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.

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.

I’ve been saying that AI’s projected electricity demand is celebrated by fossil fuel companies because this growth in electricity demand provides an anchor for Big Oil to keep selling natural gas for decades to come.

What me worry?

Sure I worry. A much clearer and devasting understanding about the “carbon budget” mankind faces has recently been recalculated and the general gist is that we have a smaller amount of carbon we can dump into the atmosphere before we push beyond 1.5C.

Or, as AI Summary puts it:

The 2025 Global Carbon Budget reports that the remaining budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C is “virtually exhausted”. Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, projected to reach a record 38.1 billion tonnes in 2025, driven by, for example, high demand. While emissions from land-use change have declined, total global emissions remain at record highs. 

Key Findings on Recent Carbon Budget Changes 

• • 5°C Budget Exhaustion: Scientists warn that at the current rate of emissions, the budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C could be exhausted in approximately three years, with only about 130 billion tonnes of CO2 left to emit.
  • Rising Emissions (2024-2025): Fossil fuel emissions have continued to grow, with 2024 seeing a 0.8% increase. The 2025 projection is a 1.1% increase in fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
  • Total Emissions Flat: Despite rising fossil fuel emissions, the total CO2 emissions (including land-use changes) for 2025 are projected to remain relatively flat compared to 2024, due to a decrease in emissions from deforestation.
  • Weakened Sinks: The Global Carbon Project (GCP) notes that climate change has weakened natural land and ocean sinks, accounting for 8% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1960.
  • The “Carbon Clock”: The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research continues to track the rapid shrinking of the remaining carbon budget for both 1.5°C and 2°C, highlighting the urgency of the situation.

The 2025 Global Carbon Budget, often highlighted by sources like Carbon Brief and Euronews, indicates that while some nations are transitioning to cleaner energy, the overall global trajectory is not yet declining fast enough to meet international climate targets. 

Want to worry more? Many scientists are now projecting that we are already on the path to or actually at 1.5C, with higher temperature increases in the average global temperature moving faster than previously considered.

“US leads record global surge in gas-fired power driven by AI demands, with big costs for the climate,” written by Oliver Milman and published in The Guardian on January 29, 2026, puts the issue of overspending our carbon budget squarely on gas generation and the new and planned gas generation planned to address the electricity-hungry AI data centers. The main projected culprit for the voracious spending down of said carbon budget largely rests with the U.S.

The article reports that “Much of this new capacity will be devoted to the vast electricity needs of AI, with a third of the 252 gigawatts of gas power in development set to be situated on site at datacenters.” I 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.” Here’s that report’s Executive Summary:

Executive Summary

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.

Looks like Big Oil has been busy selling the idea of new gas generation for AI and other growing electricity demand. Forty-six GW has blossomed to 252 GW, although the first number is U.S. back in 2025, and the second number is worldwide in 2026.

You have to admire the ambition of the fossil fuel industry. The amount of additional carbon emissions these new plants will spew is staggering… and staggeringly dangerous. Here’s a quote from The Guardian article:

The gas projects in development in the US will, if all completed, cause 12.1bn tonnes in carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetimes, which is double the current annual emissions coming from all sources in the US. Worldwide, the planned gas boom will cause 53.2bn tonnes of emissions over projects’ lifetimes if fulfilled, pushing the planet towards even worse heatwaves, droughts, floods and other climate impacts.

Of course, as I discovered in my analysis, the desire to build new gas plants is tempered by ability, especially in terms of supply chains, where turbines from the two main manufacturers of gas generators—GE Vernova and Siemens Energy—are mightily backlogged. Building out manufacturing capacity for such complex machines is no fast undertaking. Unfortunately, a recent development has entered the market, as described in the AI Summary of the search prompt “Using jet turbines for new gas generator plants and capacity”:

Using jet turbines, specifically “aeroderivative” gas turbines derived from aircraft engines, has emerged as a critical, fast-deployable solution for new, high-demand gas generator plants, particularly for data centers and AI-driven power needs. Companies like ProEnergy are retrofitting used military and commercial jet engines (e.g., GE CF6-80C2) into 48-megawatt power generators to provide rapid, “behind-the-meter” electricity. 

This approach addresses severe bottlenecks in securing new, large-scale utility turbines, which often face 3- to 7-year wait times. 

There’s a lot more to find with this prompt, but nothing to keep you calm if you worry about carbon emissions.

Here’s what it all means: All efforts to restrict and reduce carbon emissions will be more than offset by all these goddam new gas generators if they come to be. Offset and then some.

A Brief Interruption About My AI Overlords

I use AI as an effective productivity tool. My purview for climate change is a wide one. I write climate fiction that seeks to be based on realistic and accurate information about the causes and consequences of climate change, which means I’ve been hard at work understanding the science (enough to tell the difference between truth and bullshit). I give talks about climate change, and I have little interest in providing information that is wrong, so I make an ongoing effort to get things right and up to date. I find myself researching climate policy, political realities, and economic benefits of the clean energy transition. I’m active within the climate fiction world, reading widely in the genre and critiquing the various approaches to it. I’ve been at all of this for many years.

