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.
A recent Washington Post (WaPo) article, “Amsterdam’s ban on advertising hamburgers won’t stop climate change,” blasts a new law in Amsterdam banning advertisements for meat in public spaces. The order is meant to decrease the demand for meat to stop climate change. The WaPo Editorial Board has the correct reaction. It is ridiculous and authoritarian to try to control what people eat and will have no impact on weather or global climate.
A recent Washington Post (WaPo) article, “Amsterdam’s ban on advertising hamburgers won’t stop climate change,” blasts a new law in Amsterdam banning advertisements for meat in public spaces. The order is meant to decrease the demand for meat to stop climate change. The WaPo Editorial Board has the correct reaction. It is ridiculous and authoritarian to try to control what people eat and will have no impact on weather or global climate.
WaPo’s editorial board reports on a new law in Amsterdam, which “just banned all advertisements for meat in public spaces,” in order to reduce meat to help fight climate change. But, as WaPo points out, “[c]ensoring ads for beef, pork, chicken, and even fish won’t reduce carbon emissions. Nor will it make people less hungry for protein and other nutrients essential to a healthy diet.” WaPo says that European green activists are “so hypnotized by climate hysteria and the belief that it poses an “existential threat” that they rationalize authoritarianism.”
WaPo is correct. The focus of the “eating meat causes climate change” argument is that cattle produce methane, which contributes to warming. It is completely absurd to think that reducing meat consumption in Amsterdam would have any real impact whatsoever on that, even if the base theory is correct. According to United States EPA data, all the cows in the United States contribute just about 2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases, with a population of around 90 million cattle. There are less than 4 million head of cattle in the Netherlands.
The Dutch certainly do not eat only Dutch beef, but the population of Amsterdam’s metropolitan area is around 1.6 million people, comparable to Phoenix, Arizona or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Large cities to be sure, but not large enough for their eating habits to make a dent in global climate. It is absurd on its face. Even worse it is an authoritarian restriction on free speech for a non-harmful activity.
Climate Realism has noted on multipleoccasions that targeting cattle and meat eating will not change the weather or slow global warming. Amsterdam, according to WaPo, “has set a totally unrealistic goal for residents to get 60 percent of their protein from plant-based sources by 2030.” It is unclear why Amsterdam officials believe that energy-intensive, highly processed plant-based alternatives to meat are better for the environment than all-natural meat and eggs, but even if it did, this is a clear authoritarian overstep by what was supposed to be a democratic government. But it’s not the first time Netherland’s officials went climate-crazy and targeted food: in 2023, the state put forward schemes to forcibly shut down farms across the country and buy out farmers, and force them into contracts that would ban them from moving to other countries to farm elsewhere. A political backlash resulted in the nation’s government moderating its plans.
They want to push what farmers remain to go all-organic, which ironically means they will need more land to produce anywhere near the same output because yields will fall, resulting in higher overall emissions.
These schemes are, as WaPo correctly stated, both unrealistic and authoritarian. Human beings are omnivorous, meat-eating animals, the fats and proteins in meat are essential for brain development. Our guts are evolved to process meat from animals whose guts are evolved to process roughage we can’t eat. There is no climate benefit from reducing meat consumption, nor is there any other kind of environmental benefit. The government of Amsterdam is overstepping, with no scientific backing. So much for the Netherlands being a bastion of liberty and the free exchange of ideas.
Your casserole went stale and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.
Or so you’ve been told.
Woman using food film for food storage on a white table. Roll of transparent polyethylene food film.
Anti-trust investigations team up with pressure groups to target producers.
Your casserole went stale and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.
Or so you’ve been told.
In reality, green activists operating in the name of “sustainability” have joined forces with corporate interests to increase consumer prices and coerce inferior products into the marketplace. All in the name of combatting plastics — and the motivations are not difficult to understand. Green activists who have lost ground on their climate agenda under President Donald Trump have repackaged that same agenda under a different name. As to the corporations, they are only too pleased to limit competition and charge consumers more, while giving off the appearance of being concerned about the environment.
Here’s the deal
Pressure groups including the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, have joined with heavy hitters like Coca-Cola, Target, Unilever, Mondelez, and Nestle to impose burdensome environmental targets. These include: arbitrary recycled-content quotas and directives to redesign everyday packaging — just to make certain products are as expensive as possible.
Fortunately, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has entered the fray to take on the “sustainability agenda.” Earlier this month, he initiated an anti-trust investigation and issued Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the plastics trade groups and the corporations complicit with their agenda.
In a statement Uthmeier said, “Environmental groups are pressuring corporations to abandon free market principles and raise prices on consumers for products they don’t want.”
Contrary to what green activists would like the public to believe, plastics come with significant benefits as a direct result human innovation. They keep food fresh, alleviate waste, make products lighter and therefore more affordable. They also contribute to life-saving medical devices.
If environmental activists turned government bureaucrats were genuinely interested in environmental improvements, they would focus on more efficient waste management, enhanced recycling infrastructure, and biodegradable innovations. But none of those solutions are on the table. Instead, the radicals push a top-down policy approach that suffocates the free market.
Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, took down the concept of “sustainable development” in an interview with Restoration News, saying:
What needs to be understood about ‘sustainable development’ is that what is being peddled is itself unsustainable. Absent government mandates, industry collusion, and interminable lawsuits, the alternatives to plastics could not stand on their own two feet. The marketplace, which reflects consumer preferences, is the best place to separate the sheep from the goats. Just as the PC vanquished the electric typewriter, and internet transmissions quashed the fax machine, superior products prevail over inferior ones. But this is an arena the anti-plastics lobby does not dare to enter. They know they will lose. Florida’s attorney general sees this game for what it is, and is to be applauded for taking appropriate action. May other state AGs follow his example.
“Sustainability” is an invention of the United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held as part of the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. The agenda aimed to spur action at the international, national, regional and local levels with the common goal of achieving “sustainable development,” which the U.N. defines as an approach to growth and development that satisfies contemporary needs without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
At a time when the climate agenda is running up against scientific facts and economic realities; let’s not give that agenda new life under a different name.
Time to face facts. The war on plastics amounts to nothing more than a war on modern conveniences made possible by the innovations inherent in the free market. The green cultists would prefer humanity return to a time when casseroles and mayonnaise spoil in hours instead of days, and cell phones use inferior materials and fall apart in months.
Thankfully, Florida AG James Uthmeier has initiated anti-trust investigations to put an end to this nonsense in the corporate world, and to put a stake through the heart of “sustainability.”
“Unprecedented surge in demand driven by the rapid expansion of large-load data centers and broader economy-wide electrification,” is noted by PJM as one of the the three drivers of grid strain, alongside “the accelerated retirement of dispatchable generation due to environmental policy and economics; and significant supply chain and permitting frictions that have extended the time required to bring new resources online.”
Data centers are the primary drivers of rising electricity consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA expects electricity demand to grow by 1% in 2026 and 3% in 2023, potentially outpacing new energy supply.
“The result is a transition from an era of managing surplus to an era of managing scarcity,” the memo continues, highlighting long lead times on new energy developments. “Construction timelines have doubled,” the report continues. “Today, a new natural gas turbine plant – the reference technology for the capacity market – requires at least four years under optimistic assumptions from financial investment decision to commercial operation.”
Permitting requirements contribute considerably to long development times. The average environmental review takes over fouryears to complete, according to the Council on Environmental Quality.
PJM’s white paper highlights three paths toward keeping the grid solvent.
Path A aims to stabilize markets “through long-term forward commitments either through mandatory Load Serving Entity (LSE) hedging requirements or through a PJM-administered, long-term procurement, such as a tiered, multiyear capacity market.”
LSE is a catchall term for any authorized seller of electricity to its principal users.
Alternatively, PJM’s Path B institutes differential reliability.
“This could be implemented geographically (different states or zones procuring different levels of reliability) or by customer class (for example, with residential and native loads insulated from curtailment while unbacked new large load additions are curtailed first),” the memo notes.
Under the differential reliability model, data centers using preexisting supply would be subject to throttling during periods of high demand. Residential consumers who contributed to existing supply would be prioritized for output.
Path C aims to partially transition grid use to a supply-and-demand pricing model, while maintaining long-term contract optionality. PJM would “pursue a deliberate, phased shift of revenue recovery from the capacity market” combined with “long-term forward energy contracting requirements to protect consumers from increased energy price volatility and to support investment.”
“Constrained supply” is at the heart of PJM’s complaints. This shortage largely stems from the many regulatory reviews required to break ground on energy developments, according to the Consumer Energy Alliance.
The Trump administration has employed statutory actions to cut regulation and expedite permitting, notably overturning the Obama-era endangerment finding that allowed for federal regulation of carbon emissions.
These actions have not been made law by Congress. Though the House of Representatives passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act in December 2025 to modify the National Environmental Policy Act, the legislation is frozen in the Senate.
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On August 10, 2025, at approximately 5:26 a.m. local time, a massive landslide of more than 64 million cubic meters of rock and debris (a minimum estimate) collapsed from a steep slope adjacent to the retreating South Sawyer Glacier into Tracy Arm fjord.
On August 10, 2025, at approximately 5:26 a.m. local time, a massive landslide of more than 64 million cubic meters of rock and debris (a minimum estimate) collapsed from a steep slope adjacent to the retreating South Sawyer Glacier into Tracy Arm fjord.
A massive landslide in Alaska’s Tracy Arm fjord (near Juneau, in an area popular with cruise ships) triggered a landslide-generated megatsunami with a run-up of about 1,580 feet (481 meters) on the opposite fjord wall.
The landslide was preconditioned by glacial retreat, which removed buttressing support from the unstable rock slope.
It generated a megatsunami with an initial breaking wave roughly 100 meters (328 feet) high that crossed the fjord at speeds exceeding 70 m/s (over 150 mph).
The wave’s maximum run-up reached 481 meters (1,580 feet) on the opposite fjord wall—about 3.3 km across from the landslide source. This is the second-highest tsunami run-up ever reliably recorded, behind only the 1958 Lituya Bay event (~524–530 m / 1,720–1,730 ft).
The tsunami stripped vegetation and soil down to bare rock along large sections of the fjord walls, with run-up and erosion effects observed tens of kilometers away (e.g., up to 35 m at Williams Cove and 16 m in Holkham Bay). It was even detected on tide gauges as far as Juneau (~130 km tsunami travel distance).
Tracy Arm is a popular destination for cruise ships and smaller tour boats/kayakers, with up to six large vessels per day possible in peak season (some carrying thousands of passengers). The event occurred early in the morning, before typical boat traffic, so no injuries or vessel damage were reported.
