Climate Change > Big Oil backing off on reducing production in favour of profits; Record number of Polar Bears in Churchill this year

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This is like a declaration of war on Justin Trudeau who is surrounded by environmentalists. This will blow up as a battle between Alberta's Premier, Danielle Smith, and Trudeau. Unfortunately, it's a good position for Trudeau to be in. 

Suncor has been too focused on energy transition,

must get back to fundamentals: CEO

'We win by creating value through our large integrated asset base underpinned by oilsands,'

Rich Kruger says

Amanda Stephenson · The Canadian Press · 

Posted: Aug 15, 2023 2:54 PM PDT | Last Updated: August 15

Rich Kruger is the chief executive of Suncor Energy. He had retired from the same position with Imperial Oil in 2019.

(Kyle Bakx/CBC)

The man hired to turn around the flagging fortunes of Suncor Energy Inc. said Tuesday he believes the company has been too focused in recent years on the energy transition and must get back to an oil-centred business strategy.

CEO Rich Kruger, who took the reins at the Calgary-based energy giant this spring, told analysts on a conference call that the company's board of directors agrees with him that a "revised direction and tone" at the company is necessary.

He said he believes Suncor must not neglect "the business drivers of today" in favour of future-focused, clean and low-carbon energy pursuits.

"We have a bit of a disproportionate emphasis on the longer-term energy transition," Kruger said, adding that while lower emissions energy is important, it is not what is going to make money for shareholders today.

"Today, we win by creating value through our large integrated asset base underpinned by oilsands."

Kruger, the former CEO of ExxonMobil's Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil Ltd., was lured out of retirement this year to lead a restructuring at Suncor in the wake of a spate of high-profile operational and financial challenges at the company.

His stated goal to refocus Suncor's efforts on its oilsands assets comes even as the company has publicly committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

'Squeezing every last drop of oil out of the ground'

His comments also come at the tail end of a summer in which global temperatures have soared to never-before-seen heights and wildfires exacerbated by climate change have wreaked devastation across the planet.

"It's good to hear a fossil fuel CEO being honest about their intentions — squeezing every last drop of oil out of the ground, even if it means cooking our climate and harming communities in the process," said Greenpeace Canada climate campaign head Laura Ullman.

But she added Kruger appears to be blindly doubling down on business as usual in the face of an increasingly urgent need to rapidly transition to renewable energy.

"It's hard to understand how anyone who has seen the absolute devastation of this summer's fires, floods and (oilsands) leaks could continue pushing for the expansion of fossil fuels," Ullman said in an email.

'Absolutely focusing on their short-term balance sheet'

Suncor is not alone in its strategy, said Duncan Kenyon, director of corporate engagement with shareholder advocacy group Investors for Paris Compliance. Ever since crude prices spiked in the aftermath of last year's Russian invasion of Ukraine, he added, energy companies have been laser-focused on maximizing profits from oil.

After all, what's a war for?

European energy giant Shell, for example, angered climate activists earlier this year by effectively abandoning its plan to cut oil production by 1 to 2 per cent per year until the end of the decade.

British energy giant BP has also scaled back its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in the wake of last year's record profits from oil, while ExxonMobil's CEO has boasted of "leaning in" to the petroleum products that are in demand today.

"(Suncor's move) is really consistent with where almost every major oil company globally is going," Kenyon said.

"They are all absolutely focusing on their short-term balance sheet performance."

Wind and solar assets sold off

Last year, Suncor sold off its wind and solar power assets, getting out of the renewable energy business it had been involved in for more than two decades.

Instead, the company said at the time, it would focus on advancing the development of low-carbon fuels (including sustainable jet fuel) as well as the commercial-scale deployment of carbon capture technology.

The company also increased its presence in Canada's oilsands this year, acquiring 100 per cent ownership of the Fort Hills oilsands mine in northern Alberta by buying out previous partners Teck Resources and TotalEnergies.

Suncor is a member of the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of Canadian oilsands companies that have all committed to net-zero by 2050 and have proposed working together to construct a massive carbon capture and storage transportation hub in northern Alberta to help reduce emissions from oilsands production.

Kruger said Tuesday the company remains committed to Pathways, adding the group is hoping to finalize talks with the federal and Alberta governments about a fiscal framework for carbon capture projects as early as this fall.

However, Kenyon said he thinks Suncor's focus on oil ignores the "demand erosion" risk the company faces as the pace of electric vehicle adoption picks up and buyers seek out lower-cost, lower-emission barrels in the future.

