Europe’s Net Zero Insanity Reads like a Babylon Bee Parody

You can not make up stories like a Babylon Bee Parady in real life; no, wait, you can. The UK just announced that it is buying coal from Japan for a steel plant that it is considering nationalising from the Chinese owners. President Trump’s Tariff wars bring out the best in energy stories worldwide. With the EU trying to manufacture EU-approved military equipment, this will be a vast problem for automakers and trade. We get a unique view of the global energy issue facing the international markets. David Blackmon, Irina Slav, Tammy Nemeth, and Stu Turley have way too much fun talking about energy.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:10 – Introduction

02:28 – Topic Introduction: Europe’s Net Zero Insanity Reads like a Babylon Bee Parody

03:43 – British Steel’s Bizarre Saga

05:15 – Power Prices & Policy Irony in the UK

07:04 – The Carbon Footprint Irony

08:14 – Irina’s Take on the UK & EU Hypocrisy

10:43 – EU’s EV Price Floor Plan Criticized

16:30 – Political Inhibition of Anti-Globalist Leaders

20:09 – Europe’s Hypocrisy on Tariffs

21:19 – EV Irony, Censorship & Tesla’s Dominance

25:14 – Electric Cars in 1909: History Repeats?

28:51 – Net Zero Policies = Deindustrialization?

33:06 – EU’s Steel Shift & Strategic Weakness

36:02 – California’s Coal Conundrum

37:39 – Sheffield to Peers: Stop Drilling and Hunker Down

39:02 – A day in the life of Trump and his energy and climate team is absolutely glorious

43:19 – Ørsted urges Europe to act to avert wind energy ‘downward spiral’

45:31 – Trump has a $350 billion deal for Europe: Buy our energy

49:03 – Ingersoll GM plant shutdown: 500 layoffs imminent

51:50 – Terence Corcoran: Mark Carney’s plan for ‘superpower’ Canada tricks voters

55:34 – The energy storage market is getting clobbered by the tariff wars.

Irina Slav

International Author writing about energy, mining, and geopolitical issues. Bulgaria

David Blackmon

Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.Principal at DB Energy Advisors, energy author, and podcast host.

Tammy Nemeth

Energy Consulting Specialist

Stuart Turley

President, and CEO, Sandstone Group, Podcast Host

Europe’s Net Zero Insanity Reads like a Babylon Bee Parody

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:10] Hello, welcome everybody to the Energy Realities podcast. We have a special guest who just disappeared, my cat. So welcome today. Hello to David Blackmon, Irina Slav, and Stu Turley. David, how are you today?

David Blackmon [00:00:26] Oh, I’m just lovely. It’s a beautiful day in Texas as it always is. And, uh, just happy to be here with you guys.

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:34] Great, as it always is when there’s no tornadoes going through or…

David Blackmon [00:00:38] It’s just a beautiful day. Every day in Texas is a beautiful day as far as I’m concerned.

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:43] Excellent. Irina, how are you today in Bulgaria?

Irina Slav [00:00:47] I’m good, thank you, and I really, really love David’s attitude to the weather.

Tammy Nemeth [00:00:56] Rain or shine, It’s Beautiful where I am

Irina Slav [00:00:57] Yeah, I have to work on myself to develop this attitude, but I will. Thank you, David.

Tammy Nemeth [00:01:06] Well I wondering because apparently it was the second hardest, hottest march on record, again.

Irina Slav [00:01:10] Where?

Tammy Nemeth [00:01:13] Apparently in Europe.

Irina Slav [00:01:15] No, it wasn’t.

Tammy Nemeth [00:01:18] I know, I’m like, where are they getting this data? Is this ridiculous? They make it up. And we’ve got Stu Turley. Hi, Stu, how are you today?

Stuart Turley [00:01:27] Hola, como esta? Master Bahon, I see you there, day Dallas, eh?

David Blackmon [00:01:33] Yo, Tambien.

Tammy Nemeth [00:01:39] And how’s the weather where you are, Stu?

Stuart Turley [00:01:41] It was actually wonderful. I got to work in my garden. I got work on my backhoe yesterday and throw rocks around. It is absolutely wonderful. Every man needs a backhoe.

Tammy Nemeth [00:01:54] For sure, nothing like digging holes and filling them up again.

Stuart Turley [00:01:57] Oh, planting trees? I’ve planted 10 trees this year already.

Tammy Nemeth [00:02:02] Wow, hey, you can sell those as carbon offsets. It’s all part of net zero.

Stuart Turley [00:02:07] I think scamming the global people with that is absolutely wonderful, but I’m not that kind of guy.

Tammy Nemeth [00:02:15] Hey, you can be part of the voluntary carbon market that Mark Carney is trying to set up.

Stuart Turley [00:02:21] I’m going to be rude for half of a second and say, I don’t want to have anything to do with that, man, but I’ll just leave it at that.

Tammy Nemeth [00:02:28] Well, I’m Tammy Nemeth and I guess I’m hosting today as well as my cat Moxie but she’s now decided she’s had enough and is having a nap so hopefully she won’t come and disturb us again. So today we’re talking about Europe’s net zero insanity reads like a Babylon Bee parody and actually it’s a little bit more along the lines of how crazy all the EV stuff is and all these plants. going out of business or subsidies being wasted. And then we’ve got in Europe where the European Union is agreeing on a floor price to sell Chinese EVs in Europe. And then there was also an article that was linked actually from something David sent around on Substack today. It was one of the other articles. where it was Chinese car manufacturers are showing interest in purchasing two of the Volkswagen manufacturing plants in Germany. So imagine a Volkswagen plant being bought by a German company, or sorry, a Chinese company to produce Chinese EVs in the European Union. I don’t see how this is going to end well for the Europeans. So what’s your take?

