Tag: Fossil Fuels

Portion of World Electricity Generated by Fossil Fuels Has Fallen Two Percentage Points in 30 Years

Just the News
Fossil Fuels

Reports in the legacy media regularly claim that we are rapidly eliminating fossil fuels, and the energy transition is steamrolling its way to success. Data, however, appears to show a different picture.

According to the Energy Policy Research Foundation, fossil fuels remain critical to keeping the lights on. In 2023, coal, natural gas and oil-fired power plants produced 18 terawatt hours of electricity, which was 60% of the total. This was a decline of 62% in 1993.

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Commentary: Bad Climate Policies Cause More Deaths than Climate Change

Virginia Star Staff
Climate Protest

During Vivek Ramaswamy’s recent event at the Cato Institute, protestors derailed his presentation by getting on stage and chanting “climate con-man,” among other similar allegations. But it’s not just rabbles of unknown activists accusing Ramaswamy of climate falsehoods.

Last year, Ramaswamy said, “The reality is, more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”

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Commentary: The Harris Flop Would Be Scarier than Her Flip

Virginia Star Staff
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz at a rally

Joe Biden won in 2020 on the premise that until the November election, he would pose as good ol’ Joe from Scranton and not scare voters.

So Biden talked about “unity” and “competency.” He erased his prior wild primary pandering to left-wing voters about shutting down fracking and opening the border.

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Commentary: The World Needs Fossil Fuels

Virginia Star Staff
fossil fuels

It’s summer, and the Sierra Club says: “This is climate change in action. We are living it.”

The United Nations’ secretary-general declares that “a fossil fuel phaseout is inevitable.” And The Lancet, a respected medical journal, insists that nations must swiftly transition away from hydrocarbons.

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Commentary: Fossil Fuels Are the Best-Kept Secret in Our World Today

RealClearWire
Oil Platform

Apparently, you can litigate anything these days, and it’s gotten far more insidious than suing McDonald’s over hot coffee being, you know, hot. A new climate activist group called Our Children’s Trust is suing state and federal government agencies on behalf of individual children, claiming that fossil fuel regulators are negligently ruining their future.

That children should feel entitled to come of age under a specific set of favorable environmental and political circumstances — and to demand punishment for individuals they disagree with — isn’t just a testament to the egocentrism dominating the 21st Century. It also exposes our culture’s deeply warped understanding of climate science, which, surprisingly to many of us, actually shows global warming has no meaningful negative effects on our lives or our environment.

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Increasing Copper Production for Green Energy Is Impossible, Study Says

Just the News
David Hammond mineral economist

Proponents of the transition to so-called green energy argue that the technology to eliminate the use of fossil fuels already exists and it’s just a matter of scaling it up to meet demand. That sounds simple enough.

Putting aside the impact to energy costs and other challenges of this proposed transition, analyses of what is technically and financially possible in developing the resources needed for this plan show that the energy transition in the timescales that proponents demand is not just difficult. It’s impossible.

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Big Tech Championed Zero Emissions but Now Its Power-Hungry Data Centers are Straining the Grid

Just the News
Data center

For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”

In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.

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Renewables Provided 30 Percent of Energy in 2023, but Data Disputes Claims of an Overall Energy Transition

Just the News
Solar Panels

A new report from Ember-climate.org, which describes itself as “an independent energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy” touting that renewable energy provided 30% of electricity generation in 2023 is getting a lot of attention, with reports in The Guardian, Associated Press, and Reuters, and CNN.

“A permanent decline in fossil fuel use in the power sector at a global level is now inevitable,” the report by Ember declares.

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Commentary: The Case for an Inclusive Energy Strategy

Virginia Star Staff
Solar Farm

The justification for rapidly transitioning the global energy economy to renewables is to avert a catastrophic environmental crisis. It is based on the premise that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from the combustion of coal, natural gas, and oil, are altering our atmosphere, which in turn is leading to a host of negative consequences too numerous to mention.

