Free Republic

The Texas Senate passed a bill Thursday that leading business interests fear would lead to an age of expensive power and rolling blackouts. If passed by the House, state S.B. 715 would require all renewable projects — even existing ones — to buy backup power, largely from coal or gas plants. This would require solar plants in particular to buy backup power to “match their output at night — a time when no one expects them to produce energy and when demand is typically at its lowest anyway,” consultant and energy expert Doug Lewin wrote in an April analysis. The...

Last Monday, the Iberian grid suffered a disturbance in the south-west at 12:33. In 3.5 seconds this worsened and the interconnection to France disconnected. All renewable generation then went off-line, followed by disconnection of all rotating generation plant. The Iberian blackout was complete within a few seconds. At the time the grid was producing 28.4 GW of power, of which 79 per cent was solar and wind. This was a problematic situation as solar and wind plants have another, not widely known, downside – one quite apart from their intermittency and expense.This is the fact that they do not supply...

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...

The thought of Earth’s final day may seem distant, even unreal, but we know it will inevitably happen. Now a group of scientists working for NASA together with researchers from the University of Tōhō in Japan have calculated a timeline for the complete extinction of all life on Earth. According to this calculations – which have been made possible by advanced mathematical models powered by supercomputers -, survival on planet Earth will be impossible in about 1 billion years, when conditions become too extreme for life as we know it. So yes, we still have a few more years to...

Barack Obama’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Power Plant has officially failed and will begin shutting gone operations early 2026.. - $1.6 BILLION in federal loans. - $535 MILLION grant. - $600 MILLION tax credit. - MASSIVE investor write-offs.. A SCAM paid for by US Taxpayers for NOTHING ... Obamala himself is not bankrupt. Indeed, he remains awash in undrowned private chefs. Never leave your wallet unattended in the presence of Democrats. ... His first scam was Solyndra. ... Ivanpah: $2.7B to boil birds in the desert. California Bullet Train: $100B to almost connect two places no one’s trying to go. One...

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?...

The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Solar and wind power have grown to a mere 3.5% of primary energy production. Germany and the United Kingdom, which get a relatively large share of their electricity from renewables, also suffer from the world’s highest electricity costs.

Financial credits to owners of rooftop solar panels that generate more power than the home needs can greatly lower electric bills. But as more people have been motivated to install the panels, it has cut into utility sales of electricity.State officials say rooftop solar customers don’t contribute their fair share of costs to maintain the power grid, but environmentalists say strong incentives are needed to convince homeowners to invest in costly rooftop solar panels. California officials are pressing for further cuts to the electric bill credits people with rooftop solar panels can earn, in a move that would align the...

The controversial Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California’s Mojave desert is going to close 14 years early despite $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy under President Barack Obama. The Ivanpah facility works by using mirrors that concentrate sunlight on a central boiling tower, which then heats water to move turbines. It has been criticized for incinerating birds and other animals within the reflecting zone. Ivanpah has become a familiar sight on the road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and in the airspace above, with its blinding light visible for miles.

There is a private property rights battle brewing in rural parts of southeastern Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma and portions of the Dakotas, Nebraska and five Tribal Nations. The U.S. Department of Energy has plans to establish the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors or NIETCs, in these areas and the corridors span five to 15 miles in width. If approved, in New Mexico about 2 million acres of mostly private property would be transferred to the control of the federal government potentially via eminent domain. In Colorado, farmers, ranchers and rural residents stand to lose control of 325,000 acres in...

Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, said on social media that President Donald Trump’s administration cutting off funding to the Solar for All program would lock Illinois out of more than $100 million for solar energy projects. State Rep. Chris Miller, R-Oakland, said his “fingers are crossed” that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's pause will halt Illinois solar projects. "The first thing that we need to clarify is there is no climate crisis, period. CEJA [Climate and Equitable Jobs Act] and all the related legislation to the green bad deal is a complete scam and a complete hoax. Ultimately, all...

EXCLUSIVE: Republican lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to investigate President Biden's dismissal of a lawsuit claiming millions in fraud from a green energy project the day after the 2024 election. In 2011, President Barack Obama's Treasury Department granted Tonopah Solar Energy, LLC hundreds of millions of dollars for the construction of a green energy solar plant, the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, in Nevada. However, the energy group was eventually sued by CMB Export, LLC for alleged fraud involving approximately $275 million of taxpayer dollars in a qui tam lawsuit, which is a case on behalf of the...

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plans for the Empire State to go green are going south as local communities refuse to build massive battery plants that would store wind and solar energy. One upstate town where a top state official leading the state’s anti-fossil fuel push just voted to ban construction of the plants — and one New York City politician has already called to pause any new sites for the facilities. “We called for — and still support — a moratorium on these [Battery Energy Storage System] facilities almost two years ago,” said Vito Fossella, borough president of Staten Island, where...

Clean energy investment manager Greenbacker Renewable Energy has secured $950 million to build what will be New York State’s largest solar farm. Greenbacker acquired the 500-megawatt (MW) Cider project from renewable energy developer Hecate Energy. Work started in October, and the project is expected to come online in 2026. Hecate announced on February 3 that the New York Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Transmission (ORES) has now formally issued a siting permit and a formal notice to proceed with construction. “Greenbacker has called New York home for 14 years, and we’re proud to be both the owner of the...

Sometimes, government makes a bad bet. Case in point: the Ivanpah solar project. Maybe you’ve seen the unsightly, blindingly bright towers while traveling from L.A. to Las Vegas, in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada state line. Maybe you’ve read about birds getting fried to death as they fly through the sunlight directed to the tops of the towers by fields of mirrors.

President Trump sits for first interview

The mistakes of the U.K. and Germany this winter serve as a wakeup call for policymakers worldwide as they consider their own energy policies. The winter of 2025 has been brutal for Europe, exposing the severe flaws of its over-reliance on wind and solar energy. As temperatures plummeted, countries grappled with electricity shortages, soaring energy prices, and the grim specter of blackouts. In the United Kingdom and Germany, two countries that have positioned themselves as global leaders in the adoption of “renewable” energy, the dangerous gamble of prioritizing wind and solar power over reliable energy sources is leaving millions vulnerable...

BUCKHOLTS, Texas (AP) — On rural Texas farmland, beneath hundreds of rows of solar panels, a troop of stocky sheep rummage through pasture, casually bumping into one another as they remain committed to a single task: chewing grass. The booming solar industry has found an unlikely mascot in sheep as large-scale solar farms crop up across the U.S. and in the plain fields of Texas. In Milam County, outside Austin, SB Energy operates the fifth-largest solar project in the country, capable of generating 900 megawatts of power across 4,000 acres (1,618 hectares). How do they manage all that grass? With...

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for interior secretary told a Senate panel Thursday the U.S. can leverage development of fossil fuels and other energy sources to promote world peace and voiced concerns about the reliability of renewable power sources promoted under the Biden administration. Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum described Trump’s aspiration to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” as a way to counter demand for fossil fuels from autocratic nations — Russia, Iran and Venezuela — that have fewer environmental safeguards. Burgum also said the U.S. needs to make more “baseload” electricity from coal and other sources as it seeks to...

Welcome to Germany’s green economic miracle. The year is 2025! Germany’s so-called Energiewende (transition to renewable energies) has had one unmistakable result: Germany now finds itself rapidly nearing the brink of a third world country where the power supply is no longer reliable and brownouts becoming more and more a daily routine. What’s happening is the opposite of what was once promised by the know-it-all climate wisemen: “Green energies would lead to a clean and prosperous country that would be the envy of the world. So much for their fantasies. The reality, as reported yesterday by Germany’s leading daily, Bild...