Trump Administration actions to scale back renewable energy capture headlines, but citizens are also pushing back. Efforts to deploy wind and solar systems face a rising tide of opposition in towns, counties, and states. Mandates for electric vehicles and electric home appliances are being challenged. The combination of rising local opposition and Trump funding cuts threatens to end the transition to green energy.The green energy revolution in the United States has run almost unopposed for the … [Read more...]
False Pretense of Energy Transition: Long on Facts, Short on Truth
While listing many of the barriers to abandoning fossil fuels for “green” energy, three writers in Foreign Affairs magazine skip over an important truth: The once ballyhooed but now moribund “energy transition” was and remains unnecessary and undesirable.Instead, the article’s title, “The Troubled Energy Transition: How to Find a Pragmatic Path Forward,” suggests (1) that the so-called transition has legitimacy and (2) that it still somehow should happen. Both are false.The writers are … [Read more...]
Europe’s Energy Debacle Is a Warning for U.S.
Europe---light and dark. What happens if the grid fails for lack of sufficient generation?(Illustration by OpenAI.)When it comes to global energy policy, few narratives are as instructive – and as cautionary – as Europe's ill-fated experiment with wind and solar energy. The continent’s self-inflicted woes contain lessons that should be taken to heart by those formulating U.S. energy strategy for the incoming administration.Europe’s Misplaced Trust in Wind and SolarEurope's embrace of … [Read more...]
Can Green Energy Cause a Global Food Shortage?
China is one of the world’s largest food producers. Recently an acute power shortage there reduced food output. This sent markets into panic. Severe global food shortages and increased prices could follow.What caused China’s power shortage? Over-reliance on renewable energy. It led to insufficient and unreliable electricity generation. That harmed domestic food production and global food security.Many people condemn coal. They espouse “green” policies. But these lead to power blackouts. And … [Read more...]
Paris Panic: Governments Fail to Meet Their Climate Commitments, and Some Are Getting Farther Away
Political leaders and media personalities are fond of saying climate change poses an existential threat to humans and the planet. The weight of scientific evidence doesn’t support this oft-made claim, and national governments around the globe seem to acknowledge this by their actions.Despite what is reported almost daily in the mainstream media, data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no … [Read more...]
Toward a Renewable Chaos: Carbon Imperialism and Disadvantaged Smaller Nations
Net Zero, Climate Action, Build Back Better, and the Great Reset are some of the names for policies aimed at expediting the transition of the global energy sector from fossil fuel to renewable technology. The goal? Saving the planet from climate apocalypse.But there is a huge hurdle to make this transition a reality. Most of the world’s primary energy comes from coal, oil, and gas.Fossil fuels dominate the global energy sector, and there is a reason for that: they are reliable, abundant, and … [Read more...]
Renewable Failure and Renewable Threats to Wildlife Become a Global Norm
As the Paris climate agreement pushes for more and more renewable installments globally, reports of failure of installed renewables, especially wind and solar, are also becoming increasingly common.Nobody wishes for wind and solar to fail. After all, billions of dollars have been invested in them. I, like many others, desire to see renewables strengthen the existing energy infrastructure globally.Sadly, and inevitably, though, the drawbacks and limitations of wind and solar keep resurfacing, no … [Read more...]
What Do “Green Jobs” Produce?
Cornwall Alliance advisory board member H. Sterling Burnett published a good piece in the Washington Times recently that rebuts claims about "Green jobs" in two ways. Burnett points out that in response to President Donald Trump's saying one reason to withdraw from the Paris climate accord was that staying in would drive energy prices higher, causing the loss of 6.5 million industrial jobs by 2040, supporters of wind and solar energy claim that job gains in wind and solar energy production … [Read more...]
Can We Get There from Here?
A tourist asks an Irish old-timer, "How do I get to Dublin?" The old-timer responds, "Well, you can't get there from here." That's what came to my mind when I read Michael Kelly's brief paper "A Challenge for Renewable Energies," at the Global Warming Policy Forum. The gist: "In recent years the energy sector has accounted for about 9 per cent of global GDP, with the implication that the return on energy investment [ROEI] in the world economy is, approximately and as an average, about … [Read more...]
Solar: The Little Engine that Couldn’t
There are lots of dirty little secrets (though they're increasingly widely known!) about wind and solar power, the two darlings of "Green energy" lovers: high cost for low output, intermittency, production far below nameplate capacity, heavy dependence on subsidies, tendency for installations to lose efficient productive capacity long before they pay for themselves, chopped or incinerated birds, enormous waste of land, eyesores. But here's one about solar power I … [Read more...]