It is possible nowadays to find almost anything, from crime and disease and mental health to species extinctions, deforestation and disappearing coral reefs, being attributed to climate change. And if you research almost anything involving the design of civilization, not just the production and consumption of energy but housing, mining, ranching, farming, shipping, transportation, waste management, water treatment, etc., the data most prominently reported are always carbon and CO2. The actual units of energy or water, or tonnage of product, or any other practical data necessary to inform management and logistics, has now become secondary. It’s all about carbon.

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Stigma of ‘Dirty Fossil Fuels’ Drives Young People Away from Lucrative Careers in Oil and Gas Work

Just the News
Petroleum Engineers

Petroleum engineering is the highest paying bachelor’s degree in the United States, according to a report by Payscale, but despite an average annual salary of $97,500, oil companies struggle to fill positions.

The industry faces a number of challenges. Employees often face cyclical layoffs whenever commodity prices collapse, and that makes the jobs appear unstable. Young people today are also concerned about working in an industry they’re taught is destroying the planet.

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EPA Poised to Turbocharge Biden’s Climate Agenda After Ripping Up Trump-Era Rule

Virginia Star Staff

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 7 rescinded a Trump-era EPA rule which required the agency to conduct benefit-cost analysis of any significant new air pollution rules.

While it was in effect, the rescinded benefit-cost analysis rule required the EPA to identify the specific problem a new air pollution regulation addresses, explain why market alternatives cannot solve that problem and distinguish between direct and indirect health benefits that an air pollution emission is expected to generate. The Biden EPA will be able to more freely pursue its regulatory agenda against fossil fuels using the Clean Air Act after issuing a final rescission of the benefit-cost rule.

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Green Activists Pressure Renewables Industry to Reject Permitting Reform That Boosts ‘Dangerous’ Fossil Fuels

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Dozens of climate activist groups are pressuring the renewable energy industry to oppose permitting reform policies that would also support fossil fuel projects, in a letter obtained by Axios Friday.

The coalition of activists — primarily smaller, grassroots organizations —  targeted the American Clean Power Association (ACP), a major renewables trade group, over its support of what they called “dangerous” reform proposals that would also benefit fossil fuels, according to Axios. The ACP previously supported the permitting reforms proposed in House Republicans’ Lower Energy Costs Act, and in late March signed a letter alongside a coalition of groups — including oil and mining industry players — calling on lawmakers to “modernize” permitting by the end of the summer.

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Commentary: The Difficult Truths About Unrenewable ‘Renewables’

Virginia Star Staff

Today in America, there are obvious disconnects between observable reality and the narratives we get from the corporate special interests controlling the news we consume, along with politicians who are supposedly elected to represent us.

This is nothing new. Elites have defined America’s destiny throughout its history. The only difference today is that the internet, despite ongoing crackdowns, still manages to deliver an unprecedented volume of contrarian perspectives to millions of people. We aren’t any freer or less manipulated today than we ever were, we’re just more aware of it.

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Commentary: The World Bank Takes a Wrong Turn

RealClearWire

President Biden’s nomination of Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard, to succeed David Malpass as World Bank president suggests that the Biden administration is prioritizing climate change over the World Bank’s founding mission of poverty eradication and economic development. This was made clear in the president’s statement singling out climate change as the most urgent challenge of our time. 

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Commentary: The Left Sacrifices Natural Gas at the Altar of Climate Nirvana Leaving Good Americans Freeze to Death

Admin

The just-departed polar vortex confirmed that when Mother Nature is enraged, it’s wise to have options. Maddeningly, today’s “pro-choice” Democrats want Americans to have one energy choice.

Neo-totalitarian, Left-wing eco-extremists are banning new natural-gas access in scores of locales. If not reversed, this cruel, stupid, needless policy will kill Americans.

