Renewable Energy is Freedom Energy
(Ignore Dirty Energy B.S.)
Welcome to the web version of Need to Know: Science & Insight my personal newsletter that looks at what we Need-to-Know at this time of pandemic, existential crisis of climate change and unravelling of nature’s life supports.The horrible crisis in Ukraine has triggered an avalanche of lies and misinformation from the oil and gas industry. A previous issue of NtK documented the impact of the fossil-fuel industry’s lobbying and propaganda. A short excerpt:
Like drug dealers, fossil-fuel dealers have gone to extreme lengths to keep the world addicted to their dangerous product. They will continue to take extreme measures to prevent us from kicking our addiction to their profitable products. Yes, even knowing their products are destroying our climate.
Like drug dealers, the oil and gas industry use a network of ‘associates’ from PR firms to friendly “experts” on TV and in newspapers to investors, major banks, insurance companies and government officials. They have enormous resources to try and convince us that we can’t live without them
Need-to-Know 1: The fossil-fuel industry will go to extreme lengths to slow the clean-energy transition.
In recent weeks fossil-fuel industry lobbying and propaganda has reached a fever pitch by falsely claiming the solution to high oil and gas prices (on which they are making staggering profits) is to produce more oil and gas. Here’s investigative journalist and author Antonia Juhasz on how pricing by the industry actually works:
Juhasz continues:
They take advantage of high oil prices via the "rockets and feathers" phenomena: as the price of oil rises, the price of gas immediately shoots up (often out of proportion). But when the price of oil falls (as in the last week), the gas prices take a lot longer to catch up.
By the way, the 3 to 10 cents per gallon that goes to the gas station owner generally remains constant regardless of the retail price. Thus, all of the profit for higher gas prices goes to the oil company and pretty much never to the gas station owner.
And consumption isn't equal: wealthier Americans & industry consume the lions-share of gasoline (and are able to afford higher prices).
So, lower prices aren't the end goal. These are: to stop manipulative pricing & war profiteering by Big Oil, and transition off fossil fuels.
Need-to-Know 2: We need to stop manipulative pricing and war profiteering by big Oil and Gas
The clean energy transition is already underway. 'Renewable energy is freedom energy'
The Ukraine crisis has pushed Europe to end their addiction to Russian oil, coal and gas. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, a conservative, recently called renewable energy "the energy of freedom."
Consider a few developments that you probably haven’t heard about:
Europe plans to install 10 million air-source heat pumps over the next five years and 30 million by 2030 to replace gas furnaces in homes. Heat pumps are 300% more energy efficient and can operate in cold temperatures. Some 60% of homes in Norway use them.
Germany gets more than 40% of its electricity from renewables. Its new goal is 80% by 2030
Europe will only allow zero-emission vehicles to be sold by 2035. Electric vehicles (EVs) are already 20% of all new car sales.
Germany offers grants of up to €9,000 to buy an EV and 26% of news cars sold in 2021 were EVs.
Globally EV car sales reached 6.7 million, representing close to 9% of all cars sold in 2021. That’s likely to double again in 2022.
France plans a 10-fold expansion in solar and dramatic expansion in offshore wind from current 2 megawatt (MW) to 8.5 gigawatts (GW) by 2028.
Italy's cabinet has approved six new wind farms to be built on land, and committed to unlocking several tens of gigawatts of offshore wind power.
Last year, the Netherlands generated 33% of its total electricity from renewable sources. It plans to double that by 2030 “in a bid to meet climate goals and reduce its dependence on Russian gas.”
Even the U.S. is moving rapidly away from coal and gas. By 2023 renewables will generate 22% of U.S. electricity, matching coal, and gas will fall from 40% in 2021 to 34%, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Need-to-Know 3: We are already moving away from fossil fuels.
A few nations—including Iceland, Costa Rica, Namibia, and Norway—are already producing more than 90% of their electricity from clean sources. A recent Stanford University analysis concluded we have 95% of the technology required to generate 100% of U.S. electricity using renewables by 2035, while keeping the electric grid secure and reliable.
This would save about $2 trillion dollars a year.
Need-to-Know 4: Wind and sun, the fuel powering renewable energy, is free, clean and more reliable compared to volatile, costly, polluting fossil fuels.
The fossil-fuel industry certainly doesn’t want you or anyone to know this, so please share this post.
Contact me if you would like additional information.
Until next week, and yes it will be next week, be well.
Stephen
P.S. A new article in Watershed Sentinel magazine is based on a previous NtK issue. Worth a read thanks to good editing and a very nice layout: “More, New, Better” — The cultural values driving the climate/nature crisis.