The Wrong Kind of Energy Independence and Dominance

The Wrong Kind of Energy Independence & Dominance

Greetings,

I hope your June is going well, even if has been a bit too wet up front, and a bit too hot as it ends.

Rain is one of the sleeper impacts of climate change and extreme sudden rainfalls should not be looked at anymore as "one-off" events. Events like the recent one in West Virginia - 4 inches of rain in 30 minutes and several deaths from the resultant flooding - are happening all over the place. There is also the impact of non-extreme but steady rain, e.g. rainfall of some type for days on end. That may not cause flooding, but it keeps the farmers out of their fields. In some cases it prevents seeding and planting, in other cases it makes it possible to cut and bale a hayfield. It can lead to adverse impacts on yields and that can translate to economic impacts.

Rain is definitely our friend, and it is a necessary weather and climate event for societal and economic survival. But as someone said once "too much of a good thing is a bad thing". Everyone needs to realize that rain is falling in line with that.

Stay dry but also focus on resilience, and put rain on the list of things to think about as we continue to tumble forward into a different world under climate change.

Dan

P.S. It may be that you want to be only one among your friends and colleagues who reads my newsletter, so that you can impress them with the news and thoughts that you get from it. (LOL) But for anyone who puts a lot of work into creating a newsletter, it is all the more rewarding to know that more and more people are reading it.

So please pick at least one person in your network and forward this email newsletter to them with a recommendation that they subscribe and try it out. I would really appreciate it. :)

_____________________________________________________

If you were forwarded this email, click the button below to sign up to receive these Blog Posts.

Join Our Email List

______________________________

_____________________________________________________

Links to Past Issues:

Our Money, Our Mouths, and Our Climate

Two Guys Walk Into a Bar And Talk About Energy

Are you Ready to Test Your Climate Vocabulary?

A Different Kind of Message From the Climate Scientists

Climate Fiction and Climate Reality

Thoughts on Climate Descendants

Emissions as a Choice in Flying

The Forgotten Climate Holiday in April (not Earth Day)

Climate Change and the Snail Darter

St. Patrick's Day and Climate Change

Charging My Car in Manhattan

Step Into These Shoes Wearing a Climate and Energy Hat

Resilience Recognition is Rising - But There is That Other Thing

There is no "O" in Climate Change

It was an Instagram COP - And I am Finally OK with That

How to Talk About Climate With Your Crazy Uncle at Thanksgiving

Monty Python and Climate Change

What You Need to Know About NIMBYism

H mm..So How Much Did My Heat Pump Really Cost?

What it Means to Be a Climate Voter

The Climate Conundrum of Air Conditioning

Predictions Made About Utilities Made 10 Years Ago - How Did They Hold up?

My Vote For The Most Under-Appreciated Impact of Climate Change

10 Things I Should Have Written About

So I Went to the COP - Here Are My Top 10 Takeaways.

Efficiency and Clean Energy - Faster vs More

Efficiency & Clean Energy - More vs. Faster

It's Time For A Climate Vote - On the Record

Good COP, Bad COP .....Thoughts Before Glasgow

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

What I Should Have Written About

The Serenity of Being a Climate Voter

_____________________________________________________

Some Things That Caught My Eye

How the Six Truths of Climate Change Affect People’s Actions

The Yale Center on Climate Communications is out with new research that focuses on the role that six key truths about climate change can play a role in predicting attitudes and actions:

It’s real (Climate change is happening)

It’s us (Human activity is causing climate change)

Experts agree (There is a scientific consensus about human-caused climate change)

It’s bad (Climate change harms people)

Others care (Most people are concerned about climate change and support action)

There’s hope (Actions can be taken to limit the harm)

The report goes on to discuss how to translate these findings into climate communications.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-025-03934-3?utm_source=Yale+Program+on+Climate+Change+Communication&utm_campaign=e7f331fe12-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_06_09_03_40&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-e7f331fe12-711374645#Abs1

Something I Never Thought of – Someone Wanting to Become a Weather Superpower

While the U.S. may be shedding climate-related science activities, and pulling back severely on what NOAA does, another country sees filling that void as a business and diplomacy opportunity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-12-11/china-is-planning-to-become-a-weather-superpower?cmpid=BBD061625_GREENDAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=250616&utm_campaign=greendaily

This Seems Like Something Other Than Your Usual Gathering on Energy and AI

There was an event in DC on June 16^th that rounded up a significant cast of players.

Two UAE companies are convening the ENACT ("energy and action") summit alongside the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank.

· One is XRG, a large energy investor launched in late 2024 and wholly owned by UAE state oil and gas giant ADNOC. The other is UAE-based AI and tech investor MGX.

