It’s looking good for green energy (or renewable energy, but no longer alternative energy), right? The ongoing transition away from fossil fuel-based generation of electricity looks like a done deal, right?

Feel good about it. Do.

But then think about all those fossil fuel corporations out and about our world today. Wonder what the total revenues are? I did, and I went looking for the stats, but because I didn’t want to spend two hours adding the revenue from each and every such corporation, I focused on the United States, where, in 2023, among two-dozen corporations, total revenues are put at $1,418,600,000.00, or a bit shy of one-and-a-half trillion dollars. My guess is that 2024 and 2025 revenues are even higher, but I get dizzy at such heights, so I’m not looking this up. I will point out that the full list of such corporations world-wide holds close enough to call it a gross, and there’s a pun-ish poetic justice at 144. These are scattered across many countries and represent some modest revenue corporations and some giant ones, like Saudi Aramco, which had total revenues of $604,300,000,000 in 2023. What’s the grand total? Over three trillion dollars? Over four trillion? Higher?

How good are you feeling now?

If you are an American today, and a fan of clean energy, you’re probably not feeling super, given the Trump Administration’s decimation of solar, wind, EVs, and batteries (although some battery funding seems to have survived). That’s bad news. The good news is that investment in the Electrotech Revolution is still strong, and even here under the reign of President Big Oil Stooge, renewable energy investment is still significantly higher than US fossil fuel corporations’ capital investments.

But make no mistake. The Electrotech Revolution is poking a very large bear, but also understand that outsized bear pokes back. It is common knowledge that Big Oil gave the 2024 Trump presidential campaign a big bag of money, and to the tune of $1,653,324, and this is no doubt not all of it if you consider dark money. Big Oil is big enough to cover its bets, and while Kamala Harris’s campaign didn’t break the million mark, $938,648 ain’t shabby. Here’s the next biggest beneficiary: Senator Ted Cruz (R), at $845,853, and then Congressman August Pluger, at $763,435, and bringing in the fifth spot is Senator Tim Sheehy (D). I’ll bet you $1,653,324 that Big Oil didn’t stop there. When you are playing with $1.5 trillion—or $4 or $5 trillion worldwide?—the money spent on politicians and lobbyists and think tanks and PACs is small potatoes.

The frenzy to build out LNG terminals and new wells and new techniques for squeezing gas out of old and new wells alike by injecting CO2 is Big Oil’s effort to keep business as usual. That’s not unusual from a self-interest perspective if you are Big Oil, but climate change means that the rest of us can’t be business as usual. The weird international diplomacy/extortion effort coming out of the current administration is also clear evidence that these companies don’t want their run to end, even while sensible people can point out that by every economic point, there’s an end date for fossil fuels, so why keep expanding? This frenzy seems true, too, when it comes to building out new natural gas electrical generators to add to the grid to meet growing electricity demand growth, most often accompanied by the cry “Data center! AI!” The way I figure it, the push is to get in place as much new gas generation infrastructure as possible as fast as possible, so that Big Oil can say to clean energy projects, you’re not needed. The strategy is to keep selling gas to as many generators for the longest time, and when it comes to gas generators, 40 years is the minimum term of use utilities expect.

Hmm. Let’s see: 2025 plus 40 is 2065. And 2065 is well past the point (2035, maybe?) when greenhouse gas emissions need to be sufficiently reduced, or what is sometimes called Net Zero, although that term is confusing and amorphous when you try to pin it down. The simpler way to put it is that we have to stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as fast as possible in order to minimize the consequences of global warming in the years and decades ahead.

So, what the heck is up with this frenzy to build new utility-scale natural gas electricity generation plants? Sell, baby, sell, is one answer, and that answer would be from the perspective of fossil fuel corporations who like selling natural gas to utilities over and over and over again. This isn’t hard to understand, although from a GHG perspective, this is also not hard to hate. The argument used is growing energy demands, but once the many new gas plants are built out, the argument then becomes these generator plants are in place and we should keep using all this capital investment. For, like, at least another 40 years.

Despite all the talk and plans and proposals for new gas generation, there are real speedbumps and solid barriers to getting this done. Enverus projects that the United States is on a trajectory to construct 80 new natural gas power plants by 2030, which would add an estimated 46 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity, but analyzing the current state of supply chains for essential goods required for such a massive build out reveals a massive mismatch.