Stuart Turley [00:03:43] Don’t we have an example of failed Chinese purchases of steel companies?

Tammy Nemeth [00:03:50] Oh my gosh, yeah, so I guess before we move on to the EVs in the UK, a Chinese company had bought British Steel a few years ago, and there’s been criticisms that they weren’t containing the facility properly. that they were possibly taking equipment out. That’s one of the accusations out there. So on the weekend there was an emergency meeting of parliament where they sat on a Saturday, oh my gosh, you know, parliamentarians coming in on a saturday, where they were discussing the possibility of nationalizing British Steel. And What ended up happening is that the government apparently, I’m not quite sure the details, they’re going to keep giving money to this Chinese company to keep British Steel open. They’ve paid for coal, even though Britain has a whole lot of coal, they paid for to be shipped supposedly from Japan to the UK to keep the steel plant operational. And it’s just the craziest thing you’ve ever heard.

Stuart Turley [00:05:04] Is this all about net zero? This is all about are all of the policies in the UK really targeted to help drive a net zero economy?

Tammy Nemeth [00:05:15] Absolutely, and one of the big complaints for the steel company was that they’re supposed to be converting it to an electric arc furnace, but everything is so expensive. The UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world. It’s got, for whatever reason, extremely high natural gas prices, even though the spot prices are quite low. For whatever reason what people get charged in the UK is very expensive. So the company’s like, well, you know, the power prices, the electricity prices, it’s all too much. And if you want us to convert to an electric arc, you’re going to have to give us some subsidy or something. And so now they want to nationalize the company. But that hasn’t been I’m not sure. They put it forward to maybe nationalize in the near future, but at the moment, it’s this weird kind of hybrid where the UK government is giving the Chinese company a whole lot of money with no strings attached really. And we’ll see where that goes. But right now, that coal is sitting in harbor in the port in the UK, not being offloaded because the government actually hasn’t paid the bill yet.

Stuart Turley [00:06:33] Uh, Tammy, let me throw this at you. You can’t make this up. Japan, you can’t make this up and Japan has also closed their coking coal mines.

Tammy Nemeth [00:06:46] Well, they have a few, I think. But not very many.

David Blackmon [00:06:50] And then that gets to the point that, that, uh, the, the supposedly Japanese coal actually came to Japan from Australia, where it had been produced. Just makes it more insane.

Stuart Turley [00:07:04] And David, if it did, and Tammy, if it did this is all about net zero, net zero. Australia to Japan in a ore carrier would approximately be 2043 metric tons of CO2 output. In Japan to the UK, it would be approximately 4895 metric tons of CO2. So that’s a total of six thousand nine hundred and thirty eight metric tons of CO. So if they’re rushing a bill through to emergency buy that coal, who’s going to pay the extra fine for the CO2 carbon capture for all that extra tonnage of carbon for stupidity? I just asked.

David Blackmon [00:07:53] Well, they’ll tear down a forest to build a solar array.

Stuart Turley [00:07:58] Oh, nice.

Tammy Nemeth [00:07:59] Well, they’re yeah, like they’re covering up the farmland here, right to put solar.

Stuart Turley [00:08:06] You can’t buy this kind of entertainment, even the Babylon Bee could not have made this story tough.

Tammy Nemeth [00:08:14] Irina, what do you think of this crazy UK story?

Irina Slav [00:08:18] Well, it’s crazy, as you can see, I’ve been trying to not laugh out loud that, and yeah, the UK has gone a step ahead of the EU, but it’s a small step with this cold story, because we have the EU trying to do business with China, wanting to do a business with China, less than a month after the so-called top diplomat of the European Union, the US said that the EU needs to defeat China. on which front the EU needs to defeat China, I have no idea, but I think this woman needs to be removed from this post because I understand that foreign diplomats are not taking her seriously, but she’s still very highly incompetent and inadequate in every professional respect. So, you know, it’s pretty much the same story as it was with Russia. before the war in Ukraine actually began, because on the one hand the EU was cursing at Russia at every turn, and on the other hand they were keeping those gas supplies coming because they need the gas. Now they’re doing the same thing. The big problem of the EU is that they seem to perceive geopolitics as a zero-sum game. If we’re not with the US, we must be with China. And one of the two would win. It’s not a zero sum game. This is such an infantile perception of geopolitics and international relations and everything that stems from international relations. So they spent a lot of time hyping attempts to stand up to China, building new supply chains. for the transition, for energy supply in general. We’ve all seen the news, we’ve seen the reports, we’ve read the quote. Now suddenly they want to do a deal with China because the US is not playing along with the EU agenda. And they’re not even ashamed of it.

Tammy Nemeth [00:10:43] You’re right. I mean, it’s like Canada keeps talking about, we want to have a coalition with trustworthy, reputable, reliable partners. Since when is China any of those things? And now the EU wants to do this deal with the EBs to have a floor price, so that Chinese EBs, when they come, will be of a similar price as the European ones. Well, really, how is that going to help consumers? Except it’ll help the EU governments to say, well, we’re having open competition and the consumer will choose maybe. Maybe that’s their thinking, I don’t know.

Irina Slav [00:11:29] I don’t know if there’s any actual thinking involved in this whole thing, because if they make Chinese EVs as expensive as Europe made EVs, which was the original idea, they were considering tariffs on Chinese EV, so, you know, the European car makers had a chance. Yeah. But if they do this, if the Chinese agree to this… they’ll just, you know, buy the factories. By the way, they’re going to buy two factories, so the other factories will be, you know, switched into ammunition plants or something. They need to rearm, you know, they need to, so they will be changing the purpose of factories, car making factories.

