the two smaller sections into the third, which is cheaper than renting stronger crushing machines.

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy estimates conservatively that it will cost $532,000 (in 2019 dollars) to decommission each of its wind turbines—a total cost of $71 million to decommission the 134 turbines in operation at its Noble facility. Decommissioning the Palmer’s Creek Wind facility in Chippewa County, Minnesota, is estimated to cost $7,385,822 for decommissioning the 18 wind turbines operating at that site, for a cost of $410,000 per turbine.

Conclusion

Few countries have dealt with policies for decommissioning green technologies.Including the cost of recycling can increase the lifetime cost of a green technology substantially as the Harvard Business Review concluded for solar panels. If the cost of electricity is four times its current estimate as the Harvard Business Review suggests, Americans should know that before the nation plunges head-long into deploying it as a principal source of energy.

If President Biden is serious about his net-zero carbon plans first for the generating sector and then for the entire U.S. energy system, he needs to address the waste and pollution problems resulting from these technologies or the United States will be faced with overflowing landfills and taxpayers will be paying billions and maybe trillions to fix the problem. In order for these technologies to live up to their proponents’ claims of their environmental cleanliness, policymakers should not continue to ignore this looming and real environmental problem. It appears, however, that in his quest to move towards “green energy,” it may be easier for Biden to spend the federal government’s money resulting in hidden future costs that the American taxpayer will have to foot rather than confront the problem.

Coal Production Surges By 83% At India’s Largest Power Firm

By Charles Kennedy - Oct 03, 2023, 11:30 AM CDT
oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Coal-Production-Surges-By-83-At-Indias-Largest-Power-Firm.html

India’s state power giant NTPC Ltd reported on Tuesday an 83% jump in coal production from the mines it operates in the first half of the 2023/24 fiscal year as India continues to rely on coal to meet most of its electricity demand.

Coal still generates around 70% of the country’s electricity. NTPC, with a current installed power generation capacity from all sources of more than 73 gigawatts (GW), is the largest integrated power company.

In the first half of the fiscal year 2023/2024, between April and September, NTPC also saw coal dispatch for the period soar by 94%, Indian media report, citing the company’s first-half and Q2 figures.

NTPC also boosted its coal production by 66% in the second quarter of its fiscal year, compared to the period between July and September in 2022.

In September 2023 alone, the company’s coal production surged by 80% and coal dispatch jumped by 106% year-on-year.

During the whole previous fiscal year between April 2022 and March 2023, NTPC’s coal production soared by 65%, Gurdeep Singh, chairman and managing director, told the annual general meeting in August 2023.

India had anticipated that its power generation from coal would increase in the current year as authorities plan to have coal-fired units maximize electricity production from imported coal to meet rising demand.

Early this year, India’s government expected coal-fired power plants to use 8% more coal in the financial year between March 2023 and March 2024, as demand is set to continue rising thanks to growing economic activity and unpredictable weather.

Last year NTPC said it could increase its coal-generation capacity as it prioritizes energy security after the power outages in the spring of 2022.

The coal phase-out in India is “going to take 2-3 decades, if not more,” NTPC’s chairman Gurdeep Singh said at the time.

Energy Transition Outlook: Renewables still not replacing fossil fuels in the global energy mix

11 Oct 2023
www.energy-pedia.com/news/general/renewables-still-not-replacing-fossil-fuels-in-the-global-energy-mix-192946

Global electric vehicles sales, solar and battery installations hit record highs in 2022. However, renewables are only partly meeting growing energy demand rather than replacing fossil fuels in the energy mix. Fossil fuels are still growing in absolute terms.

Energy related CO2 emissions are still hitting record highs and are only likely to peak in 2024, which is effectively the point at which the global energy transition begins.

Decarbonization and electrification will be the defining features of the energy transition, with energy mix set to be split 52/48 in favour of renewables by 2050.

DNV launches seventh edition of the Energy Transition Outlook

Over the last five years fossil fuels have met only half of the new demand for energy globally, despite a rapid buildout of renewable capacity, according to DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook. The report finds that between 2017-2022 renewables met 51% of new energy demand, whilst the remaining demand was supplied by fossil fuels. Renewables are still just meeting increased demand rather than replacing fossil fuels and in absolute terms fossil fuel supply is still growing.

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C warming is less likely than ever. To reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, CO2 emissions would need to halve by 2030, but DNV forecasts that this will not even happen by 2050. CO2 emissions will be only 4% lower than today in 2030 and 46% lower by midcentury. Energy related CO2 emissions are still hitting record highs and are only likely to peak in 2024, which is effectively the point at which the global energy transition begins.

