I will keep the name of this beta-reader to myself, so to avoid an uncomfortable paparazzi-crushing lifestyle change for him, thank you very much. He was talking with me about Dear Josephine, my second book in the literary climate fiction series The Steep Climes Quartet. He was referring to the number of times the term that stands in for all the external costs the use of fossil fuel shifts to the public and not counted among the producers’ costs in fossil fuel production.

Externalities: You know, things like health problems that are attributed to pollution and particulates.

Here’s an AI summary on this particular externality:

Based on studies released in 2025, air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes millions of premature deaths annually worldwide, with a significant portion stemming from fine particulate matter. While total air pollution causes over 4 million to 7.9 million deaths annually, specific studies in 2025 indicated that fossil fuel air pollution alone causes roughly 2.5 million deaths annually. [1, 2, 3]

Key Findings Related to Fossil Fuel Deaths (2025 Context):

• • Global Impact: Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is responsible for roughly 1 in 5 deaths worldwide.
  • Specific Fuel Impact (US): A 2025 study in Science Advances found that pollution from oil and gas extraction and use causes over 90,000 premature deaths in the US annually.
  • Regional Impact: The highest mortality impacts from fossil fuel-related PM2.5 are observed in China, India, and parts of the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia.
  • Health Burden: These deaths are primarily linked to PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and other toxic pollutants that cause cardiovascular disease, respiratory infections, and cancer.
  • Household Fuels: In addition to ambient (outdoor) pollution, solid fuel use in homes results in millions of additional deaths in countries with low access to clean energy. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

You can nitpick the sources, and it is likely that Clean Air Fund has higher death counts than you’re likely to find in reports from the American Petroleum Institute. The footnote links are live in the above AI summary, if you want to check out sources.

But we all understand that pollution is not good for people’s health, but as an externality the costs accrued from health problems related to air pollution are paid by everybody, not by the producers of the fossil fuel products that create the pollution.

We all understand that the last two centuries’ rush to provide energy to industry, transportation, households, and institutions has dumped enormously more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. So much so that this has been altering our climate. Like the negative consequences to health, it is increasingly evident that greenhouse gases produce economic costs for the world, costs that all of us pay for, not costs paid for by the producers of the fossil fuel products that significantly contribute to climate change. In this way, climate change is another of fossil fuel’s externalities.

Here’s the AI summary of the recent estimates on the costs of fossil fuel externalities:

Based on the December 2025 IMF [International Monetary Fund] update, global implicit fossil fuel subsidies—representing underpriced environmental costs—totaled $6.7 trillion in 2024 (5.8% of global GDP). These externalities, which primarily include damages from air pollution and climate change, constitute the vast majority of total fossil fuel support, while explicit fiscal subsidies totaled $725 billion. [1, 2, 3]

Key Details on IMF Externalities Estimates (2025 Update)

• • Total Subsidy Value: In 2024, total subsidies (explicit + implicit) exceeded $7 trillion.
  • Implicit Breakdown: The $6.7 trillion in implicit subsidies (undercharged externalities) are primarily driven by:
    • Air Pollution: Responsible for approximately 3/4 of total underpriced environmental costs.
    • Climate Change: A significant, rising component of the total, with costs projected to rise until 2035.
  • Externalities by Fuel: Petroleum accounts for about half of total subsidies, while coal accounts for nearly two-fifths.
  • Regional Impact: 80% of global coal consumption is priced below half of its efficient level. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Impact of Correcting Prices

• • Health Benefits: Full removal of implicit and explicit subsidies could lead to over 1 million fewer premature air pollution deaths per year.
  • Climate Goals: Correcting these prices could reduce global CO2 emissions by 46% below baseline levels by 2035.
  • Fiscal Gain: Implementing efficient pricing would raise government revenues by roughly 0.6% to 3.6% of global GDP. [1, 2, 3]

The IMF defines efficient prices as those covering supply costs, environmental damages, and standard consumer taxes.

In this post, I’m already up to nine “externalities” appearances. Maybe the beta reader had a point? (Here’s a recent post, Writing The Steep Climes Quartet, Part 2: Economics in Climate Fiction, on presenting economic facts and figures within climate fiction, including, I’m sure, the concept of “externalities.”)

By the way, even I could see this was a problem and the revisions in the Dear Josephine manuscript cut the use of the term by more than half.

How—and Why—Do I Talk about Externalities in a Climate Fiction Book?

I wanted to bring in the concept of externalities in Dear Josephine to show some of the real costs of using fossil fuels. My thinking is that as more people understand such costs, the more economically competitive the clean energy transition looks. Keep in mind that at this point in time adding clean energy to our total energy portfolio is already likely cheaper and faster to build than fossil fuel-based energy even before externalities costs are factored in. And the externalities and direct subsidies costs is a very big number. Well, $7 trillion/annually certainly seems a significant sum to me, but I’m not great at math.

How did I incorporate the discussion of fossil fuel externalities in a novel that takes place in 2029? I could have done it by having one or another character read about it in the mainstream media, but I believe the topic is still likely to be the domain of specialists in 2029.

What I did was have two different types of specialists thinking about externalities. The first character, Jeannie Louise Smith, a resident of Great Barrington, is established as a recurring figure within the quartet. She’s an analyst of climate change and policy, making her living writing reports on commission or working with other like-minded analysts, freelancing articles for various professional and general market publications, and through her articles, essays, and editorials on RE:CC, her bitbytes-platformed blog. She’s in her seventies, so she still thinks in terms of blogs, but in the series, bitbytes is a new Substack-like platform with better features, including micropayment support. She’s a go-to for general media editors who want public-facing content that explains things like externalities or climate change policy fights, market consequences, and more.

In Dear Josephine, it is newly post-Trump. The MAGA and special interests-repudiated Congress is back in the business of dealing with America’s real-world problems and energy costs remain a big problem, as does climate-change-related challenges of mitigation, resiliency, and adaptation. There’s a big congressional bill in committee addressing coastal vulnerabilities. Various interests are trying to influence the bill’s scope. The Seawall Act is a big bill that needs significant funding allocated if it passes, and spending offsets will be part of the fight. Some—like Jeannie Louise—think fossil fuel subsidies might be ready for attack.

Enter a villain in the form of Gerald Greene, executive director of a fictitious fossil fuel think tank, the Kehoe Institute. He has anxious clients, plenty of dark money, and various nefarious schemes. He’s also working on a strategy paper aimed at keeping the issue of externalities off the table. Greene wants to keep the whole issue of externalities from seeing the light of day.

Readers get to see Jeannie Louise wrestling with the challenge of communicating the concept of externalities to the general public while Greene hopes some sleight of hand acceding to the cancellation of some explicit fossil fuel subsidies might do the trick of keeping externalities from the debate. By agreeing to terminate explicit, or direct, subsidies—such as accounting exceptions and advantageous tax codes—Big Oil interests can project a cooperative image while surrendering only a few billion dollars. This maneuver serves to protect the far more lucrative advantage of ignored externalities, which effectively provide an annual $600+billion benefit to American fossil fuel corporations through avoided costs. Can Greene redirect the conversation away from externalities, a confusing and hard to explain concept?

Now you’re going to my home page to buy the books, right?

Weaving in Climate Change Information

The series relies on well-drawn characters, some of whom are engaged directly in the climate change fights, but most of the characters are regular people who get information about climate change mostly from the news and not necessarily paying close attention. After all, for most of us the pressures of our daily lives—jobs, relationships, family, bills, and the other topics of our daily existence—take precedence. Davin, for example, who’s caught up doing platform architecture and system administration for a local interactive “shopper” newspaper, and who wishes he had more time in his art studio, is the sort of person who allows distraction and procrastination into his life. Sometimes a news story captures his attention and he falls down any number of rabbit holes chasing links. There’s part of a chapter to Kill Well, the first book, where’s Davin’s reading his news online about a big methane plume and follows links back to earlier, even bigger, methane leak incidents. Why? Well, he’s kind of interested in climate change, but really, he’s more interested in losing himself in the news rather than getting to his work of generating the month’s Ads-to-Sales report.

There are other native mechanisms for slipping in climate content in bits and pieces. TVs are on, or more likely, news alerts or pop-up videos or phone notifications while people go about their business. Sometimes just a stray piece of a news item is noticed. Sometimes characters have specific interests and set up notifications. Google has been applying AI to improve personalized news delivery. Sometimes someone might mention something of interest—maybe about weird weather, or some disaster, or the fate of some local denizen—while standing in line at the post office or coffee shop. Just like in the real world, climate change is part of the digital static background of the characters’ lives.

Can Boosting Climate Change Information be Thrilling?

There’s another mechanism for providing information about climate change, which is to present thriller-like plot lines that involve specific climate change elements. In Kill Well, the book starts with a young fossil fuel divestiture activist witnessing her boss’s murder while they are heading to a divestment pitch. She’s freaked out, she flees, and starts heading to Boston, not quite sure where she might be safe. On the bus bound for Las Vegas, she finds herself wondering if they’ll pass close to some of the wildfires, and to remind herself where the big fires are she checks CNN on the crappy TV embedded into the back of bus seats. She gets to Chicago, but the upper mid-west is socked in a tough and long heatwave, and on the train heading east she meets a young man who’s heading home to the Berkshires to escape the heatwave and his dropping post-layoff bank balance. The plot line gets the action into the Berkshires, where the books’ principal through-characters live and where the series is grounded, and some of the plot drivers are climate change related.

In Dear Josephine, in 2029, there’s a hurricane that devastates Miami, but the reader learns about it through the perspectives of the Berkshire County characters. I didn’t want characters at ground zero. I wanted the readers to encounter the destruction at a remove, since this is the way most of us—remember Helene?—experience such events. The disaster is covered in the news, of course, and it’s a huge story and no one is unaffected and there’s plenty of continuing coverage for a chunk of chapters. The Miami-destroying hurricane in Dear Josephine has the news bring up climate change. As best I remember (What? You want me to keep rereading my own books?!), there’s little that even the resident expert on climate change Jeannie Louise says about the storm and climate change attribution.

In Over Brooklyn Hills, which takes place in 2035, the southern part of Berkshire County is bursting at the seams with hordes of young hipsters up from the heatwave-dominated New York City and the locals have to figure out how to treat them, including all the free-campers out in the woods of Monument Mountain. The theme, if you’re asked in your English class, is climate migration, but the local action is climate migration writ small and presented not pedantically but woven into the actions and scenes. Of course, there are news stories about climate migration and the deadly violence that results along part of the border of Pakistan and India, and there’s the thriller element involving a climate action terrorist group and the cartels that references climate migration on our own southern border. Add in a small dash of local extreme weather and slightly salty climate change politics, and presto!

Or so the theory goes.

What I Fear about Climate Change Information Dissemination in Fiction

In various Substack comments and correspondence with those involved in climate fiction, I’ve considered the issue of efficacy of climate fiction to inform readers. The nature of any particular work of climate fiction is one issue, where, for example, apocalyptic tales remain a big part of the genre. Such tales seem less likely to help readers identify with the world they live in today. I like a good story of future dystopia as much as the next gun-toting fella, but I, along with many others, suspect that how we make progress on climate change is helped by writing stories in which readers can see themselves. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think most of us see ourselves racing around a desert landscape seeking the last drop of water or paddling around on a homemade raft hoping to find land not yet surrendered to the sea.

Does climate fiction, to be effective, need to capture the interest of the reader? That’s what’s called a rhetorical question. If one is trying to give readers some sense of the struggle we have with changing climate, it seems best that the reader wants to read the book, right? Yeah, rhetorical question yet again.

I recently read Habitat Man, by D. A. Baden, because the book aims to supply the reader information about climate change and other challenges to our environment, especially around biodiversity. While I have several complaints about the book, one issue is the mechanism used to deliver the information. The structure of the book includes the title character going to various home gardens and giving the owners guidance on how to make a more productive and welcoming space for creatures great and small, while ruminating about all the anti-biodiversity stuff we do. The larger point is valid, in that every better garden is a step towards climate progress, but the world isn’t going to grow itself out of climate change one garden at a time, even if the penchant for gardens is exported around the world from the green isles of Avalon.

I’ve recently posted on the concept of Thrutopian climate fiction, with which D. A. Baden is associated: Let’s Talk About Climate Optimism and Hope That We Can Write About Doing Something About Climate Change

I came away from Habitat Man feeling like a remedial learner, where the classes were all the same and there were plenty of them, and mostly all about worms and insects and what bird eats what and composting and composting toilets. I’m sure that composting toilets are helpful in reclaiming a healthy environment—and hey, I was introduced to composting toilets back in 1989, thank you very much—but transitioning to clean energy and moving away from fossil fuels seems the more dominant requirement today. I’m all for reducing methane and I do give a shit, but letting people be aware of, say, legislative solutions that can pick the biggest low hanging fruit demands our more immediate attention. Or maybe I have gone down the garden path, at least metaphorically.

But the characteristic of Habitat Man that makes my hands sweat is the transparent and rote manner the curriculum is delivered. The repetition of the sequential garden visits is one problem, especially as there are plenty of gardens visited, but the same lessons are also repeated, or so it seems, every time the main character passes a public garden or flower bed or ventures out onto the common or walks along some bit of half nature. From reading D. A. Baden’s essays about climate fiction, I’m confident that relaying climate change-relevant information was one of her goals for this romantic comedy novel.

I am, I’ll have you know, ready for the quiz. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was ready only few chapters in. It’s weird to have an info dump in the middle of a garden, composting toilet or not.

Am I doing a similar thing in The Step Climes Quartet? Too many “externalities” in the text?

I sure hope not, but I’ll need some external validation to put that worry to rest.

The post The Challenge of Conveying Climate Change Information in Climate Fiction first appeared on David Guenette.

As an entrepreneur, writer, and climate change activist, I’ve studied climate change science and policies for two decades and believe that the most effective basis for the discussion of the climate crisis is realism, both in science and the stories. I believe climate fiction can be an effective way for individuals and communities to identify with climate change challenges and that climate fiction can inform an individual’s personal actions and a community’s choices. Stories can offer alternative and surprisingly effective perspectives for understanding the climate crisis and on approaches for dealing with climate change. Climate fiction that focuses on the reader’s familiar sense of social order and circumstances and recognizable experiences may better explain the nature of the crisis and foster a more powerful identification with the problems we face.

