What’s the opposite of Energy Dominance? Dumbinance?
President Donald Trump promised to unleash an energy renaissance that would lock in U.S. dominance over oil and gas. But that is not how things are working out for America’s drillers, fracking firms and equipment suppliers, including the company founded by Trump’s own energy secretary.
The market value of Liberty Energy has fallen by nearly half since its former CEO, Chris Wright, joined Trump’s Cabinet. The company reports it is among many in the industry struggling with the challenges heightened by Trump’s agenda, including “tariff impacts, geopolitical tensions, and oil supply concerns.”
Three months into the new administration, the price of U.S. oil has plunged to below the drilling profitability threshold of about $65 per barrel and the industry is ailing. At the same time, the U.S. energy economy is being further destabilized by White House attacks on clean power. It is a stark reversal from last year, when the United States was rocketing ahead on clean energy projects, pushed by government, and oil industry executives were brimming with optimism amid record production.
Companies are opting not to add new wells out of fear they will lose money. The number of active rigs in Texas is lower now than it has been since the nation was climbing out of the pandemic. The president’s tariffs are meanwhile driving up costs in U.S. oil fields, leaving firms hesitant to invest in expanding production.
“It is truly affecting everybody,” said T. Grant Johnson, president of Lone Star Production Company, an oil exploration firm in Texas. “There was a lot of talk of, ‘drill baby, drill.’ But these companies are not going to drill if the economics aren’t there. All this fear and uncertainty is causing people to be far more cautious.”
He warns the challenges threaten political blowback for Trump.
“If this pain runs too long and spills into the midterm elections, it could become very uncomfortable for the people who got us here,” said Johnson, who chairs the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association. “And this would all be for naught.”
The administration blames market swings disconnected from Trump’s policies. Wright predicted in an interview that the president’s plans ultimately will increase U.S. energy dominance and bring the industry prosperity.
“Prices are going to spike up and they’re going to spike down in the short term,” Wright said. “That’s based on sentiment and perceptions and guesses. You know, that’s not what the administration has anything to do with. We’re changing policy.”
But many oil executives say Trump’s actions are a major reason production is going down, not up. Demand is dropping amid economic anxieties triggered by Trump’s trade war. Soaring prices for steel and rig parts are chilling investment. And a surge in pumping by OPEC+ nations — which analysts say is happening in large part because Trump demanded it in his pursuit of lower gasoline prices — has created a market glut.
Gas prices remain roughly what they were in October despite Trump’s gutting of oil-field environmental rules. The U.S. is no less reliant on foreign oil today than it was when Joe Biden left office.
Oil is not the only corner of the energy industry struggling. The president’s policies imperil major clean power projects designed to help address the very energy shortages that moved Trump to declare a national energy emergency. Trump’s order to halt all regulatory approvals for wind farms on his first day in office is causing projects to be delayed and abandoned. Offshore wind projects were hit particularly hard because the administration controls approvals in federal coastal waters.
Trump also froze billions of dollars in grants to other clean energy projects, leading to the cancellation of planned factories in the U.S. that would manufacture solar cells and industrial-scale batteries that store solar and wind power. They are components data center builders say are crucial to providing the needed power to beat China in artificial intelligence development.
Wright says current wind and solar technologies are not up to the job of meeting U.S. needs, arguing they don’t provide power around-the-clock, and storing the energy they create with giant batteries is costly.
“Americans saw relatively high energy prices in the last four years, particularly in states that were doubling down on expensive, intermittent, government-subsidized energy sources,” he said. Trump “got elected to say, ‘We’re going to stop that nonsense. We’re going to bring common sense back to energy policy.’”
While the clean power sector was bracing for a hostile White House, fossil fuel companies are feeling rattled. The president had signaled many of the actions on the campaign trail, including a vow to push gas prices below $2 per gallon, but there was an expectation among executives that he would temper his moves to limit disruption. He didn’t.
The tariffs Trump imposed have forced up the price of certain parts crucial to pulling oil from the ground. Drilling components from China that previously cost nearly $6,500 before Trump took office are going up to more than $15,000, according to Cape Tryon, an industry consulting firm.
“Bracing for a crisis” is how research firm Wood Mackenzie characterizes the state of the oil industry. Bryan Sheffield, a major investor in shale oil, told Bloomberg recently that his sector could be facing a “bloodbath.”