Tammy Nemeth [00:12:18] Yeah, that’s a really great point because they were talking about that before. Yeah, like, I mean, so this is China expressing interest in two factories, Volkswagen factories. But as you say, the EU before had talked about, well, as part of Rearm EU, we’re going to retool these the automobile manufacturers. And I was thinking, OK, well who’s going to make the cars? But apparently it’s China.

David Blackmon [00:12:48] Two years ago, I interviewed you. I’m sorry, who?

Tammy Nemeth [00:12:54] Sorry, go ahead. I was going to ask you what you thought of this craziness.

David Blackmon [00:12:59] Yeah, so two years ago, I interviewed the CEO of a battery maker, an EV battery maker based in Europe, in Italy. And Talvo was the name of the company. The company is in bankruptcy, like most other EV battery making companies in Europe and everywhere else. But during that interview, he predicted, this was two years, ago he predicted within five years, China would completely dominate and overrun the European EV market. because European companies simply can’t compete. So this effort to establish a floor price for Chinese imports of electric vehicles into Europe is an attempt to keep the struggling European native companies alive and competing in the market. The buyout, but I mean it’s on track for China to dominate, China will cheat on the floor prices and China will undersell European car makers every step of the way. It’s inevitable. Their purchase of the two Volkswagen plants that they want to execute, those are the Aren’t those the same two plants they’re talking about? Throughout its entire history, from when it was created in the nineteen thirties under the Adolf Hitler government, Volkswagen has never been forced to close an auto manufacturing plant until now. Why did they have to close these plants? Because of the forced march to electric vehicles that they’re being forced to go down. and they’re trying to sell cars. that people in Europe don’t want to buy and can’t afford. And so the solution from the EU to that issue, the lack of affordability of electric vehicles and the people’s unwillingness to buy them is to force China to artificially raise the prices of its own cars coming into the market, right? Not to allow other car makers to come in and sell cheaper cars. They want them to be expensive because the real goal here is not to have everyone driving an electric vehicle. I mean, these people in positions of power understand that that’s not going to happen. The goal here is to force the poorer classes of Europeans and Americans and everyone else in the free world, or what we used to call the free-world, to stop driving. They want you out of cars by 2050. That’s the real goal. And so all of this is just more examples we see day after day after day of governments in the EU and in European countries and the UK pursuing that real goal to get you out your cars, period. There will be electric vehicles but they will only be available and affordable. to upper classes, the wealthier classes of individuals. And you know, that’s the way it’s going to be unless somehow, some way, these people are thrown out of power. But as we also see across the European continent, that whenever a non-globalist actually wins an election or wants to stand for an election, the elections are invalidated by the courts or they are prosecuted, as we see in France. uh… you know they’re prosecuted before they can actually stand for election again and so uh… this is all very transparent it’s it’s easy to see it’s not it’s not a secret here it’s all very transparently visible and yet there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it even when it like your builders gets into power in the netherlands he’s unable it It takes him a year just to form a government. and he’s inhibited by the courts from truly pursuing the agenda he was voted into office to pursue. And so it’s a really awful situation for the people in Europe and it’s sad and depressing, but it does all read like a Babylon Bee article, it really does. You can’t parody this stuff because it’s so absurd. on its face and it’s all motivated by this pursuit of net zero, which everyone I think today acknowledges is an impossibility and isn’t going to happen. And yet we, you know, the policymakers just keep rushing headlong into this insanity. So that’s my conspiracy theory for the day.

Irina Slav [00:18:04] That’s because they’re being so stupid about it. And if we’re talking politics, they missed headbuilders. They missed him. They didn’t pay attention, so they missed him, and now they’re compensating for that by banning Georges for or sentencing Marine Le Pen to house arrest and being unable to run for office. But the stupidity, I just paid my car tax. It was much higher than the tax I paid last year but that’s okay because last year I paid for another city and cities and regions had their own taxes. But EV drivers, EV owners do not pay taxes. They do not for parking. So if the idea is to get us all on EVs, we discussed this before numerous times, nobody will be paying car taxes. Nobody will be paying for parking. You will need, as some governments have already realized in, for example, New Zealand, you will need to impose some form of taxation on EV owners. And this will immediately lead, as it did in New Zealand to a decline in EV sales. So what they’re trying to do is impossible, but they’re still trying to it. And I know, David, you believe that they’re essentially evil. I believe they’re actually stupid. They’re trying to do things that could never work. It’s more dangerous. Stupidity is a lot more dangerous because they do not have any actual idea what they’re doing. They’re try this and that, and when it fails, they either double down or, you know, change it a bit and try again. And this is what’s happening with the EVs. They so want Europeans on EVs, in EVs that they’re ready to make a deal with China to get more EVs, even though they’re being belligerent about China.

Tammy Nemeth [00:20:09] Yeah, it’s bizarre. It’s like a Jekyll and Hyde or some kind of schizophrenic thing going on that there’s one side Right. I mean, it it’s crazy. And what I was thinking with respect to this new floor price for Chinese EVs is that maybe they decided because Trump’s using the word tariff all the time Europe didn’t they wanted to take away the because otherwise how could they be criticizing Trump if they’re putting a thousand percent Terriful.

Irina Slav [00:20:40] Well, yes, but they were talking about setting tariffs on Chinese imports that will be redirected from the United States. They just said this last week, and they did use the word tariff because, you know, all these Chinese goods that can no longer be economically and profitably exported to U.S. They were freaking out in Brussels that all this will be redirected to the European Union and we need to protect local products. So we will tariff them, but now they want to make an EV deal. I know. I got a bad night.

