Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Aussie climate and energy minister Chris Bowen demonstrating his international diplomacy skills.
‘Can’t have it all’: Australia abandons bid for COP31 climate summit
Published 20 November 2025 6:48pm Updated 2m ago 6:55pm By Naveen Razik Presented by Wing Kuang
The federal government has abruptly abandoned its bid to host the United Nations climate conference next year, conceding Turkiye will oversee the COP31. The Pacific countries and environmental activists have criticised the federal government’s failure to bring the event to Adelaide.
Australia has withdrawn from its bid to host the United Nations climate conference next year, after three years of competition with Turkiye.
Speaking from Belem where the COP30 is being held, climate change minister Chris Bowen has confirmed COP31 next year won’t be hosted in Adelaide, as Australia has hoped for.
“So obviously, it would be great if Australia could have it all, but we can’t have it all.”
Mr Bowen says the withdrawal is in the best interest of Australia and also the summit.
According to the U-N rules, if Australia and Turkiye couldn’t reach a deal, Germany would have stepped in as the host of the United Nations climate organisation.
“This process works on consensus, and consensus means if someone objects to our bid, it would go to Bonn. That would mean 12 months with a lack of leadership, no COP president in place, no plan, that would be irresponsible for multilateralism and this challenge will… And don’t want that to happen.”
You might think it astounding a federal minister would say something like that about a close ally in his quest to slay the carbon dragon, but we Aussies have come to expect no less from our climate minister. I’m sure he didn’t mean Germany is incapable of providing climate leadership. Perhaps the global warming in the Belém COP30 conference center is getting to our Chris.
On a positive note, I think Australia dodged a bullet having someone else host COP31. Let Turkey endure the pain of hosting all those activists.
All this Aussie green energy obsession is having real consequences. While the US economy powers ahead, Australia is dropping to the bottom of the league table;
‘Australia’s not high-growth’: ANZ boss hits Labor on productivity
“I believe the productivity agenda debate we are watching in Australia, which is a collective effort, obviously fostered by the administration … is certainly the right thing to do,” Matos said.
RBA deputy governor Andrew Hauser said at the UBS Australasia Conference this month that the economy was already “boxed in” by its lower supply capacity. “If we do find ourselves boxed in on the rail in this way, the only escape route is to grow the capacity of the economy,” he said.
Hauser said this would require an uptick in business investment, which had been flat for 18 months. As a share of the economy, investing by businesses in their own productivity is at mid-1990s levels.
Everyone in official circles is talking around Australia’s flatlining economy like it is some kind of big mystery, but with skyrocketing green energy prices flagged as the number one business concern in a recent major survey, it’s not that big a puzzle why the Australian economy is the lame horse in the race.
Blame it on those nasty Arabs, say the weird lefties who normally wave Palestine flags, wear stupid scarves (whose silly name I am not even going to try to spell) and condemn anybody else who does the same Islamophobes!
For some reason they don’t mention all the other nations opposed to the phase out of fossil fuels, whose economies rely on their consumption – China, India or the rest of Asia, for example.
Meanwhile the far-left Guardian reveals the names of the countries who are threatening to block any agreement that did not include such a commitment to phase out fossil fuels:
Yes, its mainly made up of European countries, who are doubling on terminal decline, a handful of Latin America nations and a few totally irrelevant Pacific islands.
Back in the real world, African and Asian countries have more sense. The US is of course busy doing its own thing, but even Canada and Australia are not yet ready to commit economic Hari-Kari!
The EU, along with the idiot Miliband, don’t seem to have worked out yet that the rest of the world left them in their slipstream a long time ago!
This year they slightly re-titled the Konference to “Energy Infrastructure Summit: New York’s Path to Sustainability.” On the surface, it was remarkably similar to the program of two years ago, and to hear the words of the speakers, it was as if nothing was wrong. But with a little reading between the lines, the changes were big.
Two years ago, in November 2023, my friend Roger Caiazza and I attended a conference put on by a local news source called City & State. They called their conference the “Clean Energy New York Summit: The Path to Sustainability.” I called it the Krazy Klimate Konference, and I wrote about it in a post on November 18, 2023, titled “At The New York Krazy Klimate Konference.”
