Is the US wasting its time saving the planet?

The Houthis continue to terrorise merchant ships heading in and out of the Red Sea, while also claiming strikes at ships moored at Israel’s Haifa port. The Houthis claimed to have struck the Transworld Navigator […]

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

01:39 – EU to Ban Re-Export of Russian LNG

03:16 – The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid

05:44 – Monday’s Energy Absurdity: These Lithium Battery Factories Burn Like Chicken Farms

07:17 – Crude Oil Shipments Return to Arctic as Russia Sends Tanker To Asia

08:23 – Why Asia’s Carbon Emissions Are Erasing Western Progress

11:32 – Houthi strikes continue to terrorise merchant shipping

12:35 – Outro

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Stuart Turley: [00:00:14] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat Daily. Stand up. My name’s Stu Turley, president and CEO of the sandstone Group. We’ve got an action packed show for you, Michael. I’m on assignment today. I’ll tell you what. Let’s start out with EU to ban reexport of Russian LNG. Holy smokes. Here’s the next story. The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid. Who would have thunk that? Here’s one from our favorite Substack author. We’re talking David Blackman. Monday’s energy absurdity of the day. These lithium battery factories burn like chicken farms. I’m not sure I want to hang around and smell one, but let’s go to the next one. Crude oil shipments return as Arctic as Russia sends tanker to Asia. The summer lines are now open. Let’s go. Appeared to the next story. Why? Asia’s carbon emissions are racing. Western progress. I’m going to ask the question. Why bother? Let’s go to the last thing here. And that is the Houthis continue to terrorize merchant shipping. Wow. You know, where’s the climate activist when you need them? They ought to do a chain around these and say, you guys are making the world a very bad place for the, climate change folks. Anyway,. [00:01:39][84.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:39] Let’s get ready to rumble here. Hey, let’s start with EU to ban export. Russian, Russian LNG the European Union is about to do this. Has been debating the 14 sanctions action against Russia. EU ambassador just agreed on a powerful, substantial 14th package in reaction to the Russian, aggression against Ukraine. Belgium, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said on Thursday, quote, this package provides new targeted measures and maximizes the impact of existing sanctions by closing the loopholes. The trans shipment of LNG within the EU has been a widespread practice so far, although the volumes don’t represent large part of the Russian LNG exports. What’s happening is the LNG year ago they didn’t have the dark LNG fleet. They got it now because of the sanctions they knew were coming. And they have done a good job of avoiding sanctions and actually making it work to their advantage. So I’m not going to hold my breath. Targets three Russian LNG projects and contains a clause allowing EU member states, Sweden and Finland to cancel LNG contracts with Russia. Diplomats told Reuters. Not sure how it’s going to work. Sanctions have failed miserably against Russia. I’m not going to hold my breath now on this one. [00:03:16][96.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:16] Let’s go to the next article. The $2.5 trillion reason why we cannot rely on batteries to clean up the grid. The fluctuating wind and solar power requirements of energy storage and lithium batteries seem like the obvious choice, but they’re way too expensive. Let’s come down to this article. And Miss Producer, if you could bring up the third graphic down, I believe, and it is the one with $1,800 in megawatt hours. And the graph starts on the left hand side where you see the current, and it’s 50% renewables, and you look at the cost per kilowatt hour and it goes to 80, and then you go to 100% and the cost is amazing. You keep adding more this non dispatchable power to the grid and it becomes more and more expensive. There is no physics in fiscal responsibility matter. So if you take a look at that chart for California the Clean Air Task Force analysis, the system becomes completely dominated by the cost of storage, says Steve Bryk, a senior advisor for the Clean Air Task Force. You build this enormous, enormous storage machine that you fill up by mid-year and then dissipated. It’s a massive capital investment that gets utilized very little. But yet you need that dispatchable power. So pretty, pretty amazing. When you sit back and take a look at it, the I’m all in on storage. I think we need some storage. It needs to be handled that way. I love Bitcoin from the estate standpoint of a balancing authority, being able to come in and say, wait a minute, we’re going to have this matter much. Power, and the Bitcoin miners know that they can back their power off because the prices are going to go up during peak and, demand. And as the wind and solar are coming online or offline, having a money generation tool like Bitcoin that you can use in there for companies is wonderful. But it is a battery storage that is just absolutely horrifically expensive. And there are some side effects that are not always that good for batteries. [00:05:43][146.