Energy
World’s Most Populous Nation Has Put Solar Out To Pasture. Other Countries Should Follow Suit
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
During his debate with former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden claimed: “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change.” What if I told you that it is not climate change but climate policies that are the real existential threat to billions across our planet?
The allure of a green utopia masks the harsh realities of providing affordable and reliable electricity. Americans could soon wake up to a dystopian future if the proposed Net Zero and Build Back Better initiatives — both aimed at an illogical proliferation of unreliable renewables and a clamp down on dependable fossil fuels — are implemented.
Nowhere is this better reflected than in remote regions of India where solar panels — believed to provide clean and green energy — ultimately resulted in being used to construct cattle sheds.
The transformation of Dharnai in the state of Bihar into a “solar village” was marked by great enthusiasm and high expectations. Villagers were told the solar micro-grid would provide reliable electricity for agriculture, social activities and daily living. The promise engendered a naïve trust in a technology that has failed repeatedly around the world.
The news of this Greenpeace initiative quickly spread as international news media showcased it as a success story for “renewable” energy in a third world country. CNN International’s “Connect the World” said Dharnai’s micro-grid provided a continuous supply of electricity. For an unaware viewer sitting in, say, rural Kentucky, solar energy would have appeared to be making great strides as a dependable energy source.
But the Dharnai system would end up on the long list of grand solar failures.
“As soon as we got solar power connections, there were also warnings to not use high power electrical appliances like television, refrigerator, motor and others,” said a villager. “These conditions are not there if you use thermal power. Then what is the use of such a power? The solar energy tariff was also higher compared to thermal power.”
A village shopkeeper said: “But after three years, the batteries were exhausted and it was never repaired. … No one uses solar power anymore here.” Hopefully, the solar panels will last longer as shelter for cows.
Eventually, the village was connected to the main grid, which provided fully reliable coal-powered electricity at a third of the price of the solar power.
Dharnai is not an isolated case. Several other large-scale solar projects in rural India have had a similar fate. Writing for the publication Mongabay, Mainsh Kumar said: “Once (grid) electricity reaches unelectrified villages, the infrastructure and funds used in installation of such off-grid plants could prove futile.”
While green nonprofits and liberal mainstream media have the embarrassment of a ballyhooed solar project being converted to cattle shed, conventional energy sources like coal continue to power India’s over 1.3 billion people and the industries their economies depend on.
India saw a record jump in electricity demand this year, partly due to increased use of air conditioning units and other electrical appliances as more of the population achieved the financial wherewithal to afford them. During power shortages, coal often has come to the rescue. India allows its coal plants to increase coal stockpiles and import additional fuel without restrictions.
India will add more than 15 gigawatts in the year ending March 2025 (the most in nine years) and aims to add a total of 90 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity by 2032.
Energy reality is inescapable in a growing economy like India’s, and only sources such as coal, oil and natural gas can meet the demand. Fossil fuels can be counted on to supply the energy necessary for modern life, and “green” sources cannot.
India’s stance is to put economic growth ahead of any climate-based agenda to reduce the use of fossil fuels. This was reaffirmed when the country refused to set an earlier target for its net zero commitment, delaying it until 2070.
The story of Dharnai serves as a cautionary tale for the implementation of renewable energy projects in rural India, where pragmatism is the official choice over pie in the sky.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK.
Economy
COP 29 leaders demand over a $1 trillion a year in climate reparations from ‘wealthy’ nations. They don’t deserve a nickel.
COP 29 is calling for over $1 trillion in annual climate reparations
- A major theme of COP 29 is that the world should set a “New Collective Quantified Goal” wherein successful nations pay poor nations over $1 trillion a year to 1) make up for climate-related harm and 2) build them new “green energy” economies. In other words, climate reparations.¹
- What would $1 trillion a year in climate reparations mean for you and your family?Assuming the money was paid equally by households considered high income (>$50 per day), your household would have to pay more than $5,000 a year in climate reparations taxes!²
- Climate reparations are based on two false assumptions:1. Free, wealthy countries, through their fossil fuel use, have made the world worse for poor countries.
2. The poor world’s main problem is dealing with climate change, which wealth transfers will help them with.
But free, fossil-fueled countries have made life better for poor countries
- Free, wealthy countries, through their fossil fuel use, have not made the world worse for poor countries—they have made it far, far better.Observe what has happened to global life expectancies and income as fossil fuel use has risen. Life has gotten much better for everyone.³
- The wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has improved life worldwide because by using fossil fuel energy to be incredibly productive, we have 1) made all kinds of goods cheaper and 2) been able to engage in life-saving aid, particularly in the realms of food, medicine, and sanitation.