Last year both Roger and I skipped the Konference, and this year Roger again wisely decided to stay home in Syracuse. But I was morbidly curious as to how this crowd of climate grifters and subsidy farmers would react to the rapid derailment of their gravy train during the first ten months of President Trump’s second term. And for me, the venue was only about a 10-minute subway ride away, at the southern tip of Manhattan. So, I rounded up my daughter Jane (who had to trek in from Queens) to accompany me, and off we went.
This year they slightly re-titled the Konference to “Energy Infrastructure Summit: New York’s Path to Sustainability.” On the surface, it was remarkably similar to the program of two years ago, and to hear the words of the speakers, it was as if nothing was wrong. But with a little reading between the lines, the changes were big.
If you went to this Konference to learn anything about the subject matter at hand, you would have been sorely disappointed. All the presentations were essentially fluff, completely avoiding discussion of any serious issues. However, there was much to be learned from what was not said.
To start with, you might have noticed that the line-up of participants had greatly shifted. Two years ago, the main panelists and speakers fell into two categories: (1) promoters of expensive “green energy” projects, like solar arrays, wind farms, and transmission lines, talking about their great construction plans, and (2) high ranking political actors, including multiple members of both the State Legislature and City Council, there to take credit for bringing to bear the political will to make this all happen.
Emblematic of the speakers from two years ago were three whom I highlighted in my November 2023 post: Doreen Harris, the Co-Chair of New York’s “Climate Action Council,” Gregory Lampman, Director of Off-Shore Wind at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and Luke Falk, COO of Clean Path New York, a company then developing an $11 billion new transmission line to bring wind and solar power from upstate into New York City.
Here is a reprise of my comments on Mr. Falk’s contribution to the 2023 Konference:
[A]n afternoon panel featur[ed] a presentation from a guy named Luke Falk, identified as COO of something called Clean Path NY, which appears to be developing transmission lines to shuttle wind and solar generated power around the state. Falk started talking about how great it would be when everybody converted their homes to electric heat, because that would provide a use for the vast amounts of wind and solar electricity that would soon be forthcoming. At that point I lost it and started laughing uncontrollably. After his panel, Falk came up to me and accused me of being rude. I responded that I thought the whole point of a comedy routine was to get audience members to laugh.
The reason that I burst out laughing during Mr. Falk’s 2023 presentation was that it was obvious to anyone with any math skills that his power line could not possibly be economic. The obvious reason was that intermittent wind and solar power could not fill the line full time, or even half time, and therefore the line would cost a multiple per unit of electricity delivered to transmit power compared to the cost of a line to transmit full-time generation. To the surprise of no one with critical thinking skills, the Clean Path transmission line project then got canceled in late 2024 precisely because it was found to be uneconomic. For the full story, see Utility Dive from December 3, 2024.
Needless to say, Mr. Falk did not show up to this year’s Konference.
And neither did Mr. Lampman. At the time of the 2023 Konference, Mr. Lampman’s (and NYSERDA’s) entire off-shore wind program, previously touted as the linchpin of the State’s renewable energy plans, had just been canceled, with no idea of any path forward. As I reported in my November 2023 post, Lampman had managed to give his whole presentation at the 2023 Konference without mentioning that his entire program had just been canceled; and when gently asked by the moderator to address the subject, Lampman said that he had discussed it with his then 6 year old son, who had said “Dad, you got this.”
Since the 2023 Konference, Lampman and his agency then put the offshore wind program out for a re-bid in 2024, with the re-bids coming in about 50 – 70% higher than the originally accepted bids. NYSERDA bit the bullet and accepted the new bids in late 2024 — only then to have President Trump sweep back into office in January 2025 and promptly announce that the federal government would not be issuing any permits for these developments. Since then, there have been rumors that the Trump administration would agree to grant a permit to one of the five offshore wind projects if Governor Hochul would grant a permit to build a pipeline across New York Bay to transmit natural gas from Pennsylvania to Long Island and, potentially, to New England. The natural gas pipeline permit got issued last week, so maybe one of the offshore wind projects may proceed. The rest are deader than dead. You can see why Lampman might want to stay away from anywhere where he might get asked a question.
