renewable energy Archives - The Pennsylvania Daily Star

Commentary: The Biden Administration Misleads the Public on the Vast Expanses of Land Needed for ‘Net Zero’

September 13, 2023 RealClearWire

The Biden administration is misleading the country about the amount of land that will be required to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The Department of Energy’s official line – echoed by many environmental activists and academics – is that the vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” This topline number translates into 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles.

Ohio Democratic Ex-Congressman Ryan Backs Liquid Natural Gas Hub in Philadelphia

April 21, 2023April 20, 2023 Bradley Vasoli

Supporters of exporting liquid natural gas (LNG) from Philadelphia got unambivalent backing from Democratic former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan at a state hearing at the city’s Navy Yard on Thursday.

The liberal ex-lawmaker who unsuccessfully opposed Republican J.D. Vance for the U.S. Senate from Ohio last year is now on the leadership team of the pro-natural-gas Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future. In that capacity, he appeared before the LNG Export Task Force to strongly urge the creation of an LNG terminal at the Port of Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania’s Largest Coal Plant Closure Shows Effect of Coming De Facto Carbon-Tax

April 10, 2023April 9, 2023 Bradley Vasoli

In July, the Homer City Generation LP Plant, Pennsylvania’s biggest coal-fired energy creator, will be taken offline, meaning 129 well-paying jobs will disappear in Pennsylvania’s fifth-poorest county of Indiana.

This event, say free-market advocates and fossil-fuel supporters, should admonish Keystone State policymakers not to let the commonwealth let its abeyant membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) become active. The pact involving a dozen northeastern and mid-Atlantic states entails de facto taxation of carbon emissions. Even pre-implementation, industry experts explain, preparation for RGGI is killing otherwise viable power plants.

Commentary: The Difficult Truths About Unrenewable ‘Renewables’

March 9, 2023March 9, 2023 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

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.

Commentary: Shifting Natural Gas and Oil Jobs to the Renewables Sector Isn’t So Simple

February 19, 2022February 18, 2022 RealClearWire

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.

Top Republican Pushes Probes Into Biden Administration Ties to Green Energy Interests

February 7, 2022February 6, 2022 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

The top House Republican on a key oversight subcommittee has pushed a series of conflict-of-interest probes into the Biden administration over its ties to the renewable energy industry.

Republican South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, the ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee on Environment, has probed leadership in the White House, Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demanding accountability for potential conflicts of interests since President Joe Biden took office more than a year ago. While committee Democrats haven’t cooperated with the investigations, Norman and Oversight Ranking Member James Comer have forged ahead.

“The people in the administrations have no regard for the office that they hold,” Norman told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

MidAmerican Energy Files $3.9B Renewable Energy Project with Iowa Utilities Board

January 22, 2022January 21, 2022 The Center Square

MidAmerican Energy announced Wednesday it filed plans with the Iowa Utilities Board to build a $3.9 billion renewable energy project in Iowa.

Wind PRIME would add 2,042 megawatts of wind generation and 50 megawatts of solar generation, a news release from the Des Moines-headquartered company claims.

MidAmerican estimates the project will create more than 1,100 full-time jobs during construction and another 125 ongoing full-time positions for operations and maintenance, along with $24 million in local property tax payments on wind turbines and solar facilities and $21 million in annual landowner easement payments. The company plans to complete construction by the end of 2024, if it receives IUB approval.

‘A Mad Scramble’: One Rare Mineral May Spell Doom for Electric Vehicle Market

December 26, 2021December 25, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Lithium — a mineral that is key for electric car batteries — continues to rise in price, jeopardizing the ongoing transition to renewable energy outlined by Western governments.

The cost of lithium has skyrocketed more than 250% over the last 12 months, hitting its highest level ever, according to an industry index from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. While the cost of manufacturing a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle (EV) has fallen sharply over the last decade, the decline has slowed in recent months due to rising lithium costs.

The average cost of an EV battery pack fell to $157 per kilowatt hour, a measure of energy capacity, in 2021, the Department of Energy said in October. That means a typical EV battery is between $6,000 and $7,000, a BloombergNEF analysis showed.

Environmentalists Are Blocking the U.S. from Controlling Its Renewable Energy Future, Experts Say

December 14, 2021December 13, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Regulations pushed by environmentalists for decades have hamstrung the American mining industry, making the U.S. renewable energy needs increasingly dependent on foreign adversaries, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Extensive permitting processes under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) make it extremely difficult to open mining projects in less than a decade, according to experts. The nation’s weakness in producing minerals required for technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles and wind turbines has set it far behind the likes of China and Russia which have secured burgeoning green energy supply chains.

Big Oil CEOs Thumb Nose at Green Energy Transition, Say Fossil Fuels Still Have ‘Essential Role’

December 8, 2021December 7, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Mike Worth, Darren Woods and Amin Nasser

Executives of major oil companies slammed the aggressive global push to renewable forms of energy and warned that such policies could crash economies.

Crude oil and natural gas continue to be key to the world economy’s health and cannot be discounted, CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Halliburton and Saudi Aramco said during the ongoing World Petroleum Congress in Texas on Monday. The executives agreed that climate change should be addressed, but not to the detriment of current energy needs.

“I understand that publicly admitting that oil and gas will play an essential and significant role during the transition and beyond will be hard for some,” Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said during his remarks at the summit, the Financial Times reported. People “assume that the right transition strategy is in place. It’s not,” Nasser said, Reuters reported. “Energy security, economic development and affordability are clearly not receiving enough attention.”

Analysis: Many Environmentalists Oppose Nuclear Energy Despite Its Reliability, Carbon-Free Footprint

November 15, 2021November 14, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Expanding U.S. nuclear power — an energy source that many environmentalists and lawmakers oppose — could be the most reliable way to achieve a carbon-free electricity grid, according to experts.

Nuclear energy is considered a renewable energy source because it produces zero emissions through fission, the process of splitting uranium atoms, according to the Department of Energy. Currently, nuclear accounts for about 9% of total U.S. energy consumption, slightly less than all other renewable energy sources combined and coal, government data showed.

Environmentalists Are Making Putin Stronger Than Ever

November 4, 2021November 3, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

U.S. environmental policies pushed by the Biden administration and aimed at dramatically curbing domestic fossil fuel production have given Russian President Vladimir Putin more power on the world stage.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has blocked domestic pipelines, ditched drilling projects, proposed sweeping regulations on the fossil fuel industry and attempted to ban oil and gas leases on federal lands while pledging to decarbonize the grid by 2035. But Biden has also turned to the Middle Eastern oil cartel the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia, asking the countries to increase their production of oil and natural gas respectively.