Month: April 2025

Canary Media:

For the first time, fossil fuels accounted for less than half of U.S. electricity production across an entire month as clean power generation surged in March.

Last month, fossil gas and coal made up just over 49% of power generation, while solar, wind, hydropower, biofuels and other renewables, and nuclear met 51% of demand, new data from think tank Ember shows.

It’s worth noting that this happened at the start of the spring ​“shoulder season,” which runs from March to May in the U.S. and is a sort of stars-aligning time for clean energy performance.

There are a few reasons why. Milder temperatures mean people use less energy to heat and cool their homes, so power demand tends to contract. That has historically made shoulder seasons — the fall version runs from September to November — a good time to take fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants offline for maintenance. Meanwhile, wind production peaks in the spring, and solar production comes more alive with the longer days of stronger sun. Last month, solar and wind alone met over 24% of overall U.S. power demand.

But still: The shoulder seasons are always a stars-aligning time for clean energy. They were last year and the year before that and the one before that, too. Yet in the U.S., clean energy has never before beaten out fossil fuels for a whole month, no matter the season. That’s what makes this a significant moment.

It’s also notable given the current political hostility toward clean energy in the U.S. — and the federal government’s re-embrace of fossil fuels.

Continue reading “Clean Energy Beats Fossil on US Grid”

UPDATE: As of December 30, 2025, I am updating this post.
Time will tell if this New Year’s week bomb cyclone has caused unusual damage in UP forests. The unprecedented ice storm this past spring did create damage beyond local memory, and will have lasting effects for wildlife, insects, fire risk, and forestry.
This is the post I wrote immediately in the aftermath of that storm.

I’m not a forester but I suspect damage like that shown above will have implications for insects, wildlife and fire risk going forward.

I’ll be speaking to Michigan Rural Democrats this weekend, and one of the topics will be last week’s ice storm, the most severe in living memory, which crushed trees, houses, and infrastructure in both peninsulas.

In each of the last three springtimes, the state has seen rare and highly destructive weather events.

In 2023, choking smoke from wildfires in Canada drove residents indoors for large parts of the summer. In 2024, the state had its first declared “Tornado Emergency”, the highest threat level according to NOAA.
This year, an ice storm unlike any other.
The only clear trends for weather extremes in the state are extreme precipitation, and rising temperatures. Tornadoes have no clear trend, although the conditions for tornadoes may be more common. Ice storms are too rare to make a determination.
But insurance companies have definitely noticed that something is going on.
Michigan is one of 18 states where, according to the New York Times, home insurers suffered losses in 2023, up from just 8 states 10 years earlier.

UPDATE: This Accuweather report included an interview with a DNR official. The official, as well as the accuweather reporters noted they had never seen this kind of damage. The official noted that impacts to the forest will have effects for “decades. “the next 40 or 50 years.”

UPDATE: This Detroit Channel 2 report was produced late in the year, looking back on the damages. In this excerpt, a DNR official is interviewed.

AP:

Here’s a look at the facts.

CLAIM: “I call it beautiful, clean coal. I told my people, never use the word coal unless you put beautiful, clean before it.”

THE FACTS: The production of coal is cleaner now than it has been historically, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean.

Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from the coal industry have decreased over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Energy lobbyist Scott Segal said that “the relative statement that coal-fired electricity is cleaner than ever before is true, particularly when emissions are measured per unit of electricity produced.”

And yet, coal production worldwide still needs to be reduced sharply to address climate change, according to United Nations-backed research.

Along with carbon dioxide, burning coal emits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain, smog and respiratory illnesses, according to the EIA.

Continue reading “Trump’s Coal Order is (Toxic) Smoke and Mirrors. Here’s a Fact Check.”

What are you complaining about?
Get out there and drill baby, drill!

From the article:
One of the companies hit hardest amid the fallout in crude prices is Liberty Energy Inc., the fracking firm formerly run by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright. It’s down 37% since the tariff announcements on April 2. 

Meanwhile, someone is an obscure lab is distilling the purified essence of Schadenfreude.

Bloomberg:

The market rout sparked by President Donald Trump’s trade war is touching almost every part of the economy. But there are probably few industries feeling more aggrieved right now than US shale oil. Over the last 15 years, it has made America the world’s top crude producer, lowered energy costs and fueled a boom in petrochemicals and natural gas exports. It also contributed heavily to Trump’s election campaign.

And yet half of the 20 worst-performing stocks on the S&P 500 Index since Trump announced his tariffs April 2 are in the oil, gas and petrochemical sector, while crude prices have plunged to a four-year low. 