· The other is ADNOC CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who's also UAE minister of industry and advanced tech, will host.

DOE head Chris Wright is expected to attend.

Top names from the world of Oil & Gas, Tech, Electricity, Finance and Investment, and Government. These events don’t normally produce specific results, but reports are this one may be different.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/press-releases/atlantic-council-xrg-and-mgx-to-host-ai-and-energy-summit-on-june-16/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&stream=top

The National Weather Service Just Gave This State its First Ever Heat Advisory

This state has also had the highest increase in average temperature (7 degrees F last time I looked) demonstrating that the average rise you hear about (1.5 – 3.0) will actually be different in different places.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/weather/alaska-heat-warning-fairbanks-forecast.html

Administration Calls for Generation That is “Impactful” to Have Priority

A word like impactful can certainly be in the eye of the beholder. But new messaging from the Department of Energy is that they want electricity projects that will immediately and definitely address rising electricity demand on a 24 hour basis to be given a higher priority when it comes to the to the line of requests to interconnect to the grid.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-wright-house-baseload-wind-solar-reliability/750421/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue: 2025-06-11 Utility Dive Load Management %5Bissue:74004%5D&utm_term=Utility Dive: Load Management

More on Those Little Ones Heading North

In my last newsletter I included a blurb on northward migration of various things. The article is more of a deep dive on perhaps the most dangerous one – Ticks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/well/ticks-climate-change.html

Don’t Think There isn’t an Eco-Right Movement

This is a must-read article for those who might thing that there is a total left-right political divide on climate action. If you do not know who the American Conservation Council and the Climate Solutions Fund, check them out.

https://www.philanthropy.com/commons/conservative-climate-groups

A Different Kind of Green Revolution may be Needed

There is a objective in the GMO sector – making crops that can stand new levels of heat. But will that be any less controversial?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/climate/plants-climate-change-photosynthesis.html

Can Nuclear Really Help Out on Data Center Demand?

Nuclear is clearly on the minds of the big Data Center companies, and some are moving forward with contracts tied to it for the power they need. Here is a new report from Deloitte on what that firm thinks can be expected.

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/power-and-utilities/nuclear-energy-powering-data-centers.html?id=us:2em:3na:4diUS188101:5awa:6di:060325:mkid-&ctr=cta&sfid=<span class=eloquaemail>SFDC_ContactID_Long1=<%2Fspan=>=&elqTrack=true

The Role That A/C Units Can Play in a Virtual Power Plant

This article reports on a 2019-23 project that tested home air conditioners in a VPP situation where they were not just serving as end-uses for demand response.

https://theconversation.com/how-your-air-conditioner-can-help-the-power-grid-rather-than-overloading-it-256858?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=beacon

And Speaking of Heating and Cooling, I was Pleased to Learn About This New House-Cooling Option

Using this paint instead of some other paint will keep your house cooler?

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/this-paint-sweats-keep-your-house-cool?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter

Is This Good News or Bad News Relative to AMOC?

The first stories about the AMO Current talked of imminent collapse. There is now new news with a different outlook – at least on the timeline, not on the likelihood.

https://grist.org/oceans/amoc-atlantic-ocean-collapse-science-tipping-point/

Texas is the Top-Ranking State for Solar & Wind …And It is Planning to add 100 Gas Plants

Texas is a state that doesn’t seem to like the success it has had with Solar and Wind. Bills adverse to those resources were narrowly defeated in the Legislature this year but now the talk is about expanding gas-fired generation.

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/06/12/trump-is-trying-to-kill-the-u-s-climate-effort-it-was-already-in-trouble-ee-00395857

World Bank Ends its Ban on Funding Nuclear Projects

The World Bank is said by many to have prolonged its funding of fossil fuel projects in developing countries beyond what they should have given climate change. But the clean energy resource they did ban is now back on its good list.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/climate/world-bank-nuclear-power-funding-ban.html

EU is Focused on the Efficiency of Data Centers

Most of the ink spilled on data centers focuses on feeding their power demand. But some are starting to (appropriately) look into the question of whether there are efficiency and other demand-side options to lower that demand.