"They're trying to cash in, in the short-term," he said. "But I don't see any acknowledgment of the risk of doubling down on 'business as usual.' "

Job cuts

On Tuesday's conference call, Kruger said investors can expect to hear more on Suncor's new direction in the months to come. But he said already in the second quarter, the company has made "material progress" towards its new goal of focusing on the fundamentals.

In June, Suncor announced it would reduce its employee head count by 20 per cent, or 1,500 people, by the end of the year in order to eliminate unnecessary or "unaffordable" work.

As of Aug. 1, 535 of these job reductions have already occurred, Kruger said, resulting in a cost reduction of about $125 million so far.

"These actions, they aren't easy, and they certainly aren't taken lightly, but they are necessary for our competitiveness," he said.

$1.9B earned in Q2

Suncor said Tuesday it earned $1.88 billion in the second quarter of 2023, down from approximately $4 billion in the same period last year when oil prices were higher.

The Calgary-based energy giant says it took a $275-million restructuring charge in the quarter related to the previously announced job cut plans.

As a result of this restructuring charge, Suncor said its adjusted funds from operations for the three months ended June 30, 2023, amounted to $2.7 billion or $2.03 per share, compared to $5.3 billion or $3.80 per share in the prior year's quarter.

The company suffered a high-profile cybersecurity incident in June but said the breach did not have an effect on its financial results for the quarter.

Ten years ago, environmentalists were crying that polar bears would disappear from the Canadian North. This hysteria has been proven to be absurd, again.

Churchill on track for record number of polar bear reports

this season, conservation officers say

There have been 76 calls reporting polar bears this season, up from 18 last year

Bartley Kives · CBC News · 

Posted: Aug 16, 2023 3:00 AM PDT | 

Officials are getting more and more calls about polar bears around Churchill this summer. Ten conservation officers, Mounties and other officials recently put a heavily sedated 910-pound bear into an RCMP truck to move the animal to a temporary holding facility. (Submitted by the Government of Manitoba)

Conservation officers in Churchill, Man., say they're on track to respond to a record number of calls about polar bears wandering into the Hudson Bay town or just outside of it this season.

As of Aug. 15, Manitoba Conservation officers had responded to 76 calls about polar bears in and around Churchill and were forced to move three of the large carnivores into a holding facility east of the town.

That compares with 18 calls by the same date a year ago. And officers didn't have to capture, sedate and house any of those bears in the former military facility — a catch-and-release program that normally does not start until October.

"There are so many polar bears in and around the town of Churchill we are looking at record numbers this year and that's heavily influenced by where the last ice in the Hudson Bay melts," said Churchill conservation officer Chantal Maclean, speaking in her office on Tuesday.

During a regular spring, the estimated 616 polar bears who live along the western coast of Hudson Bay make landfall in many locations across several hundred kilometres of coastline, stretching from southeastern Nunavut to northwestern Ontario.

Only half the bears tagged by scientists usually spend their summers in Manitoba, Maclean said.

"This year, every single bear that we have tagged, except for four down in Ontario and one in Nunavut, is sitting right in Manitoba, which likely means we are going to have a very busy bear season."

Manitoba conservation officers Ian Van Nest and Chantal Maclean helped move the 910-pound polar bear west of the town of Churchill to a holding facility. The bear will be released to the wild in several weeks. (Submitted by the Government of Manitoba)

Churchill, unofficially known as the polar bear capital of the world, sits in the middle of a natural polar bear corridor. To the east of the town lies Wapusk National Park, which protects summer denning areas for the bears.

To the west of the town is Button Bay, which is often the first patch of Hudson Bay's western coastline to freeze up every fall.

During a normal season, polar bear reports pick up in the fall, allowing bears who are placed in the holding facility to remain there until freeze-up.

The three bears captured already this summer will be released after 30 days, Maclean said. The most recent guest in the facility was a 910-pound creature captured west of the town of Churchill on Aug. 8.

Conservation officers said they first try to shoo problem bears away from town in the direction of Button Bay, using shotgun shells packed with soft projectiles akin to bean bags or the noise and wind from helicopter rotors. 

If that doesn't work, polar bears are sedated and then driven or flown to the holding facility. It took 10 people to move the bear sedated on Aug. 8 into the flatbed of an RCMP truck.

The polar bear was moved to this holding facility east of Churchill, which now has three bears. 

Usually, the facility doesn't get any bears until October. (Bartley Kives/CBC)

"We are a predator coexistence program. It's a bad day for us when we have to go hands-on with a bear," Maclean said, adding she and her colleagues only move bears when they are in danger of becoming habituated to people or their food, or otherwise pose a threat to people, property or themselves.

