Sing it!

The nittier-grittier of the transition narrative

I write a lot about transition propaganda, perhaps too much, but the last week or so has handed me two brilliant examples of how the propaganda actually works in the media and I couldn’t resist a little bit of shredding.

Exhibit 1 is an article in the New York Times, sent my way by a fellow critical thinker, headlined How Electricity Is Changing, Country by Country. The article is full of charts, which are indeed quite telling, but they don’t tell the whole story, so the reporter has done this for us.

The article begins with an obvious untruth. “Carbon-free electricity has never been more plentiful,” is the lead of the report and it gives you a pretty good idea of the tone the whole thing will follow, ignoring the quite substantial emissions footprint of the production processes involved in turning the power of the sun and the wind into electricity, but we all already knew that.

Reading on, the reporter tells us that “Experts broadly agree that keeping global temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, the world’s self-imposed climate goal — and ideally as low as 1.5 degrees — will require peaking and then rapidly reducing fossil-fueled power.”

“Broadly” is a good word, since it adds a pinch of impartiality in a heavily partial report. Sadly, the pinch gets dissolved as soon as the next paragraph, which quotes an electricity analyst from one of my favourite transition-pushing organisations: Ember.

In the NYT article, Ember is referred to as “a London-based think tank”, which is true enough, only the author has missed the important fact that Ember is a think tank that is heavily invested in pushing the energy transition through reports that state half-truths and outright lies.

Moving on, we learn that “Wind turbines and solar panels generated 22 percent of the European Union’s electricity last year, up from less than 1 percent two decades ago.” Of course, as with all of these reports, there is zero mention of what basis this percentage was calculated on. There wouldn’t be, either.

Neither would there be mention of how much of that production was curtailed because of low demand. Remember those solar farms getting turned off in Slovakia and Czechia because they were producing too much? Or the wind turbines that need to get switched off when the wind gets too strong? We don’t talk about that. We talk about grand totals, even if they are completely meaningless.

The start of the next paragraph is my favourite: “The boom of cheap renewable power helped replace coal-fired generation in Europe.” Yeah, until Germany lost cheap Russian gas, closed its nuclear power plants, and took down a wind farm to reopen a coal mine.

Further on, the author admits that “growing economic headwinds and other challenges threaten to slow down their [the U.S. and the EU’s] transitions” to wind and solar, which must have hurt but who said that propaganda is painless? Hilariously, in the same paragraph the author refers to “energy experts” who call for accelerating wind and solar buildouts. I’ll give you one guess about who the experts are. You were right! It’s the IEA.

In further amplification of the transition propaganda, the next “experts” that the NYT author cites further down are referred to as energy analysts for greater weight, I imagine.

“Energy analysts expect carbon-free power to grow enough in the next few years to start pushing out coal-fired electricity here [in China], too”. The analysts? Why, those would be the brave men and women from Carbon Brief — another totally impartial and unbiased organisation, just like Ember.

The rest of the article is a series of charts and if any of you are wondering about the source of the charts, the author obliges in the notes afterwards. It’s priceless.

“All of the charts and the map are based on electricity generation data from Ember. The data shown here reflects power generated within a country’s borders and does not include imports or exports, which can play a large role in many countries. The data includes rooftop solar generation that is connected to the grid, but not solar generation for personal use that is not connected to the grid (“behind the meter”). Data for 2022 is estimated. More detail on Ember’s methodology can be found here.”

I don’t know about you, but I love it. Might as well have put “Sponsored content” above the headline.

The problem is not so much the story itself. I believe in freedom of speech — and propaganda, by extension. The problem is that the NYT is still seen by many as a reputable source of news and when the NYT says “experts” many readers, including many investing readers, take it at face value. Well, don’t, that’s all I can say.

In fairness, there is a lot of factual information in the article. There are facts you can’t really ignore, such as coal consumption, rising energy demand on a global level, and the problem with access to any sort of electricity for hundreds of millions of people. End of fairness.

Exhibit 2 is this marvelous “WSJ Exclusive” with the proud headline Now for Some Good News About Climate. Ever met Climate? The WSJ will introduce you. The subheading is gold, too: “Costs for renewables have plummeted and growth is exceeding expectations.” Told you. Gold. By the way, some media outlets have a no-article policy in the headline. The WSJ does use articles in headlines.

