Free Republic

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s green-energy lunacy keeps socking New Yorkers, with the latest blow coming from the Empire Wind One offshore turbine project. Team Trump has blocked it for now, and that’s great news (despite Eric Adams’ pleading that it should go forward): If it went into operation, New Yorkers would be forced to pay a brain-busting 2.5 times the market rate for energy, an independent analysis found. The project won a sweetheart contract to provide energy at $155 per megawatt hour, as opposed to the wholesale-market rate of around $50, an effective subsidy on the order of $9 billion over...

New Yorkers would be forced to pay 2.5 times the market rate for electricity generated by the Empire Wind One offshore wind farm if the deal goes through, according to an independent financial analysis. The Trump Administration paused construction of the controversial project — 54 turbines in the Atlantic Ocean some 14 miles south of Long Island — last week, saying it needs further review. The project has seen strong backing from Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams. Trump’s move was welcomed by those who claim the project is going to overcharge taxpayers. “New Yorkers are entitled to clean,...

Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle increasingly advocate for affordable, reliable, and clean energy. This is for good reason – modern society requires energy that is affordable and available on demand. Environmental concerns are also very important. Together, affordability, reliability, and cleanliness form the three pillars of ideal energy policy. Two new analyses evaluate competing electrical power sources and produce an affordable, reliable, and clean scorecard. The two analyses – one published by Northwood University and the Mackinac Center, and the other published by my public policy organization, The Heartland Institute – independently reach near-identical findings. Both analyses...

Accelerates permitting procedures to develop American Energy Dominance... In response to President Donald J. Trump’s declaration of a National Energy Emergency, the U.S. Department of the Interior will implement emergency permitting procedures to accelerate the development of domestic energy resources and critical minerals. These measures are designed to expedite the review and approval, if appropriate, of projects related to the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, or generation of energy within the United States. The new permitting procedures will take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most...

More than 3,500 staffers are preparing to leave the Energy Department in coming days, gutting offices tasked with doling out billions of dollars... Roughly 77 percent of workers at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, or OCED, took an offer to leave voluntarily... deeper cuts are likely on the horizon as DOE complies with the administration's push to shrink the federal footprint... OCED, for example, was allocated more than $25 billion under those laws, including for hydrogen hubs, carbon capture and battery projects.

A new report from GlobalData, a data and analytics group, projects global nuclear power capacity will hit 494 GW by 2035. The group’s “Nuclear Power Market, Update 2025–Market Size, Segmentation, Major Trends, and Key Country Analysis to 2035” said capacity gains will be tied to advancements in deployments of small modular reactors (SMRs), along with the continuing worldwide shift to cleaner forms of energy. The report released April 21 said recent gains in nuclear power have been driven by moves toward more low-carbon baseload power. Measures promoting energy security, in addition to interest in decarbonization of industrial sectors, also is...

Within the first months of his second administration, President Donald Trump has prioritized “unleashing” American energy and has already axed several of what he considers to be burdensome regulations on the coal industry, promising it’s “reinvigoration.” Trump signed an executive order on April 8 to revive the coal industry, and shortly after moved to exempt several coal plants from Biden-era regulations. Though it has become a primary target of many climate activists, coal has been historically regarded as readily available and affordable, and several energy policy experts who spoke with Daily Caller News Foundation believe Trump has the cards necessary...

In June 2019, when New York passed its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), it all seemed so easy. Back then, everyone knew that “renewables” were cheaper than fossil fuels for making electricity; it was only the nefarious machinations of evil oil and gas companies that stood in the way of an effortless energy transition. New York would assume the mantle of climate leadership to show everyone the way. And even as recently as December 2022, New York’s path to energy utopia still seemed clear. That’s when the state issued what it called the Final Scoping Plan under the...

A federal judge in Puerto Rico issued a scathing order last week accusing Democratic prosecutors on the island of plagiarizing nearly their entire 241-page complaint that blamed oil companies for causing global warming. In the order Wednesday, district court judge Aida Delgado-Colon outlined how David Efron, the lead attorney representing Puerto Rico's capital city San Juan, appears to have plagiarized a similar but separate complaint that 16 Puerto Rican municipalities filed a year earlier. A side-by-side comparison of the two complaints shows large blocks of text are copied word-for-word. Delgado-Colon wrote that the situation should serve as a cautionary tale...

With Valero announcing the pending closure of one of its two remaining California refineries, the state will lose at least 18% of its current refining capacity by the end of 2026. Because California is an “energy island,” meeting demand for California and the parts of Nevada and Arizona that rely on its refineries will require costly imports of volatile fuel by emissions-heavy tanker ships. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has long blamed rising gas prices on refiners’ “price gouging,” but even though his own administration has said that it has no found no evidence of such, he called a special legislative...

