Energy Policy
March 19, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Enormous amounts of money are being made by “green” fraudsters, utilities and politicians who tell us we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. In fact, no such transition is underway; fossil fuel consumption is higher than ever. And no such transition will take place, ever, either in America or anywhere else in the world. Why? Because wind and solar are both
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March 15, 2023 — John Hinderaker
A Biden administration Consumer Product Safety official said that regulation of gas stoves, including a potential ban, was in the works. Conservatives (and people who like to cook) were then up in arms, but were reassured by numerous “fact checkers” that it was a false alarm. Just another right-wing fantasy: the Biden administration has no such plan. So the CSPC just made it up, apparently. Only it turns out that
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March 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Every day brings a torrent of interesting energy data and news items to my in-box, and the sheer volume of it usually means I don’t end up bringing much of it to Power Line. Here’s a solution: a new weekly feature of the best or most significant energy stories of the moment. I already mentioned this week’s big story yesterday: the Biden Administration’s approval of the ConocoPhillips Willow site in
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March 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Herewith an omnibus post on the climate and energy scene for today (though I could do this at the top of each hour every day): • Did you notice how the mainstream media rushed to mention that the Department of Energy assigned “low confidence” to their finding that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab leak in Wuhan? How come the mainstream media never mentions the “low confidence” scientists often assign
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February 28, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Running low on gas? No worries. Find the nearest gas station. Pop the gas cap. Insert the nozzle into the gas tank opening, wait a minute or two and you’re good to go. The process gets a bit more complicated for drivers of electric vehicles. First they must find a nearby charging station. If they’re lucky, they may be able to find a fast charger where the process might take
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February 28, 2023 — John Hinderaker
As pollution has declined worldwide and damage from extreme weather events has grown less and less, the environmental movement has become ever more shrill and demanding. It has become obvious that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is no longer a scientific hypothesis–it failed, in that regard–but rather is an unhinged pseudo-justification for every left-wing policy prescription. At the Spectator Australia, Alan Moran documents the fact that the Earth is getting along
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February 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The DFL’s Blackout Bill, requiring that all electricity be produced by wind and solar energy by 2040, has now been signed into law by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The bill’s proponents have not offered any estimate of its cost to ratepayers, nor have they produced a feasibility study purporting to show that 100% wind and solar electricity can reliably power our state. My organization, on the other hand, has authored
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February 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Al Gore’s hypocrisy is well known: consuming ten times the average household’s electricity in his Tennessee mansion, buying a beachfront mansion in California while warning of sea level rise, flying in private jets while hectoring us about our carbon footprint, etc. Turns out Gore’s investment fund, Generation Investment Management, dedicated to “sustainable” investing (ESG before it was the cool term) is in on the con, too. Bloomberg reports: Espousing a
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February 19, 2023 — John Hinderaker
At Watts Up With That, Paul Homewood analyzes California’s “green” energy mandate, which contemplates both that all electricity will be obtained from “green” sources, and pretty much everything will be electrified. Even a cursory look at the numbers confirms that it can’t be done. Currently, California’s energy comes overwhelmingly from fossil fuels. Wind and solar are footnotes: The inherent intermittency of wind makes it ridiculous to rely on wind turbines:
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February 17, 2023 — John Hinderaker
A regulated utility exists to benefit its customers (ratepayers) and ultimately is responsible to state government. It has always been understood that the purpose of a utility is to meet the needs of its customers for electricity, natural gas or water. Its fiduciary duty is to do so as economically and reliably as possible. But that has changed, as utilities, aided and abetted by state governments, are printing billions of
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February 8, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I thought the flight of the Chinese spy balloon across the United States was a national embarrassment, but it was nothing compared to President Biden’s State of the Union performance last night. I thought he hit the high point with his congratulation of Kevin McCarthy for ascending to the Speakership in the first few seconds of his speech. The speed of the descent varied, but it was downhill all the
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February 5, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One of the favorite talking points of the climatistas is that we need to take account of the financial risk of future climate change. This is one reason the Biden Brigade is trying to impose a number of climate risk requirements on American business, even though by every conventional method of economic forecasting, the present value of hypothetical large costs decades from now is quite small. This is one reason
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February 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Following up on John’s post about ChatGPT, reader Mark Vorderbruggen has been inspired “to try an experiment.” He asked it to write a bill requiring public power utilities to purchase solar panels and wind generators that were manufactured using solar panels and wind generators. He would like to submit the resulting draft “to assorted congresspeople.” The draft requires some fine-tuning to effectuate its “purpose” — for one thing, the “requirement”
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January 31, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Liberals want to electrify everything, from your car to your stove. But they also don’t want to mine copper. Like so many things liberals do, this makes no sense. You might as well believe in fairy dust as in “green” energy. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal editorialized on this: The Biden Administration is heavily subsidizing electric vehicles, but at the same time it is blocking mineral projects needed
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January 29, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Robert Bryce identifies the culprits behind the war on natural gas: According to the latest report from Guidestar, [Climate Imperative] took in $221 million in its first full year of operation. … That means that Climate Imperative, which is less than three years old, is already taking in more cash than the Sierra Club… *** [T]he effort to “electrify everything” and ban the use of natural gas in homes and
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January 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
There are several reasons why wind and solar energy are doomed to fail, but the most basic is that they are low-intensity energy sources. They produce ridiculously little electricity per acre. Thus, Robert Bryce, one of our top energy experts, calculated in a paper he wrote for American Experiment that if we wanted to get all of our electricity needs from wind turbines, we would have to dedicate an area
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January 23, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Great Britain doesn’t have enough electricity to meet consumers’ needs, so the National Grid is paying people to keep their lights off and appliances unused: The National Grid will ask households to cut their power consumption for a second day in a row as Britain’s energy supply is squeezed by cold weather. The nation’s power operator will pay customers to refrain from using energy as part of its “demand flexibility
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