Energy Policy
February 4, 2024 — John Hinderaker
That’s what solar power does. American Experiment’s Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling have an excellent expose of California’s solar power scam: Stealing with solar: How wealthy Californians used solar panels to pick the pockets of low-income families. See original for links: Affluent households in California siphoned nearly $3.4 billion in 2021 from the pockets of low-income families through a government program called net metering. This program allows people with solar
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February 4, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The final installment of Robert Bryce’s new documentary decries our short-term thinking about what is almost literally the backbone of modern civilization: the electricity grid. We take it for granted, and allowed it to become the plaything of the green dreamers. We are setting ourselves up for catastrophe. If you haven’t already, there’s still time to sign up for Robert’s free Substack (he has a cool podcast, too). It’s worth
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February 3, 2024 — Steven Hayward
We’re back with part 4 of Robert Bryce’s new energy documentary, which looks at the sudden and surprising revival of nuclear power, which was thought to be dead for good after Jane Fonda’s fever dream came true with the Fukushima nuclear reactor explosion back in 2011. Yet Canada is on course to re-open a nuclear power plant it closed down a decade ago, and even the Biden Administration has just
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February 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This third episode of Robert Bryce’s new series explores the battle of the Osage Indian tribe against wind energy giant Enel, and this is just one story of local communities rebelling against landscape destroying wind and solar power. This installment is 24 minutes long. But still with the groovy music! This segment includes sound bytes from some of my favorite people, including Roger Pielke Jr, Michael Shellenberger, and Patty Limerick.
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February 1, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Herewith the second installment of Robert Bryce’s new documentary, “Juice” Power, Politics, and the Grid,” in which he takes up the subject of electricity deregulation in the 1990s and the role of Enron in the California debacle of 2000. I’m not sure I entirely agree with Robert’s narrative of this important policy shift—for one thing, “de-regulation” isn’t really accurate, as it was really a regulatory restructuring—but this episode is worthy
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January 31, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Our pal Robert Bryce—and if you don’t follow Robert’s Substack, then you don’t follow energy!—is out this week with a new documentary on “Juice: Power, Politics, and the Grid.” Part 1, 18 minutes long, is up for free on YouTube. He begins his story with the crisis of the Texas electricity grid last year and a conversation with Meredith Angwin, and hidden treasure of energy knowledge. Well worth your time
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January 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
When I teach energy policy, one of the assignments I make to students to to bring to class each week a story about energy in the media and critique it for its incompetence, because about 90 percent of all news articles on energy are incompetent and ignorant. A typical story, irresistible to journalists, is a breathless, gung-ho report on some new energy breakthrough in a lab, like energy from banana
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January 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Many people don’t realize that electric cars have been around for more than 100 years. One might think that the fact they have never caught on is more than a coincidence. Yesterday, Robert Bryce provided testimony on electric vehicles to the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. His testimony is reproduced at his Substack site. It is all worth reading; here is an excerpt: The history of the EV
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January 17, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Most of the country is in the grip of a cold snap, and demand for electricity is high. So where is our power coming from? Fossil fuels and nuclear energy. This chart is from the invaluable Grid Brief: America runs on natural gas, coal and nuclear power. Everything else is an afterthought. Note that over the last few days, when demand for electricity has spiked, wind turbines have contributed almost
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January 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
It is cold across most of North America, which links these three stories: After Big Tesla Bet, Hertz Selling One-Third of EV Fleet. Hertz is selling about a third of its global electric-vehicle fleet, a major reversal for the rental-car company after it positioned itself as a champion of the technology with plans to vastly grow its fleet of plug-in models. Hertz said Thursday that it would sell about 20,000
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January 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Democratic Party is pushing for net zero legislation in the U.S.–demanding that on net, America not contribute to global CO2 emissions. Is this a good idea? We can answer that question because it has been tried, as for example by Great Britain. How has that turned out? Rupert Darwall authored this report for the RealClear Foundation titled “The Folly of Climate Leadership: Net zero and Britain’s disastrous energy policies.”
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January 8, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Grid Brief performs the valuable service of reminding us where our electricity comes from, thus dispelling the fog of misinformation that surrounds “green” energy. This chart shows hourly sources of electricity for the week from December 31 to January 7. It shows that essentially, America runs on natural gas. Coal and nuclear, both cheap and reliable, vie for second place. Hydropower is a useful if relatively minor player. Wind is
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December 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
You wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers, but that is what we are living in. The recently-concluded COP28 conference touted a coming end to the use of fossil fuels, with coal first in line for extinction. But that isn’t happening. Robert Bryce has the data: The [International Energy Agency] expects coal use to rise by 1.4% this year and set a new record of 8.5 billion tons. So more
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December 13, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The UN-sponsored COP28 has broken up, and hundreds of private jets are wending their way back to civilization from Dubai. COP28 was the subject of high drama during its closing days. Some said the conference was a disaster; Al Gore, for example: COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as
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December 11, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Chinese Communist Party may be evil, but it isn’t stupid. It has been working on dominating the world’s supply of critical minerals for quite a few years now. Geopolitical Monitor has “A Brief History of US-China Rare Earth Rivalry.” First, a little background: Rare earth elements (REEs), comprising 17 (15 commercially relevant) chemical elements and soft heavy-metals like Thulium and Cerium, are vital in modern technologies from cell phones
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November 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Electric vehicles have been around for 100 years or so. They lost out to gasoline powered cars because gasoline powered cars are better. Is that ever going to change? At the Telegraph, Michael Kelly draws an analogy to the Concorde: The man in the street has failed to embrace BEVs for the same reason he failed to embrace Concorde nearly 50 years ago: the extra cost – of order £10,000
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November 15, 2023 — John Hinderaker
How much does it cost to charge an electric vehicle, and who picks up the tab? Steve Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity has this: Uncle Sam pays the automakers billions of dollars to produce EVs. Then they write a check for $7,500 to consumers who buy an EV and many states kick in up to another $5,000. Now, the government is paying to charge the batteries for the rich people
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