S. A. Shelley: For those of you too young to remember, in the late nineties and early naughts (naughties?), there was a super major company called Enron. Enron was a darling of Wall Street and was hugely profitable in trading energy. It was an inventive company, too, in that it developed things such as weather derivatives and dubious accounting schemes. But it was mostly a scam, a fraud undertaken on a massive scale. The company eventually collapsed, and from time to time in Houston, you can still meet a former Enron employee in a pub who, after a beer or two, will tell you wonderful tales of excess at that company.

 
But one often forgotten and overlooked practice that Enron excelled at was manipulating markets and physical energy grid assets to extort money: Everyone paid Enron. This situation is exemplified best by the role that Enron had in the great California energy crisis of 2000 to 2001. California had been experiencing power demand growth and subsidiaries of Enron had contracted with various California utilities to provide power. However, Enron then went on to game the system by doing such things as providing power in surges that the California grid could not transmit, and then claiming grid curtailment (congestion) charges. In effect, Enron was paid to supply power and then paid to not deliver that same power because of grid constraints. Ultimately California residents paid twice for power that they could not receive. It was a masterful stroke of clever contracting that, though of dubious morality, was legal at that time. Years later, it was even shown that Enron had taken power plants offline during California peak demand to force electricity prices higher during such times. Where else in the world can such unbridled capitalism (deviousness) flourish?

Which brings us to modern times and the renewable energy surge along with associated grid constraints. Grid operators in the UK have started paying wind farm operators huge sums, in excess of 1 billion GBP to not deliver power.

UK Is Paying £1 Billion to Waste a Record Amount of Wind Power – BNN Bloomberg

But the grid hasn’t expanded at the same pace. As a result, the operator is increasingly paying wind farms, particularly those in Scotland, not to run. So far this year, the UK has spent more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in “congestion costs” to turn off plants that can’t deliver electricity because of grid constraints, and switch on others.

It’s just as bad in Germany with grid constraints. In 2022 about 3% of all renewable energy generated by wind and solar were curtailed – produced but not delivered to the grid because of grid and network physical constraints. In 2023, about 4% of all renewable energy generated was not delivered (curtailments).

In way back times, when a power company built a new power plant (coal, gas, whatever) it was also tasked by the utility regulator to build the supporting transmission lines and substations. (See the Vogtle nuclear power plant as such an example.)

But for some strange reason, the politicians pushing renewable energy ignored or simply forgot about the grid. The grid is also forgotten by most folks. Very few people understand how the grid is a delicately balanced system of power inputs and outflows. Residents expect to be able to turn on their dishwasher whenever they want and have the power right then and there to operate the machine. Never once do most residents appreciate, let alone understand, the complex engineering and massive infrastructure required to make that small bit of modern convenience work. Rarer still do politicians ever talk about adding more power lines and substations.

It should also be noted that the solution has its own set of problems. Transmission infrastructure requires large swaths of land, often through populated areas, and residents and special interest groups (often fossil fuel companies) typically fight against such developments, the so-called NIMBY problem. It is much easier to get approval for an offshore development, take all the accolades for helping solve the earth’s climate problems, and then leave the hard work for someone else.

Big wind farm producers are no doubt cognizant of the grid constraints yet indifferent to those problems. They are perfectly willing to suck every subsidizing Dollar or Euro out of government coffers at all levels to build their huge wind farms. The wind farm developers care only for their power cable to the to the grid connection point and not past it. If they have to earn congestion or curtailment fees, so be it, because consumers will just have to pay for it. We pay, we always pay, for the actions of politicians with small intellects and big egos for as long as these politicians continue their utopian green visions without understanding the complex connections on that path forward. Until our elected representatives get smarter there will always be such reincarnations of Enron who take advantage of the grid congestion problem.

Vive l’Alberta Libre!

There is no saving Canada.

In September in Canada, there is a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples. (Some Canadians call it National Surf Day because of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau snuck off in secret to surf that very first solemn day which he publicly championed and then privately ignored.) In 2024, in the main branch of the City of Calgary Public Library, there were many displays about Indigenous history. One display was a large map of the province of Alberta. On that map the large cities were indicated as well as a mixture of Indigenous and Metis historical land areas. Figure 1 below is an image capture of that map.

In Alberta, there is only one city named Red Deer. On the map two are shown in different geographic locations. There are also some questionable land boundaries indicated and most indigenous treaty bands are not shown at all. In the main branch of the City of Calgary library there is an archive of maps on the top floor: Current maps of Alberta of all kinds are also kept there. Apparently, it was too much for the library staff to fact check in-house: They probably felt that their work was sufficient. Such is the continuing decline in Canada.

S. A. Shelley: At OWOE, we have repeatedly advocated for a North American Energy Alliance of some kind to ensure cheap and robust energy supplies at reasonable costs and with minimal geopolitical risk. In some forms, it already exists when you consider how the Northeast is supplied by cheap Newfoundland hydropower via Quebec (after a huge markup), or how the overwhelming majority of Alberta Oil is shipped to the Gulf refineries.