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/new-impetus-energy-efficiency_en

The Good News: Grid is More Reliable than a Decade Ago … The Bad News: More Chance of Outages Than Ever Before

The advent of “smart grid” was roughly 25 years ago, and investments in the grid (some instigated by federal stimulus legislation) have improved its overall reliability. But electricity demand has not grown at a normal pace due to data centers. And permitting and NIMBY issues have stymied rapid additions to the wires system. The result is that outages may be more likely than ever.

https://www.nerc.com/news/Pages/Grid-Reliable-and-Resilient-in-2024-However,-Emerging-Risks--Create-New-Challenges.aspx

New Report Questions Long-Held Component of Electricity Planning

In the wonkish world of electricity regulation, one base-line evaluation practice has relied on the use of values for levelized cost of energy (LCOE). The folks at Clean Air Task Force took a deep dive on that and came out with the thought that maybe that is not the no-brainer it has been held out to be.

https://www.catf.us/2025/06/policymakers-industry-need-move-beyond-lcoe/

Case Study of Why Nuclear is Needed to Avoid Emissions

Most Everyone has Turned the Corner on Accepting Nuclear Energy as Clean, Zero-Emissions Energy. The article below describes what actually happened in lieu of a nuclear facility that was shut down.

https://www.recordonline.com/story/news/2025/06/11/was-indian-point-closed-prematurely-gov-hochul-talks-ny-energy/84147172007/?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8Zg_EjpbowDjN5lydPUKvL32ULhYkdaz-hqmxlsnmGAgparsXYjkgGTZ4zNg_wNGgP_1bon81_uizEV0Au7EooXwKIcQ&_hsmi=366405018&utm_content=366405018&utm_source=hs_email

Step Right up …Who Wants to Host a Data Center

NIMBYism is on the rise against Data Centers, but in some cases, states and localities are trying to lure them in.

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2025/06/03/states-roll-out-red-carpets-for-data-centers-but-some-lawmakers-push-back-00380052

Whatever the Emissions Reductions Statistics are, They Don’t Matter if CO2 Concentrations are Still Going up

It is natural to focus on emissions stats and to see reductions and increases here and there across countries, states and sectors. But the stat that is more tell-tale is likely CO2 concentrations since that is what causes warming, and that statistic is still going up.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/12/gm-slow-rolls-ev-aspirations-00401177

What Advocates are Saying About One Utility’s Forecast for Data Center Build-Out

The issue of Data Center growth causing steep and sudden rise in electricity demand is firmly planted in the planning that utilities, regional grid operators, and others are doing right now based on that. But forecasting electricity demand is a difficult and challenging task. Forecasting Data Center demand is hard, and various parties are starting to look at whether all the data centers will actually show up and/or have the needs they say they will. Here is how that issue is playing out in the case of one utility.

https://www.wabe.org/georgia-power-is-planning-for-a-huge-spike-in-energy-demand-critics-say-the-utility-is-overestimating/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue%3A 2025-06-04 Utility Dive Load Management %5Bissue%3A73788%5D&utm_term=Utility Dive%3A Load Management

And this article argues that forecasting for data centers is harder than the forecasting of demand that is normally done.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electricity-consumer-groups-ferc-load-forecasts-data-centers/749754/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue: 2025-06-04 Utility Dive Newsletter %5Bissue:73759%5D&utm_term=Utility Dive

Another "Baked-In" Prediction: 75% of Glaciers

Climate scientists and communicators say it is important that people start understanding the concept of “baked-in”. They stress that to effectively spur action on climate it must be more than what can be currently observed by a person. They must be able to conceive of the serious changes that can be shown to be a certainty in the future. The article below is an example.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/29/almost-40-of-worlds-glaciers-already-doomed-due-to-climate-crisis-study?utm_term=684178b3c97c03302c75ffd6aef20125&utm_campaign=DownToEarth&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=greenlight_email

Will Clean Energy Tech be Hamstrung by an Ill-Prepared Work Force?

The current issue for the clean energy workforce is lay-offs and reductions made necessary by changes in federal policy. But there is another longer-term issue, and that is ensuring that the workforce has the skills and training that the clean energy sector needs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-06-05/the-green-transition-needs-more-workers?cmpid=BBD060525_GREENDAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=250605&utm_campaign=greendaily

Solar Dumping is Rapidly Increasing in This State

If you don’t know the term, “solar dumping” happens when grid operators must reduce their take from solar facilities because there is not enough demand on the system to use the solar-generated inflow. The solar electric generation that could be available must be purposefully avoided and prevented.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-waste-clean-energy-curtailments?amp%3Butm_medium=email&amp%3Butm_campaign=canary&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8ByTgx4lA548YTz4yrV7wAhpoUJH-HTg_6k01T28RULR7lnnnB3-TbyWxD083XBhHJ9M0Jm3ttuxh5XEDgR8gwfV2YAg&_hsmi=365406387&utm_source=newsletter

And here is an article about how to address it.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solar-wind-curtailments-increasing-california-caiso/749420/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue: 2025-05-30 Utility Dive Newsletter %5Bissue:73632%5D&utm_term=Utility Dive

Insurers say Their Biggest Risk Stems From Heat

https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sonar/sonar2025.html

In a new Report, the reinsurer Swiss Re calls extreme heat to be the “invisible peril” that is not getting the attention of other impact areas for insurers. The report describes how extreme heat can disrupt transport and energy systems, cause electrical outages and wildfires, and exacerbate the risk of illness and death. That threatens to have expensive ramifications for insurers.

