Shattering the Green Energy Illusion with Jennifer Shaigec and Robert Bryce

Jennifer is a minerals expert and Robert is the host of the Power Hungry podcast . Welcome , jennifer and Robert . Thank you Thanks for having me with you . Joel , you want to kick us off ?

Robert can address in the US . How is that shaping up in Canada ? Does anyone making this point ?

I have over 10,000 followers there and a large part of my following is commodity specialists like myself and we're very proud of our record in Alberta of natural resources and resource extraction in Canada or the cleanest energy source really in the world and it's really frustrating you know , a couple of years ago , working in the energy industry I was an energy

trading analyst and to see all of these policies affecting our province and especially in the last five to seven years , it's done so much damage and it's really upsetting . So I've gravitated now towards metals and I look at the Ring of Fire development in Ontario , basically the development that is not allowed to happen .

So this could just bring significant benefits to the Canadian economy . I think the figure was over the first 10 years of development , we were looking at about $9.6 billion that it can contribute to the Canadian GDP .

And in 2021 , there were three First Nations groups that protested the development of the Ring of Fire and so it's been on hold ever since and you see things like that .

And then you see , you know , power basically being handed over to these other developing countries , like Indonesia , who is now doing a large portion of the world's nickel processing and there it's very carbon intensive because they're reliant on that coal-fired power .

And so you know , you hear something like that , and you know that we have these deposits locked up in the Ring of Fire that aren't moving forward , and it's just really frustrating . And so you've got , you know , the issue with First Nations .

But then I think now , instead of nimnism , we should be calling it the banana acronym , which is the build absolutely nothing , anywhere near anything , because that seems to be largely the way that environmentalists would like to see us go now too .

They're building coal-fired power plants . So this idea of clean energy , I don't call it clean , I don't call it renewable , I don't call it green , it's alternative energy . I see those terms green and clean and renewable . They're marketing terms and we have been inundated by a lot of marketing around this idea of the energy transition .

Jennifer mentioned the issue of nickel and , joel , you mentioned cobalt earlier . I get a lot of , you know , press releases and a lot of information from commodity houses and so on . Atomis intelligence just put out a report on the amount of cobalt that was consumed in June of this year . And who was the one leading the amount of cobalt consumed ?

Tesla by far More than twice as much as any other original equipment manufacturer . And so to your point , joel . Sid Harth-Karra's new book , cobalt Red , is fascinating and a hair curling . Read about the artisanal mining . That's the term of art for these small mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo . These desperately poor people are mining cobalt .

Many cases by hand and mine collapses are common . These people are dying in the mines , and by the dozens every year . And yet this idea about alternative energy and electric vehicles going to save us from climate change , it is all being .

Not all of it , but much of it , to Jennifer's point , is being done on the backs of , or in the air of , or the regions of , developing countries that are simply being exploited ruthlessly for their minerals and metals .

Right , you know , the general narrative in the world is that if we move to alternative energy , especially to electricity driven by solar energy or by battery powered cars , that we're going to see a drop in greenhouse gas emissions or the climate's going to get better .

But the thing that people overlook is that it takes a lot of energy to extract the minerals , to refine the minerals , to get them to the point where they're usable in any kind of application .

And my question is if you look at it from a numbers point of view , does the amount of energy that's required to actually create a battery for a Tesla exceed the amount of savings that you would get in greenhouse gas usage ?

And I see money being spent on initiatives like that when battery chemistry is just changing constantly and I just think it's almost impossible to keep up with that technology . And so that's what I'm saying . I do believe at this point in time it's hard to quantify those exact numbers .

So right now , catl , which is a Chinese battery manufacturer it's responsible for 30% of global battery supply . They are leaning towards a sodium ion battery to replace lithium ion batteries and with lithium prices skyrocketing over the past couple of years , they've made rapid progress on that front and exceeded expectations .

And sodium is much more prevalent and abundant in the Earth's crust , is cheaper to mine , it's more environmentally friendly . You know , lithium ion batteries have issues with flammability and here in Canada nobody wants to buy one in my province because the range on them is limited and a concern in the wintertime when we get cold weather .

So you know , I just can see so much changing in the near future in that regard that EVs will get cheaper . But , like you're saying , you know we still are . Largely our power generation comes from fossil fuels . You know , over the and .

So if you're charging your EV and it's coming from fossil fuels , plus all the mind , or you need to manufacture these vehicles , it's still , like I said , it's hard to quantify , but to me it just makes no sense and I find that a lot of the experts in my field are kind of shaking their head at that .

