You won’t read about this in the New York Times or the Washington Post. And you surely won’t see it reported by National Public Radio. But the rejections of big renewable projects are continuing all across the country and it appears that rejections of Big Solar projects are exceeding the Big Wind rejections.
China is beating the pants off the United States in the race to deploy next-generation nuclear reactors. Wait. That’s not quite true. To have a race, the competitors have to be assembled at a starting line. The hard truth for the U.S. nuclear sector is that bureaucratic inertia is preventing it from even approaching the starting line.
Imagine for a moment what might happen if an oil company – say, Exxon Mobil or Chevron – announced plans to put dozens of offshore drilling platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, smack in the middle of where endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate.
Last month in these pages, I published an essay written by Jessica Petersen, a sixth-generation farmer from Benton County, Iowa, about her family’s fight against Big Solar projects that have been proposed for her area. In that piece, Petersen explained why Iowa farmers and rural landowners are pushing back against the encroachment of large renewable projects.
It has been a chaotic year in the energy sector. And with just a few hours left in 2021, I put together my list of the most important energy developments of the year. It’s a personal list and not meant to be comprehensive. So without further ado, my top seven stories of the year.
It has been a chaotic year in the energy sector. And with just a few hours left in 2021, I put together my list of the most important energy developments of the year. It’s a personal list and not meant to be comprehensive. So without further ado, my top seven stories of the year.
Two days before Christmas, the deputy mayor of Cap-Haitien increased to 95 the number of Haitians who were burned alive on December 14 after an overturned tanker truck caught fire and exploded. According to press reports, about 100 residents gathered around the overturned truck trying to help themselves to the fuel when the fuel ignited.
Despite more than a decade of hype and the promise of billions of dollars in federal and state subsidies, the offshore wind boondoggle – and yes, boondoggle is the right word for it – keeps getting torpedoed by delays and litigation.
The Biden administration wants to spend billions on electric-vehicle subsidies and charging stations because, as Vice President Kamala Harris put it in a Dec. 13 speech, “climate change has become a climate crisis and it demands urgent action.”
Written Testimony of Robert Bryce Before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources United States Senate “To examine the causes, outlook, and implications of domestic and international energy price trends.” November 16, 2021
Written Testimony of Robert Bryce, author, journalist, film producer, and host of the Power Hungry Podcast, Before the Government Operations & Border Management Subcommittee, United States Senate – “Strategies for Improving Critical Energy Infrastructure”
If Washington policymakers want to see what happens when you push renewable-energy mandates too far, too fast, they only need to read the news stories coming out of Europe.
Nearly five years ago while in Kolkata, I interviewed Sanjay Kar Chowdury, a manager at the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation. When I asked him about the importance of coal to the Indian electric grid, he did not hesitate. Coal, he told me, “is a lifeline. It is a lifeline of all the thermal power stations. Without coal, you cannot survive…It’s not possible to keep the lights on without coal.”
A few weeks ago, I ran into a prominent employee of the Sierra Club who declared something to the effect of “we have to quit using coal, oil, and natural gas.” That, of course, is the official dogma of America’s “largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.” The group says it is “committed to eliminating the use of fossil fuels, including coal, natural gas, and oil, as soon as possible.