"Down in Charleswood, where I'm from, you have a white-tailed deer walking down the street. Up here, you look out the window and you might see an 800-pound bear trying to get into your neighbour's window."

Minutes after she uttered those words, a call came in about a polar bear spotted by the beach behind Churchill's municipal complex. The previous week, a mother and her cub were observed swimming in the direction of three teens who were wading into Hudson Bay, said Ian Van Nest, the manager of Manitoba Conservation's Polar Bear Alert Team.

He and Maclean jumped into their trucks and made the short drive to the beach, where lifelong Churchill resident Alex Bennett said he spied a bear on the rocks.

He said bear sightings are so common this year, he can't enjoy the summer. 

"We used to go down to the Flats and have a picnic, you know? You can't even [expletive] do that any more, there's so many [expletive] bears," he said.

Van Nest and Maclean, however, could not locate the creature. Carrying shotguns, they walked on to the beach just to make sure no apex predators were hiding behind rocks.

Conservation officers Ian Van Nest and Chantal Maclean return from checking the beach behind Churchill's municipal complex. They were responding to a report of polar bear wandering into town but did not find one. At the same time, seven polar bears were being monitored near the shore of Hudson Bay, slightly east of the town. (Bartley Kives/CBC)

Back in his truck, Van Nest said his team is monitoring the progress of seven bears along the coast further to the east. As he drives in that direction, a cluster of vehicles full of rubber-necking tourists parked on the side of the road serves as a telltale sign at least one of those bears is nearby.

About 50 metres between the road and the bay, a roughly 440-pound bear is sunning herself on a rock. The tourists are behaving, remaining in their vans and pickup trucks. One has a camera with a telescopic lens as wide as a frisbee.

"We're for sure shaping up to be quite the season," Van Nest said. "We're going to have lots of calls, and it's only going to pick up in October and November."

Climate Change > Australia's Coal Mines Booming; Russia to Supply India With More Coal; EV Fire Risks Not Being Addressed

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Australia is making the most out of the COAL BOOM

16 Oct, 2021 06:49

©  Kelly Lacy / Pexels

Australia continues to back its coal industry as many Western nations have turned their back on the dirtiest fossil fuel, approving a third coal mine extension in a month and bolstering partnerships for long-term coal exports.

We already know the demand is there, with China requiring increasing coal to bridge its fuel demand gap, but Australia is one of the few remaining nations outside of Asia to continue to back coal as a major energy source. 

Earlier this month, Australia approved its third coal mine extension within a month. In September, Environment Minister Sussan Ley approved extensions for the Whitehaven Coal and Wollonggong Coal mines. The latest extension approval was for the Glencore Mangoola thermal coal mine in New South Wales, allowing it to continue production for eight more years, mining approximately 52 million tons of coal.

But it’s not just other countries that are putting pressure on Australia to join them in curbing its coal production. In May, a ruling from Australia’s high court encouraged the country’s environment minister to reconsider coal mine expansions due to the obligation the ministry has to the Australian childrens’ future, as well as the general impact of coal production and use on climate change. 

While environmental activists and international energy organizations are less than happy with Australia’s ongoing support for coal, many Australians back the decision to expand mines because of their contribution to the country’s employment. Around 400 workers are currently employed at Glencore, and the expansion will add 100 construction jobs.

Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal, with strong links to the Asian market. To date, Australia has made no pledge to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, unlike many of its Western counterparts. Many countries across Europe and North America have vowed to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, an aim that is expected to be reinforced in the upcoming COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this month, which Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison will attend. 

However, shortly after the announcement of the third expansion project, Australia’s resources minister proposed the establishment of a state-run $180-billion lending option for the coal industry, with the stipulation that borrowers support a net-zero carbon emissions target. This strategy comes as banks and insurers become less willing to lend to the dying coal sector. 

Australia’s dependence on coal is not surprising considering its close proximity to the Asian market, where coal demand remains high. Several Asian countries, most notably China and India with their ever-expanding populations, continue to rely on coal, as well as oil and gas, to meet their national energy demand. 

“While China unambiguously needs as much coal as it can get its hands on to avert a [fourth-quarter] slowdown due to the tyranny of rolling power shortages, geopolitical tensions with Australia have waylaid the most convenient source of high-calorific coal from Down Under,” Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy for Asia and Oceania treasury department at Mizuho, stated of China’s reliance on coal imports.