The world of climate change is extremely wide and multi-faceted. Keeping up on the latest findings of science and technology and policy proposals and economic and political realities is gained by triangulated a diverse and wide range of information resources. I’ve found that AI can be useful as a research agent, where, in response to a thoughtful prompt, AI ranges far and wide across the Web to collect and then collate and then analyze the relevant sources and then synthesize these findings into well-produced reports.

I have high confidence in these reports, and I haven’t found hallucinations to be a problem, but that’s because I know the subject well enough and broadly enough to cast a critical eye on sources and am able to review AI’s findings. What I can’t so easily do—although, of course, I’ve done this all too often and with all too much effort—is to search the Web high and low for the information, explanation, and opinion I seek.

For me, AI is a useful tool. It is not my buddy, nor do I spend much time generating funny images. For me, AI’s current capabilities are impressive.

This is not to say that the present hysteria about AI—the very hysteria that supports Big Oil’s play to flood the world with greenhouse gas-generating electricity—is sensible. My take is that there is wild financing being accumulated mainly in the hope of the debt accumulators being first to market. I believe that AI’s market will actually take a long time to develop as a deeply useful and pervasive embedded tool—evolving human culture is still a slow undertaking. I believe that there’s likely to be something on the order of a crash or bubble because of the disconnect between all that money and all that non-market.

I also believe that the rush for adding huge amounts of electricity generation is hysterical, albeit not in a funny way. I believe that whatever additional capacity may be required can be more cost-effective and more quickly produced with clean energy and by bringing digital management to the grids that already contain huge amounts of spare capacity that currently cannot be managed well.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Big Oil is the Enemy

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the fossil fuel industry doesn’t care about carbon emissions. If Big Oil did care, Big Oil would have a lot to care about.

There’s no rational explanation for the fossil fuel industry not knowing that carbon emissions must come down, not go up. Denial doesn’t cut it, not with the now long-held and clear scientific consensus on global warming and all the resulting data collection. Denial doesn’t cut it, not with the growing evidence in the form of extreme weather and not with the majority of individuals’ personal experiences. It is as if a competent adult would argue that he didn’t know that someone could be killed if he pointed a loaded gun at that person and pulled the trigger. The “Go figure” argument is as absurd for Big Oil as it is for our proverbial idiot.

Speaking of idiots, in America, Trump is the gaslighter-in-chief in regard to climate and the contributory role of fossil fuels, just as he is on so many other topics, including, of late, the ridiculous and entirely and patently demonstrable falsehoods around the ICE/CBP killings and related inciting behaviors. That’s why the connection between fighting for the American democracy and the climate fight are one in the same. The old order of Big Oil, along with a rogue’s collection of other “Bigs,” has placed its bet on a rising fascist state, damn the consequences.

I’m placing a different bet.

The post AI is Giving Me Gas first appeared on David Guenette.

Sure, the fossil fuel industry is powerful, but this only means we should go after it as hard as we can. And why prosecute an attack on Big Oil? How about because the industry has been delaying progress on the green energy transition for decades and decades, even while it knew about the greenhouse gas effect. Or how about the fossil fuel industry’s long history of destruction of governments and environments, and its violence against people. How about the fossil fuel industry’s knee-deep involvement in corruption even at the expense of the Earth’s health, the world’s economy, and society’s continuance?

Let’s put the current world of carbon emission reduction in stark terms: Big Oil is fighting tooth and claw to remain relevant, and they’re using big corruption to do it. This isn’t a matter of “good business practices,” not unless you count extortion, bribery, and violence as good business practices. There’s a long history of lawlessness in the fossil fuel industry that spans international bribery, environmental disregard, and actual physical malfeasance and violence, but we’re fast running out of time to put things right.

Search as Catch Can

The beauty of the Internet today is that it is a lot harder to hide information. Even the simple Google search reveals many result pages of blood-curdling histories of Big Oil’s bad behavior, not that you don’t know about bad behavior already on the part of fossil fuels.

Search: “History of fossil fuel industry using force against individuals and groups”

Here’s the AI Summary for this search:

The history of the fossil fuel industry involves extensive use of force, from international conflicts over resources (like WWI/WWII oil/coal) to domestic suppression of Indigenous rights, land defenders, and workers, manifesting as militarized policing, human rights abuses, gender-based violence (especially around “man camps”), and systemic environmental racism that harms marginalized communities, alongside sophisticated legal tactics (SLAPPs) and lobbying to silence critics and influence policy for profit.