Several cruise lines have since adjusted or avoided itineraries in Tracy Arm for safety reasons due to ongoing instability risks.
The landslide produced seismic signals equivalent to a ~M5.4 earthquake, detectable globally.
A long-period seiche (standing wave) in the fjord persisted for up to ~36 hours.
Researchers emphasize the need for better monitoring and early-warning systems for landslide-tsunamis in glaciated fjords, as climate-driven glacier retreat increases such hazards in Alaska and similar regions.
This event provides valuable data for modeling and hazard assessment in steep coastal environments visited by tourists.
This event, detailed in a landmark Science paper (published May 6, 2026), stands as a striking example of cascading hazards in a warming world.
A massive landslide in Tracy Arm fjord (southeast Alaska, near Juneau) on August 10, 2025, generated the second-highest tsunami run-up ever reliably recorded: 481 meters (1,580 feet).
A 481-meter-high landslide-tsunami in a cruise ship–frequented Alaska fjord
The paper “A 481-meter-high landslide-tsunami in a cruise ship–frequented Alaska fjord” (Shugar et al., Science, 6 May 2026, DOI: 10.1126/science.aec3187) is a comprehensive, open-access forensic analysis of the 10 August 2025 Tracy Arm event.
It integrates satellite remote sensing, DEM differencing, seismic/infrasound data, field surveys, eyewitness accounts, and numerical modeling. Lead author Dan H. Shugar (University of Calgary) collaborated with a large international team including experts from USGS, Alaska Earthquake Center, and others.
Core Event Parameters
Landslide: A rock wedge slide (~63.5 ± 2.7 × 10⁶ m³ subaerial minimum volume; total likely higher due to submarine component) from a slope adjacent to the South Sawyer Glacier terminus. Headscarp ~1,025 m asl; wedge geometry with planes dipping ~44° and ~46°. It transitioned rapidly into a rock avalanche, impacting the glacier and releasing large icebergs.
Tsunami: Initial breaking wave 100 m (328 ft) high crossing the fjord (>3 km wide) at >**70 m/s (157 mph)**. Maximum run-up 481 m (1,580 ft) on the opposite wall (~3.3 km from source), stripping vegetation/soil to bare rock and creating a visible trimline. Effects propagated tens of km down-fjord (e.g., ~35 m at Williams Cove).
Seismic: Main landslide equivalent to M5.4 (long-period waves detected globally). A distinct ~66 s period seiche signal persisted up to **36 hours** — only the second documented multi-day landslide-induced seiche observable globally.
This ranks as the second-highest reliably recorded tsunami run-up (behind Lituya Bay 1958, ~524–530 m, which was earthquake-triggered with smaller volume ~30 × 10⁶ m³).
Glacial retreat was the dominant preconditioner. South Sawyer Glacier retreated dramatically over decades (multiple km since the mid-20th century, with accelerated thinning of 11–19 m/yr in frontal zones recently). This “debuttressed” the oversteepened slope (previously supported by ice), exposing the failure plane progressively in July–early August 2025.
The paper attributes regional warming (and thus glacier retreat/snowline rise) overwhelmingly to anthropogenic forcing using climate model ensembles. Moderate rainfall preceded the event but was not extreme. No major tectonic earthquake trigger (unlike Lituya Bay). Smaller precursor slope failures occurred in 2017 and July 2025. No clear pre-failure creep/deformation visible in high-res imagery weeks prior — it failed abruptly.
Microseismicity: Increased activity detected regionally at least 24 hours prior, with exponential rise in rate/magnitude in the final ~6 hours (events every 30–60 s). Rate decayed 1–2 hours before failure, possibly transitioning to continuous slip. These were small, repeating stick-slip events
This pattern offers hope for monitoring but is challenging in remote areas with sparse networks. The paper highlights potential for improved early-warning via denser seismic arrays or real-time processing.
Researchers reconstructed landslide motion from seismic data and used it as a tsunami source in simulations. Models successfully reproduced observed run-up, wave speeds, and propagation, including energy splitting and amplification at certain shorelines. The confined fjord geometry focused energy dramatically. A long-lived seiche (standing wave oscillation) trapped in the fjord explains the prolonged seismic signal.
Supplementary materials detail methods (e.g., high-res DEMs from SkySat/WorldView, field RTK surveys) and include animations.
The study is exceptionally well-documented with before/after satellite imagery (NASA/USGS), figures, and supplementary data (including Zenodo auxiliaries). It balances rigorous geoscience with clear hazard communication.
Early in the morning of 10 August 2025, a >64 × 106 m3 landslide struck Tracy Arm fjord in Alaska. The landslide was preconditioned by glacial retreat caused by climate change. The resulting 481 m runup megatsunami followed an initial 100-m-high breaking wave traveling >70 m s−1. The landslide was preceded by several days of microseismicity, which increased in rate and magnitude until ~1 hour before failure. The landslide produced globally observed long-period seismic waves equivalent in size to a M5.4 earthquake. A long-period (~66 s) global seismic signal, produced by a landslide-induced seiche trapped within the fjord, persisted for up to 36 hours, the second time a days-long seiche has been thus observed. With fjord regions increasingly visited by cruise ships, and climate change making similar events more likely, this unanticipated, near-miss event highlights the growing risk from landslides and tsunamis in coastal environments.
