The world is currently filled with government-, corporate-, and billionaire-funded organizations advocating for a transformation of the energy system to “clean” and “abundant” renewables.

In my post a week ago, I described the International Energy Agency — a consortium of governments (now 40+ of them, including all the major ones) originally formed in the 70s to combat the OPEC oil embargo of the time, but since transformed into a “a center of advocacy for elimination of fossil fuels from the world’s energy supply.”

For today, here’s another one you may or may not have heard of — the Energy Institute. EI is a London-based advocacy organization set up under the UK charity laws. It appears to receive its funding largely from corporations and wealthy individuals. On its home page, it describes its mission as “creating a better energy future for our members and society by accelerating a just global energy transition to net zero.”

Let’s review the latest from these two groups.

Wind power: It’s clean. It’s free. It’s renewable. Google the subject, and you will quickly find fifty articles claiming that electricity from wind is now cheaper than electricity from those evil, dirty fossil fuels. So why doesn’t some country somewhere get all of its electricity from wind?

In fact, despite now several decades of breakneck building of wind turbines, no country seems to be able to get even half of its electricity from wind when averaged over the course of a year, and no country has really even begun to solve the problem of needing full backup when the wind doesn’t blow.

Well, maybe this project isn’t as easy as the central planners thought it would be. News of the past week brings to light a few more speed bumps on the road to energy utopia.

As yet another example of a bureaucracy gone completely nuts, consider the International Energy Agency. IEA started out in the 1970s as a consortium of Western nations organized to counteract the oil price shocks imposed by OPEC in those years. That seemed reasonable enough.

But somewhere along the line, gradually, the mission, let us say, evolved. Today, IEA is fairly described as a center of advocacy for elimination of fossil fuels from the world’s energy supply.

In May 2021 IEA published a big Report with the title “Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector.” You might get the impression from the title and some of the text that this could be just a few helpful “how to” tips on reducing emissions. But you don’t need to get too far into the document to figure out that it’s really another one of those crazed demands for immediate desperate action to save the planet from impending doom — the difference being that this one is directly funded by essentially every major Western government.

Now, two years later, along comes a serious group with a comprehensive critique of the IEA’s Report.

It’s been a persistent drumbeat for many years: Fossil fuels are obsolete, and the facilities that produce them, along with any further facilities that might be built for that purpose, will shortly become worthless.

These facilities will be “stranded assets.” And any energy company stupid enough to make further investment in fossil fuel extraction or use will inevitably suffer a total loss.

Do you believe that prediction?

Those making it are among the aggressive promoters of an energy transition to supposedly superior sources like the wind and sun. The prediction has been widely used in the attempt to bludgeon energy companies into reducing or ending their coal, oil and gas investments.

But if fossil fuels were really obsolete, and renewables superior and cheaper, why would such bludgeoning be needed?

Here in New York during the past couple of weeks, we had some days where the air was rather incredibly smoky. At times, you could barely see the Empire State Building from where I live (about one mile).

The smoke was said to originate from wildfires in the Canadian forests, mostly in Quebec but some farther West.

Getting such a large amount of smoke around here from wildfires in Canada is quite unusual. Indeed, I can’t remember it happening previously, at least to this extent. So something must be different.

Could this all be the result of — CLIMATE CHANGE????!!!!