Welcome to Technocracy - The New World Energy Order... "1000s Of Sydney Homes Plunged Into Darkness As Aussie 'Price Cap' Policy Sparks Energy Shortage"

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

“The price cap unintentionally means that some plants can’t recover their fuel costs. Participants are legitimately seeking ways to resolve the problem,” the spokesperson said.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/1000s-sydney-homes-plunged-darkness-aussie-price-cap-policy-sparks-energy-shortage

1000s Of Sydney Homes Plunged Into Darkness As Aussie 'Price Cap' Policy Sparks Energy Shortage

by Tyler Durden

Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 - 05:05 PM

Authored by Nina Nguyen via The Epoch Times,

Thousands of homes on Australia’s east coast were plunged into darkness on Monday as electricity suppliers struggled to meet demand as the country teeters on the edge of an energy shortage.

On Monday night, multiple areas in Sydney’s north and along the affluent Northern Beaches were sent into darkness, after the energy market operator warned of power disruption across the states of New South Wales and Queensland.

Affected suburbs include Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest, Narraweena, Cromer and Dee Why in New South Wales (NSW), according to Ausgrid—Australia’s largest electricity distributor on the east coast. Power was available later in the day.

Households were encouraged to use less power as leading energy provider Powerlink Queensland warned of an “unusual combination” of unexpected generator outages plus cool winter temperatures and high demand for electricity.

“Gas supplies are sufficient however very high gas prices means [the Australian Energy Market Operator] has already triggered its market generation response mechanisms,” Powerlink said in a statement on Monday.

Meanwhile, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) on Tuesday confirmed that some energy generators have “revised their market availability” in NSW and Queensland due to a new $300/MWh price cap, a result of increased wholesale electricity prices.

In the gas markets, gas prices remained capped at $40/GJ after reaching cumulative high price thresholds in Victoria and Sydney.

“As a consequence of the administered price cap in Queensland, AEMO has seen generation bids reduce,” AEMO said in a media release on Monday.

“The price cap … will only remain in place if the cumulative price threshold is still exceeded.”

“It is possible that other states may also reach the threshold in the near term.”

A spokesperson for the Australian Energy Council, which represents major power generators including AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin, said its members faced a “complex issue” but were seeking solutions to the power crunch, as they battle coal prices that are soaring because of sanctions on Russian exports..

“The price cap unintentionally means that some plants can’t recover their fuel costs. Participants are legitimately seeking ways to resolve the problem,” the spokesperson said.

The power outages came as former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged the current federal Labor government to work with the states and National Energy Market to impose export controls on gas and limit prices for a 90-day period.

Turnbull said this would push major LNG producers to concede and make cheaper gas available.

“This will involve imposing force majeure on contracts,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.

“It’ll be resented bitterly by the industry … but we have a crisis at the moment, and hopefully, it won’t go on for too long.

“The minute they say they’re going to do it, the gas companies will find the gas … they will agree to offer it at lower prices.”

In Queensland, households were also warned of possible power outages between 5.30p.m. to 8p.m. on Monday, but these were averted.

Powerlink Queensland encouraged households to save energy including suggestions to consider how much heating was being used, turn off or place into standby electronics like TVs, computers, and household appliances, and to also switch-off pool pumps.

Businesses were told to consider their use of indoor and outdoor lighting and to turn off water heating systems.

“By carefully managing electricity use at home and in your workplace, the community can help ensure that power system security is maintained in Queensland,” Powerlink CEO Paul Simshauser said.

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

Watch: Biden Advisor Says Social Media Should Silence Anyone Who Criticises Green Energy "Transition"

by Tyler Durden

Tuesday, Jun 14, 2022 - 02:09 PM

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

One of Joe Biden’s senior advisors told a reporter this week that social media companies should be cracking down on and censoring anyone who speeds information critical of the administration’s so called ‘green energy transition’.