Stuart Turley [00:21:19] I got about 19,000 different questions, but Christopher Messina, David, that one you popped up just a second ago was being asked.

David Blackmon [00:21:26] This is a good one actually, yeah

Stuart Turley [00:21:28] Christopher Messina’s federal budget book, and it’s actually fantastic. And what a great thing. Insurance, EV cars are having double your insurance as soon as the moment you buy an insurance. I got into my father-in-law’s brand new Tesla. That thing’s beautiful. And I want to set the difference between Tesla and the rest of the world. A, Tesla can be profitable because I think Teslas will be able to help older drivers keep their driver’s licenses longer. And that’s a value add that you really can’t have. I drove my dad’s brand new Ford 150. It has lane control.

Tammy Nemeth [00:22:19] The latest list, yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:22:20] leg assist holy smokes batman between abilene and oklahoma it had one mile that it actually worked uh because of the painted line so fort does not have it down to the sun auto driving and going and saying hey the thing goes what do you where do you want it to park it’ll it’ll even come get you it’ll haul your groceries in uh unbelievable you know when you get a robot made by tesla you gotta sit back and go tesla is not just a car company and that i think it makes a huge difference um david i just want to give a shout out to linkedin for shutting you down today. Did they shut me down? Well, they didn’t shut you down totally. We are looking at viewers on YouTube, on Tammy’s YouTube, on my LinkedIn, or my ex, not my LinkedIn. And I’ve got 36 views of people on my ex. So that leaves very few for your normal. You’ve got 17,000 followers on LinkedIn.

David Blackmon [00:23:29] They, they throttle me on a pretty regular basis over there. They’re a bunch of evil bastards. They won’t explain why I ask every time I notice it, but they refuse to explain why because they know they can’t justify what they’re doing and they’re essentially an organized crime operation, but it is what it is.

Stuart Turley [00:23:48] I might share that beautiful ray of sunshine out this morning, since I’ve got my hat blocking the blinding light of the incoming sun.

Tammy Nemeth [00:23:59] Well, you know, David had sent around this, I think he put it on his sub stack today where of the top four EV, well, there’s all these different EV companies in the world and only four of them are profitable. Three are from China and the number one is Tesla. And so it’s ironic that You know, all the lefties were celebrating Tesla, you know, virtue signaling when they bought one and saying, yeah, I’m in my EV, I am saving the planet. And now because they hate Musk, they want to kill the company. And it’s like the only non-Chinese company that’s profitable. And, you know, the other three are BYD and a couple of other Chinese ones that are really pushing to be part of the EU market and everything. And I know in the UK, there’s people in certain newspapers that often write articles, when can we have Chinese EVs? They’re so much more affordable and better than the ones that our manufacturers are making. And to me, that’s, yeah, it’s just like, well, why is that, you and

David Blackmon [00:25:00] And you can use slight slave labor. You can make cars cheaper.

Tammy Nemeth [00:25:05] Well, and if you have you have an entirely integrated supply chain, so when you control at right, right

Stuart Turley [00:25:14] Do we think and I want to this is a real question because as we sit back and take a look at the EVs Jay Leno we had a great he has one in his plant that or in his auto Museum that is running since 1906. I believe there were 50 30,000 of these things 35,000 and these in New York City and there were charging stations all over the city How come we couldn’t have improved between 1909 and now, and in the Biden administration, David, was it 30 or $7 billion and we got one charging station? I thought it was.

David Blackmon [00:25:56] Eight charging stations, but three of them were broken.

Stuart Turley [00:26:00] Oh, nice. Yeah. But yet, here, I’m going to bring this up without the sound on this. This is

Video Speaker 1 [00:26:11] This is a 1909 Baker Electric. That’s quite an ornate interior. Well, he was in trouble with electric cars. The idea was they really appealed to women because at the time, you know, the South Star hadn’t been invented yet. Steam was a hassle and steam was dirty and messy and scary. You had to hand crank and bang and set the choke and work the clutch. These were popular as women’s shopping cars. So what they did was they really marketed them to women. They made it look like a woman’s sitting room. You had the flowers. You see the clock and there’s a makeup. But then the problem was, well, no man wanted to buy a woman. That was the problem with them. But this thing went 100 miles on a charge. At the turn of the century, there were 15,000 of them in New York City. There were charging stations all over the city. this is your tiller right here this is what you steer with you release your handbrake can you turn your key

Tammy Nemeth [00:27:12] I’m trying to imagine how bumpy that would have been on the roads in 1909.

David Blackmon [00:27:16] Yeah, because there’s no springs, no shock absorbers. It’s just an axle with tires on it. Yeah, of course, all cars were like that.

Tammy Nemeth [00:27:23] But it does look like a saloon. It does. It’s like one of those old train cars. Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:27:30] Was that women drivers or women’s marketing? I’m not sure which one killed the EV. So we have no EVs now. It’s because of the women.

David Blackmon [00:27:44] It’s because… But they had the same limiting factors 119 years ago, that was 1906, they were actually introduced in the late 1800s, that exists today. This industry has been subsidized for the last 30 years, trillions of dollars, and they still can’t solve the same limiting factors that existed in 1906. Which is range, infrastructure. and technology, battery technology. And they still haven’t solved for that in all these years. So what makes us think over the next 25 years, they’re gonna be able to solve for all that. This is, it’s insanity to think that we’re all gonna be driving electric cars 25 years from now. Some people will be, wealthy people who like the virtue signal will be driving them. But the rest of us are either gonna be driving internal combustion engines. or we’re going to be walking everywhere we go, taking public transit.

