Transcripts. Bannon’s War Room. Dave Walsh On Europe’s Energy Crisis and Lack Of Base Load Continuous Duty Infrastructure Being Built. October 21, 2022.

Topic: Energy. Dave Walsh. October 21, 2022.

Transcripts from Bannon’s War Room on Rumble: Dave Walsh On Europe’s Energy Crisis And Lack Of Base Load Continuous Duty Infrastructure Being Built

Published October 21, 2022.

Steve Bannon:

Dave Walsh, I want to bring you in because there's so many developments happening in Europe even as we speak.  And I just heard even before coming on here, I think it's home heating oil in the northeast Pennsylvania, guys are calling to get their, you know over Thanksgiving and get it filled up and they're telling them no you can get a half a tank.  I can't give you a full tank, even rationing here.  Walk us through here.  Walk us around Europe and talk about the massive problem we've got right now that these European countries are going to have and that's going to come back to us, Dave Walsh.   

Dave Walsh

Well, you know we only get a war room reports of the not panic in the streets but demonstrating, yesterday in Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, and Potsdam. over 100,000 people in the streets on high energy cost, lack of access to energy, great concern.  And I wanted to build on the Boris Johnson commentary on his departure which sounded like a running speech for hopefully not a new term. 

One of the things he mentioned, was a nuclear plant a year, like a chicken in every pot which they greatly need.  The UK could use four or five more reactors but the reality that is Europe Western Europe is building 1 reactor at this time. They broke ground in 2007 in Flaman Ville, France being built by EDF and also French owned Areva Framatome the plant builder.  It's now been 15 years under construction.  The unit isn't commercial yet after 15 years and about €7 billion over budget.  So, we have the same thing going on here plant Vogel in the US with southern company but 10-12 billion over budget, eight years late. 

The issue is in the West, the core competence to build these plants is way eroded and the regulatory environment behind it’s just through the roof making it close to impossible to build this kind of capacity in any near term.  So, when he comes out and talks about a plant year that's dreamland.  Asia China and India are building about 52 plants, reactors as we speak.  The western world between Flaman Ville and Vogel in Georgia, three.  So again, they're way ahead of us in this space and with the competence to do it. 

The troubles they’re in is deep and they do relate Steve, directly to this public debt, that's a massive issue and it's been for a long time but now it's grown massively in Western Europe in this country in Canada and in Japan.  The public debt, Steve and Brat well chronicled the degrees of it.  Hopefully this come to reckoning on it will drive some of the subsidies to non-useful energy sources away because that is one additional source of huge public spending that is very valueless and that is subsidizing part-time intermittent resources like wind and solar as opposed to base load continuous duty power.  Dave hangover a second I want to go back.

Steve Bannon:

 So, Dave Walsh here's what we only had Doctor Ladapo left for a second this crisis that may underpin many crises has analogies in what we're going through with the vaccine and COVID and that you had these experts, and you have people on both sides, you're one of the most credentialed guys I know, and you have been a practitioner in this thing basically your entire adult life.  You seek with practicality, you always back it up with numbers, but there's such a gap between people like Boris Johnson between people like the leaders of Germany.  

It seems like and this is what gets people very concerned and now you've got winter coming upon you, there was just a story I think in Associated Press a day, Americans, and this is not in Europe, are going to be making decisions between buying putting food on the table and paying for home heating.  Why is this gap, because it's like the vaccine.  How can we have in something in the physical world like energy, why is there such a big gap between you and what I call the realist and the not just the climate change person but the net zero carbon or the sustainability energy model, Dave Walsh?

