[[{“value”:”
Irina Slav
International Author writing about energy, mining, and geopolitical issues. Bulgaria
David Blackmon
Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.
Tammy Nemeth
Energy Consulting Specialist
Stuart Turley
President, and CEO, Sandstone Group, Podcast Host
Is the Energy Transition Disintegrating Right Before Our Eyes?
Stuart Turley [00:00:11] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy Realities podcast. My name is Stu Turley, President and CEO of the Sandstone Group. We are living in a wild time right now. I’ve got two of my coconspirators. I mean, podcast host today. Here we have Irina Slav live from Bulgaria. How are you today, Irina?
Irina Slav [00:00:34] I’m great. Thank you Stu.
Stuart Turley [00:00:36] You. You seem so calm with having technical difficulties this morning.
Irina Slav [00:00:41] Yeah, amazingly. Probably because I’m exhausted with all the heat that we had last week. But it’s over now. It’s cooler, very, very pleasant.
Stuart Turley [00:00:51] Well, I’ll tell you what. And then. And not only is an a man in, he’s a legend in my mind. He’s a legend in his own mind. We have David Blackman. He is a Substack author. He’s a contributor over there at Forbes. Forbes contributing author. He’s on the Telegraph, he’s on the Daily Caller, and he is got his own podcast, the, energy question, how are you today? Dude.
David Blackmon [00:01:19] I’m just wonderful, man. It’s just like, apparently it’s just like Bulgaria over here in Texas, you know, it’s nice and cool. We’re going to be in the low 90s all week for high temperatures 15 degrees below last year.
Stuart Turley [00:01:32] Wow.
David Blackmon [00:01:35] Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:01:36] How long?
David Blackmon [00:01:37] We were between 105 and 110.
Stuart Turley [00:01:41] We have Tammy Nemeth. She is, being victimized of, CrowdStrike. She’s traveling today. And so if she dials in, we’ll be, having her, jump in. So, today, one of our main topics is the energy transition disintegrating before right before our own very eyes. And we’ve got several talking points on this, and. Yeah, this is very, very important. There’s a whole thread of energy stories that are going on out there. And, David, if you’re up on this kind of thing, the the vineyard, the offshore wind had a catastrophe. What happened there?
David Blackmon [00:02:28] Well, the one it’s the only. First of all, it’s the only big offshore wind farm, as part of Biden’s, massive plan for all this, wind generation in the northeast Atlantic that’s come online so far. They had, so far this year, brought on ten turbines offshore that were generating until, one of the blades of the turbines just broke and fell off. And what they, the company has characterized as an offshore incident, without being specific exactly the nature of the incident. We still don’t know. A week later, more than a week later. Now, it happened Saturday before last. So ten, nine days ago, the the, the it’s right off Nantucket Island, which is where all these wealthy people live, off of Massachusetts coast, the NIMBYs, they awoke Monday morning to beaches littered with enormous chunks of green colored fiberglass foam kind of stuff. That is, of course, the inside of the blade that had washed up on shore. Nantucket Island had to close its beaches for several days for the clean up and may still be closed. I haven’t checked this morning. The government came in on Wednesday night and ordered Vineyard Wind to shut down entirely while an investigation was conducted. The company communications team is not very good and, and hasn’t communicated effectively about any of this. And so, you know, it’s taking, great heat in the media right now up there in the northeast, but it’s symbolic of the whole wind industry, I think, in the United States, which is coming under increasing opposition, increasing fire from local communities, opposing, working to oppose, the installation of more of these monstrosities in their midst, because people are waking up to the reality that wind energy is not a viable substitute for real, reliable generation of electricity provided by natural gas, coal and nuclear power. And, I suspect the same thing is going to be happening to the solar business, you know, over the months and years to come as well, because of all the land it occupies, half want there was a big deal in the media last week about a single solar farm, solar installation. I think it was in California. I may be wrong about that. So this thing is going to generate one half of a gigawatt, which is half of a standard gas plant, of power generation, and it covers ten square miles of arable land, okay, ten square miles for 500MW of power. That is not sustainable. It’s not acceptable. It’s not going to continue happening for, you know, for, long term. It just isn’t. People are not going to stand for it in a free society. And that is why I always come back to my argument that this energy transition, as it’s being structured right now, is not sustainable and or compatible with a free society. And, which is, of course, why we see so much pressure coming from the globalist left to do away with democratic, institutions in countries like the United States, Canada and all across Europe. And so this is going to be the major conflict of the next decade as these green policies, policies continue to be pushed by these globalist politicians. And, what we’re seeing push back this year in elections in the EU. I suspect we’ll see major pushback in the November elections in the United States because of this dynamic in this energy transition. So that’s my initial rant for today.