Stuart Turley [00:28:51] hybrid but you know I that’s a whole different animal but one of the questions I really am trying to figure out is I I don’t know the answer to this and is the EU and the UK and the trade trade is tied to net zero and so when we sit back and take a look this is a complicated formula, and as President Trump. um i’ve got president trump and all of the people lined up there’s 90 countries now i got a video of that uh i’m not sure is this he just the white house just released this so this is president trump in all the countries

David Blackmon [00:29:49] OK, well, Ryan’s in deep trouble.

Stuart Turley [00:29:52] I showed that to my wife and she just laughed and says, I’ve done that to you. And I said, how’d that work out for you? And so, not very good. She actually hosed me down.

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:09] You know, I was thinking about when you were talking about the chargers in the turn of the century, and I wonder if one of the problems is that demand for electricity went up so significantly that it could no longer accommodate the charters and what people were using in the city. Maybe. Because that’s one of the problems. Right, and oil was becoming abundant, it was easier, more portable.

David Blackmon [00:30:37] Cheaper, yeah

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:38] lot cheaper you could carry a jerry can with you whatever if you’re on a on a going out outside the city or whatever

Stuart Turley [00:30:47] A great point that follows along with what you had just mentioned, the cost.

Tammy Nemeth [00:30:53] Yeah, so Jeff says, and worse, the cost experience is used to justify the increase in rates for the general customer base and unintended consequence of the EV push by the leftists. And, you know, Messy Times said the only two people he knows who have been permanently banned from LinkedIn. I would add Joseph Fornier onto there.

Tammy Nemeth [00:31:14] And he was bad without even knowing why and no idea. So he’s now on a Substack and X.

David Blackmon [00:31:22] David Ramsden Wood was temporarily banned a few years ago by LinkedIn for essentially, you know, posting what we’re saying on this podcast. Uh, he managed to get back in, but then quit because he was so pissed off at him and I don’t blame him. It’s a big loss for Lincoln. Somebody like DRW, Joseph Fournier, you know, gets outright banned for, for no reason that they’re willing to say. And, uh, it’s just a big operation from beginning to end.

Stuart Turley [00:31:52] DRW is a cool cat and I’ve enjoyed my five or six podcast interviews with him. He is an interesting guy.

Tammy Nemeth [00:32:03] Okay, so do we want, is there anything more you all want to add to this subject about Europe’s net zero?

Stuart Turley [00:32:10] You brought up a great thing and I think when we see climate alarmism funded by USAID and everything else has really involved the world’s energy policies around the world and when you sit back and think climate alarm ism equals net zero equals energy policies and where energy policies get totally sidetracked, what happens is deindustrialization. When you have deindustriallization, you have financial crisis and everything else. And Tammy, you shared with us this morning this, the MAPA, the EU steel production sites. This is a fantastic discussion of deindustriaalization and your thoughts on that. Cause I wanna make sure we shared that first.

Tammy Nemeth [00:33:06] Right so when we’re talking about what was going on with the UK British Steel being owned by China and they’re supposed to transition away from using coking coal to make new steel but to have electric arc furnaces so right now the the British Steel plant has blast furnaces but they’re supposed to be retooled to have electric arc furnace and this is also the issue with Tata Steel, who owns another foundry in the U.K. So we have… an Indian conglomerate and a Chinese company owning British steel assets. But in any event, they’re supposed to shut that down as part of net zero and convert everything to electric arc furnaces. And so what’s interesting about this one, it does include the UK on there, but you’ll see there’s like hardly any of the blast furnaces left. You can see that most of the the steel making facilities in the European Union, including the UK are predominantly electric arc furnaces. And when you’re using the electricity, then that’s another demand for electricity that increases prices for everybody, because there just isn’t enough reliable electricity there. So… um it’ll be interesting if people have comments um what they think about this kind of chart what do you guys think about all the like if you look on the right the blue all the electric arc furnaces there um what do you think this this means for for the ability for the european union to actually make the armaments they say that they need in order to fight off a potential Russian boogeyman.

David Blackmon [00:34:49] They’re going to have to import a lot of steel from China to do that.

Tammy Nemeth [00:34:53] And they’ll have the carbon border adjustment mechanism in order to make that more expensive as well.

David Blackmon [00:34:58] Yeah,.

Tammy Nemeth [00:34:58] That kicks in next year.

David Blackmon [00:35:00] Exactly. They’re going to tax themselves.

Stuart Turley [00:35:02] The Babylon Bee strikes again.

Tammy Nemeth [00:35:06] Well, Irina, what do you think of of this? I’m trying to see where Bulgaria is on that map. And if you guys have.

Irina Slav [00:35:13] to the right of Italy, right up there. But I’m surprised there are so many electric furnaces still making in Europe.

David Blackmon [00:35:30] It’s a lot of recycled steel, I mean, at least you can…

Tammy Nemeth [00:35:32] A lot of recycled steel.

Irina Slav [00:35:34] That is true, but do we actually produce any primary steel?

David Blackmon [00:35:41] Not much.

Tammy Nemeth [00:35:42] Not much, that would be like the blast furnace and basic oxygen and the blast furnaces.

Stuart Turley [00:35:48] and cooking pro.

Irina Slav [00:35:50] But it’s not looking good if you want to rearm from scratch, which is what they’re trying to do because they sent everything to the Ukraine.

Stuart Turley [00:36:02] And California is not exempt from the Germany-EU deindustrialization because the green policies, David, have been actually entertaining. They’re using more coal now than when they were years ago. California, because of their cement. manufacturing plants and they are using more coal now. It is still being used in California, no power.

