Changes to solar panel technology are accelerating demand for silver, a phenomenon that’s widening a supply deficit for the metal with little additional mine production on the horizon.
Silver, in paste form, provides a conductive layer on the front and the back of silicon solar cells. But the industry is now beginning to make more efficient versions of cells that use a lot more of the metal, which is set to boost already-increasing consumption.
Their policies are aimed at making the most of the clean-energy shift, but they also create challenges for it
Across the developing world, mineral-rich nations say they are moving to end the era of extract and export. Countries with vast deposits of the ingredients essential to making electric vehicles are digging in and trying to take a bigger share of the expected EV boom.
In parts of Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, governments are restricting the export of raw minerals, demanding that miners build processing plants locally and looking to tighten control over foreign-operated mines. The steps are sometimes described as resource nationalism, and their increasing popularity is reshaping supply chains that underpin the shift toward cleaner forms of energy.
Destroying the economy in the name of climate change is their obsession
The recent fog that settled briefly on many northeastern cities from Ottawa to Philadelphia as a result of unusually extensive forest fires in Quebec and northern Ontario led to the predictable conscription of this freakish event as further evidence of the need to assault the oil and gas industry and ratchet up the cost of living of practically everyone.
This is part of the self-assigned Canadian mission of saving the planet from the capitalists. There is never much of a respite from outbursts of delusional absurdities of the climate extremists. I’m not a climate denier but I am a resolute and vociferous opponent of hare-brained, self-punitive, instant cures for problems whose causes, proportions, and possible solutions are not fully known to us.
The Public Policy Forum (disclosure: where I am a senior fellow) recently released a major paper on Canada’s climate goals and the implications for the oil and gas sector. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in climate policy and the inherent trade-offs in different policy approaches.
Yet the paper has been criticized in some policy quarters for various reasons including, for instance, that it doesn’t properly account for the economic benefits of cultivating fossil fuel alternatives. (The researchers who produced the analysis have responded to this particular critique.)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Please note that Canada is the 4th biggest oil producer and the 6th largest natural gas producer in the world, and yet we still only contribute 1.5 per cent of global carbon emissions!- Stan Sudol
And two points to remember: Canada is the 4th biggest oil producer and the 6th largest natural gas producer in the world. And we still only contribute 1.5 per cent of global carbon emissions!! – Stan Sudol.
The statement from the most recent Group of Seven heads of government annual meeting, held earlier this month in Japan, is an encyclopedia of commitments and wishes, weighing in at 40 pages and 19,000 words. It takes positions on everything from human rights in Afghanistan to the challenge of artificial intelligence to the need for “stable access to affordable, safe, sufficient and nutritious food for each and every individual” on the planet.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/
Premier Scott Moe said “come get me” on Thursday when asked about the potential legal ramifications of running coal-fired power plants past 2030 in violation of federal regulations. On Wednesday, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada Steven Guilbeault said Saskatchewan would be breaking the law if it ran coal-fired electricity after 2030, unless they were equipped with carbon capture technology.
“We’ve regulated the ban on coal through CEPA (Canadian Environmental Protection Act) which is a criminal tool that the federal government has. So not complying with this regulation would be a violation of Canada’s Criminal Code.”
Power producers say squeezing fossil fuels will worsen the strains on the grid, though EPA’s backers say those risks are manageable.
The Biden administration’s new greenhouse gas rule is designed to drive drastic changes in how U.S. power companies produce electricity — but utilities say it could escalate the risk of outages as it squeezes fossil fuel plants into retirement.
Power producers are already warning that the rule threatens to compromise the power network’s reliability by pushing their older, dirtier coal and gas plants into retirement at an even faster pace than they are closing now. They say it’s especially worrisome if the plants aren’t replaced as quickly as they shut down.
New U.S. legislation points to the world being short of copper in a few years. A few big mining firms could be huge beneficiaries.
A decade of underinvestment and a dense thicket of permits are challenges that the world’s top miners need to tackle head on. That is, if they want to ride a probable surge in copper prices as the world finally gets its act together to tackle climate change—a task which will require vast quantities of the red metal.