It is easy enough to fall down any number of rabbit holes when looking for answers. The answers to this search are wide-ranging, from world wars to SLAPP suits. An article, “Tactics Used by Fossil Fuel Companies to Suppress Critique and Obstruct Climate Action”, by Sophie Hartley in The Commons Social Change Library, has a nifty list of eight tactics employed by fossil fuel corporations, along with examples. The Commons Social Change Library is an Australian online resource “for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, advocacy and justice.” You want another seven pages of search results on the query above, just type it into Google.

But we don’t want to hurt the world economy, right? Isn’t this one of the gaslit claims we hear from so many corporate interests?

Search: “What is the role of the fossil fuel industry in negative contribution to the world’s economy?”

A leading question?

Not really. Here’s the first part of the AI Summary return:

The fossil fuel industry negatively impacts the global economy primarily through massive health costs from air pollution (millions of deaths, trillions in losses), enormous government subsidies ($7 trillion globally, diverting funds from other needs), climate change damage (extreme weather, sea-level rise), and energy inefficiency, creating economic burdens that outweigh short-term benefits and hinder sustainable growth. These “hidden costs,” or negative externalities, strain public budgets, reduce workforce productivity, and destabilize economies through climate disasters, even as the industry provides jobs and energy security. 

One of the four cited sources in the summary is “The Incredible Inefficiency of the Fossil Energy System”, by  RMI’s Daan Walter, Kingsmill Bond,  Amory Lovins,  Laurens Speelman, Chiara Gulli, Sam Butler-Sloss, published on June 4, 2024. Here’s how this paper begins:

Today’s fossil energy system is incredibly inefficient: almost two-thirds of all primary energy is wasted in energy production, transportation, and use, before fossil fuel has done any work or produced any benefit. That means over $4.6 trillion per year, almost 5% of global GDP and 40% of what we spend on energy, goes up in smoke due to fossil inefficiency. Literally.

Look, I’m not one of those people who backdate accusations. I understand that fossil fuels play an important part in the development of our societies and technological advancement and general population growth. All hail Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and railroads, refrigerators, oil furnaces, tractors, and clothes washers. Yes, fossil fuels have delivered huge benefits for mankind over the last several centuries. I’m not a big fan of having to cut my own wood to keep my family from freezing.

At least here in the developed world, our age of technology would not have developed, or developed as fast, anyway, without the boost we get from fossil fuels. But we are at the point when fossil fuels should be over, must be over, and thank goodness we have great alternatives in the age of solar, wind, and batteries and all the other digital wonders of The Electrotech Revolution. It is past time for fossil fuels to retire gracefully from the stage, especially for the generation of electricity, but instead Big Oil acts like a belligerent guest who demands another drink even when you’re already in your pajamas and asking the guest to leave, only to hear the guest passing gas then claiming it’s the sound of the floorboards squeaking.

The problem is that fossil fuels have become—and have been for some while—more than an unruly guest insisting on another pour because it makes them feel good.

There’s a killer in the house.

Battle Time: Grid Your Loins

How did I get to this point of thinking about the fossil fuel industry as the killer in the house?

Recently, I was trying to figure out exactly how we’re going to meet the electricity demand growth everyone’s talking about (AI! Data centers!). I’ve written about some other aspects of this, including the likely exaggeration of the load demand growth numbers by Big Oil as justification for building many more new natural gas generation plants, in my post “New Gas Generator Plants and the Plan to Flood the (Electricity Demand Growth) Zone.” One of the interesting point is that supply chain constraints make the industry target of 100 new generators only—at best—30% achievable by 2030, and that’s with everything else going perfectly.

I’ve also recently written about what is often called “Grid at the Edge,” by which is meant the needed upgrading and expansion of our electricity grid to accommodate all that new juicy electricity that is already overwhelmingly from renewables in 2025. The main approach is to add digital intelligence and technology to the grid so that electrical capacity can be handled more efficiently. There are lots of parts to this grid improvement in the U.S.

But what does “the edge of the grid” mean? Here’s another AI Summary result:

“The edge of the grid” refers to the physical boundary where the traditional centralized power system meets end-users (homes, businesses), a zone now filled with smart tech like solar panels, EVs, and batteries (Distributed Energy Resources), allowing for two-way energy flow and localized management, unlike older one-way grids. It’s where innovation meets the consumer, enabling active grid participation but also introducing new security challenges.

The query below was submitted to Gemini under the “deep research” mode.

Query: What conditions (laws, regulations, state or PUC rulings) must be in place for Distributed energy resources and VPPs to be deployed in American electrical grids? What technological capabilities and technologies must be in place? What are the probable timelines for such grid upgrades and the timelines for DER and VPP growth?

