How well is the Biden administration doing to address “climate change”? – Watt?

From Manhattan Contrarian

Francis Menton

We are now in the final hours of the Biden administration. Today, the Bidens complete four years of their terms. It is no secret that their top priority from the day they take office is to address what they call the “climate crisis” (sometimes the “profound climate crisis”). As we all know, after making generous promises to respond to and solve the crisis during the campaign, the newly elected President Biden issued a number of executive orders on this issue at the beginning of his term, the most famous of which was this order on January 27, 2021 . He promised a “whole-of-government” approach, with every department and agency clearly stating that addressing the climate crisis is at the core of its mission. Over the next few years, Biden introduced and pushed legislation in Congress that would include hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subsidies and tax breaks for so-called “renewable energy” that it said would replace carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Approaches to the Climate Crisis Clean, Green Alternatives to Wind and Solar Energy.

To remind you of the extent of the commitment made, consider the preamble to the January 2021 EO, titled “Executive Order Concerning Addressing the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”:

The United States and the world face a profound climate crisis. The time is urgent for us to act at home and abroad to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of this crisis and seize the opportunities that climate change presents. Domestic action must go hand-in-hand with U.S. international leadership designed to significantly strengthen global action. Together we must listen to the science and embrace the present moment.

With Biden on the verge of leaving office, it’s time to look at exactly what “progress” has been made on promised emissions reductions. The answer is that any reduction in emissions would be so small that it would be almost imperceptible.

Looking at the big picture, whatever emissions reductions are achieved, most are the result of natural gas replacing coal for power generation. This substitution is likely to occur through natural market processes without any government subsidies and credits for wind and solar energy.

To aid our review, the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) releases U.S. energy production and consumption data each month. These data have been updated to September 2024. The power generation and electricity consumption data of the link.

primary energy

The term “primary energy” refers to all energy used in all sectors of the economy – not just electricity, but also transportation (cars, trucks, trains, planes), industry, agriculture, buildings and everything else. In other words, this is the full picture.

See Table 1.1 in the Primary Energy link for “Primary Energy Overview.” Here we find that in 2020 (the last year of the Trump administration), the United States consumed a total of 88,872 QBtus of primary energy, of which 73,169 QBtus came from fossil fuels, 8,251 QBtus from nuclear energy, and 7,290 QBtus from “renewable energy.” (Note that the “renewable” category includes not only wind and solar energy, but also biomass and geothermal energy, etc.). Anyway, to do some simple breakdown, 82.3% comes from fossil fuels, 9.3% comes from nuclear energy, and 8.3% comes from renewable energy.

The last full year data is for 2023. Fossil fuels accounted for 82.5%, nuclear energy accounted for 8.6%, and renewable energy accounted for 8.8%. (Due to rounding, percentages may not add to 100%.). The percentage coming from fossil fuels actually increased slightly from 2020.

There are only 9 months of data for 2024, but these figures show little change in relative shares: primary energy consumption totaled 70,345 QBtus, of which 57,662 QBtus came from fossil fuels, 6,168 QBtus from nuclear energy and 6,478 QBtus from renewable energy. Therefore, 82.0% comes from fossil fuels, 8.8% from nuclear energy, and 9.2% from renewable energy sources.

With endless hype about the climate crisis and hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the federal government to force an “energy transition,” would you have believed the numbers have changed so little?

generate electricity

For information on electricity generation by source, please refer to Table 7.2a in the electricity data link above. This time the grouping of the material is not as useful as the table above, so some additions are needed to get categories that are useful for our purposes. Fossil fuels are divided into coal, petroleum, natural gas and “other fossil fuels”. “Renewable energy” includes not only solar and wind, but also “hydro” and “wood, waste and geothermal” (WWG), which are bigger categories than you might think.

In 2020, total electricity generation was 4,009 TWh, of which the fossil fuel category increased to 2,429 TWh, nuclear power was 790 TWh, and renewable energy totaled 790 TWh remaining. But among the renewable energy sources, wind energy is 338 TWh, solar energy is 89 TWh, hydropower is 280 TWh (deducting some losses from pumped hydro), and the remaining WWG renewable energy reaches 70 TWh. Therefore, the percentages are 60.6% fossil fuels, 19.7% nuclear, 7.0% hydro, 1.7% WWG, 8.4% wind and 2.2% solar.

Fast forward to 2023 and we find total electricity generation of 4,183 TWh, of which 2509 TWh will be from fossil fuels, 774 TWh from nuclear, 239 TWh from hydropower, 64 TWh from WWG, 166 TWh hours from solar energy and 421 terawatt hours from wind energy. So the percentages now are 60.0% fossil fuels, 18.5% nuclear, 5.7% hydro, 10.0% from wind, 4.0% from solar, 1.5% from WWG.

Again, can you imagine that the needle could move so insignificantly? Due to heavy subsidies and investment in wind and solar energy, their share fell from 10.6% to 14% in three years, while fossil fuels fell from 60.6% to 60.0%, a change of less than 1%.

In the first nine months of 2024, fossil fuel power generation accounted for 59.5% of total power generation, wind power accounted for 10.1%, and solar power generation accounted for 5.2%. Despite billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, subsidies have climbed at an almost imperceptible rate.

Emissions

Has all the money spent building wind and solar generators had a measurable impact on carbon emissions? The two EIA pages linked above have no information on emissions, but here is another page with some useful information on the topic titled “U.S. Energy-Related CO2 Emissions in 2023.” excerpt:

By 2023, CO2 emissions from the power sector will fall by 7% (115 million metric tons), accounting for 85% of net energy-related CO2 emissions observed throughout the year. This reduction is due to a slight decline in electricity demand (down approximately 1% in 2023) and a significant reduction in coal-fired generation caused by Coal-fired power generation decreases Competition with other power generation resources prompts. Coal power generation will fall by 19% in 2023, or 155 terawatt hours (TWh). Most of this generation's generation was replaced by natural gas, which increased by 7% (113 TWh), while solar increased by 14% (21 TWh).. Because coal-fired power generation emits Produces more carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour than natural gas when burnedReplacing coal-fired power generation with natural gas power generation can reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions.

As a result, most of the retired coal generation has so far been replaced by natural gas and a smaller proportion by solar.

All in all, the Biden administration has made little progress in reducing “emissions” in four years, except for small reductions from replacing coal with natural gas in power generation. This substitution is achieved through market forces (i.e. low gas prices) and is not even the subject of huge energy transition subsidies from governments. While renewables have made some small gains in electricity production, their share of primary energy production has grown barely noticeable (less than 1%) over Biden's four years.

The attempt to transform our energy system through the fiat of central planners is one of the greatest wastes of taxpayer funds in government history. It can't end soon.

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