The Themes, like Climate Change Itself, Have Shifted Over Time

The main theme of The Steep Climes Quartet is our fractured society and the solidarity climate progress requires of us and our communities. This theme, I hate to admit, still carries true.

Even over the course of writing the series—I started in 2015—other themes have evolved and now include some source of hope in the form of an economically competitive clean energy transition. Don’t think I’ve grown pollyannish, though, since important plotlines involve various misdeeds by Big Oil and take into consideration the element of slow progress that typically marks the efforts of political bodies and society at large. Still, by Book Three, Over Brooklyn Hills, 2035 sees that core court cases against Big Oil are finally starting to break for the climate, but then again, these same corporations and their political allies (or to use a more crass appellation, their “bum boys”) have managed to get too many gas-fired generator plants in place, with the net result of slowing progress in carbon emission reductions.

In the first three books, the residents of the Berkshires—a pleasant bucolic place, by the way—don’t have a lot of direct experience with the immediate consequences of climate change, but like most of us, hear about such negative consequences mostly through the news. Kill Well, in 2026, has a big heatwave in the upper Midwest, and the West is experiencing another plague of wildfires, but the Berkshire-based main character Davin, an economically pressed recent divorcee, may have some talking points about the climate down, kind of, and all the right intentions, kind of, but like most others, he’s mostly caught up in worrying about rising costs and his Airbnb apartment and his work. The worst thing that happens to him, climate-effect wise, is that a heavy rain damages a part of the Airbnb apartment on the first floor of his Housatonic house. The character and the much of the nation are still stunned by Trump’s reelection and all the resulting chaos from that clown show. There’s a plot line of a young woman on the run after witnessing her fossil fuel divestiture boss killed on a business trip, which brings her to Chicago, where Davin’s son is living his first year out of college, and the two meet on the train heading toward Boston, and she ends up at Davin’s house, and there’s a contract killer in play, too. A prevailing sub-theme is the widespread economic stress of rising costs and the recession-like state of the nation’s economy that retards, along with Trump, clean energy work.

Dear Josephine is different in that the climate consequence focus is Miami’s destruction by the combination of a powerful hurricane hitting in sync with high ocean surges, and the residents of Berkshires are unaffected directly, of course, although taken up among the multitude shocked by the event, with many trying to figure out how to help. Oh yeah, there’s a guy running around trying to kill billionaires and a guy using Kill the Rich as cover for his own assassinations for fossil fuels think tanks in order to ease some newly inconvenient political ex-allies off the board. And yeah, in Dear Josephine there’s a fair amount of conversation and thinking about externalities, which sounds as exciting to you as a reader and it does to me as the author, right? I think I pulled it off. Does the appearance of a climate action terrorist group make the medicine go down? The sub-theme here is the evil intents of those who run fossil fuel empires and the growing anxiety that their golden egg is hatching trouble. Will Big Oil turn even more savage as the clean energy transition starts to take a bite out of the energy market? I’m pretty sure I nailed this; read the headlines and tell me I’m wrong about Big Oil.

Over Brooklyn Hills, now back from the editor and in the midst of review and then to formatting (and then to proofreading, and then…) is six years after the second book and nine years after the first. MAGA, repudiated in the 2026 mid-term and 2028 elections, has given way to economic reforms and climate policies and America has rejoined much of the rest of the world in making climate progress. The sub-themes include the consequences of choosing violence, as the climate terrorist group now finds itself involved with Mexican cartels and three-quarters of the way toward becoming a criminal organization. The primary theme, though, is about climate migration, and because of a long heatwave hovering over the New York metropolitan area, the Berkshires finds itself with very many more young people (i.e., typically less economically advantaged) escaping the heat and the energy bills demanded for safety, and the towns of South County and the second-homers aren’t enjoying the change in the character of their summer. Of course, the migrant movement at the southern border is a bigger problem, and the violence between parts of Pakistan and India and the portions of their populations on the move from devastating heatwaves is seeing tens of thousands of deaths, largely through paramilitary violence. But up here in the relatively cool green hills, we can be put out by the waves of body odor from those free camping in the woods as we line up at So-Co Creamery to get the kids some ice cream.

Farm to Me, which is mostly a mess of notes and line items for further research, sees 2047 with climate change reducing, due to chronic drought, the yields of some of the once highly productive agricultural areas in the U.S. New England has been experiencing a resurgence of its once dominant industry, agriculture. There’s been some real progress with carbon emission reduction, but climate change is locked in place, albeit at levels that could be worse without modest progress. Resiliency and adaptation programs are the rage, but climate change continues to exert a downward pressure on the economy. It turns out that poisoning the Earth’s atmosphere for centuries has some negative consequences. Who knew?

The fourth book’s themes will include that human nature remains a good news/bad news puzzle, with a murder mystery that may be tied to one ambitious New England food distribution company trying to take over other food distributors. There will be the sub-theme of the angst and agony of the young about the future, where the cumulative effects of climate change pile on. Tipping points, for instance, are getting more attention, but, yeah, a lot less love, that’s for sure.

What It Takes (to Write the Series)

I’d be happy enough to put down my long-running autodidact effort on climate change, but alas, climate models keep getting tweaked and plentiful research continues. Science never sleeps, and all too often, I feel that I need to be on the growing edge of climate change knowledge 24/7, which I can’t be, of course. Currently, for instance, there are new findings and expanded concepts about faster rising temperatures than previous conventional understanding has posited, and I’ve had to make my best guess that 2035 will see the rise of 1.7-1.8 Celsius in the global annual average. By the time I have the fourth book’s manuscript well in hand, I’ll have to best guess about further global annual average temperature rise in 2047, by being as well-informed as I can be to determine that guess.

One objective of the series is to present climate change as accurately as possible and with the best scientific grounding. In this way, readers who may not be similarly inclined to keep up with the science and policies may consider their own understanding advanced, and, yes, this is something of an illusion for those future timelines, but then novels are derived from the creative act of controlled illusion. Yet more speculative, I suspect, will be the political winds and social expectations governing these timelines, made all the more challenging because making assumptions about such trends requires forecasting political and societal developments that march on up and down and sideways.

An example of this challenge of future forecasting happened when I was preparing Dear Josephine for production in 2024.The national election was underway, with Harris and Trump trading leads a number of times. The situation was sufficiently unclear, so I paused in order to suss out which way the wind was blowing. My original working assumption in the manuscript was that Harris would win, and the Biden-era clean energy work would continue, but at times this seemed less or more likely. And then November 7 happened and Trump prevailed, and after recovering from the shock, I was back to work on the manuscript to have the book’s 2029 timeline reflect this dark turn in American politics. Before I shifted the Dear Josephine story to reflect the political reality, there was similar work to do with the already published Kill Well, which has the story taking place in 2026, and so a Trump-ascendent revision was issued. The main thing I got out of this experience was this joke: Who knew that writing near-future fiction wasn’t easy?

There are other problems to solve in attempting to portray the future. These include representations of technology development, but here I think I’ve taken the right approach. Science fiction books tend to over-emphasize technology’s advancement, but for 2026, major advancements were known and other than a few mentions of how AI is becoming part of the characters’ work-a-day worlds. All the surveillance tech that figured into a plotline—things like Ring cameras and ways to hide IP tracking in emails—were already sufficiently prevalent, and a few other cyber-related tech was (one hopes) sufficiently covered by plausible handwaving. For Dear Josephine in 2029, AI is more prevalent, but not by a lot, and, no, no flying cars or major new technological developments, and that’s because human economies and technologies role out more slowly than the sci-fi-inclined often hope. Not just more slowly but also quite unevenly (tip o’ the cap to William Gisbson!), and most of the characters in this series are regular people and not pioneering tech heads.

Jump ahead to 2035, and in Over Brooklyn Hills AI and the spread of some other technologies advance, with smart glasses and haptic feedback and some modest virtual reality interfaces showing up through uneven adoption rates and with varying levels of interest. Davin, a content management systems architect involved with an online “local newspaper,” is a bit tech-forward, but he’s in his early seventies in 2035 and set in his ways, with his biggest tech adoption being a wide-screen interactive monitor that he can gesture at to swipe and select away using haptic wrist bands, but otherwise he’s using his laptop pretty much the way most people today do with keyboard and some voice interface. There’s the 6G networks that provide ubiquitous Wi-Fi.

This challenge of moderating regular people’s interactions with tech changes grows harder the further one goes into the future but faulting on the side of less-is-more is the right bet. For the Farm to Me story taking place in 2047, there’s a part that involves regenerative agriculture, and there are advances in sensor technologies that can accurately analyze carbon sequestration in soil. This sort of development is not a big stretch but rather an incremental improvement in monitoring systems, not doubt aided by AI-based computations. Still no flying cars, at least in any sort of common use by regular people. Improved information search and analysis is to be expected, of course, and this is likely to get some attention, but likely focused on the tension between those who desire better results than the low-hanging fruit of the personalization and prediction engines that typify Spotify and Netflix today. There will be some movement toward direct democracy, although mostly in the form of growing public interest and hardly a done deal. The production and markets for cultured meat and fermentation-based protein are becoming well established. The failure of property insurance and the threat to housing markets in some areas will be leaking into the general economy. There will be some new nuclear reactors, although fewer than one might expect, since such energy production is hampered by high costs and bankruptcies.

In Farm to Me, I’m looking at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, which happens to be based in Great Barrington, and you may remember Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered that was written by the founder E.F. Schumacher. I want to consider what the shift toward a more local economy might look like, especially in response to climate change, although this will be more in the background, I suspect. Did I mention no flying cars?

Of course, I’ve got to write the damn thing first.

The post Writing the Future of Climate Change first appeared on David Guenette.

There’s a lot to do and we need a lot of people to do it. Most of all, at the least we need people active in the electoral process and candidates who are worth voting for when it comes to democracy and climate action.

We’ve run out of time for climate action and are now at the stage of now-or-never. We’ve not yet managed to reduce carbon emissions. We have slowed the rate of emissions, but more carbon is still being added into the atmosphere and temperatures keep climbing. I sure as hell hope that the recent studies suggesting the rate of temperature rise is faster than previously thought turns out to be wrong, although science has grown more sophisticated in its understanding of large Earth systems, and with more understanding comes, typically, more accuracy. With higher temperatures comes the greater likelihood of various tipping points happening sooner rather than later, and that’s another piece of bad news.

The good news is that we have economically viable technological developments in solar/wind/batteries and digital grid and demand management to meet not only the growing demand for electricity but replace some of the existing fossil fuel-based electricity generation and much of the gasoline-driven transport so dear to the American culture. If we keep from adding new gas-fired gas plants and retire existing coal plants and gas plants, we can cut back on greenhouse gas emissions that stem from the electricity generation we need.

We can win.

There’s a great EMBER report I covered in “The Electrotech Manifesto,” posted last June that does a great job spelling it all out. If you need a pick-me-up in the face of all the dirty tricks Big Oil has been pulling, check it out. 

Cutting back on carbon emissions instead of adding to emissions must be our goal for the next few years, never mind any decades time scales. We need to manifest this reduction of emissions as soon as possible. 2030 is right around the corner and even if we do manage to reduce emissions from the electricity generation sector, we’ll still be dealing with a world at least 1.5 Celsius hotter, in annual global average, and it looks likely that 2.0 Celsius is now the new minimum rise. I’ll take 2.0 Celsius by 2100 over 3.0, 4.0, or even higher Celsius increases, but whatever the actual number of Celsius warmer annual global average temperature, the lower the number, the better for one and all.

So, chop chop, people.

First, Restore Democracy

The first objective in the fight for faster clean energy transition, at least here in America, is to revive our democracy. While polls strongly suggest there will be a Republican rout in the midterms, the polls assume there will be midterms that aren’t abused by the Trump Administration to its advantage. And what is the basis for Trump’s advantage? Basically, to stay in power and out of jail.

Trump’s corruption is historic, and that’s keeping in mind that there have been periods in American history where corruption was strife. Still, when it comes to corruption and self-dealing, Trump truly deserves the gold medal in that event. A crucial aspect of this corruption is the favors bought by Big Oil that has President Big Oil Stooge leaning the economy heavily toward fossil fuels, despite clean power technology being more costly both in direct cost and, of course, in health and environmental impact.

For the 2026 midterms, the fight will be on two fronts. The first is to make sure the elections take place in fair and legal conditions. The second is to vote for the right candidates in record numbers.

Second, Stress the Positive

We have the means to transition our energy systems toward clean energy, including solar, wind, battery storage, geothermal, and nuclear. Solar and wind and batteries are cheapest and fastest to implement, while also freeing countries from having to continuously spend and spend on more fossil fuels to replace that which has been burned.

The reduction in carbon emissions from the clean energy transition can slow down carbon emissions and even start to reverse the high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The net effect will be to keep climate change from worsening, and thus reduce the amount of money, time, and effort to build resilience for the warming climate and decrease the adaptation efforts that higher temperatures will demand. We must diminish the threat of economic and societal collapse posited by many should we experience 2 Celsius or higher global average temperature rises.

Sounds like a bargain, right?

How about cheaper and cleaner electricity fairly shared, and not just among Americans, but to address the Global South’s energy poverty? Here, in many countries, clean energy is countering the fossil fuel-based systems that contribute to overall poverty, including high mortality, hunger, famine, disease, and whatever other horsemen of the apocalypse you can think of. Oppressive living standards occur by keeping such countries’ own energy and economic development hostage to the costs of fossil fuel energy generation.

Third, Go Big on Clean Energy Build Out Nationally, State-wide, and Locally

The United States faces big energy infrastructure build out regardless of energy source. There’s the need for more electricity, not only for the panicked requirements of AI and data centers, and clean electricity is far more efficient an energy source than fossil fuels, whether in terms of generation itself, or for the heating and cooling of the built environment, or transportation. Electrical grids need better digital management for load balancing, efficient use of distributed energy resources such as virtual power plants, and controlling demand load capacity and distribution. Overall power capacity needs expansion and old distribution lines require repair and updating.