The article features phrases such as “explosion of clean energy” which “offers hope for cutting fossil-fuel use” and statements such as this one: “Subsidies drove early growth in wind and solar, then technology refinements and large-scale manufacturing made them cheap.”

The article is essentially a wordy hallelujah for wind and solar, and how they beat the odds (I kid you not) against, wait for it, the expectations of the International Energy Agency. Back in 2009, that is. Back then, the IEA did not believe, apparently, that solar could become competitive anytime soon. How things change, right? All it takes is a trillion dollars or so.

We also get the usual reference to impartial and unbiased sources of forecasts: “The average cost of solar power fell nearly 90% between 2009 and 2023, with onshore wind declining by two-thirds, according to BloombergNEF.” So how are those solar and wind stocks doing after the 90% cost plunge? is a question you’re not supposed to ask in polite circles.

But wait, there’s more. From the WSJ article we learn that “EV costs are falling, and infrastructure is improving. The total cost of ownership of small and midsize EVs is now cheaper than gasoline-powered vehicles in China and Europe and could hit that point in the U.S. next year,” and I will appreciate it if you don’t burst out laughing, thinking of the amount of money carmakers are actually losing on EVs. Also, do not mention the word “recalls”. Or “chargers”. It’s unseemly.

The manipulation is not particularly subtle but you do have to pay attention to see it. Take EVs, for instance. The article includes four charts claiming that EV ownership is cheaper than ICE car ownership in China, India, Europe, and the U.S.

Before you gasp in shock, let me add that these are projected numbers, as stated above the charts, and are based on “price [that] includes purchase price and cost of use; future cost projections are based on historic trends,” as analysed by something called the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition project, led by the University of Exeter. Oh, and also, these are “Projections from 2023 onwards”.

In case you’re wondering what sort of a project this is, here’s the description on their own website: “[the project] develops cutting edge complexity-based modelling solutions to support government decision making around low-carbon innovation and technological change, aiming to facilitate a rapid low-carbon transition.” That should settle it.

Both of these articles, I believe, were published in anticipation of the COP28 orgy of blah that starts today. I’m sure there were many more aiming to rally the transition troops and remind everyone else that this transition is happening and it’s happening fast and hard, and “Clean-energy sell-off is ‘very wrong’, warns US power group boss.”

Who’s the energy boss, you wonder? Why, that would be “The head of one of the world’s largest developers of clean energy,” per the FT, which quoted Andres Gluski as saying “investors are on the wrong side of history as they drive a historic sell-off in renewable stocks.” Yes, tragically, the FT is in on it as well. Even more tragically, a business executive talking up his book is considered news. Anything for Climate, I guess.

COP28 begins today. It will no doubt produce a lot of media reports and little in the way of actual decisions, luckily for us all. But I hear the EU will be pushing for carbon taxes on jet fuel — international taxes, you understand. No tax is enough when we’re talking about Climate. No tax and no media effort must be spared to keep the narrative going.

Meanwhile, here’s a piece of news from the real world:

“Germany’s residential grid operators will be empowered to restrict the flow of power to heat pumps and electric vehicle (EV) chargers from 2024 in order to preserve the stability of the grid, which is suffering from chronic underinvestment.

Across Europe, investments into grids are lagging behind what’s needed as the continent embraces heat pumps and electric vehicles. 

“Waiting time for permits for grid reinforcements are between 4-10 years, and 8-10 years for high voltages,” the European Commission said on Tuesday (28 November) as it unveiled a new Action Plan to accelerate the deployment of electricity grids.

“Grids need to be an enabler, not a bottleneck in the clean energy transition,” said Kadri Simson, the EU’s energy commissioner.”

This is my mic. This is me dropping it.

P.S. A new report from Wood Mac says that 67% of Europe’s electricity supply will come from wind and solar in a few short years. In the same report, a Wood Mac research director talks about “inflexible nuclear and thermal generators still on the system”, implying wind and solar are flexible. Watch out for the flexibility spin.

P.P.S. I know and you know that the above and many more like them are spin. Many others don’t. They put money in it, and not only their own money, at that. The potential fallout from the transition could be even more devastating than the fallout from the subprime crisis.