Also staying away this year was Doreen Harris of the Climate Action Council. Her speech two years ago had been filled with cliches of false optimism (“We’re the leader. . . . We have a bias toward action. . . . long term sustainability . . . something we can be proud of”). I guess that stuff would be way too embarrassing to utter in public today.
Instead, we got as kick-off speaker a guy named Rory Christian, Chair of the Public Service Commission. Not that Christian said anything substantive, but he still proved to be a significant change of pace. While Harris’s full time job is to be a cheerleader for the energy transition, Christian, in addition to having some energy transition responsibilities, also is responsible to keep the electricity system “affordable,” “reliable,” and “safe.” You might think he would address how these various responsibilities are in irreconcilable conflict, but that would be way too much to expect. Of course his speech was the usual pile of cliches. Some excerpts: “Our expectations as to energy are evolving. . . . Uncertainty in the energy system is unacceptable. . . . We must assure safe and reliable service at just and reasonable rates. . . . We have the drive and focus to do the energy transition. . . . Federal uncertainties are having a chilling effect. . . .” Mention of “safety” and “reliability” are a big change from net zero cheerleading.
Unlike the previous conference where no audience questions were allowed, this time they had an app where you could submit questions in writing for the moderator to pose (or not). Here are two that I wrote for Mr. Christian: (1) Now that the Governor and Attorney General have publicly stated that the state’s energy transition under the CLCPA is “infeasible,” when is the PSC going to hold a hearing under Section 66-P(4) of the Public Service Law to postpone all the deadlines? and (2) Given that the CLCPA energy transition has been recognized as “infeasible,” how can the PSC give any consideration to the pending rate increase request from Con Edison that includes big spending for projects that do not enhance safety and reliability but only seek to advance the concededly “infeasible” emission-reduction mandates? (The State’s letter referred to is linked at my November 15 post here.)
It will not surprise you to learn that at the conclusion of his remarks, Mr. Christian promptly walked out of the Konference, taking no questions.
From the world of people running companies hoping to get big government money to build renewable energy projects, almost no one showed up to speak at this Konference. There were no wind or solar or transmission project developers that I spotted. The only representative of this category who uttered a word was a guy named Nick Lombardi, identified as a Senior VP of Project Development at something called NineDot, which is a grid-scale battery developer. But he was a panel moderator, rather than a speaker. We never got to learn of his great plans for battery storage.
Also missing were almost all of the elected politicians who showed up last time to preen and strut. One obscure City Council member showed up.
What we got instead were a bunch of dreamers and schemers with no attachment to the real world: e.g., Alexis Abramson, Dean of the Columbia Climate School (did you know they had that?) talking about how they are doing “teaching, research, and impact”; a representative of the New York DOT talking about how they were going to build more “resilient” highways (“integrating shade structures into the right of way” — I’m not making this up); multiple representatives of state agencies talking about “workforce development” to lure young people into “green energy” jobs (I would strongly advise any young person to stay away from this industry, which will disappear as soon as the subsidies dry up); a guy promoting “green and healthy schools” by retrofitting their energy systems (sounds to me like the lowest possible priority for the school system); and so forth.
And of course nearly every speaker worked into his or her presentation a few lines about the need to come up with “new funding streams” or some such formula, to make it all happen.
So even though there was no useful information and nothing to be learned about the energy system or how it will “transition,” the Konference was still a fascinating psychological study. There is a seemingly infinite supply of people living off “climate” grants and ready to blather on in cliches as if nothing has changed, when in fact their whole world has gone away. They just haven’t admitted it yet, even to themselves.
But beneath the polished language of urgency and cooperation lies a difficult truth: the UNFCCC’s version of “climate action” consistently demands more compliance, more administration, and more top-down control — while ignoring the practical realities of the communities expected to carry out its directives.
I was privileged to attend the COP30 Closing Event in Belém, Brazil. As the conference concluded with its “Global Climate Action High-Level Closing Event,” the United Nations once again framed the future of climate policy as a race toward accelerated implementation, deeper integration of climate mandates from national to local levels, and expanded global oversight over how communities plan, build, adapt, and even measure progress. But beneath the polished language of urgency and cooperation lies a difficult truth: the UNFCCC’s version of “climate action” consistently demands more compliance, more administration, and more top-down control — while ignoring the practical realities of the communities expected to carry out its directives.
