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Over the last three decades, author, journalist, and public speaker Robert Bryce has published more than 1,000 articles and five books. His byline has appeared in dozens of publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal and National Review to the Sydney Morning Herald and New York Times. In 2010, he published Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future. His most recent book, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong, was published in 2014 by his longtime publisher, PublicAffairs, and is now available in paperback. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, he lives in Austin. |
Mark Jacobson, the Stanford engineering professor who became the darling of the green Left by repeatedly claiming the U.S. economy can run solely on renewable energy, has threatened to take legal action against the authors of an article that demolished his claims last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The backlash against Big Wind continues. Indeed, entire states are now restricting or rejecting wind projects.
In April, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed a bill that puts an early end to lucrative tax credits that Big Wind was collecting in the Sooner state. The move will save the state about $500 million over the next decade.
The idea that the U.S. economy can be run solely with renewable energy — a claim that leftist politicians, environmentalists, and climate activists have endlessly promoted — has always been a fool’s errand. And on Monday, the National Academy of Sciences published a blockbuster paper by an all-star group of American scientists that says exactly that.
The hyperventilating was immediate and predictable.
On Wednesday morning, shortly after sources in the White House confirmed that President Trump was going to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Todd Stern, who was President Obama’s special envoy on climate change, declared that the U.S.’s quitting the deal “would be indefensible.” Stern said the agreement established a “durable global climate regime for the first time” and that quitting would cause “serious diplomatic damage.”
Big Wind’s lobbyists and promoters love to claim that their projects are being welcomed by rural communities everywhere. The reality is rather different. Last Tuesday, voters in 20 rural towns in Michigan went to the polls and rejected or restricted the expansion of wind energy.
NextEra Energy, which bills itself on its website as “the world’s largest generator of renewable energy,” is suing a tiny municipality in one of Oklahoma’s poorest counties.
In mid February, NextEra, which operates 110 wind projects in 20 states, filed lawsuits in both state and federal court against the town of Hinton, population: 3,200. Why is the wind giant suing the Caddo County town? Simple: Hinton stands between NextEra and nearly $18 million per year in federal tax subsidies.
Now that tax day has passed, I must thank you, my fellow federal taxpayers. You all are the wind beneath my solar panels. Pardon me for mixing energy metaphors, but it’s only appropriate that I express appreciation for the generous subsidy you provided for the 28-panel, four-array, 8,540-watt photovoltaic system I installed on my metal roof last year. (Subscription Required)
Ann Mahoney Bryce, a pioneer of Oklahoma television, matriarch of a longtime Tulsa family, and widow of Walter Bryce, the founder of Bryce Insurance, died peacefully at her home on March 23. She was 92.
A few years ago, a group of climate scientists infamously changed the numbers in their data set so that they could “hide the decline.” In what is now known as the Climategate scandal, the scientists/activists fudged the underlying data to bolster their claims that global temperatures were rising due to increased carbon-dioxide emissions.
Urban voters may like the idea of using more wind and solar energy, but the push for large-scale renewables is creating land-use conflicts in rural regions from Maryland to California and Ontario to Loch Ness.
Since 2015, more than 120 government entities in about two dozen states have moved to reject or restrict the land-devouring, subsidy-fueled sprawl of the wind industry.
In his recent State of the State report, New York governor Andrew Cuomo declared that the Empire State must “double down by investing in the fight against dirty fossil fuels and fracked gas from neighboring states.” But by negotiating the premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant with Entergy, Cuomo has virtually assured that New York will be burning even more natural gas for electricity generation than it is right now. Indeed, in 2016 alone, gas-fired electricity generation in New York increased by nearly 8 percent.
Gov. Cuomo doesn’t like nuclear energy.
Last month, he finalized a deal that will prematurely shutter the Indian Point Energy Center, the twin-reactor facility that supplies about 25 percent of New York City’s electricity.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo won a political victory earlier this month when Entergy Corporation announced it would shut down its nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center by 2021. For years, Cuomo has been campaigning for the closure of the 2,083-megawatt plant. He has long contended that Indian Point isn’t safe. Last June, he even claimed that the nuclear facility is “not a reliable generation resource.”