This may seem overwhelming, but keep in mind that America has undertaken this sort of infrastructure work before–think the Federal Rural Electrification program or Tennessee Valley Authority, or for that matter, the Interstate Highways buildout. Keep in mind that just one administration back, two major bills for big energy infrastructure passed, only to be illegally curtailed by the Trump Administration’s violations of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

The clean energy transition may seem too expensive, but longer-term considerations prove out that the clean energy transition to be the less expensive path. Why are large clean energy infrastructure programs less expensive, especially if one doesn’t get caught up in the “next-quarter” thinking? First, solar/wind/and battery systems are cost comparable to fossil fuel-based generators, but the cost of operation for fossil fuel-based generation is never-ending with ongoing purchases of price-volatile fossil fuels. This contrasts to clean energy generation that has only its upfront cost but very low cost of operations that does not include any ongoing fuel purchases for thirty or forty years. There’s an old argument still being made that the levelized cost of energy (LCOE, or the overall costs over the life of the energy generation) is lower with natural gas than with renewables. Yes, once upon a time this was true, but only by cherry picking old data from back when solar, for example, was costly, do the numbers work out that way. In reality, costs for solar, wind, and battery storage have fallen so low that renewable energy’s LCOE is cheaper than fossil fuels and that that’s not even counting the negative externalities of health and climate cost inseparable from fossil fuels.  Another way to look at this issue is as energy return on investment (EROI), and if you want more on this, check out my post “My Report About EROI, Written by AI,” published last April.

Today, the thumb on the scale for fossil fuels is even worse, with 100-plus year old tax code advantages and $billions in direct subsidies still being handed to the fossil fuel corporations each and every year, including several $billion extra added in by Trump through the OBBBA. Big Oil has been gaming the system for its own business benefit, cost, inefficiencies, and damages from the business of fossil fuels be damned. We need to act at every level, from federal, to state, to local.

Fourth, Take a Breath

The energy transition may look better and be moving forward faster in many other parts of the world outside the U.S. China has been full steam ahead (old metaphors never die, they just become ironic), and while China’s large economy and huge population make carbon emissions reduction difficult, that country is on its way toward becoming the first “Electrotech” country. Usually, advantage goes to first place winners, but as an American considering this advantage, I’ll merely sigh.

There are good signs that many Global South countries are leapfrogging older energy systems and often this may mean that the expensive infrastructure outlays that the West’s traditional energy grid systems represent can be ignored for a more quickly built and less expensive micro-grids and local energy capacity based on renewables. One of the great fears has long been that the developing countries, as they approach parity in energy wealth to the developed countries, would contribute to huge further spikes in carbon emissions. What we’re seeing instead are countries putting in place clean energy systems early on. This trend has the potential for a significant win/win, where countries develop energy wealth parity while no further carbon emissions are added.

Fifth, Eat the Billionaires

Any neutral economic assessment of the past forty or fifty years shows a staggeringly huge shift in wealth to the top 10%, and even worse, the top fraction of one percent. By most analyses, our wealth inequality today exceeds the excess of the late nineteenth century Gilded Age, and any reader of history knows that the Gilded Age was an awful time of corruption, worker oppression, and wide-scale poverty. Today, America is captured by oligarchs. Billionaires avoid taxes in myriad ways. The accretion of power to the top one-percent is so significant as to be nearly incomprehensive. Dé·jà vu, all over again.

Shifts in distributed wealth have many examples in American history. Within our lifetimes—well, decreasingly few of us still living these days—the Depression era New Deal corrections provided economic support to desperate citizens. The post WWII American productivity growth created a growing middle class because productivity gains were shared more equitably. The top income tax bracket was 92 percent during Eisenhower’s administration, and while the top bracket fluctuated, the 1960 and 1970s saw top rates at 70 percent or higher. Only with the election of Ronald Reagan did the top rate crash down to 50 percent in 1982 and fell further to 28% in 1988. Further tax cuts in the George W. Bush administration happened and then the Trump tax cuts in his first term went into law, then were extended again in 2025 with OBBBA.

The current level of wealth inequality is absurd and absurdly dangerous: The top 1% (approx. $55 trillion in assets) holds roughly as much wealth as the entire bottom 90% of Americans. As of early 2026, the top three richest Americans are Elon Musk (approx. $839B), Larry Page ($257B), and Sergey Brin ($237B). Together, they represent a significant portion of the roughly 31.7% of U.S. wealth held by the top 1% of households.

Let’s tax the rich and get the wealth distribution back into fair territory. Let’s have a more fairly shared burden contribute to the crucial work on the energy transition ahead of us.

By the way, should billionaires even exist?

Sixth, Shift America’s Money to the Real Conflict

In 2026, the budget for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) was $839.2 billion in discretionary funding, but The FY2026 DOD budget request also contains approximately $113.3 billion in mandatory (non-discretionary) funding, including the following:

• Resources designated for the Navy’s shipbuilding plan and to revitalize the nation’s shipbuilding industrial base
• Over $5 billion is allocated specifically for the submarine industrial base
• Investments include $321.9 million for DPA purchases and $2.6 billion for Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) programs
• Strategic capital to the tune of $300 million directed toward the Office of Strategic Capital for loans and loan guarantees
• The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) budget, which is part of the broader, non-discretionary personnel-related costs, accounting for 84% ($1,216.8 million) of the specific budget request
• While not mandatory funding, the enacted NDAA/appropriations provided significant budget additions in specific, targeted “non-discretionary” areas (items that Congress authorizes) such as $1.5 billion for the maritime industrial base and various, targeted, weapon systems enhancements

Well, what’s another $113 billion, right?

And then, of course, there are the additional costs associated with specific military adventures in 2026, including:

• Iran-related operations incurring roughly $10.35 billion in costs in just the first 10 days of the conflict, with the initial 100 hours of operations costing an estimated $3.3 billion, with costs rising rapidly due to munitions, flight hours, and damaged equipment. A two-month engagement is estimated to cost between $40 billion and $95 billion
• Venezuela adventure/Caribbean operations will incur costs above the initial FY2026 budget, including increased personnel benefits (e.g., family separation allowances) and higher operational tempo (e.g., more flying/steaming hours). These are estimated to cost an extra $3 million per day
• The FY2026 defense budget includes expanded missions for the DoD to support the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes deploying U.S. forces to border areas

Due to the high intensity of operations, the Pentagon has informed Congress they need an additional $50 billion beyond the original budget request. Additionally, the administration has anticipated at least $150 billion in further, separate, or reconciliation funding for defense activities.

Well, what’s another $150 billion, right?

So, yeah, well over $1trillion is going to the DOD. One core factor in the current war efforts is fossil fuels, whether to address the threats against oil markets or for “strategic” geo-political considerations. And then there are the costs stemming for the protection of maritime shipping and the negative production capacity among both U.S. allies and enemies.

Keep in mind that the Pentagon has never passed a clean financial audit since they began audits in 2018, failing its eighth consecutive annual audit in late 2025. Despite conducting yearly audits, the Department of Defense (DOD) remains the only federal agency unable to achieve an unmodified, or “clean,” audit opinion. That 1960 warning by Eisenhower about a military-industrial complex? It turns out, I Like Ike.

Keep in mind, too, the negative revenue consequences of OBBBA. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is estimated to reduce federal tax revenue by approximately $4.5 trillion to $5.5 trillion over the ten-year period from 2025–2034. These revenue losses primarily stem from extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) policies, implementing new business tax reforms, and raising the SALT deduction cap to $40,000.

You’ve heard this before, but the U.S. military budget in 2026 is $839.2 billion (but actually over $1 trillion). China (People’s Republic of) is in second place, at $303 billion, well less than a third of the U.S. military budget. Here are the next top eight military budgets, in $billions: Russia, $212.6; Germany, $127.4; India, $88.4; Saudi Arabia, $67.2; United Kingdom, $64; France, $57.4; Japan, $57.4; South Korea, $45.8.

So, yeah, what you’ve heard is right: the budget for the U.S. military is as much as the next nine nations’ military budgets combined. Half of these are allies.

The money for the clean energy transition is there, but it is being spent on the wrong things.

Let’s fund the Electrotech Revolution, save most people money, and save the planet’s hospitable climate. That’s the battle we need to join.

The post How to Win the Electrotech Revolution first appeared on David Guenette.

Still, I’m tempted to call baloney when it comes to balcony solar, but another part of me knows that any step forward with solar power is a good thing. But I still grumble that this under-powered piecemeal addition for adding solar is far less important than all the proposals being considered across—at last count—28 states and DC might suggest.

What’s being considered in legislatures across the land is allowing small plug-and-play photovoltaic (PV) kits that connect directly to a standard wall outlet, allowing users to reduce electricity bills without complex installation. Balcony solar panel systems typically have a maximum output capacity of 600W to 800W for standard plug-in microinverter kits, which is the legal limit in many European countries. While some systems allow for up to 1,200W or slightly higher, 800W is the common, safe, and regulatory-approved threshold for small apartment-focused solar energy. Basically, we talking a balcony solar kit generating an amount of power that falls short for most microwaves or hairdryers. Forget about refrigerators that may only need 150–300 watts to run, but can require 1,000–2,000-plus watts to start the compressor.

Keep in mind that balcony solar powers only the circuit it is plugged into, not the whole house. Under best conditions a balcony solar set-up might generate 300-1,200k kWh annually. Here in Massachusetts, the typical household annual electricity consumption is approximately 7,150-7,250 kWh, which means, best case, balcony solar might supply 16% of your annual usage, but of course there’s no such thing as best case, especially here in New England.

But whatever. In my book, any reduction in fossil fuel-derived electricity is a win, even if my enthusiasm for balcony solar is, like its output potential, weak.

What is clearly not a win at all is adding more regulations and local authority over rooftop and community-scale solar and battery projects.

Good Intentions Can Have Bad Consequences

In fact, I find myself grumbling about a lot of solar-related issues these days and balcony solar isn’t top of the list. Some people within one of my local climate groups sends around to the members information from Responsible Solar MA asking that members consider submitting testimony to the state Energy Facilities Siting Board to support changes in the regulations on siting of solar projects be adopted for “Safe Solar Siting.” Responsible Solar MA was asking for the public written testimony in support of many new restrictions on solar siting, and when I read the template testimony provided, I ended up editing it to oppose most provisions included.

Here’s what I wrote (slightly further edited for this post):

To the Energy Facilities Siting Board,

Please accept my comments relating to the energy siting regulations and guidelines that are in development. My guiding principle below is that liberal permission should be allowed in the siting of solar and solar/batteries facilities in the vast majority of cases, but perhaps with a few exceptions, such as setback and fencing and aesthetic border requirements as described in local zoning codes. 

The country and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are in a race to develop solar and tie clean energy into existing or newly needed transmission grids renewable energy sources. Indeed, the transition to renewable energy-based electricity production is among the highest priorities for the world at large, as progress in the reduction of greenhouse gases has to date underperformed, with consequential increases in climate change. As few restrictions to solar or battery or solar/battery facility siting as possible will be necessary to encourage and accelerate the renewable energy transition.

1) Do NOT exclude “small” energy projects and all ESS battery systems by only allowing such projects on the built or disturbed environment. This is an unnecessary restriction that will only serve to delay, complicate, and raise the costs of solar and battery facilities.

2) Do NOT exclude the following areas from large and small energy generation and transmission projects:

• • Article 97 protected open space [Note: the proposed additions do already recognized that some Article 97 land could hold exceptions such as solar canopies over a DCR beach parking lot]  
  • Wetland resource areas (310 CMR 10.04) and with setbacks of 1,000 feet to identified wetlands resources. However, a shorter distance setback, perhaps up to 40 feet, might be considered with the addition of construction barrier placements near such set back lines.
  • Properties included in the State Register (950 CMR 71.03), except as authorized by regulatory bodies
  • BioMap 2 Critical Natural Landscape, Core Habitat, Important Habitat, or Priority Habitat
  • Flood plains and flood prone areas 
  • Land that provides public drinking water, especially with adequate set-backs and construction barriers, given that solar facilities are not significant sources of water table toxicity contamination, although battery facilities may be restricted because of the (low) potential for toxicity dissemination.
  • On prime farmland (as defined by the state), where private land owners should be the decision source as to whether solar or solar/battery facilities are placed within the bounds of the private land

Flood plains and flood-prone areas actually make excellent siting choices for solar and/or solar and battery facilities, if sufficiently robustly platformed and at a height safely above flood plain high-water flood potential.

As for land that provides public drinking water, solar facility siting should be allowed, especially with adequate set-backs and construction barriers, given that solar facilities are not significant sources of water table toxicity contamination. Restrictions on land that provides public drinking water should not be considered, because of the (low) potential for toxicity dissemination.

3) Do NOT exclude ground-mounted solar projects on newly deforested land, defined as cleared less than 5 years ago. This is an unnecessary restriction that will only serve to delay, complicate, and raise the costs of solar and battery facilities.

 4) Marginal farmland should have NO restrictions on solar siting.  Any private land use for solar or battery or solar/battery facilities should yield decisions only by the property owner, with adequate setbacks and fencing and aesthetic borders, as defined by state and local zoning regulations.

 5) Language should NOT be included that ensures no negative impacts on:

• • Biodiversity including plants and animals listed under the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act
  • Protected open space
  • Native American cultural areas as determined by Massachusetts’ Indigenous people

The facts are clear that the consequences of climate change pose the greatest threat to biodiversity. The irony of arresting or slowing the reduction of greenhouse gases through overly-restrictive renewable energy production siting is clear.

6) Please keep decision making on solar power generation facilities within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts authority, so that NIMBY pushback to solar facility siting may be discouraged. Consider allowing the discretion and authority provided to the towns to enforce adequate setbacks and fencing and aesthetic borders, as defined by state and local zoning regulations and in keeping with public safety concerns, especially for battery facility siting (e.g., adequate access for emergency responders). Therefore, language should NOT be included that ensures the following:

• • Locally generated enforceable safety standards for battery storage
  • Town-specific capacity and siting goals, with local control of siting
  • Authority for municipalities to reject any proposal for minimization and/or mitigation that are deemed a threat to the towns’ health safety and welfare, and natural and cultural resource protections, as determined by local boards and commissions

Please note that threats to the towns’ health safety and welfare and natural and cultural resource protections should be directed by state-level policies, rather than be left to local boards and commissions, and largely because local NIMBY reactions can too easily be driven by a minority of voters within any locality who may not represent majority views. The state-level policies should be adequate for defining  threats to the towns’ health, safety, and welfare, and natural and cultural resource protections.

