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Ford reported losing over $100,000 per electric vehicle sold in the first quarter of 2022, with its electric vehicle division posting a $1.3 billion loss. Electric vehicle sales volumes dropped 20% as Ford was forced to slash prices due to weak industry demand. “Americans don’t want EVs at levels Biden’s climate hysteria require,” businessman Andrew Puzder wrote on X. “Ford’s EV Q1 losses soared to $1.3 billion — a ridiculous $132,000 per EV sold. All Ford’s profits came from combustion engine vehicle sales. Collectivist policies destroy prosperity.” The company expects $5 billion in electric vehicle losses for the year, up...

Forty-two was the mystical number that explained “life, the universe, and everything” in Douglas Adams’ comic novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Today, another mystical number, the so-called social cost of carbon (SSC), is providing the excuse for the Environmental Protection Agency and green-energy-enamored state regulators to enact crippling energy policies.The SCC is the thumb on the scale that can justify virtually any policy aimed at eliminating fossil fuels. When the EPA first proposed its rule to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the agency’s cost-benefit analysis determined the benefits would be minuscule. Any putative benefits, it turns...

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made some questionable remarks regarding China in recent years, including applauding the country for allegedly using threats of prison or organ harvesting as a means to meet its green energy goals, according to unearthed comments reviewed by Fox News Digital. "They take this very seriously," Kennedy said in 2014, speaking of China and its clean energy agreement that year. "I don’t know whether… the guy ends up in prison with his, you know, organs harvested or what. But they are very, very dead serious." Kennedy’s comments, made on "The Ring Of Fire" radio...

For two decades and more, the political position of the climate alarm cult in the U.S. and Europe has only seemed to strengthen with time. In the U.S., the Obama and Biden Administrations have both pushed huge regulatory initiatives to restrict use of fossil fuels (with only some modest roll-backs during Trump’s four years); some of the most sweeping restrictions got pushed through just a week ago. Meanwhile, blue states like California and New York have enacted ever-more-extreme restrictions by statute. In Europe, there has been a near all-party political consensus in favor of the “net zero” agenda, notably including...

Back in 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), mandating environmental reviews for all major projects to determine their environment impact and allowing for periods of public comment. This has generally been beneficial, but it opens the door to lengthy lawsuits from environmental activists that can tie projects up in the courts for years. There may be some significant changes coming to the process, however, but only for certain types of projects. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has just finished what's being described as a "rule change" that will remove many delays and "streamline" the...

There is a famous story about Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman walking down the street with a friend. The friend stopped and said, “Hey, there is a $20 bill on the sidewalk.” The economist turned to him and replied, “There can’t be. If there were a $20 bill on the sidewalk, somebody would have picked it up.” Friedman often taught that if something were in people’s best interest, they would discover and put it to use without having to be told or forced to do so. A Forbes economic writer named Tilak Doshi, a long-time energy economics analyst, wrote a...

Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy. Despite hundreds of government actions and initiative in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkable stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production. The percentage of what is called “primary energy” (that is, energy for everything, not just electricity) coming...

In my self-designated role critiquing various schemes for total transformation of the world energy system, I get to review large amounts of poor, shoddy, and incompetent work. When people get into advocating for this “energy transition,” the stars regularly align to bring forth the most extreme levels of ineptitude. Start with the fact that the “smartest” people are filled with arrogance and hubris, but are not actually very smart. Add that many innumerate Politics and English majors have flooded into a field that cries out for engineering calculations. Add too that groupthink and orthodoxy enforcement prevent anyone from pointing out...

In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed — enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity. But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” —...

There are many myths about energy and the economy. In this post I explore the situation surrounding some of these myths.My analysis strongly suggests that the transition to a new Green Economy is not progressing as well as hoped.Green energy planners have missed the point that our physics-based economy favors low-cost producers.In fact, the US and EU may not be far from an economic downturn because subsidized green approaches are not truly low-cost.[1] The Chinese people have long believed that the safest place to store savings is in empty condominium apartments, but this approach is no longer working.The focus on...

