June 28th, 2024

• Stay up to date on all things energy by visiting the TEA Newsroom.
• America needs Affordable, Reliable, Clean energy security.
• New foes emerge in carbon bill fight: Oil refiners.
• Rare lizard’s endangered listings could slow drilling in the Permian Basin.
• Opinion: Biden’s LNG export pause hits Ukraine.
• Trump is still courting coal workers in Pennsylvania.
• SCOTUS halts enforcement of EPA’s plan to limit downwind pollution.
• Presidential debate gets heated on climate.
• Biden admin blocks controversial mining project​​​​​​​ in Alaska.

• Survey: 46% of U.S. electric vehicle owners have buyer’s remorse.

The issue: Numbers don’t lie. In fact, they provide a fairly accurate picture.

The Energy Institute annual report reveals that consumption and demand for hydrocarbons continued increasing over wind and solar in 2023. That’s good news for producers of domestic energy like natural gas, as well as for America’s consumers.

Why it matters:  The Statistical Review, published by the Energy Institute, provides a much-needed reality check to the narrative being promoted by major media outlets, academia and the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.

First, wind and solar just aren’t keeping pace, despite the media hype and billions of our taxpayer dollars invested.

Second, soaring electricity demand was, yet again, the big story in 2023. It is not expected to change this year or in the near future.

Numerical comparisons are essential ingredients in the debate over energy and climate policy.

Consider:

• Global hydrocarbon consumption reached a record high, up 1.5%.
• U.S. consumption of hydrocarbons fell, but still accounts for 80% of total primary energy consumed.
• Hydrocarbon use increased 3.2 times faster than wind and solar, despite global spending on renewables totaling $4.7 trillion.
• Renewable energy, despite a massive boost via subsidies for wind and solar projects, was at only 8%. Even combined with hydro, it’s still just 15%.

The Inflation Reduction Act provides tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for wind and solar in the U.S. However, gas-fired generation is still growing faster than those two sources combined.

Note that in 2023, wind generation fell despite the addition of 6 gigawatts of capacity. Why? The wind doesn’t always blow.

Bottom line: The EI Statistical Review underscores the need for natural gas today and tomorrow. Good thing we have more than a century’s worth beneath our feet. The U.S. again led the world in emissions reductions, thanks in large part to natural gas.

The issue: The Just Stop Oil’s recent protests at Stonehenge and PGA Tour Traveler’s point out the misguided rage of the climate activists. Disrupting people’s lives and livelihoods, in the name of climate change, is winning the radical group very few friends in the mainstream.

In fact, they are being labeled as an extreme protest group and may face a ban in the United Kingdom. One official there accurately said the group is “using criminal tactics to create mayhem and hold the public and workers to ransom without fear of consequence.”

Why it matters:

These radical climate change activists (in our view, terrorists) are actually harming their cause with this boorish and dangerous behavior. As a result, social media has not been kind to the group.

Just Stop Oil activists are simply low-level hoodlums who stormed courts at the Wimbledon tennis tournament in 2023, have interrupted numerous soccer games and most recently vandalized private jets at a United Kingdom airport in an attempt to target singer Taylor Swift’s plane (which was not at that airport).
In May, they smashed the glass protecting the Magna Carta at London’s British Library.

Consider:

• The group responsible posted this: “The orange cornflour we used will soon wash away with the rain, but the urgent need for effective government action to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of the climate and ecological crisis will not.”
• The storming of the green and the use of smoke bombs resemble tactics climate extremists have employed in recent months.
• Protesters also rushed the field at the Congressional Baseball Game. Just Stop Oil has also defaced or, at the very least, thrown soup at the glass coverings of famous paintings.

Just Stop Oil receives funding from a variety of sources, including donations, grants and private individuals, according to its web site. Most of it comes from The Climate Emergency Fund, formed in 2019.

Bottom line: Just Stop Oil’s method of advocacy is not to talk or educate; it is to disrupt and to destroy. Prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law is the appropriate response.

Just ahead of one of the busiest driving holidays of the year, gas prices once again started to climb. Over the last week, the national average for a gallon of gasoline increased 5 cents, now sitting at $3.50. This comes after 3 weeks of little to no movement from prices at the pump. AAA expects 60 million Americans to hit the road next week for July 4th, so prices could increase further.

Nothing is on the calendar for next week due to Independence Day!

Scheduling update: we will not publish a Common Sense Energy newsletter next Friday, our normal schedule will resume on Friday July 12th. Happy July 4th! 

“The U.S. is now the number one producer of oil and gas in the world, the number one exporter of natural gas, and that’s a good thing.”

— John Podesta, President Biden’s top climate official.