But make no mistake. The Electrotech Revolution is poking a very large bear.

With grid forming invertors and battery storage, the warning by the spinning mass boys are fading, although I’m sure there will be work still needed to figure out just how the grid is different with renewables as the largest part of the mix.

The Future of U.S. Natural Gas Power Generation: Projections, Accuracy, and the Confluence of Limiting Factors to 2030

I’d been hearing this sort of argument out and about the climate action circles, but I wanted to understand the issue better. Here’s the prompt I used with Gemini Deep Research:

What is the projection for new natural gas electricity generating plants in the US to come online by 2030 and how accurate are these numbers? Include energy output figures for each gas plant listed. Describe the limiting factors behind the projected number of new US gas plants by 2030 and how these limiting factors prevent larger numbers of gas plants from being built by 2030.

You can read the full report here. Here’s the first part of the Executive Summary to wet your whistle:

1.1 Overview of Projections and Core Findings

An analysis of U.S. energy market trends and projections indicates a notable ambition for future natural gas power generation. A key projection from the firm Enverus suggests the United States is on a trajectory to construct 80 new natural gas power plants by 2030, which would add an estimated 46 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity. This figure is a focal point for assessing the future of the nation’s energy infrastructure. However, a comprehensive review of the current market and regulatory landscape reveals that this aggressive projection is highly speculative. It is a needs-based assessment rather than a realistic forecast of what can be built, as its feasibility is called into question by a complex and multi-faceted set of constraints.

“Needs-based” means what utilities and other electrical generation plant companies think they want. There are many factors making what’s wanted to lead to disappointment for the fossil fuel industry, as the second part of the Executive Summary points out:

1.2 Key Drivers vs. Limiting Factors

The fundamental premise of this report is a paradox between a rising need for power and a difficult environment for new construction. The primary driver of this renewed interest in natural gas is an unprecedented surge in electricity demand, particularly from the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. Data centers are forecast to account for a significant portion of future load growth, creating a critical need for reliable, dispatchable power. This pressing demand is creating market signals that are driving the projections for new gas plant construction.

However, a confluence of powerful limiting factors is impeding the flow of capital and the pace of project development. These constraints include escalating capital costs, supply chain bottlenecks, a strong competitive disadvantage from renewables, increasing regulatory hurdles, and growing socio-political opposition. These factors collectively make it increasingly difficult and financially risky to build new gas plants, preventing the widespread buildout that would be required to meet the 46 GW projection.

So, yay for renewables, right?

Remember what renewables are up against. Even before the need to meet expanded demand growth, Big Oil, alongside some—many?—public utilities, plays dirty pool. In a previous post, I noted the discrepancy in interconnect queue times between traditional fossil fuel generation and renewables, and that different was a one to two years in the queue for fossil fuel plants and an average of seven years for renewables. Part of the difference likely is that it takes the grid operator less time to connect fossil fuel-based generation because there’s a much longer industry experience working with well-known generation systems, while renewables might strike too many grid operators as new-fangled and thus confusing and thus requiring more time and study to make sure this source of power won’t crash thew grid or prove unreliable. I have my suspicions that more is at play here, and that more is dirty pool. Maybe I should ask Gemini.

Of course, buying the presidency could be considered not cricket, but what are you going to do?

Bill McKibben and so many others understand that renewables can do the job of supplying electricity less expensively and with high reliability, especially as battery storage keeps expanding. Of course, there are other sorts of delays on the renewable side of the ledger, and the stop-and-go-and-stop-and-go baloney with Revolution Wind is another likely example of dirty pool. Bill McKibben and so many others understand that renewables face fewer supply chain bottlenecks and better buildout timelines, and this is important if you want to reduce GHG emissions ASAP.

The best news is that much of the rest of the world seems happy enough to ignore the whining of the fossil fuel industry and many countries are proceeding on pace toward renewables. The worst trick is the one being played on the American people and the delays in our road toward evolving away from fossil fuels and as a petrostate to become an electrostate.

But remember, please, that the bear bites back, and one such chomp is the attempt to flood America’s power infrastructure with a bunch of new gas electricity generators.