National climate advisor Gina McCarthy made the comments in an interview with a reporter for Axios, stating “Now it’s not so much denying the problem. What the [fossil fuel] industry is now doing is seeding doubt about the costs associated with [green energy] and whether they work or not.”

She continued, “We need the tech companies to really jump in,” on “disinformation,” noting that criticising a green energy transition upheaval is “equally dangerous to denial,” and adding “we have to move fast.”

The Axios interviewer just nodded in agreement without any pushback.

Watch: {VIDEO]

The Wall Street Journal reported on the comments, noting “Some conservative scholars argue that Big Tech companies could be sued as “state actors” for violating users’ First Amendment speech rights when they censor content at the behest of government officials. Ms. McCarthy is helping make their case.”

As we highlighted recently, Joe Biden has admitted, using rhetoric identical to Davos ‘great reset’ elites, that unaffordable gas prices in the U.S. are part of a deliberate “transition” to green energy.

[ZH: Perhaps they have good reason to tamp down this groundswell of realization as the cost of the "net zero" Grand Reset transition will be $150 trillion (with a 'T').

In case you believe that is just 'conspiracy theory' wonks spreading disinformation, it was actually Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at her keynote address at COP26

Glasgow and COP26 is a pivotal moment at the start of this decisive decade of climate action. The climate crisis is already here.  This is not a challenge for future generations, but one we must confront today.

Rising to this challenge will require the wholesale transformation of our carbon-intensive economies.  It’s a global transition for which we have an estimated price tag: some have put the global figure between $100 and $150 trillion over the next three decades.  At the same time, addressing climate change is the greatest economic opportunity of our time.

These numbers are simply staggering, and as Yellen concedes, "The gap between what governments have and what the world needs is large, and the private sector needs to play a bigger role."

Imagine the 'shared sacrifice' that you will all be asked to pay in the name of funding this farce? Now that is a good reason for government to silence anyone who dares tell the truth.

As before, the full 114 page report from Bank of America on the true costs of climate change and which we recommend to anyone who wants to know what is truly behind the push for "net zero", is available to pro subs.]

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-biden-advisor-says-social-media-should-silence-anyone-who-criticises-green-energy

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

Irina Slav SUBSTACK - https://irinaslav.substack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-the-european?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F31253959-irina-slav&utm_medium=reader2&s=r

The curious case of the European ICE car ban

The energy transition front of the European Union — and the UK — has had it in for internal combustion engine vehicles for years. Petrol and diesel car are simply incompatible with the energy transition, even though the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, for a random example, drives a diesel car. According to that front, if there is to be a transition, petrol and diesel vehicles must go and be replaced with electric ones.

First, they tried the carrot: subsidies for EV buyers, subsidies for EV makers, subsidies for charger installers, subsidies all around. For some unfathomable reason, while a lot of people did switch to EVs, their numbers were nowhere near where the green frontmen and frontwomen want them to be. So it was time for the stick.

The stick is what amounts to a ban on the sales of internal combustion engine vehicles from 2035 across the EU (also in the UK but earlier, in 2030). The ban is dressed in the goal of achieving a 100% reduction in emissions from the carmaking industry. After the European Parliament voted for it, now it’s up to member states to shape the ban in its final form. Or break up the EU.

“The EU Parliament has today taken a decision against citizens, against the market, against innovation and against modern technologies,” said the president of the German car industry association, Hildegard Mueller, as quoted by Euractiv.

You’d think she means things like right of choice and making your own decisions about means of transportation but she was strictly speaking about the practical implications of a ban when there are not enough charging points even in Germany, let along the whole of the EU.

“It is therefore simply too early for such an objective. It will increase costs for consumers and put consumer confidence at risk,” Mueller said. And she is quite right.

In 2020, there were 246.3 million cars on European Union roads in total, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Of these 246.3 million cars, 51.7% were petrol-powered, 42.8% were diesel-powered, and 2.5% were powered by liquid petroleum gas. Plug-in hybrids accounted for 0.6% of the total, and battery electric vehicles accounted for 0.5%. This 0.5% must go up to 100% in eight years, under the ban plan.

