Week Recap: Wind Costs, EV Struggles, and Policy Debates

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Weekly Daily Standup Top Stories

Who is paying for the Free Energy Wind?- or as Penguin Empire Reports – “Who’s paying for lunch?”

Highlights of the Podcast

00:00 – Intro

01:45 – Who is paying for the Free Energy Wind?- or as Penguin Empire Reports – “Who’s paying for lunch?”

06:04 – Chinese Companies Should Not Benefit From the EV Critical Minerals Tax Credit

09:57 – Drowning in Sewage and Dumping Money into a Climate Rathole

13:14 – Questions the debate moderators need to ask Presidential Candidates about America’s energy plans

15:24 – What’s Going on with Electric Vehicles?

18:47 – Texas Oil Regulator Flags Endangered Species Designation

21:10 – Outro

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

Michael Tanner: [00:00:14] What’s going on, everybody? Welcome into the Saturday, May 25th, 2024 edition of the Daily Energy News Beat Standup, our special weekly recap. I am Michael Tanner, joined by Stuart Turley. First off, happy Memorial Day weekend, everybody. It’s a busy week. We had a lot of great stories, a. [00:00:31][16.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:31] Lot of great stories, man. It’s a lot of big fun. [00:00:34][3.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:00:35] Absolutely. We appreciate everybody who stuck with us for the week. We’re about to roll over some of our top stories from the week on. The team does a great job of picking out some of the ones that have got the most, kick. What’s on the docket still? You you just released an episode, with Troy Echard. [00:00:49][14.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:49] Yeah, yeah. Trey Echard and, also Doug Sandridge and I are talking about the Osage, wind farm problem up in Oklahoma. So we will be we’ll have done that live on Friday. [00:01:02][12.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:02] Now, that’ll be great. So go ahead and check that out, guys. pretty unbelievable. You can also check out, my latest episode seven of the Deal spotlight with Bennett Williams. We’re covering, the Exxon, Chevron Hess, merger debacle that is Guyana and the Stabroek block. But, guys, as always, before we cut in, thank you to the energy news beat, team the energy news Beat.com, which is the proud provider of all the news and analysis that you hear doing. The team do a tremendous job making sure that website stays up to speed. Everything you need to know to be the tip of the spear when it comes to the energy and the oil and gas business, I’m going to go and turn it over to the team. They’ll have a great Memorial Day weekend, guys. We’ll see you on Monday. [00:01:44][41.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:01:45] Hey, let’s start off with, their buddies over at Penguin Empire who’s paying for free energy wind. Or as Penguin Empire reports, who’s paying for lunch? Michael, there are no free lunches. And I absolutely love what they did. Let me team this up a little bit. When you sit back and and try to think, Michael, there’s a fallacy out there that wind is free. When the energy is free, it’s not free. And who’s paying for it? And so I did not understand some of the things in here. Miss Producer, if you could bring up the four technology trends chart, it’s coming up. It says turbine capacity, rotor, diameter and hub height have all increased significantly over the long term. Michael, I didn’t understand this. Really taking a look at it in the United States, 2022, the average, newly installed was 3.2MW. That’s 7%. And three, is then larger than in 2021, but it’s, 350% since 1999. That is just those are huge. [00:02:57][72.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:02:58] Yeah. I mean, again, you know, with if you haven’t seen a wind farm in person, I’d highly recommend going and finding one, because the physical footprint of these things are unbelievable. If you haven’t driven down a road before and seen, you’ve got the the truck in front of them. That’s the you know, watch out wide load. That’s a mile above. Because then you’ve got these trucks that just are carrying one blade that are taking up two lanes on a highway. You’ve got the other service vehicle behind. So the they’re really a huge footprint relative to say in oil and gas. Well, I mean, heck, if you have an opportunity, our friends over at Pecos Energy and our I’ve been out to their website multiple times, the footprint of their well. And then in the background you can see a wind farm. It’s unbelievable. You’ll be shocked. Wait wait wait, I’m on an oil. I’m in an oil field, right? But yet the physical footprint of this field is drastically lower than the three windmills or wind farms that are behind them. [00:03:55][57.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:03:56] Outstanding point. And you did that perfectly, Mike. Well, even without, you know, for our, podcast listeners at home, I’m going to pay him after this podcast because, Mr. Producer, if you could bring up the, slide that says it is the one, the second one down that has the this gas plant doesn’t need all those multiple steps. I’ll tag it in there for you. There are there you can see in the lower right hand corner it says 103, megawatt gas power plant. Look at how small that is. When you go up to the next three sections across each of those are sections. Michael, look how much land that is taking up compared to one natural gas plant. Isn’t that crazy? Wow. [00:04:44][48.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:45] Absolutely. And that that, 103 megawatt gas plant is the amount of power that that is going or the amount of things that that power is relative to even that wind farm up there is unbelievable. And the gas power’s dispatchable. [00:04:59][14.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:00] Exactly. And so that one single graphic for anybody that is understanding what a section of land is, that is just unable. [00:05:10][9.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:05:11] Believable to mile by mile. [00:05:12][1.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:05:13] Mile by mile on that baby. And then, in this also, there’s table six. We don’t need to bring that up because it’s pretty detailed, but it has a really amount of tonnage that is required for each windmill. And we’re here’s where I want to give a shout out for what I’m trying to understand and making money. And that is land reclamation. After wind farm death, wind farms, do not last 30 years. They are lucky if they last 5 to 8 before they have to be reworked in order to get to maintenance. Without having all that, that’s a whole nother story. Here’s where I want to get into who’s paying for the land reclamation of these horrible land problems at the end of the year, like when we were talking about that more with videos later on. Chinese companies should not benefit from the EV critical mineral tax credit. Michael. You can’t buy this kind of stupid. No wonder you know you’ve got great companies like, I interviewed the CEO and president, two different and two different people at different times from Frere Brad Battery out of Norway. They’re taking advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and I applaud that. I think it’s great they have renewable battery technology. That makes sense. This does not let’s go into this here. According to Joe Manchin, the key author of The Tax credit, a core reason for disqualifying bad batteries with, any minerals from foreign entities of concern from that tax credit has been bad actors, namely China benefiting from the tax credit. Moreover, the current production of the for definition of the foreign entity of concern only deems an entity of foreign entity of concern is engaged from the extraction, processing, or recycling of such material in a covered nation. Here’s where it also does not cover that, Michael. And that is what about the batteries coming in from the new plants that they’re putting in, in Mexico to undermine the EVs, for the U.S. manufacturer? This is a mess. [00:07:26][133.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:07:27] Yeah, it really is a mess. And I think it goes. But it it goes to show that the, you know, you have to be very careful when you offer direct tax incentives. There’s going to be a market for people to come in and attempt to undermine them. So I’m glad they’re taking the stamp and at least making sure that Chinese companies can’t. And especially these bad actors can’t take advantage, because what are they trying to do? They’re trying to come into the electric vehicle market and lower the price because they can come in and offer much, much lower vehicle cost because they’ve done a good job over the last 15 to 20 years of shoring up the supply chain, which, you know, if you want to go back to why EVs are so expensive in the first place, it’s because the supply chain is highly fractionalized. These critical minerals are extremely expensive to both get out of the ground. We’ve we’ve talked at nauseam about, you know, the the human rights abuses that are happening from countries like Congo and other places in which they are, grabbed from. But that still means that. And still, even though you’re making a dollar a day with an ax and your baby on your back to mine, these they’re still coming out to be, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, just for one battery to come out and, and fund these things. So it’s unbelievable. I, I applaud what gener, what Senator Joe Manchin is doing here, at least trying to carve out dysfunction. [00:08:41][73.8]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:42] Oh, I agree, and I applaud anybody standing up for America. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat. I don’t care if you’re a Republican. Look out for America first. [00:08:52][10.0]