For organizations like CFACT, which has spent decades advocating for evidence-based environmental stewardship rooted in innovation and free markets, COP30’s closing message was familiar. Instead of empowering nations and communities to select solutions that work for their economies and environments, the UN continues to centralize authority, expand reporting requirements, and tighten the regulatory noose around governments already struggling with basic capacity.
Global Rhetoric, Local Strain
During the High-Level Closing Event, speakers emphasized the need for jurisdictions at all levels — countries, states, municipalities, tribal communities — to “accelerate implementation actions” in alignment with global climate objectives. But these expectations come packaged with extensive administrative burdens tied to climate-resilience metrics, equity indicators, emissions data, and annual verification requirements.
The session’s presenters openly acknowledged that the tools, sample plans, and “model frameworks” published by UN partners are unrealistic for many communities. Smaller municipalities lack the staff, funding, and technical resources to meet such expectations. Yet instead of reassessing these demands, the UN’s answer is always the same: more capacity building, more consultants, more data systems, more reporting — and ultimately, more money spent on bureaucracy rather than real environmental improvements.
This is the central flaw of UN climate policy. It focuses on tracking actions rather than achieving results.
“Demonstrated Progress”: An Undefined Mandate With Real Consequences
A particularly revealing point from the COP30 session was the expectation that jurisdictions must show “measurable progress” toward UN-aligned climate objectives even in the first year of implementation. Yet UN officials admitted that the metrics for defining progress remain vague or still under development.
This creates a regulatory trap. Jurisdictions must comply with requirements that are impossible to measure — and then risk losing access to international funding if they fail to meet standards that no one can clearly articulate.
This is not guidance. It is coercion through ambiguity.
By conditioning financing on compliance without defining compliance, the UN consolidates power. It becomes both the rule-maker and the judge of whether rules were followed. For communities already stretched thin, the lack of clarity almost guarantees they will fall short.
Rewiring Local Governance Around Climate Mandates
One of the most striking — and concerning — assertions at the COP30 event was that climate-risk assessment must now be integrated into every stage of planning. What was once a supplementary document has become the central organizing principle of governance.
This ideological reframing elevates climate policy above all other civic priorities, turning local governments into implementation arms of the UNFCCC.
CFACT believes environmental stewardship should strengthen communities, not subordinate them to international bureaucracies. Local leaders should respond to local needs — not global mandates. Yet under the UN’s approach, compliance replaces autonomy, reporting replaces problem-solving, and international priorities replace community priorities.
Where Are the Market-Based Solutions?
In a panel devoted to “connecting solutions,” one thing was conspicuously absent: actual solutions that harness innovation, entrepreneurship, or market-driven adaptation.
The closing session emphasized frameworks, reporting cycles, compliance structures, and climate-finance mechanisms — but not:
New technologies that reduce emissions without mandates
Agricultural innovation increasing yields while using fewer resources
Private-sector breakthroughs in energy efficiency
Property-owner–led land management
Decentralized risk assessment by insurers and businesses
These are the tools that genuinely reduce vulnerability and drive progress — without stripping nations or municipalities of autonomy.
But because markets and innovation lie outside the UN’s centralized governance model, they remain largely ignored.
A Better Path Forward
CFACT rejects the premise that serious environmental stewardship requires global regulatory expansion. Instead, a better approach is within reach — one grounded in freedom, science, and prosperity rather than bureaucracy and coercion.
1. Empower local decision-making. Communities must retain the authority to choose which climate or resilience strategies serve their people best.
2. Promote innovation before regulation. Technological progress — not paperwork — drives environmental improvement.
3. End compliance-based financing. Aid should reward outcomes and efficiency, not adherence to UN frameworks.
4. Encourage voluntary cooperation, not mandates. Nations and localities should be free to engage with global partners without surrendering self-governance.
5. Reduce administrative burdens. Money spent on reporting should instead support infrastructure, agriculture, energy diversification, and mitigation projects that deliver real benefits.
COP30’s High-Level Closing Event showcased the UN’s familiar vision: a world governed through expanding climate obligations, mandatory planning integration, and conditional financing tied to ever-growing reporting requirements. But real solutions — innovative, market-driven, community-centered — rarely emerge from this system.