However, in late 2020, China ended its coal imports from Australia following difficult trade relations, namely Australia’s support for an international inquiry into China’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Coal is Australia’s third-largest export to China, a country that accounts for 32.6% of all Australian exports, with Australia exporting more to China than it imports. 

After reportedly telling utilities and steel mills to stop all Australian coal imports, China began to import its coal from regional exporters Indonesia, Mongolia, and Russia. India has apparently been buying discounted coal that was left stranded in Chinese customs following the falling out between China and Australia. In recent months, Indian cement makers and sponge iron plants have sought to boost supplies with this low-cost option. 

The Chinese stockpile of Australian coal, and its willingness to sell the supply at a discount, suggests the dedication it had to cutting trade ties with Australia. However, the energy crisis experienced in recent months has finally proved too much for China to continue holding a grudge. Fuel shortages and high energy costs have led the Chinese government to resume Australian coal imports. This month, China released Australian coal from bonded warehouses in addition to receiving 450,000 tons of Australian coal cargoes at the beginning of the month.

During the time that China refused imports, Australia did not just simply wait for China to come running back, rather it fostered its relationship with India. Australia held its first joint working group meeting on coal and mines with India this September to encourage greater participation in Australia’s ongoing coal production. Australia identifies India as a key market for some of its lower-grade coal, with prices significantly undercutting those of the premium coal products imported by China.

With little commitment to net-zero aims, ongoing support for coal plant expansion projects despite a high court interjection, and ongoing trade links with high-demand countries across Asia, it seems unlikely that Australia will curb its coal production or make it more carbon-friendly any time soon, despite international pressure to do so.  

Russia to boost coal supplies to India amid global power crunch

17 Oct, 2021 13:33

© Sputnik / Aleksandr Kryazhev

Russia’s Energy Ministry signed an agreement this week with India’s Steel Industry Ministry aimed at increasing Russian coking coal supply to India to 40 million tons per year.

The deal was inked at the Russian Energy Week Forum, held from October 13-15 in Moscow.

According to Russian Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov, Russia currently supplies around eight million tons of all types of coal to the South Asian country.

The agreement is also meant to stimulate enterprises in Russia and India in the development of coal deposits, the development of coal logistics and infrastructure, the promotion of R&D in production, as well as education and training for the coal industry.

The world’s third-largest coal importer, India, is currently struggling with coal shortages. Coal accounts for around 70% of the nation’s electricity generation. Most of India’s coal-fired power plants have critically low levels of inventory amid growing electricity demand.

A widening gap between soaring international and domestic coal prices has also seen imports decline sharply in recent months.

==========================================================================================

Moving to a green economy at the pace of some countries is absurdly reckless. 

‘Naive is an understatement’: German safety official tells RT

that risk of electric vehicle fires is ‘completely unaddressed’

24 Oct, 2021 17:33

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a bus depot in Stuttgart, Germany, September 30, 2021 © AFP / Andreas Rosar

It's hard to see how this is improving air quality

A series of fires involving electric buses is calling into question Germany’s reliance on these zero-emissions vehicles. “The risk of these fires,” safety regulator Heinrich Duepmann told RT, “is completely unaddressed.”

Europe is experiencing a green transport boom. Sales have quadrupled since 2018, and one in every ten new vehicles sold on the continent is now fully electric, a share that rises to four in ten when hybrid vehicles are taken into account. In Germany, where the Greens are in talks about joining a coalition government, the number of electric buses doubled last year compared to 2019.

The switchover from diesel to electricity has not been entirely smooth. Three bus depots were gutted by fire this year alone, with the most recent in Stuttgart last month destroying 25 buses and sending a column of smoke towering over the city.

The fires prompted the cities of Munich and Stuttgart to suspend use of these battery-powered buses, and Heinrich Duepmann of Germany’s Electricity Consumer Protection Association told RT that he shares their concerns ​​– not just about buses, but electric vehicles in general.

“The risk of these fires, including in other locations such as bicycle basements or large apartment blocks, is completely unaddressed,” he said. “Also, insurance companies are not yet tackling the issue.”

The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles can catch fire if damaged, or in some cases during charging or spontaneously. Lithium burns ferociously on contact with air, and once ablaze, these fires can be extremely difficult to put out. While burning, lithium-ion batteries have been shown to emit toxic quantities of fluoride gas.

Aside from the fire risk, Deupmann is also concerned that as private electric vehicles become more popular, the country’s electricity infrastructure is “completely undeveloped” to facilitate widespread fast charging.

