Ohio Power Siting Board Rejects Huge, Ugly, Unreliable Solar Farm
Local townships, whether governed by a majority of Republicans or Democrats, typically reject proposals to install massive, ugly, bird-killing (and filled with toxic chemicals) solar farms, no matter where they are tried (red or blue states). It’s a problem for the tone deaf environmental left. Solar farms are even rejected in blue New York! Another such installation tried to gain approval in Stark County, Ohio, recently. The Ohio Power Siting Board, citing local opposition, rejected a permit for a 150 megawatt solar farm that would have gobbled up 860 acres in Washington Township. Read More “Ohio Power Siting Board Rejects Huge, Ugly, Unreliable Solar Farm”
As we so often say, the left’s creativeness in their quest to destroy fossil energy (the thing that makes civilization possible) never ceases to amaze us. The left thought it could bully investors into divesting from fossil energy companies using ESG (environment, social, and governance) policies. That flamed out. They tried to force Big Banks to abandon loans for fossil energy companies. Yeah, that’s down the tubes, too. But, once again, they’re baaaaaack! This time, the left is pushing something called Sustainability-Linked Bonds (SLBs). The plan is to entice (force, coerce, bully) national oil companies (NOCs) and public development banks (PDBs) to use SLBs, which force NOCs to phase out fracking “transition” to the renewable energy business. Yeah, here we go again with the transitioning bullcrapus. 
President Trump was 100% correct in calling the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Biden’s “green new scam.” Here is a perfect example. The heart of Marcellus Shale country is the highest-producing natural gas county in Pennsylvania, Susquehanna County (not far from where MDN sits). Anyone who lives in our region knows this: It is one of the cloudiest regions of the country. Binghamton, NY (where MDN resides) averages 212 cloudy days per year! Yes, we’re nuts for living here. About 25 minutes south of Binghamton down Interstate 81 sits Clifford Township, PA, in Susquehanna County. It’s just as cloudy as Binghamton. Yet Biden’s IRA (“green new scam”) is paying to build a….wait for it….solar farm in Clifford Township! In a place that is cloudy 58% of the time. Taxpayers are paying for this insanity. Meanwhile, natural gas (more reliable, easier to produce, and almost as clean as solar) keeps chugging away in Clifford and other locations around Susquehanna County. 
The Reuters news agency, based in the U.K., is typically objective in its news coverage. It tilts to the left a bit, depending on the reporter. But overall we tend to trust most of its coverage. It’s certainly better than Bloomberg by a mile. However, when we saw the opening line of a Reuters article titled “Climate policy requires a more realistic approach,” we were blown away by its brutal honesty. Here’s the very first two sentences of the article: “The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute.” Wow! 
Here’s a story in the karma-is-a-boomerang department… In July 2019, the Connecticut Siting Council approved the Killingly Energy Center gas-fired power plant project after initially rejecting it (see 
You’ve always known that there’s corruption in the federal government, right? With that much money sloshing around, people with sticky fingers show up and grab some of it for themselves. Today’s story of government corruption will blow your mind. Thanks to the Biden Infrastructure Law and the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, some $385 billion was earmarked to be given out as “loans” to so-called “green” projects (kickbacks to political donors). The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) was delegated the responsibility to get the money distributed. So the LPO hired a bunch of independent contractors to help distribute the money, and the contractors (in some cases) are double-dealing—they are serving both the LPO *and* they are representing and serving the borrowers of that money. The DOE’s own Inspector General office is sounding the alarm and telling the LPO it should cease and desist from distributing another dime until safeguards are put in place and contractors with a conflict of interest are removed. 
For those unlucky enough to live in New York City and its sprawling suburbs, get ready for blackouts due to the lack of electricity. The state of New York and developers of the 175-mile Clean Path NY transmission line have “mutually agreed to terminate” contracts underpinning the project, which was planned to come online in 2027. Clean Path was supposed to bring 5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from windmills and solar farms in Upstate New York to liberal elites living in and around NYC. The project was billed as “critical” to achieving New York’s climate goals, including 70% renewable electricity consumption by 2030 and developing a zero-emission electric grid by 2040. That’s all down the toilet now. Get ready to sit in the dark. 