CFACT will continue to advocate for an alternative path: one where prosperity empowers stewardship, where innovation reduces risk, and where free people — not unaccountable institutions — decide how their communities adapt and thrive.
Electricity prices are surging, voters are growing angry, and the artificial intelligence industry’s data centers are increasingly a target for blame with U.S. mid-term elections on the horizon.
Residential utility bills rose 6% on average nationwide in August compared with the same period in the previous year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
…
The tech companies and AI labs are building data centers that consume a gigawatt or more of electricity in some cases, equivalent to more than 800,000 homes, the size of a cityessentially.
Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the world. Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the state’s recent governor’s race in a landslide by campaigning on cost of living. Spanberger put at least part of the blame for rising electricity prices on data centers, promising to make tech companies “pay their own way and their fair share” of the escalating costs.
The race for Artificial Intelligence (AI) supremacy is, fundamentally, an ever-escalating energy war. China’s centrally planned, dual-track “AI-Energy” policy is establishing a critical, long-term infrastructure advantage that threatens the U.S.’s technological leadership, forcing the West to abandon strict free-market ideology and adopt its own form of strategic state capitalism to compete.
The current limiting factors for AI development – the scarcity of compute and of world-class talent – are increasingly being overshadowed by a far more foundational constraint: energy. It is on this crucial frontier that China holds a decisive advantage.
…
China has launched what amounts to a Manhattan Project for energy infrastructure, deploying a centrally planned, dual-track strategy that grants its tech sector a decisive edge in the global AI race. While American AI researchers struggle with a fragile power grid, Chinese developers now treat energy availability as a solved problem. China’s energy strategy is characterized by aggressively deploying clean power for future dominance while expanding coal and oil production to ensure immediate stability. This has resulted in unprecedented energy construction. China currently has 32 nuclear reactors under development. The U.S., by contrast, has built two since 2014. China’s solar manufacturing capacity exceeds 1,000 gigawatts. The U.S. capacity stands at 26 gigawatts.
The development of an artificial general intelligence will be a world changing event on a par with the development of the atom bomb.
Most people have tried to play that chess app on your computer, and experienced the humiliation of a few lines of code kicking your butt. Imagine that chess app AI intellectual butt kicking capability extended into every sphere of human experience, and you see what I’m concerned about.
Of course reaching the prize is not the only benefit of an AI Manhattan project. Just as the US Manhattan Project, like the Space Race, produced spinoff benefits at every advance, every Chinese advance towards super intelligence will allow more of the economy to be automated, allowing Chinese exporters to cut prices, further undermining the economies of other nations.
And that is in addition to the possibility of AI powered military devices which can outperform any human soldier. We’ve already seen a taste of battlefront AI in the Ukraine war, where Ukraine’s AI driven targeting has defeated Russian drone jamming technology, by allowing kamikaze drones to operate without a human control signal.
This is not a race anyone should want to lose.
How close are Chinese researchers to developing artificial general intelligence? It may prove to be a problem as elusive as nuclear fusion. Or it might be solved tomorrow. Having said that, I doubt it will be as difficult as fusion, because researchers already have a working template to copy – the human brain.
One thing for sure. In terms of the current most critical limiting factor, affordable energy, China is way ahead of the USA in the push to develop the world’s first super intelligence. If the USA wants to have any chance of winning this race, US energy supply and affordability must be fixed, before the growing voter backlash against skyrocketing energy prices pulls the USA out of the race.
Some US leaders are moving in the right direction on this issue, but there are still enormous obstacles which must be overcome. So long as AI development hurts ordinary people by driving up energy prices, AI development in the USA will be in danger of stalling.
So, there was always debate but the dominant narrative said:
No, we have to radically change our economy and move away from
fossil fuels to renewable and that was usually wind and solar.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains the collapse of climate hysteria in his Daily Signal video AI is Challenging Climate Orthodoxy:
For those who prefer reading, below is a lightly edited transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the daily signal. For most of my life, at least for the last 35 years, we have accepted the climate change orthodoxy. We used to be global warming and then when things were not always warming but they were cooling. They changed the name to climate change to suggest whatever the temperature extreme was it was all due to carbon emissions caused in general by humans, but in particular westerners who were polluting the planet with heat.