“People have been too naive about this,” he said, adding that “naive is an understatement.”

Environmental Threats Remote and Invisible Meant to Create Fear - Patrick Moore

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Environmental Threats Based on Invisible, Remote Subjects to Create Fear:

Greenpeace Co-founder

BY ISAAC TEO

May 22, 2021 Updated: May 23, 2021

The co-founder of Greenpeace says in his new book that alleged environmental catastrophes and threats are based on subjects that are either invisible or extremely remote in order to create fear, forcing people to rely on experts to tell them the truth.

“It dawned on me that the great majority of scare stories about the present and future state of the planet, and humanity as a whole, are based on subjects that are either invisible, like CO2 and radiation, or extremely remote, like polar bears and coral reefs,” wrote Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, in his book titled “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom.”

“Thus, most people have no way of determining the truth of these claims of alleged catastrophes and doomsday threats. Instead, they must rely on the activists, the media, the politicians, and the scientists—all of whom have a very large financial and/or political stake in the subject—to tell them the truth.”

Moore, also a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, said he left Greenpeace after 15 years when he realized the movement had taken “a sharp turn to the political left.”

During a webinar on May 20, he said the main purpose of writing the book was to show that those narratives are “just a big hoax.”

Language is manipulated to invoke negativity, fear, and compliance in order for proponents of environmental catastrophes to push their narratives, Moore said.

“A classic example of propaganda is ‘dirty oil,’” he noted. “That’s how we grow our food—in dirt. So what’s wrong with dirty? But they’re not using it to mean dirt as in soil. They’re using it to mean ‘dirty rotten scoundrel.’ In other words, it’s purely an epithet—a negative epithet.”

Moore said that kind of wording has nothing to do with scientific description or the actual quality of oil. Rather, it’s an example of a propaganda technique where a normal concept is merged with an undesirable idea in order to make something seem bad.

“Much of propaganda is about associating negative words with normal words, and therefore turning them into a negative,” he said.

“This welcomes the opportunity to invent narratives such as the claim that ‘CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing climate emergency,’” he writes in his book.

But Moore said the amount of CO2 has been declining in the global atmosphere for at least half a billion years based on historical records.

In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight in 2014, Moore argued that although there is some correlation, there is little evidence to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia.

“The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming,” he testified at the time.

The book also addresses the issue of coral reefs reported to be dying allegedly due to climate change warming the oceans. Moore explains in the book that the most diverse coral reefs are found in the world’s warmest oceans, in a roughly triangular-shaped region in the western Pacific Ocean known as the Coral Triangle. The region extends from the Philippine Archipelago in the north to the Indonesia Archipelago in the south and extends east to the seas around the Solomon Islands.

The Coral Triangle has the world’s “highest biodiversity of coral, with more than 600 species, which is 76 percent of all coral species,” the book states. It adds that the region also has the “highest biodiversity of reef fish, with 2,000 species, which is 37 percent of all reef-fish species,” and is “home to six of the world’s seven species of marine turtles.”

“In other words, they found no evidence that there is anywhere in the world’s oceans that indicates a decline in species richness due to warmer ocean water,” Moore writes, referring to a research paper on global marine species diversity and the factors that influence higher or lower diversity.

“They found the opposite, that the warmest waters in the world have the highest species diversity for every taxonomic class of marine life.”

His book, “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” also seeks to dispel what Moore calls the “unified theory of scare stories.” They include the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific, which has a high concentration of microplastic debris and is said to be twice the size of Texas; polar bears being threatened with extinction due to climate change; and ocean acidification.

The book is published by Ecosense Environmental Inc. and is available on Amazon. (Click on Image).

Apple, Tesla & Other US Tech Giants Sued Over Child Labor Deaths at Cobalt Mines in Congo

Lithium Ion Batteries for cell-phones, laptops, EV-cars, wind and solar power storage, use cobalt.

Is this a price we are willing to pay for the greening of the world?

The children, of course, don't have any choice; I'm glad to see this lawsuit is giving them a voice.

A child breaks rocks extracted from a cobalt mining at a copper mine quarry and cobalt pit in Lubumbashi, Congo

© AFP / Junior Kannah

A civil lawsuit has been filed in a federal court in Washington DC against Apple, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Tesla, Microsoft, and Dell. They are accused of exploiting child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five children who were killed and 11 who were injured working in the mines of the DRC. They were aged between 13 and 17 when the incidents occurred.

The companies were part of a system of forced labor that allegedly led to the death and serious injury of the children, according to the complaint. Images in the filed court documents showed children with disfigured or missing limbs.

