renewables

Climate Dogma Killed Biden’s “Build Back Better”

by Michael Shellenberger A half trillion dollars to subsidize renewables would have raised energy prices, worsened inflation, and undermined decarbonization. But what do we do now? The centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda is dead. Senator Joe Manchin today announced that he could not support Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation which consisted of $1.7 trillion in new spending and would have added $158 billion to the national debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The largest component of spending, $570 billion, was for renewables, electric cars, and other climate change investments. Progressives, environmentalists, and Democrats are furious with Sen. Manchin, but it was their own climate and renewables dogmatism that doomed the legislation. Democratic Senators could have written legislation that expanded nuclear energy and natural gas, the two main drivers of decarbonization, which are strongly supported by Manchin, and Republicans, but instead investments went overwhelmingly to solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars. It’s true that there were good things in Build Back Better, and that one of the worst climate provisions, the Clean Energy Performance Program, was already removed. Build Back Better included a tax credit for existing nuclear power plants, funding for advanced nuclear fuels, funding for fusion R&D, and financial support for communities hurt by the transition to renewables. But the money for nuclear would not have made much if any difference to the operating of nuclear plans. Nuclear plants in California, Massachusetts and New York are being shut down, despite already being profitable, for ideological reasons. Legislatures in less anti-nuclear states like Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticult step in to save their plants when they need to. And higher electricity prices due to natural gas shortages are making nuclear plants in other states even more profitable. Of Build Back Better’s […]

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Energy Clarity: Our need for cheap, plentiful, reliable energy

By Alex Epstein From Center for Industrial Progress When making energy choices, there are three major criteria that need to be considered: 1. Is it cheap? Simply put, if you can’t afford energy, then you don’t have energy. 2. Is it plentiful? If energy is scarce, then many people will have little to no energy. 3. Is it reliable? If energy is unreliable, then you won’t have it when you need it. In other words, energy is only valuable to the extent that it is cheap, plentiful, and reliable. And to make it that way, we have to discover cheap, plentiful, reliable processes for generating energy. Energy is a process Energy is a process. Whether it’s coal, oil, gas, solar, wind, we describe them as materials, but they’re really processes. The materials are just one part of the process, but the whole process can include things like mining, refining, manufacturing, transportation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. And then you have to look at how the whole process adds up. When we see something in the marketplace being cheaper or more expensive that reflects the whole process. The general reason why certain forms of energy are not adopted is because the process to produce them is too expensive or it’s not reliable. Let’s look at some examples of this. Jimmy Fallon’s irrefutable case against “renewables” For this first example, I’m going to let comedian Jimmy Fallon do the talking. “New Scientist Magazine reported on Wednesday that in the future, cars can be powered by hazelnuts. That’s encouraging considering an eight ounce jar of hazelnuts costs about nine dollars. Yeah, I got an idea for a car that runs on bald eagle heads and Faberge eggs.” So you may be thinking, “Isn’t hazelnut energy renewable? Doesn’t it come from the sun? Isn’t the

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