“The tendency to exaggerate the appeal of renewables is hardly new…. Except that renewables seem to fare poorly in the real world.”
“The much-hyped ‘mass market’ Tesla Model 3 is still appearing only in the more expensive versions, from $50,000 to $85,000, rather than the $35,000 promised sticker price that was promised to appeal to the average consumer, not the luxury car driver.”
Yet another study has appeared warning of peak fossil fuel demand, which is certainly a popular topic with the media as the heavy fire season in the Southwest and hot European summer convince many that global warming is more threatening (and urgent) than it appeared to be last summer.
Unfortunately, this attention is not the result of reasoned analysis so much as the sexiness of the issue—at least in the minds of the public and the media.…
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060071515
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Continue Reading“Government agencies are easily born, but they never seem to die. Rarely do they even fade away. But at 5 P.M. today the Government’s Synthetic Fuels Corporation closed its doors forever.”
– “U.S. Synthetic Fuel Corporation Shuts Down,” New York Times, April 19, 1986, p. 46.
Only occasionally in U.S. energy history has a government energy agency disbanded. Almost all have been after wartime when bureaucracies were disbanded (such as World War II’s U.S. Petroleum Administration for War).
The demise of the United States Synthetic Fuels Corporation (SFC) in 1986 was a rarity. Established under the Energy Security Act of 1980, and called by President Jimmy Carter “the cornerstone of U.S. energy policy,” the SFC was premised on a belief in the increasing scarcity of crude oil and natural gas–and thus the need to turn coal into (synthetic) oil and gas.…
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