'Globally, the energy transition has not started, if, by transition, we mean that clean energy replaces fossil energy in absolute terms,' said Remi Eriksen, Group President and CEO of DNV. 'Clearly, the energy transition has begun at a sector, national, and community level, but globally, record emissions from fossil energy are on course to move even higher next year.'

Energy security has strengthened as a driver of energy policy due to changes in the geopolitical landscape. Governments are willing to pay a premium for locally sourced energy, which has had a notable impact on the Outlook’s results. For example, the Indian Subcontinent is now forecast to transition slower with more coal in the energy mix. In Europe the transition is accelerating with the alignment of climate, industrial and energy security objectives.

Even if the transition is yet to get out of the starting blocks, once it starts renewables will outsprint fossil fuels. From now, most energy additions are wind and solar, which grow 9-fold and 13-fold respectively between 2022 and 2050. Electricity production will more than double between now and 2050, bringing efficiencies to the energy system. The fossil to non-fossil split of the energy mix is currently 80/20 but this will move to a 48/52 split by mid-century.

Solar installations reached a record 250 GW in 2022. Wind power will deliver 7% of global grid-connected electricity and installed capacity will double by 2030, despite inflationary and supply chain headwinds. However, in the near-term, transmission and distribution grid constraints are emerging as a key bottleneck for renewable electricity expansion and related distributed energy assets such as grid-connected storage and EV charging points in many regions, including in North America and Europe.

'There are short term set-backs due to increasing interest rates, supply chain challenges, and energy trade shifts due to the war in Ukraine, but the long-term trend for the energy transition remains clear: the world energy system will move from an energy mix that is 80% fossil based to one that is about 50% non-fossil based in the space of a single generation. This is fast, but not fast enough to meet the Paris goals. Ahead of COP 28, DNV will publish its ‘Pathway to Net Zero’ report, showing that technology is not the main challenge, but rather the incentives to drive fast deployment of renewables & storage and dis-incentives to drive down emissions from fossil fuel are lacking,' added Eriksen.

Download the report:  www.dnv.com/energy-transition-outlook/download.html
Source: DNV

Investors are taking a pass on unprofitable and unreliable net-zero grid 'improvements' so where is the money going to come from?

And now this...

IEA: Annual Energy Grid Investments Need To Double To $600 Billion

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Oct 17, 2023, 4:49 AM CDT
oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/IEA-Annual-Energy-Grid-Investments-Need-To-Double-To-600-Billion.html

Global annual investments in energy grids need to double to more than $600 billion a year by 2030 if the world is to achieve the national climate and energy goals, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report on Tuesday.

The world needs major changes to the grid and reaching net-zero targets will also require adding or replacing 80 million kilometers of power lines by 2040 – an amount equal to the entire existing global grid – according to IEA’s new report Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions.

To achieve countries’ national energy and climate goals, the world’s electricity use needs to grow 20% faster in the next decade than it did in the previous one, the Paris-based agency noted in the report.

The IEA warned that grid expansions and upgrades globally are not keeping pace with the surge of clean energy technologies including solar, wind, electric cars, and heat pumps.

“Without greater policy attention and investment, shortfalls in the reach and quality of grid infrastructure could put the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C out of reach and undermine energy security,” the agency says.

Grids could be the weak link in the energy transition as they have started to become a bottleneck for the expansion of renewable energy sources.

At least 3,000 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power projects, including 1,500 GW in advanced stages of development, are waiting in grid connection queues. This is equivalent to five times the amount of solar PV and wind capacity added in 2022, the IEA said.

“The recent clean energy progress we have seen in many countries is unprecedented and cause for optimism, but it could be put in jeopardy if governments and businesses do not come together to ensure the world’s electricity grids are ready for the new global energy economy that is rapidly emerging,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

“We must invest in grids today or face gridlock tomorrow.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Today in Miami a 5000sqft home burned down when a Tesla caught fire charging in the garage at 4:30 in the morning. On the news the fire chief said EVs come with warnings that say do not charge inside a garage. Really, where else would people charge their cars?

And now this...

Auto execs are coming clean: EVs aren't working

Alexa St. John and Nora Naughton - Oct 26, 2023
www.businessinsider.com/auto-executives-coming-clean-evs-arent-working-2023-10

General Motors CEO Mary Barra. Nic Antaya / Stringer / Getty Images

- At earnings this week, several auto execs pulled back on EV targets.

- Dealers have been warning of slowing EV demand for months.

- "This is a pretty brutal space," Mercedes-Benz's CFO said this week.

