Pennsylvania’s energy future isn’t only a question of renewables versus fossil fuels — it’s a question of whether the state can reliably provide enough energy to meet growing demand.
One problem is that power plants retiring is happening quicker than new, cleaner ones get built. The shuttering has been driven by state and federal rules to mitigate pollution, but getting projects approved and built takes years and years.
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Petroleum engineering is the highest paying bachelor’s degree in the United States, according to a report by Payscale, but despite an average annual salary of $97,500, oil companies struggle to fill positions.
The industry faces a number of challenges. Employees often face cyclical layoffs whenever commodity prices collapse, and that makes the jobs appear unstable. Young people today are also concerned about working in an industry they’re taught is destroying the planet.
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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 7 rescinded a Trump-era EPA rule which required the agency to conduct benefit-cost analysis of any significant new air pollution rules.
While it was in effect, the rescinded benefit-cost analysis rule required the EPA to identify the specific problem a new air pollution regulation addresses, explain why market alternatives cannot solve that problem and distinguish between direct and indirect health benefits that an air pollution emission is expected to generate. The Biden EPA will be able to more freely pursue its regulatory agenda against fossil fuels using the Clean Air Act after issuing a final rescission of the benefit-cost rule.
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Dozens of climate activist groups are pressuring the renewable energy industry to oppose permitting reform policies that would also support fossil fuel projects, in a letter obtained by Axios Friday.
The coalition of activists — primarily smaller, grassroots organizations — targeted the American Clean Power Association (ACP), a major renewables trade group, over its support of what they called “dangerous” reform proposals that would also benefit fossil fuels, according to Axios. The ACP previously supported the permitting reforms proposed in House Republicans’ Lower Energy Costs Act, and in late March signed a letter alongside a coalition of groups — including oil and mining industry players — calling on lawmakers to “modernize” permitting by the end of the summer.
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Today in America, there are obvious disconnects between observable reality and the narratives we get from the corporate special interests controlling the news we consume, along with politicians who are supposedly elected to represent us.
This is nothing new. Elites have defined America’s destiny throughout its history. The only difference today is that the internet, despite ongoing crackdowns, still manages to deliver an unprecedented volume of contrarian perspectives to millions of people. We aren’t any freer or less manipulated today than we ever were, we’re just more aware of it.
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President Biden’s nomination of Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard, to succeed David Malpass as World Bank president suggests that the Biden administration is prioritizing climate change over the World Bank’s founding mission of poverty eradication and economic development. This was made clear in the president’s statement singling out climate change as the most urgent challenge of our time.
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The just-departed polar vortex confirmed that when Mother Nature is enraged, it’s wise to have options. Maddeningly, today’s “pro-choice” Democrats want Americans to have one energy choice.
Neo-totalitarian, Left-wing eco-extremists are banning new natural-gas access in scores of locales. If not reversed, this cruel, stupid, needless policy will kill Americans.
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With the price of everything from gasoline to food soaring in America, nobody is surprised by inflated price tags these days. But even by Washington standards, an action taken earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency is creating sticker shock: a nearly fourfold increase in the government calculation of damages from carbon emissions.
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The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scoring system is undergoing intense scrutiny. It also has become quite a political football, with conservative governors, attorneys general, and other officials pushing back against the movement while progressive politicians argue that ESG needs to go further.
This political tug-of-war has exposed the evil essence of ESG: It is an attempt by progressives to arm-twist the leaders of investment firms controlling the allocation of over $20 trillion in investment capital away from firms disfavored by progressives, including, most notably, producers of fossil fuels.
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Investment groups in China and Europe intended to promote climate-friendly and social justice-related causes are funneling money into fossil fuel projects and companies associated with slave labor, a Bloomberg investigation found Tuesday.
China’s allegedly climate-sustaining investments have ballooned in the past couple of years since the Chinese government claimed they align with Beijing’s political agenda to revitalize rural labor, raise the nation’s prosperity and achieve carbon-neutral status, Bloomberg reported. However, ESG investors have stretched the definition of “Environmental, Social and Governance” investing to encompass investments in coal companies and firms tied to human rights violations in the Xinjiang province.
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The price of U.S. natural gas futures reached its highest point since 2008 as gas demand continues to spike amid the worldwide energy crisis and the passage of the Democrats’ climate bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Natural gas futures for November, December and January each surpassed $10 per million British Thermal Units (BTUs) on Monday, reaching highs that have not been seen since 2008, according to the WSJ. High prices are largely due to the strong demand for gas in Europe amid uncertainty surrounding Russian natural gas flows, the WSJ reported; furthermore, the Democrats’ new climate bill includes regulations that will hike expenses for natural gas producers.
