Kennebec Journal editorial board: Transmission lines are key to our clean energy future
The scientific community was amazed this week by news of a breakthrough in the generation of power from nuclear fusion, long one of the holy grails of renewable energy.
It’s an exciting development. Maybe one day, fusion sources will be part of a robust mix supplying all the clean energy we need.
But that day won’t be any time soon.
Fortunately, in order to reach our goals, it doesn’t have to be. Just by harnessing the power of the sun and the wind using the technology available now, we can reduce the use of fossil fuels and make great strides toward climate goals while reducing prices for consumers.
Unfortunately, to do so, we’ll have to build more transmission lines — something that at times has proved just as vexing as nuclear fusion to achieve.
Mainers know this well from the saga of the New England Clean Energy Connect project, proposed by the state of Massachusetts as a way to bring hydropower from Canada to the regional power grid, essentially replacing some fossil fuel use.
The project, met with opposition by both the people who live along the route of the proposed transmission line and the natural gas companies poised to lose revenue because of it, is now mired in court challenges.
It’s not just happening here. Only 386 miles of transmission line were built in the entire U.S. in 2020, down from 1,702 the year before and more than 3,500 miles in 2013. For reasons largely to do with disagreement about land use and aesthetic concerns, dozens of utility-scale clean-power projects have been delayed or blocked by local opposition.
That’s a problem. Unlike gas-fired power plants, which can be placed nearly anywhere, solar arrays and wind turbines must go where the wind blows and the sun shines. Transmission lines then carry the power to the grid.
As Maine has seen with the NECEC project, or with the debate over how to connect offshore wind power to land, that can be a tough sell.
And it’s not just local opposition that can sink a project. With approval needed from several state, regional and federal authorities, there are plenty of points along the way where a clean-energy project can be waylaid.
While the future of NECEC plays out in court, Maine will have another chance to bring a significant amount of carbon-free electricity to the grid.
If approved, the King Pine wind farm, likely through a partnership between Maine and Massachusetts, would be built near Houlton. It would generate enough electricity to power 450,000 homes “at full tilt” and would save Maine ratepayers an estimated $1.08 billion over 20 years as cheaper wind power replaces electricity generated by fossil fuels.
It would also finally connect Aroostook County to the New England grid through a transmission line running along a yet-to-be-determined route to Pittsfield, opening the way for additional clean energy projects up north, and fulfilling a longstanding economic goal for the region.
Will those benefits be enough to get the project over the line?
When it comes to the transition to an economy run on clean energy, one without the emissions, pollution and volatile prices we have today, that is the biggest question out there.
Utility-scale solar and wind projects are producing clean electricity at lower cost than carbon-emitting power plants and, once online, those costs stay constant, regardless of what happens around the globe.
Along the same lines, electric vehicles and heating systems are now as affordable and efficient, if not more so, than their counterparts. Rooftop solar also is in reach for many people, and pays off in the long run. The main factors holding them back are no longer technological, but have to do with supply chain challenges, labor shortages and opposition to development.
Solving them may not require quantum physics, but it will take a concerted effort at all levels of government to both streamline the approval process and train more workers in the renewable energy sector. The Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier this year includes groundbreaking incentives for the clean energy transition, and will help create the domestic supply chain necessary to speed it up.
Continue reading:
https://www.centralmaine.com/2022/12/18/our-view-transmission-lines...
*************************************
Fair Use Notice: This website may reproduce or have links to copyrighted material the use of which has not been expressly authorized by the copyright owner. We make such material available, without profit, as part of our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, economic, scientific, and related issues. It is our understanding that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided by law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Views: 108
Comment
-
Comment by Richard McDonald/Saving Maine on December 19, 2022 at 4:45pm
-
All the happy talk and salivating promotion around the 1000MW Long Pine Wind Farm and LG transmission corridor is more propaganda from the the developer formerly known as First Wind - you all remember First Wind? Nothing close to annual output of 1000MW will ever be produced no matter how massive the turbines. I suspect they'll be in the 650 ft to tip range - as big as you can get for land based use. Even something that massive given the average wind resource at their location is going to render at best 35% maybe on a very windy day in January/February 40% production. So Troy Jackson and the rest of the knuckleheads in Augusta, the climate zealots in Mass and ISONE believe it's justified for the sake of the planet and the developers wallet to spend $4 billion dollars for 350-400MW. The big question will be just how much of this outrageous scam will be forced down the throats of the Maine ratepayer? We shall see.
