Free Republic

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has come under fire on social media over his response to Hurricane Beryl, which crashed into the southeastern United States on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane leaving six dead in Texas, and one in Louisiana, according to The Associated Press. The storm caused widespread damage across Texas with the Houston area, where millions of people lost power, particularly badly affected. As of Tuesday just under 1.7 million CenterPoint customers remained without power according to The Houston Chronicle. Abbott is currently on an economic development tour of Asia and was in South Korea on Monday when...

The word charade has several meanings, and including an act or event that is clearly false (Cambridge Dictionary), something done just for show (Vocabulary.com), or a situation in which people pretend that something is true when it clearly is not (Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary).The charade I refers to is President Biden’s $7.5 billion dollar investment to install 500,000 electric charging stations along America’s highways by 2030. A reliable and convenient public EV charging infrastructure is critical to achieve the President’s goal of meeting the recent EPA CO2 emission regulation that require nearly 72% of U.S. new light vehicle sales to be...

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Monday led 22 members of Congress in requesting that the Department of Energy add Texas to the areas serviced by proposed federal corridors for electrical transmission. In May, the department announced 10 proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (NIETCs) that, if implemented, could make federal funds available to expand grid capability in those areas. However, Texas, which relies on the self-contained Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), was not among the proposed sites. “The United States needs a 21st-century electric grid [and] you can’t have a 21st-centutry electric grid with a giant hole in the...

It's been pretty interesting watching the carefully worded but dire warnings coming out about just how tenuous the future of reliable power is in the Empire State. On June 6, the folks who manage and operate the state's electrical grid, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), issued their 2024 Power Trends Report. One of the first things that should have jumped out at Green Gov Kathy Hochul and the climate cultists in the state legislature should have been the #mathz. That alone would have given a rational person pause, but who are we talking about, right? There's only about...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a coalition of 19 states to challenge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (“FERC”) decision to adopt rules that would force the Biden Administration’s costly and inefficient “green energy” transition onto states. FERC Order No. 1920, issued on May 13, 2024, grants unprecedented electrical grid oversight to FERC, compromising the ability of individual states to determine the most efficient mix of energy sources for their electrical grids. The new rule also forces states to cover the costs of expensive regional transmission lines to support “green energy” generation, even when such expenditures contradict the state’s...

You've read more than once right here at PJ Media about the $7.5 billion that Presidentish Joe Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act put on the table as an inducement to build a network of 500,000 EV charging stations up and down the nation's interstate highways. And you've read about how few have been built — eight, at last count.Well, that was a bargain compared to today's boondoggle. The same law also set aside $42.45 billion — that's three Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers — to deploy high-speed internet to millions of Americans who currently lack access. That mostly means rural...

A new study by a state government has determined that the many new regulations of the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could lead to power blackouts that will impact millions of American citizens. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the study, conducted in May, was carried out by the firm Always On Energy Research, on behalf of the state government of North Dakota. The report concluded that the EPA’s most recently-implemented regulations are not technologically feasible and will only lead to the forced retirement of coal power generation units. Coal and other more reliable forms of energy will be...

Authorities say gunfire was the cause of a fire Monday at a North Carolina power station that resulted in 730 customers to lose electricity. Emergency crews responded to the problem as a fire and equipment failure on Duke Energy’s power distribution grid, which resulted in customers in the Durham area [losing power], according to the Associated Press. The following day, the Durham Police Department responded to a call about damaged power equipment and was told the damage was the result of gunfire in the past week.

NBC 5 learned more about how leaders at the state's largest power grid think it will perform during upcoming hot Texas summers. ERCOT and Public Utility Commission leaders updated lawmakers in Austin Wednesday morning after a striking new report issued by the grid operator. They've long known that ERCOT, the state's largest power grid, is most vulnerable on hot late-summer nights as the sun goes down. That's when the big chunk of energy generated by solar power goes offline. It gets worse if the wind goes down as well, and wind generators don't run. According to a report delivered to...

Rampant inflation and President Joe Biden’s favoring of left-wing policies are contributing to a lack of progress on his landmark infrastructure law, analysts told the Daily Caller. Two and a half years after Congress ratified the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November of 2021, there has been very little concrete progress on new roads or bridges. The trillions of federal dollars the Biden administration has poured into the economy may actually be hindering the completion of the infrastructure that Biden promised to build, analysts told the Caller.