The Santa Marta Conference (First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, April 24–29, 2026) represents a notable experiment in climate governance: a “coalition of the willing” approach that deliberately sidesteps the full-consensus paralysis of the UN COP process.
The Santa Marta Conference (First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, April 24–29, 2026) represents a notable experiment in climate governance: a “coalition of the willing” approach that deliberately sidesteps the full-consensus paralysis of the UN COP process.
The COP process, rooted in the UNFCCC, has delivered landmark agreements (Kyoto, Paris) but struggles with implementation on fossil fuels. COP28 (2023) introduced the phrase “transitioning away from fossil fuels” without timelines, targets, or enforcement. COP30 (2025 in Belém, Brazil) faced criticism for limited progress amid opposition from major producers and the influence of lobbyists.
Core problems:
Requires near-universal consensus → veto power for petrostates (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Russia) and large emitters.
Massive scale invites performative diplomacy, endless procedural fights, and dilution.
Blurs ambition with inclusion, often prioritizing lowest-common-denominator outcomes.
Heavy fossil fuel industry presence.
Santa Marta emerged as a response: hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands in a coal-exporting city, it gathered ~57 countries (representing ~1/3 of global GDP, mostly democracies) plus subnational actors (e.g., California), civil society, Indigenous groups, and others for focused, non-negotiated dialogue on implementation.
Over 1,500 participants across stakeholder dialogues. Described as “refreshing,” “groundbreaking,” and a shift from ambition-setting to managing decline.
This isn’t the first “club” (e.g., previous initiatives on methane, EVs, or subsidies), but it’s the most direct challenge on the core issue: fossil fuels. It highlights a maturing trend toward variable geometry in climate action—broad COP for norms/legitimacy, smaller groups for speed and depth.
Energy transitions are decades-long, capital-intensive processes driven more by technology costs, national politics, and markets than conferences. Santa Marta is a promising signal of political will among willing actors, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental physics/economics (intermittency, materials, grid, developing world growth) or geopolitics of energy.
It challenges the COP model productively without rejecting multilateralism.
Whether it accelerates real-world decarbonization—or joins the long list of high-profile climate meetings—will depend on follow-through in national capitals far more than declarations in Santa Marta.
The next conference in Tuvalu (vulnerable island nation) will be a telling stress test.
The Breakaway Climate Conference Challenging the COP Process
Colombia and the Netherlands co-hosted the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels Conference in the coastal city of Santa Marta in Colombia from April 24–29. By Felicity Bradstock
Several state leaders praised the conference for its explicit focus on reducing reliance on fossil fuels and supporting a global green transition, particularly as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) annual COP climate conference has been increasingly critiqued for giving a platform to oil and gas lobbyists. The OilPrice.com has the story.
The UNFCCC has held a COP summit almost every year since 1992, with representatives from most countries attending. To agree on joint climate action, a consensus must be achieved among country representatives.
However, due to the participation of several oil-producing states, climate progress has often been stifled. While the summits have helped countries agree to transition away from fossil fuels, progress has been limited due to the lack of a timeline or blueprint on how this might be achieved.
During the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, the Colombian government announced plans to host a breakaway conference. The government stressed the importance of establishing a “coalition of the willing” to discuss how to make the green transition tangible.
The organizers of the new conference have been adamant in stating that the conference is not a replacement for the annual COP conference, but is, instead, a gathering that is complementary to COP.
The aim is that the conference provides an “innovative, horizontal dialogue that deepens democratic climate governance through meaningful and influential participation by countries and subnational governments, civil society, and other stakeholders.”
According to the leadership, “The objective of the Conference is to initiate a concrete process through which a coalition of committed countries, subnational governments, and relevant stakeholders can identify and advance enabling pathways to implement a progressive transition away from fossil fuels, creating sustainable societies and economies.
This process will be informed by the experience and perspectives of national and subnational governments, academia, Indigenous Peoples, Peoples of African Descent, peasants, civil society, workers, the private sector, and other key actors at different stages of the transition.”
The conference brought together governments from 57 countries – representing one-third of the world’s economy – to create practical, accelerated roadmaps for phasing out coal, oil, and gas.
The states in attendance included EU member states, the U.K., the COP31 co-hosts – Turkey and Australia, dozens of developing countries, and several oil- and gas-producing states, such as Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Angola, and Canada. China, India, the U.S., Russia, Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were all absent from the conference.
Bielefeld, Germany, has idled its fleet of seven hydrogen-powered garbage (refuse) trucks due to the lack of viable refueling infrastructure. This case, widely reported in early 2026, highlights ongoing practical challenges with small-scale hydrogen deployments for municipal vehicles.
Germany’s hydrogen refueling station (HRS) network has undergone significant shrinkage in 2025–2026, primarily due to chronically low utilization, high operating costs, and a strategic pivot by operators from passenger cars to commercial heavy-duty vehicles (trucks and buses).
H2 Mobility (Europe’s largest operator) reports around 50 publicly accessible stations remaining, down from over 80 two years ago and a peak of roughly 100–105 stations.
Earlier estimates in 2025 put the network at ~72 stations before further cuts.
This represents a net loss of dozens of stations through 2025, with a net loss of 31 stations in one reported year despite a handful of new openings.
Germany continues to support hydrogen via new funding schemes in 2026 for truck-focused stations and H2 trucks (applications open into mid-2026). However, critics point to this as continued subsidy of underperforming technology while battery-electric options advance faster for many applications.