Michael Tanner: [00:08:53] No, absolutely. Whatever happened to, Fetterman’s happened in the mansion right now. [00:08:58][4.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:59] Oh. Oh, I love the Fetterman. I did you see his quote? [00:09:04][5.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:05] He’s had so many of them. [00:09:06][1.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:07] I swear. I think if a conspiracy theory was about was ever there, it’s him. I think it’s not the original Fetterman. I think they put a body double in because he’s smarter, he’s better looking. I don’t know what happened, but when he said, I agree, I, I apologize or I, I originally said Congress was like, going to a Jerry Springer show. I now have to apologize to Jerry Springer. Hahahahahahahaha. [00:09:34][27.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:35] That’s a good one. [00:09:36][0.6]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:38] Hats off to Fetterman. I you know, I think right now I even have to visit with him on the podcast. If you’re listening. You know, Senator Fetterman, we’re gonna be, talking to, Senator Cruz here pretty quick, so might as well follow up with the Fetterman. [00:09:52][13.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:53] You’re, you’re you’re busting into, Congress. How fun is that? [00:09:56][3.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:09:57] Drowning in sewage and dumping money in a climate rat hole. Net zero. This is the tagline that’s in the in. The subheading is net zero will have zero effect on the climate and threatens devastating. Consequences for the supply of affordable and reliable electricity. Michael. This one is really a great article. And, the Thames when is filled with sewage, but yet it’s a global problem. This is disgusting. The company was fined 300. 3.3 million pounds after causing the death of 1400 fish with the release of millions of liters of untreated sewage. The aging sewage infrastructure can’t handle the demands of a gross population. Well, then stop the illegal migration. As more and more I’ve got to say. Yeah. Just kidding. No. I’m not. Okay. In Bangladesh, the link rivers at King Capital can receive 60,000 cubic meter of waste from nine major industrial carriers. The river is so toxic that locals consider it biologically dead. In New Delhi, the capital of India, the Yammer, Yammer a river has been heavily affected by the disposal of harmful chemicals and untreated sewage. Michael, it seems to me that we would spend better time cleaning up renewable plastics, cleaning up, sewage, turn our waste to energy. Then it would be to go to net zero. [00:11:37][100.5]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:38] Yeah. I mean, you’re absolutely right. I think the other the climate change debate, in my opinion, is a lot of hand-waving of look over here when there’s a lot of other problems, you know, over here, you know, we didn’t mention the great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is one of the biggest dumping grounds in the entire, you know, look that up. If you’re if you’re by computer right now, Google the great Pacific garbage patch absolutely will blow. You and I talked to. [00:12:04][25.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:04] Doctor Patrick more about that. In my one of my two hour diet, two two hour podcast with him. So, yes. There is a lot. And then also Captain Kelly, who is, a wonderful reach around the world for cleaning plastics out of the, the, the world’s ocean. He is a dynamo on doing so. [00:12:27][22.6]