The tone was similarly ominous in an anonymous survey of 130 fossil fuel and related companies published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in late March.
“The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one company responded, calling the “drill, baby, drill” mantra a myth and the tariff policy unpredictable.
Years of US climate action have been decimated in a mere few months. Renewable energy in the US had tripled over the last decade with solar, wind, and geothermal becoming more and more mainstream. Now the Trump administration is defunding renewable energy projects that have been designed to moderate our warming world.
For those concerned about the climate crisis, a new analysis points to the loss of almost $8 billion in renewable energy investments. These aren’t just small scale solar farms or a couple of wind turbines on a hill. No, they include 16 large-scale factories and other projects that were canceled, closed, or downsized in the first three months of 2025. Ninety-five clean energy projects have been delayed, threatened, or cancelled since Trump’s re-election, putting more than 60,000 jobs and $71 billion in investment at risk.
And it’s not just the projects in planning and construction phases that have been affected. Any US federal agency that has any type of relationship with clean energy/ climate/ conservation/ weather/ renewable energy has been threatened, harassed, and cut. The Environmental Protection Agency faces a 54.5% proposed cut. The massive changes in US research are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the US, with Europe and Canada among the top choices for relocation.
UPDATE:
Bookmark this February 2025 interview with Chris Wright and see how it ages in the next 4 years. So far not promising.
It can’t be said often enough that
A) SOLAR AND WIND ARE THE CHEAPEST ENERGY SOURCES OF ALL. (Besides efficiency and wiser lives.) Most of the places increasing them most reduce energy costs, especially compared to FFs and nukes. As electrification meets renewablization, the synergy will reduce costs even faster and across the board. Where S&W aren’t already cheapest even including battery storage, they soon will be, since their prices continue to drop long-term even as fossil fuel and nuke prices keep spiking up and cratering, but inevitably rising, long-term.
Add in the ever-ballooning yearly $13 tra-la-la-lillion of fossil fuel subsidies and externalities (a vast undercount that nevertheless dwarfs renewables’ S&E by 500:1, plus reductions in solar costs from doing it the way Australia does it, plus the enormous reductions in transmission needed as we vastly increase distributed solar-plus-batteries and offshore wind, plus reductions in cost if we speed up permitting of clean energy. Then Wright’s lies start to become obvious. OK, MORE obvious.
1) Let’s remember that
a) most pumped hydro storage in the US was built to make up for nukes’ inability to follow load. And ALL energy sources are intermittent. The most intermittent thing about renewable energy is the subsidies and even legality now, constantly yanked away, making business planning nearly impossible, while fossil and fissile fuels’ enormous subsidies keep growing even as they wreck civilization while reaping gazillions in profit.
b) Offshore wind’s cutting edge capacity factor is higher than US gas or coal and still rising, nearing that of most of the world’s nukes.
c) The rise in global energy prices was caused by a petro-dicktator’s fossil fuel extortion and nuclear reactor terrorism… in response to sanctions triggered by his invasion of another country.
B) almost everything THIS psychopath—Wright—said was a lie. Wudda suprize.
“SOLAR AND WIND ARE THE CHEAPEST ENERGY SOURCES OF ALL.”
I’m looking into tapping into the energy generated by Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Ben Franklin, FDR, etc., spinning in their graves.
It’s not the amount of energy that’s important; it’s that they can provide the spinning reserve that’s suddenly a favorite anti-renewable fanatic attack point of the lunatic far right.
No.
Why is it you can never keep facts about renewables straight or tell who’s telling the truth and who’s lying (when it’s not you) about energy? Is it a rare hyper-specific learning disability? Mercury poisoning? Odd form of OCD that compels you to relentlessly return to the worst possible “false assumption” (aka lie) about renewable energy in every situation? I’m sure you don’t know what your motivation is for collaborating with psychotic psychopaths in trying to destroy civilization and nature, but someday I hope to talk to enough of you in person and at length to fully understand the illness.
The sun is always shining. Wind is always blowing. Water’s always flowing; earth is always warm. Besides PV, renewables also include clothesline paradox energy; complementary onshore, offshore, and near-shore wind; dispatchable CSP, geothermal and hydro, micro-hydro, run-of-river hydro; and complementarily-rhythmed tidal; and small amounts of bioenergy for now.
