Mark Mills—EPOCH TIMES

February 23, 2022 Updated: March 8, 2022
Commentary
The world, we’re told, is not only undergoing an “energy t***sition,” but an “accelerating” one.
Except it’s not.
This isn’t to suggest that there’s anything false in all of the headlines about record increases in electric car sales, huge plans for more solar and wind installations, or massive government spending and mandates to effect an “energy t***sition.” That’s all true. But a rapid t***sition away from traditional energy just isn’t visible in the data. Oil, natural gas, and coal supply 84 percent of global energy. That share has shrunk by a mere 2 percentage points over the past two decades. And that’s after more than $5 trillion being spent by governments in pursuit of avoiding f****l f**ls, along with endless admonitions and mandates in the age of “climate awareness.”
Burning wood still supplies civilization far more energy than all of the world’s solar panels. Oil still fuels nearly 97 percent of all of the world’s t***sportation. Crop-derived liquids supply most of the rest, with electric vehicles (EV) striving to reach a 1 percent share of that energy sector. And as economies climb out of recession, f****l f**l use has taken off and is already past or close to pre-lockdown levels. That’s with commerce, driving, and especially global air travel yet to fully recover.
But now, from Washington to Brussels, policymakers and pundits propose spending far more—many trillions of dollars more—to accelerate the goal of avoiding f****l f**ls. Everyone knows why: the climate. Debating the science behind the why is a separate subject. But the how is about energy domains, a subject with very settled physics. Set aside the cost of forcing a faster t***sition—which is a lot to set aside—the t***sition narrative ignores two big wild cards.
Building the hardware for t***sition aspirations will require an unprecedented increase in global mining at scales almost certainly unachievable in the time frames proposed. And aside from the challenges in replacing existing uses for f****l f**ls, t***sitionists fail to account for huge growth in energy demands that will yet come from the kinds of emerging innovations that everyone wants.
Engineers have long known that in order to deliver the same amount of energy as hydrocarbon-based machines, building solar or wind systems instead requires a tenfold increase in the use of common materials such as concrete, steel, and glass. And it requires far more than a tenfold increase in the use of specialty minerals and metals.
We’re approaching the second anniversary of a seminal report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that documented how just starting an “energy t***sition” will require the global supply of minerals—rare earth metals, nickel, copper, cobalt, lithium, and so forth—to increase to 4,000 percent from 700 percent.
As a World Bank study put it, the “technologies assumed to populate the clean energy shift … are in fact significantly more material intensive.” That may be the understatement of the century. Until now, that fact hasn’t mattered much because wind, solar, and batteries still account for only a few percentage points of global energy.
The world doesn’t have enough mines now operating or planned to meet such demand increases. Trying to supply such unprecedented quantities will stress global supply chains. In the world of commodities that t***slates into higher prices—inflation—for all of those minerals. That will make everything else built from those minerals more expensive, from home appliances to conventional cars and computers. It also will inflate the price tag for an energy t***sition because raw materials account for 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost to manufacture both solar panels and batteries.
Contrary to claims about inevitable, continual, and rapid declines in the cost of the machinery needed to pursue the t***sition, mineral commodity inflation has already slowed and has even reversed price trends.
The year 2021 saw a mere 6 percent decline in average lithium battery prices, a dramatic slowdown from the decadal trend. Battery prices are forecast to rise in 2022. One of China’s largest EV makers has already raised sticker prices. Higher commodity costs have pushed solar module prices up by nearly 50 percent since 2020. Wind turbine manufacturers are struggling to make any profits in an already “thin margin” business because of higher materials costs, and forecasts now see turbine prices rising by 10 percent in the coming year.
It bears noting that China is the largest source for a majority of the essential energy materials. The United States depends on imports (pdf) for 100 percent of 17 minerals and for more than 50 percent of 28 others.
Plenty of minerals exist under U.S. soil. But proposals to build mines in the United States, and increasingly everywhere, meet fierce opposition, if not outright bans. The Biden administration recently canceled a proposed copper and nickel mine in northern Minnesota. This was after years of delays and navigating through a maze of regulations. Many of the people who want more solar panels and electric cars are the same ones who oppose mining.
As for the ultimate goal of replacing all hydrocarbons—rather than just a bigger fraction of them—consider a Geological Survey of Finland study. Researchers calculated that the aggregate quantity of minerals needed to meet that goal would be greater than not only than all planned mining, but greater than all of the known global reserves of the minerals needed.
Of course, future innovations will moderate mineral demands. But in these realms, efficiency gains of 10 percent or so are hard-won. To make a meaningful reduction in material intensity would require efficiency leaps of tenfold in solar, wind, and battery technologies. Such gains aren’t even theoretically feasible (pdf).
Aside from ignoring these physical and economic realities regarding materials, the aspirants of a t***sition underestimate how much more energy the world would need. The future won’t only have more people, but also more innovations. Entrepreneurs are far better at inventing new ways to use energy than to produce it.
It’s obvious, but worth stating: Before the invention of automobiles, airplanes, pharmaceuticals, or computers, there was no energy needed to build or power them. The future will have billions more people who will be more prosperous and want what others already have—from better medical care to vacations and cars.
More than 80 percent of air travel is for personal purposes. That’s 2 billion barrels of oil per year, essentially for fun. And more than 80 percent of the world’s population has yet to take a single flight.
In the United States, there are about 80 cars for every 100 citizens. In most of the world, it’s about five cars per 100 citizens.
Hospitals use 250 percent more energy per square foot than average commercial buildings. And drug manufacturing is far more energy-intensive than fabricating cars or aircraft.
The global information infrastructure—the cloud—uses twice as much electricity as the entire country of Japan, and the former is expanding at a torrid pace.
The semiconductor industry—at the core of today’s supply chain stresses—plans to spend $300 billion building new manufacturing plants over the next few years. Those additional plants alone will use twice as much electricity as the country of Denmark.
These are the known trends. While we can’t predict the future, we can predict that there will be more innovation—robots, drones, metaverse, augmented reality, cryptocurrencies, quantum computers, biotechnology, and things not yet imagined.
Energy is embodied in each and every single thing that makes life worth living—not just surviving, but improving safety, comforts, conveniences, and even beauty.
We’re going to need every form of supply, not just the new or old.
Even the IEA’s most optimistic t***sition roadmap—one that imagines all nations spending vastly more on such a t***sition than any do now or even propose to do—still has a world in 2050 consuming more f****l f**ls than in the year 2000. Global energy t***sitions are very, very slow. There won’t be a t***sition eliminating hydrocarbons for a long, long time.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Mark Mills
Mark P. Mills is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and partner in the Montrose Lane energy-tech venture fund. He served as chairman and CTO of ICx Technologies and helped take it public. Mark also served in the Reagan White House Science Office and was an experimental physicist and development engineer in microprocessors and fiber optics.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/18/the-democrats-are-trying-to-hide-a-very-dirty-secret-about-electric-cars-n2604719