That was the dominant narrative. I didn’t think in my lifetime that I would see an end to that dominance, even though there were inconsistencies. The planet is 4 billion years old and man has only been here for 300,000 years. And we only have accurate record keeping of temperature fluctuations for the last 150 years. And even within that period, we have cyclical changes between decades of abnormal temperatures, whether too hot or too cold. And before the industrial revolution in some cases by tree rings and ice sampling in the Arctic.
So, there was always debate but the dominant narrative said: No, we have to radically change our economy and move away from fossil fuels to renewable and that was usually wind and solar.
And then something’s happened lately. King Gustaf the16th the hereditary monarch of Sweden, is a symbolic figure not an actual person in power. He’s known as a rabid environmentalist, but kind of mused openly the other day, saying essentially: Why are we ruining the economy of Europe by having exorbitant power cost, electricity cost, when we only contribute to 6% of global warming worldwide? Then Bill Gates shocked the world when said he never he no longer believes that there is an impending climate change crisis. This was followed by a lot of other people who said let’s take a different look at this.
And of course the second tenure of Donald Trump has people in energy, interior, treasury who are saying, you know, we’re not going to subsidize this anymore. And this is collated with disasters that were caused by worries over climate change worries or global Armageddon. There was the highspeed rail program in California that was supposed to replace automobiles, $15 billion, $20 billion, not one foot of track laid. And the solar plant down in the desert of California that is being dismantled or the battery storage in Moss Landing near Monterey that has caught fire twice.
Moss Landing on fire 02/2025
I could go on. So there was a lot of skepticism both by individuals who were influential and by the general public for good cause. So what is causing this? Well, in reference to Bill Gates the first thing is artificial intelligence. It’s going to require a unprecedented level of electrical generation. It takes huge amounts of electricity. We don’t have it, and we will not get it by subsidizing wind turbines and solar panels.
There are 1000 Gigawatts in 1 Terrawatt.
Sam Altman, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence said, If the United States wants to achieve preeminence in the field, and this seems to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the industrial revolution, we’re going to have to build plants producing AI of one gigawatt a week. That’s the size of a large nuclear reactor, one thousand megawatts. We’re going to have to build, he says, a 100 per year or the equivalent of clean coal or natural gas. So that influenced Bill Gates, that shook him up. That’s notcompatible with his prior green idea that we’re going to supplant fossil fuels.
MW refer to 1,000,000 watts of power, rate of energy generated or consumed in an instant by a system, mechanical, thermal, etc. MWe refers specifically to Megawatts of electricity.
Another reason is geostrategic. People are starting to become aware that Russia is a bad actor and Iran is a bad actor. Since they depend on oil exports, therefore the high price of oil to fuel their military ambitions. When the United States became the largest producer of fossil fuels during the first Trump administration, then Biden for all of his green rhetoric, pivoted in his third and fourth year so he could win the election and began pumping oil again. Donald Trump took that 12 to 13 million barrels and has increased it to 14 million. And the price of world oil is going down, and that hurts Iran and hurts Russia. That benefits our allies like Europe and Japan that would like more liquefied national natural gas shipped from the United States.
And so there were geostrategic reasons. Let’s be frank. Everybody has sort of seen what China is doing. It’s playing the West. It talks a great game about global warming. You guys, we all have to reduce our emissions. And then what does it do? Two things. It subsidizes cheap export of solar panels and wind turbines below the cost of production to bankrupt competing industries in Europe, the United States, to get the West hooked on solar and wind even though it is a very expensive and unreliable source of electricity. Meanwhile, as we get hooked on Chinese exports, they build two to three coal or nuclear plants per month. Affordable energy that will give them a competitive hedge over the west.
Then there’s the third world that has been telling us for the last 20 years that we are culpable for global warming even though the two greatest heat emission areas in the world are China and India. Nonetheless, governments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia say, “You people owe us because you started the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century, and you’ve been polluting the planet ever since. And you create all of your industries and your affluent lifestyles by burning fossil fuels. And therefore, you should pay us, not we pay you.” And we don’t have to cut back. We’re late to the game.
