5/30/2023

Energy Realism this past week looked at the huge demands that electrification will entail and how bullying fellow Americans into wind and solar is the ultimate in “unsustainability.” And let’s take this critical opportunity to introduce readers to our new sister site: Energy of the Future.

Jude Clemente got us started last week: greens should realize that for more wind, more solar, and more electric cars, a LOT more domestic mining will be needed. Fortunately, there is emerging bipartisan support for both mining and permitting reform, which will help these “green” technologies but will, sensibly, also help advance the oil and gas sector that meets 65% of America’s energy needs. Danny Ervin, for instance, brings home the bacon: the amount of new copper production, the “metal of electrification,” that our green dreams will require is nothing short of immense. Simply put, we need to produce a lot more of these metals, minerals, and rare earths here, or risk exposing ourselves to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party. And no matter what, if we’re trying to “electrify” everything to “fight climate change,” Patrick Gibbons realizes that greens must also realize we’re going to need a lot more nuclear power. Nuclear, of course, is our most reliable and cleanest energy resource, yet greens inexplicably oppose it.

Even more realistically, Nadia Schadlow looks back in time to give the electric car fantasy a much-needed reality check. Putting lots of pressure on our already fragile power grid could bring a lot more problems than electric car advocates apparently understand. But as Jonathan Lesser makes clear, “not understanding” is just par for the course for people that think only wind, only solar, and only electric cars are needed to “fight climate change.” In particular, they demand on bullying honest and hard-working rural Americans to allow tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines to be sited over state and local objections. As it turns out, people don’t want such dangerous things built in their backyard. Bullying over NIMBY is about as un-American as it gets and utterly unsustainable. That fact is a perfect segue to our Essential Reading this week from Robert Michaels. His reality check: “intermittent renewable power, primarily wind and solar, is a major disruptive influence on operations and investments, and some of its costs are not being borne by those responsible for causing them.”