Tag: Robert Bryce

Big Green Projects Hoisted By Their Own Petards

For decades environmentalists raised questionable, but often successful, objections to block mines, pipelines, nuclear power, and oil and gas operations.

Now, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet might say, they are “hoisted by their own petards,” referring to a small explosive device used in siege warfare.

From ClimateRealism

Vertical axis wind turbines generator farm for renewable sustainable and alternative energy production along coast baltic sea near Denmark. Eco power, ecology.
Guest Post by Craig Rucker and CFACT 

For decades environmentalists raised questionable, but often successful, objections to block mines, pipelines, nuclear power, and oil and gas operations.

Now, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet might say, they are “hoisted by their own petards,” referring to a small explosive device used in siege warfare.

In a bit of irony, the very legal and regulatory obstacles the Greens erected and deployed against fossil fuel companies they were opposed to are now coming back full circle to explode in their faces, blocking and hindering their beloved solar and wind projects. Even more poetically just, it has often been the “little guys” environmentalists have insisted they care so deeply about who are the ones wielding the weapons.

Energy expert and journalist Robert Bryce notes that farming families, small rural communities and Native American Tribes have rejected or restricted 35 wind and 58 solar projects this year, through September. Since 2015, these “little guys” have stymied a whopping 735 “renewable energy” projects across the USA.

Rural and coastal communities know those installations will be in their backyards. They apparently don’t want them impacting croplands and habitats, ruining scenic vistas, pummeling property values, killing birds and other wildlife – and creating major fire and toxic gas risks from lithium-ion electricity storage batteries.

Who could blame them? The bad news for the Greens is these locals are challenging their beloved “climate-friendly” projects, using the environmentalists’ own legal roadmaps … and winning.

In Idaho, local preservationists opposed the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which would install hundreds of 700-foot-tall turbines within eyeshot of the Minidoka National Historic Site, where a World War II Japanese internment camp was located. They have been joined by local officials, the Idaho legislature, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and both US senators in demanding that the US Bureau of Land Management scrap the project.

The unprecedented defiance convinced a nearby county to implement a moratorium on wind and solar farms the Biden-Harris Administration wanted as part of its climate agenda.

In next-door Oregon, Native Americans filed lawsuits to challenge a deepwater offshore wind project – which arguably makes no energy, economic, engineering or environmental sense. Even liberal Governor Tina Kotek has now changed her position on offshore wind, and an October auction was postponed because no company was interested in bidding.

In California, local officials and landowners oppose the proposed 320-MW Seguro battery energy storage facility, after a series of battery fires in EVs and at battery factories and energy storage facilities.

Heading east, after a decade-long legal battle, Oklahoma’s Osage Nation forced wind energy developers to tear down and remove dozens of turbines, because they had not obtained leases or permits to install the turbines and power lines on Native lands beforehand.

In Wisconsin, the Engelstad family and other locals are battling the Koshkonong solar project near Christiana, Wisconsin. It would blanket 6,400 acres (10 sq mi) of prime agricultural land and put a 667-MWh battery storage system hundreds of feet from an elementary school.

Along the Atlantic coast, multiple groups have helped to cancel the Ocean Wind 1 and 2 projects (NJ), put Atlantic Shores North and South (NJ) under pressure, make Skipjack Wind (MD) less promising, and subjected Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind and other offshore wind projects to litigation over harm to endangered whales.

Multi-hundred-mile transmission lines – including the Grain Belt Express (Kansas-Missouri-Illinois-Indiana) and Piedmont Reliability (Pennsylvania-Maryland-Virginia) – also face intense pushback.

The list of delayed, cancelled or stymied projects goes on and on.

Local residents, developers, regulators, permitting agencies and insurers are rightly concerned about the impacts of so-called “green” energy.  It is they who must consider its major issues that have received scant scrutiny in the past. They must address questions such as what to do with the thousands of solar panels or hundreds of wind turbines get worn out after 20 years … or maybe destroyed by hail, tornados or hurricanes. It is they who must figure out who pays for dismantling, removing and disposing the trash, and in whose backyard do those billions of pounds of trash go.

Case in point, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird recently sued a waste disposal company for failing to cut up, transport, recycle and otherwise properly dispose of 1,300 broken and decommissioned wind turbine blades, which the company simply left piled up at multiple locations across the state.

As green ventures collapse, there’s a reckoning environmentalists must come to grips with – they no longer have the public trust. They will have to make their case to state and local officials who, to quote Shakespeare, will determine whether green energy projects are “to be, or not to be.”  This may become much more difficult to do.

This article originally appeared at NewsMax.

Rural and coastal residents delay, block green energy projects

Environmentalists insist that they love the “little guys” — until they get in their way, ask inconvenient questions or try to block renewable energy projects intended to save the planet from “human-caused climate cataclysms.”

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

Environmentalists insist that they love the “little guys” — until they get in their way, ask inconvenient questions or try to block renewable energy projects intended to save the planet from “human-caused climate cataclysms.”

Then the little people learn the environmentalists are really working with wind and solar energy companies, public utilities, finance giants, politicians and bureaucrats — the climate-industrial complex. Stand in its way, and farmers, rural communities and American Indian groups can face protracted, expensive battles. But they often emerge victorious.

Energy analyst and journalist Robert Bryce reports that these little guys have rejected or restricted 735 U.S. wind and solar projects since 2015, including 58 solar and 35 wind proposals so far this year. Transmission lines, grid-scale batteries and other plans also face growing resistance.

Rural Americans don’t want these huge installations destroying their traditional way of life, hurting property values, raising electricity rates, wrecking vital croplands and habitats, ruining scenic vistas, killing birds, bats and other wildlife — and creating serious fire and toxic gas risks from lithium-ion electricity storage batteries.

They don’t want their countryside dotted with landfills piled high with billions of tons of broken and obsolete solar panels, wind turbine blades and other trash.

The proposed projects are daunting in their number and scale, and the dream of transitioning the United States from fossil fuels to an all-electric energy, transportation and industrial system would require vastly more.

Before being scaled back in a failed effort to reduce local and state opposition, the Lava Ridge Wind Project would have installed 400 huge turbines on some 200,000 acres of federal land in Idaho. That’s 310 square miles, over 4½ times the area of the District of Columbia. Most of its output would go to California, which already imports nearly one-third of its electricity.

The Koshkonong solar project near Christiana, Wisconsin, would cover 6,400 acres (10 square miles) and put a 667-megawatt-hour battery storage system near an elementary school.

The Biden-Harris administration’s plan for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy translates into 2,500 12-megawatt turbines rising 850 feet above the waves. But all those turbines wouldn’t provide enough electricity (31,541 MW) to power New York state on a hot summer day if the wind blows.

The state’s plan is to spend $2 billion for 24,000 MWh of backup batteries for windless or sunless days, which would provide enough electricity to run the state for barely 45 minutes. Sufficient batteries would cost trillions.

Each offshore blade is 350 feet long and weighs 140,000 pounds; 2,5000 turbines would mean almost 500 miles of blades weighing more than 1 billion pounds. Imagine the cleanup and landfill costs after a major hurricane.

Yet a 2020 Princeton University report called for massively expanding U.S. wind and solar capacity to fight climate change and rebuild America.

As Mr. Bryce points out, however, those plans would require solar projects blanketing an area the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined — plus wind installations sprawling across lands equal to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

That’s without factoring in wind and solar power needed to charge grid-scale backup batteries to store enough electricity to power America for even a day or week of windless, sunless days.

Other projects are equally enormous, expensive and fanciful.

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to build a pipeline to carry carbon dioxide from 57 ethanol plants in five states — and inject the carbon dioxide into geologic formations beneath North Dakota. The company can provide no guarantees that the pressurized gas will stay in the ground and not erupt suddenly and violently, killing wildlife and people by rapidly replacing breathable air — as a natural carbon dioxide reservoir did at Cameroon’s Lake Nyos in 1986.

hy are you trying to end local land-use controls, take our property via eminent domain and destroy small local and minority businesses to build these enormous projects?

• How will ruining our wild and agricultural areas, killing wildlife and reducing our living standards do any good if China and India alone emit 38% of the world’s greenhouse gases (vs. 11% by the U.S.) and are building coal-fired generating plants every week?

Proud, principled resistance is essential if citizens are to defend their jobs, lands, living standards and freedoms.

• Paul DriessThe cumulative impacts of these wind, solar, battery, transmission line and other projects would be incalculable — on land, wildlife, families, budgets and human health.

Adding to the cost, construction and raw material requirements, home, neighborhood and regional grids would have to be expanded and upgraded to handle the ballooning electricity demands and the surges and plummets associated with unpredictable, weather-dependent wind and solar power.

This is all irrelevant to those in the climate-industrial complex, who want to extol the “pivotal role” they are playing in driving America’s “renewable energy transformation,” meeting arbitrary greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and preventing “climate catastrophes.”

Property rights advocate Tom DeWeese says concerned citizens can fight back by asking tough questions about these policies and projects.

For example:

• What benefits has our community received from the solar and wind farms we already have, and from the taxpayer subsidies and increased rates we already have to pay?

This article originally appeared at The Washington Times

Industrial Wind Power: A Depleting Resource?

The New York Times article, “As Solar Power Surges, U.S. Wind Is in Trouble” (June 4, 2024), discussed the problems of wind problems, such as site depletion. But the article has nary a quotation, much less mention, from the legion of critics of the aged, doomed technology for economical, reliable grid power.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Getting wind projects built is getting a lot harder. The low-hanging fruit, the easier access places are gone.” (Sandhya Ganapathy, EDP Renewables North America, quoted below)

The New York Times article, “As Solar Power Surges, U.S. Wind Is in Trouble” (June 4, 2024), discussed the problems of wind problems, such as site depletion. But the article has nary a quotation, much less mention, from the legion of critics of the aged, doomed technology for economical, reliable grid power.

In order of appearance, the seven chosen by authors Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich were:

Trevor Houser, Rhodium Group; Sandhya Ganapathy, EDP Renewables North America; Matthew Eisenson, Columbia University; Ben Haley, Evolved Energy Research; Michael Thomas, energy writer; John Hensley, American Clean Power Association; Ryan Jones, Evolved Energy Research.

Where were the real critics on industrial wind’s cost, aesthetics, health, and ecological issues? Conspicuously missing was Robert Bryce, whose renewable rejection database bank lists nearly 700 delayed or cancelled wind and solar projects.

Why not include a perspective from an energy specialist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute or the Institute for Energy Research? Cato’s Travis Fisher?

At the grassroots level, why not interview Lisa Linowes, Kevon Martis, or Sherri Lang? What about the North American Platform Against Windpower or National Wind Watch. Pick just one of fifty wind-opposed organizations that represent grassroots environmentalism, not Big Green. [1]

The article talks about cost inflation, but what is the all-in cost of wind and solar versus power generated by a natural gas combined cycle plant? How much is the government subsidy? What are the costs of offshore wind versus onshore? Tell us about the avian mortality problem and the infrasound issue of ill-sited, in-service wind turbines? And what are wind subsidies adding to the federal budget deficit and need to inflate the money supply to pay for it (wind counterfeiting?)?

The gist of the article is that wind is great and Net Zero inviolate–but the industry has run into various issues that have shifted the (government-enabled) energy “transition” to solar and batteries. More government is needed, the article implies, such as building out (uneconomic) transmission. “… a growing backlash against new projects in many communities” is mentioned almost as an aside.

Some quotations from the article follow:

The country is now adding less wind capacity each year than before the [Inflation Reduction Act] was passed.

Some factors behind the wind industry’s recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities.

If wind power continues to stagnate, that could make the fight against global warming much harder…. A boom in solar power alone, which runs only in daytime, isn’t enough.

… wind power is much more sensitive to location. Wind turbines in a gusty area can generate eight times as much electricity as turbines in an area with just half the breeze…. That means developers can’t just build wind farms anywhere.

In the United States, the best places for wind tend to be in the blustery Midwest and Great Plains. But many areas are now crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects.

“Getting wind projects built is getting a lot harder,” said Sandhya Ganapathy, chief executive of EDP Renewables North America, a leading wind and solar developer. “The low-hanging fruit, the easier access places are gone.”

Because they can reach the height of skyscrapers, wind turbines are more noticeable than solar farms and often attract more intense opposition from local communities. In Idaho, the entire State Legislature has opposed a new wind farm that would be visible from a World War II historic site. A few years ago, hundreds of residents were arrested on Oahu, Hawaii, for blocking the construction of a relatively small wind project.

Across the country, hundreds of local governments have restricted or banned wind or solar projects. If a county blocks a solar array, a developer might be able to move next door. But it’s not always as easy to find a new location for wind farms. [Where is Robert Bryce?]

Wind turbines are more visible than solar farms and often attract more intense opposition.

The wind industry has also been hampered by soaring equipment costs after the pandemic wrecked supply chains and inflation spiked. The cost increases have been devastating for offshore wind projects in the Northeast, where developers have canceled more than half the projects they planned to build this decade.

Wind isn’t languishing only in the United States. While a record 117 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online last year globally, virtually all of that growth was in China. In the rest of the world, developers weren’t installing wind turbines any faster than they were in 2020.

If wind power can’t expand as quickly as many proponents hope, the United States would need to rely much more heavily on other technologies that can supply carbon-free power throughout the day, such as new nuclear reactors or advanced geothermal power. But those technologies are still in earlier stages of development and are currently more expensive than wind. [Early stages of development? Just the opposite]

…some experts argue that the recent slowdown is only a temporary artifact of tax policy. It can take years to develop a wind farm and most companies had raced to finish projects by the end of 2021, which is when the last big federal tax credit for wind power was set to expire.

Many experts say federal legislation is still needed to ease the process of building high-voltage transmission lines. But that’s unlikely to happen in a sharply divided Congress.

Final Comment

Little doubt that authors authors Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich are under pressure from the New York Times nation to put wind power in the best light possible, while gingerly pointing out its problems. But the fact is that dilute, intermittent, land/seascape intensive industry wind turbines are bad economics and bad ecology. But the narrative must not be shaken too much, particularly in an election year when “the earth hangs in the balance.”

[1] Allegheny Treasures, Keyser, W. Va.; Allegheny Front Alliance, W. Va. & Md.; Allegheny Highlands Alliance, W. Va., Va., Pa., Md., & N. Car.; Altamont Landowners Against Rural Mismanagement, Calif.; Aspen’s Horse Ranch Preserve, Cle Elum, Wash.; Barbara Durkin, Mass.; Better Plan, Wisconsin; Calhan Wind Fraud, Colo.; Canyon Country Coalition for Responsible Renewable Energy, Ariz.; Citizens Against Wind Turbines in Lake Erie (CAWTILE), N. Y.; Citizens for Clear Skies, Ohio; Coalición Pro Bosque Seco Ventanas Verraco, Guayanilla, P. R.; Coalition for the Preservation of the Golden Crescent and 1000 Islands Region, N.Y.; Coalition for Rural Property Rights, Iowa; Concerned Citizens of Branch County, Mich.; Concerned Residents of Hammond, N.Y.; Columbia Gorge Audubon Society, Wash. & Ore.; Cumberland Mountain Preservation Coalition, Tenn.; Deepwater Resistance, R.I.; El Paso County Property Rights Coalition, Colo.; Flying M Ranch, Ellensburg, Wash.; Forest Ecology Network, Me.; Friends of Beautiful Pendleton County, W. Va.; Friends of Lincoln Lakes, Me.; Friends of Maine’s Mountains; Great Lakes Concerned Citizens, N.Y.; Great Lakes Wind Truth; Greenwich Neighbors United, Ohio; Health Care Professionals Against Commercial Wind in the Appalachian Mountains; The Heart of Henderson, N.Y.; Helderberg Community Watch, N.Y.; Howard County Citizens for Safe Energy, Ind.; Ill Wind, R.I.; Industrial Wind Energy Opposition (AWEO); Indiana Wind Watch; Kansas Wind Alert; Kent Conservation and Preservation Alliance, Kent County, Md.; Keepers of the Blue Ridge, N. Car.; Know Wind Organization, Ubly, Mich.; Lake Michigan P.O.W.E.R. Coalition, Pentwater, Mich.; Lower Laguna Madre Foundation, Texas; Laurel Mountain Preservation Association, W. Va.; Lucien Rosenbloom, N. Car.; Lynn Studebaker, Ind.; Mountain Ridge Protection Act Alliance, N.Car.; National Wind Watch; Neighbors Caring About Neighbors, Wis.; New England Wind Turbine Education Center, Vt.; No Union Beach Wind Turbine!, N.J.; No Wind Farm, New Castle, Ind.; Open Water, West Olive, Mich.; Partnership for the Preservation of the Downeast Lakes Watershed, Me.; People Against the Lake Michigan Wind Farm, Mich.; People’s Task Force on Wind Power, Me.; Porter Quarter Horses, King City, Mo.; Preserve the Sandhills, Neb.; Protect Our Lakes, Me.; Saint Francis Arboreal and Wildlife Association, Fla.; Save God’s Country, Pa.; Save Coteau Prairie Landscape, N. Dak.; Save Our Allegheny Ridges, Pa.; Save Our Seashore, Mass.; Save Our Sherman, Mich.; Save Our Tehachapi Mountains, Calif.; Save Western Ohio; Save the Prairie, Woodward, Okla.; Savoy Neighbors, Mass.; Selman Ranch, Okla.; Seneca Anti-Wind Union, Ohio; Stearns Wind Truth, Minn.; Stop Ill Wind, Md.; Swanton Wind, Vt.; Vermonters With Vision; Whitley County Concerned Citizens, Ind.; Wind Energy – Concerns About Rural Environment (WE-CARE), N. Dak.; Wind Energy Is a Scam!, Wis.; Wind Power Ethics Group, Cape Vincent, N.Y.; Wind Turbine Syndrome

THE GOLDEN AGE OF COAL

You wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers, but that is what we are living in. The recently-concluded COP28 conference touted a coming end to the use of fossil fuels, with coal first in line for extinction. But that isn’t happening. 

From The powerlineblog.com

POSTED ON DECEMBER 18, 2023 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ENERGY POLICY

You wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers, but that is what we are living in. The recently-concluded COP28 conference touted a coming end to the use of fossil fuels, with coal first in line for extinction. But that isn’t happening. Robert Bryce has the data:

The [International Energy Agency] expects coal use to rise by 1.4% this year and set a new record of 8.5 billion tons.

So more coal is being burned than ever before.

That increase shows, yet again, how difficult it will be to achieve significant cuts in CO2 emissions from hydrocarbon use. Mainly due to coal use, which accounts for about 40% of emissions from energy, global CO2 emissions will set another new record in 2023 of 36.8 billion tons.

So good luck with “net zero” by 2050, or any other date. Environmentalists in the U.S. and Western Europe have succeeded in prematurely shuttering a number of coal plants, but that is virtually irrelevant. It is China and India, along with countries like Indonesia, that are driving the coal explosion. And those countries don’t even pretend to be participating in a “transition” to wind and solar energy:

China, India, and Indonesia didn’t sign the agreement to triple renewables.

But in any event, even a tripling in energy from renewables–which isn’t happening–would scarcely make a dent in the world’s demand for fossil fuels, as this chart by Bryce shows:

When it comes to coal, supposedly slated for extinction by the world’s “greens,” the U.S. and Western Europe are irrelevant.

Some 204,000 megawatts of new coal-fired capacity is now under construction around the world. Of that 204,000 MW, about 67% is in China. To put that massive amount of new capacity in perspective, the U.S. currently operates about 205,000 MW of coal-fired power plants… In addition to the huge amount now being built, another 353,000 MW of coal-fired capacity has been announced, pre-permitted, or permitted. Of that 353,000 MW in the queue, about 72% is in China.

This chart shows coal capacity in existence, and on the drawing board. The U.S. could close all of our coal-fired power plants; it wouldn’t matter:

If people are serious about cutting down on CO2 emissions, the only rational solution is nuclear energy, because wind and solar don’t work most of the time and are ridiculously expensive. At COP28, many nations, including the U.S., pledged to triple their nuclear capacity. That’s great, but the reality is that coal is growing much faster than nuclear, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future:

Robert Bryce points out that Michael Bloomberg has donated more than $1 billion to a campaign called “Beyond Carbon,” which is trying to shut down 40% of all U.S. electricity production. There is no replacement for this capacity on the horizon:

Bloomberg and his allies at the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Earthjustice, are launching their campaign to shutter all of our coal plants despite numerous warnings from grid operators, federal authorities, and trade groups that the U.S. grid is facing serious reliability challenges.

For instance, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Willie Phillips told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in May, “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.”

The challenges are unprecedented because until now, no one has done anything as stupid as shutting down vast quantities of reliable electric power while having no plan replace that capacity, on any timetable or at any cost. But that is where we are now. Given that U.S. emissions are essentially immaterial to global CO2 emissions, in view of what China, India, Indonesia and other countries have in progress, one can only question the motives of those who want to cripple our economy and our children’s futures with pointless “green” mandates.

If you follow the first link above, it will take you to Robert Bryce’s Substack. You should sign up for his emails, too. You will learn more about energy policy here than from virtually any other source. Also, check out the paper Robert wrote for American Experiment, on the insuperable land use issues that stand in the way of wind and solar energy development on anything like the scale that would be required to try to replace fossil fuels.

Get Real on Energy Policy ( Bryce to US Senators)

Legislators and policymakers in Washington need a big dose of energy realism, an even bigger dose of energy humanism. Europe provides a case study for what not to do. Millions of Europeans are facing the prospect of a cold winter without enough affordable energy to heat their homes. Fertilizer plants and steel mills are closing because of high energy prices.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The imperative is put concisely in US Senate testimony by Robert Bryce in summary video above.  For those who prefer reading, I provide below a transcript and exhibits from the closed caption and screen captures.

Legislators and policymakers in Washington need a big dose of energy realism, an even bigger dose of energy humanism. Europe provides a case study for what not to do. Millions of Europeans are facing the prospect of a cold winter without enough affordable energy to heat their homes. Fertilizer plants and steel mills are closing because of high energy prices.

Europe’s price hikes are being caused by under investment in hydrocarbons due to aggressive decarbonization and ESG policies. Second, they’re being caused by over-investment in weather-dependent renewables, which has left the continent vulnerable to wind droughts. Just yesterday in Britain spot prices for electricity exceeded four thousand dollars a megawatt hour due to low wind speeds. Third, Europe is prematurely shuttering its coal and nuclear plants, and finally it is relying too heavily on imported energy and in particular Russian natural gas.

The implications of Europe’s price spikes include soaring inflation,
deindustrialization and increased burdens on consumers,
especially the working poor.

The knock-on effects could last for months or even years. Fertilizer made from hydrocarbons is the food of food. Numerous fertilizer plants in Europe and around the world are shutting down because of high natural gas prices. This will mean less food production and therefore higher food prices, leading to additional inflation.

The United States must not emulate Europe’s disastrous energy blueprint. We need energy realism. Energy is the economy; energy nourishes human potential. Hydrocarbons now provide 82 percent of our total energy and about 60 percent of our electricity supplies. The US today gets 18 times more energy from hydrocarbons as it does from wind and solar combined.

The myriad claims being made by climate activists, politicians and elite academics that we can run our economy solely on wind and solar and a few drops of hydropower have no basis in physics, math or history. Furthermore wherever renewables have been ramped up, as in Europe, energy prices have soared.

Senators, look at California where electricity prices are absolutely exploding. Wood Mckenzie estimates that converting our grid to renewables could cost 4.5 trillion dollars, or roughly $35, 000 for every family in America. How could such a staggering cost result in the just energy transition that we hear so much about?

Some Energy Realism: Since 2015 more than 300 communities across the country, from Maine to Hawaii have rejected wind projects. Over the past six months alone massive solar projects in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Montana have been rejected by local communities.

More Realism: Trying to convert our energy and power systems to renewables will make the US reliant on China for critical minerals like Neodymium, Dysprosium and Cobalt. Why is this okay?

Relying on renewables would also require building hundreds of thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines. But the November second referendum in Maine showed very clearly again that rural americans do not want high voltage transmission lines slashing through their neighborhoods.

Strangling America’s hydrocarbon sector by killing pipelines, banning natural gas, halting drilling on federal lands, electrifying everything, and never ending tax breaks for big wind and big solar will not solve global climate change. Instead those moves will turbocharge inflation, imperil our energy security, and impose regressive taxes on the poor and the working class.

Our economy runs on hydrocarbons and that will be true for decades to come. Staking our economy as Europe has done on weather dependent renewables amounts to unilateral energy disarmament
That will hurt us and benefit Russia, China and OPEC. Who will stand up for rural America and against the landscape destroying sprawl of wind and solar? Who will speak against the federally subsidized slaughter of our birds and bats by the wind industry? Expensive energy is the enemy of the poor; Who in the senate will stand up for them? Who in congress will stand up for the affordability reliability and resilience of our electric grid, which is being undermined by this senseless rush to renewables and the premature retirement of our nuclear reactors?

Where are the pro-nuclear, pro-energy realists?
Where, I ask you, are the energy humanists?

Postscript:  Complete text of Bryce presentation with images is at Innovationized:
What’s Causing the Energy Crisis?

ESG, the Demonization of Carbon Fuels, and an Unfounded Confidence in Renewables