The Energy Transition Got "Transitioned"

Commemorating the passage of peak green insanity with a video for posterity.

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson

When we started environMENTAL in December 2022, we had a sense that energy, environmental and economic policy in the world’s advanced nations - in particular America and Europe - were headed for a change. Viewing the world through that interconnected policy lens, it seemed to us that the West was in for a long overdue reckoning between “green” ideology and the combination of physics and economics. Eventually.

But trillions have been “invested” in “renewables” (read: nonreliables) like wind and solar by the governments of the U.S., Europe, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan. Combined with the legacy media’s endless fear mongering about the consequences of not rapidly transitioning to these energy sources and the “existential crisis of climate change”, a wholesale change in direction seemed rather distant even if we were optimistic.

In hindsight, we dramatically underestimated what would happen over the next twenty-three months. The much ballyhooed “energy transition” is in the process of transitioning - in a direction opposite from that which was intended. And it is happening faster than we could have imagined when we started environMENTAL almost two years ago.

This is going to cause great consternation and a fair amount of apoplexy among those in the West who for years have wrapped themselves in the (false) moral flag of “green” virtue. Those who believe (or at least pretend to) that wind and solar are “solutions” to “climate change,” with only benefits and no costs or consequences, are going to find the shifts that are about to occur in energy and environmental policy shocking and upsetting.

But the pendulum has clearly swung.

Natural gas and nuclear power have the upper hand, despite the latter’s steep regulatory, learning, supply chain, and cost-reduction curves. Setting aside absurd constructs like the “Levelized Cost of Energy” (LCOE) and “Social Cost of Carbon” (SCC), they were always the obvious answer for anyone who believes deep decarbonization of the electrical grid is a necessity, despite “renewables” advocate’s best attempts to kill both.

Wind energy is in trouble and over the longer term headed for worse. Offshore wind is a dead man walking. Hydrogen has many problems, including cost, technical, energy return on energy invested, and storage/transport.

Solar energy will survive and might even prosper in the few areas with the highest annual average solar irradiance. These do not - and will never - include areas where solar capacity factors are a pathetic 10 - 15%, like Rhode Island in the U.S., Alberta (or anywhere else) in Canada, or places in northern Europe like Germany.

Much will be written about the energy and environmental policy pendulum shift in the West, including in these pages. But we decided to go one step further, and commemorate the passing of peak green insanity visually (hopefully with a bit of entertainment value as well).

So, we created a brief video for the occasion, for your viewing pleasure as well as for posterity. We hope you enjoy.

(Note: turn up the volume. Set to apropos music.)

“Like” this post or we’ll put you to work laying pipe on a carbon capture and sequestration crew.

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