Stuart Turley [00:06:49] Cool.
Irina Slav [00:06:51] Opening round.
David Blackmon [00:06:53] My opening round.
Stuart Turley [00:06:54] Irina, in the transition that we’re seeing right now, you wrote an article on your Substack which is IrinaSlav.substack.com. Everyone needs to run out, get your credit cards out and support IrinaSlav.substack.com and it is fantastic. It was my.
David Blackmon [00:07:15] Own subscription renewed last week. Irina.
Irina Slav [00:07:17] Thank you. Thank you very much.
Stuart Turley [00:07:19] I love mine, by the way. I, I’m over here being a Irina fan. Sorry, guys. The the 2024 Energy Loony Bin Awards goes right in with today’s topics. Holy smokes, Batman Canada in the EV subsidy. Underestimation new Zealand and the awkward oil and gas ban. California and the bad oil profits. Europe in the coal embarrassment. Germany in the wind. Solar subsidy overhaul. Volkswagen, and the E-Tron miscalculation. What a great list Irina.
Irina Slav [00:08:00] And this is just a very, very small sample because after I took a week off everything, I returned to a treasure trove of more news. We could have another loony bin awards edition right this this minute. It’s bad news all around. I mean, Germany First overhauls its future subsidy regime to not guarantee minimum prices for wind and solar electricity. Then it goes one step further days later, to to say that it will no longer guarantee minimum prices when electricity prices from the wholesale markets are negative. Because this is happening increasingly often, and they have somehow realized that they will be, you know, covering losses of private companies. And now the UK is being warned that it will not be able to meet its own targets, the government’s its wind power targets for 2030 because it’s shockingly unexpected and very surprising because someone thought they could meet them. It’s. It’s just amazing. The bad news just keeps flooding in.
David Blackmon [00:09:29] Well, yeah.
Irina Slav [00:09:30] And, you know, it’s it’s expanding. Which is why I would have the title of today’s broadcast that we have. It is disintegrating in front of our very eyes.
Stuart Turley [00:09:43] One of the.
David Blackmon [00:09:44] Bad part is it’s at a cost of trillions of dollars to taxpayers.
Irina Slav [00:09:48] Yes. When you were talking about those wind turbines. You’ve probably seen the video that circulated, on X, weeks ago. You know, the rendering of how, an onshore wind turbine is constructed, the amount of iron that goes into it, the amount of weight. This one of the hardest to decarbonize sectors. And they’re using this enormous amount of raw materials to construct an onshore wind turbine. I don’t even want to imagine what it’s like to construct a good, to construct an offshore wind turbine.
David Blackmon [00:10:31] That are as tall as the Eiffel Tower. The vineyard wind towers are as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Think of what the foundation of something like that has to look like. It’s it’s it’s unimaginable.
Irina Slav [00:10:46] And it’s a waste of resources.
David Blackmon [00:10:49] Yes.
Irina Slav [00:10:50] A complete waste of resources.
David Blackmon [00:10:53] It certainly is. Stu I interrupted you a minute ago? Sorry.
Stuart Turley [00:10:57] Oh, that’s all right. I was, working on something here, when we had. I was trying to. I was trying to get the, video, pulled over. This we brought up. Oh, way to go, Patrick.
David Blackmon [00:11:14] Great point. Patrick.
Stuart Turley [00:11:15] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:11:17] These guys, I’m sorry this is happening to.
Stuart Turley [00:11:22] We have NIMBYs that we’re talking about. Not in my backyard. You know, all the NIMBYs are watching that big solar panel blow up or. Excuse me, when wind turbine blow up the microplastics. Let me get back to this. Here’s the microplastics that were that are being, released into the, oceans is horrific. Captain Kelly, Kieran Kelly is one of the one of my heroes. He is out and he’s leading the charge on saving, you know, pollution from pollution from, the oceans, the microplastics from wind turbines is horrific. And when you saw the videos and I was trying to technologically bring up here, which I’m having a bit of a cramp this morning. And you see, it’s not just microplastics. These things are like bulldozer type size heavy that they’re having to pull off. And they’re. The animals are eating these things and it gets into humans. So this is not healthy. This is pollution at its worst.
Irina Slav [00:12:34] What where do the microplastics from wind energy come?
David Blackmon [00:12:38] The blades.
Stuart Turley [00:12:39] The blades as they’re turning around there is an erosion of the blade.
Irina Slav [00:12:44] And they release.
Stuart Turley [00:12:45] Them and they release them as they.
Irina Slav [00:12:48] Say. Wind power, facilities contain plastics.
Stuart Turley [00:12:54] Oh, fiber. Yes.
Irina Slav [00:12:55] No
Stuart Turley [00:12:58] Yes. It’s unbelievable.
