Biden’s Measures Enhance Provide Chain Dependencies on Overseas Sources – Watts Up With That?
President Biden is finally beginning to recognize national security concerns for the American economy by depending on overseas oil shipments and the greening of America
By Ronald Stein
Ambassador for Energy and Infrastructure, Irvine, California
Despite President Biden’s vocal concern on Feb. 24 about America’s growing reliance on unreliable foreign sources for the supply chain of materials and products to support electric cars, pharmaceuticals, hospital supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and military hardware, his actions are direct opposed its vocal concerns as they promote national security concerns.
Biden has learned very little from the first two countries to go green, Germany and Australia, as both countries’ manufacturing industries cannot compete with China and India and therefore depend on those countries to support their mission to go green . With the Biden government looking to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, America will certainly not be able to compete with China or India in making solar panels in America.
Solar modules require “rare earth” elements, which are not currently being mined in the United States. The demand for these elements is expected to increase by 250 to 1000 percent by 2050. America is now 100 percent dependent on imports for about 17 major minerals and another 29, more than half of our needs are imported from unreliable foreign sources, creating a tremendous vulnerability to the American economy.
Also worrying is the fact that around 90 percent of the world’s solar modules in Asia are built on carbon-rich electricity grids. In the poorer world, it is difficult to replace fossil fuels with new intermittent power sources such as wind and solar power as most people desperately want a much more continuous uninterrupted power at a lower cost and not inconsistent power at high cost.
For converting from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, each of these electric vehicle batteries weighs around 1000 pounds. To make a battery, around 500,000 pounds of raw materials like cadmium, cobalt, lead, lithium and nickel must be excavated and processed, all of which are dominated by these unreliable foreign sources for the supply chain.
As the popularity of electric vehicles increases, so does the stack of used lithium-ion batteries that these cars once operated on. Industry analysts predict that around 500,000 tons of used Li-ion batteries will be produced in China alone by 2020 and that the global figure will reach 2 million tons per year by 2030.
It is estimated that by 2050, the amount of worn solar panels, much of which are not recyclable, will double the tonnage of all global plastic waste today, along with over 3 million tons per year of non-recyclable plastics made from worn wind turbine blades.
Under the Biden Climate Plan, America will discourage US energy independence by tightening restrictions on fossil fuel development, suspending federal oil and gas permits, encouraging closings and cessation of further fracking efforts in America, and the Keystone XL picks up pipeline.
As a result of Biden’s “loss” of Canadian oil to America through Keystone Energy, China has just received an unwarranted gift for its industrial and military advantage. America’s most serious competitor can now look forward to Canada’s oil being transported by truck and rail to ports on the west coast and then by tankers across the Pacific rather than the safer, cleaner, and more efficient pipeline south to the United States.
The Democratic platform loves California’s policies and regulations and wants to clone them for the other 49 states. Biden should open his eyes to what’s going on in California, as the dysfunctional energy policies in California make the state dependent on foreign countries for most of its oil and pay its residents below the highest cost of electricity and fuel in the country.
California continues to encourage reliance on unstable foreign sources for its supply chain for energy required by the world’s fifth largest economy, as the state increased imported crude oil from abroad from 5 percent in 1992 to 58 percent today of total consumption. Imported crude oil costs California more than $ 60 million a day, yes, every day when paid to oil-rich foreign countries, increasing energy bills for all residents and stealing jobs, careers and business opportunities from Californians.
As much as Biden is keen to electrify everything with intermittent power, he has yet to understand that intermittent power cannot support: 1) commercial aviation with 23,000 commercial aircraft worldwide that take 4 billion passengers annually, 2) cruise ships that each consume 80,000 daily Gallons of fuel that serves over 25 million passengers annually worldwide. 3) The 53,000 merchant ships burn more than 120 million gallons of high-sulfur bunker fuel every day (which will soon be converted to diesel fuel to reduce sulfur emissions). Transporting billions of dollars worth of products per day worldwide and 4) fossil fuel energy requirements for non-nuclear military equipment of aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, submarines, planes, tanks and armor, trucks, troop carriers and weapons.
President Biden’s actions are fueling increasing reliance on foreign countries on two fronts: 1) for America’s oil needs from unstable foreign sources, reversing America’s latest achievement for the first time since Harry Truman as president, to finally become energy independent and no America became Long held hostage to unstable petro-powers and the volatility of foreign energy supplies, and 2) Biden’s plan to electrify everything, America continues to give China and India market share for solar panel manufacture and control of the supply chains for environmentally friendly materials needed for the construction of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicle batteries.
The member countries of OPEC and Russia as well as the economies of China and India are grateful for the measures that are being implemented with the Biden climate plan.
Ronald Stein, PE
Ambassador for energy & infrastructure
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