Energy

Destroying Countrysides to Save Earth from a Climate Non-crisis

Paul Driessen — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:35:17 -0500

Energy analyst Robert Bryce maintains a database showing that, as of November 2025, local communities have rejected or restricted 595 wind, 475 solar and (more recently) 72 large-scale battery projects.

Many don’t want the installations blanketing wildlife habitats, scenic vistas, croplands or their backyard viewsheds; especially when the unreliable electricity is exported to faraway, power-hungry, virtue-signaling cities; and particularly when they are expected to help pay for installations and transmission lines that serve another state: North Dakota ratepayers to help Minneapolis, for example.

Other locals worry about health risks posed by light flicker, low-frequency noise and infrasound.

Many people also get riled up over the real costs of “green” energy – the total actual costs … versus deliberately lowballed costs that advocates emphasize.

This opposition is not only an American phenomenon. French and other European towns are also raising concerns, as are others around the world.

A recurrent sales pitch is that wind and solar power costs are declining and are now lower than coal, gas or nuclear electricity, ensuring lower prices for consumers. The claims leave out important but studiously unmentioned costs – economic, environmental and human.

“Save with renewable energy” promotions typically look only at initial costs associated with installing wind turbines and solar panels – which often come from China and are manufactured with cheap labor, using materials extracted with child labor, in mines and facilities with minimal or no workplace safety or environmental safeguards, with every phase fueled by oil, natural gas or coal.

Promoters also ignore sneaky subsidies paid via taxes and hidden charges on electric bills. They ignore payments to companies for not producing electricity when they must shut down because of high winds or when generation exceeds supply or grid capacity.

They don’t mention the costs of constructing, maintaining and operating duplicative backup systems: coal- or gas-fired power plants that must operate full-time at low throttle and go full-bore whenever wind and sunshine are inadequate. Or the mining and pollution involved in manufacturing all these technologies.

Grid-scale backup batteries cost tens of billions of dollars and carry significant fire and toxic emission risks, as with the 300-megawatt battery inferno at Moss Landing, California.

Offshore oceanic wind turbines must be replaced frequently, due to salt spray and storms. Hailstorms can destroy entire solar panel installations. The trillions of dollars keep adding up.

Read the rest of this piece at Townhall.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and human rights. Special thanks to researcher T.H. Platt, author of The Dark Side of Hunger Mountain, for assisting with this article.

Oregon DOT via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Carney Faces Up to the Reality of Trudeau's Climate Fantasies

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:18:28 -0500

Sometimes policy change is necessitated by reality. The welcome new entente cordiale between Ottawa and Alberta, fast tracking new energy developments, marks a pleasant example.

This is all the more remarkable since Prime Minister Mark Carney, was once a leading voice against fossil fuels; as head of the Bank of England, he led the charge for banks to bankroll the much-ballyhooed transition to renewables. Yet a decade later, he appears to have shifted from a “net-zero” crusader to seeking to become “an energy superpower.”

What changed? This corresponds to the global weakening of climate hysteria. As Matt Ridley noted recently in the Spectator, extreme claims of an imminent collapse of humanity, so promoted by the likes of Greta Thunberg and groups like Extinction Rebellion, have lost their credibility on everything from sea-level rise to imminent mass starvation. To be sure, some media — like the New York Times or John Stewart’s “The Daily Show” — are still predicting massive dislocation in the near future, with Manhattan poised to be soon engulfed by rising waters. But this seems little more than an anti-Trump laugh line.

Nothing better illustrates the climatistas’ decline than the largely ignored COP 30 climate conference in Brazil, which attracted few world leaders. The rejection comes from a growing realization that solar and wind cannot power growing economies, something now widely accepted outside academia, mainstream media, and the NGO complex. As Axios recently reported, Democratic congresspeople have all but abandoned talk about “the Green New Deal,” even amidst their never-ending denunciations of all things Trump.

The shift gained more credibility when the magazine Nature recently retracted a 2024 study predicting economic collapse due to climate change. Reality has started to bite, even in my home state of California, a bastion of climate hysteria. Governor Gavin Newsom, an avid supporter of net zero, earlier this year basically  fell on his knees before Big Oil in April, when two companies announced they were shutting their Californian oil refineries as a result of oppressive green regulations. He also kept the state’s last nuclear plant going.