This Country is not Missing the Opportunity to Reduce Emissions in New Construction

Lowering future emissions from a building are much easier if you things as you build it, as opposed to when you are trying to retrofit it. Yet requiring building codes, etc. continues to be hard as special interest groups fight against such actions. In the UK, steps are being taken.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j728gvp94o

But This State Appears to be Missing the Same Kind of Opportunity as it Turns to Rebuilding After Devasting Fires

California has made regulatory decisions to loosen its requirements for new homes in order to help wildfire recovery.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-06-06/socal-air-regulators-vote-to-relax-rules-that-would-phase-out-gas-appliances

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/clee/research/climate/projectclimate/projects/los-angeles-fire-recovery/?ref=floodlightnews.org

Will Data Centers be the Thing That Spurs Distributed Energy?

Ten to Fifteen years ago, the next big thing in the electricity sector was going to be distributed energy, loosely defined as a turn from large centralized power plants to smaller, more geographically distributed generation facilities. Along with the concept came the idea of looking at specific or local demand and designing those facilities to meet those needs.

As companies building data centers start to look at providing their own generation for their own facilities, it may be that distributed energy ramps up.

https://dailyenergyinsider.com/news/48470-utilities-and-regulators-look-to-encourage-more-distributed-energy-in-age-of-ai/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue: 2025-06-04 Utility Dive Load Management %5Bissue:73788%5D&utm_term=Utility Dive: Load Management

Another Return to Nuclear

Avoiding nuclear is quickly falling out of favor in the electricity sector due to the need to lower carbon emissions and also meet forecasts for significant rise in demand.

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-nuclear-sites-edf-energy-bradwell-b-heysham-hartlepool/

Wait, What? …. This Utility CEO Said Renewables are the Bridge to More Gas?

In speaking at the recent energy conference known as CERA Week, the CEO of NextEra did say that. He talked about the large amount of gas projects that were being planned/developed but argued that supply chain problems mean they won’t be in place for a while.

Given that the unregulated part of NextEra is the largest renewables company in the U.S. it may be that his statement is intended to show that solar and wind can ramp up quickly and act in lieu of gas when combined with storage. But the statement stands in stark contrast to the days when gas was to be the bridge to renewables.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/nextera-ceo-says-renewables-needed-as-bridge-to-expanding-gas-power/ar-AA1Gs8kb

Coal has Waned Because of its High Costs and Prices, and This New Report Shows Just How High Those Are

There is a saying in the energy industry that if someone gave you an old coal-fired power plant you shouldn’t accept it, because you could not afford to fuel and operate it. This new Report dives into the realistic cost profile of coal.

https://energyinnovation.org/report/coal-power-28-percent-more-expensive-in-2024-than-in-2021/

Which is More Impactful to Everyone Else – Data Centers on the Grid or Off the Grid and Dedicated?

Data Center growth is fueling rapid increase in electricity demand. The companies in that industry are looking at what they can expect from electric utilities. But they are also taking matters into their own hands and contracting to build their own power plants. In either case, there are going to be costs added to the electricity system. Should all those costs be rolled into rates? Are utility or dedicated plants better or worse in that regard?

https://floodlightnews.org/email/10847613-bb63-41f2-8983-0541e4f8a9e8/?ref=im-a-reader-newsletter

That Iberian Peninsula Thing That Happened

When the big outage occurred in Spain and Portugal, everyone assumed the cause would be simple to determine. But early analyses proved that was not the case.

Here are two new Reports on what happened, with the first being from the Spanish Government itself. It says “the power failure was caused by an overvoltage problem with a multifactorial origin (and) the system had insufficient voltage control capacity, oscillations occurred that affected the operation of the system and generation facilities were disconnected, in some cases in an apparently improper manner”.

https://www.miteco.gob.es/es/prensa/ultimas-noticias/2025/junio/se-presenta-el-informe-del-comite-de-analisis-de-la-crisis-elect.html

https://www.agora-energiewende.org/

____________________________________________________

gotten limaNot Ea Da

The Wrong Kind of Energy Independence & Energy Dominance

If you follow what the new Administration is doing on energy, you have heard and read a lot about energy dominance and energy independence. Let’s take a look at that.

