Energy

On the surface, the Green New Deal (GND) sounds enlightening. Use a nonexistent super grid of renewable intermittent electricity energy to replace fossil fuels so we can all breath air with no emissions from energy production. But the renewable term in all these cases is not energy in its totality, but just “electricity”. Wind and solar farms can only produce electricity, and even that is intermittent, as we need the wind to blow or the sun to shine, or both continually as far north as Oslo and as far south as Christchurch.  read more »

The recent debate over the Green New Deal got me thinking about a lecture I gave in 2018 at the Columbia University Seminar on Energy Ethics. The faculty who attended were mostly environmental lawyers and scientists. I am neither. But they asked me to discuss “The Fragility of the Blue-Green Alliance” – not so much the formal partnerships between union and environmental groups but rather the complex challenges of bridging differences between workers and environmentalists.  read more »

“Saving the planet” should be an unbeatable political slogan. Yet consistently the imagined “green wave” mindlessly embraced by most of the media continues to fall short, as evidenced by recent elections in Canada and Australia, as well as across much of Europe.  read more »

Somehow Californians are proud (or oblivious) to the fact that the Golden State has become a national security risk. Both California’s in-state crude oil production, and Alaskan oil imports have both been forced into decline and are now unable to meet the states’ energy needs.  read more »

If you haven’t been paying attention, and you should have, the balance of power energy-wise has shifted. Today, the U.S.A., Russia, and Saudi Arabia are neck and neck in oil production. The other OPEC countries, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, and Algeria together run a close second.  read more »

Can the California grid handle the charging challenges for the EVs the state is promoting to be on the grid? The knee-jerk reaction to going green as fast as possible has the potential to crash California’s already fragile economy. No one’s even talking about the load it’s going to put on the current grid. The silence is deafening.  read more »

In much of the country a powerful energy boom is providing a serious stimulus to economic growth. But in California, where fossil fuels are considered about as toxic as tobacco, we are lurching toward an anticipated energy shortage that will further exacerbate the state’s already deep geographic and class divisions.  read more »

The problem with the California economy is not greenness. It’s homelessness. Get these people off our streets first. Make living like a human being affordable again. If there is no incentive to work, why work.

Every year there are over 2,500+ new bills expected to fill the annual calendar of the 80 Assemblymen and 40 Senators of the California State legislature. Fortunately, most never make it to the Governor for signature.  read more »

The thousands of young climate change activists in more than one hundred countries that played hooky to march to save the climate on March 15th were vague on their definition of “renewables”. The mass hysteria among politicians, the press, and environmentalists is a constant bombardment about renewable energy and the goal of the Green New Plan for a super renewable grid.  read more »

The San Bernardino County’s Board of Supervisors slammed the brakes on big solar projects and highlighted a challenge California could face if it seeks to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.  read more »