In November 2022, PA’s then-Governor, Tom Wolf, signed into law a bill providing $142 million annually in state tax credits for several purposes, including clean hydrogen hubs, natural gas use, semiconductor manufacturing, and milk processors (see 
Dominion Energy Virginia yesterday issued its “2024 Integrated Resource Plan” to the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) and the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC). The document outlines a plan to meet rising power demand through significant investments in new power generation from “every source,” expansion and modernization of the power grid, energy storage, and energy efficiency programs. The problem is (from our perspective), the plan deemphasizes natural gas in favor of unreliable renewables, to the peril of Dominion’s customers. 
Toby Rice, the Chief Executive Officer of EQT Corporation, currently the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (but about to become second-largest next week, after Chesapeake Energy & Southwestern Energy merge to become the largest, see today’s companion story), addressed the 800 attendees at the Shale Insight event yesterday. He was in Erie, PA, yesterday, just one day after he spoke at an event in New York City at that city’s so-called Climate Week. Rice had some rather blunt words about the capability of renewable energy and the inability of renewables to meet a dramatic increase in demand for energy that will come from AI data centers and a massive expansion in the use of electric vehicles. He said renewables will “not be enough” to meet that demand, especially at the prices needed. Natural gas, on the other hand, IS enough. 
Last Thursday, one of our favorite authors (and energy expert/philosopher), Alex Epstein, testified before the U.S. House Budget Committee at a hearing called “The Costs of the Biden-Harris Energy Crisis.” His main point was that the government-dictated “green” energy policy, practiced by Biden-Harris and many other governments, is ruinous. When you shackle the most cost-effective and scalable source of energy, fossil fuels, and subsidize unreliable solar and wind, energy necessarily becomes more expensive, less reliable, and less secure. Alex debunked 12 grossly inaccurate myths peddled by Trevor Higgins of the leftwing Center for American Progress which supports the Biden-Harris energy policy disaster we now have. 
The CEO of the Energy Association of PA who is also a former chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) asks this question: What can Pennsylvania lawmakers do about a looming regional power shortage that they didn’t cause and can’t easily fix? He says this dilemma poses the most important energy issue facing the commonwealth today. He’s certainly not against renewable energy, but he points out in an op-ed appearing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that coal and natural gas-fired power plants are “retiring prematurely” for several reasons, and renewables can’t handle the load. The predictable end result will be blackouts in the PJM region.
Energy comes in many forms. Most energy produced and consumed in the world comes from fossil fuels. In the United States, fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) provided 79% of all the energy we used in 2022, according to the authoritative U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The false narrative that so-called renewables (which are unreliable) like solar and wind are about to take over is just that — completely false. The EIA published a post yesterday to note that U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions coming from the production of energy last year fell by 3% from the previous year, mainly due to the change from using coal to using natural gas to generate electricity.
As we outline today in another post, the PJM electric grid, which covers 13 states including Pennsylvania, reports emissions of all the nasty things (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide) have decreased radically thanks to the change from coal-fired power to natural gas-fired power (see Marcellus Fracked Gas Leads to Record Low Emissions in PJM Grid). We also report today that in 2023, the country as a whole increased its usage of natural gas specifically because the country (including the M-U) is adding more low-carbon gas-fired power plants (see NatGas Grew Its Share of Electric Power 7% in 2023, New Record High). So what does the “brilliant” Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, do? He signs up PA government agencies (sentences them) to use unreliable solar energy.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, in mid-March to announce a proposal to “immediately pull Pennsylvania out of a multi-state carbon cap-and-trade program” (the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) and instead enroll PA in its very own RGGI-like carbon tax program (see