What must have escaped the planners’ attention is that there is currently a looming shortage of EVs globally thanks to — surprise — a looming shortage of batteries, and with raw material availability and battery metal prices where they are, who knows when it will end. This puts the EU’s electrification plan in a fascinating perspective.

On the one hand, you want to get rid of millions upon millions of future ICE cars and replace them with millions upon millions of electric cars. Carmakers are spending billions on developing their electric vehicle manufacturing platforms and trying to build a supply chain for metals and minerals, the key word here being trying, unfortunately.

On the other hand, the ACEA car fleet chart shows that while in Germany the average age of cars is 9.8 years, this rises to 14.3 years in Poland, 17 years in Lithuania, and 16.9 years in Romania. In other words, while many swap their cars for new ones once they hit five years, more, it seems, keep driving their four-wheeled emitters for quite a bit longer than that. And then they sell them in the East, meaning Eastern Europe, so other people can keep driving them.

It’s worth noting that the ban concerns sales beginning from 2035. However, chances are that there will also be punitive measures for the drivers of ICE cars in order to motivate them to go electric.

There already are such measures: EV buyers don’t pay the so-called eco-tax that all petrol and diesel car buyers pay in Bulgaria and, I assume, across the EU. Owners of older, less fuel efficient cars also pay higher annual taxes — the older the car, the higher the tax.

The EU, then, has all the levers it needs to force people into going electric… as long as there are enough EVs to go around, of course, and this remains an open question for the time being.

The ban has yet to be finalised and agreed by all member states. Things can yet change. But if they don’t and if the whole EU, that is, all the EU governments, agree to go fully electric in passenger vehicles and vans, I will do something I rarely do and predict a breakup for the European Union by 2035.

I first mentioned the possibility of the ICE car ban breaking up the EU on Twitter and the responses I got without exception amounted to “Nah, it won’t last even that long.” I disagree with this prediction because there are plenty of reasons for the EU to want to survive. An end to the sales of internal combustion engine cars, however, may well prove the crack that breaks the whole thing up.

The rate of motorisation in the European Union was 560 cars per 1,000 people in 2020, according to ACEA. I’m willing to bet the number is higher per 1,000 people of driving age. There are, in other words, a lot of cars in the European Union and many of their drivers are attached to them. I’m not joking. We like our cars, or at least the idea of having a car to move around.

I’m sure millions of people wouldn’t mind switching to EVs but only under a few conditions: first, they would need to be cheaper or at least no more expensive than the ICE cars they would be giving up; second, they would need to be assured there are enough charging points; third, charging will need to become much faster, and fourth, electricity will need to be affordable. It would also need to be, not to put too fine a point on it, reliable.

Currently, none of these conditions are close to being met. Perhaps the easiest one to meet is the one about charging points: they simply need to be built. Then again, it may not be that simple — the EU will need a lot of charging points if it bans ICE cars, and at all the right locations, too.

The most challenging conditions, I believe, are price and charging times. EV prices have only just started to go up and official bans will inevitably boost demand, pushing prices further up. Material price inflation will also contribute to making EVs costlier. Finally, charging technology will need to move in leaps and bounds over the next eight years to achieve charging time parity with filling up a petrol car tank.

Because of all these challenges and the limited ability of the EU and European carmakers to overcome them, the ICE car ban will most likely fail. What the consequences of this failure would be is an interesting and, no doubt, entertaining question. One of them may well be that some member states will get fed up with the EU and strike out on their own.

P.S. Fun fact, per Euractiv: “However, Italian luxury car manufacturers managed to obtain an exception for carmakers like Ferrari, Bugatti and Lamborghini who could be exempt from the de facto ban on the combustion engine, the so-called “Ferrari exception.”” If that’s not a blatant case of double standards I don’t know what is.

