Natural Gas Now Best Picks – April 9, 2022

Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy. This week:

• • Protecting Eagles vs. Green Grifting
  • The Insanity of Pipeline Opposition
  • Natural Gas Appliance Bans Based on Junk Science

Eagles? Who Cares When There Is Green Rent at Stake?

When there is green rent to be had from ratepayers and taxpayers, the American Eagles rates but a poor second in the environmental virtues competition:

A renewable energy company was given five-year probation and ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines after the deaths of 150 bald and golden eagles on their wind turbines.

NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, per a press release from the Department of Justice.

The Act prevents anyone from killing or taking parts from protected birds without permission from the federal government. Golden and bald eagles are further protected by federal law…

Prosecutors said the eagles died over a period beginning in 2012, and that 136 of them were killed being struck by a turbine blade.

Per the DOJ, ESI failed to apply for the necessary permits after the death of the birds…

In its plea agreement, ESI agreed to spend up to $27 million during its probationary period on an “eagle management plan” to minimize future eagle deaths and injuries…

In a statement ESI said that collisions with the wind turbines were unavoidable and should not be criminalized… 

The ruling came amid a push from the Biden administration for more renewable energy, including a large expansion of offshore wind farms.

Rules are for little people, not green grifters.

Hat Tip: R.N.

The Insanity of Pipeline Opposition!

Shills for investors in green grifting (think Clean Air council) have invested a lot of effort in fighting pipelines on the theory natural gas is a contributor to global warming and they’re having some success, which means they are actually working against the reduction of carbon emissions achieved by using gas as an alternative energy source:

U.S. natural gas production will decline by 5 percent by 2050, and consumption will shed 4 percent if no new interstate pipelines are built, the Energy Information Administration said in its latest Annual Energy Outlook.

This, in turn, will lead to higher gas prices, the authority also said, and this will, in turn, lead to higher electricity prices.

“The higher natural gas prices that result from capacity constraints primarily affect natural gas consumption in the U.S. electric power sector, which is more price-sensitive than the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors,” the EIA explained.

The share of natural gas in power generation is set to decline in the scenario of no new interstate natural gas pipelines but not by much. According to the EIA, in that scenario, the share of gas in 2050 will constitute 31 percent of the total, compared with 34 percent under the agency’s reference scenario.

Yet, in absolute terms, the lack of new interstate gas pipelines will reduce gas-fired power generation by 11 percent in 2050 compared to the reference scenario.

At the same time, any bans on new interstate pipelines—a prerogative of the federal government—will not lead to any significant carbon dioxide emission declines.

Will someone please pound this into the brain of Dick Glick, the new FERC chairman who seems to think nothing is more important than being on the right side of the global warming debate?

Hat Tip: D.S.

Natural Gas Appliance Bans Based on Junk Science

There is simply no end to the junk science employed by fractivists, the climate cult and corporatists to attack natural gas, leading to stupid natural gas bans such as Kathy Hochul plans for all of New York:

In recent months, there has been some biased media coverage based on limited research assert that natural gas stoves are both bad for the health and detrimental to the environment. Reports that draw conclusions from their own bias rather than from the scientific community to lure readers in are dangerously misleading and irresponsible. An example of this is a Stanford University study written with an organization called Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers (PSE) for Healthy Energy that recently made headlines, claiming that natural gas stoves in kitchens are an outsized contributor to climate change and poor public health. While the headlines are alarming, a look at key details from the study tell a very different story.

Concerns with this study include sample size, quality of the testing environment and the elimination of ventilation.

First, researchers only studied 53 stoves in California homes. Roughly half of the emissions measured in this small sample came from only five of the 53 stoves, which they then used as a model to predict emissions from the 40 million U.S. residences with natural gas stoves, even though the study included discontinued stove models with inefficient pilot lights that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) prohibited the sale of in 2009…

A Global Analysis of Phase Three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC),” which analyzed 512,707 primary and secondary school children from 108 centers in 47 countries, concluded that there is “no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”

While some reports may vilify natural gas, residential natural gas accounts for only four percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and natural gas distribution system emissions have declined 69 percent since 1990. Furthermore, residential natural gas use for cooking produces less than 0.2 percent of total annual greenhouse gas emissions – far from being number one on the target list for meaningful paths to emissions reduction.

Facts are, indeed, stubborn things, aren’t they?

Hat Tip: C.A.