Irina Slav [00:12:59] Anything you want to tell me? They use lubricants made from petroleum?
David Blackmon [00:13:06] Yes. And it just gets dumped into the ocean in these offshore.
Irina Slav [00:13:10] I’m shock.
David Blackmon [00:13:11] Developments.
Stuart Turley [00:13:12] You know, each wind turbine takes hundreds of gallons of oil just to maintain,.
Irina Slav [00:13:18] I know,.
Stuart Turley [00:13:19] And then the the article that went off on one of my news sites was, Scotland years ago was, I think it was two years ago, 14 million trees to cut down all the wind turbines. And then the second follow up story to that was the diesel generators having to run the wind turbines.
Irina Slav [00:13:38] This is like, battery packs for households, which is why we’re not getting batteries even though we’re getting solar panels, because even when the solar panels are not producing, you need to charge those batteries. You can just let them discharge and stay empty. And when the solar panels are not producing, you need to charge the batteries from the, from the grid, which is not inconvenient because you will have some backup power. When you need it, in case you need it. But, you know, it’s not entirely green. If you’re charging them from the grid, which is not great
Stuart Turley [00:14:20] And we’re seeing there’s a pattern and energy thread of stories going on that I’m watching around the world and on my feed. And the number one thing I’m seeing is we’re not going to be hitting our net zero goals, which I think, you know, nobody’s going to hit it. We have companies like Renault announced yesterday that they’ve got to say they need help on the EV standards because manufacturers. I believe that Tesla will be a survivor in the EV market because of its technology and brand.
Irina Slav [00:14:59] That’s that’s Tesla’s.
Stuart Turley [00:15:01] And yes.
Irina Slav [00:15:02] Advantage.
Stuart Turley [00:15:03] It’s an advantage in their leadership that they’re designed as a EV as opposed to coming from the other way. And then you have Ford and you have all the other ones. The EVs are just, Ford and everybody else. This story from Tammy, we have to give Tammy, even though she’s not here, we have to give her a shout out. Ford scrapped plan for 1.8 billion. Oakville EV assembly plant will retool to make gasoline pickups.
David Blackmon [00:15:34] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:15:35] Unbelievable story in. Tammy pointed out to us that it was that Ford got a subsidy of 377,000 per employee that they’re now no longer going to use.
David Blackmon [00:15:53] Right, to. Build that plant. And open it. Yeah. And yeah, but but the F-150 lightning. You know, it’s a product that people don’t want. Okay, this is the problem where our government is trying to force our automakers in this country, in the United States, to make products consumers don’t want to buy. And there’s a very limited market for an electric pickup truck. And last month, for the first time, the Tesla Cybertruck overtook the F-150 lightning in total sales. And it’s not selling, either. Okay, the Cybertruck isn’t selling many units either.
Irina Slav [00:16:34] It’s a horrible looking vehicle.
David Blackmon [00:16:36] It’s the ugliest thing in history, and, you know, it’s the worst design ever. But it’s outselling the F-150.
Irina Slav [00:16:44] No, I think that was the week when I ran through the bottlenecks. A tiny little thing that doesn’t even look like I know that the Cybertruck looks like car, but it looks like a, you know, vehicle. I’d like to put a very interesting comment.
David Blackmon [00:17:02] Yes. Yeah. This is a great comment because. Why? Because it was only generating enough electricity to light about 10,000 homes with those ten turbines, and there’s plenty of natural gas and nuclear and coal fired power plants to take up the slack in that part of the country, at least on these days. Right now, in the summertime when the weather’s fairly mild up there. But, you know, they’ve got that grid up there in New England is pretty short of, baseload generation as well, in part because of all the millions and billions of dollars their governments are spending on boondoggles like Vineyard Wind. Okay. You miss allocating all this money, all these resources to build generation capacity. That doesn’t work. That has a 20% efficiency factor. Instead of focusing on building stuff that actually works and and the price is going to be paid soon, it already has in some instances in blackouts, in people with unreliable power to their homes.
Irina Slav [00:18:12] And you don’t miss it when it goes down.
David Blackmon [00:18:14] Right? Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:18:19] Guess what happens in the UK? They’ll feel it. But if they don’t feel it, even then, if they have to shut down an offshore wind farm, then what are we doing?
David Blackmon [00:18:30] Yeah, and the UK is getting
Irina Slav [00:18:35] generation capacity. That’s unreliable.
David Blackmon [00:18:36] Yeah. And this this labor government, by the way, is is already going completely radical, tripling down on all these failed policies.
Irina Slav [00:18:46] I expected.