I don’t think Responsible Solar MA, the local effort to improve solar siting rules, has nefarious intent, nor do I believe this is some sort of astroturf conspiracy but rather a sincere contribution to the public process. But I think that too many of us who have long been active in the environmental movement are stuck on old goals such as protecting specific species or to keep land pristine. While I’m all in favor of good stewardship, the dangers from rising global average temperatures put the vast majority of environments and their fauna and flora at risk, and our best opportunity to reduce such acute danger and damage is to reduce carbon emissions. Solar power has the present and ready capacity to take a big chuck out of carbon from fossil fuel-driven electricity generation and internal combustion-based transportation and gas- or oil-based heating and cooling of buildings.

The Best Approach: Reduce Barriers to New Solar and Solar/Battery Facilities

The best solution is fewer rules and regulations about siting and permitting solar, wind, and battery projects. We already have too many rules and regulations and too many Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), or town-based permitting and inspection, that slows such projects down or keeps them from getting built, even while significantly contributing to the cost of such projects that go forward. The fact is that clean energy project permitting is too arcane and slow and complicated by AHJ inspection requirements., and slow and difficult permitting and inspection processes add costs. Common estimates are that over one-third of the cost of rooftop solar is tied to permitting and inspection and the time delays these processes cause. I did an analysis last year about the source of high costs for rooftop solar/batteries systems, if you want more detail. The report is titled “The American Solar Cost Paradox: Analyzing the Soft Cost Drivers and Policy Barriers to Affordable Residential PV in the U.S.”

I’d much rather have the climate movement pay more attention to permitting reform that has fewer restrictions and an fast and automated permitting process such as SolarAPP+. I wrote a post titled “What is the State of States’ Efforts to Make Home Solar and BESS Easier and Cheaper? Red Tape, Not Technology, Is the Biggest Threat,” if you want to find actual efforts underway to improve solar/battery project costs.

What’s the Real Threat to Clean Energy?

Big Oil recognizes the threat of the transition to clean energy, which is why, in addition to their lying and greenwashing, they’ve been buying up more and more of our government, and getting results. Trump has severely repressed clean energy projects, up to and including cancelling the East Coast wind farms, although recent court cases may have solved this to some degree (although, of course, then there’s an appeal possible). Removing the IIJA and IRA incentives for solar, wind, and EVs and other clean energy projects, have dealt a major blow to the energy transition in the U.S. And Big Oil is on the rampage to get 100+ new gas generator built and expand their natural gas market for another thirty or forty years, citing the need to meet growing electricity for AI and data centers, even while actively and unfairly suppressing clean energy alternatives needs, fighting for climate court case pre-emptive dismissals, and continuing to manipulate the public’s perception aboutclean energy and the danger of climate change.

Climate activists need to focus on bigger solutions, even if balcony solar is okie-dokie. We need to reform the permitting processes, the mis-match in interconnection queue schedules , and otherwise return our country to a more equal market environment, where the faster speed and lower cost of clean energy production can kick Big Oil’s can.

Oh yeah, this work also includes getting democracy healthy in the U.S., but no one ever said saving the world was going to be easy.

The post Let’s Get Serious About Solar first appeared on David Guenette.

I believe that I can confidently claim that one thing that Trump is not guilty of is smart long-term thinking.

I wonder what Big Oil is thinking these days.

War is Good (for Big Oil)

Among the consequences of the US/Israel-Iran War is the ongoing rise in oil prices. Another consequence of this war is the significant increase in the resources and money the US directly provides Big Oil, whether through the purchase of higher volumes of fossil fuels (at higher costs) to feed military actions or in the indirect expenses of insurance and military protection coverage of the significant chunk of the oil transport market that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s right: the United States government is now getting into the business of insuring oil tankers, since Lloyds of London and the other main marine insurers aren’t interested in covering loss of shipping when their clients ply the waters adjacent to Iran. There are other geopolitical consequences, too, such as today’s “permission” by our government to allow India to buy Russian oil, where the higher prices for oil will bring in more revenue to Russia and thus help that country prosecute its war against Ukraine, but hey, that doesn’t seem to be a bug for Trump’s program, but rather a feature.

And then, of course, armed conflict causes a noticeable spike in greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s a Gemini AI summary to the search, “war and greenhouse gas emissions”:

Global military activity contributes approximately 5.5% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure larger than the entire aviation industry. Wars, such as in Ukraine and Gaza, release immense CO₂ through fuel-heavy combat, infrastructure destruction, and future reconstruction needs, often operating outside mandatory international reporting standards. 

Key Aspects of War and GHG Emissions:

• • Massive Carbon Footprint: If the world’s militaries were a country, they would rank as the fourth largest emitter globally.
  • Major Conflicts: The first 15 months of the war in Gaza resulted in at least 32 MtCO₂e, comparable to Croatia’s annual emissions. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has generated an estimated 230 MtCO₂e in roughly two years.
  • Fuel Consumption: Militaries are intensive consumers of fossil fuels. The U.S. Department of Defense is considered the world’s largest institutional consumer of oil.
  • Infrastructure & Rebuilding: Beyond immediate combat, destroying cities and the subsequent carbon-intensive reconstruction efforts create significant, long-term environmental impacts.
  • Transparency Gaps: Military emissions are often exempted from international climate agreements like the Paris Agreement, making their true impact hard to track.

So now add to the above count the US-Israel-Iran War and the expansion of the conflict throughout the Middle East.

Big Oil—Happy, Sad, or Confused?

I’ll play an amateur psychologist for Big Oil and try to think through the emotive state of the industry. The good (i.e., happy) news for Big Oil is that the price per barrel has been quickly climbing due to the latest Mideast conflict, and that means profitability is up, and especially for the U.S. industry. Big Oil has been operating on a surplus basis price-wise, hovering not that far above profit margin make-or-break levels with per-barrel costs around the sixty-dollar mark. But today, Brent Crude is up $7.28 per barrel, or $92.69. Natural gas too is climbing. It is great for the U.S. fossil fuel corporations having Trump as their front man, considering that the supply of Mideast oil and gas is curtailed, so profits accrue more to the U.S. corporations. Headlines talk about oil hitting $150 per barrel in weeks.

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

Big Oil’s applause—especially for the U.S. corporations—grows louder when you consider the anti-clean energy efforts of President Big Oil Stooge. The States are facing growing electricity demand with the much-ballyhooed AI data center predictions, but also for the welcome electrification of heating and cooling, transportation, and some electrification expansion in various segments of industry.

Dark Clouds in Reality Land

But this boon has the capacity to go bust. Not because AI and data centers aren’t a real thing, although there’s a bunch of questions about this, too. One big question centers on just how real the electricity growth load demand really is, but I’ll leave further discussion on this topic to another recent post, “Fossil Fuel Demand Growth Uber Alles.”

On the other hand, any price rise in fossil fuels makes clean energy that much more competitive and the issue of affordability is rising across the country. Even in Trumpland, there’s a growing chorus for solar power. From Solar Energy Industries Association,” published on February 19, 2026:

A recent poll from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, chief pollster for President Trump, found that a clear majority of Republicans support expanding solar power in the United States. In the survey, 68% of GOP voters agreed that “we need all forms of electricity generation, including utility solar, to be built to lower electricity costs,” while 70% said they support utility-scale solar deployment when projects use American-made materials. Another poll from Kellyanne Conway’s KA Consulting showed that three-quarters of Trump voters (75%) in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Texas believe that solar energy should be used in the U.S. to strengthen and increase our energy supply.

This story is not simply wishful thinking on the part of pro-solar outfits like the SEIA. This story is making headlines and getting coverage in the mainstream media.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects a record 86 GW of new utility-scale electric generating capacity will be added to the U.S. grid in 2026, driven by a 62% increase in renewable energy additions over 2025 levels. Solar (51%) and battery storage (28%) dominate the growth, with 93% of new capacity coming from renewables and storage, including 43.4 GW of solar and 24.3 GW of battery capacity.

If these projections hold, renewables (including small-scale solar) are expected to surpass natural gas in total capacity by the end of 2026. And these projections were done well before the US/Israel-Iran War. Consider, too, that the Trump’s administration is hostile to clean energy. Consider, too, that most other nations aren’t hostile to clean energy and with spikes in price of natural gas, I’m guessing other nations reliant on natural gas and other fossil fuel imports grow even less happy with such dependency.

It remains to be seen how long the price jump for fossil fuels will continue. The cost of running a gasoline-powered car or diesel-based transport continues to climb, and there are already signs of a resurgence of EVs in the U.S., although there’s already been plenty of solid growth of EVs in the majority of the world.

So, How Happy is Big Oil?

As much as I’m horrified by Trump’s stupid fantasy play with real world life-and-death ramifications, I find myself wondering if the foreign military entanglements might boost the move away from Trump and his madness. The 2026 midterms look better than ever for the shift in Congress toward the Democrats and with Trump’s gang of incompetents mucking up the economy and dealing out threats to democracy, 2028 looks good for a full ousting. Of course, if Democrats keep their fealty to corporations as a priority, my bet is off.

Dear Josephine, the second book of The Steep Climes Quartet, takes place in 2029. There’s a new, unnamed Democratic administration just in, and the Congress has moved toward progressive gains. Energy and climate policies are back in play, with the sort of 100-Day advances a guy can hope for, but politics still has its partisan problems and by no means are all Democrats clear about working for citizens instead of corporations. Campaign funding reform has not been accomplished, but the fight is on. Progress moves more slowly than many of us might like, but progress takes place. Big Oil’s efforts to maintain business continues, especially in the push to get more and more gas plants built. By 2035, which is the year Over Brooklyn Hills, the third book of The Steep Climes Quartet, takes place, Big Oil is on its back foot, but still has plenty of kick left, even as court cases against the industry and pro-energy transition legislation do well. The problem remains of too much money in the political system, although real progress to kill Citizens United and the absurd legal foundation for that awful decision is finally imminent. Everyday life continues: people struggle with bills and are exasperated or delighted in relationships, work, and circumstances beyond an individual’s control.

The carbon emission tide is turning, but slowly, like the proverbial change in direction of a large ship’s course. Plenty of damage has been done and shows up in climate change consequences. Tipping points are an ongoing concern. Greed, power, and selfishness are counterpoints to our better angels.

We Are All Sad, Really

As excited Big Oil may be about expanded sales and profits, they live in the same world as the rest of us, and that world is getting hotter because of Big Oil’s expanded sales and profits. From the AGU Journals collection, Advancing Earth and Space Sciences posted a Geophysical Research Letter titled “Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly,” authored by G. Foster, S. Rahmstorf, and first published on March 6, 2026. Fortunately for us non-scientists, AGU offers a plain text summary, as follows:

The rise in global temperature has been widely considered to be quite steady for several decades since the 1970s. Recently, however, scientists have started to debate whether global warming has accelerated since then. It is difficult to be sure of that because of natural fluctuations in the warming rate, and so far no statistical significance (meaning 95% certainty) of an acceleration (increase in warming rate) has been demonstrated. In this study we subtract the estimated influence of El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, which makes the global temperature curve less variable, and it then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015. Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been.

If even this is too long to read, here are the key points:

Key Points

• • During the last decade, the rate at which Earth warmed increased substantially
  • After removing the influence of known natural variability factors, the increase of the warming rate is statistically significant
  • At the present rate, we will exceed the 1.5°C limit of the Paris Climate Accord by 2030

We no longer have the opportunity to keep global warming from occurring, but we do have the capacity to slow down carbon emissions and make it more likely that climate change consequences are less severe.

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

The post Oil War and Counter-War on Oil first appeared on David Guenette.

This is the first paragraph of one of my posts from earlier in the year, “AI is Giving Me Gas: The Collision of Tech Hype and the Carbon Budget.” It may be bad form to start a Substack post citing another Substack post, but clearly these two posts are related. The sub-title of the above referenced post” “We are scraping the bottom of the 1.5°C carbon budget. Big Oil’s response? Build 252 gigawatts of new gas power to feed the AI boom.”

I also wrote about this back in September of last year, in a post titled “New Gas Generator Plants and the Plan to Flood the (Electricity Demand Growth) Zone.” In this post there’s a link to an AI analysis I did in a report called “The Future of U.S. Natural Gas Power Generation: Projections, Accuracy, and the Confluence of Limiting Factors to 2030.”

The electricity demand growth tied to AI and data centers has Big Oil salivating, with plans—dreams?—of 100-plus new gas-fired generation plants in place by 2030. Not that the supply chain and turbine manufacturing capacity can deliver, but the explosion in small diesel or natural gas generators nonetheless seems a happy enough ending, boding well for Big Oil sales.

This doesn’t bode well for the rest of us, unfortunately. In the news of late is Elon Musk’s xAI company, which has used a large fleet of mobile, trailer-mounted gas turbines (rather than diesel generators) to power its “Colossus” AI data center in Memphis, Tennessee. These turbines are deployed as a temporary, “quick and dirty” solution to bypass power grid constraints while constructing the facility, which houses Nvidia H100 GPUs for training the Grok AI model.

To get the data center operational in just 122 days, xAI used mobile turbines (approximately 35 to 62, depending on the report and timeline). Each turbine is capable of providing 2.5 MW of power, with reports indicating a total capacity exceeding 35 MW to over 100 MW. There’s been pushback from local residents and environmental group. It turns out that neither noise pollution or emissions of nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde are being welcomed, and in January 2026, the EPA ruled that xAI violated the law by operating dozens of these, at times, unpermitted, gas generators. I’m guessing any fines actually levied against xAI will be just part of the cost of doing business. The broader AI data center industry is facing a shortage of power, with many companies increasingly using on-site, fossil-fuel-based generators to bridge the gap.

By the way, if you want to dive deeper into the issue of power strategies and developments for AI data centers, check out Distilled, on Substack. Distilled is written by Michael Thomas and he’s undertaken as series of articles on the issue of AI data centers and approaches being pursued for power, including data centers building their own power plants.