David Blackmon [00:36:33] I don’t think there, yeah, no power stations are fired.

Stuart Turley [00:36:37] There is not any power stations. They’re importing coal from Nevada is the closest coal plant, but they are still using coal and they cannot get away.

David Blackmon [00:36:49] they can’t get away from it and probably the percentage is going to rise in the coming years as you know I mean I just think we’re going to start building more coal plants here pretty soon in the United States.

Stuart Turley [00:37:03] We already have one permitted, David, in Alaska. That was quick. Didn’t take long, did it?

Tammy Nemeth [00:37:14] So why don’t we start with David’s stories, Stu, can we do that?

David Blackmon [00:37:21] My stories. Okay.

Stuart Turley [00:37:23] Sorry. Let me find them. I gotta get a better mouse.

Tammy Nemeth [00:37:30] There we go.

Stuart Turley [00:37:30] I need a cat.

David Blackmon [00:37:31] There I am. So we had a couple interesting deployments. We had a lot of interesting developments last week. Um, uh, the first one is, uh Brian Sheffield, who’s the son of Scott Sheffiel, former CEO of pioneer natural resources. And Brian is a, a big Permian basin shell pioneer in his own right. Um, advised his peers in the industry last week, uh to stop drilling and hunker down. in this environment that’s currently happening with the Trump tariffs and the falling oil prices. There’s a general belief, I think, in the Permian Basin, among the major producers there, and probably the independents too, that prices are already below break even in the Permian, which means they’re well below break-even in other oil shale basins in the United States. And I don’t think it was a coincidence that last week we saw largest single week drop in the active rig count in the United States, according to Baker Hughes, since June of 2023. Okay, and I think the rig count is going to start dropping, it’s going to continue to drop here for the over the next 90 days as, you know, we find out and gain some surety around where oil prices are going to go in the wake of these tariff negotiations. That was a big story, I think. And then the other one, uh, is a day in the life of Trump and his energy and climate team is absolutely glorious. This is a piece I wrote at my sub stack. So one of the problems, and I think we’re all experiencing it in, in covering energy right now is there are so many things happening on a daily basis, you just can’t keep up with it all. So I just went back in this piece and looked at some of the things the Trump administration had announced on Friday alone. And it is, it’s amazing in a single day, the number of major actions they took to reverse regulations and edicts and executive orders and, and all sorts of different things out of the Biden administration. And I think the only conclusion that I was trying to get everyone to stand here is. This is completely different from the first Trump presidency. In the first, Trump presidency, we had, you know, they, they did a lot of good work and made headway in reversing a portion of what Obama, the damage Obama had done in energy and climate policy over the previous eight years. But it wasn’t anything like what we’re seeing now, because in his first presidency. You know, Trump didn’t expect to win that election. And so he did not, you know, have this big pool of senior advisor nominees to put in place who were loyal to him, believed in the agenda, and were competent to get those jobs done. And so a lot of things that, that just went unaddressed in that first presidency. This time is different. His whole cabinet is people who believe in the agenda, they’re all incredibly smart. competent people who hit the ground run, like Chris Wright at Energy and Doug Bergham at Interior and Lee Zeldin at EPA. They hit the groundbreaking. They had their agenda in place three months before they actually got sworn into office. And so they were able to just hit the grand running, start doing all these things. What we’re having in this presidency, this second Trump presidency, is a true revolution and energy and climate policy. And by the end of this four-year period, he’s going to have completely reset the United States position on energy and climate policy. And the globalists in Europe and everywhere else around the world are going to hate every bit of it. You know, everyone can form their own opinions about whether it’s good or bad or indifferent, but it is what it is. This is a real, true sea change in the U.S. position on energy and climate policy, and I suspect that’s going to have cascading impacts all over the world because of the predominance of the U.S. economy. uh… on the global stage so it’s it’s a big deal that’s all i was trying to communicate i’m also serious today i can’t

Stuart Turley [00:42:24] And your Substack.

David Blackmon [00:42:25] Substack is, let’s see here, blackmon.substack.com, the energy transition absurdity substack that I wish I could rename, but if I did that, I’d have to reset the whole thing, so.

Tammy Nemeth [00:42:38] Oh dear.

Stuart Turley [00:42:40] Why would you want to rename something that’s actually accurate?

David Blackmon [00:42:44] Well, because the transition doesn’t exist. I would like to rename it Energy Absurdities, but because the Transition isn’t happening.

Stuart Turley [00:42:54] But it’s absurd to think that we’re in a transition. So I think it’s actually.

David Blackmon [00:42:58] In and of itself, it’s an absurd.

Tammy Nemeth [00:43:00] Because they keep talking net zero transition and.

Tammy Nemeth [00:43:03] All that so.

Stuart Turley [00:43:05] I’m just trying to talk to you and make you feel good about yourself.

Tammy Nemeth [00:43:13] Irina.

Irina Slav [00:43:15] Oh yeah, two of my favorite stories. So the first one, Orsted urges Europe to act to avert wind energy downward spiral. Ousted is asking for more money. Otherwise it will die. Because the wind power industry is unprofitable. It will continue to be unprofitability because I don’t see that supply chain bottlenecks. They’re still talking about supply chain bottlenecks, people. What is this? 2025 and they’re still talking about these bottlenecks. I think this is by now. This is just a knee-jerk Explanation of why prices are so high So yeah, they are they’re openly the chief executive of our state is openly asking for more money Just because of the European government or whoever Those are the money they have to commit to annual support Yeah, it’s like some kind of alimony

David Blackmon [00:44:19] He sounds just like the previous Orsted CEO, right? Exactly the same thing.