David Blackmon [00:18:47] Yeah, they’re going to completely destroy the power sector in, in the UK in just a couple of short years. And then they’ll have to call a snap election here because they’re going to become so unpopular. And the the idiot Tories will make a comeback.
Irina Slav [00:19:04] Under the same name. Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:19:09] Probably. It’s it’s a terrible situation in the UK. I shouldn’t be laughing. I wish Tammy was here to talk about it, actually.
Irina Slav [00:19:16] Yeah, well, they’re golden for them, David.
David Blackmon [00:19:18] Yeah. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:19:20] But you bring up a great point and I’m going to bring up this. I can’t understand her. David, you had sent this out. This is the. You want to tee this video up. It is the Polish representative to the EU.
David Blackmon [00:19:34] Oh, this is fantastic. Yeah, she’s she just lambasts. Ursula von der Leyen.
Stuart Turley [00:19:39] I’m going to turn the southbound. Because she’s. Speaking and and so for our podcast listeners, the vast majority of Europeans think of you in your election as president of European commissioner in the previous terms. It’s a huge mistake. She grills.
Irina Slav [00:19:57] Yeah.
David Blackmon [00:19:58] For two minutes. It’s it’s a just an epic speech that she delivered. She’s wonderful. And she’s looking directly at Ursula von der Lang, who’s sitting over there with an evil grin on her face. It’s really.
Irina Slav [00:20:12] that it won’t matter.
David Blackmon [00:20:14] Right? It won’t help them.
Irina Slav [00:20:15] Spelling out the truth. It does matter,
David Blackmon [00:20:22] right. Because we get to see this on our social media, right? I picked this up from Max Twitter. But but the actual legacy media over there in Europe isn’t going to air this, so nobody’s going to see it other than people who look for things like this out on social media.
Stuart Turley [00:20:40] But, you know, Irina, this is something that I think is really important because people are waking up and that’s I have to hand it to Elon and X in order to use to say, we’re able to find out a lot more about the Trump assassination. And we have found out that they have.
Irina Slav [00:20:59] To attempt, please.
Stuart Turley [00:21:02] Attempt. Thank you. The Trump attempt. Thank you. And that we that there are multiple shooters even the senator said yesterday on yesterday.
David Blackmon [00:21:13] You know.
Stuart Turley [00:21:14] So this is now out there because of Elon’s purchasing of X, has made a complete difference. And now we’re seeing that around. We would not know that the, assassination attempt, was going to be this way. Let me share this. I have to hand it for President Trump in his speech. This was very critical.
Video Donalnd Trump [00:21:39] I don’t want to. See the screen up there of me that’s very severe. That come over. That’s this. That’s a severe sucker. What’s with that one? It looks okay from the other side. But that is very severe. I apologize, man, I’m up there. I said whoa. Look at that. Wow. That’s like a work of art.
Stuart Turley [00:22:08] The man has a sense of humor. If he can make fun.
Irina Slav [00:22:13] Sense of self. Irony. Right. Which is what the idiots don’t have. I’m not a huge fan. He’s more of a showman than a politician, but honestly. A sense of self and it is essential regardless of where your career is, but especially in politics.
Stuart Turley [00:22:35] Well, I tell you, the Kremlin put out an article, today on on, the Harris as a president. Putin’s laughing already. I mean.
Irina Slav [00:22:50] What his will.
Stuart Turley [00:22:51] Oh it’s unbelievable. And, David, this was, a bunch of people kind of looking. I’m going to set this video up. Imagine, if you would Democrats not knowing what’s going on and you’re out for a jog, David, you go out for a jog every day, right?
David Blackmon [00:23:10] Oh, sure.
Stuart Turley [00:23:11] Oh, yeah. Okay, so you’re out jogging and you.
David Blackmon [00:23:13] To go out for a walk every day.
Stuart Turley [00:23:15] Is this. Is this Democrats on the. That’s how they’re doing their job getting ready for this election. All right. Okay. Watch this. Here we go. Okay. That is the Democrat Party right now trying to run down. I mean, they’re in they’re in power right now. And I’m it’s a laugh and it’s not a laughing matter, but we have to laugh in order to get around the censors.
David Blackmon [00:23:46] Well, I mean, this is a coup de that’s happening in real time, and we can talk about that some other time. But I back back to the energy transition last, last, last point on that, is, is it is falling apart, but it’s slow motion. It’s kind of like this coup against Joe Biden. It’s a slow motion, silent coup, not silent, but slow motion. The the the things fall apart slowly until they fall apart suddenly. Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:24:17] That sounded very much like Kamala.