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

Wall Street Journal - https://archive.ph/Si1bQ

Climate-Change Censorship: Phase Two

Now Gina McCarthy tells Big Tech to stifle debate global-warming policy responses.

 

 

By

The Editorial Board

 

June 13, 2022 6:46 pm ET

Print

Text

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White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy

Photo: michael reynolds/Shutterstock

 

 

Progressives first demanded that social media platforms silence critics of climate alarmism. Now White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy wants them to censor content on the costs of a force-fed green energy transition.

A few years ago, Facebook enlisted third-party “fact checkers” to review news stories about climate. That didn’t satisfy Democratic Senators who howled about a “loophole” for opinion pieces. Facebook then began appending fact-checks to op-eds, including by our contributors Bjorn Lomborg and Steven Koonin, that criticized apocalyptic climate models and studies. The goal was to restrict readership.

Now progressives are moving to censorship phase two, which is shutting down debate over climate “solutions.” “Now it’s not so much denying the problem,” Ms. McCarthy said in an Axios interview last Thursday. “What the industry is now doing is seeding doubt about the costs associated with [green energy] and whether they work or not.”

Ms. McCarthy cited the week-long power outage in Texas in February 2021. “The first thing we read in the paper was” that the blackouts occurred “because of those wind turbines,” she said. “That became the mantra.” In fact, most of the media immediately blamed climate change and fossil fuels.

 

 

We were among the few to point out that wind energy plunged as temperatures dropped and turbines froze. Gas-fired plants couldn’t make up for the wind shortfall despite running all-out, and then some went down too. Ms. McCarthy doesn’t want to admit the inconvenient truth that renewable energy sources are making the grid increasingly unreliable.

Comparing fossil-fuel companies to Big Tobacco, she complained that “dark money” is being used to “fool” the public about “the benefits of clean energy.” “We need the tech companies to really jump in,” she said, because highlighting the costs of green energy is “equally dangerous to denial because we have to move fast.” Got that, Mark Zuckerberg ?

Merely pointing out technical limitations of lithium-ion batteries could be “disinformation.” Asked whether climate disinformation posed a threat to public health, Ms. McCarthy replied “absolutely” while adding hilariously that “President Biden doesn’t focus on, and neither do I on, bashing the fossil-fuel companies.” The Axios interviewer smiled and nodded along.

Some conservative scholars argue that Big Tech companies could be sued as “state actors” for violating users’ First Amendment speech rights when they censor content at the behest of government officials. Ms. McCarthy is helping make their case.

[Tom Nolan + 2,441]

From the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM.....

How potty-training cows can help to save the planet

(short video in article below)

https://www.activistpost.com/2022/06/great-reset-globalist-controlled-new-zealand-to-introduce-climate-tax-on-cattle-and-sheep.html

Great Reset: Globalist-controlled New Zealand to Introduce “Climate Tax” on Cattle and Sheep

[Ron Wagner + 643]

The height of their stupidity. Sheep give wool, mutton, and fertilize the soil with their excrement which feeds the plants they eat. The plants provide the oxygen we need to breathe. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

On 6/14/2022 at 6:32 PM, Tom Nolan said:

From the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM.....

How potty-training cows can help to save the planet

(short video in article below)

https://www.activistpost.com/2022/06/great-reset-globalist-controlled-new-zealand-to-introduce-climate-tax-on-cattle-and-sheep.html

Great Reset: Globalist-controlled New Zealand to Introduce “Climate Tax” on Cattle and Sheep

These dumb cunts want to tax farmers 60 euros per ton of CO2 emitted? Do they have any idea how slim the margins are per animal? 

[cigerci + 1]

The Electric Company of Sydney is in a state, with many homeowners plunging their homes into darkness as they struggle to keep up with power bills under Australia's new "price cap" policy. The city-state was already experiencing an energy shortage. things will only get worse before they start getting better thanks largely due to demand exceeding supply which means customers are being forced into extensive conserve mode or face blackouts throughout much if not all regions within this beautiful country!