Dave Walsh

You're making a great point and that you know.  We've all become a quasi-experts on COVID and the vaccine and just think about it. The 17 western European countries Canada and North America 19 countries have taken one consistent path since the pandemic began in early 20. One consistent path with one medicine, want no antidotes, etcetera.  The rest of the world another 170 countries basically didn't do this, and the data is compelling on that topic alone across the other 170 countries data being so much superior.  The energy thing is identical, in respect to this over absorption of wind and solar as a mania for the last 12 years, displacing known reliable and now very clean electricity sources, coal and gas and nuclear, is the same countries embarking on an identical groupthink down the same path while Indonesia, the Philippines, India, China largely even Japan are not doing this.  They're not doing this.  Mexico is not doing this.  I mentioned before I built a huge number of plants in Mexico combined cycle fossil fired plants.  They're not doing this.  This is very limited to the group think of Western Europe, Canada, and the US.  And it's curious, it's very much aligned with this COVID handling thing.  It was identical among the elites in Western Europe, Canada and the US, in terms of how to deal with it.

Steve Bannon:

OK but hang on a second, this is why I want to get to the people in the public health service are as credentialed as our guys on the football are, highly credentialed on this COVID topic and the highly credentialed and there's an unbridgeable gap.  It's not bridgeable okay, is where we stand now, the bid and the ask.  If I go to the energy and look, we've seen, we're seeing governments fall we're seeing the United Kingdom and let me be blunt and I'll ask Tammy that.

They're having a sovereign debt crisis this was the previous prime reserve currency before ourselves.  They're having a sovereign debt crisis. And it's rolling out through their entire economy.  How can the experts on something so fundamental that's really been around with us since the internal combustion energy in the middle of the 19th century right, within you know starting with mass electricity.  How could we be having a debate where Dave Walsh and his experts are on one side, and I've got an unbridgeable gap to the net zero carbon into the sustainability model? Sir. 

Dave Walsh:

Well, Steve it's complicated and I'll put it right out there in part in this country the regulated utilities who are publicly traded on Wall Street are in large part captured by working with public service commissions to get anything approved that they can to generates a guaranteed return. 

The big power plants last too long, that's one of their problems, they're too durable, they're too reliable, they're too durable, you're not building them that often.  So, this comes along, this provides unfortunately an opportunity for what's called asset churn, that is go to the Public Service Commission get rates approved at a 9 1/2% or close to it, guaranteed rate of return to invest in something, even if it's not the best thing for your population, on a reliability basis and availability basis.  And I'm seeing this across major utilities, major cap capital Wall Street equity cap firms making decisions to push this stuff like crazy because it provides more investment opportunity for them approved by public service bulletins.  

Steve Bannon:

Are you saying you don't believe these people actually believe in the sustainability model? That this is really a financial thing? That they got the ability instead of having the duration of a plant but to actually have these new sustainable assets and this is the big new carbon trading, and all this is, it's a new capital market so you're saying it’s that craven?

Dave Walsh:

I hate to say follow the money but follow the money.  I know many many senior executives in utilities very well and they know the truth of the matter on the necessity of baseline continuous duty coal plants, nuclear plants, gas fired combined cycle plants and the intermittency of this new stuff is just not, it's not going to get the deal done for people being electrified 100% of the time and it's going to create brownouts and blackouts.  And we don't really have a fungible replacement for coal, nuclear and gas at this time in electricity production.  We don't really have one. They know this.

They do know it.  And I'm sorry to report that they do know it but then you into the EPA manages them the SEC is now in their kitchen managing them through ESG and they've got activist shareholders and of course the you know the shareholding thing generally does promote an interest in making money in terms of asset churn and building, you know, if you can build like utility near me 70 solar farms it's 60-64 1/2 megawatts 74 megawatts at 4 billion and you can get rate recovery in that you're going to go do it because you get a guaranteed 9 1/2 percent rate of return and even though it may not be the best thing for the people of the given state may not be the best thing.

Steve Bannon:

I love this. This is the first time I've seen this but Dave we got to bounce give us for over the weekend, how do people and everybody knows that we go through because there's been a game change this weekend, a sea change out of the United Kingdom and capital markets.  It's coming to a country near you soon that would be the United States of America. Dave how do people get to you?

Dave Walsh:

If we could get people the attention to the debt crisis this all helps create it's actually a blessing, because the downside of all this is just the massive additive public debt to underwrite intermittent unreliable energy.  Anyway, I’m at Dave Walsh energy at GETTR, thank you Steve.

END

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