With signs of growing inventory and slowing sales, auto industry executives admitted this week that their ambitious electric vehicle plans are in jeopardy, at least in the near term.

Several C-Suite leaders at some of the biggest carmakers this week voiced fresh unease about the electric car market's growth as concerns over the viability of these vehicles put their multi-billion-dollar electrification strategies at risk.

Among the surprising hand-wringing is GM's Mary Barra, historically one of the automotive industry's most bullish CEOs on the future of electric vehicles. GM has been an early-mover in the electric car market, selling the Chevrolet Bolt for seven years and making bold claims about a fully electric future for the company long before their competitors got on board.

But this week on GM's third-quarter earnings call, Barra and GM struck a more sober tone. The company announced with its quarterly results that it's abandoning its targets to build 100,000 EVs in the second half or this year and another 400,000 by the first six months of 2024. GM doesn't know anymore when it will hit those targets.

"As we get further into the transformation to EV, it's a bit bumpy," she said.

While GM's about-face was somewhat of a surprise to investors, the Detroit car company is not alone in this new view of the EV future. Even Tesla's Elon Musk warned on a recent earnings call that economic concerns would lead to waning vehicle demand, even for the long-time EV market leader.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz — which is having to discount its EVs by several thousand dollars just to get them in customers' hands — isn't mincing words about the state of the EV market.

"This is a pretty brutal space," CFO Harald Wilhelm said on an analyst call. "I can hardly imagine the current status quo is fully sustainable for everybody."

EVs are getting harder to sell

But Mercedes isn't the only one; almost all current EV product is going for under sticker price these days, and on top of that, some EVs are seeing manufacturer's incentives of nearly 10%.

That's as inventory builds up at dealerships, much to the chagrin of dealers. While car buyers are in luck if they're looking for a deal on a plug-in vehicle, executives are finding even significant markdowns and discounts aren't enough. These cars are taking dealers longer to sell compared with their gas counterparts as the next wave of buyers focus on cost, infrastructure challenges, and lifestyle barriers to adopting.

Just a few months after dealers have started coming forward to warn of slowing EV demand, manufacturers appear to be catching up to that reality. Ford was the first to fold, after dealers started turning away Mach-E allocations. In July, the company extended its self-imposed deadline to hit annual electric vehicle production of 600,000 by a year, and abandoned a 2026 target to build 2 million EVs.

In scrapping plans with GM to co-develop sub-$30,000 EVs, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said the shifting EV environment was difficult to gauge.

"After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV," Mibe said in an interview with Bloomberg this week.

For some, this pullback is no surprise.

"People are finally seeing reality," Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda said at the Japan Mobility Show, the Wall Street Journal reported. Toyoda has long been skeptical of his peers' pure-electric blueprints.

Big Oil has told the ESG woke wonks that they don't believe their fantasy timeline and voodoo economics related to unreliable energy becoming reliable and clean.

Now this...

Big Oil Sticks To Core Business Despite Lower Q3 Results

By Irina Slav - Nov 01, 2023, 6:00 PM CDT
oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Big-Oil-Sticks-To-Core-Business-Despite-Lower-Q3-Results.html

- Exxon made its plans to grow its oil and gas business crystal clear with the acquisition of Pioneer.

- BP, which reported third-quarter results earlier this week, missed expectations with its results getting dragged down by weaker gas trade and, notably, a half-a billion-dollar charge on its offshore wind business.

- Exxon boasted strong operating performance, including record third-quarter refining throughput, as well as a higher crude price than in the second quarter and industry refining margins.

It’s earnings season for the supermajors, and most of them have reported annual declines, missing analyst expectations. Despite this, however, Big Oil appears upbeat about its core business and is making expansion plans.

Exxon, which made headlines earlier this month when it announced the planned acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources, booked earnings of $9.1 billion, which was higher than in the second quarter but significantly lower than a year ago as oil prices declined.

The company boasted strong operating performance, including record third-quarter refining throughput, as well as a higher crude price than in the second quarter and industry refining margins. On the flip side, Exxon booked lower profits from its chemical business.

More than any of that, however, Exxon made its plans to grow its oil and gas business crystal clear with the acquisition of Pioneer, although the news sparked speculation that the surge in dealmaking activity in the oil patch is a question of survival as the world moves on from oil to alternatives.

Chevron does not seem to buy that. The company followed its bigger rival Exxon in dropping a media bomb when it said, a few days after Exxon, that it would acquire none other than Exxon’s partner in Guyana’s Stabroek Block, Hess Corp. The deal would give Chevron access to one of the hottest oil spots in the world, with production seen reaching 1.2 million barrels daily in 2028.

