Starting To Notice That The Energy Transition Is Not Happening

Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates. Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real?

No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is obvious and easily tracked. But a code of silence has enveloped the progressive media, commanding that no one is allowed to notice.

A small crack in the wall of silence suddenly happened in the New York Times on March 14. The front page article had the headline “A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals.” The gist is that various sources of new electricity demand are rapidly emerging, from data centers to EVs to AI. Demand for electricity is starting to rise, but wind and solar generators can’t be added to the grid fast enough to fulfill this demand. And thus utilities are starting to add large numbers of new natural gas plants.

The Times provides this chart of the recent history of electricity demand in the U.S., with a projection for the next decade:

Demand has been flat for fifteen years, but now looks about to surge. From the Times:

To meet spiking demand, utilities in states like Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia are proposing to build dozens of power plants over the next 15 years that would burn natural gas. In Kansas, one utility has postponed the retirement of a coal plant to help power a giant electric-car battery factory.

So why not just build a bunch of new wind turbines and solar panels?

Some utilities say they need additional fossil fuel capacity because cleaner alternatives like wind or solar power aren’t growing fast enough and can be bogged down by delayed permits and snarled supply chains. While a data center can be built in just one year, it can take five years or longer to connect renewable energy projects to the grid and a decade to build some of the long-distance power lines they require. Utilities also note that data centers and factories need power 24 hours a day, something wind and solar can’t do alone.

I like that last line about wind and solar not being able to provide “power 24 hours a day” by themselves. Finally, somebody has noticed.

And the Times even has figured out that something about this might be inconsistent with the government’s ridiculous “climate” pledges:

Burning more gas and coal runs counter to President Biden’s pledge to halve the nation’s planet-warming greenhouse gases and to generate all of America’s electricity from pollution-free sources such as wind, solar and nuclear by 2035.

Other than that one sentence, the Times piece is noticeably devoid of any quantitative information on what promises have been made by the U.S. as to “greenhouse gas” emissions, and on what progress has been made toward achieving those promises. However, here at Manhattan Contrarian we know that the information to answer those questions can be found easily. So let’s take a look at it.

The two main pledges as to GHG emissions that the U.S. has supposedly made to the international community are:

• In the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 (when Barack Obama was President), the U.S. pledged to reduce GHG emissions by 26-28%, from 2005 levels, by 2026.

• At a World Climate Summit on April 22 (“Earth Day”), 2021, President Joe Biden pledged to reduce U.S. GHG emissions, from 2005 levels, by 50-52% by 2030.

And how is progress going toward those pledges? The EPA puts out an annual Report titled “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks.” The most recent such Report came out on February 14, 2024, and contains information through the year 2022. Here is the summary chart of numbers:

Total U.S. “gross” emissions were 6,341.2 MMTCO2e in 2022, compared to 7,488.2 MMTCO2e in 2005. That’s a decrease of 1147.0 MMTCO2e, or 15.3%. But notice in the two most recent years reported, the emissions went up rather than down.

Today, the pledge date of the Paris Climate Agreement, 2026, is only two years away, and we’re barely half way toward the goal. Moreover, most of the supposed “progress” has been achieved by closing coal power plants and replacing them with natural gas, a process that is now nearly complete. There are almost no coal plants left to close. And now electricity demand is rising and utilities are looking to build more natural gas plants. The 2026 pledge will never be achieved.

And the 2030 pledge is even more ridiculous.

Here is a chart from page 2-29 of EPA’s Report showing trends in U.S. GHG emissions by economic sectors:

As you can see, the large majority of the decreases in emissions achieved since 2005 have been in the electric power sector. A chart with numbers on the same page of the Report says that emissions in the electric power sector went down from 2457.4 MMTCO2e in 2005 to 1574.7 MMTCO2e in 2022. That’s a decline of 882.7 MMTCO2e since 2005 in this sector alone, representing 76.9% of the decline in emissions achieved over all sectors.

But if the remaining annual emissions from the electric power sector are only 1574.7 MMTCO2e, then that is all the further reduction in emissions that can possibly be achieved in that sector, even if all production of electricity by fossil fuels has been completely eliminated. If those 1574.7 MMTCO2e of emissions are eliminated tomorrow by closing down every single fossil fuel power plant, then the 2022 total national emissions of 6341.2 MMTCO2e would go down to 4766.5 MMTCO2e — not even close to the 3744.1 MMTCO2e (that is, 50% of 7488.2) that Biden supposedly committed us to by 2030.

And how about all those other sectors where emissions have barely budged since 2005? Nothing is going to change. Have you noticed any move away from using aviation fuel for airplanes? Something other than fossil fuels for steelmaking? A move toward electric farm equipment? Yes, there are now some all-electric cars — but that trend is also starting to stall out.

On Monday, Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco — the world’s largest oil company — gave a speech in Houston where he said a bunch of obvious things that somehow other oil executives (from companies based in the U.S. and Europe) are unable to say. The speech was widely reported. Here is one report from CBC. Excerpt:

The head of the world's largest energy company on Monday urged the world to accept the "hard realities" that oil and natural gas will be around for a long time to come and consumption of both sources of energy is likely to grow for at least the next decade or two. . . . "We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions," he said. . . . "All this strengthens the view that peak oil and gas is unlikely for some time to come, let alone 2030," he said. "No one is betting the farm on that."

“Abandon the fantasy” — I couldn’t have said it better myself.