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Global Economy Is Suddenly Fighting an Energy Stranglehold on Three Fronts – WSJ

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Global Economy Is Suddenly Fighting an Energy Stranglehold on Three Fronts – WSJ

Conflict in the Middle East broadened this week with Tehran-backed Houthi militants turning tankers back from the Bab al-Mandeb strait. The Red Sea maritime chokepoint, which has become the biggest export route for Saudi Arabia’s crude following the Strait of Hormuz closure, accounted for roughly 12% of the world’s seaborne oil flows before the war.

Another disruption: Ukraine has mounted sustained attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and ships in the Black Sea. A barrage of strikes in the waters near the port of Novorossiysk, which handles nearly a third of Russia’s oil exports, paused flows through a pipeline that delivers Russian and Kazakh oil to the Black Sea.

The closing of the three chokepoints collectively imperils roughly a quarter of the world’s oil supply and provides a fresh test of the ability of energy-hungry economies to adapt.

Oil is at the heart of two major conflicts consuming the world’s attention. Iran’s ability to starve the world of supply from the Gulf has emerged as its most potent form of leverage against the U.S. Ukraine has increasingly disrupted Russia’s energy exports and domestic fuel markets, giving Kyiv unexpected momentum in the four-year-old conflict.
Map: Sand Lake

Caveat Emptor Banking

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I was reading about the scam fin-tech company, Yotta Bank, a financial services company masquerading as a bank. Unlike banks and credit unions, there is no government-backed insurance or supervision of bank assets in financial services companies compared to banks – even when they claim such backing. It is really essential to confirm a bank is a bank by searching the FDIC BankFind Suite, especially when putting money in a high-interest internet-only savings account – which makes sense as most retail banks and credit unions offer very low rates due to the high cost of offering in-person service. Credit unions offer similiar banking opportunities to banks, you can verify they are insured like an FDIC Bank through the NCUA Credit Union Locator service. People expect the government to protect them, but the government doesn’t always do that, so check yourself.

For going on 20-years now, I have had an high-interest savings account. It has changed hands several times since I opened it, but before opening it, I confirmed with the FDIC BankFind Suite that it’s an FDIC insurance was legimate and that it was a legitimate bank, even though it is associated with a large banking insitution. It has rolled over into a couple of different banks since then, and just recently I found out the bank name had changed again, and I promptly went to FDIC BankFind Suite to make sure my savings was still in a legitimate bank. While I doubt it would be legal for a FDIC insured banking institution to transfer funds from an FDIC account to a non-FDIC account, it is always good to regularly confirm such details, especially when the bank you are dealing with does not have a physical branch locally.

Map: Floodwood Pond

Eco-lifestyle Consumerism

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Eco-lifestyle consumerism of dubious values seems to be all the rage these days. Many smart marketers have figured out that it’s easy to sell new products to urban consumers who feel guilty about their consumption and ecological impact.

The newest one is buying into “community solar farms” that are these vast areas of farm land covered by solar panels that sell into the grid. The consumer pays a little extra on his or her bill – or maybe about the same with tax credits – and they subsidize the construction of these urbanized farm fields or former forests. They argue it’s carbon-free energy, although it’s heavily backed up fossil generation of the grid. The fossil plants work “less hard” with “less load” so they burn less fuel when assisted by the solar, but it’s still all supported by our fossil-fuel grid while using up valuable farm land and forest land. If we took land that was going to be a solar farms and put it into traditional non-urban uses, what would be the impact on the climate? It would at least be less ugly solar farms to look at.

Geothermal heat that uses refrigerant to pump or dump heat out of the earth using large quantities of electricity is also a popular thing – it’s a new high-end product that can be sold by well drillers – who traditionally could only market their service to rural dwellers beyond the city water supply. I’m equally cynical about this technology, because it uses incredible amounts of electrical energy to power it – theoretically from renewable sources – but rarely that’s case as intense amount of energy to power a geothermal system comes from the fossil-fuel grid.

I don’t discredit the early pioneers in this green technology, but I think it’s valid to ask questions, even if we shouldn’t be necessarily defending the status quo. Certainly, we should be doing everything to get solar panels on existing buildings, as solar is proven technology that is simple and inexpensive. It doesn’t consume land on existing structures, it is long lasting, even if it’s as toxic as the rest of electronics it powers. I think we should increase efficiency standards on new buildings and furnaces, work to do more to improve energy efficiency on existing buildings. Geothermal should be considered as an alternative to air-source heat pumps both in existing and new buildings, but it should not be promoted as a way to “consume more” with “zero impact”.

It’s stupid to ignore the climate crisis we are all facing. But throwing money at so-called green technologies that do little to actually address the problem of over consumption and over population isn’t necessarily a good answer.