- Without the historic use of fossil fuels by the wealthy world, there would be no super-productive agriculture to feed 8 billion humans, no satellite-based weather warning systems, etc. Most of the individuals in poor countries would not even be alive today.
Free, fossil-fueled countries have made the poor safer from climate
- The wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has been particularly beneficial in the realm of climate.Over the last 100 years, the death rate from climate-related disasters plummeted by 98% globally.
A big reason is millions of lives saved from drought via fossil-fueled crop transport.⁴
- The “climate reparations” movement ignores the fact that the wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has made life better, including safer from climate, in the poor world.This allows it to pretend that the poor world’s main problem is dealing with rising CO2 levels.
The poor world’s problem is poverty, not rising CO2 levels
- The poor world’s main problem is not rising CO2 levels, it is poverty—which is caused by lack of freedom, including the crucial freedom to use fossil fuels.Poverty makes everything worse, including the world’s massive natural climate danger and any danger from more CO2.
- While it’s not true that the wealthy world has increased climate danger in the poor world—we have reduced it—it is true that the poor world is more endangered by climate than the wealthy world is.The solution is for the poor to get rich. Which requires freedom and fossil fuels.⁵
Escaping poverty requires freedom and fossil fuels
- Every nation that has risen out of poverty has done so via pro-freedom policies—specifically, economic freedom.
That’s how resource-poor places like Singapore and Taiwan became prosperous. Resource-rich places like Congo have struggled due to lack of economic freedom.
- Even China, which is unfree in many ways (including insufficient protections against pollution) dramatically increased its standard of living via economic freedom—particularly in the realm of industrial development where it is now in many ways much freer than the US and Europe.
- A crucial freedom involved in rising prosperity has been the freedom to use fossil fuels.Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy, providing energy that’s low-cost, reliable, versatile, and scalable to billions of people in thousands of places.⁶
- Time and again nations have increased their prosperity, including their safety from climate, via economic freedom and fossil fuels.Observe the 7X increase in fossil fuel use in China and India over the past 4 decades, which enabled them to industrialize and prosper.⁷
- For the world’s poorest people to be more prosperous and safer from climate, they need more freedom and more fossil fuels.The “climate reparations” movement seeks to deny them both.
- The wealthy world should communicate to the poor world that economic freedom is the path to prosperity, and encourage the poor world to reform its cultural and political institutions to embrace economic freedom—including fossil fuel freedom.Our leaders are doing the opposite.
Climate reparations pay off dictators to take away fossil fuel freedom
- Instead of promoting economic freedom, including fossil fuel freedom, wealthy climate reparations advocates like Antonio Guterres are offering to entrench anti-freedom regimes by paying off their dictators and bureaucrats to eliminate fossil fuel freedom.This is disgusting.⁸
- The biggest victim of “climate reparations” will be the world’s poorest countries, whose dictators will be paid off to prevent the fossil fuel freedom that has allowed not just the US and Europe but also China and India to dramatically increase their prosperity.
- The biggest beneficiary of “climate reparations” will be China, which is already emitting more CO2 than the US and Europe combined. (Though less per capita.)While we flagellate and cripple ourselves, China will use fossil fuels in its quest to become the world’s superpower.⁹
- The second biggest beneficiary of “climate reparations” will be corrupt do-gooders who get to add anti-fossil-fuel strings to “reparations” dollars and dictate how it’s spent—which will surely include lots of dollars for unreliable solar panels and wind turbines made in China.
Leaders must reject reparations and champion fossil fuel freedom
- We need leaders in the US and Europe who proudly:1. Champion the free world’s use of fossil fuels as an enormous good for the world, including its climate safety.
2. Encourage the poor world to embrace economic freedom and fossil fuels.
Tell your Representative to do both.
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1 Scientific American – COP27 Summit Yields ‘Historic Win’ for Climate Reparations but Falls Short on Emissions Reductions
Phys.org – COP29 climate finance deal ‘must cover loss and damage,’ experts urge
COP29 official website – Fund for responding to Loss and Damage ready to accept contributions
2 Global population was about 8.02 billion in 2023.
About 7% of world population are considered high income, which translates into about 562 million individuals. Considering 3 people per average household in high income households, this translates into about 187 million households.