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John Fetterman handily won campaigns for mayor of heavily Democratic Braddock, PA in the 2000s and 2010s and won two statewide Pennsylvania primaries, one for lieutenant governor in 2018 and another for U.S. senator this year. His history of opposing hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking” to extract natural gas didn’t burden him in those races.
But now the Democratic lieutenant governor faces a general election for U.S. Senate against Republican celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz. And although Fetterman now says he does not support prohibiting fracking, his past support for a fracking ban promises to complicate his appeal to working Keystone Staters on whose livelihoods fossil-fuel development depends.
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Pennsylvania state Sen. Gen Yaw (R-Williamsport) this week announced he is authoring a bill to bar any county that bans natural-gas development on county-owned lands from getting certain natural-gas revenues.
Specifically, Yaw’s proposal would prevent those jurisdictions from receiving allocations from the commonwealth’s gas-drilling impact fee, including any grants from the Marcellus Legacy Fund that finances regional environmental improvement projects. Revenues collected from the levy on companies extracting gas from the sedimentary rock known as Marcellus Shale totaled $234.4 million last year. The fee has brought nearly $2.3 billion into the state Treasury over the last decade.
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Try as they might to mitigate the severe energy crisis plaguing the U.S., the Biden administration’s attempt to shore up supply is a few wellheads short of an oil rig.
With gasoline prices averaging over $4.60 per gallon and several electric grid operators warning of rolling blackouts, increasing the supply of America’s most critical energy sources is vital. Fossil fuels account for 80% of America’s energy usage, yet the administration is intent on curbing oil and gas supply, cutting gasoline refining capacity, and making it more challenging to meet rising electric demands.
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Without sufficient support in Congress and state legislatures to pass sweeping green energy measures, environmentalists are now targeting the oil and gas industry through a financial movement that pressures companies to support liberal policies, according to critics.
“ESG promotes and implements policies through private businesses that could be adopted through a legislative process,” said Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks. “The Green New Deal didn’t make it through Congress, so its proponents shifted the battlefield to the capital markets.”
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Most state senators voted to end Pennsylvania’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) on Monday but fell short of the two-thirds needed to succeed.
In 2019, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) initiated Pennsylvania’s entry into the 11-state compact to reduce carbon emissions by charging power plants for their discharge in hope of counteracting global warming. Unlike most of the other northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that participate in RGGI, the Keystone State’s governor could not get sufficient backing from state legislators for Pennsylvania’s membership and thus acted via executive order. Republicans and some Democrats have argued Wolf exceeded his constitutional authority in rebuffing the legislature.
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A bipartisan majority of a Pennsylvania House of Representatives panel Monday passed several measures to increase fossil-fuel development in and exportation from the Keystone State.
One resolution, sponsored by state Rep. Stan Saylor (R-Red Lion) would call upon Govs. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Phil Murphy (D-NJ) to terminate their states’ bans on the building of new conduits that could carry natural gas extracted in Pennsylvania. Other legislation offered by state Sen. Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) would ensure that legislators must approve Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multi-state pact to which Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has committed the state by executive order. Implementation of RGGI entails effectively imposing a tax on carbon emissions.
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Republicans in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives this week introduced several measures to boost fossil-fuel production in the Keystone State, including a resumption of new state-land drilling leases.
Gov. Tom Wolf (D) imposed a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas development on state-owned areas in January 2015. A bill authored by State Rep. Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) would rescind that order and stipulate that all energy exploration performed under any resulting leases be subsurface. That means that the well site must be built off of commonwealth property and that underground channels would reach horizontally into the public lands, allowing for better environmental preservation than older drilling methods.
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Pennsylvania State Representative Stan Saylor (R-Red Lion) announced Monday he’ll introduce a resolution exhorting New Jersey and New York’s respective governors to allow construction of natural-gas conduits.
In 2014, Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo (D) banned hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) for natural-gas extraction and thenceforth barred the creation of new natural-gas pipelines. Last month, Hochul endorsed a statewide prohibition of gas power for new buildings, the first such state-level interdiction in the U.S.
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Within hours of taking office on January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order cancelling the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a plan to phase out natural gas and oil, eliminating thousands of family-sustaining jobs. At the same time, the Biden administration promised plenty of “good-paying” positions would be available in the renewable energy sector.
But the reality is that natural gas and oil jobs don’t easily transfer to the renewables sector, as a new analysis by Cicero, in coordination with North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and American Petroleum Institute (API), shows.
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The Biden administration altered the official federal policy on approving new interstate natural gas facilities and pipelines, requiring a climate consideration.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced that it will begin to “undertake a robust consideration” of the environmental justice impacts of such fossil fuel projects before granting approval, according to a fact sheet published Thursday. The agency, which is the top regulator of domestic natural gas infrastructure, said its new policy will presume projects that cause 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year will have a significant impact on the environment.