David Blackmon [00:24:20] The unwinding of this energy transition, which is not workable, not sustainable, not affordable, is going to progress slowly. I don’t know for how many more months or years, and then it’s suddenly going to come crashing down in a very disastrous way, probably with some major energy crisis, caused by lack of reliability on, on some country’s major power grid. Maybe the United States could be the UK, could be Canada, but we’re going to have a major crisis, and that’s going to lead to a rapid unwinding of all this because it is not affordable, not affordable, not sustainable and not workable.
Stuart Turley [00:25:01] Do you think I wish, Tammy was here and I notice that her X is down right now. So even in her her ex, but not her ex husband, she still married. But I mean X the Twitter.
David Blackmon [00:25:13] I gotta be worried there for like.
Stuart Turley [00:25:14] Oh no, but, Irina, you’re two stories and let’s go ahead. I want to go ahead and sling over here to the two stories. The grid, get ready to pay more for less reliable energy.
Irina Slav [00:25:27] You know why? Because of underinvestment and climate change, it has nothing to do. Oh with the addition of. Inordinate amount of wind and solar. So this is great. And this is the Wall Street Journal.
Stuart Turley [00:25:48] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:25:49] They’re talking about climate change. They’re talking about years of underinvestment in grid resilience and grid expansion. Not a word about wind and solar.
Stuart Turley [00:26:04] Wow.
Irina Slav [00:26:05] A work of art. A work of propaganda art. And I really didn’t expect it. And I’m starting to get fed up with with this. With previously reputable media pushing the narrative increasingly, how should I say harshly, though roughly or blatantly? I don’t know, pick your word. But this is not normal because people can see what’s happening and people will start and they have started to ask questions. When we didn’t have as much, wind power was not reliable. But climate change? No, it’s not climate change. It’s of unreliable energy sources to a grid that was built for reliable energy sources.
David Blackmon [00:26:57] That is true. That is true. You know, people look at the Wall Street Journal think it’s a conservative publication.
Irina Slav [00:27:03] That’s not.
David Blackmon [00:27:04] The opinion. Page is the only part of the Wall Street Journal that is mainly conservative in nature. The news part of the every other piece of the Wall Street Journal is a little different than the New York Times.
Irina Slav [00:27:17] It’s really amazing news. I had this shock with Financial Times, which used to be considered a conservative outlet as well. Now it’s reads. It reads like the Guardian.
David Blackmon [00:27:27] Right.
Irina Slav [00:27:29] It’s it’s really.
David Blackmon [00:27:32] And it’s because, you know, they’re all getting all this, this big infusion of money from these billionaire NGOs, billionaire funded NGOs who pay them to do all this biased reporting about climate change and the energy transition. So it’s the only way some of these publications can remain in business. You know, I would suggest that a lot of the publications we still see functioning today would be completely out of business were it not for all this money coming into them from these NGOs to pay them to slant the news related to climate change.
Irina Slav [00:28:06] But why, I mean, involves challenging them. People like us, alternative media. We have no money. We have no sources. We have no, you know, correspondents on the ground here or they’re reporting. We can’t really compete with them. So why do they feel the need to sell out, essentially and lose all self-respect?
David Blackmon [00:28:34] They lost their audience. They’ve lost their real audience.
Stuart Turley [00:28:39] I think personally also, and I could be wrong in asking your opinion. In the U.S. of the major news networks and ownership, there’s only 5 to 8 families and or entities that own the media. It’s very. Easy to do. Project Mockingbird
Irina Slav [00:29:00] Yeah, it’s the same in chocolate. If you think about it, just a handful of companies. Confectionery business. Same in soft drinks.
Stuart Turley [00:29:09] And I believe Project Mockingbird was put out by the CIA to put out the same narrative everywhere. What was your other story there.
David Blackmon [00:29:18] In the 1950 show?
Irina Slav [00:29:19] Oh, yeah, they had stories from Bloomberg. And KKR says public markets too short sighted for energy transition, basically. The idea is we shouldn’t look at bottom lines. You shouldn’t look at quarterly reports. You should not expect, quick return on your investment. Or better yet, don’t expect any return on your investment in your lifetime. These are polls. It’s in the interview with the climate chief of KKR. I don’t know what climate chief or head of climate is, but, yeah, he is basically advising investors to be more patient with, apparently what’s now being called transition technology because the the return on investment period is longer. Longer than what? Nobody expects the, investment to be returned within a year. Everybody knows that massive projects have longer. Return periods. This is not what’s happening here. These projects, utility scale wind and solar, are not returning money at all. And the more of them we build, the less the chance of return there will be.
David Blackmon [00:30:41] Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:30:42] Because they’re making electricity prices negative. You can turn in a profit at negative electricity prices because the weather makes you overproduce wind on solar power. It’s so idiotic. It’s just it’s insane.
David Blackmon [00:31:00] Right? But what happened?
Irina Slav [00:31:03] Very obvious.
