What Has Elizabeth Warren Been Smoking In Her Peace Pipe?

Governor Jay Inslee’s (D-WA) presidential campaign and his global warming climate change fighting proposals.  Governor Inslee tried to impose a state ‘carbon tax’ to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Despite being a very liberal state, voters there rejected Initiative 1631 by a landslide margin, 1,340,725 (43.44%) for versus 1,745,703 (56.56%) against.

Mr Inslee attempted to base his presidential campaign on fighting, but received so little support that he dropped out.

But, not to worry: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), looking for a wedge issue to move up in the polls, decided to pick up the issue which got Mr Inslee nowhere:

Warren adopts Inslee’s climate plan as part of her 2020 platform

By Brandon Conradus and Rachel Frazin | September 3, 2019 07:16 PM EDT

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Tuesday announced she’s backing Washington Gov. Jay Inslee‘s (D) climate plan as part of her platform in the 2020 presidential race, calling for the U.S. to achieve 100 percent clean energy within the next 10 years.

“Today, I’m embracing that goal by committing to adopt and build on Governor Inslee’s ten-year action plan to achieve 100% clean energy for America by decarbonizing our electricity, our vehicles, and our buildings,” Warren said in a Medium post Tuesday night. “And I’m challenging every other candidate for President to do the same.”

Warren had already announced plans on green manufacturing and public lands. She said in her Tuesday post that she was committing an additional $1 trillion over 10 years “to match Governor Inslee’s commitment, and to subsidize the economic transition to clean and renewable electricity, zero emission vehicles, and green products for commercial and residential buildings.”

The candidate aims to achieve clean electricity, clean vehicles and clean buildings.

Specifically, she said she hopes to achieve “100% zero-carbon pollution for all new commercial and residential buildings” by 2028, “100% zero emissions for all new light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and all buses” by 2030, and “100% renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation” by 2035.

She’s got one heck of a task ahead of her!

What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source?

In 2018, about 4,178 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or 4.18 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States. About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases). About 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 17% was from renewable energy sources. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that an additional 30 billion kWh of electricity generation was from small-scale solar photovoltaic systems in 2018.

Breaking that down a bit, natural gas had the largest share, at 35.1%, while 27.4% was generated by burning coal. That, alone, is 62.5% of total electricity generation in this country, with petroleum and other gases adding another 0.9%. Nuclear power generation, which is another bugaboo of the left, added 19.3%. Total renewable energy production was 17.1%, roughly 1/6 of the total.  But Senator Warren is going to replace all of that fossil fueled power generation in fifteen years? And it’s more than just the fossil fuel plants:

The last two nuclear power plants to be built in the US were the Watts Bar plant, which began construction in 1973, was completed in 1990, and didn’t begin commercial operation until 1996, and the River Bend plant, which was built in 1977 and went online in 1986.

President Obama announced, in 2010, loan guarantees to start building nuclear power plants again, but even with that, only two have begun, and construction on those did not start until 2013. Other than those two new plants, every nuclear power plant — though not every individual reactor — has been in service for more than twenty years, with most decades older. Even if Mrs Warren plans on including nuclear power in her plan, she’s going to be faced with a considerable number of nuclear plant retirements during her time as President . . . assuming that she has any time at all in that office.

In 2018, there were 276.1 million vehicles registered in the United States, but only one million of them are plug-in electric vehicles. The Edison Electric Institute projects that there will be 18 million plug-in electric vehicles in the US by 2030, but that would still be just six to seven percent of the total.

With roughly 17 million new vehicles sales per year of automobiles and light trucks, just how would “President” Warren replace the entire American automobile, SUV and light truck fleet by 2030? How is she going to force everybody in the country to trade in their gasoline powered vehicles — which would be worthless, since they couldn’t be resold — to buy a new plug-in vehicle? Perhaps Mrs Warren — net worth: $8.75 million — can afford to buy a Tesla (Model 3 = $35,000 starting MSRP; Model S = $75,000; Model X = $81,000), but most Americans cannot. Millions and millions of working-class Americans are stuck in the used car market, unable to afford any new vehicle. Is Mrs Warren going to buy them all new electric vehicles?

Replacing ‘just’ 100 million personal vehicles with the cheapest model Tesla would cost $3.5 trillion — not billion, trillion — or more than Mrs Warren estimates her global warming climate change program to cost.

Mrs Warren’s plan makes about as much sense as the other Democrats’ plans .  .  . which is to say, none at all.  She is talking about replacing almost our entire energy and transportation systems in just fifteen years.  Whatever the Democrats are smoking, it can’t be legal. https://www.redstate.com/diary/kentucky_dana/2019/09/04/elizabeth-warren-smoking-peace-pipe/
__________________________________