Tag Archives: energy

Rationing Energy

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It seems that the cost of energy to end users—us average Americans and our businesses—is higher in Progressive-Democrat-run States than in Republican-run ones.

Always On Energy Research and the Institute for Energy Research…completed an analysis of electricity rates and found that residents of blue states see higher electricity bills than those of red states.

Tom Pyle, Institute for Energy Research President:

While there are many factors that influence electricity rates, the one constant we see is that states that have pursued climate or net-zero policies above all else have some of the highest rates in the country[.]

For example,

California mandates 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 and operates a cap-and-trade program, while its average electricity price has climbed from 16.6 to 27.6 cents per kilowatt-hour since 2018 [2nd highest in the US]. New York requires a zero-emissions grid by 2040, and its average price has risen from 14.8 to 21.6 cents per kilowatt-hour [8th highest in the US][.]

Other Progressive-Democrat States, from the report:

  • Hawaii’s average electricity price was 35.72 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, highest in the US (excluding DC)
  • Rhode Island’s average electricity price was 25.86 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 3rd highest
  • Connecticut’s average electricity price was 25.68 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 4th highest
  • Massachusetts’s average electricity price was 25.56 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 5th highest

By contrast,

  • North Dakota’s average electricity price was 8.2 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 51st highest—lowest in the US, even including DC
  • Oklahoma’s average electricity price was 9.5 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, lowest in the US, back to not counting DC
  • Louisiana’s average electricity price was 9.5 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 2nd lowest
  • Nebraska’s average electricity price was 9.55 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 3rd lowest
  • Idaho’s average electricity price was 9.74 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 4th lowest
  • Wyoming’s average electricity price was 9.75 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, 5th lowest

Beyond mere rankings, those are some pretty significant dollar differences in costs.

Mandating “green” sources for producing energy, which results in increasingly unreliable energy production and delivery, which results in increasingly unreliable energy at the end user level—that’s functionally rationing energy, even if that’s not the goal of the green funding industry, although the goal of the climate funding industry affirmatively goes much farther: the bankrupting of hydrocarbon-sourced energy producers. The only distinction here is that the rationing isn’t on the demand and price side, rather it’s on the supply side.

And as any pupil in a high school economics class understands, limiting supply without concomitant reduction in demand—via whatever mechanism—produces increasing prices to those end users.

This is what Progressive-Democrats running those blue States studiously ignore as they blithely enact mandate after mandate to use more “green” energy, use less hydrocarbon energy, limit atmospheric CO2 emissions, participate in cap and trade emissions programs, or some combination of them all.

I Wonder

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The ECB raised its baseline interest rate earlier this week, doing so, it said, in response to the jump in energy prices, which has driven inflation above 3% in the eurozone. Inflation in the rest of the economy—and it’s the same in the US and in the rest of the OECD-esque economies—remains largely muted and under control except to the extent energy costs percolate through them, impacting personal and commercial transportation and shipping, food production, manufacturing, and so on. It’s energy inflation that’s at the core of inflation in today’s overall economy, not a broad excess demand or supply deficiency.

So, I wonder.

When a central bank raises its baseline interest rate, it’s using, if not a cudgel, at least a two-handed sword to address a problem. That’s appropriate, when the problem is broad. But if the problem is narrow, a dagger would seem more appropriate (to continue the metaphor, or perhaps a scalpel, to soften the imagery a little).

Today’s inflationary problem seems narrow, for all its broad effect. It’s energy that’s causing the overall inflation. If raising interest rates is the way to combat inflation, what if a central bank were to raise interest rates only on basic energy production—oil, natural gas, and coal at their input stage, and solar and wind facilities at their component manufacture stage—while leaving its otherwise baseline interest rate unchanged for the rest of the economy?

Clearly that would take some restructuring of its baseline interest control, separating out energy from the rest of an economy. That might demand legislative support. But there’s no reason a farmer should have to pay a higher interest to borrow to get his seed for next year, when it’s core energy that is impacting the cost of his money and not a shortage of seed or a flood of farmers into the market for that seed. It’s the same for folks borrowing to buy a house or car and for those building houses and factories. It’s underlying energy, not a shortage of labor or a spike in buyers, that’s inflating the cost of their money.

On the other hand, raising interest rates on basic energy production would reduce the amount of energy produced. That would lead to reductions in the supply of all the things to which energy is central in their production. The demand for energy is pretty inelastic in a modern economy—it’s going to be produced, within broad limits, regardless of price, and that price increase still is going to percolate through an economy.

