EU lawmakers want to cut car emissions by 40 percent by 2030

The war on the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide is in full swing at the EU. The diesel scandal, which was about nitrogen oxides, seems strangely to have been used as an excuse to press for a more punishing policy towards CO2. But they appear to ignore the fact that even if electric car sales go up, this mainly transfers the supposed problem to fuel-burning power stations.

The European Parliament wants to cut CO2 emissions from new cars and vans by 40 percent by 2030 and will try to convince the European Union’s 28 nations to back the idea despite objections from the powerful car industry, reports Phys.org.

The proposed cut agreed on by the legislators Wednesday was a compromise between environmentalists who wanted tougher commitments and those who wanted to avoid too much damage to the auto industry.

The EU nations will discuss the measures further this month. Car producers in the EU are warning that tough cuts would cost manufacturing jobs.

Federal auditors call out Germany’s failing green energy transition

German Chancellor Merkel surveys an offshore wind site [image credit: evwind.es]

Spending fortunes, having little of any benefit to show for it, and not being in control of what’s going on. That seems to be the verdict from the auditors on their government. The sums involved are eye-watering.

Germany’s Federal Audit Office has accused the government of a catastrophic mis-management of the green energy transition (Energiewende), reports The GWPF.

The wastage of resources is “unprecedented”. Germany’s Federal Audit Office has accused the federal government of having largely failed to manage the transformation of Germany’s energy systems.

Germany struggles to end coal power as populist AfD challenges green consensus

Hambach surface mine, Germany [image credit: Wikipedia]

To be more realistic, delete ‘struggles’ and insert ‘fails totally’. The bottom line is that part-time unpredictable electricity supplies are of strictly limited use to modern industrial economies dependent on continuous and adequate – preferably affordable – power for their survival and prosperity. Granted, lignite is not a great choice of fuel but something has to be used to keep the show on the road 24/7.

Coal showdown reflects government’s floundering shift to renewable power, says The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

Not far from Germany’s Rhine River, a fight to thwart giant excavators from grinding away what’s left of the 1,200-year-old Hambach forest came to a head this month as thousands of protesters faced off with police in a tense, and at times violent, showdown.

End of the road for solar panels on roadways?

Solar panel road [image credit: Wattway]

For several obvious reasons cited below, the conclusion should be that solar panels on road surfaces perform extremely poorly and are essentially an irrelevant waste of money. If the money has to be spent, putting the same amount of panels somewhere more suitable would be an easy improvement to make.
H/T Phys.org

Four years ago a viral campaign wooed the world with a promise of fighting climate change and jump-starting the economy by replacing tarmac on the world’s roads with solar panels, says Dylan Ryan at The Conversation.

The bold idea has undergone some road testing since then. The first results from preliminary studies have recently come out, and they’re a bit underwhelming.

California Dreaming: Push for 100% Wind & Solar Doomed to End in Costly Failure

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Apart from a major question of practicality, where’s the money supposed to come from for these ideologically driven policies?

Some citizens are already resisting…
California Climate Policies Facing Revolt from Civil-Rights Groups

STOP THESE THINGS

Renewable energy zealots talk about the ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future being ‘inevitable’. Except that the only thing inevitable about running on sunshine and breezes, is grid chaos and rocketing power prices. Ask a South Australian.

It is also what that crazy German Corporal with the funny moustache called a “big lie”: so helpful to the tyrant because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted and more readily fall victim to a colossal untruth, than the small lie.

The idea that a country can run itself entirely on wind and solar power is, of course, patent nonsense.

But, there are plenty profiting from that ideologically driven fiction, who have worked out that if you ramp up the claims to the height of ridiculousness, there are plenty of idiots ready to believe you.

California has done just that.

California cannot run on…

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Doomsday: New Energy Minister – Angus Taylor Declares War On Subsidises for Wind & Solar

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New Australian energy minister Taylor: ‘Something has gone terribly wrong’. Can’t argue with that.

[Note re. heading: ‘subsidises’ should read ‘subsidies’]

STOP THESE THINGS

Angus Taylor’s elevation to Energy Minister is the beginning of the end for subsidised wind and solar in Australia. And the merry mix of zealots and profiteers that people the anti-carbon dioxide industrial complex, surely know it.

As every history buff knows, the French Revolution kicked into gear when an angry mob overran the Bastille on 14 July 1789. But the fun and games didn’t really commence until Maximilian Robespierre launched his Reign of Terror. ‘The Terror’ was clearly a nervous time for those who had fallen out of favour with Robespierre and his revolutionaries. Old certainties and aristocratic manners gave way to the brutal efficiency of the guillotine, and the public squares in Paris were quickly filled with the panicked screams of condemned ‘aristos’ and anyone else deemed to be an apologist for the Bourbon King’s slights and tyrannies.

Sure, things got out of hand and way too bloody…

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Blow for France’s Macron as star minister quits – AFP

Ex environment minister Hulot

This is what you get for appointing a hardline ‘greenie’ to your government…

President Emmanuel Macron suffered a major political blow Tuesday as his popular environment minister resigned live on radio — without informing the French leader beforehand, reports AFP.