Wet Dreams and Sloppy Seconds

The accuracy of future demand predictions itself is highly questionable, considering the wide-ranging numbers and, among other issues, the double, triple, or greater duplicate counting of generation sources among data center hyperscalers. These eager corporations reach out to more than one potential generation source to cover their bets. Accurate forecasting seems hindered by some combination of wishful thinking and double counting. Here’s an AI summary of this issue:

The “duplication issue” (often called “phantom load” or “speculative queuing”) refers to the practice where data center developers submit multiple applications for electrical grid interconnection for the same single project. 

Because securing power is now the primary bottleneck for AI and hyperscale facilities, developers “spam” the queue to hedge their bets. They might file requests for the same 500 MW project in three different states (or three different sites within the same utility territory) to see which one gets approved first. Once one is approved, the others are withdrawn, but in the meantime, they clog the study queue and artificially inflate demand forecasts. 

Grid operators warn that these “phantom” requests make it impossible to accurately plan for new power plants, as the requested demand on paper is often 5x to 10x higher than what will actually be built. 

Estimate Ranges of Duplication

Industry data suggests that the vast majority of current interconnection requests are duplicate or speculative. 

• • Overall “Phantom” Rate: Experts estimate that 80% to 90% of the data center capacity currently in US interconnection queues will never be built.
  • Realization Rate: Utilities often project that only 10% to 20% of the requested data center load in their pipelines will actually materialize.
  • Speculative Ratios (Firm vs. Requested):
    • AEP (American Electric Power):Reported 24 GW of firm commitments but has requests for 190 GW of additional load—a ratio of nearly 8:1 (speculative to firm).
    • Oncor (Texas Utility):Reported a queue of 186 GW of data center requests. For context, the utility’s entire current peak demand for all customers is only ~50 GW, suggesting the queue is inflated by nearly 400% of the grid’s total existing capacity.
    • PSE&G (New Jersey):Reported a 9.4 GW large load pipeline but expects only 10–20% of those inquiries to result in actual projects.
    • ERCOT (Texas Grid):Has received requests for over 220 GW of new load by 2030 (mostly data centers), which is more than double the state’s all-time peak demand record. 

Why This Is a Problem

1. 1. Planning Paralysis: Utilities cannot distinguish real projects from “zombie” projects. If they build transmission lines for all 190 GW (in AEP’s case), they would bankrupt ratepayers. If they wait to see which are real, they risk being too slow for the 24 GW that is real.
   2. Queue Backlogs: The “phantom” requests force grid engineers to perform complex impact studies for projects that don’t exist, delaying the connection of viable power plants and real factories by years.
   3. Artificial Scarcity: The illusion of zero capacity drives up power prices and panic-buying of land, further fueling the cycle of speculative multiple-filing. 

Why is this a Problem?

You might also ask, from the perspective of Big Oil, “Why is this an opportunity?”

Big Oil loves the high estimates of power demand and the expanded market for their products, and not just more volume, but more over the next several decades, just when we need to reduce carbon emissions, not raise them. Big Oil is in a frenzy to keep their business going for decades more, despite the counter need for this industry to decline.

There’s temptation, too, for the utilities who contract or build new generation capacity. While solar/wind/batteries can meet new energy needs (and be quicker and cheaper), power utilities remain drawn to action that follows business-as-usual thinking, and for many utilities, especially without governmental and regulatory guidance, that means more power plants.

The opportunity is now for Big Oil to future-proof the industry.

Does the Trump Administration strike you as leaning on governance and regulation to push for clean energy?

I don’t think so, but then maybe I’m as wrong as all those wild estimates about power requests to feed the AI industry.

The post Fossil Fuel Demand Growth Uber Alles first appeared on David Guenette.

Everybody tries to figure things out, although what is being figured out is hardly the same for everyone. Nor is the method for figuring things out the same for everyone, with academics a class of its own, and this applies to climate fiction, too.

Here’s how “Six books to help you explore the role of storytelling in the climate fight,” starts:

Humans are storytelling animals. 

That, at least, is one of the stories that humans tell about themselves. We are not logic machines or information processors; we need the tug of a narrative thread to carefully follow an argument. 

This poses a challenge for science, especially climate science, which has such a long timeframe, such a vast playing field, and way too many characters. But climate scientists, social scientists, reporters, and activists have tried, in permutating collaborations, to meet this challenge. And they have stories to tell about their efforts. (Or should we call them quests?) 

You have to love academics, and I mean this positively. Appearing in Yale Climate Connections, this article runs the deck, “This special selection includes books on storytelling, science, and climate change.” The article is found through an initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Communication. The article is written by Michael Svoboda and was published on January 30, 2026. Svoboda has been at George Washington University and teaching in the writing program there for two decades-plus, where “… he has pursued two very different research programs—on ancient Greek rhetoric and on communicating climate change. In 2010, he became a regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections. His current book project—and the focus of his year with GW’s Humanities Center—will further develop pieces he wrote for YCC on how climate change is depicted in advertising, in popular books and magazines, in documentaries and fictional movies, and in American political cartoons and commentary.”

Like I said, you got to love academics.

There’s a sub-industry on climate fiction these days and this recent Yale Climate Connections contribution is but one manifestation. Not that the books covered in this article are necessarily focused on climate fiction, but rather are books on the forms and values of storytelling about matters including climate change. I’ve read none of them, although I have looked a bit at We All Die in the End: Storytelling in the Climate Apocalypse and read the generous, albeit hopscotched, “Read sample.” I found myself impressed.

Not surprisingly, as a writer of what I call “literary climate fiction,” I have a dog in this hunt. I’ve reviewed quite a few cli-fi books, dived deep into such pools as Climate Fiction Writers League, and explored various academically-oriented programs looking at climate fiction or more generally the topic of storytelling associated with or applied to climate fiction.

Here’s a list of posts about climate fiction on my website published since September 2025:

• Climate Fiction, Climate Fantasy: What’s the right mix of hope and disappointment? 
• Let’s Talk About Climate Optimism and Hope That We Can Write About Doing Something About Climate Change
• Is Climate Hope Fiction Hopeless?
• Climate Fiction, Optimism, and Realism
• Fun with Apocalypse, Part 2
• Writing The Steep Climes Quartet, Part 2: Economics in Climate Fiction
• Climate Change and the Human Condition
• Writing Villains on Both Sides in Climate Fiction
• Democracy, Climate Action, Climate Fiction… and Criminality
• Why We Write: A look back at why the heck I’m writing a four-book climate fiction series

There are more, going back to mid-2023, too, back when the first book of The Steep Climes Quartet, Kill Well, was published, although I’m not sure what this tells me. Maybe that I’m a slow learner or that I still have questions about what kinds of climate fiction may be most efficacious?

Climate Fiction’s Scorecard

There are plenty of great climate fiction works out there. I place Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future in the top tier, although the scale is global and across many domains and the book carries a lot of policy wonkiness, but entertainingly so. The Deluge, by Stephen Markley, is another solid work along a similar scope as Ministry. Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver, places readers into the lives of everyday characters, encouraging readers to live alongside these characters in regular lives, even as the sublime aspects of climate change manifest. Weather, by Jenny Offill, accomplishes much the same, but at an even subtler level. Snowflake: A Novel, by Arthur Jeon, is a book I’ve greatly appreciated both for its form—journal entries by a climate/Trump obsessive high school senior with spectrum disorder—and its perspective, and there are a number of independently published works by others of note, but if you want to see more, look under “Other Writing” category on my website for reviews.

You’ll also see books that carry my complaint. One critical aspect is catastrophic climate occurrences that fall outside of known science. Another critique is focused on books that re-write human culture as climate solution or adaptation, pre-supposing either the passage of time or major human cultural shift, or both. These sorts of climate fiction can be engaging but represent what I term the “You can’t get there from here” problem.

What most concerns me is the question of how writers get people interested in climate change action, which for me seems mostly that of political action (i.e., voting) to affect legislation supporting the renewable energy transition. In America today, this has become part and parcel of the struggle to continue our democratic experiment, where today’s emerging authoritative threat bleeds into the fight between fossil fuel’s policy ascendancy and the anti-competitive market conditions being imposed on the clean energy transition. Traditional storytelling, such as the hero’s journey or a main focus on action plots or disaster stories, I argue, keep people from identifying with the current situation, even if such stories can be satisfying reads in and of themselves. Unfortunately, few of us are indeed heroes or survivalists or champions on the international stage. Most of us find our attention taken up with paying next month’s rent or mortgage payment, or current or dreamed of relationships, or the grocery or utility bill. An individual’s positive climate action takes place within the quotidian and having readers identify with characters’ experiences seems the way to bridge our everyday concerns with climate concerns, and not by making people into outsized heroes but rather by showing more informed citizens who realize the normal actions within which they participate can lead to better outcomes. Still, the range of concern varies from character to character, from intense climate action involvement to indifference or denial, and why? Because this is the world in which we live and so must be represented in climate fiction to support identification by the reader with the issue of climate change and what we can do about it.

Huh. Maybe I should write an academic paper about this.

The post Figuring Out Climate Fiction first appeared on David Guenette.

What I am talking about is the clear identification of the fossil fuel industry—I like the moniker “Big Oil”—as the enemy. Enemy to whom? How about those billions and billions of us alive today and those in the future who directly suffer because of the actions of Big Oil in denying, delaying, and actively opposing the benefits of energy sources and policies that reduce carbon emissions.

The main arguments for clean energy to be the only energy source going forward for electrical generation and transportation are:

1. Clean energy is the cheapest energy resource to build and implement compared to fossil fuel-based energy, making clean energy the affordability winner;
2. Clean energy is the fastest to build and implement compared to fossil fuel-based energy, making clean energy the best choice for meeting growing energy demands;
3. Clean energy significantly reduces health problems tied to fossil fuel use across the world in many ways, including declining asthma and premature deaths;
4. Clean energy reduces geopolitical conflicts based on energy resources, since solar and wind do not rely on scarce consumable commodities but derives energy from the sun and wind available to all.

Fossil Fuels Had Their Day

Every time I mention that Big Oil is bad there will be people ready to jump down my throat with some version or another of “Fossil fuel built our modern economy” or “If we stopped using fossil fuel today, millions would die from starvation.”

This kind of reaction is still all-too common, and my answer is, “Yeah, so stipulated.” An immediate full stop in our use of fossil fuels would be disaster for the world. But replacing fossil fuels with clean energy electricity as soon as possible will go a long way in dropping carbon emissions.

Solar, wind, and batteries are now so low in manufacturing and build out costs that fossil fuels can’t compete. Building out solar, wind, and batteries is the way to go if you want lower electricity bills. Clean energy now makes reducing our economy’s carbon footprint the best choice just on economic basis, never mind the health benefits and slowing climate change. Even if you are part of the small minority that doesn’t care about climate change or reducing environmental pollution, I’ll bet you’re interested in lower electricity bills.

You know who’s not interested in lowering your electricity bill? Big Oil. Big Oil’s business model is to keep selling you oil, gas, and coal for you—well, when it comes to electricity, your utility—to keep burning their products, replacing every volume used with new volume, and on and on until the generation plant gets decommissioned. How long do fossil fuel generator plants last?

Here’s a quick Google AI Overview:

Fossil fuel power plants typically operate for 30 to 50 years, with coal-fired units averaging around 45 years in the U.S. and some lasting over 60 years with maintenance. Natural gas combined-cycle plants generally have a 25 to 30-year design life, though they may operate longer. 

• • Coal-Fired Plants:Often designed for 50 years, many in the U.S. are approaching or exceeding 45 years of age.
  • Natural Gas Plants:Combined-cycle units typically last 25–30 years, while simpler, smaller generators might require major overhauls within 10–20 years.
  • Retirement Trends:While many plants last 30-50 years, environmental regulations and economic factors are leading to earlier shutdowns, with 28% of U.S. coal capacity planning to retire by 2035.
  • Replacement vs. Life Extension:Despite aging, some plants are granted extended lifespans to ensure grid reliability, particularly in areas with high energy demand, such as data centers. 

For every new fossil fuel generator plant built, you and your utility are signing up for buying more natural gas or oil or coal for 25 years or more.

Want to know why Big Oil is fighting so hard to keep solar/wind/batteries from getting built? Big Oil, of course, wants to continue in the business they know and have invested in, which is selling you energy that you burn up and need to buy more of year after year after year. Do U.S. fossil fuel generator plants get to pass on increased costs of fuel?

Here’s another Google AI Overview:

Yes, in the United States, fossil fuel generator plants—specifically investor-owned utilities—are generally allowed to pass on increased fuel costs to customers, often with little to no risk to their own profits. This is accomplished through regulatory mechanisms known as Fuel Adjustment Clauses (FACs) or similar cost-recovery trackers, which are overseen by state-level Public Service Commissions. 

Here is how this process works and its implications:

• • How Fuel Costs Are Passed On:Utilities are permitted to adjust electricity rates outside of formal, lengthy rate cases to reflect fluctuations in the cost of fuel (coal, natural gas) used to generate electricity. If fuel prices rise, the cost is passed to consumers as a surcharge on their monthly bills.
  • “Dollar-for-Dollar” Recovery:In many regions, particularly the Southeast, 100% of these fuel costs are passed on to customers. This means that if a power plant pays more for natural gas, the utility does not absorb that expense; rather, customers pay it.
  • Regulatory Oversight:While these adjustments are often automatic, they are reviewed by state commissions for accuracy. Regulators may disallow charges if they find improper fuel procurement practices.
  • Impact on Utilities vs. Customers:Because these mechanisms exist, utility investors are often insulated from fuel price volatility. Critics argue this reduces the incentive for utilities to seek lower fuel costs or invest in more stable, renewable energy sources.
  • Incomplete Pass-Through:While many utilities pass on costs completely, studies suggest that across the industry, marginal cost pass-through is not always 100%, with consumers bearing between 25% and 75% of the cost increases in some scenarios.
  • Timing Differences:Fuel adjustment charges are often calculated monthly based on costs from previous months, which can lead to a lag in how quickly price increases or decreases are reflected in customer bills. 

Are power utilities motivated to seek the lowest energy cost? Public power utilities are notoriously conservative, not liking change. After all, one of their mandates is reliability of electricity. Of course, solar/wind/batteries are reliable suppliers of electricity and the application of digital management of grid balance and support of distributed energy resources such as demand flexibility make more of the overall capacity of the grid available meet peak demand loads.