In 1973, something happened called the Arab Oil Embargo. It came about because of what is known as the Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria invaded Egypt in an attempt to regain territory lost in the Six-Days war. When the U.S. stepped in to help Israel with support, most Arab nations in the Middle East took that as a hostile action. Their response was to form the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and pull back on oil exports – thus the “embargo” – and hurt the U.S.

The embargo hit the U.S. and other Western nations hard. Prices skyrocketed and inflation soared, and it was not easy to do a routine thing like fill up your car with gasoline – the lines for that were long and spilled into the streets and roads. (My girlfriend at the time had a nice temporary job. She would sit in someone’s car while they were at work or had to be elsewhere and move the car up one space at a time until she got to the pump).

Obviously, the U.S. was not energy independent in 1973. While it had its own oil and gas production, and and had and used a lot of coal, its economy ran on foreign oil.

Today the U.S. is energy independent, thanks mainly to fracking and other advances in drilling, production and, in the case of LNG, shipping technology. We have evolved to become one of the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels, and in the case of gas we are Number 1.

It is a great accomplishment for the U.S. to become energy independent.

The problem is that we are becoming independent in the wrong way. It is great that the U.S. has oil, coal and gas resources. The use of them has over the decades allowed it to achieve incredible economic growth and become an economic powerhouse around the world.

But the U.S. is not independent of climate change. While impacts are different in different places, the U.S. is and will not be exempt from its impacts. Yet we continue to burn, baby, burn thinking that there is no other factor to use in making energy policy decisions other than continued use of our fossil energy resources.

The other resource we have, of course, is abundant solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and other clean energy options in the basket called “renewables”. And they are tied to climate change in the “right” way. Using them to be energy independent would be a “two-fer”. It would not only allow us to be energy independent, but it would significantly address our emissions problem.

But regardless of what energy source we are talking about, there is another type of energy-related independence that the U.S. does not have. It is one which increasingly is being shown to become one of the important contributors to a country’s energy sector and economy - technology independence.

As we are all focused these days of tariffs and trade wars, the world is now a global market, with global supply chains. And now it is not just a question of what a country’s domestic energy sources are, but what does a country need from another country to be able to utilize them – especially in the case of renewable resources. For example, the technologies for modern solar energy were for the most part developed in the U.S. But the lack of good energy policy resulted in China being the one that turned the technologies into products and took those products to market. The U.S. largely relies on panels from that country for solar.

Domestic energy is also not just about raw energy resources – it is about electricity, which is what economies and societies run on. And to make electricity, or better yet, use it more smartly, or use less of it, the U.S. needs things from other countries. Take rare earth minerals. You have likely seen in the news lately that China is where the U.S. presently gets most of its rare earths – substances that are essential to the high tech, automotive, energy, and other industries. Yet China is also a country that the U.S. is in a major trade war with. Yes, there are rare earth deposits in the U.S., and parties are rushing to develop them.

It seems like we should have seen this new kind of independence coming a long time ago and developed policy to manage it.

Instead, the present Administration and Congress seem to be focused on the old type of energy independence, as if we were still in the days of OPEC and the embargo.

And they have added a new goal - Energy Dominance.

If you read Project 2025, or look at the policies being currently pursued, energy dominance is being defined as using the country’s fossil fuel resources to increase our exports beyond what they already are and using this to create offshore economic dominance.

It is true that the world’s appetite for fossil fuels is strong and, in some places, is unfortunately growing. But the rest of the world is much more attuned to climate change than the U.S. They are trying to reduce their use of fossil fuels, and enacting policies like carbon pricing to do so and supporting renewables. Yes, some countries have had to pull back or modify their climate goals and timetables – but they still know where they want to go, and it is not backwards. They do not want to be a future market for U.S. fossil energy.

The U.S. has for decades avoided developing a national energy policy and a national climate policy. Ideally those two would be intertwined, but even separately it would be great for each to be in place.

But we are in different times. We are pursuing the wrong kind of energy independence and operating under the fallacy of energy dominance. There is no guarantee either will prove beneficial. But global warming and climate change is guaranteed based on what has already happened and based on CO2 concentrations that already exist. And pursuit of the wrong kind of energy independence and using that to pursue energy dominance is guaranteed make it worse.

_____________

If you were forwarded this email, click the button below to sign up to receive these Blog Posts.

Join Our Email List

_______________________

Links to Past Issues

Our Money, Our Mouths, and Our Climate

Two Guys Walk Into a Bar And Talk About Energy

Are you Ready to Test Your Climate Vocabulary?

A Different Kind of Message From the Climate Scientists

Climate Fiction and Climate Reality

Thoughts on Climate Descendants

Emissions as a Choice in Flying