As they shy away from climate catastrophism, resurgent progressives in the U.S. focus rightly on issues like cost of living, medical care, and jobs. They realize very few working class voters — now up for grabs in the next election — actually prioritize climate policy; in a recent Monmouth poll, just one percent of working-class (non-college) voters identify climate change as the biggest concern facing their families. Recent U.S. polling reveals that belief in predominately manmade climate change is now at 45 per cent, according to Pew, and enthusiasm for spending money on climate initiatives has plummeted.

Perhaps even more surprising, politicians in deep-green Europe are beginning to recognize that green obsessions undermine their own industries.  Net-zero policies, notes a recent OECD study, have doubled the rate of job losses in high-carbon jobs, which traditionally paid higher salaries to mostly male, non-college educated workers than the retail, tourism and other low-end service jobs that replaced them. Virtually all the places with the highest energy costs are those with the strictest renewable policies  —  Germany, California, and the U.K. Overall, British, Italian and Germany industrial users pay roughly twice more for electricity than the U.S. or Canada.

So, here’s the reality: oil and gas remain the dominant source of energy, with even coal, a dirtier fuel than natural gas, making a comeback. Despite billions spent by governments — taxpayers — to subsidize renewables, global hydrocarbon use, notes energy expert Robert Bryce, is not only thirty times larger than wind and solar combined, but is also growing faster. In the last decade, the world added 9,000 terawatt-hours per year of energy consumption from wind and solar but 13,000 from fossil fuels.

Adding to the power grid is increasingly important with the rise of artificial intelligence. This appears to be leading to greater fondness among oligarchs and investors faced with a desperate need for reliable, affordable energy, which solar and wind are not. Now, some embrace nuclear power, long verboten among the green activists they so generously funded.

This shift away from tough climate policies will shape global politics for the next decade or more. Countries with ample fossil fuels like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Norway, and Qatar will become richer and more influential. Other, more troubled oil producers, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela are able to survive, in the face of awful governance, only because they still have their share of “black gold.” The developing world, notably Africa and India, will either develop their own resources, or import huge quantities.

In this still fossil-fuel dominated world, Canada will have great cards to play and now may even be willing to play them. These are also Canada’s biggest exports; it is the world’s fourth largest crude exporter. Like the United States, the world’s leading energy producer, Canada’s influence will be tied to its natural resources.

Canada’s embrace of energy production also constitutes a way to work against fossil-fuel-funded malefactors like Iran, Qatar, Venezuela, and Russia. It is also a way to counter China, which emits more GHGs responsible for more than 30 per cent of global carbon emissions as of 2024, twice the American share.

China, which lacks huge oil or gas resources, has seized on Western climate policies as a way to penetrate markets for solar panels and electric vehicles. This leads to praise from some greens, but the Middle Kingdom is not exactly abandoning fossil fuels; indeed, its EV and panel industries rest on power generated by its over 3,000 coal-power plants, which accounted for  64.4 per cent of global emissions in 2023.

In an ideal world, energy growth would be a common agenda in North America, faced with challenges from Russia, the Middle East and China. But Donald Trump’s misplaced idea of national interest makes such cooperation difficult for now. So, Canada will need to find other markets for crude and other commodities, precisely what proposed West Coast LNG and pipelines would address. Asia is a boom market for fossil fuels, and Canada could enrich itself hugely through this trade.

This is the moment for Canada to assert its economic power and tell us Yankees that you can play the “great game” of power politics, too. Carney’s shift also provides an opportunity — after a decade of disappointment — to get the country back on track and reassert itself as one of the world’s great liberal democracies.

This piece first appeared at National Post.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Premier Smith and Prime Minister Carney sign a memorandum of understanding that opens the way to construct a new oil pipeline, via X.

Gavin Newsom Sticks It To California Ratepayers

Robert Bryce — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 18:52:13 -0500

The Ivanpah concentrated-solar project has been an environmental and economic disaster.

Launched in 2014, the $2.2 billion solar facility located 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles, was designed to produce 392 megawatts of electricity by focusing sunlight on 459-foot-high towers. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, then-Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz claimed the sprawling project, which covers nearly six square miles of the Mojave Desert, was a “shining example” of America’s leadership in solar energy.

But Ivanpah was a flop. It never generated more than 75% of its planned electricity output. It relies heavily on natural gas to ensure its complex generators operate properly. The juice it produces is absurdly expensive. And it has been a disaster for wildlife. Some 6,000 birds are being killed every year while flying between the mirrors and the towers. The project also required relocating endangered desert tortoises. Even the goofballs at the Sierra Club, an outfit that has never met a solar, wind, or battery project it couldn’t slobber over, have called Ivanpah a “financial boondoggle and environmental disaster.”

