Ed. Note: This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. The complete Newsletter for this post can be found here.

Greed Energy Economics:
*** Bloomberg: Wind and solar will need subsidies indefinitely
US revises tax credit rule to help offshore wind projects

Unreliables (General):
*** “I Was Wrong About Renewables,” Says Former Green Energy Executive
*** Renewables will destroy America’s lifestyle back to the pre-1800’s – this is the Biden energy plan
*** The Coming Electricity Crisis
It’s Hailing on the Climate Crisis Green Energy Parade
Polish Farmers Stage 600 Protests in a Day Against EU Crippling Green Policies

Wind Energy — Offshore:
*** Conservative groups sue to stop Dominion VA offshore wind project
     Wind Project Sued Over Claimed Threat to Whales
*** Dominion Energy’s absurd reply to CFACT’s whale protection lawsuit

Wind Energy — Other:
*** Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change (referencing 60± studies)
*** Doctor: Infrasound From Wind Turbines Could Be ‘A Huge Threat to the Entire Biodiversity’
Can Wind Turbines Cause Developmental Deformities in Horses?…

“Senator Jesse Bjorkman is up against an army of eco-activists and lobbyists.  We Alaskans have the responsibility to hand down the legacy of an affordable and reliable energy system. A Renewable Portfolio Standard is not that.”

The Camel’s Nose metaphor goes: “Don’t allow even small malpractices, because they will grow big eventually.” Realized or not, the major malpractice in question at this very moment is Alaskans being forced into anti-energy “decarbonization.”

The political war against carbon dioxide (CO₂), the building block of life, has wreaked havoc on humanity throughout the world. The implementation of this decarbonization plan is the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). This post updates the issues and what can be done to save Alaska’s largest population center from political plunder. 

Background

In early 2022, Governor Mike Dunleavy introduced legislation for an RPS with the press release: “House Bill 301 and Senate Bill 179 will allow Alaska to join 30 states and two territories in creating a renewable portfolio standard in the Railbelt.…

“There are substantial environmental, technical, and cost challenges in using carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at the scale needed to significantly reduce global warming…. [that make it] unlikely that CDR could be implemented rapidly enough or at sufficient scale to entirely avoid dangerous levels of climate warming in the near term.” (Pro, public letter, February 27, 2023)

“The speculative possibility of future solar geoengineering risks becoming a powerful argument for industry lobbyists, climate denialists, and some governments to delay decarbonization policies.” (Con, open letter: January 17, 2022)

It is hard, contradictory, and hypocritical to be “green” as conventionally defined. I am reminded of a comment in the 1970s that noted “a general frustration generated by the energy crisis: every solution to the problem seems to create tremendous problems of its own.”…

Q. It’s been a year since your last MasterResource article. I know you recently retired from Spire, Inc., a St. Louis-based gas utility holding company you joined in 1994. What happened?

A. I was planning to retire for medical reasons anyway, but Spire beat me to it and that accelerated my retirement.

Q. But here you are still in the natural gas fight.

A.  I am very much still involved. I and a few other ex-gas utility ex-pats are starting a consulting group. Our objective is to become a technical resource for consumers and other entities that value and want to protect end-use alternatives to electricity. We want to be a technical alternative to NRDC (and its “useful idiots”). For now, we are going with the decidedly dull but to-the-point name of Gas End-Use Advocacy Group.