California Mulls Combustion-Engine Car Ban: "You Could Stop All Sales By 2030"

California, the state which single-handedly turned Elon Musk into the billionaire that he is today by forcing taxpayers to subsidize his unprofitable electric vehicle scam via "Zero Emission Vehicle" credits, is now considering a full ban of combustion-engine cars by as early as 2030. The potential ban was discussed by Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board, the same folks who decided to regulate cow farts last year, who told Bloomberg that Governor Jerry Brown has expressed interest in a ban.

Governor Jerry Brown has expressed an interest in barring the sale of vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines, Mary Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, said in an interview Friday at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. Brown, one of the most outspoken elected official in the U.S. about the need for policies to combat climate change, would be replicating similar moves by China, France and the U.K.

“I’ve gotten messages from the governor asking, ‘Why haven’t we done something already?’” Nichols said, referring to China’s planned phase-out of fossil-fuel vehicle sales. “The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California.”

California has set a goal to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Rising emissions from on-road transportation has undercut the state’s efforts to reduce pollution, a San Francisco-based non-profit said last month.

“To reach the ambitious levels of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we have to pretty much replace all combustion with some form of renewable energy by 2040 or 2050," Nichols said. “We’re looking at that as a method of moving this discussion forward.”

"There are people who believe, including who work for me, that you could stop all sales of new internal-combustion cars by 2030. Some people say 2035, some people say 2040,” she said. “It’s awfully hard to predict any of that with precision, but it doesn’t appear to be out of the question.”

Of course, the irony that seems to be lost on Jerry Brown and Mary Nichols is that, according to Morgan Stanley, electric cars generate more CO2 than they save.  As a stark reminder to our left-leaning political elites who created these companies with massive taxpayer funded subsidies in the United States, Morgan Stanley pointed out that while electric cars don"t burn gasoline they do have to be charged using electricity generated by coal and other fossil fuels.

This is where Tesla, along with China’s Guoxuan High-Tech fall short.

“Whilst the electric vehicles and lithium batteries manufactured by these two companies do indeed help to reduce direct CO2 emissions from vehicles, electricity is needed to power them,” Morgan Stanley wrote. “And with their primary markets still largely weighted towards fossil-fuel power (72% in the U.S. and 75% in China) the CO2 emissions from this electricity generation are still material.”

In other words, “the carbon emissions generated by the electricity required for electric vehicles are greater than those saved by cutting out direct vehicle emissions.”

Morgan Stanley calculated that an investment of $1 million in Canadian Solar results in nearly 15,300 metric tons of carbon dioxide being saved every year. For Tesla, such an investment adds nearly one-third of a metric ton of CO2.

Meanwhile, despite Brown"s desire for "Hope & Change," even the U.S. Energy Information Administration says that "renewables" will represent less than 20% of electricity generation in the U.S. by 2040.

Of course, the problem is that a California ban on combustion engine cars would effectively be the same as a full U.S. ban given the size of the California market. 

Embracing such a policy would send shockwaves through the global car industry due to the heft of California’s auto market. More than 2 million new passenger vehicles were registered in the state last year, topping France, Italy or Spain. If a ban were implemented, automakers from General Motors Co. to Toyota Motor Corp. would be under new pressure to make electric vehicles the standard for personal transportation in the most populous U.S. state, casting fresh doubts on the future of gasoline- and diesel-powered autos elsewhere.

The end result of this effort to "save the environment" will be more expensive vehicles, landfills full of lithium-ion batteries and more coal-fired generation plants...but, somehow we suspect those "inconvenient facts" are lost on our politicians and enviros who seem determined to subsidize Elon"s trip to Mars.

How Trading Renewable Energy Will Grow the Industry

As the world becomes more environmentally aware, all eyes are on finding sustainable, long-term solutions to replace the use of non-renewable materials such as fossil fuels. Great steps are being taken to reduce greenhouse gases, notably carbon emissions, with recruiters like NES constantly looking to place talented individuals into key positions within the energy industry – but what could Europe’s renewable energy revolution have in store for the industry?

International power grid

Believe it or not, a relatively quiet mission is currently underway to create an economically significant and internationally successful power grid. It will help many countries benefit from natural resources like never before. It may sound like something from a futuristic movie, but an impressively intricate project has already begun to connect Britain to Norway’s huge hydroelectric power supplies.

The project will take years to complete, but when finished power lines running through a Norwegian mountain near Kvilldal will connect to Blythe in Northumberland via the longest undersea power cable in the world, stretching 450 kilometers.