In January, Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest utility, announced it was terminating power purchase agreements it signed 15 years ago and the plant, which is operated, and partially owned by Houston-based NRG, would be shuttered and dismantled. Those contracts were expected to run through 2039. Ending the contracts, PG&E said, “will save customers money.” But last week, the California Public Utility Commission rejected the proposed shutdown and ordered the plant to stay open. Why? Shelving the project would threaten the state’s efforts to achieve its renewable energy targets. The agency also said that the transmission and distribution infrastructure that ratepayers have already paid for would be “stranded.”

What a load of crap. As one insider told me, the California Independent System Operator recently issued a forecast which showed the state will have to rely even more on imported electricity in the coming years. With the state’s goal of achieving 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045 in jeopardy, this insider told me, the state “can’t afford to let go of any renewables no matter how uneconomic...Important to keep up appearances no matter what it costs.”

Read the rest of this piece at: Robert Bryce Substack.

Robert Bryce is a Texas-based author, journalist, film producer, and podcaster. His articles have appeared in a myriad of publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Time, Austin Chronicle, and Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo:California Energy Commission, via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Climate Censorship and Integrity at COP30 and Beyond

Paul Driessen — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 19:18:28 -0500

The Roman god Janus had two faces: for comings and goings, beginnings and endings, the interim between war and peace, and transitions both tangible and abstract.

Climate Cultists might hail him for presiding over the demise of fossil fuels and the advent of wind, solar and battery power; or of an idyllic past, tumultuous present, and calamitous future if we don’t make that transition.

Most of us might herald Janus as looking back on decades of fantasy and fanaticism over manmade climate crises and magical “renewable” energy – and forward to an era of realism about natural climate change and reliable, affordable energy as the foundation of civilization and living standards.

p>Of course, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is not the end of that fanaticism. It may not even be the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning of global economic suicide.

For Climate Cultists, the thirtieth Conference of Parties (COP30) ended in dismay and disarray. Every mention of eliminating fossil fuels to reach temperature targets was stricken from the global outcome document. Demands that rich nations pay trillions of dollars to mitigate or stop climate change were replaced with calls for funding “adaptation” and “loss and damage” compensation.

Worse, those new funding demands include no concrete mechanisms for raising and distributing funds, no enforcement mechanisms to compel countries to contribute, and no countries actually willing to provide more than a pittance.

Perhaps worst for COP Climate Cultists is the latest global energy number. Even after decades of gaslighting about greenhouse gas emissions, rising seas, worsening weather and the “inevitable” energy transition, 86% of the world’s energy is still oil, natural gas and coal.

It may indeed be the end of the beginning of global economic suicide. Happy tidings for all.

But COP30 also highlighted another Janus, the two faces of climate censorship: an incessant stream of climate alarmism and renewable energy fantasy – and continuous efforts to silence voices of realism about both illusions. The UN, academia, search engines, activists, news media and others are guilty.

Read the rest of this piece at TownHall.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia, under CC 3.0 License.

California Gov. Newsom is Oblivious That Electricity Came About After Oil

Ronald Stein — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 16:01:39 -0500

The State of California sent a large delegation to the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Belém, Brazil, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and top officials from the California Natural Resources Agency, Department of Food and Agriculture, Air Resources Board, Public Utilities Commission, and Governor’s Office of Tribal Affairs.

Interestingly, the leaders of the world’s most-polluting countries – China, India, and Russia decided to skip this year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil.

Newsom told the LA Times that he “absolutely” sees California as a proxy for the U.S. at the COP30 conference, the leading global venue for countries to strengthen their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Newsom remains unaware that the demand by humanity for more than 6,000 products and transportation fuels is the only reason for using crude oil! To stop climate change, Newsom wants to stop the world! Ceasing the use of products and transportation fuels is the only known way to rid the world of crude oil usage.

The global population has surged from 1 to over 8 billion in less than 200 years. This growth has been supported by the dramatic increase in the number of products and transportation fuels made from oil, and food production made possible by synthetic fertilizers, all of which did not exist before the 1800s, just a few hundred years ago.

He remains oblivious to the fact that wind turbines and solar panels can only generate electricity, but cannot make any products for the 8 billion on this planet. Without a replacement for oil, he wants the world to go back to the 1800s by reducing the world’s product usage, which translates to promoting the reduction in the number and size of hospitals, airports, and military forces around the world.