Six of the 14 children in the case were killed in tunnel collapses, and the others suffered life-altering injuries, including paralysis.

Child miners work for $2-3 a day “under Stone Age conditions for paltry wages and at immense personal risk,” the lawsuit said. It also alleged that the US tech giants know and “have known for a significant” amount of time that child workers are used in the “dangerous” mines where the cobalt, which ends up in their products, originates.

“These companies – the richest companies in the world, these fancy gadget-making companies – have allowed children to be maimed and killed to get their cheap cobalt,” Terrence Collingsworth, an attorney representing the families, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A child and a woman break rocks extracted from a cobalt mine at a copper quarry and cobalt pit in Lubumbashi, Congo

© AFP / Junior Kannah

More than half of the world’s cobalt is produced in the DRC. The mineral is an essential part of lithium batteries which are used in almost all of the companies’ products.

Global demand for cobalt is expected to increase at 7 percent to 13 percent annually over the next decade, a study by the European Commission shows.

More than 40 million people have been estimated to be captive in modern slavery, which includes forced labor and forced marriage, according to Walk Free and the International Labour Organization.

Wind Power Giant Enercon is Cutting 3,000 Jobs in Germany

Is wind power too expensive and unreliable to be viable?

dpa / Stefan Sauerbild
Translated by Google from German site Focus.de

Workers build a wind turbine from the manufacturer Enercon.

The crisis in the German wind energy industry is worsening. At the largest German manufacturer Enercon, hard cuts are said to cost 3000 jobs, according to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".

As of next year, the company plans to cut contracts with German suppliers and also cut jobs at its headquarters. Structurally weak regions are affected anyway. According to the company, 1,500 jobs will be lost at each of the Aurich and Magdeburg locations. At the company's headquarters in Aurich, 250 to 300 jobs are affected. 

On Friday afternoon, thousands of workers learned what the Enercon plans meant for them. The state governments concerned were also informed of the plans. For the most part, the Group does not cut the positions directly. It has almost completely outsourced their production to smaller third-party companies, which often depend solely on Enercon. If supply contracts are terminated as planned, many of these companies are threatened with the end.

Why the government is cutting subsidies is not addressed in the Focus piece, but, according to Climate Change Dispatch there are two main reasons:

Subsidies cut

Once lavished with huge incentives, the German wind industry is being hit hard after the government recently ended the huge subsidies that were once aimed at expanding the installation of wind energy capacity.

Power grid operators had been struggling to keep the grid stable due to erratic feed-in and the subsidized feed-in of wind energy caused German electricity prices to become among the most expensive worldwide.

Fierce opposition from hundreds of protest groups

Moreover, hundreds of citizen protest groups have sprouted and since become a formidable force pushing for the stop of proposed wind projects.

Not only have wind parks scarred the German landscape and destroyed habitats nationwide, but they have also been shown to be a real health hazard to humans living in their proximity through the low-frequency infrasound they emit. Enough is enough, citizens say.

Enercon boss Kettwig: "Politicians have pulled the plug"

Enercon stands for the rise of the industry like hardly any other company and could now become a synonym for the severe crisis. Enercon has long been the undisputed market leader. In Germany, the company installed 17,000 of the 29,000 wind turbines on land. Management justified the move on Friday with the consequences of political decisions. "This is a very emotional situation for us," says Enercon managing director Hans-Dieter Kettwig of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "The crisis of the energy turnaround has also come to us." Now it is a matter of creating the turnaround: a turnaround in the energy turnaround, a move towards international business.

The background to the problems is a slump in the addition of wind turbines. Enercon has delivered more than 700 systems for the German market annually in the past few years, according to the company it was only 65 this year. “Politicians have pulled the plug on us,” says CEO Kettwig. "And we do not have a battery." Even international business cannot compensate for the slump in the short term. The company is aware of the consequences for the suppliers: "We are pulling the ground from under these companies," admits Kettwig. Due to the lack of orders, there is no alternative.

Wind industry threatens wave of emigration

The Enercon case shows that the wind industry is threatened by a wave of emigration similar to that of the once leading German solar companies. "We can no longer rely on Germany," says Enercon CFO Thomas Cobet. The company now urgently needs to focus on other markets. Financially it is still solid, the equity ratio at Enercon GmbH as the core of the group is still above 50 percent. This also applies when taking into account the significant losses, which could significantly exceed half a billion this year. More and more people want to get involved in France or in countries like India.