Today, President Trump took action to ensure the United States is leveraging modern technology to effectively and efficiently conduct environmental reviews and evaluate permits. Permitting reform is a top priority for the Trump Administration and this action will accelerate the process, improve the transparency and predictability of project timelines, and eliminate unnecessary delays holding back the growth of the American economy.The Presidential Memorandum signed today calls on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in consultation with the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC) and relevant permitting agencies, to issue a plan for modernizing the technology used for Federal environmental review and...

Joe Biden’s private email scandal is likely much worse than Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. And just like Hillary, Biden was never indicted for his use of burner phones and private emails while he was US Vice President. Special Counsel Robert Hur ignored Joe Biden’s use of private emails. The National Archives previously confirmed through a FOIA response that they found 5,138 email messages and 25 electronic files pertaining to the known Joe Biden pseudonym accounts robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov. According to newly unredacted documents, in 2014, while Joe Biden was publicly calling for sanctions against Russia, he was privately negotiating...

European energy expert Samuel Furfari sums up green hydrogen (GH) perfectly; “It’s like burning Louis Vuitton handbags for heat.” He says this because it is so very expensive. Federal law allocated $9.5 billion for GH hubs, and the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Causing Act) expanded tax subsidies. Even with massive taxpayer subsidies, GH is a money loser. Leftists claim GH is a way to replace batteries for transportation. It is at least five times more expensive, which doesn’t include all the extra costs associated with the production of natural gas, such as purifying massive amounts of water, which takes...

Large-scale solar farms, wind turbines, and associated infrastructure are touted as solutions to the climate crisis, but their development comes at the cost of native forests and critical habitats.” “Until conservation charities disentangle themselves from government funding and corporate influence, they risk becoming complicit in the very destruction they were created to prevent.” ... One of the great ironies of our age is the double standard of Big Environmentalism toward wind and solar, which commit numerous eco-sins that would not be tolerated otherwise. Dilute, intermittent, and thus inefficient? Yes. Energy sprawl requiring service roads and transmission lines in the wild?...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:Section 1. Purpose. In order to secure America’s economic prosperity and national security, lower the cost of living, and provide for increases in electrical demand from emerging technologies, we must increase domestic energy production, including coal. Coal is abundant and cost effective, and can be used in any weather condition. Moreover, the industry has historically employed hundreds of thousands of Americans. America’s coal resources are vast, with a current estimated value in the trillions of dollars, and...

The president will direct agencies to boost coal leasing, mining and exports. But these steps are unlikely to usher in a coal renaissance.President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Tuesday aimed at boosting the struggling U.S. coal industry, according to White House officials.Flanked by coal miners wearing hard hats at the White House, Trump will direct federal agencies to loosen various restrictions on coal mining, leasing and exports. He will instruct the Interior Department to resume coal leasing on millions of acres of public lands, and he will order the Energy Department and other agencies to study whether...

8 Apr 2025 U.S. President Donald Trump shot down the European Union’s offer of a zero-tariff trade relationship on some goods, demanding that the bloc do more to rectify the significant trading imbalance, such as purchasing more American-produced energy. With markets putting pressure on politicians worldwide, leading Eurocrats came out on Monday, attempting to appease Washington with concessions. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Brussels had relayed an offer of “zero-for-zero” tariffs on industrial goods, while trade envoy Maroš Šefčovič suggested a “boost in strategic areas” like semiconductors and minerals. 8 Apr 2025 U.S. President Donald Trump...

---Down 7.35% as I post this--- Eight key OPEC+ producers on Thuesday agreed to raise combined crude oil output by 411,000 barrels per day, speeding up the pace of their scheduled hikes and pushing down oil prices...The group was widely expected to implement an increase of just under 140,000 barrels per day next month.

PRAGUE, August 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Moscow's new diplomatic assertiveness was on display for the world to see during last month's G8 summit in St. Petersburg. And one controversial topic that dominated the run-up to the summit has remained in the spotlight -- Russia's repeatedly stated intention of following its own democratic path, dubbed "sovereign democracy." The concept was formulated by Vyacheslav Surkov, the deputy chief and prime ideologue of President Vladimir Putin's administration. Surkov began floating the new ideology during speeches to activists of the pro-presidential Unified Russia party in February and May. Sovereign Democracy As outlined by Surkov...

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US President Donald Trump said that the issue of Kiev's membership in NATO had been the cause of the Ukraine conflict, and it was not discussed in the context of the rare earth metals deal. "I see he [Volodymyr Zelensky] is trying to renegotiate the rare earth [deal],"Trump told reporters at the White House. "Through you [reporters], I heard that they now say 'Well, I'll only do the deal if we get into NATO' or something to that effect. Well, number one, that was never discussed." The issue of Ukraine's membership in NATO was the cause of...