Bielefeld, Germany, has idled its fleet of seven hydrogen-powered garbage (refuse) trucks due to the lack of viable refueling infrastructure. This case, widely reported in early 2026, highlights ongoing practical challenges with small-scale hydrogen deployments for municipal vehicles.
Seven trucks, total cost around €7 million (roughly €1 million per vehicle). Heavy public subsidies covered up to 90% of the premium over conventional/diesel equivalents (federal funds contributed ~€5 million total). The first truck entered service around 2021, with the rest added later.
The primary refueling station in Rheda-Wiedenbrück (~40 km away, 80 km round trip) closed at the end of 2025 as part of a broader wave of hydrogen station closures in Germany due to low utilization.
Bielefeld has a hydrogen station at the waste incineration plant, but it was funded under a program restricted to public passenger transport (e.g., buses). Bureaucratic rules prevent the garbage trucks from using it.
Trucks have a nominal range of ~300 km. The previous 80 km round trip already consumed a significant portion of that; alternatives (e.g., to Münster) would require 180+ km round trips, leaving little operational range and making daily routes impractical.
Even before the station closure, the trucks reportedly suffered high downtime in 2025 (out of service nearly half the time) due to maintenance and reliability issues typical of low-volume specialized vehicles.
Germany’s H2 network shrinkage:
Dozens of public hydrogen stations have closed or are closing due to low customer numbers, especially for passenger vehicles. Operators are trying to pivot to heavy-duty/truck-focused stations, but progress is slow.
Policy and economics:
This exemplifies “pilot project” pitfalls — high upfront subsidies for vehicles without guaranteed, flexible infrastructure. Battery-electric refuse trucks are increasingly preferred by many municipalities for simpler depot charging, lower operating costs, and better maturity for urban stop-start cycles.
Defenders’ view:
Early hydrogen projects are learning experiences; Germany continues new funding (e.g., €220 million announced for H2 trucks and stations in 2026). Proponents argue hydrogen suits high-duty, long-range applications if scaled properly.
Infrastructure fragility and regulatory silos can strand even heavily subsidized “green” assets.
While hydrogen may have a role in certain heavy-duty niches, cases like Bielefeld demonstrate why many fleets are shifting toward battery-electric solutions for practicality and cost-effectiveness in municipal waste collection.
The trucks remain parked as authorities explore options, including potential station modifications.
Battery technology, especially for electric vehicles (EVs), is a key arena in U.S.-China strategic and economic competition. It highlights differences in industrial policy, supply chain control, innovation approaches, regulatory environments, and resource strategies.
The most familiar races between superpowers are those involving dreaded killer weapons, but today the U.S. and China are engaged in another one involving a centuries-old invention that also improves life: batteries.
One year ago, the Chinese battery giant CATL announced that it had redefined the limits of electric cars by creating a battery that could power a vehicle for 320 miles on a 5-minute charge. And in March, the world’s largest EV maker, China’s BYD Auto, unveiled a car that could also be charged in less time than it takes to fill a traditional car with gasoline.
These Eureka! moments, much heralded by renewable energy champions, make it appear that China has leaped over the Energizer bunny and eclipsed the U.S. in a field Americans have long dominated. Coming on the heels of the billions the Biden administration poured into batteries and other green energy projects, the apparently superior Chinese technology raises questions not just about what the U.S. has to show for its spending, but also about larger concerns regarding America’s ability to compete with its main rival.
“Kamala Harris said the Biden administration spent $1 trillion on green energy, and if we’re now falling short in that area, one has to ask where the money went,” said Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a conservative advocacy group for rural energy communities. “None of it seems to have materialized.”
But the situation, as they say in Hollywood, is complicated. While China’s natural resources, economic structure, and ideology give it some advantages when it comes to producing EV batteries, that market is but a star in the sprawling battery universe. On the cutting edge of battery technology, which includes grid storage and backup along with classified programs, several experts told RealClearInvestigations that U.S. technology remains unrivaled.
An RCI look at the evolving landscape of batteries suggests that, given the immense resources the U.S. and China have poured into the technology, it is a good barometer of key advantages and disadvantages each rival superpower possesses. But the limits of that technology also mean it may never provide either side with true superiority.
“Mature Technology”
At its core, a battery still relies on what Alessandro Volta pioneered two centuries ago, when he produced a stream of continuous juice by separating discs of copper and zinc with material soaked in Mediterranean brine.
“It’s a very mature technology in many ways; it’s not a ‘new thing’ because there are no new battery chemistries,” said Mark Mills, the executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics. “To make lithium batteries, you always need copper and aluminum, and lithium of course, then you need the trace metals needed, depending on the battery type, those could be cobalt, nickel, manganese, or iron oxide.”
The challenge for battery innovators is how to pack as much power as possible into the unit, while also extending the battery’s hours and lifespan and reducing its weight and cost. Breakthroughs are always possible, but incremental advances are the norm, and a big boom could be years away.
“Battery technology is consistently improving, but the process is slow,” said Brent Bennett, an energy expert at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “We are used to computing power, which scales at 50 percent per year, or software, where advances seem to come every day. Batteries, and energy technologies in general improve at rates of three to five percent per year.”