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EPA Quietly Quadruples Regulatory Cost of Carbon Emissions in New War on Fossil Fuels

Just the News

With the price of everything from gasoline to food soaring in America, nobody is surprised by inflated price tags these days. But even by Washington standards, an action taken earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency is creating sticker shock: a nearly fourfold increase in the government calculation of damages from carbon emissions.

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Commentary: ESG Is Evil

Virginia Star Staff

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scoring system is undergoing intense scrutiny. It also has become quite a political football, with conservative governors, attorneys general, and other officials pushing back against the movement while progressive politicians argue that ESG needs to go further.

This political tug-of-war has exposed the evil essence of ESG: It is an attempt by progressives to arm-twist the leaders of investment firms controlling the allocation of over $20 trillion in investment capital away from firms disfavored by progressives, including, most notably, producers of fossil fuels.

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Woke Funds in China and Europe Invest in Fossil Fuels and Slave Labor

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Investment groups in China and Europe intended to promote climate-friendly and social justice-related causes are funneling money into fossil fuel projects and companies associated with slave labor, a Bloomberg investigation found Tuesday.

China’s allegedly climate-sustaining investments have ballooned in the past couple of years since the Chinese government claimed they align with Beijing’s political agenda to revitalize rural labor, raise the nation’s prosperity and achieve carbon-neutral status, Bloomberg reported. However, ESG investors have stretched the definition of “Environmental, Social and Governance” investing to encompass investments in coal companies and firms tied to human rights violations in the Xinjiang province.

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Natural Gas Prices Hit 14-Year-High After Biden Signs Dems’ Climate Bill into Law

Virginia Star Staff

The price of U.S. natural gas futures reached its highest point since 2008 as gas demand continues to spike amid the worldwide energy crisis and the passage of the Democrats’ climate bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Natural gas futures for November, December and January each surpassed $10 per million British Thermal Units (BTUs) on Monday, reaching highs that have not been seen since 2008, according to the WSJ. High prices are largely due to the strong demand for gas in Europe amid uncertainty surrounding Russian natural gas flows, the WSJ reported; furthermore, the Democrats’ new climate bill includes regulations that will hike expenses for natural gas producers.

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s War on Fossil Fuels

RealClearWire

Try as they might to mitigate the severe energy crisis plaguing the U.S., the Biden administration’s attempt to shore up supply is a few wellheads short of an oil rig.

With gasoline prices averaging over $4.60 per gallon and several electric grid operators warning of rolling blackouts, increasing the supply of America’s most critical energy sources is vital. Fossil fuels account for 80% of America’s energy usage, yet the administration is intent on curbing oil and gas supply, cutting gasoline refining capacity, and making it more challenging to meet rising electric demands.

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Green Activists Are Using Business, Bypassing Congress to End Fossil Fuels

Admin

Without sufficient support in Congress and state legislatures to pass sweeping green energy measures, environmentalists are now targeting the oil and gas industry through a financial movement that pressures companies to support liberal policies, according to critics.

“ESG promotes and implements policies through private businesses that could be adopted through a legislative process,” said Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks. “The Green New Deal didn’t make it through Congress, so its proponents shifted the battlefield to the capital markets.”

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Commentary: Shifting Natural Gas and Oil Jobs to the Renewables Sector Isn’t So Simple

RealClearWire

Within hours of taking office on January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order cancelling the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a plan to phase out natural gas and oil, eliminating thousands of family-sustaining jobs. At the same time, the Biden administration promised plenty of “good-paying” positions would be available in the renewable energy sector.

But the reality is that natural gas and oil jobs don’t easily transfer to the renewables sector, as a new analysis by Cicero, in coordination with North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and American Petroleum Institute (API), shows.