The Democrats Are Trying to Hide a Very Dirty Secret About Electric Cars
Matt Vespa

Pretty obvious that our leaders are in the CCPs pocket…..yes? Xo, Kerry, Pilosi, Buttjudge, just to name a few….have siphoned cash from China. Why wouldn’t our leaders want us to drive EVs. It’s not about the climate at all.
The Left views electric cars like the Rings of Power. It’s predictable but also pathetic. Driving electric cars saves the environment, says the left-wing drone. It emits next to nothing regarding carbon emissions, except that it does. Do liberals think we don’t know that this whole fad is a con game? Where do you think the energy that powers the batteries comes from? Fairies? Electric cars aren’t as efficient as gas-powered vehicles, but you pay more because…of feelings. Screw that. G***n e****y is a backdoor to c*******m from greenies who talk more about controlling the means of production than saving Mother Earth. Clean energy is a grift and political crony project aimed at giving fat cat donors tax breaks. Solyndra forever ruined this industry. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s all a long miserable exercise in subsidizing sub-par products.

Coal is what powers your electric car. Do liberals even know that? The very people who mock states like West Virginia don’t seem to know that these areas allow them to drive their precious, overpriced electric cars (via The Federalist):

To advance their climate agenda and deflect backlash about rising gas prices, Democrats are telling Americans that driving electric cars is for the greater good of the environment, fully knowing the charging stations for these cars are not f****l f**l free.