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:44] David Blackmon, one of my absolute favorite podcast host out there and Substack, authored Monday’s energy absurdity of the day. These lithium battery factories burn like chicken farms. I don’t want to stand around and smell one, David, but I’ll tell you what. This is an amazing story. This was there are no casualties in this. 20 in the lithium battery. Scotland Herald reports that battery recycling facility and broke out on Sunday, three months after a similar fire battery. lithium battery in killing that one did not have any. But in the one that is just happened in I believe it was South Korea, they had 22 people die. South Korea reports that a major plant 90 miles south of Seoul went up in flames, killing 22 workers. Most of them, interestingly enough, were Chinese nationals. Reuters states that the fire was largely put out. Is that kind of like I’m not quite dead yet? We we’re not real sure or it’s still going to be there. There was a fire not too long ago, lasted for weeks, as they put the fires out. So large storage of lithium technology is needed. But I don’t think the technology’s there yet. And I’m all in on looking at the different kinds. Fryer battery. They’re using different ones. There are other companies that are out there that are looking and using different technologies that are not nearly as combustible. So you got to love it. [00:07:17][93.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:07:17] Hey, let’s go to the next story here. Crude oil shipments return to Arctic as Russia sends tanker to Asia. This is an amazing thing. When you sit back and take a look. Last summer shipping season, the oil tankers carried 1.5 million tons of crude across the Arctic Ocean to number ports in China, including in Gabon. Tai Jan, I had you. I’m not even going to pronounce that correctly. Russia officials ehm, do more than double those volumes to 3 to 4 million tons for 2024. That is just amazing. Ice capable shuttle tank is what’s used through most of the year. And when you consider, how much oil that that’s a lot of oil that they’re pumping through the, the Arctic seaways there, especially with the Houthis blowing things up, you kind of want to go ahead and, skirt around. I want to ask a serious question. And that is for our podcast listeners and our Substack readers. Please reach out to us because I want to ask the question in this. [00:08:23][65.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:23] Next article why Asia’s carbon emissions are racing. Western progress, I really want to know is net zero. I think it’s unattainable. Is it something that the West should even bother with? Should we just try to save money and actually bring in our supply chains in-house so that we can have control over humanitarian and the ecology and pollution, and trying to make sure that we manage things this way, because realistically, when we take a look at it, this producer, if you can bring this chart up, it’s the chart in the third chart now, it’s got top ten countries and it’s billions of metric tons. As we look at this chart, China put out 12.6 billion metric tons, 31% of the world’s tonnage of CO2 output is put out by China. US is only 5.1 now, and we lost almost a percent growth rate last year because we had migrated to natural gas. So we continue to do nothing, do nothing but migrate to natural gas and really try to cut it there. We’re doing our fair share. I think that that actually is phenomenal. Take a look at India. India is at 4.1% growth rate. Russia is at a half a percent. Japan is losing their 2.4% decrease. They’re doing fabulous as well as because of LNG imports and nuclear. And so Japan is dead on. Right on. That hat’s off. And so why should we waste our money in and why don’t we try to help. Get energy poverty and programs put in place and not waste any more money. But instead, we’re doing carbon capture. It’s not doing anything. We’re doing it. I mean, it really is doing nothing. So when we take a look at this, the in 2023, the 12.6 billion metric ton of CO2 equivalent is two and a half times that of the U.S. and 4.7% of the EU. No matter what we do, the world, the world is going to be more polluted because of China. And why shouldn’t we just try to make ourselves out of debt? Let’s reduce the national debt. Cut all of our programs, cut our government spending, and cut our money going around the world. And we would be doing a lot better and able to help Africa put in natural gas, put in nuclear. Let’s help the other emerging markets. We would make more money by putting in those kind of activities. So it’s an opportunity to make money. Lower pollution is where it’s really and and really drive and get out there. [00:11:31][187.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:11:32] Hey, our last story for the day. Let’s go to the last story. Houthi strikes continue to terrorize merchant shipping. I made that half hearted joke at the beginning. And that joke is, you know, hey, where are the climate activist when you need them? You know, let’s see them go spray paint, up and down. And that’s the main area their houses have claimed to the Trans World Navigator boat carrier twice in the space of 24 hours. In the in the, say, using drones. This is really frightening that you can take a low cost drone and have a very low tech group of terrorists causes this much damage and pollution to the world, because the amount of distance that now energy has to trans can be transported through tankers and all those extra miles is just pollution. So if you really want to just stop oil, why don’t we turn your focus over to something that would actually do something good and try to talk to these people? [00:12:34][62.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:35] So with that, I want to give a shout out to all of our folks that are subscribing to our Energy News Beat Substack. It’s the energynewsbeat.substack.com. Join us there. We are going to have some new changes there. We’re going to have some other, new tools. We are dropping out some new stories. I just dropped out Anna Ford and she was with the CEO or the founder co-founder of, Kronos Energy. Pretty excited to get that one out. Fusion energy podcast. We have a lot of other great CEOs and world leaders coming up around the corner. So with that, subscribe like share and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Have a great day. [00:12:35][0.0][737.6]

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