OWOE Staff: This month, the American Petroleum Institute (API) presented its “5 Point Policy Roadmap to Secure American Energy Leadership and Help Reduce Inflation” to President-elect Donald Trump and the 119th US Congress. Given that the API is an organization that was created by the oil industry, is supported by the oil industry, and is funded by the oil industry, it is no surprise that it is a blatantly self-serving plan whose primary purpose is to ensure income and maintain shareholder value for the fossil fuel industry. However, OWOE has reviewed the plan and concluded that it is a not unreasonable plan in many ways. With that in mind, OWOE has done some minor editing to address several serious problems that will negatively impact our planet over the long term and hereby presents its own “5 Point Policy Roadmap to Secure American Energy Leadership and Ensure the Planet is Protected for Future Generations”.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: When it comes to energy matters, as in all matters that affect our health or fiscal wellbeing, we tend to be our own worst enemies. There are two components to the global warming surge:  greenhouse gases, which insulate the planet and prevent heat energy from radiating into space, and heat exhaust generated by human activity. The latter is often overlooked and forgotten by most people but is just as critical a factor in global warming. We wrote a blog a few years back highlighting the thermal inefficiency of internal combustion engines (ICEs) which on aggregate pump out a heck of a lot of waste thermal energy compared to their transport energy use (Throwing Away 3 of every 4 Gallons of Gasoline Bought). This is one area in which electric vehicles (EVs) crush ICEs:  EVs use a much greater proportion of their energy to move people and stuff and emit far, far less waste thermal energy. Point to EVs. But there is a myriad of other personal choices that people can make today, without switching to EVs, that will on aggregate reduce the rate of global warming.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: As is usual every spring, many large entities ranging from super major oil producers to large Wall Street firms and global organizations release annual energy statistics, reports and forecasts about the world’s energy state. Invariably discussed are subjects like energy mix, demand or supply projections. Often these entities will venture into discussing oil prices and associated forecasts. All those entities have big research budgets and teams of analysts, statisticians and economists pouring over mountains of data. However, even with all those highly paid personnel, and I suspect some added AI, those big entities are at best equal to the analysis undertaken by OWOE staffers, but more often than not, much worse. Apparently, nobody can beat curiosity, whisky and voodoo.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: OK, another inciteful blog but that’s the OWOE writing team’s style, gleefully stoking controversy.

The term “fossil fuels” is one of the greatest marketing triumphs that the environmentalists ever adopted. “Fossil” suggests old and outdated, coming from some pre-historic, ancient, way-back, long-ago-dead biologic entities. The uses for fossil fuels also reflect “old” technologies, cooking, training and steam shipping (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Using Fossil Fuels from Ancient (left) to Modern Times (right)

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: The U.S. Federal Government is a huge organization that is staffed by some very bright people. There are also nearly 1,000 advisory committees in Washington, comprising leaders from industry, science and the arts. For the most part, the advisory committees concern themselves with publicly available information and have public meetings, but there are a few which require security clearance and concern themselves with confidential matters of state. These advisory committees are a valuable resource upon which the Federal Government can call to review policies and assist with formulating strategies.

Guest blog by Manny Topiques Here are some interesting and somewhat offbeat energy stories that haven’t gotten much media attention over the past year.

Is coal the new future for clean energy? In an amazing new discovery just announced by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the Perseverance Rover discovered an outcropping of high quality space coal not far from the spacecraft’s 2021 landing site. Using its rotary percussive coring drill, the rover was able to penetrate approximate 6 meters below the planet’s surface to confirm that this outcropping was the surface exposure of a large deposit of anthracite space coal. Further exploration on future missions will be required to determine if this deposit is native to Mars or the remains of a meteor that impacted the surface in the distant past.

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: Change is inevitable unless you’re well established. There is a reason why empires are lost to history, governments are overthrown, businesses collapse, and academia becomes irrelevant. The established organizations or systems could not change fast enough to respond to imminent threats, emerging technologies or changes in consumer habits.  When faced with such challenges established systems, especially governments, harden themselves. In extreme cases you end up with kingdoms such as North Korea. But in most cases, you end up with economically declining and socially irrelevant states like Canada. It is a problem of ossification of thought, of edicts being churned out ever more frequently with worse effects. It applies to everything from healthcare and education to defense and energy policy.

T’was the night before separation when all through the Land
The Liberals were dancing, excessive tax revenues in hand.
While the stockings of residents, homeless or not
Were filled with inflation and expenses that came from dumb Liberal thought.

The homeless were nestled where they put their heads
While visions of affordable housing danced in their heads.
And Granny in Cape Breton, her home heated not,
Cursed feebly at Ottawa for the heat pump they brought.