In reality, one of Tesla’s Supercharger stations was reported to get 13 percent of their energy from natural gas and 27 percent from coal. Power plants burn coal to generate electricity to power electric cars and emit a higher f****l f**l footprint than the left would care to admit.

While these vehicles may be falsely advertised, many who invest in these overpriced cars are able to avoid paying the currently outrageous gas prices. Still, Americans’ growing reliance on electric cars and the batteries they require will increase our dependence on countries such as China for materials.

“Chinese companies, particularly CATL, have secured vast supplies of the raw materials that go inside the batteries,” The New York Times reported in December. “That dominance has stirred fears in Washington that Detroit could someday be rendered obsolete, and that Beijing could control American driving in the 21st century the way that oil-producing nations sometimes could in the 20th.”

By increasing our use of electric cars, the United States will require more lithium batteries and will further rely on China to sustain our supply.

Well, isn’t that peachy. Liberals seem to have the yellow fever when it comes to China, or at least they’re a bit kinky when it comes to their wanting to be dominated by this country. Gas prices began to soar when Joe Biden took a hatchet to the Keystone Pipeline and our own oil and gas industry. That’s just a fact.

With the Ukraine war raging now, and sanctions being slapped on Russia for their invasion, the line the Biden White House is selling right now is ‘if you worried about $8/gallon for gas, you should buy a…$50k+ electric car.’ It’s almost too good to be true. You cannot make it up. The Democrats’ plan to ease gas price pain for a large swath of Americans is to force them to buy vehicles they can’t afford. A part of that is due to liberals being i***ts. The other part is that it shows how the Democratic Party doesn’t know working people anymore. It’s all urban-based, rich, over-educated, and very white people making these snide remarks. The professional Left is the Democratic Party—and these people view those who drive pick-up trucks as neo-N**is.

The dirty little secret is that a lot of f****l f**ls are used to power the liberal delusions behind their electric car fetish. The Federalist did a great job sifting through the nonsense.

I've been reading up on Putin's history regarding attacks and how he operates. This idea of hammering the civilian population and turning cities into rubble is nothing new for him, and it has always involved the terror of chemical weapons attacks at some point.

Since he is obviously waging the war on civilians in the Ukraine, and he is not having very good results with breaking the fight out of them, chemical weapons will be a go to thing for him, and obviously he will try to go with the doubt that it was not Russia, but the Ukraine that did this.

This invasion is different from the other wars he has been involved in in which there were already serious conflicts to play a role in. Russia was not at war with Russia in the typical sense, and if anything the conflicts that existed with breakaway regions were fueled and driven by Russia.

This will come down to misinformation and lies about who uses chemical weapons, and in this case it would take stupidly ignorant people that already heavily empathize with Putin's positions to even begin to believe that the Ukraine would resort to chemical weapons.

The US and NATO in regards to this issue should tell Putin in advance that should chemical weapons be used there will be an immediate and direct response...and that would include a terrorist attack on Chernobyl, which Russia has control and responsibility for.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/video-line-of-teslas-wait-to-charge?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220316Trending-Teslas&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News

"Curious, I pulled over and asked the guy how long it took to charge — he said normally 30 min[utes] but these stations are running slow due to demand so it’s over an hour per car," she continued, adding, "Take a look at this line ... Each car is over an hour to charge."

scroll down for the video

You are spot the heck on!
Mike

Theoretically, if biden with all of his anti fossil morons were to get their way by completely shutting down every buit og our energy, what do you all think will happen? I can answer that question. Every single progressive l*****t will be screaming for and answer as to why they do not have the every day life perks that they and the rest of us common sense people once had! Ideas are perfectly fine but when you throw everything out the window and forget that the window is closed, it shatters right? Morons a plenty for sure. It really is like kicking yourself in the balls just to see how it feels. Besides, I really cant see the progressive left willing to give up all of their creature comforts in order to see experience their stupidity up close and personal.
Mike

https://youtu.be/6X0ttHdNsuo