According to “U.S. Spending Bill to Grant $40 Billion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies,” originally published in Wired in late 2025, fossil fuels still get billions of dollars in U. S. subsidies each year:

The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the U.S. will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at least $34.8 billion a year.

Keep in mind that the U.S. had already been subsidizing fossil fuels for a century or more. President Biden’s 2021 budget had called for ending tax breaks for oil companies, but these phaseouts were struck down in the Senate and now, with President Trump, new subsidies have been added, including for coal, a favorite fixation of the Trump Administration.

Why Big Oil is the Enemy

Quite simply, Big Oil puts profits over the common good and ignoring the common good in this case leads to disease, death, and the collapse of the climate environment of the last ten millennia that has fostered human development.

Big Oil isn’t doing this out of ignorance, but rather in willful disregard for the physics behind global warming. In short, those leading the corporations that make up Big Oil seem happy enough to forfeit our future and that of our children and their children, down the many generations. Here’s the right analogy: “Big Knives” has employees test the sharpness of their products by stabbing people and children in the street and since Big Knives get paid only when selling knives that are so tested, there are one hell of a lot of bleeding people in every neighborhood, although more so in poorer neighborhoods.

As absurd as the analogy sounds, the correlations are direct. Big Oil produces a product (the knife) that poisons the air we all breathe (people getting stabbed). The question becomes how we shift to clean energy in a way that supports the essential and pervasive energy benefits to people.

Keep in mind that Big Oil plays dirty. Big Oil—along with other big money interests—has purchased much of the federal government, from the Executive branch to many in Congress. What has Big Oil gotten? Here’s a very partial list:

• A DOJ attempting to repress court cases and many states’ legislation against Big Oil corporations, including, most recently, “polluters pay” bills that Trump calls “extortion.”
• The EPA’s recent removal of the endangerment finding that has been a central regulatory enforcement mechanism against greenhouse gases.
• The Executive branch’s overriding of massive Biden-era funding programs (such as IIJA and IRA) for clean energy.
• Outright market interference, such as Trump’s anti-offshore wind projects shutdowns.

Since Big Oil has clearly demonstrated it wishes to continue business as usual—the current efforts to build dozens and hundreds of new gas electricity generators are just the latest example—we see that these corporations stand in opposition to what needs to happen.

Al Gore is right when he says, “They [Big Oil] are much better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions… They are the enemies of progress.”

Bill McKibben is right, when he says, “We have a literal enemy in this fight… The fossil-fuel industry has played the most disgraceful role of any set of corporations in the history of the world. They are Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our civilization.”

George Monbiot, the journalist and activist, puts it this way, “We are not just fighting climate change; we are fighting the people who profit from it. The fossil fuel industry is the enemy of nature and the enemy of humanity.”

Kevin O’Brien, author and ethicist, In his 2024 book Meeting the Enemy, writes, “To make progress on climate change, we must recognize that the fossil-fueled industrial complex is a strategic enemy… treating them as such is a requirement for justice.”

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said, “We are at war with nature, and the fossil fuel industry is the fuel for that fire. We must end this war on our planet… We are seeing a historic battle between those who want to protect life and those who want to protect profits.”

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator, said, “We are in a battle for the survival of the planet. We are taking on the greed of the fossil fuel industry, and it is a war we cannot afford to lose.”

Jay Inslee, former Governor of Washington, during his presidential campaign, stated, “This is a world war… it is a war of survival against the carbon-industrial complex that has held our democracy hostage for decades.”

Why We Will Win

Despite the decades of Big Oil’s explicit effort to deny climate change and fossil fuel’s contribution to it and the political favors and market advantages bought with a small part of profits, Big Oil has the losing hand. The industry continues to expand its investments when fiduciary responsibilities dictate that a managed drawn down of production is called for to avoid creating stranded assets and further legal liability. Fossil fuels are, simply put, an increasingly bad investment that is now offering “last idiot in” conditions.

Costs

Generating electricity from fossil fuels is more expensive. While the capital investment for solar farms and wind farms together with battery storage may have somewhat higher initial capital costs (i.e., to build), based on 2025 industry data, natural gas peaker plants are generally more expensive than solar plus battery storage systems when comparing the total cost of electricity generation (LCOE) over their lifetimes. While natural gas remains a cheaper option for instantaneous dispatchable power in some specific scenarios, newly build, unsubsidized solar-plus-storage often beats the cost of new-build natural gas, particularly when accounting for the volatility of fuel prices and lower maintenance costs.

Here’s a Google AI Overview:

Cost Breakdown (2025 Estimates)

Key Comparison Drivers

• • Fuel Costs:Solar and storage have zero fuel expenses, providing stable, long-term costs. Natural gas plants are subject to market volatility and rising, unpredictable fuel prices.
  • Capital Costs:Solar + storage has higher upfront capital costs (installing panels and batteries), but lower operating expenses (O&M) compared to the ongoing, high fuel and maintenance costs of gas plants.
  • Battery Advancements:Battery costs have fallen by roughly 89% between 2010 and 2023, making them highly competitive.
  • Subsidies:Even without tax credits, solar and wind are frequently more cost-effective than new-build gas plants. With subsidies, the cost advantage for renewables is even more significant. 

While gas plants are still used for reliable 24/7 baseload power, solar + storage is increasingly seen as a more economical choice for new capacity in many regions, especially as technology improves to handle grid intermittency. 

Legal Position

There are many bases for legal action against Big Oil, including causing harm (pollution and global warming), corruption (dark money and “lobbying” for market advantage), more expensive electricity (the issue of affordability), and many social justice offenses (local pollution and reduced quality of living conditions). There are, as of early 2026, 3,000 climate court cases worldwide, although active litigation targeting Big Oil is a subset.

Here’s what Google AI Overview has to report:

Global Active Cases

• • Total Against Fossil Fuel Corporations: Approximately 86 major lawsuits have been filed specifically against “Carbon Majors” (the world’s largest oil, gas, and coal producers) since 2005.
  • Active Status: As of recent reports (late 2024/2025), over 40 of these cases remain active and pending in courts.
  • Top Defendants: The most frequently targeted companies are ExxonMobil (43 cases), Shell (42 cases), BP, Chevron, and TotalEnergies. 

U.S. Active Cases

• • Concentration: The United States is the primary battleground, hosting approximately 50 of the 86 global cases filed against fossil fuel companies.
  • State & Local “Deception” Suits: There are over 32 active lawsuits brought specifically by state attorneys general (e.g., California, Massachusetts, Minnesota) and local governments (e.g., Honolulu, Boulder) seeking damages for alleged climate deception.
  • 2026 Developments: This number continues to grow. In January 2026, Michigan filed a new federal antitrust lawsuit against major oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute (API), accusing them of operating as a “cartel”. 

Summary of Case Types

The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law categorizes these active cases into three main buckets:

1. 1. Climate Damages (38%): Seeking compensation for infrastructure damage and health costs (e.g., the “Climate Superfund” cases).
   2. Misleading Advertising (16%): Alleging “greenwashing” or false claims about net-zero commitments.
   3. Emissions Reduction (12%): Attempting to force companies to align their business models with the Paris Agreement (e.g., the landmark Milieudefensie v. Shell case in the Netherlands). 

Context: While there are over 3,000 climate-related cases globally (1,900+ in the U.S.), the vast majority target governments over policy failures or permitting decisions, rather than private corporations.

There’s one case getting a lot of attention, since the legal argument is fundamental: conspiracy. In January 2026, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against four major oil companies—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—and the American Petroleum Institute (API). This case is groundbreaking because it shifts the legal strategy from “consumer deception” to “anticompetitive conspiracy.”

Here’s what Google AI Overview says about this case:

Core Allegations of the “Cartel” Strategy

The lawsuit explicitly labels these corporations a “cartel” that engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to maintain fossil fuel dominance by sabotaging renewable alternatives. Key claims include: 

• • Suppressing Innovation: The defendants allegedly “acted in concert” to dismantle their own early solar and renewable energy divisions to prevent those technologies from maturing and competing with oil.
  • Hobbling EVs: The suit claims the companies coordinated to block the installation of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructureat their brand-name gas stations to prolong consumer reliance on gasoline.
  • Market Manipulation: By using their collective power to withhold cleaner, cheaper energy options, the state argues the companies artificially inflated energy costs for Michigan households and businesses.
  • Coordinated Disinformation: The Michigan Department of Attorney Generalalleges the industry used trade associations (like API) to exchange sensitive information and coordinate the suppression of climate science as early as the 1950s. 

Legal Framework and Objectives

• • Statutes Cited: The case brings claims under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act (MARA).
  • Damages Sought: Michigan is seeking triple damagesand the disgorgement of corporate profits obtained through these alleged anticompetitive practices.
  • Affordability Argument: Unlike previous climate suits focused purely on environmental damage, Nessel has framed this as an “affordability crisis” case, blaming corporate “greed” rather than market forces for high energy bills. 

Industry and Federal Response

• • Industry Denial: Defendants like ExxonMobiland Chevron have dismissed the suit as “baseless” and a “coordinated campaign” to regulate energy policy through the courts rather than through Congress.
  • Federal Opposition: The S. Department of Justice(under the Trump administration) attempted to block the filing, arguing it threatened national security and energy independence, but a federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s challenge in early 2026. 

Marching Off to War

The first shots of the war against Big Oil were fired many decades ago. For decades clean energy skirmishes were small, scattered, and largely ineffective. The clean energy transition has been marshalling an army, though. Significant majorities of Americans—and worldwide—place climate change among top priorities of concern. Costs of clean energy are competitive, thanks largely to all the benefits of scientific and manufacturing learning curves driving down the costs of technologies.

In the fight against Big Oil there are plenty of weapons to be wielded. Here are some of the most powerful actions that can be taken to push back against Big Oil’s power: carbon taxes, carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAM), cancellation of direct industry subsidies, and including the negative externalities that makes the true cost of fossil fuels more evident, thus making clean energy even more competitive.

Many countries in the Global South are accelerating implementation of clean energy, often leapfrogging the old grid-style model advanced nations have long enjoyed. China’s high production of clean energy material and tools are making inroads to the Global South, which not only supports clean energy implementation, but favors China’s domestic industrial base and builds markets. China’s diplomatic advantage, relative to the United States, grows stronger.

Americans are catching on that Big Oil want to keep customers buying their products, even though this raises costs for these customers. Americans are catching on that the higher energy prices can be put to Big Oil’s corruption and influence within the political realm. Affordability is likely to be a major battle ground for fossil fuels and clean energy in the upcoming elections and this is a winning plank for clean energy.

Big Oil’s tricks and lies are becoming transparent to more and more citizens.

The question isn’t whether this war will be won, but how long it will take and whether the world is lit aflame in a pyrrhic victory.

Consider me enlisted.

The post The War on Big Oil first appeared on David Guenette.

As summer in 2035 approaches, an unrelenting heatwave settles over New York City and west to Lake Erie and south into parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many in the big city without the means to cope escape into the relatively cool hills of the Berkshires just as high season is coming on, and with a tight housing market, there’s little room for the hordes.

2035 sees battles over climate policy and new legislation continue, as does the march upward of average global temperatures. In the courts, finally, there are some very real legal threats to the fossil fuel industry still fighting for its future against the advancement of renewable energy. Addressing climate change remains something of one step forward-two step sideways jig.

Davin has been busy in his Housatonic studio and has sculptures in galleries in the Berkshires and the Hudson Valley. His finances are modestly stable. His solar/batteries and VPP membership keeps electricity bills down. His three house sharers help with the Housatonic House on the Hill expenses. Marsha’s been there nearly a decade, and she’s queen of the big vegetable garden. Charlie is a more recent house sharer, but a nigh-on perfect one, since he’s often away on business or holed up in his third-floor bedroom working. The newest house sharer is Bee, a ceramic artist who helps Davin out with the first floor Airbnb apartment and who has just claimed a corner of the studio and could easily claim his heart if he isn’t careful.

But as summer approaches, the unrelenting heatwave settles over New York City and west to Lake Erie and south into parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Many in the big city without the means to cope escape into the relatively cool hills of the Berkshires just as high season is coming on, and with a tight housing market, there’s little room for the hordes. Young Brooklyn hipsters take up camping in the woods around Monument Mountain Reservation and along the Appalachian Trail, or double and triple up at the summer homes of friends’ parents, or anywhere, really, somewhere, to sleep. Many in the town aren’t happy with the spike in petty crimes, and it’s up to Marian Gray-Fletcher, Great Barrington’s town manager, to solve the problem. But she’s distracted with her own philandering husband, until a drug-gang killing focuses her attention.

The international news is full of climate migration stories and political problems in Europe and an escalating conflict between India and Pakistan. Central and South American climate change-induced droughts make for huge numbers of people heading north. The southern border is militarized and running battles between cartels and U.S. forces are in the headlines. And then there’s No One is Safe, a climate terrorist organization that has a history of blowing up refineries and pipelines and the occasional oil exec, and one of them finds himself wondering how deep the NOS-cartels connection goes.

The post Over Brooklyn Hills, Book Three of The Steep Climes Quartet first appeared on David Guenette.

What follows is an AI-generated report based on the following query to Gemini in the “Deep Research” mode:

Identify and summarize studies, investigations, and reports of well-funded state and local organizations and groups opposing solar and wind power projects that may have funding and other forms of assistance from national organizations, think tanks, and professional groups. Be as specific as possible in regard to names of organizations and principal participants and include these names, along with the budgets involved and the connections to state and local level solar and wind bans in table form as well as within the text report.

This report was generated and edited on February 9, 2026.

A Forensic Analysis of the Anti-Renewable Energy Countermovement

Executive Summary

The transition to renewable energy in the United States, specifically the deployment of utility-scale solar photovoltaics and offshore wind turbines, has encountered a formidable and increasingly sophisticated barrier: a coordinated, multi-layered opposition network that transcends traditional “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) sentiments. While local opposition to infrastructure projects is a historic constant in American land-use planning, the current wave of resistance against renewable energy differs fundamentally in its structure, funding, and strategic cohesion. What appears to be a fragmented archipelago of local grievances is, in reality, a unified “countermovement” orchestrated by a nexus of national think tanks, fossil fuel trade associations, and dark money conduits.

