Energy
Joe Biden

President Joe Biden

Donald Trump recently warned that Joe Biden would lead us into World War II, a conflict that ended almost 80 years ago. Another world event he may not be current on is America's boom in oil production — never mind the green energy revolution.

"We are going to drill, baby, drill," Trump said on a recent Fox News town hall.

Actually, America is now pumping oil in record amounts. The U.S. now accounts for one in every eight barrels produced in the world. Prices are coming down, too.

As for Biden's clean energy program, it foresees a transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels. It also recognizes we're not there yet.

An essential piece in the move toward green energy is a switch-over to electric vehicles from the gasoline-powered kind. This is a worldwide phenomenon that the Biden administration has joined through a variety of subsidies.

In China, EVs are expected to reach 38 percent of total car sales this year, versus 13 percent of new purchases in the U.S. China is experimenting with vehicle-to-grid technology that would, amazingly, enable cars to feed electricity back into the system when demand surges. America should take notice.

In Trump's backward ideology, clean energy programs are a "new scam business." Trump is bashing the new technology at a time when U.S. automakers have planned $100 billion in electric car investments. Apparently ignorant of new developments, he keeps saying that EVs are "too expensive" and they "don't go far enough."

Dan Neil, car columnist at The Wall Street Journal, acknowledges some past glitches with EVs but then offers an update on Trump's claims. People who actually drive one of the new models, Neil writes, are finding it "quicker, quieter, more refined and responsive, more efficient, more connected and cheaper to operate than its gas-powered equivalent. ... After a few miles in an EV, going back to internal combustion feels like returning to whale-oil lamps."

Charging has already become easier as Biden's program to build half a million public fast chargers bears fruit. Other carmakers, meanwhile, have adopted Tesla's charging standard, enabling their EVs to use Tesla's supercharging network.

"Pretty soon range anxiety will be returned to neurotics," Neil adds.

As for the prices on EVs, they are expected to plummet in short order. Tesla is expected to soon introduce a Model 2 priced at only $25,000.

But in Trump world, everything has to be turned into a culture war. U.S. automakers consider these attacks worrisome, and so should their workers.

"I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are," Ford Motor Co.'s executive chair Bill Ford said.

By the way, Americans remain free to buy gas-powered vehicles. But many are looking at plug-in hybrids as well.

The boost in U.S. oil production is coming largely from the usual parts of oil country: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. It reflects improved technology rather than an expansion in the number of rigs. In other words, companies are now extracting more oil from the same location, which means they can obtain it more cheaply. Oil producers are not complaining.

"Companies are making money and investors are making money," Bloomberg's energy columnist, Javier Blas, said. "So everyone is loving it."

The people who are not loving it are the Saudis. U.S. shale oil is growing and making money at the same time, Blas adds, and "this is what really terrorized OPEC."

Is it possible that America is reducing reliance on foreign oil while also addressing the planetary need to move toward clean energy? It is possible, and it's also happening. Biden's America is enjoying a boom in both.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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Wind Energy Production
Windmills producing power in Texas

Texas is currently America's leader in wind and solar power. It provides 28 percent of America's wind energy. If it were a country, it would be the fifth biggest source. Surprisingly, it's about to eclipse California in production of solar power.

And so why aren't Texas Republicans bragging about all that? Why, on the contrary, are they attacking clean energy with regulatory and tax burdens? Perhaps it's their co-dependance with oil and gas interests.

On the psychosis level, renewables serve as a right-wing culture-war toy. After all, they are the pride and joy of President Joe Biden and concerned environmentalists everywhere. Same goes for the science behind planet warming.

Renewables have become "a four-letter word," according to a big Texas landowner trying to stop a real rancher from putting a wind farm near his rich-man ranch. (His land is his land, and so is his neighbor's.)

This leads to a plausible guess: Some of the older Texas money sees green energy's amassing of economic power — with its growing empire of wind turbines and solar farms — lording over parts of Texas they're supposed to be lording over.

Well, we will need fossil fuels for the near future, but they are headed into the sunset. We don't power our lamps anymore with whale oil.

If there weren't so many Texans gaining economic benefit from America's green energy policies, one might say, "Boys and girls, go out and play your game."

But they're going after a source of big money and bigger money to come. In olden times, Gov. Rick Perry likened the state's wind projects to Spindletop, the spectacular 1901 gusher that turned Texas into an oil giant.

Last year, over a third of the country's clean-power projects were in Texas. One reason, ironically, is that Texas is a low-regulation state that lets people easily build things. Plus, it has loads of open land swept by mighty winds.

But one of the bills before the legislature would require renewable energy projects to get permits from the state and an environmental impact statement from the Parks and Wildlife Department. Any property owners "within 25 miles" could call for a hearing. It goes on.

The Earth Liberation Front would look on that regulatory aggression with envy.

You would think that the self-interests in green energy would stir some brain cells in the Texas Capitol. But Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the 2021 electricity blackouts that left millions of Texans without heat in frigid temperatures on ... wind turbines. They did freeze, as did gas-powered plants, coal-fired plants and a nuclear plant.

Industrial and consumer users of energy are complaining that the proposed disincentives for green energy will drive up their electricity costs. One of the biggest developers of renewables in Texas, Enel, now says it might reconsider its expansion plans if confronted with new bills targeting their projects with higher costs.

(Imagine a governor in Florida threatening his largest taxpayer and employer over some minor disagreement and then the company saying it would halt a big planned development. These are strange times we live in.)

Two years ago, Elon Musk moved his electric vehicle carmaker, Tesla, to Texas. His plan was to "end the Oil Age." And when Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accords, Musk quit Trump's advisory council.

Sure, Musk has gone mental over woke activism — whose clout he greatly overestimates — but you wonder what he thinks about the bold efforts in Texas to punish the very industry he relies on. America now has 55 plants making EVs.

As for the Texas political leaders or anyone else who wants to stymie green energy: What's wrong with these people?

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.