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Present-day warming has been termed a crisis, and modern economic development a cancer. But what if I told you that much of the recent advancement in human prosperity would have been impossible without the temperature increases of the last several hundred years?
A key to the sustenance of any society is food security. Today’s world should be grateful for today’s relative warmth as well as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels because both have been instrumental in propelling plant growth globally.
A review of human and climate history reveals a strong link between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of civilization—just opposite of what the climate doomsayers are telling you.
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Legislation disallowing local bans on new buildings’ use of natural gas passed the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives Wednesday by a vote of 118 to 83.
A number of major U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and New York, have prohibited the supply of natural gas to most new buildings. The sponsor of the Pennsylvania bill, Rep. Tim O’Neal (R-Washington) said that while local governments in the Keystone State haven’t yet officially barred the fuel’s use, some climate-action plans generated by state and local governments call for such measures.
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It has been a little more than a month since the United Nations climate meeting at Glasgow, yet global use of fossil fuels has increased rapidly.
For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled domestic oil projects and vowed to stop funding for international fossil fuel projects. But as fuel prices rose, Biden responded to his self-induced energy insecurity by releasing 50 million barrels of oil reserves and even called for an increase in domestic oil production.
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A prominent U.K. green energy group took over a firm dedicated to fracking for natural gas, vowing to halt all fossil fuel production and cancel further development, The Guardian reported.
The North Yorkshire-based firm Third Energy, which has been a major producer of natural gas in the U.K for decades, was acquired by Wolfland Group, a company that develops renewable energy solutions across the nation, The Guardian reported. Third Energy will now be led by Wolfland director Steve Mason, a prominent anti-fracking activist.
“The current energy crisis has shown that we must be energy independent as a nation and that fossil fuels need to be urgently replaced by clean renewable energy supplies, which will lead to cheaper energy and help us tackle climate change,” Mason said, according to The Guardian.
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Cecilia Martinez, a member of the White House Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ), announced that she would resign Friday, nearly one year after accepting the role.
Martinez explained that she needed rest and wanted to spend more time with her family in an interview with the Associated Press. She was in charge of crafting the White House’s aggressive environmental justice policy which had been lauded by climate activists but criticized by Republicans and the fossil fuel industry.
“It was a hard decision,” Martinez told the AP.
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The year is 2022. The place: a New York City so overpopulated that everyone is sleeping and dying on outdoor stairways. All sweating like pigs because of global warming. People have become unwitting cannibals because there is no more food. Elites still dine on delectables, but all that remains for the hoi polloi is the promise of a green wafer allegedly made of plankton, but in reality “It’s PEOPLE!!”
That’s the setting of the over-the-top 1973 movie “Soylent Green,” produced in the wake of Paul Ehrlich’s classic fear porn book The Population Bomb. Time has proven Ehrlich’s predictions of mass starvation due to population growth to be massively wrong. Ehrlich also lost his famous wager with the economist Julian Simon who predicted a more prosperous world. Still, Malthusian propaganda dies hard because it’s such an effective tool for social engineering.
“Soylent Green” is a random example, chosen because its year 2022 happens to be upon us. Certainly, dates and science used in science fiction have a heavy emphasis on fiction. The “Blade Runner” rebellion of genetically designed replicants was set in 2019. And, of course, Big Brother ruled in George Orwell’s 1984. Though much has come to pass, including genetic engineering and the surveillance state, there’s proof enough that we can’t predict the future with certainty.
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Low wind power generation is largely to blame for Europe’s ongoing energy crisis and scramble to import more fossil fuels, according to a Reuters report.
Wind farms across Europe produced just 14% of their capacity from July-September compared to the previous average of 20-26%, market data from Refinitiv showed, according to Reuters. As a result, European energy providers have been forced to purchase more coal and natural gas which have skyrocketed in price as demand has increased.
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Following his trip to Rome a few weeks ago for the G-20 summit, President Joe Biden expressed worry that surging energy costs would harm working-class families and urged OPEC and Russia to pump more oil.
Some noted this was a strange message to send to the world, since Biden was preparing for a climate summit in Scotland where he pledged to reduce carbon emissions at home.
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Environmentalists voiced support for President Joe Biden’s decision to tap into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) despite their firm opposition to fossil fuels.
“The Biden admin is taking effective action to protect Americans from oil price gouging. This is what reserves are for — defending our economy against disruption,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, a climate hawk and Green New Deal proponent, tweeted Tuesday. “Profiteering can’t go unanswered, especially as Big Oil makes billions and fuels the climate crisis through exports.”
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