Energy Policy
January 15, 2025 — Steven Hayward
Lost in the wildfire smoke right now is a rare climbdown by California’s relentless environmental regulators. As you may know, California announced a mandate in 2023 that would ban purchasing new diesel-fueled trucks by 2036, and that the state’s entire truck fleet (nearly 2 million) would have to convert to emission-free propulsion by 2042. There was always one little catch: this regulation would require federal approval by the EPA. California
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January 13, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The lights are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. Energy costs are de-industrializing one former economic power after another. This Telegraph article is mostly about the U.K.: Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned that Britain’s multibillion-pound chemicals industry is facing “extinction” because of soaring energy costs and the shift to net zero. *** Sir Jim, the co-owner of Manchester United and one
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December 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Wind and solar energy are both unreliable and ridiculously expensive, a fatal combination. They exist only because of government subsidies and mandates, without which they couldn’t begin to compete with real–i.e., reliable and affordable–sources of energy. But no matter how hard governments try, they can never subsidize waste enough money on “green” energy. This is from the London Times: “Far more funding needed if UK is to decarbonise grid by
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December 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker
That is energy expert Robert Bryce’s title for his depressing Substack piece: On Monday, the Biden administration issued new restrictions on the export of key semiconductor equipment and software to China. On Tuesday, China retaliated by banning the export to the US of three strategic elements — antimony, gallium, and germanium — that have multiple military and civilian uses. It also restricted the export of graphite to the US. The
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November 28, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In 2019, Britain’s Tories won a landslide victory. Just five years later, they were voted out of office. The Conservatives failed to deliver on immigration, and Boris Johnson went “green.” With more or less leftist positions on those two issues, what reason was there to vote Tory? None, most people concluded. Now the “green” train is engaged in a slow-motion wreck. Electric vehicle mandates are part of the problem. The
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November 22, 2024 — Steven Hayward
John and I already noted last weekend Trump’s spectacular pick to be secretary of energy (“The Wright Stuff at Energy“), Chris Wright of Liberty Energy, and I mentioned that you could take in an old podcast I did with Chris and Matt Ridley some years back. I had forgotten that I also did a video interview with him via Zoom for our pals at the Pacific Research Institute back around
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November 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This afternoon’s fabulous cabinet announcement is that Chris Wright, founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, is President Trump’s pick to be secretary of energy. Chris is an old friend—he hosted me any my family for a week of skiing once at his second home in Big Sky, Montana, some years back—and he was a guest on our podcast along with his great friend Lord Matt Ridley back in 2018, which
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November 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker
We spent a week in London just before the election, and only saw the Sun once. It wasn’t windy, either. Wherever we went, the lights were on, but that was only because of natural gas. The Telegraph reports: “Britain’s wind power falls to virtually zero as Miliband prepares to cut reliance on gas.” Britain’s wind generation is set to plummet to virtually zero this week as Ed Miliband presses ahead
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October 20, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Tech companies that operate giant data centers with vast needs for electricity can foresee that our grid is becoming overstressed, and intermittent wind and solar technologies will never meet their needs. So they are going nuclear: Nuclear power contracts signed by hyperscalers show they’re desperate for reliable “clean and green” energy sources to feed their ever-expanding datacenter footprints…. The emphasis here is on “reliable,” not “clean and green.” Nuclear power
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September 18, 2024 — John Hinderaker
How do you heat houses without burning fossil fuels? The Greens’ answer is: heat pumps. They are pushing heat pumps as an all-electric solution, and the Biden/Harris administration has enacted major subsidies to try to entice homeowners off fossil fuels and onto heat pumps. If you are not sure what a heat pump is, you are not alone. Neither am I. I am told that it is basically the same
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August 22, 2024 — Steven Hayward
In a typical moment for Joe Biden Monday night, he said in his convention/farewell shoutfest that “women have electrical power.” He actually repeated the adjective because he couldn’t get “electoral” out of his mumble mouth, but it is possible it isn’t a mistake after all, and perhaps represents the kind of slip that conveys a deeper belief—namely, that the Biden Administration’s pro-green electricity mania has even reached those beings still
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July 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As a follow up to my post last night with the video of my Breakthrough Dialogues presentation last night, I thought I might as well post up my complete text, about half of which I had to leave out of my talk for time reasons, and most especially the point I make at the very end, which I wasn’t able even to hint at in my summary talk. Remarks
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July 23, 2024 — Steven Hayward
One of the notable features of Trump’s nomination acceptance speech last week is that he devoted 1,000 words to the subject of energy, and in particular called out the “green new scam.” That’s probably 900 more words than any previous nominee of either party has ever said about energy in an acceptance speech. He also devoted a lot of attention to immigration and border control, as is to be expected.
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May 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I don’t think I ever saw “Barbarella,” but I remember the Jane Fonda of those days. That was a long, long time ago. Nowadays, Fonda is campaigning to return us to the pre-modern era by encouraging a “p***y boycott” of anyone involved in the fossil fuel industry. Note that her phrase is bleeped here; the twitter post that I originally saw has been deleted: At 86, Jane Fonda is not
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May 22, 2024 — John Hinderaker
We can’t have both a “green” energy transition and artificial intelligence. That is the message of Robert Bryce on Substack. The linked essay is long and complex, and I encourage you to read it all. Here are a few extracts that I hope distill Robert’s point: The rise of artificial intelligence has re-ignited concerns about electricity availability and strains on the power grid. Over the past two decades, worries that
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May 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Biden Administration is determined to limit America’s production of fossil fuels, of which we have the largest supply in the world. This will transition us from a position of energy independence, and potentially energy dominance, into a position of subservience to the Chinese Communist Party, on which we will depend for the vast quantities of materials that are needed for wind turbines, solar panels and batteries–which we will not
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May 20, 2024 — Steven Hayward
A few weeks back when I was a guest host on the Ricochet podcast, I asked retied Lt. General (and former national security adviser to President Trump) H.R. McMaster whether there are any potential “sleeper” conflicts out in the world that we aren’t paying attention to because of Ukraine, Gaza, China, etc. I mentioned specifically Venezuela and Guyana. McMaster agreed it is certainly possible. I note this from economist John
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