Another ‘Green Energy’ Domino Falls: Shell Refocusing on Gas and Oil
Meanwhile, offshore wind farms are facing a rising tide of mechanical breakdown issues and a solar farm in Nebraska was taken out by a hail storm.
I recently reported that Sweden’s government ditched plans to go all-in on “green energy,” green-lighting the construction of new nuclear power plants.
Yet another climate cult domino has fallen, and this one may be even more significant. Shell is the second largest investor-owned oil and gas company in the world.
It has now booted its head of renewable energy, in a quest to return to its fossil fuel roots.
Shell’s (SHEL.L) head of renewable generation Thomas Brostrom is leaving the company, a spokesperson said on Friday, weeks after CEO Wael Sawan scaled back its energy transition plans.
Brostrom joined Shell from offshore wind giant Orsted in August 2021 to head offshore wind as the company planned to rapidly grow its wind and solar operations as part of a strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions under previous CEO Ben van Beurden.
Brostrom quickly became head of renewables in February 2022 after Elisabeth Brinton stepped down less than two years after taking the reins.
Chief Executive Sawan, who took office in January, announced on June 14 a shift back to oil and gas production while paring back investments in renewables following investor pressure to focus on the most profitable businesses.
Imagine that! A chief executive office responsibly listening to investor concerns, rather than being worried about climate cultists. What is this world coming to?
This is not to say there isn’t any investment in green energy by the international firm, however.
Sawan also introduced a new structure to the company’s top leadership that eliminated Brostrom’s role and split it into regions.
“Thomas Brostrøm has elected to leave Shell to pursue an external opportunity,” the company said.
He will be succeeded by Greg Joiner, currently VP Shell Energy Australia, as head Shell Energy Europe and Emerging Markets Power. Ajay Shah will lead renewable generation in Asia while Mike Parker will head offshore wind engineering.
Shell appears to be taking a step in the right direction to avoid squandering opportunities for exploration, development, and profit.
And they are doing so in the face of opposition from the climate cultists. Shell’s annual meeting in London was disrupted by eco-fascists. Watch:
To meet the demands of these cultists, many firms have gone all-in on renewables without long-term testing and development. The consequences of this decision are starting to become clear.
The offshore wind sector must take action to address a rising tide of mechanical breakdown issues, component failures and serial defects ensuing from the deployment of ever-larger offshore wind turbines. This is according to GCube Insurance (GCube), a leading underwriter for renewable energy projects.
GCube’s new report, entitled “Vertical Limit: When is bigger not better in offshore wind’s race to scale?”, is compiled from 10 years of the company’s claims data and draws on evidence from experts across the offshore wind sector to demonstrate how offshore wind’s risk landscape has significantly shifted, as manufacturers push to develop bigger machines, faster.
Over the past five years, the race to scale turbine technologies has seen the leap from 8MW to 18MW turbines occurring in a fraction of the time it took to go from 3MW to 8MW. While this is a fantastic technological achievement, such rapid commercialisation of ‘prototypical’ technologies is now leading to a concerning number of losses, and subsequently piling financial pressure on manufacturers, the supply chain and the insurance market.
Renewables insurer Gcube says new offshore wind turbines of 8Mw+ are failing more during construction and breaking down more within 2 years.
Their claims have increased 7 fold since 2012.https://t.co/hTdsVRTqvv.
— Steve Loftus (@LoftusSteve) June 30, 2023
Onshore, a major hail storm in western Nebraska recently put a solar farm out of commission and forced the local community to turn back to traditional power sources.
The so-called Community Solar Project – a 4.4 megawatt solar field comprised of 14,000 solar panels and located in Scottsbluff, Nebraska – is not currently operating and will remain offline until repairs are completed, the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) confirmed to Fox News Digital. NPPD, the state-owned public utility, and energy firm GenPro Energy Solutions developed the project in 2020.
“The solar complex was destroyed by hail,” Scottsbluff City Manager Kevin Spencer said in an interview. “They’re assessing the damage, but it certainly looks destroyed to me.”