The plan? To allow the UK and Norway to import and export natural power sources. The UK could import 1400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 750,000 homes. Norway will benefit from wind energy exported from the UK in a scheme that’s both intelligent and efficient.

The trade of surplus energy

The trade of surplus energy from one country to another forms the backbone of Europe’s renewable energy revolution. Using power interconnectors to link nations together in an eco-friendly way is a logical step when it comes to reducing emissions. But what does this mean for the future of energy usage?

An international power grid can theoretically produce more reliable energy supplies by helping to reduce the effects of intermittent energy produced by renewables such as wind and solar power.

Northern European countries, for instance, that produce large amounts of energy from the wind can trade electricity with sunnier European climates offering reliable and efficient solar power. The use of surplus energy is an innovative and forward-thinking approach to reducing the carbon footprint here on Earth and, if successful, could go a long way to reducing greenhouse gases. A successful international network of natural power could also drive down wholesale energy prices as people are given an alternative to how they fuel their lives.

Interconnectors already in use

With the Norwegian-UK project well underway, it’s also worth noting that interconnectors are already being used. The UK is connected to electricity sources in France and Ireland. Interconnectors in multiple other countries, including Belgium are in the advanced stages of planning or construction. Indeed a new interconnector linking the UK with France has recently been approved and looks set to power up to two million homes ensuring Britain’s energy supply is continuously resilient.

Europe’s large-scale renewable energy revolution will potentially make the world a greener environment with cleaner living gathering momentum across the globe.

Pay with rays

Trump Didn't Kill The Paris Agreement - It Was Already Dead

President Trump recently removed the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, heralded by many as a major win for global climate action. The Paris Climate Agreement, signed during the Obama administration, attempted to include the entire world and managed to amass 195 signatories.

Given that international climate negotiations are notoriously difficult, that can only be evidence of two things: either the Paris agreement was a truly monumental agreement in which the entire world came together to respond effectively to a global problem or it was so toothless that nobody bothered to object. All things considered, it was probably the latter.

The agreement itself contains very few direct requirements, instead relying on nations to interpret independently and work toward various ill-defined goals. This problem led James Henson, the “father of global awareness of climate change” and an ex-NASA scientist, to condemn the agreement as a fraud. It lacks any enforcement mechanism, instead relying on nations voluntarily to reduce emissions.

Assuming that countries will voluntarily subject themselves to emissions reductions brings into question the need for an international agreement in the first place. Why else would Exxon, Shell, Peabody and other fossil fuel companies traditionally hated by the environmental movement defend the accord? The excitement of many Paris agreement supporters following these statements exposes their naivete.

People worldwide lauded the accord for including 195 countries, but the inclusion of so much of the developing and undeveloped world may have neutered the agreement. Including undeveloped nations in a global climate agreement presents a double bind. Either the outcome will stymie much-needed and fossil fuel-dependent development, or the agreement will not do much at all.

The Paris Agreement, again, took the latter approach by failing to make meaningful change. The agreement’s already vague and unenforceable requirements for developed countries are even more diluted for lower income countries. Interest in the agreement among many low-income countries likely stems from the $100 billion earmarked for payouts to assist in adaptation and mitigation.

Yet even the source of these funds are up in the air, with international public pledges still well beneath the agreed-upon amount. If the money does materialize, the agreement fails to outline any monitoring to make sure funds are used appropriately or a mechanism for their transmission. If mitigating emissions is really the only goal, that money would probably be more effectually spent where sizeable emissions are actually occurring — the developed world.

Including the entire world in climate agreements is unnecessary and, as illustrated above, is likely to reduce their effectiveness. If an international agreement does prove useful for addressing climate change, a better agreement would place responsibility for carbon emissions squarely in the lap of those who emitted them: large, developed countries.

The United States and European Union alone are responsible for more than 50 percent of emissions since 1850. Thus, there’s no reason to complicate negotiations with a worldwide agreement, nor to add to the developing world’s biggest challenge of tackling poverty. If less developed nations are considered at all, it should be to carve out room for their emissions to grow as they develop.

The Trump administration’s decision to leave the Paris agreement may have ramifications such as straining diplomatic relationships, but the claim that Trump is undoing the ultimate solution to global climate change cannot be justified by a plain reading of the agreement’s text. Hand-wringing over the United States’ exit fails to recognize that the Paris agreement is more of a symbolic vanity project for world diplomats than an actionable plan for addressing climate issues.