And you know , I look at solar panels and wind turbines and , like Robert was saying , I kind of object to the term renewables because , sure , wind and sun are renewable , but to harness that energy you cannot do it without these mind ores and those aren't renewable .

And so you know , I think it's a real issue that we have this disconnect from the supply chain , and I think that's part of what we need to start working on is even in the education system . Start talking to the youth there . If you ask them what's in your cell phone , what metals are in your cell phone , I doubt actually anybody under 45 can even tell you .

So I don't think .

Good jobs first . In an analysis on this , it's going to cost each job that's created at that Ford plant will cost federal taxpayers 3.4 million dollars . I mean the numbers here are just they're . They truly are incredible in . And One other point about , just a quick one on the metals and them and the mining .

I had a guest on my podcast , simon Micho , a few months ago and we talked about or an ore quality and is any , any kind of Mining operation . You mine the best stuff first . Well , we've mined the best ore quality that we , globally , that we found , and now we're chasing ores that are , let have , lower quality .

Our lower quality have less in terms of the quantity of metals that were after in that ore body . So it means you have to move more rock . More rock you have to use the more energy intensive it is . So these , this .

This effort to pursue the energy transition is going to require massive amounts of mining and we're chasing lower and lower quality ores to get the metals and minerals that we need . So this is all to your original question , marshall very Energy intensive , and it's going to be hydrocarbons that are going to be burned in the pursuit of this .

I think really a what is ultimately going to be a massive , massive waste of money well , the the .

We were we invented nuclear power , basically in the United States , but my understanding is that that even this alternative , you know is Leading us to be , if we even go for it will will essentially be dependent on the Russians . The way it looks now .

Is this a problem that that the pro-nuke greens are dealing with , or or is this something that is just beyond the panel ?

I mean , the can-do reactor is really a marvel of technology and and the Ontario government just announced a big expansion of bruce power they're also building an SMR . So Canada , improbably and largely due to the work of dr Chris Kieffer out of Toronto , has really revived the nuclear sector in Canada and it's been a remarkable story .

But to your point , joel , yes , nearly half of all the enriched uranium now globally comes out of Russia . 25% of all the Nuclear fuel in the United States comes from Russia . There are no prospects for this new Renaissance of nuclear power in the United States happening without a big and sustained , prolonged effort to enrich uranium in the United States .

And it's not happening , not yet , not at scale . And so you're right , we have not . The supply chains for all to energy are clearly tied to China , but the supply chains for nuclear are clearly tied right now mostly to Russia . So we've got work to do and a lot of it .

It's a little bit more difficult for me to gauge that sentiment , living in Alberta , because we don't mine uranium in my province , we don't have nuclear power right now , and so I think if you speak to people in Ontario , like Robert was saying , with the Bruce nuclear power plant , they're more pro-nuclear there , and so you hear a lot more about it and it's not

a sector I follow closely . And I'll be honest , because I was closely related to something that worked on business development for the Bruce nuclear power plant and I would have lengthy discussions with him about that , and so you know , personally I've never been so keen on nuclear power .

I think there's a lot of risks and it's interesting to me too when you see something like Fukushima and you see they did coals with the Japanese people and it's taken so long now for that population to come back around , and I think right now they're only at about 18% approval in Japanese society for expanding their nuclear power .

And so my concern with nuclear has always been exactly that . All it takes is one incident and it really turns people quickly against it .

So yeah , that's one I , like I said , I don't follow particularly closely because I've just always kind of assumed that that would be the case , and you know , in 2020 , more nuclear reactors were being shut down than at any time in history , and I think you , you know there's a growing movement towards it , but I think , generally right now , there's still not

enough of the population , at least that I'm aware of in Canada . And , like I said , you look at countries like Japan , where they relied heavily on it . I still don't think that the sentiment is there globally to go forward with it .

And then you look at France , too this year they had significant issues with drought and so they didn't have water to cool the reactors and they had to shut down a large portion of the country's generation .

And so I think , going forward , if climate change is the problem that people think it is and we're going to base significant droughts , I don't necessarily think that nuclear will be the best solution .