Wind and solar are the cheapest energy sources of all.
They’re cheap with or without storage, with which they are essentially dispatchable. We absolutely must stop using fossil fuels as fast as humanly possible if we want civilization and most life on Earth to survive. In addition to all their other fatal flaws, nukes are expensive all the time, and almost as intermittent in most of the world as cutting-edge offshore wind. In the US, most pumped hydro storage was built to compensate for nukes’ inability to follow load. To try to provide even a significant minority of the world’s energy with nukes (it’s about 5% now) would result in flabbergastingly high prices, many many mass-murdering disasters, extreme water and ecological crises, and more even if it could be done, which it simply can’t. There’s not enough capital funding for even a small fraction of that.
We must stop using fossil fuels as fast as humanly possible, though because of the decades of delay caused by the fossil-fueled far right’s lies, manipulations, smears, intimidation, contempt for law and the constitution, murders, destruction of democracy, and other crimes, unparalleled, unimaginable chaos, violence, death, and suffering are already virtually certain.
3 countries get more than 50% of their electricity from nukes. 2, barely at 50, are the industrial powerhouse Slovakia, and Ukraine—everybody’s current favorite NoNukes poster child. The other is France, former go-to argument for nook boosters, (because it was the only one) still recovering from a massive emergency shutdown of 40% of its 50-odd reactors in the middle of a global energy crisis (characterized by fossil fuel extortion and nuclear reactor terrorism) and of course no shutdown of the 5 reactors destroying aquatic ecosystems. All those disasters will happen a lot more until all nukes are shut down permanently.
At least 70 countries get most of their electricity from renewables. 40 get more than any country has ever gotten from nukes, at least 23 are at or near 100% RE electricity, and 2 get almost all their energy from renewables. Orkney, eg, gets 110% of its electricity from RE, mostly wind and tides, and sells the excess to Scotland. Scotland (110% RE grid) gets 70% from solar and wind, with solar, currently at 1%, able to provide at least 20%, and offshore wind currently at 2%, with its huge capacity factor and complementarity to solar and onshore wind, able to provide 40-50%, or likely, much more. Scotland sells its excess into the larger UK grid (51% RE) which I believe has given up coal completely.
Denmark gets 52% of its 64% RE electricity from wind. Germany, 4th biggest economy in the world, gets 60% from RE, 34% from wind and solar, and keeps increasing it all despite also rapidly electrifying primary energy. Spain and Portugal’s Iberian grid is over half RE. Canada is 70% RE, mostly hydro but with enough onshore and offshore wind, solar and geothermal to provide all its own energy and sell enormous amounts to the US. All of them are quickly renewablizing and electrifying, though not fast enough—because of the insane lying extreme right wing.
Scores of studies show various paths to 100% renewable energy, the ones that have looked at cost have shown it will be cheaper than energy is now. (Jacobson, 2021, eg, Delaware U, Lappeenranta U’s series, etc.)
That bullshit you’re spewing about “the system”, suddenly a popular far right fossil-fueled lie, always comes with zero evidence from no-nothing schlubs spreading the lies of malignant narcissists, and has been refuted many times. Like all climate denial and anti-renewable fanaticism, it has no merit and is nothing but a phenomenally destructive symptom of mental illness. You should see someone about it.
[I think you meant to reply to MD.]
Sorry, I was sure I did.
Wind and solar are only cheap when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. They make the whole system more expensive. The only reason China has accomplished what it has is because it invested heavily in coal electricity. Even if a lot of it gets replaced with wind and solar, they will still need a lot of coal to maintain a consistent grid for industry.
On the grid, the issue is that the supply curve be able to cover the demand curve. Last century, utilities dealing with nuclear power plants making unwanted electricity in the middle of the night by explicitly shifting more consumption to the oversupply hours (including having large buildings make ice overnight for help in cooling the building during the day).
I myself used to charge my EV and run appliances and do extra cooling overnight because that’s when the extra supply was back then and I was raised to be a responsible citizen. Now I know, based on the ERCOT dashboard, that the best time to consume electricity in Texas is in the sweet spot where both wind and solar overlap. Industry knows this, too.