“I don’t know an industry that was more supportive of Trump than the oil and gas industry,” said Kirk Edwards, a former chairman of the petroleum association who attended the tournament Monday in the West Texas city of Odessa, which lies in the middle of the Permian amid a landscape dotted with pumpjacks. “People are in shock at how quickly he can get the price of oil down.”

Continue reading “More Oil/Gas FAFO as Crude Keeps Diving”

The self inflicted wound on what was once one of the world’s greatest brands could have lasting effects on American competitiveness and global response to climate change.

Description:

Tesla’s stock price dropped 9.2% to $217.41 amid a global equity market selloff, contradicting Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s prediction that it would never fall below a certain price again. The decline follows a 40% price target cut by Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives, citing Trump’s trade policies and a brand crisis created by Elon Musk, and a weak first-quarter vehicle delivery report. Analysts have lowered their estimates for Tesla’s sales and earnings, citing concerns over the impact of Trump’s tariffs, particularly in China, where Musk’s association with the US president may drive consumers to prefer domestic brands. Dan Ives, Global Head of Technology at Wedbush Securities, joins to discuss Tesla’s fall, big tech movers and his recent note: “Tech Investors Tariff Policy Creates Mass Uncertainty/Pain”

Additional discussion of the technological advantage of Chinese home grown vehicles have over their western counterparts.

Below, Lawrence O’Donnell continues his masterful narrative of the disintegration of the Musk/Trump alliance.

Continue reading “Tesla’s Brand Destruction at Tipping Point”

In an interview with Katie Couric, Historian Heather Cox Richardson gives an example of how the right wing disinformation machine deals with disaster response.

Wait. What?
You mean the important and powerful players is doing something completely predictable.

Lotta gas execs might be going “I didn’t vote for this.”
Including Fracking baron Chris Wright, the new Secretary of Energy – whose former company, Liberty Energy, has lost a third of its value this week.

Bloomberg:

China hasn’t imported liquefied natural gas from the US for 60 days, the longest gap in five years, as worsening relations between Beijing and Washington lead the nation’s buyers to divert shipments.

No US shipments are currently heading to China, according Kpler, an analytics firm that tracks ship data.

During US President Donald Trump’s first term, China didn’t take a shipment from the US for about 400 days through April 2020, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. 

“Zero LNG trade between China and the US is likely to continue for the rest of 2025, with a further increase in China’s tariff on US LNG from the previous 15% to 49%, as a counterstrike against Trump’s steepest tariffs,” said Wei Xiong, head of China gas research at Rystad Energy. “In the meantime, we expect to see more reselling by Chinese companies,” she added.

The current geopolitical conflict is beginning to decouple the world’s biggest LNG seller and buyer. Beijing slapped a 15% tariff on US LNG shipments from Feb. 10 in retaliation to American levies, which was further exacerbated last week by another set of Chinese levies on all imports from the US.

Continue reading “China Blocks US LNG Imports”

Someone at the New York Times is obviously following this blog.

The New Energy Secretary’s former company, Liberty Energy, has been liberated of a third of its value this week.

New York Times:

If U.S. oil prices fall much lower than $60 a barrel, around where they were trading on Monday, companies could be forced to slow drilling, slash spending and most likely lay off workers, hurting states like Texas.

Oil executives donated millions of dollars to help elect Mr. Trump, who has championed the industry. But if the past few days are any indicator, having a friendly ear in the White House goes only so far.

“Everybody’s afraid,” said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer for Pickering Energy Partners, a Houston financial services firm.

Executives in other industries like finance and technology who have been closely aligned with Mr. Trump have gone further in urging the president to soften his trade policy.

Continue reading “Feces Hits Fan as Leopards Eat Frackers Faces”

Improbably, one of my newest favorite follows on YouTube is an Oil/Gas executive from Oklahoma, Matt Randolph, aka “Mr Global”.
He’s a little abrasive and combative, as an apparent democrat might have to be to survive in his environment, but his insights about the oil/gas industry are consistent with my wider reading, and often well put.
What he’s on about now is that the current economic chaos has not been all that great for much of the oil industry, as prices sink below break-even on recession fears.

The article below appeared in the New York Times a month before the tariff “liberation”.

New York Times:

President Trump’s promise during last year’s election to make it far easier to drill for oil and gas thrilled energy executives who believed his policies would lower their costs and help them make a lot more money.

Those hopes are now fading. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the oil and gas industry is contending with rising prices for essential materials like steel pipes used to line new wells.

That has not yet translated into a meaningful change in U.S. drilling activity or production expectations, but companies have begun revising budgets to reflect higher materials costs. Decisions made today about which wells to drill will affect production many months from now.

Oil refineries are separately bracing for a tariff on Canadian oil, which some of them need to produce gasoline, diesel and other fuels.

Continue reading “Plandemic: Oil/Gas Industry FAFO-ing on Trump Tariffs”