Like more Baltimore-style bridge-ship collisions? According to a news nugget buried deep in a long Washington Post investigative report, ships losing propulsion is shockingly common and can lead to ships running aground or colliding with bridges and other structures. A look at Coast Guard records showed that more than 100 incidents involved huge container ships. One of the reasons they happen is because of greenie fuel mandates.The story is actually very good and very long, giving the reader a feel for what drives how ports operate.But that tiny item about greenie environmental regulations forcing ships to change fuel after they...

President Joe Biden keeps lecturing corporate America to “pay your fair share” of taxes. It turns out he’s right that some companies really are getting away scot-free from paying taxes.But it isn’t Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley or the Wall Street financial company “fat cats” or big banks or Walmart. They pay billions in taxes.The culprits here are the very companies that President Biden is in bed with: green energy firms.It turns out that despite all the promises over the past decade about how renewable energy is the future of power production in America, by far the biggest tax...

When I first came upon it, I called it the “stupidest litigation in the country.” In 2015 a group of adolescents, led on a leash by some activist environmental lawyers, had sued the federal government in the District Court for Oregon. The plaintiffs alleged violation of their fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment, and sought as remedy a compulsory national plan to “phase out” the use of fossil fuels nationwide plus (why not?) “draw down excess atmospheric CO2 so as to stabilize the climate system and protect the vital resources on which Plaintiffs now and in the...

A semiconductor company whose president was head of the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar energy company stands to receive $6.6 billion in funding from the Biden administration. Under a preliminary agreement, according to CNBC, a subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in Arizona will receive the funding under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. The company’s president is Brian Harrison. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Harrison was CEO of Solyndra, which in the early 2000s was involved in the manufacturing of solar panels and considered at the forefront of the sustainable energy industry.

For decades, scientists and inventors have flirted with the concept of a water engine, but their attempts often hit insurmountable roadblocks. However, Elon Musk, known for pushing the boundaries of technology, has provided a fascinating insight. His revelation might just revolutionize the transportation industry at all levels. But people are asking exciting questions. Is water a viable source of fuel? What other innovative solutions are available for transportation problems? Join us as we unravel how Elon Musk went public with the new engine that changes everything. Transcript Follow along using the transcript. Show transcript

Throughout the West, the cult of fossil fuel suppression presents itself as an orthodoxy from which no dissent is permitted. In the U.S., there has been substantial and growing resistance to the enforcement of that orthodoxy, among Republicans in general and particularly from red and energy-producing states. By contrast, in Europe, there has been little push-back. Somewhere along the line, in country after country, the drive for Net Zero carbon emissions got the backing of an effective all-political-party consensus. In a gigantic political miscalculation, many mainstream center-right conservative parties got fully on board. That mistake now looks to destroy several...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that a key plank of President Joe Biden’s agenda to lower costs is by “creating incentives to dramatically improve the use of clean energy in the United States” and “over time, this will help lower household energy costs.” Host Andrea Mitchell asked, “[H]ow can you — I know you’re in Georgia today — help get the message to people that the economy is better and improve it even more, get those grocery prices down, help bring down the prices that people are feeling at their kitchen table?”

The single biggest problem with the Left’s “climate” agenda is that the proposed response to the alleged crisis — replacement of fossil fuels in the energy system with intermittent wind-and-sun-based electricity generation — is not going to work. This is obvious to anyone who considers the subject seriously for any amount of time. Yet any mention of this issue has been almost completely banished from the mainstream media, from academia, from government, and from social media. It remains to a few lonely voices (such as, here in New York, myself, Roger Caiazza, and Ken Girardin of the Empire Center) to...

Supposedly, there is a big energy transition going on. Throughout the West, countries have made ambitious pledges to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions by specific percentages and by specific dates. Many such pledges were notably made in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016. Some countries — for example, the U.S. and UK — have even gone beyond the Paris Agreement and made still more ambitious pledges in the years since then. But is any of it real? No, none of it is real. The failure to make the progress that would be necessary to achieve the alleged pledges and mandates is...

There's not enough power to flood the roads with electric vehicles, but DemocRATs don't and probably are counting on it. In perfect Democratic Party form, the Biden administration has dropped another government burden on the private sector. Two days ago, the White House rolled out “the toughest-ever” automobile emissions standards. The objective, of course, is to force Americans to buy the cars that the ruling class wants them to drive. There’s a big problem here, though – the grid won’t be up to the task of keeping tens of millions of electric vehicles charged. The headline from a Bloomberg story...