Drawing upon a comprehensive review of financial filings (IRS Forms 990), court dockets, legislative testimony, and investigative reports from academic institutions—including Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University—this analysis reveals the operational mechanics of this network. It identifies the “information subsidies” provided by national entities like the State Policy Network (SPN), the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), and the Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) to local groups. These subsidies manifest as legal counsel, rhetorical scripts, expert testimony, and direct financial assistance, effectively weaponizing local zoning codes and environmental statutes to preserve the market dominance of incumbent fossil fuel industries.

The report is structured to provide a granular examination of this ecosystem. It begins by dissecting the national infrastructure of opposition, profiling the think tanks that function as the movement’s ideological and logistical command centers. It then traces the financial arteries that sustain these operations, identifying specific donors and funding vehicles. Subsequent sections provide deep regional analyses of the Midwest (specifically Ohio and Michigan) and the Atlantic Coast, illustrating how national strategies are operationalized in local battlegrounds. Finally, the report synthesizes these findings to demonstrate how legal and legislative frameworks are being systematically reshaped to obstruct the renewable energy transition.

Section I: The National Infrastructure of Opposition

The structural backbone of the anti-renewable energy movement is not located in the rural townships or coastal communities where projects are proposed, but in the offices of national policy institutes, free-market think tanks, and trade associations. These organizations function as the “wholesale” suppliers of obstructionist tactics, distributing them to “retail” local groups who then deploy them in zoning hearings and town halls. This section profiles the key national organizations that provide the intellectual, legal, and strategic scaffolding for the movement.

1.1 The State Policy Network (SPN): The Central Hub of Disinformation

The State Policy Network (SPN) serves as the primary nerve center for a confederation of conservative, market-oriented think tanks across the 50 states. While SPN describes its mission as promoting federalism and local control, its affiliates have been instrumental in orchestrating opposition to Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and specific energy projects. The network’s reach is vast, allowing for the rapid dissemination of anti-renewable talking points from national headquarters to state capitals and local county boards.¹

1.1.1 Strategic Pivot to Obstruction

In 2024, the SPN explicitly identified “blocking renewable energy” as a top legislative priority. This marked a significant strategic pivot from broad advocacy for deregulation to a targeted, adversarial stance against the physical deployment of wind and solar infrastructure. This shift acknowledges that the battle for energy dominance has moved from the abstract realm of federal policy to the concrete reality of land-use permitting.²

The SPN operates through a franchise model. It provides resources, training, and coordination to independent state-level think tanks, ensuring that local opposition groups have access to high-quality production value for their campaigns. For instance, an anti-wind report produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan can be rapidly repackaged and cited by the Buckeye Institute in Ohio or the Caesar Rodney Institute in Delaware, creating an echo chamber of “expert” opinion that reinforces local biases.²

1.1.2 The Energy Policy Working Group

The operational core of SPN’s anti-renewable strategy is its Energy Policy Working Group. This group was recently placed under the leadership of Amy Oliver Cooke, a political consultant with a long history of opposing renewable mandates. Cooke previously worked for the Independence Institute, an SPN affiliate in Colorado that has received funding from coal producers. Her appointment signaled a doubling down on aggressive rhetorical strategies.²

Under Cooke’s guidance, the Working Group has refined the narrative used to oppose renewables. Moving away from outright climate denial, which holds diminishing traction with the public, the group focuses on three key themes:

1. Reliability: Framing wind and solar as inherently unstable sources that threaten grid resilience (e.g., the “Texas Blackout” narrative, despite evidence to the contrary regarding natural gas failures).
2. Cost: Arguing that renewable subsidies constitute a wealth transfer from ratepayers to foreign corporations.
3. Property Rights: A paradoxical argument that champions the rights of neighbors to not have turbines near them over the rights of landowners to lease their land for energy development.²

1.1.3 Funding and Affiliates

The SPN’s operations are underwritten by major philanthropic entities aligned with fossil fuel interests. Publicly available tax documents and investigative reporting have identified the Stand Together Trust (part of the Koch network) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) as significant donors. In 2022 alone, Stand Together contributed over $5 million to SPN-affiliated think tanks, fueling a war chest that allows these organizations to outspend and outmaneuver pro-renewable advocates.²

1.2 The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF): The Litigation Engine

If SPN is the logistical hub, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) represents the “heavy artillery” of the movement. Based in Austin, TPPF has grown into a financial behemoth with a 2023 revenue exceeding $28 million.⁵ It uses this immense resource base to provide high-level legal representation to local groups that would otherwise lack the funds to sue the federal government or multinational energy developers.

1.2.1 The “Life:Powered” Initiative

The TPPF’s anti-renewable crusade is centralized under its “Life:Powered” initiative. This project is explicitly dedicated to “raising the alarm” about the alleged dangers of the “green energy agenda.” It frames fossil fuels not just as economic commodities, but as moral imperatives necessary for human flourishing, thereby positioning renewable energy as anti-human.³

The initiative has been heavily funded by the Brigham Family Foundation, representing oil and gas wealth, and the broader Koch network. This funding allows Life:Powered to produce slick media campaigns, educational videos, and policy papers that circulate widely on social media, influencing public perception far beyond Texas borders.²

1.2.2 Federal Litigation Strategy

The TPPF has distinguished itself by its willingness to engage in direct federal litigation. It has effectively nationalized local land-use disputes by representing local plaintiffs in high-profile cases against offshore wind projects.

• Vineyard Wind Challenge: TPPF represents a coalition of Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishing interests (e.g., Seafreeze Shoreside Inc.) in federal court. The lawsuit challenges the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approval of the Vineyard Wind project, alleging violations of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). By absorbing the legal costs for these plaintiffs—costs that can run into the millions—TPPF ensures that these legal challenges can proceed through the appellate system, delaying projects for years.¹
• The “Whale” Narrative: TPPF has been a primary propagator of the unsubstantiated theory that offshore wind survey work is responsible for the deaths of North Atlantic right whales. This narrative serves as a potent wedge issue, splitting the environmental coalition and rallying animal rights activists against wind energy.²

1.3 The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI): The Offshore Command Center

While smaller in budget than TPPF or SPN, the Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI), based in Delaware, has emerged as the tactical command center for the anti-offshore wind movement along the Atlantic Seaboard. Its influence illustrates the asymmetric power of the network, where a small, focused organization can coordinate a multi-state obstruction campaign.

1.3.1 Incubating “Astroturf” Coalitions

CRI’s most significant contribution to the movement is its role as an incubator for “astroturf” groups—organizations that appear to be grassroots citizen coalitions but are, in fact, centrally coordinated projects.

• American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP): Founded by CRI, ACOP acts as a clearinghouse for anti-wind strategies, specifically targeting beach communities. It connects local homeowners’ associations with legal experts and PR consultants. ACOP does not present itself as a think tank project but as a network of “beach lovers,” masking its ideological origins.¹
• Save Right Whales Coalition: CRI principal David Stevenson, a former DuPont executive, was instrumental in the formation of the “Save Right Whales” coalition. This group leverages the endangered status of the right whale to file lawsuits and generate negative press for wind developers. Despite NOAA consistently stating there is no evidence linking wind surveying to whale mortality, the coalition—under Stevenson’s guidance—has successfully mainstreamed this claim into conservative media ecosystems.⁶

1.3.2 Financial and Personnel Links

CRI’s operations are sustained by strategic grants from foundations with industry ties. In 2022, it received $162,500 from the Longwood Foundation, which has historical ties to the DuPont family. Additionally, CRI has received funding from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the American Energy Alliance, directly linking its anti-wind activities to the petroleum refining industry.²

1.4 The Heartland Institute and CFACT: The Ideological Vanguard

The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) occupy the ideological flank of the movement. Their role is to provide the “scientific” and moral justifications for opposing renewable energy, often relying on fringe science and aggressive polemics.

1.4.1 Heartland’s “Circuit Riders”

The Heartland Institute deploys policy advisors, such as Steve Goreham, to travel to rural townships across the Midwest and testify in zoning hearings. These advisors present themselves as independent experts, often citing Heartland-published reports that claim wind turbines cause catastrophic health issues (“wind turbine syndrome”), kill exorbitant numbers of birds, and destroy property values.³

• Methodology of Disruption: In places like Spotsylvania, Virginia, and Knox County, Ohio, Heartland’s intervention transformed routine zoning hearings into contentious political battlegrounds. Their testimony provides local officials—who may be ideologically predisposed against renewables—with a “credentialed” basis to deny permits, citing “health and safety” concerns.³

1.4.2 CFACT and Infrastructure Obstruction

CFACT works in tandem with organizations like ALEC to draft model legislation that creates unreasonable setback requirements for solar and wind farms. More recently, CFACT has expanded its operations to the West Coast. In 2024, CFACT representatives, alongside the local REACT Alliance, petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation to cancel a $426 million grant for port infrastructure in Humboldt Bay, California. This move demonstrates a shift from opposing specific generation projects to attacking the enabling infrastructure (ports, transmission) necessary for the industry’s growth.¹⁰

1.5 The Institute for Energy Research (IER): The Intellectual Foundation

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) provides the intellectual underpinning for the movement. Led by Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive and a disciple of Charles Koch, IER produces the dense economic analyses and white papers that other groups cite.

• MasterResource Blog: Bradley’s blog, MasterResource, serves as a repository for anti-wind arguments and a gathering place for activists. It hosts the writings of key operatives like John Droz and Lisa Linowes, creating a shared lexicon and strategic doctrine for the movement.³
• The “Energy Poverty” Narrative: IER specializes in the argument that renewable energy mandates drive up electricity prices, disproportionately hurting the poor. This narrative allows the fossil fuel industry to frame its self-preservation as a crusade for social justice.³

Section II: The Financial Engine – Following the Money

The sophisticated operations of these national organizations require significant capital. While much of this funding is obscured through “dark money” channels, forensic analysis of tax filings and bankruptcy disclosures reveals a clear pattern of fossil fuel industry support.

2.1 Dark Money Structures and “DonorsTrust”

A central mechanism for funding this countermovement is DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund often described as the “ATM of the conservative movement.” DonorsTrust allows wealthy individuals and corporations to funnel money to think tanks like SPN, Heartland, and CRI without their names appearing on the recipient’s IRS Form 990.

• The Mechanism of Anonymity: A donor (e.g., a coal executive) gives $1 million to DonorsTrust. DonorsTrust then gives $1 million to the Heartland Institute. The public sees only a donation from DonorsTrust, effectively severing the link between the fossil fuel interest and the anti-renewable advocacy. This structure shields corporations from consumer boycotts and shareholder activism while allowing them to direct policy outcomes.³

2.2 Case Study: The “Six Donors” of the Anti-Offshore Wind Network

A landmark 2023 report by Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab, titled “Against the Wind,” provided a rare glimpse into the funding of the East Coast anti-wind network. The report identified that $16,278,401 flowed from just six fossil fuel-interested donors to the network of think tanks and coalitions between 2017 and 2021.¹⁴

While the report anonymized some donors in its public summary, cross-referencing with other investigative datasets identifies the likely composition of this group:

1. Koch Industries / Stand Together Trust: A historical and primary funder of SPN, TPPF, and AFP. The network’s ideological commitment to deregulation aligns perfectly with the obstruction of government-subsidized renewables.²
2. DonorsTrust: The primary conduit for anonymized capital.¹³
3. The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM): A trade association representing oil refiners. AFPM has been explicitly linked to funding the Caesar Rodney Institute and SPN meetings.²
4. Ariel Corporation (The Wright/Rastin Family): As detailed below, this Ohio-based compressor manufacturer is a major donor to SPN and local anti-solar groups.¹⁵
5. Cordelia Scaife May / Colcom Foundation: Historically a major funder of anti-immigration groups, this foundation also funds “conservation” groups that oppose population growth and infrastructure development, aligning with the “industrialization of nature” narrative used against wind farms.
6. Dominion Energy / Utility Interests: While utilities often invest in renewables, they also fund groups that oppose independent power producers (IPPs) or distributed generation (rooftop solar) to protect their monopoly status.¹⁶

2.3 Case Study: Ariel Corporation and The Empowerment Alliance

Perhaps the most direct link between industrial fossil fuel interests and local opposition is found in Ohio. Ariel Corporation, a major manufacturer of natural gas compressors based in Mount Vernon, Ohio, is owned by the Wright/Rastin family.

• Karen Buchwald Wright: The Chair of Ariel Corporation, she contributed $700,000 to the State Policy Network in 2019 alone, making her one of its largest individual donors.³
• The Empowerment Alliance (TEA): Wright and her husband, Tom Rastin, founded and funded TEA, a 501(c)(4) dark money group. TEA promotes the narrative that “Natural Gas is Green” while aggressively attacking solar projects.
• Direct Intervention: Unlike passive donors, Rastin has been personally involved. Testimony and emails reveal he directed funds and strategy to Knox Smart Development, a local group fighting the Frasier Solar project. This effectively weaponized a local zoning dispute into a proxy war for the natural gas industry, utilizing the family’s wealth to overwhelm local pro-solar farmers.¹⁷

2.4 Case Study: Murray Energy

Bankruptcy filings from Murray Energy, the now-defunct coal giant, inadvertently revealed the extent of its funding for the opposition. The filings showed direct payments to:

• The Heartland Institute: $130,000 to support climate denial and anti-wind advocacy.
• Legal Counsel: Payments to law firms representing “citizen” plaintiffs in Ohio wind siting cases. This confirmed that what appeared to be grassroots litigation was actually being underwritten by a coal corporation desperate to block competition.³

Table 1: Major Financial Flows to Anti-Renewable Groups

Section III: Regional Battleground I – The Midwest (Ohio & Michigan)

The Midwest has become the primary theater for land-based renewable energy conflict in the United States. The region’s vast agricultural lands are prime territory for utility-scale wind and solar, making them the target of intense obstruction campaigns. Here, the opposition is highly organized, integrating local zoning boards with state legislative strategies to create a regulatory blockade.