Irina Slav [00:44:25] They keep asking for more and they think they are due, they deserve this money, which is amazing. And again, being stupid, they don’t think that even if the European Union or national governments make this commitment, they will run out of money. And what happens then? It’s mind-boggling to me.

Tammy Nemeth [00:44:56] Does the Orsted believe it’s too big to fail? Do they think they’re like-

Irina Slav [00:45:01] themselves this way yeah because downward spiral support us or we’re dead and apparently we mustn’t die because he actually talked about energy security and affordability can you believe this yeah if you want energy security and affordability give us more money

David Blackmon [00:45:23] Goodness gracious.

Tammy Nemeth [00:45:23] They’re saying that in the UK as well, yeah.

Irina Slav [00:45:25] No shame whatsoever. And my favorite gloat piece. Trump has a 350 billion dollar deal for Europe buy our energy. Now, I wrote about this on Substack, but I would like to vocalize it now. Three years ago when the European Union was celebrating its independence from Russian gas and how Russia was so unreliable it never actually stopped the gas flows except when the Ukraine forgot to pay its transit fees twice but that was just the Ukrainian pipe Nord Stream never stopped but anyway Russia was unreliability because Russia is bad. We now have a reliable partner in the face of the United States and LNG will flow to Europe at affordable prices, which turned out to be a lie just a few months later when everyone said, wait, it’s just very expensive. Do we need to keep buying it? Yes, because you, well, somebody bombed the Nord Stream. But they kept on this, it’s a reliable partner, we can rely on the US. No, you can’t. You can’t rely on anyone, regardless of how friendly a relationship you’ve had for however many decades. Again, we see this infantile perception about geopolitics and the assumption that just because things have been going so well for a very long time, they will keep going well. The people in charge of Europe has no awareness of the fact that the world is a dynamic place. Geopolitics, international relations are a dynamic, not an industry, I was going to say industry, it’s not an industries, it’s a dynamic process. And as one sub-stack reader quoted to me, Ah, no, no. British foreign policy philosophy from the end of the 19th century, I believe, there are no friends, they are just interests. I forgot the name of the politician, but this is exactly how things are. If you think you have sincere friends in the face of other countries, you really are second grade mentality. I’m sorry, it doesn’t have to be nice, it’s not nice. is just true. So now they’re getting exactly what they deserve.

David Blackmon [00:47:58] I like Messy Times’ comment there, Stu. Messy Time’s Christopher Messina says, to be fair, offshore wind is zero sum. Humans get electricity, albeit insanely expensive, and whales get to die. Yes, exactly. But we’re not supposed to notice the whales die.

Irina Slav [00:48:19] Well, it doesn’t matter if it’s for offshore wind. If it was an oil spill that killed a mackerel, then we would be…

David Blackmon [00:48:26] Oh my gosh, yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:29] And Irina, you’re a Substack?

Irina Slav [00:48:32] My Substack is Irina Slav On Energy

Stuart Turley [00:48:35] And it’s fabulous.

Irina Slav [00:48:36] It’s fabulous.

David Blackmon [00:48:38] I can’t wait to read A Bad Day at Brussels. I don’t know what that’s about, but I’m going to go read it when we’re done.

Irina Slav [00:48:44] It was fun. There are many bad days in Brussels lately.

Tammy Nemeth [00:48:50] So, there’s a couple of stories today from me and one is, there is a couple of different plants, EV plants that are going to be shut down in Canada. One is in Ingersoll, which is a GM plant, but actually GM is laying, is shutting down their EV plants in both Canada and the United States due to lack of demand and everything. But what’s really fascinating about this one is that. they were making these little EV delivery vans. And so now all the labor unions or the socialist NDP party are saying that Canada Post should be buying these EV vans so that the company won’t have to shut down and all this kind of thing. The problem is that they’re quite expensive, not so reliable when it’s really cold out, the usual stuff. And then there was another plant still, I forget the, let me see if I get the Linamar, Linamar and they were given 169 million dollars from the Canadian federal government to build a new facility in Welland and within a few days of receiving the money they put it up for sale, they put the plant up for sail and what’s happening I’m not sure but it was like there’s 169 billion dollars out the window. And then the Parliamentary Budget Office in Canada had put together this little report last year. And so this is from last year, where the total Canadian government support for various EV initiatives is up to 52 billion. The total investment from what companies have put in is 46 billion. And then, the provincial government has put forward money as well. So. government funding 52 billion and the investment of the companies themselves is 46 billion. So Canada can’t apparently meet its NATO commitment, but it can throw 52 billion at various EV initiatives. And that doesn’t even count for how much money they’re throwing at charging facilities, just like they did with the United States. I don’t know how many they built. They put a bunch of money towards it. Not sure what the outcome was. Kind of like the that Canada said they’re gonna plant two trillion trees or something and they’ve spent millions and millions probably billions of dollars and there’s like I think they planted like two million trees or something which is hilarious because we have this amazing forestry industry and some forestry experts who took a look at the the government plan is just like wow this is a waste of money We could have done this. You know, we could have planted two trillion trees fairly quickly at a reasonable rate, but the government didn’t want to talk to forestry companies.

David Blackmon [00:51:46] Of course not.