Oh Hail NO: Baseball-Sized Hail Took Out 5.2 Megawatt 'Solar Farm' in Scottsbluff, Nebraska Knocking Out Power https://t.co/tMbhVtZKln
— Kenny, USA Patriot (@kennethy69) June 30, 2023
Over the next few years, many are going to discover that “experts” made assertions and predictions about climate and green energy capacity that are simply not true. It is good to see companies beginning to walk back from the brink of even more risky and needless financial sacrifices for the climate cult.
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Comments
If you reason from false premises you can only get correct answers by accident. Being experts that are wedded to their false premises they can only lead us into disaster.
I bet that this leads to better prices for solar equipment.
They’re headquartered in the UK, and the UK is even more stupidly aligned with the WEF’s climate cult than the US is. I don’t see this doing anything after the Home Office orders them (which they assuredly will) to restore their “green” division.
Oh, the greens have a 5.2 MW solar plant that cannot survive a weather event? Who could have foreseen such an event? Nuclear power plants can provide 2 GW of power under any weather conditions.
That’s a 384x power differential. Are the greens going to build another 384 solar fields, that cannot survive weather events?
Stop with the wind and solar nonsense, America. If we truly believe in global warming caused by CO2, then authorize the construction of nuclear power plants.
Erronius
“”the greens have a 5.2 MW solar plant that cannot survive a weather event?””
I can’t wait to see what happens when an F-5 tornado hits one of their big wind or solar farms in N. Texas.
BlackRock could not be reached for comment — oh, oops. Even those idiots are backing off from all this greenie-weenie bullshiite
Someone should stick a windmill, decorated for Pride Month, up Larry Fink’s keister.
This is fascinating summer-
Another false god is starting to topple.
First the celebration of sexual deviancy, then the adulation of one minority at the expense of all others, and now the material sacrifices to Gaia – all facing resistance.
I quote Churchill with great hope:
“This is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but it is the beginning of the beginning of the end”
Hopefully common sense will prevail. the federal government should get out of the way and stop using taxpayer money to push this garbage. if there was a viable alternative to gas and oil the private sector would have developed it.
I’m fascinated with how the activi-progs get stuff wrong, even when they get it right-ish.
The leverage in energy wrangling is where it’s used, not produced, and distributed, not centralized application. Even so, the screaming meeemies have done the poisonous light bulbs, crap-collecting toilets, and half-trip travel so badly, they discredited the whole idea of better energy.
See also: poverty reduction, education, and health care.
The “Don’t say it.out loud.” reason we don’t want them doing gun control “For the chiildren!” Is they’ll make that worse, too. We don’t need Chicago murder rates.across the whole country.
There are three major producers of wind turbines — one Spanish (Gamesa, owned by Germany’s Siemens), one American (General Electric), and one Danish (Vestas). All of them have had major problems with the bearings in the hubs.
The reason is that, as the blades rotate, the wind pressure fluctates on those blades, and the bearings can’t handle it. This problem has been known for at least a decade, and no one has solved it. The larger the turbine, the worse the issue. Bearings are supposed to last for 20 years, but experience has shown that they last for much shorter time periods.
The most recent consequence is that Siemens Energy (owner of Gamesa) recently announced a major loss, and predicted more losses. The company’s stock declined by one-third after the announcement. Vesta and GE have also taken big financial hits because of the same problem,
Further, the very largest new turbines, which are taller than the Empire State Building, have been collapsing around the world because they cannot withstand the pressure of the wind whose energy they are designed to catch.
These problems are just beginning to capture the attention of the financial press, but not of the rest of the lazy media, which studiously ignore these engineering issues as if they didn’t exist. I could say more, but this is a comment section, with most comments being uninformed and unresearched, and most commenters having the attention span of a gnat. If there’s enough interest, I will write more, but I’ve already spent more time than is warranted given the nature of this (and other) comment sections.
The commenters here are (naturally, having done no research) missing the biggest problem with solar. Hint: It’s not hail in Nebraska. Not even close.