David Blackmon [00:31:04] How do they respond every. Every time they have a problem? How do they respond every time their lack of profitability becomes a PR problem for them? By demanding the government give them more subsidies. And this is a trade war, right? And it’s never going to end. No amount of money for these companies is ever going to be enough. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:31:28] Well, David, speaking of not enough. Just stop.
Irina Slav [00:31:35] Ever. Best birthday present ever.
David Blackmon [00:31:40] Yeah. We, we got the creator of, Just Stop Oil tossed in the pokey in the UK for five years, five year jail term. And my understanding is he’s he’s going to have to serve the whole five years that this is a, for some reason. I mean, apparently he he’s not going to be eligible to get out early on parole, although I’m sure they’ll figure out some way to get him out. But that’s cool. You know, I mean, it’s I’ve been saying for years that the only way these, these traffic stopping protests or the protests where they throw paint or soup on a masterpiece of art will ever end is when they start throwing these people in jail with harsh prison terms. And finally, someone in the UK, one judge in the UK decided to actually follow the law and do that with the fella who created the whole movement. So that was great news. I laughed for half a day about that one. Trump’s 1000 words about energy. I just, thought it was remarkable. I’ve been following presidential acceptance speeches for 44 years, since the 1980 campaign, involving Reagan and Carter. And in most such speeches, you. They don’t even say the candidate doesn’t say anything about energy. Or if they do, it’s some slogan like drill, baby, drill, or, you know, whatever Green New Deal and, you know, whatever it is. But, in Trump’s speech, I was just flabbergasted. Of course, it lasted 90 minutes, so he had to fill a long time, said 12,000 words in this speech, and one out of every 12 words in his speech was about energy, which is remarkable, incredible, unprecedented in American history, I’m sure. So I thought it was important to point that out. And, it shows that this is and it’s because, you know, the reason why politicians seldom, if ever, talked about energy in the past is because nobody gives a damn about it, hasn’t been on top of the voters minds. But because of all this focus in the Biden administration, you know, screaming about climate change and subsidizing all these UN workable solutions, it’s suddenly become a big concern to voters because they see their cost of energy constantly rising. You know, even though natural gas is incredibly cheap and oil has been pretty steady. Your utility bills continue to rise. And they understand now that all this renewable nonsense is beginning to cause that. So at least Trump talked about it in his acceptance speech. Who? It’ll be interesting to see if Kamala Harris or whoever the Democrat nominee becomes. And I’m not convinced it’ll be Kamala Harris. It’ll be interesting to see what the Democrat nominee says about energy in Chicago in late August. I suspect it won’t be much.
Stuart Turley [00:34:35] No, I think the article was outstanding and that was on, David Blackmon or blackmon.substack.com, I believe.
David Blackmon [00:34:44] And I wrote it for Forbes. Yeah. So. Oh no, the Daily Caller excuse me, that one was the Daily Caller.
Stuart Turley [00:34:51] Let’s see. This is more of an energy scam in Germany for rent. This is from when 100. In. For example, most pump storage power plant projects have been discontinued, even though renewable energies have massively expanded. That’s great comment.
Irina Slav [00:35:10] batteries
Stuart Turley [00:35:15] Gary Hagger, shout out. It’s, smoke and mirrors to deceive the population. Scam money from them. It’s big business for politicians.
David Blackmon [00:35:24] It is that.
Stuart Turley [00:35:26] Pushing. I suspect they will crash the coal plant suddenly.
David Blackmon [00:35:31] That’ll be a neat trick.
Stuart Turley [00:35:33] Yeah. Hey. Good morning. Robert, how are you?
David Blackmon [00:35:38] Hey, Robert.
Stuart Turley [00:35:39] Let’s see. Did I get everybody
David Blackmon [00:35:42] No. There’s one more down here from win 100 in. This means the electricity.
Irina Slav [00:35:47] Waste.
David Blackmon [00:35:49] Generators destroyed. Yeah, well. Titian’s color. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Irina Slav [00:35:54] And also with each new project because they’re too expensive and they also need space.
David Blackmon [00:36:02] And they have a three hour cycle time in any event, and they’re kind of useless. So.
Stuart Turley [00:36:08] Hey, Irina did both, this the two stories for me today or the global tech outage wreaks havoc and, how was Bulgaria during the CrowdStrike, outfit? Pretty calm.
Irina Slav [00:36:27] We were. Yeah, well. Generally fine.
Stuart Turley [00:36:29] That’s good. And I think that that’s fabulous. I think that it’s amazing that this happened, that CrowdStrike is also a partner with the World Economic Forum. Oh, a a huge partner. So the timing is very suspect.
David Blackmon [00:36:47] By the way, it is also the owner of the of the Democrat emails from the 2016 campaign.
