L.A. Recklessly Leaps into Hydrogen Energy with No Safety Net
We spotted a fascinating story out of Los Angeles about the city’s foolish and reckless action in abandoning its largest natural gas-fired power generation plant in favor of using hydrogen instead. Hydrogen is the Holy Grail for the left. At least, for some on the left. Many on the left (and, it seems, on the right too) want to replace natural gas with 100% hydrogen in gas-fired power plants because natgas produces carbon dioxide when it burns, and hydrogen does not. Except (we learned from this article), hydrogen power generation has one huge, glaring, problem…
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Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months or so. We sometimes poke good-natured fun at the EIA because one month, their predictions go up, the next month, down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published yesterday? EIA slashed the price of natural gas at the Henry Hub another 30% from the previous monthly STEO, saying natgas will average $3.40/MMBut in 2023, down from a forecast of $4.90 the month before. EIA’s new average price, if it holds, would be 50% lower than 2022’s average of $6.42/MMBtu.
Tuesday of last week, Freeport LNG, which has been out of operation since an explosion and fire in June 2022, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to begin re-introducing feedgas back into one of three liquefaction “trains” (units) at the facility. A day later, FERC agreed, and small amounts of gas began to flow (see 
The supposedly non-partisan U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which increasingly appears to be influenced (if not corrupted) by the Bidenistas, published a post yesterday on the agency’s daily Today in Energy website with this headline: “Coal and natural gas plants will account for 98% of U.S. capacity retirements in 2023.” The thrust of the article is that dirty fossil energy is being phased out of electricity production in favor of unreliable, intermittent so-called renewables (like solar and wind). EIA says operators plan to retire 15.6 gigawatts (GW) of electric-generating capacity in the U.S. this year, mostly natural gas-fired (6.2 GW) and coal-fired (8.9 GW) power plants. But as usual with the Biden administration, key facts are left out of the article. We have the rest of the story…
“May the odds be ever in your favor.” – Hunger Games. For more than a year, we have covered the topic of the Bidenistas’ Hunger Games contest to award $7 billion to some 6-10 “hydrogen hubs” across the country. Each winning hub will receive $500 million to $1 billion of government largesse to help build a hub in a given region. The money for the hub projects was allocated as part of the so-called Infrastructure bill, passed in November 2021 (see 
Joe Biden has big plans to force you to change the way you get (and consume) your energy. He wants you to use hydrogen, electricity (generated by unreliable renewable sources like wind and solar), force you to capture your carbon dioxide (the stuff you breathe out with every breath you take), and in general, use anything other than fossil energy. Joe is happy to export LNG (a nasty fossil fuel), but only because other people will use it and not you. There’s one big problem with making Joe’s dystopian future a reality: The government bureaucracy and red tape that it spins, is preventing his preferred sources of energy from getting built and used. Isn’t it delicious? The very bureaucracy the left loves and adores is strangling the left’s attempts at the forced conversion of society to alternative energy.
You’ve heard of investment firms like BlackRock, and Vanguard Group, and Fidelity. But have you heard of VanEck? It’s much smaller than the biggies like BlackRock, but important all the same. VanEck is a global asset manager that offers active and passive investment portfolios in hard assets, emerging markets equity and debt, precious metals, fixed income, and other alternative asset classes. The CEO of the company, Jan van Eck, recently published a provocative post on the company’s website called, “ESG Died in 2022.” He takes on the issue of big investors (like BlackRock) throwing their weight around with proxy voting–a default way of running a company, making it bow to your whims.
On Dec. 22, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) published a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that allows the nearly-completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to finish up construction through 3.5 miles of Jefferson National Forest straddling West Virginia and Virginia (see 
New analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows the world will bring online the least amount of new LNG exports this year than it has in the past ten years. The world will, if the predicted four new projects come online, add another 1 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of LNG export capacity, which is piddly. But that’s not even the worst news. The worst news is that NONE of that new capacity will come from the U.S.
Last week, the oil and gas industry gathered in Houston for the 
Sigh. The Bidenistas are at it again–targeting the fossil fuel industry for extinction. The latest attempt came on January 9th when the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which serves as the White House’s environmental policy arm, issued “interim guidance” to assist federal agencies in analyzing so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) and climate change effects of their proposed actions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). One of the agencies affected by this guidance is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). However, FERC is an independent agency and does not necessarily march to the White House drummer. The question is, how much will the new CEQ guidance affect FERC’s policies as the agency evaluates oil and gas pipelines?
For almost a year, we’ve sounded the alarm about a coming change at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that will force publicly traded companies to disclose mythical greenhouse gas emissions data (see 