Michael Tanner: [00:12:27] No, the point of all that is, I think this article does a great job of saying yes, real issue. And we’re, you know, we’re we’re going to see much more universal health standard increases by cleaning up a lot of the river pollution that’s going on and not necessarily worrying about what’s going on in the climate. Yes, obviously we need to, you know, worry about quote unquote, what’s going on in the climate. But beyond Long Bear talks about this. I mean, there are, yes, of other issues that come before climate change that we need to worry about this being one of them. [00:12:56][29.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:57] I couldn’t agree more. You know, climate change, man made climate change does happen. Now, there’s a whole argument on how that happens. But what can we do to affect life and and everything else? Let’s let’s quit worrying about net zero and clean up our act questions that they debate. Moderators need to ask presidential candidates about their, American energy plans. A one of the questions should be, are you alive? I did, I just say that, since all the hospitals, airports and communications, military planes, trains and vehicles are all based on products made from fossil fuels, what is your plan to avoid a transition to lifestyles that existed before the 1800s? What a great question. You know, if we go to net zero and we ruin the energy policies, there’s two different things. Another thing is electricity is not, petrochemical things made from petrochemicals. And so we have to sit back and take a look. Is it actually petrochemicals? Or, you know, is it plastics? Is it life saving drugs? Is it a windmill cannot make a pharmaceutical drug does not happen. But you need oil and gas to make other thing that makes sense. Yeah. [00:14:23][86.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:14:23] Yeah. I mean, there’s a great list of questions here we could go through and read all of them. Unfortunately, with CNN hosting the debate, then no one’s ever going to ask this one. Unfortunately, I think one of the key questions is, you know, you know, there was this you know, there’s one in the middle here with ongoing efforts to shutter coal fired power plants, natural gas power plants and nuclear power plants. How do you plan to support the needs for continuous, uninterrupted supplies of electricity? That’s a question that should be asked, and maybe you could frame it more as baseload energy. That’s the key to this whole thing. How are we going to keep having baseload energy exactly? [00:14:58][34.9]