Nicolas Hulot, one of the most respected members of the cabinet among the French public, took even his interviewers by surprise on the France Inter radio station when announcing his move.

Electric cars: will any auto company make money?

Chinese electric car [image credit: scmp.com]

The author paints a bleak picture: ‘Hundreds of new car models chasing only five percent of the market is a recipe for financial debacle.’ High prices don’t help either.
H/T Heartland Freedom Pub / Washington Times

Tesla reported second quarter results earlier this month. Despite losing $718 million during the quarter, Tesla shares rose 16 percent on renewed promises of profitability.

Driven by government incentives and mandates, world automakers have announced big electric car introduction plans. But will any electric car firm be able to make money, asks Steve Goreham?

Automakers could be fined more than €14Bn for European CO2 excess emissions in 2021

With electric vehicles mostly failing to impress buyers, and diesel sales taking a nosedive, European car makers are running short of options to get anywhere near the arbitrary emissions targets imposed on them. Battering a successful industry that so many people depend on for transport and employment seems a strange, not to say crazy, policy in a competitive world.

New analysis by IHS Markit suggests that automakers failing to meet 2021 fleet CO2 emissions compliance for passenger vehicles sold in the European Union (EU) could be fined more than €14 billion (US$16 billion) in 2021, reports Green Car Congress.

Legislators in the European Union (EU) are imposing a new passenger car fleet CO2 emissions target of 95 g/km, to be phased in during 2020, with 100% application in 2021 on Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP).

The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction

Typical electric car set-up

As the worldwide ideological push to establish electric vehicles continues, all is not well in the world of lithium extraction and usage.

As the world scrambles to replace fossil fuels with clean energy, the environmental impact of finding all the lithium required could become a major issue in its own right, says Wired UK.

Here’s a thoroughly modern riddle: what links the battery in your smartphone with a dead yak floating down a Tibetan river?

The answer is lithium – the reactive alkali metal that powers our phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars.

Trump to California fuel standards: “You’re fired!”

Image credit: auto.ndtv.com

US Government efforts to bulldoze Americans into buying more electric cars seem to be over.

Driven by Green ideology, the Obama Administration set unrealistic fuel standards (a.k.a. “CAFE” rules) for cars sold in America, says CFACT.

Yesterday, the Trump Administration announced it is putting a freeze on their implementation before any serious damage is done.

Ever wonder where the 275 billion taxpayers money went that got poured down the EU carbon trading system hole?

Talkshop readers may remember a damning report by UBS about the billions of public money lost in the ETS carbon trading system. It calculated that if the money had been invested in modernising the European power generation fleet, CO2 could have been cut by 40% (and generate a huge number of high quality jobs). EU emissions rose 1.8% last year.

Despite all the recent turmoil over the UK steel industry and meetings in Brussels today, the reality is that the European Union has actually been subsidising the Chinese steel industry for years, in payments hidden amongst its efforts to combat Climate Change.

Using complex methods of carbon credits and carbon offsets, the EU devised rules on climate change ended up paying Chinese steel manufacturers billions to upgrade their steel mills and other energy intensive industry.

According to the analysis company, European Insights, almost €1.5 billion was paid to over 90 steel plants in China with the purpose of modernising them to consume less energy, and making the plants more efficient. Taken with the downturn in Chinese trade and the need for them to reduce world market prices to sell their product, the output of these mills has flooded onto the European market making steel products artificially cheap and endangering thousands of jobs in the UK. One plant alone, Anshan Iron and Steel, received a payment of €150 million to help pay for the installation of up to date equipment and replace the old inefficient Communist era machinery.

CFACT billboard — Russia funneled cash to Greens to cripple energy

June 21, 2018 by CFACT

CFACT’s kicked off a new billboard on busy I-10 in Louisiana which reads, “Russia funneled Green groups millions of dollars to oppose fracking & cripple American energy,” and asks, “How’s that for COLLUSION?”

The billboard campaign was spearheaded by CFACT’s Graham Beduze and Adam Houser.

Russia wants to reduce and eliminate competition to its energy exports with the goal of keeping prices high and the world, particularly Europe, dependent on Russian energy.

What better allies could Putin find but the free world’s network of Green pressure groups?

To accelerate climate action, citizens are suing governments

Case dismissed?

All this rests on the notion that humans can somehow tune the climate to their liking – whatever that may be – which of course has never been shown to be true. Are court cases and ‘rule books’ just the latest attempts to impose the will of one group in society, over everyone else? As this report says: ‘But such court battles are long, and often fail’. And ‘long’ often means expensive.

After climate talks in Bonn, many criticize outcomes as weak. Increasingly, concerned citizens see legal action as a path for climate action — a thousand climate lawsuits are currently active around the world, reports DW.com.

As climate negotiators return home after a two-week “intersessional” climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, their homework is only half finished. The COP24 annual climate conference, scheduled for December in Katowice, Poland, is supposed to decide a “rule book” for implementing the Paris Agreement.