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‘Reckless Decision’: Biden Administration Adds Climate Roadblocks for Future Pipelines, Energy Projects

Virginia Star Staff

The Biden administration altered the official federal policy on approving new interstate natural gas facilities and pipelines, requiring a climate consideration.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced that it will begin to “undertake a robust consideration” of the environmental justice impacts of such fossil fuel projects before granting approval, according to a fact sheet published Thursday. The agency, which is the top regulator of domestic natural gas infrastructure, said its new policy will presume projects that cause 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year will have a significant impact on the environment.

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Commentary: Be Grateful for Global Warming

Admin
"It's not easy being green" sign in the middle of a crowd

Present-day warming has been termed a crisis, and modern economic development a cancer. But what if I told you that much of the recent advancement in human prosperity would have been impossible without the temperature increases of the last several hundred years?

A key to the sustenance of any society is food security. Today’s world should be grateful for today’s relative warmth as well as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels because both have been instrumental in propelling plant growth globally.

A review of human and climate history reveals a strong link between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of civilization—just opposite of what the climate doomsayers are telling you.

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Commentary: Climate Industrial Complex Left Clueless as Fossil Fuel Usage Increases

RealClearWire

It has been a little more than a month since the United Nations climate meeting at Glasgow, yet global use of fossil fuels has increased rapidly.

For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled domestic oil projects and vowed to stop funding for international fossil fuel projects. But as fuel prices rose, Biden responded to his self-induced energy insecurity by releasing 50 million barrels of oil reserves and even called for an increase in domestic oil production.

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‘No Interest in Fossil Gas’: Green Group Takes over Global Fracking Company

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A prominent U.K. green energy group took over a firm dedicated to fracking for natural gas, vowing to halt all fossil fuel production and cancel further development, The Guardian reported.

The North Yorkshire-based firm Third Energy, which has been a major producer of natural gas in the U.K for decades, was acquired by Wolfland Group, a company that develops renewable energy solutions across the nation, The Guardian reported. Third Energy will now be led by Wolfland director Steve Mason, a prominent anti-fracking activist.

“The current energy crisis has shown that we must be energy independent as a nation and that fossil fuels need to be urgently replaced by clean renewable energy supplies, which will lead to cheaper energy and help us tackle climate change,” Mason said, according to The Guardian.

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Senior White House Climate Official Resigns

Admin
Three wind turbines

Cecilia Martinez, a member of the White House Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ), announced that she would resign Friday, nearly one year after accepting the role.

Martinez explained that she needed rest and wanted to spend more time with her family in an interview with the Associated Press. She was in charge of crafting the White House’s aggressive environmental justice policy which had been lauded by climate activists but criticized by Republicans and the fossil fuel industry.

“It was a hard decision,” Martinez told the AP.

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Commentary: Six Cultish Things Globalist Elites Want You to Look Forward to in 2022—and Beyond

Virginia Star Staff

The year is 2022. The place: a New York City so overpopulated that everyone is sleeping and dying on outdoor stairways. All sweating like pigs because of global warming. People have become unwitting cannibals because there is no more food. Elites still dine on delectables, but all that remains for the hoi polloi is the promise of a green wafer allegedly made of plankton, but in reality “It’s PEOPLE!!”

That’s the setting of the over-the-top 1973 movie “Soylent Green,” produced in the wake of Paul Ehrlich’s classic fear porn book The Population Bomb. Time has proven Ehrlich’s predictions of mass starvation due to population growth to be massively wrong. Ehrlich also lost his famous wager with the economist Julian Simon who predicted a more prosperous world. Still, Malthusian propaganda dies hard because it’s such an effective tool for social engineering.

“Soylent Green” is a random example, chosen because its year 2022 happens to be upon us. Certainly, dates and science used in science fiction have a heavy emphasis on fiction. The “Blade Runner” rebellion of genetically designed replicants was set in 2019. And, of course, Big Brother ruled in George Orwell’s 1984. Though much has come to pass, including genetic engineering and the surveillance state, there’s proof enough that we can’t predict the future with certainty.