We should say to them, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We burned more fossil fuels in the past because we created the industrial revolution and we do today. We provide you the cars. We provide you the industrial plants. We provide you the plastics. If you want us to stop, we won’t export it to you and then maybe we’ll pay reparations and you can do your own industrialization. So then, don’t take stuff from us requiring fossil fuels, stuff that’s essential to your economies, and then tell us that we have to pay an added tax on it because we’re warming up the planet, as if it’s only for our purposes as well as yours.
Then there’s the hypocrisy, I guess we would call it. The people who have been the avatars of climate change never suffer the consequences of their own ideology. Barack Obama said the planet would be inundated pretty soon if we didn’t address global climate change. Why would he buy a seaside estate at Martha’s Vineyard or one on the beach of Hawaii, if he really did believe that the oceans would rise and flood his multi-million dollar investment? Why would John Kerry fly all over the world on a private plane and then tell the rest of us that we’re flying too much commercial, when his carbon imprint was a thousand times more than the individual Americans? Why would people on the California coast say we have to have wind and solar and we have to get electricity up to 40 cents a kilowatt because we want to use less fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the temperature from La Jolla to Berkeley is between what, 65 and 75F year round, where here in Bakersfield or Fresno or Sacramento it can be 105 and poor people can’t afford to run their air conditioners.
Add it all up, the inconsistency of the global warming narrative, the self-interest in the people who promote it, and the logic that they have presented no convincing empirical evidence that we have to radically transform our economies on the wishes of a few elites that do not have the evidence, but do have a lot of hypocrisy in the process.
Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
Britain faces the risk of energy shortages because of a “planning paralysis” crippling the nuclear sector, a think tank has warned.
On Thursday, a report for Policy Exchange by former Cabinet secretary Lord Case said the UK faces growing threats from blackouts unless new nuclear power stations are granted fast-track approval to begin construction.
“The UK is barrelling toward an energy crisis – and an urgent change in policy is needed to stop costs continuing to rise, and to secure our energy security … We must put nuclear enterprise at the heart of government reform,” said the report.
No new nuclear power stations have been built in the UK for 30 years, with the report warning that demand for power will surge over the next decade, just as many ageing nuclear and gas power plants are set to shut down.
It said urgent changes were needed to “cut through the planning paralysis” or risk an energy crisis by 2035.
“Without further nuclear power, Britain risks energy shortages that will drive up industry costs and raise household electricity bills,” the report added.
As the Telegraph’s chart below shows, the time to start panicking was when all those coal power stations started to close, without any replacement be other dispatchable capacity:
The belief that even fast tracking nuclear will make any difference in the next decade or more is a childlike delusion.
Hinkley C is probably going to be ready in 2030, fourteen years after work began on construction. Sizewell C, which has also now entered the construction phase is unlikely to start operations much before 2040.
Any new nuclear capacity after that will take at least twenty years to materialise, given all of the planning issues involved.
As for SMR, it is still an unproven technology and will probably be at least a decade away. Currently it is believed that the first tranche to be built by Rolls Royce will be only 1400 MW.
There is only one answer to the problem of looming blackouts – begin immediately on a large scale rollout of new CCGT power stations. If we do that, of course, there is no economic value in building any further wind and solar capacity, so AR7 and future CfD rounds need to be cancelled.
A nuclear energy resurgence is underway, driven by the artificial intelligence revolution and the Trump administration. Nuclear plants that were shut down are being restarted. Dozens of small reactors are being deployed. But nuclear power still faces major cost, startup time, and regulatory obstacles.
Nuclear power stations in the United States, 3D rendering isolated on white background
The first commercial nuclear plant started operation at Calder Hall in England in 1956. By 1970, reactors were in construction around the world. Many predicted that atomic energy would generate most of the world’s power by 2000. In 1973, President Richard Nixon stated, “It is estimated that nuclear power will provide more than one-quarter of the country’s electrical production by 1985, and over half by the year 2000.”
However, operational problems and environmental opposition would sway public opinion against atomic energy. Reactor failures at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, and at Fukushima, Japan in 2011 raised safety concerns. Rising costs from efforts to ensure reactor safety and disposal of nuclear waste limited new plant construction. The nuclear share of world electricity peaked in 1996 at 18%, dropping to about 9% in 2024.
Artificial intelligence (AI) now drives a rising demand for electric power. The high-tech firms—Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and the newcomer OpenAI—are building data centers across the world. Since the start of 2024, the number of US data centers has increased more than 50%.