Pew Research – Are you in the global middle class? Find out with our income calculator
$1 trillion per annum paid by 187 million households means the average household would pay about $5,300 per year.
3 Maddison Database 2010 at the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen
4 UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve
For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 in per year during the 2010s.
Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).
Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.
Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.
5 UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve
Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).
Population estimates come from World Bank Data.
6 Our World in Data – Energy Production and Consumption
7 BP – Statistical Review of World Energy
8 UN News – ‘Pay up or humanity will pay the price’, Guterres warns at COP29 climate summit
9 Our World in Data – Annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
From the Fraser Institute
In the wee hours of Nov. 6, Donald Trump provided a subtle but clear signal about the direction he will pursue as president regarding climate policies. In his victory speech he gave a nod to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to join forces with MAGA saying, “He wants to do some things, and we’re gonna let him go to it. I just said, but Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold.”
People need to understand that Trump 2.0 is a different entity. He did not build his comeback movement by pandering or watering down his priorities. He reached out and either won people over to his side or sent them packing. A major example of this was Elon Musk, who during the first Trump administration resigned from the White House business advisory council to protest Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty. Now Musk is all-in on MAGA and is set to play a lead role in a major downsizing of the administration.
When Trump secured the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy it was based on issues on which they could find agreement, including anti-corruption efforts and addressing the chronic disease burden. But Kennedy had to leave his environmentalism at the door, at least the climate activist part of it.
Trump’s remarks about energy during the campaign were unmistakeable. When he made the quip about wanting to be dictator for a day it was to close the border and “drill drill drill.” When asked how he would reduce the cost of living he said he would rapidly expand energy production with a target of cutting energy costs by at least 50 per cent. And on election night he reiterated: the United States has the oil, the liquid gold, and they’re going to use it.
U.S. climate policy will soon no longer be a thing. The Biden administration chose to focus on extravagant green energy subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. They were easy to bring in and will be just as easy for Trump to eliminate, especially the ones targeted at Democrat special interest groups. The incoming Trump administration will not settle simply for stalling on new climate action, it’s more likely to try to dismantle the entire climate bureaucracy.
In 2016 Trump did not understand the Washington bureaucracy and its ability to thwart a president’s plans. He learned many hard lessons merely trying to survive lawfare, resistance and open insubordination. It took three years for him to get a few people installed in senior positions in the climate area who could begin to push back against the vast regulatory machinery. But they simply did not have the time nor the capacity to get anything done.
This time should be different. Trump’s team has spent years developing legal and regulatory strategies to bring full executive authority back to the Oval Office so it can execute on plans quickly and efficiently. His top priority is hydrocarbon development and his team is in no mood for compromise. As to the climate issue, Trump recently remarked “Who the hell cares?”
That’s the reality. Now policymakers in Canada must decide what will be appropriate to ask of Canadians in terms of shouldering the costs of climate policies.
There’s one legal issue that Trump has thus far not addressed but that his administration will need to confront if it wants to drill drill drill. There has been an explosion of climate liability lawsuits in U.S. courts, where states, municipalities and activist groups sue major players in the fossil fuel industry demanding massive financial damages for alleged climate harms. There’s even a new branch of climate science called Extreme Event Attribution, which was explicitly developed to promote flimsy and arbitrary statistical analyses that support climate liability cases. Such cases are also popping up in Canada, including the Mathur case in Ontario, which the appellate court recently brought back from defeat.
Both Canada and the U.S. must act at the legislative level to extinguish climate liability in law. There is no good argument for letting this play out in the courts. The cases are prima facie preposterous: the emitters of carbon dioxide are the fuel users, not the producers, so liability—if it exists—should be attached to consumers. But then we would have an unworkable situation where everyone is liable to everyone, each person equally a victim and a tortfeasor. Climate policy belongs in the legislature not the courts and the “climate liability” movement is simply a massive waste of time and resources. It must be stopped.
Canada was already out of step with the U.S. in its mad pursuit of the federal Emission Reduction Plan. While the carbon tax is top of mind for voters, it’s but a small part of a larger and costlier regulatory onslaught, most recently supplemented by a new emissions cap on the western oil and gas sector. With the U.S. poised to sharply change direction, Canada now needs a complete rethink of our own energy and climate policies.
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