Category: Alternative Subsidy

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

The future’s so bright, they gotta wear shrouds;

Sales of electric and hybrid vehicles have dropped more than 50 per cent in Ontario over the past year, according to data provided by a non-profit advocacy group.
 
Electric Mobility Canada recently released a report on electric vehicle sales compiling data from Statistics Canada and IHS Markit, a market analysis firm.
 
During the first quarter of 2018, 2,633 electric vehicles were sold in Ontario. During the same time period this year, that number dropped to 1,219.
 
Electric Mobility Canada attributes at least part of this decline to the end of Ontario’s Electric and Hydrogen Vehicle Incentive Program (EHVIP) in July 2018.
 
The program offered drivers between $5,000 and $14,000 to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles from a range of auto manufacturers.

Major Setback For EVs;

Peak oil demand might be delayed as the U.S. and China scale back support for fuel efficiency and electric vehicles.
 
[…]
 
According to Rapidan Energy, changes to policies in these two key countries, plus others, “may prompt reexamination of oil demand forecasts from IEA and EIA.” The consultancy is drawing upon its database that tracks 71 policies across 37 countries, which collectively account for 62.4 million barrels per day of oil demand.
 
In the U.S., the Trump administration is in the process of watering-down national fuel economy standards for cars and light-duty trucks. The proposal would freeze corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards at 39 miles per gallon by 2020, rather than letting them rise to 55 mpg as the Obama-era rules require. California has vowed to use its unique authority to maintain tighter fuel economy standards, but the Trump administration is also seeking to strip the state of its ability to set independent rules.

It’s as though they have to pay people to buy them.

It’s good to be rich and a Liberal

“We work with the municipalities and federal government to submit a list of what we think, some projects that would be submitted — we put some on, the national government wanted the airport put on and we will put it on,” McNeil said.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

At Forbes;

Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds.
 
Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) “significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward,” the economists write.
 
The study, which has yet to go through peer-review, was done by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath. It compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is “the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled” which covered 1990 to 2015.
 
The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: “All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy,” they write.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

NOBODY COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS.

The southern Alberta city of Medicine Hat is pulling the plug on a $13-million concentrated solar power facility after operating it for about five years.
 
The project’s goal was to test whether the technology was a feasible way to employ the sun’s heat to replace some of the natural gas used to make steam at the city-owned power plant, said Coun. Phil Turnbull, chairman of the city’s utility committee.
 
The answer, unfortunately, was no, as the project’s small and unreliable contribution to the community’s power needs didn’t justify the cost of maintaining its rows of mirrors and pipes through snowy winters and dusty summer days, he said.
 
“I think people sometimes look at what we did and say, ’What a waste of money.’ But it wouldn’t have been a waste if it had been successful in taking it to the next step,” Turnbull said Thursday.

It was a waste of money, Phil.

h/t Bob

“Do you guys on Wall Street have something in your desks that makes steel?

Update: You can watch the full interview here.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

Miracle in Puerto Rico;

It looks like something out a brochure advertising what renewable energy could offer a remote, storm-ravaged island.
 
Electrical lines still hang perilously from poles across the street, but inside the mint-green, one-story Ciudad Dorada senior center, fans blow cool air and refrigerators stocked with insulin and other medicines run cold even as the noon sun broils in a cloudless Caribbean sky. On its roof are a set of Tesla photovoltaic solar panels, attached via cable to a pair of Tesla batteries hitched to the wall beneath.
 
And yet, a diesel generator growls on full blast behind the center.
 
Workers from Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk’s electric car and solar energy giant, arrived on Vieques just weeks after hurricanes Irma and María crippled the aging electrical grid and severed the transmission cable that connected this island to the Puerto Rico mainland seven miles west. The company selected the senior center as one of 11 sites on the darkened island that it would equip with power-producing panels and batteries.
 
Constructing the system was simple. But when workers attached the panels and batteries to the old electrical wiring in the former schoolhouse, the batteries blew out.
 
“It doesn’t work,” a nurse at the senior center said in Spanish during a HuffPost visit in late February. “It never has.”

Via @MarkBSpiegel“In other words, Musk was about as useful to Puerto Rico as he was to the kids trapped in the cave… With Fraud-Boy, it’s all about grabbing fraudulent headlines.”

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Now with third row seating.

But wait! There’s more! Tesla’s Firesale Of Its Solar Inventory Begins

And more yet! Ugly turns uglier…

Oh well. At least there’s SpaceX.

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