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Report: Weak Wind Power to Blame for European Energy Crisis, Greater Reliance on Fossil Fuels

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Low wind power generation is largely to blame for Europe’s ongoing energy crisis and scramble to import more fossil fuels, according to a Reuters report.

Wind farms across Europe produced just 14% of their capacity from July-September compared to the previous average of 20-26%, market data from Refinitiv showed, according to Reuters. As a result, European energy providers have been forced to purchase more coal and natural gas which have skyrocketed in price as demand has increased.

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Commentary: Biden Is Right that Moving off Fossil Fuels Quickly Would Be Dangerous

Virginia Star Staff

Following his trip to Rome a few weeks ago for the G-20 summit, President Joe Biden expressed worry that surging energy costs would harm working-class families and urged OPEC and Russia to pump more oil.

Some noted this was a strange message to send to the world, since Biden was preparing for a climate summit in Scotland where he pledged to reduce carbon emissions at home.

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Anti-Fossil Fuel Activists Support Biden’s Move to Release Oil from Reserves

Virginia Star Staff

Environmentalists voiced support for President Joe Biden’s decision to tap into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) despite their firm opposition to fossil fuels.

“The Biden admin is taking effective action to protect Americans from oil price gouging. This is what reserves are for — defending our economy against disruption,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, a climate hawk and Green New Deal proponent, tweeted Tuesday. “Profiteering can’t go unanswered, especially as Big Oil makes billions and fuels the climate crisis through exports.”

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Report: Vast Majority of Top Fossil Fuel Companies Don’t Plan on Abandoning Oil and Gas Anytime Soon

Virginia Star Staff

The majority of oil and gas companies said that they don’t have plans to shift away from fossil fuels at any point in the future, according to an industry report released Tuesday.

Oil and gas company executives said hydrocarbons would be their long-term business and that fossil fuel demand would remain at current levels for at least another decade, according to Deloitte Insights. Of the 100 executives polled, 77% said fossil fuels would continue to serve as their main source of revenue for the foreseeable future.

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Biden Clears Way for Russian Gas Line After Nixing Keystone XL

Virginia Star Staff
Joe Biden waving

Following a Biden administration move to lift U.S. sanctions blocking completion of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, critics are charging that the new president — who canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office — is more concerned about Russian energy jobs and independence than he is about America’s own.

“President BIden, if [you] can’t put America First, can you at least not put Russia first?” form Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted.

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Commentary: Why America’s Elites Want to End the Middle Class

Virginia Star Staff
A sunset with a field of windmills

A recent column by Victor Davis Hanson titled “Radical New Rules for Post-America” lists “10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.” Hanson offers a thorough description of what’s wrong: Fiscal and monetary negligence, selective enforcement or nonenforcement of laws, anti-white racism, rights and privileges for immigrants over citizens, an infantilized culture, hypocrisy, urban chaos, censorship and cancel culture, politicized “science,” and “woke” as the new religion, with Big Tech as the clergy.

While there may not be a more succinct description of the new and radical rules Americans face these days, Hanson is covering familiar territory. But what is the cause of these changes?

It doesn’t require a conspiracy theorist to suggest these wholesale shifts in American culture are not happening by accident. Nor are they solely the result of nefarious intent, at least not among everyone occupying the highest rungs of power and influence in America. What motivates members of the American elite, billionaires and corporate boards alike, to approve of these radical changes?

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Biden Reportedly Prepared to Issue Moratorium on Fossil Fuel Leases for Federal Lands

Virginia Star Staff

President Joe Biden is reportedly set to temporarily halt new federal oil and gas leasing, people familiar with his plans told The Washington Post.

The move would pause pending fossil fuel auctions on federal land and water, but will not affect existing leases in the Gulf Coast and the western part of the country, according to the Post. While the moratorium will help Biden deliver on one of his signature campaign promises, it will likely be met with sharp resistance from fossil fuel industries and lawmakers who have voiced concern that Biden’s climate policies will cost thousands of jobs.

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