-
-
These pundits need to take a trip to Germany, the UK, and other EU countries to witness the devastating results of their lunatic green agenda. With the sabotage of the Nordstream II pipeline, Germany's economy is inching ever closer to collapse. Energy costs have skyrocketed, citizens are living without heat and lights as intermittent rolling blackouts plague a once global industrial powerhouse. Major industries are moving to more energy secure and cost effective countries like India and China. The UK has plunged into an energy crisis, forced to return to coal fired power plants as the vaunted wind power sector fails. Energy costs have risen by 1000% with the coldest months of the year just ahead. All this because the globalist and their climate zealots are in control. Next will be food production which is on the chopping block due to restrictions on nitrogen emissions - a total lie and farce. The Netherlands has mandated the forced sale of 3000 farms. Germany has banned fertilizer use. Fertilizer production in Europe has cratered due to excessive natural gas prices and shuttered plants. All these moves are being perpetrated by the climate zealots backed by the World Economic Forum and the UN Climate Agenda 2030. And this is not staying the the EU - it will be here soon. Prepare for it.
-
Comment by Dan McKay on December 19, 2022 at 3:30pm
-
How to Make Wind and Solar Affordable in a World That Runs on Fossil Fuels.
BlackRock's iShares heads Investopedia's list of the largest ETF (exchange traded funds) providers.
Most people are bewildered by what is a global energy crisis, with prices for oil, gas and coal simultaneously soaring and even forcing closure of major industrial plants such as chemicals or aluminum or steel. The Biden Administration and EU have insisted that all is because of Putin and Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. This is not the case. The energy crisis is a long-planned strategy of western corporate and political circles to dismantle industrial economies in the name of a dystopian Green Agenda. That has its roots in the period years well before February 2022, when Russia launched its military action in Ukraine.
Blackrock pushes ESG
In January, 2020 on the eve of the economically and socially devastating covid lockdowns, the CEO of the world’s largest investment fund, Larry Fink of Blackrock, issued a letter to Wall Street colleagues and corporate CEOs on the future of investment flows. In the document, modestly titled “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance”, Fink, who manages the world’s largest investment fund with some $7 trillion then under management, announced a radical departure for corporate investment. Money would “go green.” In his closely-followed 2020 letter Fink declared,
“In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant re-allocation of capital…Climate risk is investment risk.” Further he stated, “Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change.” [i]
In a separate letter to Blackrock investor clients, Fink delivered the new agenda for capital investing. He declared that Blackrock will exit certain high-carbon investments such as coal, the largest source of electricity for the USA and many other countries. He added that Blackrock would screen new investment in oil, gas and coal to determine their adherence to the UN Agenda 2030 “sustainability.”
Fink made clear the world’s largest fund would begin to disinvest in oil, gas and coal. “Over time,” Fink wrote, “companies and governments that do not respond to stakeholders and address sustainability risks will encounter growing skepticism from the markets, and in turn, a higher cost of capital.” He added that, “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects… we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.” [ii]
From that point on the so-called ESG investing, penalizing CO2 emitting companies like ExxonMobil, has become all the fashion among hedge funds and Wall Street banks and investment funds including State Street and Vanguard. Such is the power of Blackrock. Fink was also able to get four new board members in ExxonMobil committed to end the company’s oil and gas business.
The January 2020 Fink letter was a declaration of war by big finance against the conventional energy industry. BlackRock was a founding member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (the TCFD) and is a signatory of the UN PRI— Principles for Responsible Investing, a UN-supported network of investors pushing zero carbon investing using the highly-corrupt ESG criteria—Environmental, Social and Governance factors into investment decisions. There is no objective control over fake data for a company’s ESG. As well Blackrock signed the Vatican’s 2019 statement advocating carbon pricing regimes. BlackRock in 2020 also joined Climate Action 100, a coalition of almost 400 investment managers managing US$40 trillion.
