Biden’s clean energy revolution depends on diesel trucks

From Commercial Carrier Journal.

The war in Ukraine the resulting oil market chaos has sent diesel fuel rocketing past $5 a gallon while renewing calls for a clean energy revolution to remove fossil fuels entirely from a supply chain that’s already reeling from two years of pandemic volatility.

“Transforming our economy to run on electric vehicles, powered by clean energy, will mean that no one will have to worry about gas prices. It will mean tyrants like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as a weapon,” President Joe Biden said when announcing sanctions on Russian oil that shot the price of crude up to over $130 a barrel.

But, clean energy has a few dirty secrets: namely mining, charging and refining. And while lowering the U.S. reliance on fossil fuels would limit Russia’s geopolitical leverage, the nation still depends on global supply chains to provide rare metals needed to produce the batteries, solar panels and electronics Biden’s vision would require.

Commercial Carrier Journal spoke to a commodities trader and a diesel expert to untangle why all the batteries, solar panels and windmills in the world likely won’t lower fossil fuel demand in the near term.

‘You can’t be long on EVs without being long on oil’ Tracy Shuchart, the Global Energy & Materials Strategist at Hedge Fund Telemetry Geopolitics, has some bad news for the clean energy crowd.

“Clean tech to me is not really clean tech. It’s disgusting how dirty and how energy intensive mines are,” she said. “We don’t even have to mention the mines in Africa” with questionable environmental and labor practices. “Mining stuff is super dirty and super energy intensive. We’ll need a lot more fossil fuels to extract these metals from the ground and nobody wants it in their back yard. You can’t bring these supply chains home.”

See the complete article online at Commercial Carrier Journal.