In fact it was just on the 15th just a few days ago that Kansai Electric restarted their Takahama reactor , and so now there are 12 reactors in Japan that have come back online , and in our meetings in February and March with Japanese government officials and utility officials they were all of the same mind that they have to embrace nuclear for energy security reasons

. And they are . I mean , it's happening slowly and there's still some . Japan has a long and complicated history with nuclear energy , let's be clear , and Fukushima Daiichi is only part of that and I went to Fukushima Daiichi .

But I would also say that globally there is a resurgence in interest in nuclear , particularly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine , and particularly in Europe . France has committed to building new nuclear .

This is coming from Macron's office himself and I think we will see new deployment of new nuclear whether it's SMRs or gigawatt scale reactors in Europe before we see it in the United States , because they have more of an imperative , they have more of an energy security need for it than the US does , but the nuclear renaissance is happening .

There are a lot of obstacles to overcome , but I think it's real and it's going to continue .

That there won't be a convergence of unified goals in the world and a unified direction until some either cataclysmic crisis happens or some other factor coalesces people together to be able to have a common policy , or do you think it's just unrealistic to think we'll ever have a common policy in the world about how to make this transition ?

This year , according to the IEA , we will see record coal burn over 8.4 billion tons . Last year , china permitted two new coal-fired power plants per week . They're building coal-fired power plants in Indonesia . They're building them in Japan . Tepco , tokyo Electric Power Company is building an ultra-supercritical plant on Tokyo Bay in Yokohama .

They're also building gas-fired power plants in Japan . Why ? Because of energy security . So every country I think Marshall , just to make the quick point here is every country is going to act in their own best interest .

And so for China and India it's going to be coal , because that's what they can afford and build and deploy relatively quickly and they have growing electricity demand and growing industry . Same with Vietnam , indonesia , et cetera .

Europe is going to turn to the US and other countries for LNG , and they're importing record amounts of LNG now because they're not getting it from Russia . So you know , this response is going to be based on geography and resources , and that's going to be true for forever , right ? Rich countries going to act in their own best interest .

And final point , on Japan . What we heard over and over there was climate change is not their first concern . Energy security is . And Nibbuo Tanaka , who we interviewed for my upcoming documentary . He said we got North Korea over here , china over here and Russia over here . We live in a bad neighborhood . We're going to take care of ourselves . What a general .

There were all the savings from COVID-19 and all the money that was pumped into that with government initiatives , and so people were basically flush with cash when energy prices started to go up . And so you know it was a little bit painful , but not painful enough to enact change .

And so you know , you've seen now years of energy companies not investing in growth . They've just been returning money to shareholders , and I think that , in like Robert was saying too , the easy stuff is gone in terms of oars Mining is becoming increasingly expensive , and so I don't think this is hit yet .

And so you combine the shortages that we're about to face with a potential recession , and you know it's great that society is looking at things like sustainability , gender equality , community well-being , but you know those priorities kind of go out the window when you're being hit in the pocketbook and you can't afford food for your family .

And so I think what will happen is once you see these energy prices and commodity prices as a whole start to skyrocket and , like I said , combined with a potential recession . I think the green movement will get significantly quieter and you're going to see you know , changes in voting . You look at Argentina , for example .

They've just elected someone very right wing . Germany has moved to right wing as well , and I can see that happening in Canada too . The Liberal government is dropping in popularity , and I think that's what it will take is , once consumers are hit , voters will vote accordingly , and that's when you're going to see changes that will probably move back towards .

You know , traditional sources of energy that we know are cheaper .

The same thing , by the way , is happening in Germany , where the car industry is much more important to them than ours is to us . Maybe it really is the signature German industry . So you know what I you know . What I wonder is also if we're setting the even the stage for the return of Donald Trump .

I mean , trump is I give you know , the guy is a total jerk , but he's not giving credit .

He's going to come out to to Michigan and he's going to say look , the reason this is happening is because Joe Biden is has this mandate on EVs and EVs are bad for you and from a labor point of view , it's about 30% less labor from what I've seen , and most of the EV and battery plants are being located in non union states , and the other thing is that

the country is completely non union . So I think you know this is going to really affect the politics , the internal politics of Western countries because they've put themselves in an enormous amount of pressure on the country and I think that's going to be a big push .

You know the Goldman Sachs in March put out a report that estimated the inflation reduction act could cost taxpayers $3 trillion . I've done some estimates based on Wood McKenzie report that the subsidies for solar energy alone could approach $900 billion .

So the corporations that stand to make money off of this are going to be pushing very hard and they have major and very influential allies both in Congress and in the NGO , in the NGO business , in what I call the anti industry industry , and they have lots of friends in the media .