With the world’s population projected to grow beyond 9.5 billion by 2050, rather than focusing on wind and solar to generate electricity, Newsom should be inspiring humanity to review and control its materialistic demands toward a viable future for all humans, animals, and plant life on this planet.

Newsom has no clue that a replacement for crude oil has yet to be identified to maintain the supply chain of all the products and various transportation fuels demanded by the world’s 40,000 planes, 100,000 ships, 1.4 million automobiles, and hundreds of millions of commercial vehicles in operation worldwide.

Newsom cannot comprehend that the one thing that’s going to kill billions on this planet is running out of crude oil before we’ve identified its replacement to support the supply chain of products and transportation fuels demanded by humanity. Even the grease he uses to comb his slick hair is made from crude oil.

The 70,000 attendees at the COP30 in Brazil, including Newsom and his entourage, are oblivious that electricity came after oil, as all electrical generation methods from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar are all built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Without Crude Oil, there can be no electricity

In addition, electricity can charge an iPhone, but neither wind turbines nor solar panels can make an iPhone; thus, everything that needs electricity consists of products that are also made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Without Crude Oil, there will be nothing that needs electricity.

The world extracts from Mother Earth over 100 million barrels of oil per day, while the United States consumes around 20 million barrels daily. That oil is not being replenished, and those poorer developing countries want to be “like us”, thus worldwide extraction rates may increase to meet the demands of humanity for all 8 billion now on this planet.

Obviously, Newsom and world leaders are all in favor of ridding the world of crude oil usage, but we have yet to identify a clone or replacement to oil that will support our materialistic needs for all the products and transportation fuels that allowed the world to populate from 1 to 8 billion in less than 200 years.

Thus, without crude oil or its replacement, to support the supply chain of products made from oil, Newsom wants the world to go back to the pre-1800s, when the world did not have all those products and transportation fuels.

Read the rest of this piece at America Out Loud.

Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book "Clean Energy Exploitations."

Photo: courtesy America Out Loud.

Why Does the World Insanely Ignore Nuclear Power?

Ronald Stein — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 11:46:28 -0400

There is a lot of talk about nuclear power around the world today. However, except for China and, maybe, Russia, there is no action.

Talk means nothing, but action means everything. Perhaps the reason for inaction is the massive waste of government funding for nuclear power promises. Private capital produces many times more production than government funding does. Maybe if the money were left in the hands of the people, some sense of urgency could be realized. Moreover, to secure monopolies for those who own them, massive government roadblocks are placed in the way of any competition that could disrupt the profits from these monopolies.

Such is the case for government-subsidized wind and solar projects over the last two decades. Because of mismanagement and outright corporate theft, the sizzle has come off the idea of just electricity from “renewables.” Once the private industry lost their government subsidies, wind and solar projects started shutting down. Some, of course, are still around, but no utility company will take even a single penny of risk on solar and wind production.

So, when the gravy train of government subsidies stops flowing, the profit centers move on — no gravy, no profits, no production. Then the citizens are left to clean up the mess. What a deal. Citizens pay to make the mess and now citizens pay to clean it up. All while enjoying the benefits of higher electricity costs. Maybe they will get tired of this scam and start to realize that they really need nuclear power.

The answer to safe, continuous, uninterruptible, emissions-free electricity is laying right in front of us. Locked in the nucleus of each uranium atom is a source of energy that is 50,000,000 times that released by burning an atom of coal.

So, all other things being the same, we should use this natural uranium resource instead of just throwing it away. The commercial nuclear industry, so far, has leveraged only 3% of the energy available in nuclear fuel rods. We would not get very far buying an apple and just eating the peel. Yet, that is what we do with our uranium.

It makes a lot of sense to make use of all the uranium since we went to the trouble of mining it and refining it. Your cheap costs for electricity (worldwide) in past years have come at the price of taxes. In the USA, the renewable subsidies over the years stand at $5 trillion (or so). This means that every person has paid $15,000 above their power bill for the luxury of having so-called “renewable” electricity. So, do you really wonder what will happen to your power bill when that subsidies are gone?

Now, we add the further economic pressure of a sharply rising demand (data centers) with a stable or slightly reduced supply of electricity. It appears that we have to cover the cost of wind and solar renewables and the cost of competition for a vanishing resource at the same time.

Read the rest of this piece at America Out Loud.

Authors

Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book "Clean Energy Exploitations."

Oliver Hemmers has a Doctorate in Physics from the Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He was a Researcher in Physics, the Executive Director of UNLV’s Harry Reid Center and C- level executive.