25 refrigerators. That’s how much the additional electricity consumption per household would be if the average US home adopted electric vehicles (EVs). Congressman Thomas Massie—an electrical engineer—revealed this information while discussing with Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, President Biden’s plan to have 50% of cars sold in the US be electric by 2030. The current and future grid in most places will not be able to support each home running 25 refrigerators—not even close. Just look at California, where the grid is already buckling under the existing load. Massie claims, correctly, in my view, that the notion of widespread...

We were once a nation of builders—from the toll roads and canals of the early nineteenth century and the railroads of the second half of that busy century, to the construction of power, energy, and water systems that were the envy of the world. Even Stalin hired American engineers and planners to build hydroelectric plants and car and other large-scale factories, some planned and developed by people from Detroit. As Stalin knew, infrastructure is one of the keys to imperial power. Ancient Rome, the imperial dynasties of China, the Mesoamerican empires, the Islamic empire of the Caliphs, the British Empire,...

“We’re facing an unfunded, $1 trillion mandate that carries enormous consequences for the American consumer.” At least that’s what Chris Spear, American Trucking Associations President and CEO has to say about one D.C. diktat coming down from on high in particular, and that is the one mandating that the American trucking industry bend to EPA rules requiring all electric fleets and production lines.Here’s the context, from March of this year:On March 29, 2024, Good Friday, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolled out its new electric truck mandate, which will require that electric semi-trucks make up an increasing share of manufacturer...

Coal and natural gas plants provide 60% of the U.S.’ affordable, reliable, and baseload power. In a time of increased electricity demand, America needs to double down on harnessing these sources—not abandon them.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s recently finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 (CPP) rule, however, takes the country in the wrong direction. Under this regulation, one that is arguably illegal, existing coal and new natural gas power plants will be mandated to install emissions control technologies that aren’t yet commercially viable. Plants that don’t comply risk permanent closure. This unrealistic mandate is advanced under the guise of reducing greenhouse...

While it’s true that some things get better with age, the United States’ aging transmission infrastructure is not one of them. Updated transmission infrastructure is crucial to reducing emissions and ensuring dependable electricity service. Congress has passed green energy laws to help make this update happen, but now it’s up to a little-known government commission to fully realize the benefits of our transformational climate laws. And they need to act before it’s too late. It would be an understatement to say our country’s existing transmission infrastructure—the energy cables, towers and transformers that move energy between a generation system and the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) admitted Thursday that the state still faces the risk of blackouts in heat waves despite investing in battery capacity to store electricity for use in times of peak demand. The Los Angeles Times reported: Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that California continued to rapidly add the battery storage that is crucial to the transition to cleaner energy, but admitted it was still not enough to avoid blackouts during heat waves. … Asked by reporters if California now had enough battery storage so that residents no longer had to worry about blackouts during times of high...

As federal net-zero policies attempt to shift transportation, heating, and other essentials onto the electric grid, one of the hottest growth sectors of America’s economy is poised to increase electricity demand exponentially, further straining an energy infrastructure that is being pushed into the red. Data centers, the so-called “brains of the internet,” are industrial warehouses packed with rows upon rows of servers. They process, communicate, and store the data behind everything from bank records, online retailers, and social media platforms to Netflix shows and your personal iPhone videos. “Data centers are essential to cloud computing and its ability to give...

Last May I wrote about a group of Chinese hackers who'd been identified by Microsoft after malware was discovered in telecom systems on the island of Guam. Microsoft named the hacking group "Volt Typhoon."Microsoft called the hacking group “Volt Typhoon” and said that it was part of a state-sponsored Chinese effort aimed at not only critical infrastructure such as communications, electric and gas utilities, but also maritime operations and transportation. The intrusions appeared, for now, to be an espionage campaign. But the Chinese could use the code, which is designed to pierce firewalls, to enable destructive attacks, if they choose.Today,...

Authorities in Pittsburgh closed McKees Rocks Bridge as a precaution after several barges broke loose on the Ohio River late Friday. There is a risk that the barges could come into contact with the “substructure” of the bridge, the McKees Rocks Police Department said in a statement early Saturday confirming the closure. The department said it closed the bridge because it was “not willing to take the risk.” The bridge opened in 1931 and stretches more than 1 mile across the Ohio River. As part of the Blue Belt, the innermost of several roads that loop around Pittsburgh, the bridge...

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act propelled forward President Joe Biden’s vision of a clean energy economy. As outlined in a 2023 guidebook, this remaking of the U.S. economy includes billions in funding for green tech manufacturing — everything from hydrogen production to batteries to solar panels. The plan will not only create jobs and investments for Americans, according to the Biden administration, it will lower the nation’s dependence on China, which currently controls 80% of the global production in polysilicon and other components used in solar panels, 80% of wind-turbine components, and 89% of the refining to produce...