But there are always new combinations and seemingly endless uses for them. At “The Battery Guy” website, for example, one can scroll pages of offerings under 16 different categories, from dog collars to voting machines, and 13 different “battery types,” from the familiar alkaline to “nickel metal hydride” or “nickel cadmium” and “pure lead.”
Most of these fall into the first of two battery categories, that of “SLI,” or “starting, lighting, and ignition.” But the real high-tech work in modern batteries is in “UPS,” or “uninterrupted power supply,” which is instrumental for data centers, backup power, industrial machinery, cellphone towers, and more, and it is here U.S. technology shines, according to several battery developers.
It is unlikely that batteries alone will ever provide sufficient power to back the grid for long periods of time if conventional sources falter. The world’s largest battery backup system, in Fairbanks, Alaska, is designed to keep the town running for up to seven minutes before backup generators can kick in.
China’s Advantage
All the recent stories about China’s dominance involve EV batteries, several experts noted. The featured players on that field are BYD Auto and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL), with its “Shenxing Superfast Charging Battery.”
When it comes to making EVs, China enjoys some undeniable advantages. The country possesses greater supplies of the critical ingredients for batteries, and it has also built greater refining capabilities to turn these elements into usable materials. Chinese companies also benefit from much cheaper labor costs.
In addition, the Chinese Communist Party labeled batteries a key component of energy policy more than a decade ago and has featured them in consecutive “Five-Year Plans,” the staple of Communist central planning. In that span, the EV and battery industry there benefited from an estimated $500 billion in state money that provided cheap land, tax breaks, subsidies, and more for battery makers.
The mining and refining that go into making EV batteries come with environmental costs that are of little concern to party leaders in Beijing, who are focused strictly on economic power. Similarly, the country simply tosses unsold products like EVs into fields to rot, potentially causing greater environmental damage.
Finally, there is the black, sulfurous cloud that looms over China’s manufacturing push. China’s EV and battery boom, like much of its industry, relies on coal for much of its power, and the country burns more coal than any nation on earth, accounting for more than half of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions from that source.
“Right now, China controls the supply chain and it is hugely subsidized,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a policy director at the conservative Heartland Institute. “If you control those markets, have cheap or even slave labor, and don’t care a whit about the people who do the mining and refining, if you have government support and lax standards like that it would be a surprise if you weren’t the leader in the industry.”
Not So Green
Despite China’s mammoth carbon footprint – it is now the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases – stories championing its superiority in renewable energy projects have long been a staple of those pushing green policies to combat what they characterize as the “existential threat” of global warming.
In 2010, prior to one of his many visits to China, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “the self-evident fact is that China will clean our clocks in terms of addressing the green economy if we don’t wake up to the opportunities and do the same.” Two years ago, a bipartisan group of mayors praised China’s green initiatives after a visit there, and last year, the New York Times hailed “China’s green triumph.”
Today, the EV batteries that have left many Westerners starry-eyed come with strings. There are U.S. firms that could match China’s steps, several experts told RCI, but they are unlikely to do so for a variety of reasons. These include the fact that batteries absorbing such jolts of juice wear down quickly, the superchargers these batteries require are rare, especially among car owners, and the EV market is faltering in the U.S.
“It’s an impressive feat,” Mills said of the Chinese announcements. “But it’s not unique. There are lots of people who can give you 60-plus percent of that in 20 minutes or less with superchargers, that’s not new. The problem is it is around 20 to 50 times more expensive than [charging] overnight.”
The cost of building an EV-charging infrastructure in the U.S. equal to what exists today for gasoline and diesel vehicles would be $2-$4 trillion, according to a 2024 report by the National Center for Energy Analytics. And that’s just for commonly sold EVs – building a supercharging infrastructure that could juice motorists for more than 300 miles in minutes would cost vastly more, Mills said.
The fact that China may be first in this area is more a reflection of its domestic economy than superior technology, experts said. China’s automotive system is in a more fledgling state than America’s and, lacking the infrastructure to power gas and diesel vehicles, China decided to take an electric route as it builds out. Something similar happened in the cellphone world in the 1990s, where Europe, lacking the continent-wide phone infrastructure of the U.S., used the gadgets much more widely than Americans, said Chris Antoniou, the owner of the EVERLAST brand and “The Battery Expert” who has spent a quarter century in the battery world and crisscrossed China looking at “hundreds” of battery-related businesses.
“I’m not surprised because you have a huge part of our economy backed by oil and gas,” he told RCI. “Plus, the world’s economy is also driven by that, plus the American auto makers slow played the transition. It’s a niche market and the only reason EVs exist is for green people and climate change.”
Bennett, whose PhD thesis was focused on developing large-scale batteries, agreed. “We still have world-class battery technology and technology development,” he said. “The problem is getting from a prototype to a commercial project, and that valley of death has been hard to bridge here. Profitable battery companies require not just good technology but also massive scale.”
Biden Bucks
The billions the Biden administration poured into batteries were intended “to boost the domestic production of advanced batteries and battery materials nationwide.” Yet, much of the money was directed to political allies in the green energy sector – some of whom lacked any experience in the field – while also focusing too heavily on EVs, according to administration critics and many energy experts.
Bennett echoed that view, while Turner said that for too long, climate has “served as a shield,” in which imputed good intentions can mask backscratching and failure.
Still, despite sectors like defense and grid storage where U.S. battery technology excels, one big question remains: Why hasn’t the money showered on green energy projects under Biden shaved the competitive edges China has achieved?
“We did spend oodles of money, and the One Big Beautiful Bill the Republican congressional majority passed last year maintained subsidies for both battery manufacturing and installing battery systems on the grid,” Bennett said. “But the U.S. should not try to force technology to be adopted or scaled in the way that China is doing. We need to give private markets the space and regulatory certainty to develop on their own and stop trying to use taxpayer money to ‘create’ new industries.”
Biden also left office with a regulatory system that made the toll over the bridge to market too high, burdens that do not exist or are easily waived by Communist Party officials in China.
“The regulations here are basically hostile to these sorts of industries,” Mills said.
The U.S. Scene
Just how big the gap between China and the U.S. may be depends, to some extent, on which expert one consults. For example, last month the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition released a report saying that, “for the first time, American factories have the capacity to supply 100% of future U.S. energy storage projects with American-made battery energy storage systems – including advanced power electronics, battery management systems, controls equipment, operational hardware, and specially engineered and fabricated steel enclosures designed for grid-scale facilities.”
The cutting edge for battery companies in the U.S. isn’t EVs. On EverLast’s home page, for example, it lists “cars, trucks, boats, powersports, fleet vehicles and generators” but not EVs.
In at least one area – military applications – Antoniou and others told RCI the United States is far ahead of the world. This has been true for decades, as when, during the buildup for the invasion of Iraq from Kuwait, U.S. Army tanks had cutting-edge batteries that allowed them to keep their place in formation without having to refuel.
Much of the Pentagon’s use of batteries is classified, but they are known to play a role in the drone warfare that has become part of combat in the Ukraine and Iran wars, and batteries are also part of high-tech weapons like the Navy’s “high-energy laser.”
The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment, but the Trump administration has also poured money into battery supplies and technology, trying to bridge the drone gap between the U.S. and China.
What’s Ahead
In recent years, when the conversation was dominated by fear of catastrophic global warming and NetZero policies to fight it, grid storage batteries were usually seen as repositories for energy produced by renewables such as wind and solar. That juice needs to get from the panels and windmills to the grid, and batteries are the main method of storing and moving that power.
But U.S. industries have multiple visions for grid storage batteries. It is a mistake to see these batteries, the size of shipping containers stuffed with cargoes of supercomputers, as only or chiefly coupled with renewables, according to Aaron Zubaty, founder and chief executive of Eolian, a Silicon Valley energy storage company.
He argues these batteries should also be used to augment existing grids, and Eolian has developed batteries that can store power already produced in non-peak hours and then feed right back to the grid when needed. Since it is cheaper to squeeze the most out of a fading power plant, including coal, than it is to build a new plant, batteries can also prolong the life of those diminishing producers.
Another U.S. company, Form Energy, is utilizing what it calls “iron air battery technology,” which it manufactures in the repurposed former Weirton Steel factory in West Virginia. Essentially, Form is rusting and then un-rusting iron, generating power in the process that it stores in batteries. The company has been able to ramp that up to industrial scale, and last month announced a 12-gigawatt deal with an AI company to help sate the gargantuan energy appetite of its data centers.
“Large scale energy storage is by far the largest sector of the energy storage market, and it can be the primary support for the main power grid,” said the Coalition’s executive director, Noah Roberts. “And there we’re still leading in innovative battery technology.”
Even China’s big advantage in the supply chain could be mitigated, according to energy executives. At last year’s RealClearEnergy Forum, Zubaty said he believes the U.S. could build its own lithium supply chain, and last week the U.S. Geological Survey announced a find of potentially 2.3 million metric tons of lithium, enough to power America’s battery industry for a century or more. Brandon Craig, recently appointed chairman of the mining conglomerate BHP Americas, proposed a kind of NATO alliance between North and South American allies that could capitalize on big lithium deposits in Chile, Australia, and elsewhere.
Expanding battery production outside of the faltering U.S. EV market is also a plus, Roberts said. Currently, the battery industry is concentrated in Appalachia – where most of the recent lithium discovery sits – the Midwest, and the Southwest, but the Coalition estimates close to $100 billion in private investment in battery development and production by 2030, which in turn could produce 350,000 jobs.
In other words, any perceived gap in battery technology between the U.S. and China is mostly one of priorities rather than know-how. The most important issue with batteries is always power generated, and it is the tradeoffs between performance and price that limit designers. It’s the difference in regulatory attitude and framework, meanwhile, that warps production.
“The question is the same for every technology: Why does it seem like none of the things we buy were made here even though we invented them?” Mills said.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
The US (slowing/stalling many projects) is making the smarter bet long-term; China’s massive overbuild is likely a costly mistake driven by central planning, not economics.
Two articles from the New York Times in the past couple of days describe the widening divergence between the approaches taken by the U.S. and China on the subject of wind energy. I apologize that these pieces are behind the Times’s paywall, but remember that I subscribe there so that you don’t have to.
These articles once again illustrate the extent to which the U.S. and its people are uniquely blessed in the world. Our biggest blessing is that we have been bequeathed by our forebears with the freest economy in the world, and with structural obstacles that make it very difficult for politicians to undo that. But almost as big a blessing is the total incompetence of our geo-political adversaries.