Gov. Cuomo just struck a deal to shutter the nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center by 2021. Cuomo has been agitating to close the plant for years. But his win is a loss for New Yorkers who need reliable and affordable electricity. The shutdown also contradicts Cuomo’s push to cut the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
Other than that, it’s a great deal.
Another day, another pipeline protest by "keep it in the ground" activists.
On Dec. 8, a dozen people swarmed a construction site near the Hudson River in an attempt to halt construction of Spectra Energy's AIM pipeline, which is designed to carry natural gas from New Jersey to Massachusetts. The protesters, who call themselves the HudsonStand12, were arrested and charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest by authorities in Cortlandt, New York.
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December 2016
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As the Trump transition team prepares to take power in Washington, they should be making the conservative case for nuclear energy.
During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump declared: “Nuclear power is a valuable source of energy and should be part of an all-the-above program for providing power for America long into the future. We can make nuclear power safer, and its outputs are extraordinary given the investment we should make.”
On the surface, the fight over renewable-energy siting in western New York looks hopelessly mismatched. Governor Andrew Cuomo—the scion of a Democratic political dynasty and the leader of a state with nearly 20 million residents—is pushing a scheme that will require the state’s utilities to derive 50 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030. Cuomo’s highest-profile opponent is Dan Engert, the Republican supervisor in the Niagara County town of Somerset—population 2,700. Last year, Engert won a third term by garnering about 400 votes. So, yes, Cuomo versus Engert looks like a mismatch. But here’s a tip: don’t bet against Engert and his allies.
Big Wind lost big last Tuesday.
While it’s not clear what Donald Trump’s election means for federal energy policy, it’s abundantly obvious that the wind-energy sector’s agenda was crushed in Vermont. Indeed, thanks to the resounding — and somewhat improbable — election of a new Republican governor, Phil Scott, it is possible that Vermont could ban construction of new wind projects. And in the towns of Grafton and Windham, voters rejected the proposed Stiles Brook wind project by big margins.
The Left’s unthinking demonization of natural gas continues.
Last month, 15 people were arrested at a rally outside the offices of New York Sen. Charles Schumer as part of the ongoing effort by activists to halt the construction of the AIM pipeline, which is designed to carry natural gas from the Appalachian basin to southern New England.
The latest WikiLeaks dump contains plenty of insider dirt on John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress and the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the tawdriest story to be exposed by Podesta’s pilfered e-mails is the bragging by an employee of ThinkProgress, an arm of the Center for American Progress, about how they got Roger Pielke Jr.’s scalp.
A foreign wind-energy company is in such a hurry to collect the maximum possible amount of subsidies from the U.S. Treasury that it has taken an unprecedented step: It has promised to share the federal gravy with individual voters in two Vermont towns, Grafton and Windham. Earlier this month, Spanish energy company Iberdrola announced that it plans to distribute about $565,000 per year among 815 registered voters in the two towns. The payments would continue for 25 years.
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October 12, 2016
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October 11, 2016
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Back in 2008, Daniel Day-Lewis won the best-actor Oscar for his role in There Will Be Blood, a movie about the early days of the oil industry in the United States. Eight years later, there’s plenty of blood being shed in the oil and gas sector. Oil prices are down about 50 percent since June 2014, and huge job losses have followed. Last year, the global oil and gas sector lost about 250,000 jobs. In Texas alone, about 100,000 oil and gas jobs have been lost since 2014. For comparison, that’s more jobs than the entire domestic wind industry claims (88,000). Since early 2015, more than 40 Texas oil and gas companies have filed for bankruptcy, and some 75 others are on what consulting firm Deloitte calls its “danger list.”
Last year, Texas lost more jobs in the oil and gas sector (about 100,000) than the number of jobs in the entire U.S. wind industry (88,000).
Oil prices are down about 50 percent since June 2014. And since early 2015, more than 40 Texas oil and gas companies have filed for bankruptcy, and some 75 others are on what consulting firm Deloitte calls its danger list.
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Robert Bryce has written five books and hundreds of articles. Check out his work. |
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Bryce appears regularly on Fox, CNBC, and other networks. View his YouTube Channel. |