A decade ago Tony Seba pointed out that demand for thermal plant power would be undercut by the growth of , but capital investment contracts for thermal power plants were still using the obsolete return on investment (ROI) calculations that assumed they could pay off the capital loan by selling power like they did in the old days. Banks and investors should not have backed all of those new costly fossil fuel plants once RE advancements were clear. In some areas, utilities were contractually required to pay more for coal power when much cheaper RE was available.
We’ve known for a long time that there would be a lot of “stranded assets” in energy. The whaling ships were no longer needed to supply oil, the horse and buggy were no longer needed to transport people, camera film is only for artistic niche, and we don’t need to build more old-tech costly power thermal power plants as the basis for our grids.
It’s ironic that people who defend nuclear power plants that required energy storage (like pumped hydro) for time shifting are now whining that the RE supply curve doesn’t match the demand curve and storage doesn’t work because [reasons].
FFS! The wind is NOT always blowing and the sun is intermittent EVERY bluddy day. That is if it shines at all. These gaps can be continent wide and days, weeks, SEASONS long.
The superiority of wind and solar is NOT the question. It is how to maintain continuous power supply without destroying the ecosphere. Emphasis on continuous or get voted out.
Wind is always blowing in many places, hard and constant over much of the world. The sun is always shining on half the Earth, always intensely in some places. Those varied resources—onshore, offshore, and near-shore wind, solar PV, CSP, clothesline paradox energy—are generally complementary, peaking at different times of day and year and places in such a way that all 3 peaks in demand—summer days in hot places, winter nights in cold places, and the daily duck curve—are met by simply building enough generation and transmission infrastructure. (And those who never noticed, let alone complained about the far greater, more land-intensive, far more destructive infrastructure of fossil and fissile fuels, but find every sight of a panel or turbine offensive, should be dismissed as the tools of repulsive malignancies that they are.) The more wind and solar in a grid the more stable it is; no upper limit to this has been found.
Water is always flowing. Earth is always warm. They’re dispatchable contributors, and water in particular, though also peaking at a different time (spring) can be used more as pumped hydro storage than it is. (We can also build more pumped hydro storage, as the Chinese are doing.)
Tides flow twice a day and in some places can be a significant supplement with a rhythm predictable years in advance. (Scotland, e. Canada, Alaska, many other places.) Most places without ample local sun have ample local water and wind. Probably more than 95% of humanity lives where it can either use 100% local resources (The Sky’s the Limit study) or can connect to such places at a profit for all involved, and with infinitesimal transmission losses (2% per thousand miles).
Diverse widely geographically distributed sources, combined with battery and hydro storage, and demand response in a multi-continent interlinked grid, will provide all the energy the world needs. Numerous studies have shown how this can work, and those who looked have shown it to be a cheaper path than the current system (Jacobson 2021, eg, and Lappeenranta U’s series of studies) and usually the cheapest possible path, while still having no failures, providing more stability than we see now in most of the world.
So we do know how. And you’re right, the superiority of the combination of all renewable sources is utterly clear. So why reveal ignorance of the solutions with implied denial of some reality and outright denial of other reality, instead of just admitting that you personally just don’t know enough to understand how it’s done?
We have to seriously question the motives of those who reflexively or relentlessly deny these facts and this science without even a whisper of evidence to support their obstructionism.
“…are met by simply building enough generation and transmission infrastructure.”
There’s nothing simple about budgeting, property rights, labor availability and pre-connect testing of everything that adds power to the grid. The goal is simple to express, but that’s not the same thing at all.
Of course it’s simple. We decide to do it, then do it. Equations need to be worked out, machines designed, agencies formed, groups convinced, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
Just like WWII. Invading Europe alone on D-Day was the biggest, most complex single operation in human history. But it was a simple decision for the US to fight against fascists trying to take over the world. Deciding whether to let civilization and most life on Earth die within a century is a simple decision some people are unwilling to make because stopping the current fascists would be hard. People would have to stop watching [fill in current most popular TV show]. They’d have to confront the malignant narcissists running the US, Russia, etc. and their enablers. They’d have to confront their own malignant narcissist tendencies and hatred.
Everything humans do is unfathomably complex. Choosing a breakfast cereal is somewhere in the middle of a chain of 10,000 decisions, 9,987 of which the chooser is unaware of.
You think I didn’t put that “simply“ in there consciously?
The only possible response to that is: What motives could compel anyone to attack renewable energy with lies?
I know the answer to that of course. Do you?
Do not question my motives!!