So I wonder (still I wonder). It seems to me that targeting the inputs to energy production—crude oil, natural gas coming out of the well, coal leaving the mine, metals arriving at the solar panel or windmill factory while leaving rates on the rest of an economy alone would reduce inflation growth in the rest of the economy while limiting supply deficiencies more than does raising interest rates all across an economy.

Progressive-Democrats Destroy Again

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This time they’re Illinois’ Progressive-Democrat governor, the inestimable JB Pritzker, and the State’s Party-dominated legislature. (The Wall Street Journal misattributed the fiasco to Pritzker, but even within Party, Governors need the complicity of Party’s legislative syndicate.) Following is from the Chicago Tribune, from which the WSJ quoted.

The owner of two-thirds of a massive natural-gas-fired power plant in Will County is moving their part of the facility to Texas.
Literally.
As in, putting huge turbines on flatbed trucks and driving them south to friendlier climes.
We’ve learned that two-thirds of the capacity at the 1,350-megawatt Elwood Energy facility—the largest natural-gas-fired peaker power plant in Commonwealth Edison’s territory and one of the biggest in the nation—now is being shut down thanks to Illinois’ landmark clean-energy law [Climate & Equitable Jobs Act] enacted in 2021. The sudden removal of that whopping 900 megawatts of capacity could well drive up local electric bills that already have been rising.

And this:

The remaining three units at Elwood will continue to operate at the site and now will be permitted to do so under the law until 2045. Why? Because the previous owner, J-POWER, sold those three units to Dairyland Power Cooperative, of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, which by virtue of being a nonprofit is allowed by CEJA to operate gas-fired power plants over the next few decades that otherwise would have to shutter in a few years.
So those emissions also will continue well into the future, but only because ownership changed from a private company to a nonprofit.
Yes, that’s how CEJA works. If you’re not a privately held gas-plant operator, you can continue to pollute.

This is far more than the empty virtue signal that the WSJ article suggested. This is the wanton foolishness resulting in destruction that Party is so enthusiastically pursuing for reasons only Party members can have a glimmer of understanding.

A Cynically Irrelevant Argument

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Here’s the lede:

A coalition of climate and health organizations sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday in an effort to combat its repeal of a landmark climate finding.

Because of course they do. The landmark climate “finding” that has been repealed is the finding that plant food in the form of atmospheric CO2 actually is a pollutant. That fiction has expanded costs of living for us American citizens for decades, and its removal is good riddance. Nevertheless, the climate funding industry is waxing hysterical over the nation’s turn toward rationality.

Their suit proceeds, cynically, from an irrelevancy. Peter Zalzal, of the Environmental Defense Fund:

Repealing the endangerment finding endangers all of us. People everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths.

Even were that true—it isn’t—it’s irrelevant. The question is an economic, and so a political, one. Our courts have no jurisdiction for hearing this argument. Our judges and Justices are bound by our Constitution and their oaths of office to uphold and defend it, and by their oaths they’re further constrained to rule based on the text of any statute that comes before them. They cannot, legitimately, rule based on what they wished our Constitution and statutes said, nor can they, legitimately, rule based on their personal views of what’s good or bad for our society.

This sort of suit should be tossed at the outset, with prejudice, and with sanctions on the lawyers and their employing firms for bringing frivolous suits.

New Trick for Old Dogs

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The old dogs being, in this case, old(er) jet engines and more-or-less purpose-built jet engines.

There is a move afoot to convert commercial aircraft jet engines to produce electricity for AI-centered data centers. The conversion is relatively straightforward: replacing the fuel nozzles to utilize natural gas instead of jet fuel, and replacing the large fan on the front of the flight engine with a much smaller fan that is better suited for power generation.

FTAI has said it expects to be able to deliver about 100 turbines, or 2.5 gigawatts, a year. Boom Supersonic said its goal is to have 4GW of manufacturing capacity or more annually by 2030.

If jet engines can do this—and they can—they also can be used, or ganged together to be used, as electricity generators for localized needs other than AI centers in much the same way small modular reactors are planned for localized electricity needs.

One GW is enough electricity to power a city with a population of 1.8 million people. That works out to enough electricity for towns of 18,000 for each of FTAI’s turbines. They’ll gang together and scale for this, just as they will for AI centers, and just as SMRs will for either purpose.