Why the Global Fossil-Fuel Phase-Out is a Fantasy Akin to Time Travel

A reality check on ending fossil fuels by 2050

To produce the power needed to offset fossil fuels, Canada would have to

build two and a half $13-billion hydro dams every year

Canada’s Green Party, said to be gaining ground, has a new platform plan,

headlined “Mission: Possible," to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050. Getty Images

Terence Corcoran

Financial Post

Judging from the headlines, Canada and the world are on track to ratchet up renewable energy and begin the rapid scale-down and ultimate phase-out of fossil fuels. Most energy analysts consider the fossil-fuel phase-out to be a scientific, economic and political fantasy, akin to levitation and time travel, but the movement keeps making news.

Governments everywhere — from Canada to the United Kingdom to states in Australia — are declaring climate emergencies and committing to variations on zero emissions. The international organization promoting emergency declarations claims “a fast transition to zero emissions is possible.”

Canada’s Green Party, said to be gaining ground, has a new platform plan, headlined “Mission: Possible,” to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050. A proposed Green New Deal in America aims to eliminate fossil fuels from the U.S. power grid by 2030 and phase gasoline out of the transportation sector.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says Canada’s oil industry is on its way out: “It’s the direction the world is headed.” The newly announced Liberal and Conservative programs are leaning in the zero-carbon direction, although less explicitly.

The magnitude of the implied decarbonization effort takes us beyond the possible

and into the world of junk science fiction

   

So what are the carbon zeroists talking about? Aside from massive amounts of government intervention — almost a total takeover of the economy — the practicality of it all looks a bit impossible, to put it mildly. As the graph below suggests, the required technological and economic change could be a little overwhelming.

The general scale of the operation is hinted at by Climate Mobilization, an organization promoting climate emergency declarations: “Only WWII-scale Climate Mobilization can protect humanity and the natural world.”

In keeping with the analogy, here are some indicators of the magnitude of the coming Green World War III.

In Canada, for example, Vancouver energy consultant Aldyen Donnelly calculated that to achieve the “deep decarbonization” Canada is aiming for will require massive expansions of non-fossil fuel sources of energy.

To produce the electric power needed to offset the lost fossil fuel energy, Canada would have to build 2.5 hydro power dams the size of British Columbia’s $13-billion Site C project somewhere in the country “every year for the foreseeable future” leading up to the proposed 2050 carbon reduction targets. The geographic and cost obstacles send that prospect into the realm of the impossible.

On a global basis, the magnitude of the implied decarbonization effort illustrated in the graph takes us beyond the possible and into the world of junk science fiction. In 2018, world consumption of fossil fuels rose to 11,865 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe). To get that down to near zero by 2050 as proposed by the zeroists would require a lot of alternative energy sources.

University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr. did some of the rough numbers. “There are 11,161 days until 2050. Getting to net zero by 2050 requires replacing one mtoe of fossil fuel consumption every day starting now.” On a global basis, such a transition would require building the equivalent of one new 1.5-gigawatt nuclear plant every day for the next 30 years.

If not nuclear, then maybe solar? According to a U.S. government site, it takes about three million solar panels to produce one gigawatt of energy, which means that by 2050 the world will need 3,000,000 X 11,865 (should be 11,161) solar panels to offset fossil fuels. The wind alternative would require about 430 new wind turbines each of the 11,865 days leading to 2050.

So far, other tested technologies do not exist to offset the fossil fuel energy that would be lost under the green zero targets. Maybe this is a world war that should be stopped before it gets out of control.

Of course, no one approach would be used but a multiplicity of approaches, which, so far are limited to 4 - hydro power, nuclear, wind, and solar. To calculate a very rough estimate we will assume that all four power sources will grow equally. Therefore, we can divide Dr Pielke's estimates by 4. That leaves:

- Building 0.625 site C scale dams each year; that's 18.75 new dams. That should go down well with indigenous peoples, if there are 19 possible sites in Canada. Getting approval for the first one would take until 2050.

- Building a 1.5 gw nuclear plant every 4 days for 30 years; or 2790 nuclear plants; ie one for every city with 1 million people or more.

- Building 750,000 Solar panels per day for a total of 8 trillion, 370 billion, 750 million solar panels. Of course, that would mean that we would all be living underneath a solar panel.

- Building 107.5 wind turbines every day, or 1 million, 200 thousand turbines total. There wouldn't be a bird left alive on the planet.

Of course, the carbon foot-print required to build these structures would mean they would be woefully inadequate by the time they are all built. So we would have to do it again in the next 50 years. That's presuming there are no big volcanoes to make a mockery of all our doings.