3.1 Ohio: The Laboratory of Solar Bans

Ohio serves as the clearest example of “legislative capture” by the anti-renewable network. The state has seen a proliferation of solar bans, facilitated by Senate Bill 52 (SB52), passed in 2021. This legislation fundamentally altered the regulatory landscape by empowering county commissioners to designate “exclusion zones” where utility-scale renewables are prohibited—a power they do not possess for fossil fuel infrastructure.²⁰

3.1.1 The Mechanism of Senate Bill 52

Prior to SB52, the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) had final authority over energy projects, ensuring a standardized state-level review. SB52 devolved this authority to local boards, making projects vulnerable to hyper-local political pressure campaigns. The bill was heavily lobbied for by organizations linked to the fossil fuel industry, including the Buckeye Institute (an SPN affiliate) and The Empowerment Alliance.²¹

• Impact: Since the passage of SB52, at least 10 counties have enacted bans or severe restrictions on solar development, effectively freezing the industry in large swathes of the state.²⁰

3.1.2 The Empowerment Alliance (TEA) in Action

As detailed in the financial section, The Empowerment Alliance (TEA) is the critical operational node in Ohio. It has spent millions on ad campaigns and direct mailers framing solar energy as a threat to farmland (“Farmland not Solar Wasteland”) and a beneficiary of Chinese manufacturing.

• Knox Smart Development: This group presents itself as a grassroots coalition of neighbors in Knox County opposing the Frasier Solar project. However, OPSB hearings revealed the extent of astroturfing involved. Jared Yost, the group’s founder, admitted under oath that the group received significant funding and strategic direction from Tom Rastin. Rastin’s involvement included reviewing Yost’s testimony and coordinating the group’s messaging to align with TEA’s pro-gas agenda.¹⁸
• Outcome: Despite the manufactured “unanimous” opposition from local townships (fueled by TEA’s campaign), the OPSB initially approved the Frasier project, noting the external influence. However, the political pressure continues to threaten the project’s viability.

3.2 Michigan: The Fight for Siting Authority

Michigan represents a counter-narrative where the state government, recognizing the obstructionist tactics at the local level, attempted to reclaim siting authority. This move sparked a fierce backlash funded and organized by the same fossil fuel-aligned network.

3.2.1 Citizens for Local Choice / Our Home Our Voice

In 2023, Michigan passed a law streamlining renewable energy siting, moving final authority to the Michigan Public Service Commission. In response, Citizens for Local Choice was formed to push a ballot initiative repealing the law and restoring local veto power.

• Kevon Martis: The central figure in this effort is Kevon Martis. Martis is a veteran anti-wind activist who has transitioned from a local agitator in Lenawee County to a regional strategist. He holds a Senior Policy Fellowship at E&E Legal (historically funded by Arch Coal) and is a frequent contributor to the MasterResource Martis acts as a “circuit rider,” traveling to townships across the Midwest to advise local boards on how to draft exclusionary zoning ordinances that can withstand legal scrutiny.³
• Dark Money Controversy: A campaign finance complaint filed in 2024 alleged that Our Home Our Voice, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit led by Martis, acted as an unregistered ballot committee. The complaint detailed how the group funneled over $53,000 to Citizens for Local Choice while hiding the original donors. This “pass-through” structure effectively shielded the ultimate funders—likely agricultural lobbies and fossil fuel interests—from public disclosure requirements.²³
• Interstate Funding: Despite the campaign being focused on “Michigan local control,” Tom Rastin (of Ariel Corp in Ohio) contributed $10,000 to the Michigan effort. This cross-border funding demonstrates the national coordination of the opposition, where donors in one state will fund obstruction in another to protect regional markets for natural gas.²⁵

Table 2: Ohio Counties with Solar/Wind Bans (Selected)

Section IV: Regional Battleground II – The Atlantic Coast Offshore Wind War

The opposition to offshore wind along the East Coast is arguably the most sophisticated component of the network. It leverages complex environmental law (NEPA, ESA) and highly emotive marine conservation rhetoric to stall projects. Unlike the land-use battles in the Midwest, this fight takes place in federal courts and the court of public opinion, targeting the “social license” of the offshore wind industry.

4.1 The “Whale” Narrative and Coalition Building

The central narrative of the Atlantic opposition is the claim that offshore wind development is killing North Atlantic right whales. This argument is particularly potent because it weaponizes the environmental movement’s own values against it.

• The Save Right Whales Coalition: This umbrella group unites various local anti-wind organizations. It was incubated by Environmental Progress (founded by Michael Shellenberger) and the Caesar Rodney Institute. The coalition’s strategy is to create a “wedge issue” that splits the environmental vote. By framing wind turbines as the “industrialization of the ocean,” they attract support from conservation-minded citizens who might otherwise support climate action.⁶
• Scientific Consensus vs. Disinformation: NOAA and marine scientists have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence linking wind survey work to whale strandings (which are largely caused by ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement). However, the coalition—funded by industry groups—persists in this narrative, using it as the basis for federal lawsuits.²⁷

4.2 Green Oceans (Rhode Island)

Based in Little Compton, Rhode Island, Green Oceans has emerged as a prominent opponent of the Revolution Wind project.

• Leadership: The group is led by Lisa Quattrocki Knight (President) and Elizabeth Knight.
• Strategy: Green Oceans mimics the output of a professional think tank. They produce detailed “white papers” claiming that offshore wind farms threaten national security (via radar interference) and will cause irreversible damage to marine ecosystems. These papers rarely cite peer-reviewed marine science; instead, they rely on reports from national anti-wind think tanks and unverified data. This “information subsidy” allows them to present a veneer of scientific rigor to local media and town councils.²⁸
• Network Ties: Green Oceans is a member of the National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance (NOOA), a coalition founded to nationalize the fight. The group has also received legal and strategic support consistent with the patterns identified in the Brown University “Against the Wind” report.³⁰

4.3 ACK for Whales (Nantucket)

Formerly known as “Nantucket Residents Against Turbines,” ACK for Whales has been the most litigious group in the region, focusing its fire on the Vineyard Wind project.

• Principal Participants: The board includes Val Oliver (Founding Director), Amy DiSibio, and Veronica Bonnet.
• Legal Lawfare: ACK for Whales has filed multiple lawsuits against BOEM and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Their lawsuits allege that the federal agencies failed to adequately consider the cumulative impact of wind turbines on the right whale population, a violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The legal arguments used in these filings frequently mirror those crafted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in parallel cases, suggesting a shared legal strategy or counsel.³¹
• Funding: While ACK for Whales positions itself as a grassroots group of concerned islanders, the scale of their legal operations—federal lawsuits require hundreds of thousands of dollars—suggests significant external backing. They are listed as an affiliate of the Save Right Whales Coalition, linking them to the fossil fuel funding streams of the Caesar Rodney Institute.³³

4.4 The National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance (NOOA)

Recognizing that local groups were fighting isolated battles, Mandy Davis of the California-based REACT Alliance founded NOOA to coordinate opposition on a national scale.

• Mission: NOOA aims to create a unified front, sharing legal strategies and PR resources between East Coast and West Coast groups.
• Strategic shift: This marks the evolution of the movement from disparate NIMBY clusters into a cohesive national lobby. NOOA’s formation allows for the pooling of resources and the standardization of messaging (e.g., the “whale” narrative is now being adapted for Pacific marine life).¹¹

Table 3: Key Coastal Opposition Groups and Legal Challenges

Section V: The Mechanisms of Obstruction

The effectiveness of this network lies not just in its funding but in its methods. The opposition employs a toolkit of obstruction that is standardized, replicable, and scalable.

5.1 “Information Subsidies”

The concept of “information subsidies,” detailed in the Brown University report, explains how national groups influence local outcomes without necessarily providing direct cash transfers.

• The Mechanism: Local activists often lack the time, expertise, and resources to analyze complex Environmental Impact Statements or draft zoning bylaws. National groups like TPPF and CRI fill this gap by providing “subsidies” in the form of pre-written talking points, model legislation, and expert witnesses.
• Impact: This dramatically lowers the “cost” of participation for local opposition. A local homeowner doesn’t need to understand grid physics to argue against a solar farm; they simply need to read the script provided by the Caesar Rodney Institute about “grid instability.” This ensures that the arguments heard in a town hall in Michigan are identical to those heard in a county commission in Ohio.¹

5.2 Legal Lawfare: The War of Attrition

The goal of the network’s litigation strategy is often not to win a final judgment on the merits, but to inflict delay.

• The logic of delay: Energy projects rely on complex financing models with tight timelines. By forcing federal agencies to redo environmental reviews or tying projects up in appellate courts, opponents can push projects past their financing deadlines or into periods of higher interest rates/inflation, rendering them uneconomic.
• Weaponizing NEPA: The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to assess environmental impacts. Opponents routinely sue alleging that the assessment was “insufficient,” a procedural argument that can halt construction even if the environmental harm is negligible.

5.3 Zoning as a Weapon

The shift from fighting state mandates to fighting local zoning is a calculated strategic move.

• Home Rule: By framing renewable energy bans as a matter of “local control” or “home rule,” the network taps into deep-seated conservative values. ALEC’s model legislation is designed to strip state siting boards of their power and devolve it to the most local level possible (townships/counties), where projects are easiest to kill through small-scale political mobilization.

Section VI: Conclusion

The opposition to solar and wind power in the United States is frequently characterized by media and policymakers as a “grassroots” phenomenon—a spontaneous uprising of rural and coastal citizens concerned about viewsheds and property values. However, a forensic analysis of the financial, legal, and organizational ties underpinning this resistance reveals a different reality. The local sentiment, while often genuine, is systematically cultivated, funded, and weaponized by a sophisticated national network of fossil fuel interests.

Organizations like the State Policy Network, Texas Public Policy Foundation, and Caesar Rodney Institute act as force multipliers. They transform isolated zoning disputes into a cohesive national strategy of obstruction. They provide the capital that allows local groups to hire high-end legal counsel; they provide the “experts” who testify with authority on debunked science; and they provide the rhetorical frameworks that turn neighbors against energy development.

The involvement of specific industrial actors—such as the Wright/Rastin family (Ariel Corp) in Ohio and Murray Energy in legal funding—reveals the direct financial stake that fossil fuel incumbents have in these battles. Whether through dark money conduits like The Empowerment Alliance or through ballot initiatives like Citizens for Local Choice, the objective remains consistent: to use the mechanisms of local democracy to delay the energy transition, preserving the dominance of coal, oil, and natural gas for as long as possible.

The data shows that this is not a series of skirmishes but a war of attrition. By freezing development through local bans (like Ohio’s SB52) and federal litigation (like the whale lawsuits), the network aims to run out the clock on the energy transition. Understanding this architecture is essential for policymakers, as addressing the opposition requires looking beyond the local town hall to the national structures that empower it.

List of Abbreviations

• ACOP: American Coalition for Ocean Protection
• AFPM: American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers
• ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council
• BOEM: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
• CFACT: Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
• CRI: Caesar Rodney Institute
• E&E Legal: Energy & Environment Legal Institute
• ESA: Endangered Species Act
• IER: Institute for Energy Research
• NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act
• NMFS: National Marine Fisheries Service
• NOOA: National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance
• OPSB: Ohio Power Siting Board
• SPN: State Policy Network
• TEA: The Empowerment Alliance
• TPPF: Texas Public Policy Foundation

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Addendum

Here’s an addendum that the report provided when “Robert Bryce” was specifically queried in the context of the report, and the text below is numbered for inclusion in the report (but otherwise not added into it. In the context of the “Architecture of Obstruction,” Bryce functions as a key supplier of the narrative framework used by both national think tanks and local activists to delay or block projects.

1.5.2 Robert Bryce and the Manhattan Institute

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (an SPN affiliate), plays a critical role in shaping the movement’s narrative. The Manhattan Institute has historically received funding from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. Bryce produces high-profile content arguing that wind turbines pose severe dangers to birds and public health, and he frequently characterizes renewable energy as “land-hungry” and ecologically destructive. His work is often cited by local groups to give their opposition the veneer of economic and environmental legitimacy.

That addition query returned the following additional material on Robert Bryce:

Yes, Robert Bryce appears frequently in the research material as a central figure providing intellectual and media support to the anti-renewable network. His work serves as a primary source of the “information subsidies” (reports, talking points, and media content) that local groups use to justify opposition.

He is directly associated with several of the national and local entities detailed in the report:

• • Center of the American Experiment: This Minnesota-based State Policy Network (SPN) affiliate published Bryce’s 2021 report, “Not in Our Backyard.” The report, which catalogs local government bans on renewables, was published the same year the Center received $20,000 from the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and $250,000 from the Stand Together Trust.
  • Manhattan Institute: Bryce has served as a senior fellow for this think tank, which is also an SPN affiliate. The institute has historically received funding from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. In this capacity, Bryce has produced content arguing that wind turbines pose severe dangers to birds and public health, narratives that are frequently cited by local opposition groups.
  • Green Oceans: The research identifies a direct link between Bryce and this Rhode Island-based anti-offshore wind group. Green Oceans hosted Bryce as a featured speaker, illustrating how national figures are deployed to lend credibility to local “grassroots” organizations.
  • Ohio Senate Bill 52 Context: Bryce actively tracks and promotes data regarding the rejection of wind and solar projects in Ohio. He has publically championed Senate Bill 52 (the legislation allowing local counties to ban solar/wind), framing the resulting bans as proof that “the public” opposes renewable energy, rather than the result of coordinated legislative capture.

Note: I’ve followed Robert Bryce’s Medium and Substack posts for quite a while. I’ve previously researched his fossil fuel affiliations in several of my posts. It’s been an education and from the looks of this list, maybe something of a fixation. What can I say? Those lying about and misrepresenting solutions to the climate change threat to human society is something that seems morally questionable to me.

1. I’m Rubber, You’re Glue: Robert Bryce, Fossil Fuel Shill, is just one of the many attacking Bill McKibben and his latest book, Here Comes the Sun

2. New Atlantis is a Fossil Fuel Shill Factory

3. Bryce and His Snow Job: Apparently, Climate Change Action is the Work of Anti-Math Nincompoops and Elite Conspiracists

4. Robert Bryce’s Anti-Environmental Pro-Renewable Energy Transition NGOs Argument is a No Go Argument

5. Bryce Hyped Focus

6. WOW. I Never Meta-Hypocrisy I Didn’t Like, or, Who is Robert Bryce and Why Does He Write Such S***?

7. Who is Lying? Those Who Say Fossil Fuel Companies Engage in Misinformation and Influence Campaigns against Renewable Energy, or Those Who Say Renewable Energy Advocates Have Pants on Fire?

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