Tammy Nemeth [00:51:47] That’s, of course not. And then I want to give a shout out to Terence Corcoran, who’s a veteran columnist with the Financial Post. He’s always got a really good take on things. And Mark Carney announced his energy climate, well, it was more of his energy plan last week when he was in, I think, Calgary or Edmonton. And… It’s funny because they were talking about Canada is going to be a clean superpower, clean is the operative word. And he talks about how if a project is of national interest, the approvals will be expedited and everything else. But when you look at the backgrounder, conventional energy, that’s oil and gas and coal, is mentioned in the last sentence once. And it was kind of a throwaway. Oh yeah, conventional as well as clean. But everything else in the two-page backgrounder of what the policy would be. is all about clean energy. So it’ll be expediting wind and solar. They want to build an east to west national grid in Canada. And then there was this ridiculous idea that I sent around, I didn’t get a chance to send it to Stu, where they’re going to build a transatlantic interconnection. Transatlantic, for energy, it’s great because when it’s producing in Europe and it’s night time there, it’ll be just in time for when people in Canada are waking up or whatever, and when demand is high in Canada. So it’s green, it will all balance out. So there’s this ridiculous plan to build a giant green power line under the Atlantic to make us dependent, to make Canada dependent on the European Union. For electricity. It- it-

David Blackmon [00:53:34] It’s it’s that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard because even to transport electricity just halfway across the state of Texas 300 miles you’ve got about a 20 percent line loss yeah you know what what’s the line loss percentage going to be on a transatlantic energy cable it’s it’s going to be 70 80 percent

Tammy Nemeth [00:53:58] Yeah, that’s Ultra-high-voltage something

Irina Slav [00:54:02] And Europe won’t be producing consistently you’re producing while the sun shines

Stuart Turley [00:54:08] Yeah. And how many Chinese dark fleet folks are out there that drag anchors across these these lines? You know, this is absolutely, Taiwan has now got three or four major data cable lines out because of the Chinese anchors accidentally dropping and dragging them through their lines.

David Blackmon [00:54:32] Messy times has the scheme, he’s figured it out. Pre-cooked seafood will just bubble up to the surface.

Tammy Nemeth [00:54:41] Anyway, that’s those are my things for today. Yeah, I just thought that transatlantic interconnection. I mean, people are already complaining about, oh, we need to be more energy secure and produce our own energy and whatever and Canada has got an abundance of resources, and we’re gonna go and get electricity from Europe. Just they can’t even get enough for themselves. Like what a joke. Yeah. So yeah, this is my Substack, The Nemeth Report.substack.com. And I put my podcasts up there and put different articles on there. So check it out if you have an opportunity.

Stuart Turley [00:55:18] I saw you were interviewing Robert Brights just recently, that was pretty cool.

Tammy Nemeth [00:55:23] Yeah, we had a conversation last week and yeah, it was it was fantastic. We talked about that.

Stuart Turley [00:55:29] Good job.

Tammy Nemeth [00:55:30] Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:55:31] Okay, and then we’ve already covered mine, but the energy storage market is getting clobbered by the tariff wars. I actually saw Felicity Broadstock on oilprice.com put out a nice one, so I went ahead and asked broke on X, which broke 3.0 is actually doing pretty good.

David Blackmon [00:55:50] It is.

Stuart Turley [00:55:51] about what is actually going to be it in tariffs on global steel and aluminum imports increased cost of battery enclosures rack grid and structure steel is 75 percent of the wind turbine mass. The green energy and tariffs are absolutely going to die but where we’re going to have a major problem. is land reclamation in the United States for all of the energy projects that are dying not having maintenance because the wind energy system is four years they get extra subsidies they replace the turbines under a upgrade nameplate so they can then use that. That whole scheme is gone, so we’re going to see when farms starting to fail dramatically, who’s going to pay for that, and I want that to come up. We’ve already talked about this one.

Tammy Nemeth [00:56:58] That’s a great point about the cleanups, Stu. Especially when they were anticipating they could use all that subsidy money to upgrade or whatever. So, yeah, that’s important, especially for landowners.

David Blackmon [00:57:11] And there’s no regulations to govern any of it.

Stuart Turley [00:57:15] And all you have to do, at least the oil and gas industry has had time and it’s getting better at it. Yes, the orphan well projects are a problem, but there are funds available and yes it is. And I’m honestly working on a nonprofit trying to figure out, because if the government’s going to be handing out money, I might as well make some kind of money making good for land reclamation on this. I see this as a potential business. You can find me on energynewsbeat.co or theenergynews beat.substack.com and I got one more because I think that President Trump and President Xi just released a negotiation. I’m not sure which one was which, but, you know.

Tammy Nemeth [00:58:08] That’s funny.

David Blackmon [00:58:10] Nothing better than a good cat video.

Tammy Nemeth [00:58:12] I love the cat videos of course. But you know, China in retaliation for the terrorists was trying to mock the administration by making those little AI videos of Trump and Americans working on the lines to make shoes. And I kept thinking they should, the Republicans and the Americans should just own that and be like, yeah, best shoes ever.

David Blackmon [00:58:38] I thought we were learning it, yeah.

Tammy Nemeth [00:58:39] Exactly!

Stuart Turley [00:58:41] Well, Tammy, have you seen President Trump’s shoe line?

Tammy Nemeth [00:58:46] Oh, I’ve heard about that. Oh, my God. I haven’t looked at it.

Stuart Turley [00:58:48] They are very expensive, and I guarantee you, don’t tease President Trump with anything. He will do it.

David Blackmon [00:58:59] They’ll have it on market the next day.

Tammy Nemeth [00:59:02] Yeah, for sure!

Tammy Nemeth [00:59:06] Yeah, you should you should, you know, fix those videos and put have them making his shoes him and JD Bants. That’d be pretty funny. Well thanks everybody for all the great comments today and I hope you all have a great week.

David Blackmon [00:59:24] See you all next week

Tammy Nemeth [00:59:26] See you next week. Bye