Stuart Turley [00:36:52] That is correct.
David Blackmon [00:36:53] This drive. Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:36:56] And here’s what I thought was funny, is that Southwest Airlines, was one of the few airlines that could survive this CrowdStrike dupe, but this one sums it up. Due to a worldwide outage, we can only accept cash until further notice.
Irina Slav [00:37:14] So what did they do? Their computers were not working right.
David Blackmon [00:37:20] So they put that out. That’s what I want to know.
Irina Slav [00:37:22] Yeah, but this is why I keep cash in the house.
David Blackmon [00:37:26] Yeah. Me too. I.
Stuart Turley [00:37:28] I also am not a fan of digital currency. And and, Robert, you’re stealing the thunder. Did you read my show notes? Southwest Airlines didn’t stop. They still use windows three one. I had that. If you go to energynewsbeat.co and look at that article, it is there. I put that screenshot in there that they still are using when the old windows. So thank you Robert for stealing my thunder. My brief moment.
David Blackmon [00:37:56] With Southwest Airlines.
Stuart Turley [00:37:58] I love southwest, but this other story of why wind power is useless. This one I thought was pretty funny. The Sierra Club put out wind power is economically viable without government assistance. I’d like to have a moment of silence for stupidity for the Sierra Club.
David Blackmon [00:38:22] That’s a smelly load of horse manure.
Stuart Turley [00:38:25] Exactly. So let’s go down here to a. Let me just say this. $1 billion wind farm would have a name. Capacity. Nameplate capacity of 400MW. The nameplate capacity is the maximum output of power when there’s sufficient wind. But since the wind isn’t always blowing, the average power would only typically be 38% of 400MW, or 152MW. This amounts to, a million, 337 megawatt, per year. To meet the 12% interest rate goal, the electricity would have to sell for, $115 per megawatt hour to meet the 8% goal. In case of a guaranteed long term contract, would need $75 per megawatt hour. Here’s where it gets dicey. The marginal cost of general generating electricity with natural gas depends on the cost of the gas and the efficiency of the plant. Cost is typically $20 per megawatt hour. It’s about $2 $20 versus $75. Huge difference.
David Blackmon [00:39:48] Yeah, and they can’t be funded. I mean, they’re not sustainable without subsidies, which is why every time a wind, operator has a problem, they demand more government subsidies. This isn’t hard, folks. This is very easy to understand.
Irina Slav [00:40:02] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:40:03] Even I can understand it. Is that what you just said?
David Blackmon [00:40:06] Even I can understand?
Irina Slav [00:40:07] And then that KKR guy, the climate head, after saying that we should be more patient with a transition technology. He also said that if the transition relies on subsidies, it will eventually stall. Really?
David Blackmon [00:40:25] No kidding. Yeah. No kidding. And think about what he’s actually demanding there in business terms. He’s demanding those companies, the management teams of those companies, to abrogate their fiduciary responsibility to their own investors to maximize profits and return on investments. He’s telling them to ignore their duties as management teams of those companies. That is. You know, I mean.
Irina Slav [00:41:02] This is an investment. Companies and investors follow the quarterly reports and it’s not shortsighted. It’s tracking performance. You know, it feels weird to say the obvious so, so often.
David Blackmon [00:41:20] It really does, doesn’t it? Yeah. You shouldn’t have to keep saying it.
Stuart Turley [00:41:24] There’s an article that came out from energy. Energy live news. The UK must tackle net zero NIMBYs. And.
David Blackmon [00:41:36] So the.
Irina Slav [00:41:36] Ground over.
Stuart Turley [00:41:38] Yeah, that. Yeah, that. Not in my backyard. Folks in, Tammy was. Talking about.
Irina Slav [00:41:44] That over the tackles into the ground and, I don’t know, strangled them or.
David Blackmon [00:41:48] Something. You got to deny them their civil rights. That’s what this is why it’s an anti freedom movement.
Stuart Turley [00:41:54] And and it is going. And Tammy is saying that in the green belts or in the green area in the UK they’re forcing solar panels. They’re forcing the farms to go away. They’re forcing these things. So as the world evolves, into this awakening, if you would, of, people tired of high energy costs due to bad management and forcing a transition. That can’t happen. I mean, AI is the great equalizer. I don’t see I is not going to survive without nuclear and natural gas. So I see a comeback for natural gas and nuclear because of AI.
David Blackmon [00:42:40] But Irina.
Irina Slav [00:42:41] They will survive at our expense. Well, then we should be consuming that AI. So it’s a bit tricky. They.
David Blackmon [00:42:49] Irina made great points in her Substack today actually arena talking about that the pushers of the transition have a solution to all of that too, which is to tell everybody to make do with less.