With that fateful January 2020 CEO letter, Larry Fink set in motion a colossal disinvestment in the trillion-dollar global oil and gas sector. Notably, that same year BlackRock’s Fink was named to the Board of Trustees of Klaus Schwab’s dystopian World Economic Forum, the corporate and political nexus of the Zero Carbon UN Agenda 2030. In June 2019, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations signed a strategic partnership framework to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. WEF has a Strategic Intelligence platform which includes Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
In his 2021 CEO letter, Fink doubled down on the attack on oil, gas and coal. “Given how central the energy transition will be to every company’s growth prospects, we are asking companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy,” Fink wrote. Another BlackRock officer told a recent energy conference, “where BlackRock goes, others will follow.” [iii]
In just two years, by 2022 an estimated $1 trillion has exited investment in oil and gas exploration and development globally. Oil extraction is an expensive business and cut-off of external investment by BlackRock and other Wall Street investors spells the slow death of the industry.
Biden—A BlackRock President?
Early in his then-lackluster Presidential bid, Biden had a closed door meeting in late 2019 with Fink who reportedly told the candidate that, “I’m here to help.” After his fateful meeting with BlackRock’s Fink, candidate Biden announced, “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels…” In December 2020, even before Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, he named BlackRock Global Head of Sustainable Investing, Brian Deese, to be Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council. Here, Deese, who played a key role for Obama in drafting the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, has quietly shaped the Biden war on energy.
This has been catastrophic for the oil and gas industry. Fink’s man Deese was active in giving the new President Biden a list of anti-oil measures to sign by Executive Order beginning day one in January 2021. That included closing the huge Keystone XL oil pipeline that would bring 830,000 barrels per day from Canada as far as Texas refineries, and halting any new leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Biden also rejoined the Paris Climate Accord that Deese had negotiated for Obama in 2015 and Trump cancelled.
The same day, Biden set in motion a change of the so-called “Social Cost of Carbon” that imposes a punitive $51 a ton of CO2 on the oil and gas industry. That one move, established under purely executive-branch authority without the consent of Congress, is dealing a devastating cost to investment in oil and gas in the US, a country only two years before that was the world’s largest oil producer.[iv]
Killing refinery capacity
Even worse, Biden’s aggressive environmental rules and BlackRock ESG investing mandates are killing the US refinery capacity. Without refineries it doesn’t matter how many barrels of oil you take from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In the first two years of Biden’s Presidency the US has shut down some 1 million barrels a day of gasoline and diesel refining capacity, some due to covid demand collapse, the fastest decline in US history. The shutdowns are permanent. In 2023 an added 1.7 million bpd of capacity is set to close as a result of BlackRock and Wall Street ESG disinvesting and Biden regulations. [v]
Citing the heavy Wall Street disinvestment in oil and the Biden anti-oil policies, the CEO of Chevron in June 2022 declared that he doesn’t believe the US will ever build another new refinery.[vi]
Larry Fink, Board member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, is joined by the EU whose President of the EU Commission, the notoriously corrupt Ursula von der Leyen left the WEF Board in 2019 to become EU Commission head. Her first major act in Brussels was to push through the EU Zero Carbon Fit for 55 agenda. That has imposed major carbon taxes and other constraints on oil, gas and coal in the EU well before the February 2022 Russian actions in Ukraine. The combined impact of the Fink fraudulent ESG agenda in the Biden administration and the EU Zero Carbon madness is creating the worst energy and inflation crisis in history.
Weblink:
https://americafirstreport.com/how-blackrock-investment-fund-trigge...
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********
(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
Not yet a member?
Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?
We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"It's not whether you get knocked down: it's whether you get up."
Vince Lombardi
Task Force membership is free. Please sign up today!
Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
© 2024 Created by Webmaster.
Powered by
You need to be a member of Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine to add comments!
Join Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine