There can be no doubt now that the UK’s electricity system is increasingly fragile. Will the consumer accept the extremely high costs of addressing renewable energy problems in order to secure this fragile electricity system? Or would they prefer a major policy rethink? In an earlier post, this blog has noted the evident concern of […]

Every year, 7 million people die from an airborne pollutant known as particulate matter. It’s not something that many of us think about, myself included. But on a recent trip to Tanzania I came face to face with this silent killer. A Masai family whom we visited used a small wood fire as their only […]

The collapse of new wind projects in Germany is showing the way forward on renewable energy; the US wind industry should be ready for headwinds. On Monday, the Seattle City Council passed a resolution that adds the city to the list of municipalities that have committed to a local version of the Green New Deal. More than […]

Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic. Democrats dream of powering society entirely with wind and solar farms combined with massive batteries. Realizing this dream would require the biggest expansion in mining the world has seen and would produce huge quantities of waste. “Renewable […]

The shale revolution is a major reason for America’s basic strategic realignment away from the Middle East and towards Eurasia in our new multipolar era. In theory, we all know that major technical revolutions change and fundamentally disrupt the face of the world we live in. In practice, analysts of all stripes are too often […]

Most of the additional 4 million bpd of crude from the Permian Basin over the next five years will have to be exported The shale revolution has demonstrably increased the production of crude oil from the U.S. and given the country the title of the world’s largest oil producer, even if it lasted only briefly. The […]

Presentation at the Heartland Institute’s 13th International Climate Change Conference, Washington DC, 25 July 2019 Presentation (PDF)

All told, renewables produce a small fraction of recent years’ increased production of oil and gas. Nearly all the Democrats running for the White House share two common talking points on energy: They loathe hydrocarbons and they love renewables. “We can and must build an economy free from fossil fuels,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has […]