Irina Slav [00:43:04] And they’re doing it.
David Blackmon [00:43:05] Yeah. Yeah. And in the UK and especially UK, in Canada, probably more than anywhere else. And you know, the UK, the problem that got now is that this labor government is new and you’re not going to be able to do anything about them for at least 2 or 3 years. Think of all the damage. These communists. These are communists, unless everybody else. Yeah. I mean, they’re going to go crazy here right off the bat, knowing that there’s nothing the voters can do to them for 2 to 3 years. Well.
Stuart Turley [00:43:43] Patrick. SMR. SMRs. Small modular reactors. I think that, they’re they’re a big, in the U.S., the regulatory issues are such still a problem. We. Even though David and I, brought out the Chevron deference, talk. We did see four, 3 or 4 great wins against the deep state legislation through regulatory actions. Yeah, but the regulatory agencies then doubled down in Alaska again and then banned a whole nother group. So it’s going to be in a they’re not going out without a fight.
David Blackmon [00:44:30] Oh no no no one should think that. I mean, this is a war for survival. I mean, this is this is really serious stuff. We laugh about it. I try to keep a sense of humor about it, but this is, you know, this is survival of a free society kind of stuff. It really is at the end of the day. And so, you know, while we try to keep a sense of humor about it, you know, it’s, this is very, very dire times for us. Robert. Robert. De Dominik. Yeah. Well, we’ll see how long it lasts on YouTube especially. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:45:12] Robert, you bring up an excellent point and please subscribe to David Blackmon dot subs. It’s blackmon.substack.com IrinaSlav.substack.com. Mine is the EnergyNewsBeat.substack.com. and the NemethReport. Get out there and follow people that are independent. I’m not a journalist. I’m an independent comedian that pretends to be someone in the energy space. But I can demonstrate to people that on my website that I have, I can have four people that Google Analytics, which is run by a bunch of crooks, and my firewall shows 5000 people at that moment. I can average between 25 and 50,000 people a day on my site. But Google Analytics will show four at any given moment. So, Robert, your point is very, very important. Follow and support journalists and or authors or in my case, comedians that want to be something. Yeah. Anyway, sorry for.
David Blackmon [00:46:23] Can I say one thing? About a comment Stu made at the top? Yeah, that I didn’t think to remark on, but it’s vitally important for everyone to understand. If Elon Musk had not bought out Twitter and maintained what is now called X, which I hate. Maintain that as a platform where people can speak freely. I doubt any of us would be able to continue doing what we’re doing. Whether that transaction was so important to the maintenance of free speech and free elections in the United States, it can’t be overstated. Right. And, we all, you know, I make fun of Tesla a lot in electric vehicles. He’s got a lot more going on than that. And, we all owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Elon Musk.
Irina Slav [00:47:19] The very fact that the European Commission hates him with a.
David Blackmon [00:47:23] Yes.
Irina Slav [00:47:23] Is. You know,
David Blackmon [00:47:25] you can judge that person by the nature of their enemies.
Irina Slav [00:47:29] Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:47:31] I love Elon, and, I’ve invited him on this podcast. I haven’t heard back.
David Blackmon [00:47:39] Good luck.
Irina Slav [00:47:41] You know.
David Blackmon [00:47:43] Yeah. A dozen times to Tesla for an interview with anyone, Musk or anybody else in the management team.
Stuart Turley [00:47:52] But you know what, guys? I see positive, great things coming around the corner. Good will win. And as a unified front against evil, I think there is hope. I’m optimistic.
Irina Slav [00:48:09] Of course there is. What else do we have?
David Blackmon [00:48:12] Without hope, you have nothing.
Irina Slav [00:48:13] I have facts and hope
Stuart Turley [00:48:18] and humor. And I.
Irina Slav [00:48:18] You know, that’s a that’s a survival mechanism.
Stuart Turley [00:48:21] That it is. And I’ll tell you what. I just want to just give everybody a shout out out there, that have been commenting. For all the folks that are on David, David Blackmon’s, LinkedIn, my YouTube, his YouTube. Tammy’s X is not connected. David’s X. And, my X, this is all a great day. And Irina. We got to get, connected there as well, too, so that.
Irina Slav [00:48:55] Maybe, figure out how to handle YouTube restrictions.
Stuart Turley [00:48:59] Oh, yeah. But anyway, with that, we’re going to say, hey, we’ll see you guys next week and stay frosty out there for some entertaining. Reach out to us and follow us all on our Substack. So thank you all very much.
David Blackmon [00:49:13] Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for chiming in.Bye
Irina Slav [00:49:17] Thanks for the great comments and have a great week.
Stuart Turley [00:49:23] Bye Irina.
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