So the money , the media and the momentum is clearly on the side of the this alt energy crowd , whether it's the EV stuff or or batteries , or solar or the rest of it . So there is a lot of money to be made here and consumers are the last thing . That is the concern of these big corporations who are going after the subject .

Here we have this entire move to a digital based , digitized economy where , you know , the reason why we're going with EVs and the reason why we have the strike in in Detroit is that the EVs are much cheaper to make because they don't have as many moving parts , they don't have as complex a system as the , as the internal system . So this is just natural .

Isn't this just the natural order of things when you have major technological shifts ?

The brick layers and the carpenters and the landscapers they're not driving Teslas . Are you kidding me ? So there is a very much . This is why I admire Joel's work . So much is he's looking at all of this through the class lens and that's how I see it as well , and Joel's work has really affected me .

But this is largely , I think , a war on the poor in the middle class in the name of climate change and there , as Rui Tashara wrote a really good piece recently I had him on the podcast to talk about it the working class is not down with the energy transition was the headline , if I'm remembering it , Joel .

But so this is about class and , yes , are these technologies interesting ? But the electric vehicle is not new . It's a hundred year old technology that has been around for a long time and it's not substantial . Yes , they're better , they're faster , but they're high performance , luxury cars .

So basically , here in Alberta , where we're very pro fossil fuels , we don't have the voting power , unfortunately . So again , I think it really goes back to when it impacts the voter , and that's when maybe the voter will actually have a greater impact than some of these lobbying groups .

And I totally agree with Robert in terms of the amount of money behind the green movement . Of course that will affect politicians , but unless you move away from democracy at some point , it's really going to hit the consumer , and so we were talking about the declining or grades making it more expensive .

But I think another thing that isn't talked about often enough and I keep going back to our education system I really think we're failing kids today in a lot of ways . But the University of Calgary a couple of years ago only had eight applicants to their petroleum engineering program .

They shut it down and since 2014 , australia has seen a 63% drop in mining engineering enrollment . United States has seen a 39% drop in mining graduates since 2016 . And more than half of the US mining workforce is anticipated to retire by 2029 .

And so it's not just supply chain issues , but we're already facing a serious labor shortage in the mining industry , and you take the environmentalist input into school curriculum now , and kids are not even looking at going into those industries , and so I think we're looking at some serious trouble over a number of reasons here in the future that will cause

skyrocketing prices for all of these metals , for fossil fuels , and I really think that's when you're going to see this sea change and even lobbyists I don't know if they can overcome that obstacle yeah , you know this has just been a fascinating conversation and as we move toward our conclusion here , I have one final question for you , and it kind of gets at this

class notion that Robert was talking about .

And how do you , with all of the money being spent to be able to romanticize the transition to green energy , how do you see the ? What's the pivot point going to be for regular working people to be able to get their point across ? Is it going to be strikes ? Is it going to be other kinds of political action ?

What kinds of things do you see that would actually catalyze this ?

The United Auto Workers has not endorsed Joe Biden and they are withholding their endorsement , and so labor is not necessarily , I mean , their natural home , has been in the Democratic Party for a long time , but that could switch Now , will it ?

I don't know , but I think you know , unfortunately , where a lot of the so much of our politics now is being driven by super wealthy donors , and that it is clearly the super , the oligarchs , to you know borrow the Russian term , and one that that Joel uses a lot and I think is the right one they're the ones that are funding these big climate activist NGOs ,

that are pushing this energy transition agenda and including bans on natural gas , even though natural gas is the cheapest form of in-home energy . So , you know , will this class issue be the key issue in 2024 ? I think it should be , but will we have a strong enough Republican candidate hopefully not Trump who can make that point ?

One quick other point , which is that I think Jennifer made a really important point there about the retirement of mining engineers and skilled labor . And this is one of the other constraints on this claim that we're going to switch to all energy .

We don't have enough electric linemen , and this is something I've written about on my sub stack just in the last couple of weeks , robert vice dot sub stack dot com that linemen are in such short supply that the investor and utilities are poaching them from cooperatives .

So not only do we need linemen to maintain and upgrade the existing grid , which is aging and needs constant maintenance . We need linemen to add more capacity for EVs and heat pumps and all this other stuff . So this idea that this is going to be easy , well , it's not going to be easy .

It's going to take years and it's going to take a lot of skilled labor , at a time when labor is short across all industries and particularly blue collar skilled labor .