Over the last six months mining firms have begun jostling to acquire copper assets. One major reason: The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, essentially a massive green industry policy bill, which passed last August. Copper supply now looks likely to fall far short of demand over the next decade—unless big new greenfield projects are brought online.
The green techno-dream is so vastly destructive, they say, ‘we have to come up with a different plan.’
“Sometime during this century, it is highly likely that worldwide depletion of natural resources will force an entire reorganization of social and economic structures, perhaps violently.” — Walter Youngquist, ‘Our Plundered Planet’
We are going to have to dramatically downsize the dream of a future in which we replace 150-year-old fossil fuel infrastructure with “clean energy” by 2050. That’s the message in a number of recent important reports and books. They underscore a number of problems with the renewables illusion, including the complexity of the task, the toxicity of rare earth mining and the scarcity of critical minerals.
JOHANNESBURG — A wind farm in Namibia and a floating solar farm on Zimbabwe’s massive Kariba Dam are among the new green energy projects Chinese companies are looking at investing in this year after Beijing pledged to help African countries address their energy problems with renewable sources rather than fossil fuels.
“Chinese overseas renewable energy investments aim to deliver China’s international climate commitments of accelerating the energy transition away from fossil fuels in Africa, China’s largest trading partner,” Lei Bian, a policy fellow at the The London School of Economics and Political Science, told VOA.
If fossil fuels are destructive, renewable alternatives are maybe even more so
In the rollicking world of net-zero policy-making and initiatives, Canada aims to be a global leader. The country’s bankers, mining executives, auto companies, electricity producers and political leaders have merged into a unified machine around the idea that a new green economy can be achieved via a just transition to a global energy system free of carbon emissions.
The nationalist clatter last week around the possible sale of Teck Resources of Vancouver to Swiss mining giant Glencore reflected the new official Canadian corporatist approach. As a key global player in the business of producing “critical minerals” — copper, zinc, molybdenum — Teck is seen as a vital cog in the wheel of economic fortune swirling around the net-zero objectives.
Except, maybe, coal and China and downtown condo owners
As part of the global policy movement toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, as required under the Paris Agreement signed in 2015, Canada’s target is to reduce and/or offset all greenhouse gas emissions through various methods, including “tree planting or employing technologies that can capture carbon before it is released into the air.” China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, is aiming for net zero by 2060.
How’s the global plan going so far? We turn to last weekend’s meeting of G7 ministers of climate, energy and the environment in Sapporo, Japan, which ended with a 20,000-word statement that, if nothing else, serves as an important demonstration of the high level of linguistic advocacy that propels net zero forward.
A line must be drawn between obtuse environmental orthodoxy and the rational need for responsible energy development
Led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) recently announced a million-barrel-per-day reduction in oil production, action only cartels can take to limit supply in order to raise prices — the cost to the global economy be damned.
It will inevitably lead to higher North American gasoline prices as refineries gear up for peak-driving summer months. Even more damning is that it exposes the inherent fallacy of the anti-energy policies of Canada and the United States, which have two of the largest oil and gas reserves on the planet.
In politics, budgets are screenplays for movies that will never get made
Budgets, like Bidens, bore me. Like another in the fellowship of the great minds of our day, I pay no attention to monetary policy. Or to fiscal policy. And what is a budget but a massive tool of that latter? Budgets get as much attention from “communications advisers” — the most empty phrase and occupation of our time — as they do from … people who might know something about the economy. Most likely more. Besides, budgetary promises do not stand up in time, at all.
You want an example? Recall. In 2015, Justin Trudeau “looked straight at Canadians” (his phrase) and in that soft, hushed, mellow tone he struggles to adopt when he’s about to burst from the magma force of his urgent sincerity, promised — “being honest the way I always have” — that by 2019 (four years back for those who are counting), Canada would have a “balanced budget.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/
Green energy investment could pour into the U.S. from around the globe
U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate bill is only six months old, but its impact on the energy industry around the world continues to grow as pressure mounts on countries to offer similar subsidies toward green energy or risk losing out on valuable investment dollars.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a multi-billion-dollar program that pledges government dollars toward developing low-carbon energy. The policy is aimed at boosting the country’s manufacturing sector and takes aim at China’s dominant position in the clean energy technology supply chain.