To help meet the new AI power demand, the Trump administration now pushes for a nuclear resurgence. On May 23, President Trump signed four executive orders aimed at deployment of new reactors, strengthening the nuclear supply chain, and re-establishing US industry leadership. In 2024, nuclear plants generated about 18% of US electricity. The presidential orders called for quadrupling US nuclear capacity to 400 GW by 2050.
The power needed by artificial intelligence is huge. When data center servers that previously supported the internet and grid storage are upgraded to run AI, they require six to ten times more electricity. Meta’s Hyperion data center in northeast Louisiana, when completed, will consume twice as much power as New Orleans.
Artificial intelligence needs 24-hour, 7-day, always-on power, which intermittent wind and solar can’t provide. Companies that have committed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions view nuclear as a zero-emissions source to power AI.
Today, natural gas is the preferred onsite electricity source for new data centers in the US. Over 200 gas-fired power plants are in planning or under construction nationwide, including more than 100 new gas plants in Texas alone.
Tesla is a solar and battery company, but last year the firm installed 35 gas turbines to power its Colossus xAI data center near Memphis, Tennessee. Gas plants can be constructed in as little as two years at a small fraction of the nuclear cost.
Nevertheless, to help meet rising power demand, US nuclear plants are being restarted or completed. Holtec International is restarting the plant in Palisades, Michigan, which was shut down in 2022. Constellation Energy and Microsoft agreed to restart the Three Mile Island #1 reactor in Pennsylvania, (not the unit that suffered the 1979 accident). Google and NextEra Energy plan to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa, which was shut down in 2020 after wind-storm damage. Last month, Santee Cooper signed a letter of intent with Brookfield Asset Management to complete construction of two reactors in South Carolina after construction was halted in 2017.
In October, the Trump administration signed an agreement with Cameco Corporation, Brookfield Asset Management, and Westinghouse to invest $80 billion in new or restarted large-scale nuclear plants. This government-industry partnership aims to boost the nuclear industry in the US and abroad.
But large nuclear reactors continue to face cost, cycle time, and regulatory obstacles, compared to other sources. The most recently constructed US nuclear plants, Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Georgia, took more than a decade to build and entered service in 2023, more than seven years late. The plants cost over $30 billion, more than $18 billion over budget.
Nuclear plants face stringent regulatory requirements. I recently spoke at a conference of plastic pipe manufacturers. An attendee told me that when he ships pipe to a typical factory, two pages of documentation are required, but that this rises to more than an inch of paperwork for pipe for a nuclear plant.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) aim to provide the cost and cycle-time reductions needed for nuclear resurgence. Traditionally, reactors were custom designed and built on-site with capacities of about 1,000 megawatts (MW). SMRs are being designed with capacities of 10ꟷ300 MW, small in size, and able to be factory-assembled and transported as a unit to a location for installation.
In addition to targeting cost and build-time breakthroughs, SMRs are being designed for wide application and improved safety. Rather than rely on the grid, tech firms plan to build SMRs on-site to power data centers. Small reactors may soon be used to power commercial ships, military bases, and rural communities. These small plants are designed to shut down automatically in the case of failure and to minimize nuclear waste.
In August, the Department of Energy selected ten companies for fast-track SMR development, with an aggressive goal of having three test reactors up and running by July, 2026. Twenty-four US companies are pursuing the SMR market.
The nuclear resurgence also appears to be underway globally. About 80 companies from 19 countries are working on SMR designs. One SMR is operating in Russia, and one is under construction in China. Russia and South Korea have begun building commercial ships with small reactors.
Trump administration efforts to expand nuclear capacity face another obstacle. The US nuclear fleet of 94 operating reactors was mostly built in the 1970s and 1980s and is rapidly aging. Thirty-one of the reactors are more than 50 years old and another 36 are more than 40 years old. These reactors will need to be refurbished along with new reactor start-ups to expand the US nuclear capacity.
In summary, the push for a nuclear renaissance must overcome two things. One is the need for major cost breakthroughs, so that developers can back their projects with ‘turnkey’ performance to meet quoted costs and completion dates. Second is the need for a reduction in federal regulations. If these can be accomplished, a real free market in commercial nuclear power may be possible where government subsidies are not needed.
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