“The race is on to see who hits the green energy wall of impossibility first,” writes Francis Menton on his Manhattan Contrarian blog. He lists California and New York as vying with Germany and the U.K. for first place, noting how they trade “vast green progressive virtue credits for ridiculous promises.”
Germany vows 100-percent renewables by 2035, while California is giving itself an extra decade to achieve the same goal. The United Kingdom is characteristically centrist, setting its sights on 2040. New York City aims to impose “energy efficiency standards on large residential buildings starting in 2024 — next year,” and a new law will fine building owners for noncompliance.
Menton gives the example of an apartment building known as The Grand Tier, owned by Glenwood Management. He quotes The New York Times: “The Grand Tier was set to face roughly $100,000 per year in fines starting in 2024, rising to $400,000 per year in 2030, because of those two giant carbon-spewing boilers in the basement.” This, despite the fact that Glenwood had already implemented numerous energy-efficiency measures to comply with the new standards.
So management opted for carbon capture, which would convert carbon from the basement boilers’ exhaust into its dangerous liquid form, to be trapped and stored. The holdup is that the city has yet to approve carbon capture as a solution that complies with the new law.
Menton speculates that approval will not happen, because CarbonQuest, which is Glenwood’s proposed carbon-capture system, “only sequesters about 60% of the CO2 that the building’s boilers generate. No way will that satisfy the environmental zealots.…”
The Grand Tier is only one of thousands of buildings that will suddenly be lawbreakers next year. The managers of each will be “subjected to punishing annual fines, with no realistic way to get around them,” writes Menton.
Less-Than-Zero
Everywhere, politicians and their useful-idiot media lackeys at federal, state, and local levels are making similar promises of achieving 100-percent “renewables” — the fabled Green New Deal — a dozen or more years into the future. Take your pick: 2035, 2045, and 2050.
The alleged benefits associated with such an energy economy cannot be secured within any of the promised time frames, or even by the end of the century. In vain attempts to achieve green goals, eco-radicals are signing the death warrant for abundant, affordable, and reliable electricity.
According to a 2021 Princeton University study called “Net-Zero America,” “Total electricity demand more than doubles by 2050 across all pathways to net-zero.” Keeping in mind that the current electric grid is not compatible with green goals, based on a May 2022 Department of Energy press release and the current rate of transmission line growth, doubling the size of America’s high-voltage transmission grid would take about 140 years.
Unfortunately, the general public doesn’t understand the devastating economic consequences that will accompany efforts to achieve a 100-percent “renewables” economy by 2050, much less sooner. America’s economy will be destroyed by government mandates and laws that will curtail the freedoms and reduce the wealth of the lower and middle classes. And when it comes time to pay the piper for the false promises, the politicians making them will be retired or dead.
By not speaking up now to put an end to the catastrophic man-made climate-change nonsense, Americans are surrendering themselves to a new normal of brownouts, blackouts, and energy rationing.
To learn more about Agenda 2030 and the “Big Green Boondoggle,” and what can be done to stop it, click here.
Rebecca Terrell contributed to this article.
