EV's, Reliable Power, et al

[Herman]

Concrete is considered the 3rd largest CO2 emitter, accounting for 4 to 8% of the world's CO2. A typical wind turbine uses approximately 550 tons of concrete. The production of 1 m³ of concrete requires 2,775 MJ of energy. Most of this energy comes from oil (90 barrels or so per turbine base).
* Note all the steel also required.
 The remote locations add to the huge cost and emissions, and the massive expense of connecting them to the grid.
 One might argue that their life expectancy ensures they cannot pay back for the emissions produced to install them.

[Shen Li]

Nature magazine had to retract it's very influential paper about the cost of climate change. They claimed it would cpost $47 trillion dollars, although I don't know over how long. It was all wrong, the modelling so faulty that they retracted the entire paper because their were too many errors. Meaning it was all horseshit.

[DKG]

Here we go again. This time in Vermont.

Electric buses unveiled with great fanfare as symbols of progress and climate virtue are now sitting idle in the snow, while the supposedly outdated diesel fleet does the actual work of moving people. Taxpayers paid millions for these vehicles, and right now, they can't do the job they were purchased to do.

Green Mountain Transit added five new electric buses to its fleet last year, announcing the move in the warmth of summer. Officials praised the decision as a major step toward Burlington's net-zero energy goals and reduced carbon emissions. The buses were billed as modern, clean, and capable, each equipped with a 520-kilowatt-hour battery and a theoretical range of up to 258 miles on a single charge.

They cannot run in Vermont's cold winters.

[DKG]

With oil prices once again dropping, it may surprise many to know that while Democrats traditionally are harsher on the oil industry, they actually end up making those companies more money, while the average American's pocket gets lighter.

Dan Doyle, president of fracking company Reliance Well Services, said that when pipelines and other drilling technology are limited by Democrats, it is the consumer who suffers.

"Profitability is a little bit better under Democrats than Republicans," Doyle told Return in an exclusive interview. "Trump is very tough on oil prices, you know, because he's using them this time to get gas prices lower. So he's really pressuring to bring those oil prices down."

President Biden shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline his first day in office was just one example of Democrat-led moves that increased the cost of daily living for Americans, Doyle explained.

"You shut the pipelines down, it just makes it more expensive. Now you're bringing it over the roads," he asserted. "Now you're putting this stuff over the road or in train cars."

Doyle asked readers to simply check out the oil prices under Democrat leadership versus Republican.

"Under Obama back in [2013-2014] and, I believe, later, oil was routinely at $100. So you take CPI and you adjust it for inflation. ... That's twice what it is right now."

Doyle was actually estimating conservatively. According to data from the Energy Information Association, a government agency, the price per barrel was $98.99 under Obama in January 2012; when adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index inflation calculator, that equates to $142 per barrel in January 2026.

[Brent]

Stellantis is facing a financial reckoning that should send a warning across the global auto industry.

After betting that the electric vehicle transition would move faster than consumers were ready to follow, the company is now reporting a staggering $26.3 billion net loss for 2025 — driven largely by roughly $30 billion in write-downs tied to scaling back parts of its EV strategy.

[Herman]

[Herman]

[DKG]

This is what happens when governments try to create an artificial demand with taxpayers' dollars instead of letting consumers decide. The entire green energy and transportation sector is built on governments deciding instead of the marketplace. The results have been costly white elephants.

Canada's big bet on electric vehicles goes bust
The Honda fiasco is the perfect symbol for the EV disaster

Attempts by the federal and provincial governments to create an electric vehicle supply chain in Canada through massive taxpayer-financed public subsidies have turned into a disaster.

The latest example comes from a report by Nikkei Asia — a major English-language news outlet in Tokyo — that Honda has decided to kill its planned $15-billion EV plant in Alliston, Ont., announced in 2024, to which the federal and provincial governments planned to contribute $5 billion, at $2.5 billion apiece.

The report is hardly a surprise since the project was already on life support.

Honda announced last year it was delaying a decision on the future of the plant for two years — so this may just be the final nail in the coffin for a project that was massively hyped by the federal and Ontario governments when it was announced on April 25, 2024.

Two days later, then prime minister Justin Trudeau posted a video touting the deal on X, titled "We bet big on electric vehicles. Now that industry is betting on us" featuring himself, declaring he was "standing in the middle of what will be Canada's first full electric vehicle supply chain."

Not any more, apparently.

The Honda fiasco is the perfect symbol for what has happened to the plan by the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments to earmark, according to a June 2024 report by the parliamentary budget office, $52.5 billion in public subsidies meant to trigger $46.1 billion in private sector investments in 13 major EV projects announced from October 2020 to April 2024.

At the time, the PBO disputed reports by the federal government that it was poised to get back all of its investments on some projects in five years, estimating it would actually take two decades.

Canadian economist jackass Mintz estimated that in some of these projects, the cost to taxpayers would be about $4 million per job created.

Today — with slumping EV sales in Canada and the U.S. — this government subsidy strategy lies in ruins, with many of the EV projects cancelled, delayed, relocated to the U.S., or in bankruptcy.

Taxpayers won't be on the hook for all of the $52.5 billion in pubic subsides because many were based on the actual production of EVs and batteries, that now won't happen.

But taxpayers are on the hook for an additional amount of almost $9 billion — so far — that federal and provincial governments across the country have spent, or committed to spend, giving direct subsidies to buyers of EV vehicles.

The reason is that EVs are more expensive than comparable gas-powered cars and have relatively limited range, particularly in cold weather.

That, plus a national shortage of charging stations, means government subsidies are needed to convince many drivers to buy them.

The current federal subsidy is up to $5,000 for a fully electric vehicle and up to $2,500 for plug-in hybrids costing up to $50,000, from countries that have free trade agreements with Canada.

There is no price limit on the cost of the vehicle to qualify for the subsidies if it is Canadian made.

Canadian government policies of subsidizing the production and sale of EVs are in trouble because the Trudeau government created them to compete with similar subsides offered by the administration of former U.S. president Joe Biden.

Since Donald Trump because president he has killed most of those subsidies, and used his trade and tariff policies to pressure auto manufacturers to relocate production to the United States.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-canadas-big-bet-on-electric-vehicles-goes-bust