Stuart Turley: [00:14:59] Here’s another question how will electricity generated from wind and solar be able to support the materialistic demands of humanity? Or, or before we chastise Big Oil for. Climate change. I want to add one more thing to that. They’re suing now. Big oil for climate change. You know, you gotta be kidding me. All these lawsuits. The law fair is going nuts on big oil. [00:15:23][24.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:24] What’s going on with electric vehicles? I’m going to read straight from the Article here. 2024 has not been kind to the electric vehicle market, particularly in the United States. Sales are down. Tesla has laid off staff and EVs have been caught in the political crosshairs. The future of transportation may still be electric, but the recent struggles underscore the market’s role in determining that future. This this article goes on, to highlight one that Yahoo Finance pulled. That we talked about yesterday, they found 50% of respondents were unlikely to purchase EV. They also talk about another Gallup poll that was actually in March of 2023, that from 41% of adults would not purchase an EV, while only 43% might consider optimism. Opposition among Republicans is also much stronger 76% according to that Yahoo poll, and 71% according to that Gallup poll respondent. They would not buy an EV. There’s there’s two things that are happening right now. First, it’s just the overall cost assessment. Right now it’s becoming it’s it’s not economical for these companies or not for the companies per se, but for consumers to actually purchase these EVs. I think there was a Department of Energy study that was done by their national laboratory out in Chicago. They did this quote unquote, cost assessment of purchasing. And now I’m going to start reading straight from the article, purchasing and operating electric vehicles compared to hybrids, gas powered car dealerships from that compact car, mid-sized cars and SUV were cheaper than the lowest cost comparable EV, even if owned for 15 years, even including, some upgraded technology, technological innovation and cheaper commodity prices could make EVs, make EVs owning or owning EVs more economical. But the upfront cost down is critical. Of course, the upfront cost is going to be key. Anything. They also point out that beyond the economics, both politics and policies are kind of affecting it. We talked about the tariffs that that Joe Biden has has just implemented. Now. He also he’s following up on what Trump has done, which was, you know, massive tariffs and stuff’s coming in from China. That’s not going to make products here at home cheaper unfortunately. Because a lot of the cheap, products that we’re getting do come from overseas. So you’re beginning to see a little bit of, look over here. We love cheap stuff. Oh, but we also want to make sure that, we don’t take too much and we don’t enrich China people. You know, this article also points out that the EV tax credits aren’t necessarily, quote unquote, equitable. I’m not a big fan of that term, but they point out that three that households making $300,000 annually can still qualify for this $730 tax credit. Basically, that means it just goes to people that don’t need the tax credit. If there’s any people that need tax credits, it’s the lower cost people. You know, I also love this quote here. Because of price thresholds and domestic content requirements, only 22 of the 110 EV models sold in the U.S qualify for the tax credit. So even if you want to use the tax credit, there’s only about less than 20% of all EVs on the market actually qualify for the tax credit, which is absolutely unbelievable. It goes to show you that, you know, at the end of the day, the consumer will rein in EVs are getting pitch is going to be interesting to see what happens. As we’ve said on this show many times, I am for hybrids. I think hybrids are going to be the future where you have a combination of a combustion engine along with back, a battery storage. I think that’s also where personal consumption will go, so we will be following that quickly. [00:18:46][202.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:18:47] Texas oil regulator flags endangered species designation. I gotta hand it to this. This is, kind of a funny one. Only in Texas. You gotta love it. Wayne Christiansen, actually came out and says this is a, quote, the new EPA ruling on this stupid lizard. Excuse me. Did I say stupid? I didn’t mean to insult any lizards that are possibly listening out there. This doesn’t have a thing to do with saving lizards. It’s about shutting down U.S. oil and gas production to win political brownie points, which will only increase inflation and jeopardize billions of lives globally, said our, railroad Commissioner, Christian. Wayne Christian said in a statement. I gotta hand it to he’s dead on. Right. Go, Wayne, I like it. [00:19:37][50.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:19:38] Yeah. I mean, I’m not the biggest Wayne Christian fan for a bunch of different reasons, but I think what he’s what he’s doing is actually lines like this. [00:19:46][8.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:19:46] This one’s getting better. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lizard, a chicken, a whale or a unicorn. Radical environmentalists won’t be satisfied until we get our all of our energy from firewood and are living in a cave again. I’m sorry. That’s the first thing I’ve really heard from him that I like. [00:20:03][16.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:20:04] Yeah. Two things. Blind mice, fine cheese once in a while. And if they’re going after whales. We know I’m all for it. You know, maybe he is right about this again. I’m not, you know, just because of. Just because my feelings about Wayne Christiansen aren’t the best. What he is calling out is something that’s great. Is that this, you know, this United States Fish and Wildlife announcement that this dune sagebrush lizard is going to be classified as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Is is clearly a political, you know, political framework attempting to shut down majority of oil gas development here in the state. [00:20:42][38.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:43] Oh it’s unbelievable. And and, our good buddy out there, my, in California, was sitting there in his video when that’s when we interviewed him about how much extra work he had to do to go out and look and look under some sagebrush out in California and go there. Lizard. Hello? Yep. And I was. [00:21:03][20.4]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:04] Like, bro. [00:21:04][0.4]

Stuart Turley: [00:21:05] Yeah. My grandma, there’s a thousand of these little things out there. Yep. Absolutely. [00:21:05][0.0][1224.7]

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