“Until last week, Richard Nixon was responsible for the two worst-conceived American energy policies. On June 1, Donald Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords displaced all competitors as the worst presidential initiative on energy in our nation’s history.”

– Hakes, “Quitting the Paris Climate Pact in Historical Perspective” (June 6, 2017)

“Historian Hakes got it exactly backwards. President Nixon violated economic law by imposing federal pricing on energy; President Trump removed an impetus to federal pricing for carbon-dioxide (CO2). Only if Trump had stayed in Paris would the Nixon analogy come into play.”

His bio line at Real Clear Energy reads: Jay Hakes is an energy historian who has worked for three presidents on energy issues. Experience aside, Mr. Hakes made just about the worst analogy possible regarding Donald Trump’s courageous decision to withdraw the United States from the redistributionist, toothless, ill-conceived Paris climate agreement.…

“Energy fundamentals explain why oil, gas, and coal brought an end to mankind’s renewable energy era. The same fundamentals explain why decreasing the market share of fossil fuels requires so much government intervention at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.”

The use of fossil fuels grew and remained widespread for several reasons. First, they are abundant. Vast amounts of living matter on the earth accumulated over eons of time. This accumulation, combined with the ever-active nature of the earth’s surface, meant that large volumes of ancient bio-matter were captured in the earth’s crust and transformed into fossil fuels.

Secondly, hydrocarbon compounds (those consisting mainly of carbon and hydrogen) are very chemically stable. Though these compounds might change form over long periods of time and under intense pressure and temperature beneath the earth’s surface, chemical stability preserves their inherent structure and subsequent energy content.…

“By eliminating wind and solar from the 2014–2035 projections, almost $3 trillion in capital costs would be saved globally without any significant loss in needed power generation capacity.”

Part 1 of this series (yesterday) provided an analysis of the global use of primary energy sources. It showed that in projections to 2035 the new renewables of industrial wind turbines and solar panels will provide only about 5 percent of our total primary energy consumption.

This post narrows the focus to the electricity sector where some primary energy sources, the so-called “clean” technologies (wind, solar, hydro and nuclear), are almost exclusively used. This indicates why this sector is the focus for much of the very questionable, ineffective ‘revolutionary’ changes being advocated today.

The trends in electricity-generation primary-energy use are much the same as in overall use, that is, fossil fuels dominate notably, to date and as projected to 2035, in spite of substantial future investments in new wind and solar plant implementation of almost $3 trillion.…

“Green energy is not so green after all. It reduces the supply of food, water and energy available to all life on earth, and it often consumes large amounts of hydrocarbon energy for its manufacture, construction, maintenance and backup.”

The earth has three significant sources of energy: Geothermal, combustible hydrocarbon minerals, and radiation/gravitational pull from the sun/moon.

Geothermal energy from Earth’s molten core and decaying radioactive minerals in Earth’s crust. This energy moves continents, powers volcanoes and its heat migrates towards the crust, warming the lithosphere and the deep oceans. It can be harvested successfully in favorable locations, and radioactive minerals can be extracted to provide large amounts of reliable heat for power generation.

Energy stored in combustible hydrocarbon minerals such as coal, oil, gas, tar sands and oil shale. These all store solar and geothermal energy collected eons ago and they are the primary energy sources supporting the modern world and its large and growing populations.…