Steve Curtis has a Master’s degree in Health Physics from UNLV. He has spent decades studying spent fuel issues in Nevada and worked as a technical field team leader for nuclear search and characterization missions for the Department of Energy. He is currently engaged in education, speaking, and writing in favor of nuclear power returning to the United States, especially from recycling spent nuclear fuel in fast reactors.

Photo: Michael Gattorna via Pexels.

Transmission Unplugged

Robert Bryce — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:28:38 -0400

In May, Michael Polsky, the CEO of Chicago-based Invenergy, appeared on Fox Business to announce that his company was awarding some $1.7 billion in contracts to build the long-delayed Grain Belt Express transmission project. In an interview with Maria Bartiromo, Polsky claimed the 780-mile high-voltage project would "create 22,000 jobs along the way between transmission and generation.”

Polsky (net worth: $2.5 billion) went on to serve up more spin than Rafael Nadal. He claimed the project “will be unleashing American energy. We will be creating energy independence in a way.”

Here’s a tip: whenever you hear anyone — particularly a hype man like Polsky — promise energy independence, grab your wallet.

Invenergy, which is majority owned by the Canadian firm CDPQ, also claims the project will result in “$52 billion in energy cost savings” and that the transmission project is “private sector-led and market-driven.” Polsky, who recently announced a $75 million gift to the World Resources Institute so it can help “accelerate...the global energy transition,” concluded his CNBC appearance by saying his company needs “clarity” from the Trump administration. “We need to know what the rules” will be.

Polsky neglected to mention that if his project gets built, it will saddle ratepayers with about $500 million in costs to integrate the power it will be delivering into grids on the eastern end of the line. In other words, Invenergy wants to build a merchant high-voltage transmission line and force its way onto the US electric grid. But it doesn’t want to pay any of the costs that its project will impose on the system. Furthermore, Grain Belt Express has faced fierce opposition in Missouri for more than a decade. Earlier this month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced a civil investigation into Invenergy for its “misleading claims and a track record of dishonesty” about the project.

But I digress.

Last week, the Department of Energy gave Polsky some high-amperage clarity from the Trump administration when it canceled a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express that the agency’s Loan Programs Office made last November in the waning days of the Biden administration.

The DOE said it killed the loan deal “to ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources.”

The cancellation of the DOE’s guarantee will almost certainly kill the Grain Belt Express. (Invenergy claims it still plans to build the project. I wouldn’t bet on that.) The demise of that project is only one of many high-voltage projects around the world that are being slowed or stopped by local opposition, soaring costs, and permitting delays.

Read the rest of this piece at: Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: The Grain Belt Express project aimed to carry wind-generated electricity from Kansas to the Indiana-Illinois border. Map credit: grainbeltexpress.com

Bill McKibben's China Syndrome

Robert Bryce — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:13:32 -0400

Bill McKibben may be the highest-profile climate activist in America. For more than a decade, he has been campaigning against the hydrocarbon industry and proclaiming that the world doesn’t need — and shouldn’t use — coal, oil, and natural gas. He has also repeatedly claimed that the global economy can be fueled solely by wind and solar, if only there were sufficient political will to make that happen. He’s also declared that we should slash our use of coal, oil, and natural gas by a factor of 20, a move that would plunge the entire world into energy poverty.

I’ve known McKibben for a long time. I’ve debated him and debunked many of his claims. In 2023, I had him on the Power Hungry Podcast. I give him credit for his persistence and work ethic. As noted on his Amazon page, he’s written “more than 20 books.” And yes, he’s right: solar energy around the world is growing fast.

But the hard truth is that McKibben is an old-school huckster.

McKibben is equal parts P.T. Barnum, Amory Lovins, and The Boy Who Cried Wolf. He’s a constantly scolding climate catastrophist who blames the hydrocarbon sector for the impending doom he claims is now facing humanity. And he repeatedly praises the work of Mark Jacobson, the hyper-litigious Stanford professor who may be the most discredited academic in America.

McKibben’s latest book, Here Comes The Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, provides another example of the hucksterism that has made him famous. It’s also another example of his rank dishonesty. The book is a 220-page love letter to America’s most formidable geopolitical rival: the People’s Republic of China. McKibben is effusive in his praise of China’s pursuit of EVs, batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. But he blithely ignores China’s record as one of the world’s most notorious abusers of human rights. In particular, he makes only a passing mention of how dependent China’s solar sector is on the use of slavery in Xinjiang province, where numerous reports have determined that Uyghur Muslims are being enslaved to produce components for solar panels. Further, his book ignores the land-use conflicts over alt-energy that are raging all around the world. Finally, McKibben ignores the pesky problem of scale.