The May 4 piece about the U.S. reports on the latest gambit by the Trump administration to shut down wind power development. The asserted basis is national security, and particularly the alleged interference of wind turbines with military radars and flight paths. Excerpt:
The Trump administration is blocking more than 150 onshore wind farms across the United States by delaying military reviews that were once considered routine, according to a leading industry trade group. . . . [T]he administration has held up a large number of onshore wind projects under development on private land, citing national security concerns. These wind farms typically have to undergo a review by the Pentagon before being built to ensure that their turbines won’t interfere with military radar or flight paths. In the past, those reviews have been fairly straightforward, but they have ground to a halt in recent weeks, and the Pentagon has canceled some meetings with developers. “The Department of War is currently making it almost impossible to build a new wind project in the United States,” said Jason Grumet, chief executive of the American Clean Power Association, which represents renewable energy companies.
I do not know the extent to which the asserted basis for restricting wind power development is real versus pretextual. On the other hand, I would not be surprised at all to learn that wind turbines have at least some negative effects on military radars and flight paths. And evaluation of the extent of a real national security concern is something uniquely within the President’s responsiblities, with the courts having little power to second guess. Meanwhile, these 100+ wind turbine projects, if they have been undertaken in time to qualify for tax credits that have now been terminated for newer projects, have the potential to cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next couple of decades, for nothing of any value. The administration has done us all a huge favor by preventing these projects from proceeding.
Needless to say, the Times, and Mr. Grumet of the ACPA, don’t see it that way:
The stalled projects together would have about 30 gigawatts of electric generating capacity if they were built, Mr. Grumet said. One gigawatt can provide enough electricity for more than 300,000 homes, although wind turbines can’t produce power at all hours.
Somehow the Times and Mr. Grumet don’t see it as a significant problem that wind turbines only work about 30-35% of the time. You may have a different view as to your own home or business.
Then we come to yesterday’s piece about how China’s big bet on wind power is, supposedly, “paying off.” How do we know that? Excerpt:
Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast. Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric. The war has made China’s investments in wind look prescient. Its Asian neighbors, long reliant on Middle Eastern oil and gas, are struggling to secure fuel supplies. Meanwhile, China, with its massive reserves and modern electric grid, is better positioned to weather the energy crisis.
OK, they have wind turbines all over the place. There are several pictures accompanying the article depicting huge and hideous wind farms in China. Here is one of them:
But how do you know that these wind farms are “paying off”? Sorry, but there is no such thing as “massive reserves” of wind power. The wind blows when it feels like blowing.
So are all these wind turbines creating wealth or destroying it? In a market economy like ours, you get the answer to that question from profitability. If a project makes a profit after paying for factor inputs at prices determined by markets, then you have an excellent indication that the project is creating wealth. If the project loses money or requires subsidies to get built or to continue to operate, then you know that it is destroying wealth. So, how about the China wind projects? From the Times:
An industrial policy of subsidies and import restrictions laid the foundations for China to become almost as dominant in wind turbines as in solar panels. . . . Chinese manufacturers, led by Envision Energy, are also gaining ground in India. Buoyed by tax incentives and government support, the country vies with the United States as the world’s second-largest wind market, after China. . . . China’s state-owned banks keep the renminbi weak against the euro, making Chinese wind turbines less expensive abroad.
So the industry has grown massive based on “tax incentives,” “government support” [i.e., subsidies], “import restrictions,” and currency manipulation. In other words, they have no way to measure whether they are creating or destroying wealth. However, since the “incentives” and subsidies are apparently necessary for the industry to survive, the odds that the industry is creating wealth are nil.
This article does not mention anything about China’s parallel and massive expansion of its coal power plant fleet over the past two decades, nor does it consider the question of why all those coal power plants are needed even though all this wind power capacity has been built. China is building two full overlapping and duplicative electricity generation systems, one of which works all the time and the other of which does not. Somebody has to pay for both of them. You can hide who’s paying be concealing the cost in subsidies and tax incentives, but that does not change the fact that somebody is paying. So how does this add up to the wind turbines “paying off”?
The article does provide the answer to why China might be spending billions on this uneconomic endeavor. Xi wants it!
“Energy is a strategic issue in development — our pioneering development of wind power and solar technology has proved to be forward-looking,” Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, said in late March. . . . In a speech in July, Mr. Xi urged China to “promote the orderly and well-regulated expansion of offshore wind power.”
It looks like Xi is no better at doing basic arithmetic or physics than the morons who are in charge of climate policy here in New York. And in China, nobody dares to speak up and contradict Xi, no matter how obviously wrong he may be.
As I said, the U.S. is blessed by the total incompetence of its geo-political adversaries.
The article takes note of the fact that nobody in China is pushing back against the wind power expansion, despite obvious downsides:
The push has faced little public resistance because of strong government backing. Even though local residents complain, they have little power to stop projects from moving forward. “The noise from these turbines is quite loud,” said Wang Cuifen, who lives on a small farm outside Yancheng, near the base of towering turbines in a tidal zone. “They run nonstop from around 4 p.m. to 4 a.m., and it affects our rest.”
There’s nothing like a government that has no need to respond to complaints from the population. In the view of the New York Times, this is a good thing.
So, dear readers, you can place your bets on whether it is the U.S. or China that is making the right bet on the future of wind energy. My bet is that within about a decade, China will be taking multi hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars, of write-offs on its wind energy investments. Or, given that this is China and no loss of face for the leaders is ever allowed, it will be propping the industry up with ever increasing subsidies as its economy gets eaten away from within.
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