But perhaps technology will provide many new ways to reduce the necessity of all this building. Let's pretend it will cut the total need in half. Try cutting my numbers in half and see if they are any less absurd. 

It looks like insanity to me. 

Greenpeace Gets it Wrong, Again; Increased Prosperity Improves Ecosystems

Mark Milke
The Province Opinion Op-Ed

Tourists and Londoners along the Thames River. DHF/ZDS / Dinendra Haria/WENN

Economic growth — implicitly criticized — can and has damaged the environment. However, increasing prosperity, once a minimum threshold of subsistence income is reached, inevitably allows for improved ecosystems.

You may know this frightening if self-evident bit of advice: “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” The quote is ostensibly from Canada’s First Nations peoples (the Cree are often cited) but popularized by Greenpeace.

The point is clear enough: Anyone with sense should avoid killing the earth and/or their own future just to make a few bucks.

But most of life is not composed of such binary, either-or dramatic choices. You can fish, for example, just as some First Nations did 15,000 years ago or 15 minutes ago, without necessarily depleting fish stocks.

As with all of life, it is a question of balance. That also includes managing government lands (always more difficult than managing private property) so resources are not overused and depleted.

That noted, here is the other reality check on the romanticized quotation: Economic growth — implicitly criticized — can and has damaged the environment. However, increasing prosperity, once a minimum threshold of subsistence income is reached, inevitably allows for improved ecosystems.

For example, 140 years ago, London’s Thames River was a polluted, poisonous, dead body of water. When a passenger ship sunk in 1878 after a collision, at least some of the 600 passengers who died might have survived. The problem was that as some swam to shore they were overcome “by the noxious cocktail of pollution in the water,” was how the Daily Telegraph described it.

By 1957, the Thames was pronounced biologically dead. But after an intensive environmental program, as well as improved technology, it was revived, and as of 2010, when the Telegraph wrote its story, the river was home to 125 types of fish and more than 400 species of invertebrates. Herons and seals now frolic near Canary Wharf.

Ponder another example: In the 1950s and in subsequent decades, Los Angeles was choked by smog. Public demands coupled with technological advances (you need the second to realistically satisfy the first) meant air quality improved by the time I lived there briefly in the 1980s. The smog was still there, but Los Angeles air was far better than in previous decades. L.A. air quality has also steadily improved in the last three decades despite many more people who live and drive in the city and state.

Air quality in the Fraser Valley and Vancouver, British Columbia has improved remarkably in the past two decades as the Port of Vancouver installed huge electric outlets for ships to plug into when in port, rather than running their diesels continuously. 

Then there are trees. Forest cover around the world has been recovering for decades in every place where people have prospered under increasingly market-friendly economies. According to Human Progress, China, Europe and North America have all gained forest cover in the last three decades: 511,800 more square kilometres in China; 212,122 more in Europe; and 64,410 square kilometres gained in North America.

The exception to this positive trend has been in countries that are poor, thus Africa is still losing forest cover. No surprise there. Mothers and fathers need fuel to cook food for their families, and if trees are the only option, expect them to disappear. The remedy, which should be obvious, is to use natural gas or electricity from hydro, where available. That will prevent “cutting down the last tree.”

The other remedy is more and not less economic growth to advance human prosperity. Those in poverty, either as families or entire countries, have nothing left with which to buy less-polluting energy. In the case of governments, it is difficult to require and enforce more stringent pollution controls when consumers live hand-to-mouth and companies are barely profitable.

Widespread prosperity allows families to purchase other forms of energy rather than burning what is nearest to them. Rising living standards also allows for clean-ups of rivers and significantly better automobiles, the Thames and Los Angeles lessons respectively.

None of this means nirvana exists. In China, for example, while forest cover has increased, smog is thick for much of the year. That nation’s consumers, businesses and often corrupt governments in particular could usefully spend more money on effective environmental improvements. Also, overfishing in the oceans is still a problem. That speaks to the need for (some) environmental organizations to stop opposing fish farming, which can ease pressure on fish stocks in the commons.

But the general rule holds: It is increasing prosperity which allows for people once too poor to avoid environmental dead ends, to instead have the money and time to care for the environment. Or put another way, only when the last bit of propaganda from Greenpeace ends, might more people realize that from increasing forest cover to cleaner rivers, many environmental indicators have been trending positive for decades.

Mark Milke is an author, policy analyst and contributor to Canadians for Affordable Energy.