But with so much at stake, there’s not nearly enough action, environmental activists say.

UK car industry on alert over ‘hybrid ban’

Toyota Prius [image credit: BBC]

UK political leaders are hopelessly hooked on climate dogma, leading to various strange decisions and economically damaging policies.

The SMMT trade body hits out after reports the government will target hybrids in a new emissions drive, says BBC News.

The UK’s car industry has hit out at the government over unconfirmed reports ministers will target hybrid vehicles as part of a new emissions crackdown.

New cars unable to do at least 50 miles on electric power may be banned by 2040, a ruling that would hit the UK’s best-selling hybrid, Toyota’s Prius.

Ireland faces annual EU energy fines of €600m

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The EU demands that Ireland disfigures its coasts with wind turbines, or pay extortionate fines for failing to do so.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

More lunacy from the EU:

From the Independent:

Ireland faces annual EU energy fines of €600m

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Ireland faces fines of €600m a year from the EU for failing to meet renewable energy targets and cutting carbon emissions by 2020.

New, more ambitious targets for 2030 do not let Ireland off the hook for the 2020 measures, it has emerged.

A report for the Dáil Public Accounts Committee, which calculated the potential fines within two years, said they will be a matter for the European Court of Justice to impose.

Irish EU Commissioner Phil Hogan said there was confusion in some quarters that the 2020 targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive would be merged into the more ambitious targets for 2030. This would give the Government some breathing space and lessen the risk of punitive fines.

“But that is not the case. The 2020 target must be adhered…

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Ed Hoskins: UK Weather Dependent Renewable Energy installations: Installed capacity, costs and output 2017

Introduction

This post is concerned with the two main forms of UK Weather Dependent Renewable Energy in the UK, Wind Power, (Onshore and Offshore), and on grid Photovoltaic Solar Power.  In the UK these amount to ~75% of all installed Weather Dependent Renewable Energy.  The other Renewable energy inputs are traditional Hydro power ~8% and the remainder are other sources such as biomass, waste and landfill gas amounting to ~17%.

The capacity percentage, or load factor, of any power generating installation is calculated as the actual electrical output achieved annually divided by the nominal maximum Nameplate output.  This article uses the real measures of capacity reported in up to date time series data of UK Renewable installations.  It thus provides reasonably correct comparisons of the efficacy of Weather Dependent Renewables as is reported annually by the Renewable Energy Foundation in the UK.
 

Climate-industrial complex wasting £100 billion and shutting down debate – warns Lilley

Credit: Fenbeagle

H/T The GWPF

Former Trade and Industry Minister, Peter Lilley warns that vested interests in the renewables industry, politicians of all parties, the bureaucracy and academia have together largely suppressed debate about their reckless waste of public money exposed by the government’s own Review of the Cost of Energy by Dieter Helm.

In a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Peter Lilley highlights Professor Dieter Helm’s devastating critique, outlined in the Cost of Energy Review which was commissioned by the government.

“Helm shows that the Climate Change Act objective of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide could have been met for a fraction of the £100 billion so far committed, which has already raised the cost of energy by 20%.”

Renewables Rush Sends Germans Back to the Dark Ages: Blackouts Now Part of Daily Life

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Germans are supposed to understand engineering but that doesn’t seem to apply to their leaders, at least where ideological obsession is a factor.
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Talkshop link: Diesel generators installed in South Australia

STOP THESE THINGS

Mutti Merkel’s suicidal obsession with sun &
wind sends Germans to a New Dark Age.

Renewable energy zealots keep ranting about the ‘inevitable transition’ to wind and solar power. The only thing inevitable about it, is rocketing power prices and routine blackouts.

If you don’t believe us, ask a German, South Australian or a Victorian.

All three have been hijacked by lunatics, obsessed with nature’s wonder fuels, the sun and wind; all three suffer retail power prices which are the highest in the world (or in Victoria’s case, rocketing in that direction); and all three have suffered, and will continue to suffer, mass blackouts and routine load shedding, simply because they’re attempting the impossible.

If the tech-savvy Germans can’t make wind and solar power work (despite trillions of euros in subsidies), it’s a pretty fair bet that this wholly weather-dependent nonsense isn’t going to work anywhere on…

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Green flop: Germany is missing its European climate targets

German Chancellor Merkel surveys an offshore wind site [image credit: evwind.es]

Will this failure persuade the media to stop pretending Germany’s energy policy is a shining example to the rest the world? Probably not, as yet more financial pain for its taxpayers awaits, thanks to climate obsessions.
H/T The GWPF.

BERLIN—Germany is missing its European climate targets and will have to pay for rights to emit greenhouse gases due to polluting vehicles, farms and buildings, the government said Wednesday, an embarrassing admission for Chancellor Angela Merkel who had once put energy transformation at the forefront of her policies.

Germany will have to purchase greenhouse gas emissions allowances for the years 2019 and 2020 from other European Union members, an environmental ministry spokesman said.