Read the rest of this piece at: Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: courtesy Robert Bryce.

Failures of the Renewables Transition Era are Insults to Taxpayers

Ronald Stein — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Natural gas and crude oil are commonly needed fossil fuels to manufacture insulation, wires, and computers used in all methods of generating electricity. This is because components of natural gas and oil are essential feedstocks for creating plastics, which are used for insulation and many computer parts.

Fossil fuels are also required for the vast amount of energy needed throughout the manufacturing process.

Insulation

Many of the polymer plastics used for insulation, like polyethylene (PE), cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are made from feedstocks derived from fossil fuels. Natural gas liquids, primarily ethane, are heated in cracker plants to produce ethylene, which is then used to create polyethylene for electrical wires and cables. Crude oil fractions, particularly naphtha, are also used to make ethylene and other petrochemical feedstocks for different types of plastics.

Wind turbines and solar panels only generate electricity, so where is the transition away from fossil fuels?

Wires

While wires themselves are made of copper, a high conductor of electricity, the fossil fuel industry is deeply connected to their production process. Insulation: The manufacturing of the insulating plastics for wires and cables depends on feedstock from natural gas and oil. Energy: The mining, refining, and manufacturing of copper wires is an energy-intensive process that relies heavily on fossil fuels.

Computers

The production of computers and the electronics they contain is one of the most fossil fuel-intensive manufacturing processes per unit of weight. Components: Plastics derived from fossil fuels are used in many parts of a computer, including the casing, circuit boards, and connectors. Energy consumption: The energy required to mine, refine, and manufacture all the different components of a computer comes largely from fossil fuels. One 2004 study found that producing a single desktop computer required ten times its weight in fossil fuels.

Fertilizers

Conventional nitrogen fertilizers are made using fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, in a process that turns atmospheric nitrogen and fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen into ammonia. This energy-intensive process, called the Haber-Bosch process, is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. While phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are made from mined minerals, most agricultural production is reliant on synthetic fertilizers derived from fossil fuels.

Read the rest of this piece at America Out Loud.

Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book "Clean Energy Exploitations."

Photo: courtesy America Out Loud.

Big Tech Is Scorching The Electric Grid

Robert Bryce — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 20:28:32 -0400

In 1946, when ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose computer, was first turned on, it used so much power (about 174 kilowatts) that it caused the lights in Philadelphia to dim momentarily.

Six years later, John von Neumann, the mathematician and computer pioneer, unveiled MANIAC, short for Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer, the first computer to use RAM (random access memory). MANIAC was far more efficient than ENIAC, drawing about 19.5 kilowatts, or one-ninth the power needed by its predecessor. Author George Dyson has written that, “the entire digital universe can be traced directly” back to MANIAC.

As I explained in May 2024, the energy efficiency of our computers has continually improved since the days of ENIAC and MANIAC. And while the efficiency of our digital machinery has increased:

The power hungry nature of computing has not. The Computer Age has been defined by the quest for ever-more computing power and ever-increasing amounts of electricity to fuel our insatiable desire for more digital horsepower. As data centers have grown over the past two decades, concerns about power availability have surged.

Today, the US is facing an unprecedented power crunch. After two decades of flat electricity demand, power use is suddenly soaring as the world’s biggest tech companies race to build massive data centers running thousands of AI computers that will use stunning volumes of juice. On August 11, the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that AI’s existing power demand is approximately 5 gigawatts, but that demand could reach 50 GW by 2030. For perspective, 50 GW is larger than the total electric generation capacity in Pennsylvania, which has a population of 13 million people and is the fifth most-populous state in America. (Pennsylvania currently has about 49 GW of electric generation capacity.)

On August 27, Monitoring Analytics, the independent market monitor for PJM, the largest regional transmission organization in the US, warned that the costs associated with meeting the surging demand for AI could result in a “massive wealth transfer” from ratepayers to Big Tech. The way to avoid that, it said, was for data center operators to “bring their own new generation.” In other words, PJM should require Big Tech to build its own power plants rather than simply connecting to the existing grid. PJM has previously projected that it expects peak loads on its system, due to data centers, to jump by 30 GW by 2030.

Read the rest of this piece at: Robert Bryce Substack.

Photo: composite by Robert Bryce.