Search Results for: Energy
March 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
On Saturday evening, Sunday morning in Australia, I did a fun appearance on Outsiders, the excellent Sky News program that I have been on a number of times. Rowan, Rita and James asked me about some of the issues we have been covering here on Power Line: the Left’s insidious effort to make us eat insects, the U.S. government’s insane energy policies, and the three-cornered battle now going on among
»
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
»
February 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
For all of the incessant talk of renewable energy revolutions, and the new massive Biden subsidies to try to make it happen, guess which country leads the world in fossil fuel investment: On the other hand, it might not be enough, at least in the oil sector on the global scale. Oil held in inventory has been drifting steadily down: U.S. natural gas reserves, by the way, keep increasing. Thank
»
February 6, 2023 — Steven Hayward
All you need to know about how mindlessly stupid the fanatical green energy crusade is can be seen in this chart:
»
January 10, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Or perhaps one should say: utility scale solar energy is useless. In northern climates, like where I live, solar panels produce electricity around 18% of the time–not a lot of electricity, any electricity. The vast majority of the time, they are inert. It’s not just that solar panels do nothing during the night, as Duke Energy recently reminded its customers following a series of blackouts. In the North, solar panels
»
January 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Duke Energy customers in North and South Carolina experienced rolling blackouts over Christmas. Duke is appropriately contrite, but its explanation of its own failure is revealing: Duke Energy executives repeatedly apologized and owned up to the situation that caused thousands in North and South Carolina to be without power during a bitter cold snap leading up to the Christmas holiday weekend. The admissions came during a hearing Tuesday before the
»
December 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
More signs that energy realism is coming back into fashion: I’m so old I can remember when we were well along with phasing out coal. But lo and behold 2022 is going to turn out to see the highest use of coal ever, for the simple reason that Europe’s self-inflicted energy crisis has made it necessary to rush back into coal in a big way. Today the Wall Street Journal
»
December 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The big buzz in energy today is the report that the Lawrence Livermore Lab has made a potential breakthrough in fusion energy, for the first time getting more energy out of a fusion reaction than was put in to ignite the fusion process: The fusion reaction at the US government facility produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in
»
November 30, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The European Union has committed to going “green.” This means they are closing reliable fossil fuel and nuclear plants, and betting on wind and solar to meet their energy needs. Liberals assure us that wind and solar will represent a cost savings. (Which, obviously, is why they need to be subsidized.) Also as part of its “green” agenda, Europeans are moving to replace internal combustion vehicles with electric vehicles, with
»
November 22, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Advocates of wind and solar energy have argued that the cost of those energy sources would decline over time as they are more widely adopted. That never made any sense, and it has not proved true. In fact, the cost of both wind and solar energy is destined to continue rising sharply as the massive quantities of materials they require become more expensive as a result of increasing demand, driven
»
November 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
One of the more laughable left-wing themes is the claim that Europe’s energy shortage will hasten a transition to wind and solar energy. Actually, the opposite is happening: when you are in danger of freezing to death, you don’t go shopping for windmills that produce hardly any electricity, less than half the time. “Green” energy is a luxury of the rich who have plenty of energy to spare. In Germany,
»
September 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
It is remarkable that, with the example of Europe before us, and with blackouts in California and Texas in the immediate past, our masters are plunging ahead with plans to do away with fossil fuels in favor of solar and wind energy. I have written many times about what folly this is, and won’t repeat those arguments here. Instead, something new. Minnesota’s far-left Governor Tim Walz has proposed to make
»
September 1, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Alexander Hamilton spoke of “energy in the executive,” but today we wonder about energy in our executive (has there ever been a moniker more on the mark than “Sleepy Joe”? “Low-Energy Jeb” must wonder why he hasn’t been able to hand off the name. . .), not to mention energy from our executive. So let’s start out the latest Power Line statistical update with energy: But then you cut back on
»
August 31, 2022 — John Hinderaker
There is no excuse for advanced economies to experience a shortage of electricity, or of energy generally. The world has more than ample supplies of fossil fuels. And, if you buy the global warming hype, nuclear energy is the obvious alternative, although that implies universal use of electric vehicles that are devastating to the environment. Nevertheless, an electricity crisis is upon us. From the U.K.: “Energy could be rationed ‘for
»
August 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
When I made a government-sponsored junket to Germany in 2008 to tour their ambitious energy and environmental plans, every expert and government official our delegation met said the same thing: to have any chance of making Germany’s ambitious carbon-emissions reduction targets, they’d have to keep their nuclear power plants, despite the determination of the previous Social Democrats to phase them out. It seemed possible that Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led coalition
»
August 9, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I’ve discovered a wonderful energy data tool, ElectricityMaps.com, that offers interactive real-time and historical maps of electricity production and consumption around the world (insofar as data exist, which it doesn’t for China and other key places). Check it out for yourself. I want to draw a contrast between “green energy” Germany and France as of this morning (though use the time-slide in the lower left hand corner of the site
»
August 9, 2022 — John Hinderaker
This is from today’s Telegraph: In the end, it could be even worse than had been feared. Today saw the release of a new forecast for the energy price cap – and it does not make for comfortable reading. Experts predict that the figure will hit more than £4,200 in January [$5,082 for a single month]. In a new dire outlook for households, Cornwall Insight said bills are set to
»