The acquisition comes amid weaker-than-expected third-quarter results as Chevron had worse luck than its peers, suffering the financial effects of extended maintenance in both its upstream and downstream business, a delay in the Tengiz project in the Caspian Sea, and lower refining margins from its international operations, per the company itself. But the major also reported record oil-equivalent production during the quarter.

Investors have punished the company for its acquisition plans and its third-quarter performance, but this is unlikely to spur Chevron in the opposite direction: even the European supermajors are scaling back low-carbon operations and doubling down on oil and gas.

BP, which reported third-quarter results earlier this week, missed expectations with its results getting dragged down by weaker gas trade and, notably, a half-a billion-dollar charge on its offshore wind business—yet another ripple from the massive cost overrun problems that the wind power industry has been having recently. Also, it booked higher oil trade results despite weaker gas trade, and higher production in both oil and gas.

Italy’s Eni, meanwhile, reported third-quarter results that actually beat analyst expectations, attributing the strong results to the strong performance of its upstream business. The company booked a 4% increase in its oil and gas production and signaled it will be focusing especially on gas and LNG in the future.

Fellow supermajor TotalEnergies also reported third-quarter results that were above analyst expectations, attributing these to higher oil prices during the period and stronger refining margins. It also reported encouraging exploration results from projects in Namibia and Suriname—at a time when there is a massive campaign to discourage all new oil and gas exploration, including from the EU.

Shell is reporting third-quarter on Thursday, but it said earlier this month that its gas trading operations had rebounded in the period after a decline in the second quarter of the year. Also this month, the company said it would cut the number of people employed in its low-carbon business by 15% as it shifts its focus to more profitable projects, including in oil and gas.

Big Oil, it seems, is doubling down on its core business, unpopular as this business has become over the past decade as climate activism gathered momentum. The doubling down—and a curb on low-carbon energy exposure for BP and Shell, which were particularly enthusiastic about it a couple of years ago—reflects the realities of energy security and the capacity of hydrocarbons to ensure that security despite the strong, all-out support for alternative energy sources coming from governments and international bodies.

Clearly the economics of ESG are not working out and reliable energy security is winning out.

And now this...


GOVERNMENTS PLAN MORE FOSSIL FUEL PRODUCTION DESPITE CLIMATE PLEDGES: REPORT

- THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2023 - 13 HOURS AGO NO COMMENTS 758 VIEWS
macaudailytimes.com.mo/governments-plan-more-fossil-fuel-production-despite-climate-pledges-report.html

Despite frequent and devastating heat waves, droughts, floods and fire, major fossil fuel-producing countries still plan to extract more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with the Paris climate accord’s goal for limiting global temperature rise, according to a United Nations-backed study released yesterday.

Coal production needs to ramp sharply down to address climate change, but government plans and projections would lead to increases in global production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050, the Production Gap Report states. This conflicts with government commitments under the climate accord, which seeks to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The report examines the disparity between climate goals and fossil fuel extraction plans, a gap that has remained largely unchanged since it was first quantified in 2019.

“Governments’ plans to expand fossil fuel production are undermining the energy transition needed to achieve net-zero emissions, creating economic risks and throwing humanity’s future into question,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said in a statement.

As world leaders convene for another round of United Nations climate talks at the end of the month in Dubai, seeking to curb greenhouse gases, Andersen said nations must “unite behind a managed and equitable phase-out of coal, oil and gas — to ease the turbulence ahead and benefit every person on this planet.”

The report is produced by the Stockholm Environment Institute, Climate Analytics, E3G, International Institute for Sustainable Development, and UNEP. They say countries should aim for a near-total phase-out of coal production and use by 2040 and a combined reduction in oil and gas production and use by three-quarters by 2050 from 2020 levels, at a minimum.

But instead, the analysis found that in aggregate, governments plan to produce about 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), and 69% more than would be consistent with the less protective goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). These global discrepancies increase even more toward 2050.

Soon after the release of the 2021 Production Gap Report, U.N. climate talks were held in Glasgow, Scotland, and governments agreed to accelerate the transition away from “unabated” coal power, meaning coal-fed power plants where carbon dioxide comes out of the smokestack. A transition away from that kind of electricity is underway in many places, including Germany, Canada, South Africa and the United States. But major oil and gas producers continue to expand, the report states.

More than 80 researchers from over 30 countries contributed, examining 20 major fossil fuel-producing countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They found that while most have launched initiatives to cut emissions, none have committed to reducing coal, oil and gas production enough to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Combined, these countries account for 82% of production, and 73% of consumption, of the world’s fossil fuels, the report states.