The result was a tidy 18-page report titled “The Edge of the Grid: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Regulatory, Technical, and Economic Conditions for DER and VPP Deployment (2025–2030).” The report included 44 endnote source references. Here’s a paragraph from the Executive Summary that goes to the issue I was after:

This report posits that the realistic timeline for a wide DER-enabled grid system in the U.S. has shifted from an optimistic, policy-accelerated horizon of the mid-2020s to a pragmatic, necessity-driven struggle that will likely not achieve broad national scale until the early 2030s. However, this delay is not uniform. We are witnessing the emergence of a “Two-Speed Grid,” where specific regions and sectors will achieve advanced DER integration by 2028 out of sheer survival necessity, while vast swaths of the country will face stagnation, locked in a traditional centralized paradigm until the next decade.

A “shift from an optimistic, policy-accelerated horizon of the mid-2020s to a pragmatic, necessity-driven struggle that will likely not achieve broad national scale until the early 2030s”? That doesn’t sound like the best progress, does it?

Still, the report lacked specificity as to the actual mechanisms contributing to the timelines for the development of edge of grid, so I added my specific query items. Here’s the close of the revised report’s Executive Analysis:

Our findings indicate that while the federal implementation of FERC Order No. 2222 has encountered significant friction—resulting in multi-year delays across major Independent System Operators (ISOs) like SPP and MISO—state-level initiatives have accelerated, creating a “dual-track” deployment landscape. The conditions for success have thus shifted from a reliance on wholesale market access to a mastery of state-specific “value stacks,” requiring aggregators to navigate a complex patchwork of interconnection rules, telemetry requirements, and consumer protection mandates.

Nothing like getting a FERC order number for a sense of specificity. It’s a nifty report and a great primer on the factors determining grid enhancement development timelines, along with breakouts for different states and their own and various legislative mandates, or lack thereof. Still, what the report gained in specificity—I now understand much better the regulatory problems of PJM, for instance—the report lost some clarity as to the overarching challenge. The first version put this forward more forcefully right there in its Executive Summary:

The catalyst for this shift is the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) in July 2025, which has effectively ended the era of federal “green industrial policy” initiated by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The OBBBA’s repeal of key investment tax credits (ITCs) and production tax credits (PTCs), coupled with stringent “Foreign Entity of Concern” (FEOC) restrictions, has pulled the financial rug out from under the residential and commercial solar sectors just as they face their stiffest competition for capital from the booming Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure market.

In other words, the progress we were making got its legs kicked from under it. You can thank Trump and the fossil fuel industry that bought him.

Corruption R Us

And so, back to the malfeasance of Big Oil. We all remember the infamous meeting between Trump and representatives from the fossil fuel industry during the 2024 campaign for the Presidency of the United States, where Trump asked for a $1 billion. There was an uproar about quid pro quo, but that turned into nothing, mainly because the election finance system is already so badly corrupted that even the obvious solicited bribe was seen as “business as usual.”

Big Oil has a long history of bribery, although the bribes to United States officials have been rarer than the bribes to foreign officials. The information is easily available, should you be interested.

Search: “Fossil fuel industry history of bribery and corruption”

Here’s the AI Summary:

The fossil fuel industry has a long, documented history of bribery, corruption, and deceit, from early 20th-century scandals like Teapot Dome involving oil barons and politicians, to modern-day accusations involving climate fraud, lobbying abuses, illegal payments to foreign officials, and the funding of misinformation campaigns to block climate action, using front groups and complex schemes to influence policy and hide harmful knowledge.  

Let’s see. There’s “Climate Change Deception Campaigns,” “Bribery and Illegal Payments,” and “Lobbying and Political Influence” among the “Modern Corruption and Climate Deception” category, with types of activity ranging from bribery, fraud, racketeering, greenwashing, and state capture.

The most brilliant of these criminal activities by Big Oil, at least in our time, has been state capture, which is why I refer to Trump as “President Big Oil Stooge.” Trump has taken Big Oil money and come out swinging against climate change, even while the results are a weakened economy, especially relative to Red China’s economy. Then there’s the problem for us rate payers in that electricity generated with fossil fuels is now intrinsically more expensive, but then “affordability” is a hoax, I guess. There’s the problem with meeting growing demand load, because renewables are the quickest to market and to interconnect, if, that is, the playing field is level, but the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has pressed the greasy thumb of Big Oil on that scale, and viciously.

Oh yeah, there’s also the problem of climate change and the U.S. falling behind on efforts to reduce its carbon emissions, and that leads to all sorts of other rising costs for us and the world.

By the way, let’s take a moment to talk about subsidies. The next time someone tells me that renewable energy is only cheaper because of subsidies, I’ll likely kick that person on the shin. Sure, the Federal government has supported the development of clean energy, as it should do with new technologies with public-facing benefits. Can this person, now hopping about in pain clutching his or her leg, explain to me why the fossil fuel industry, well established in its 150-year-old-plus history, still requires government subsidies, both direct ones and the indirect support from being allowed to freely dump into everyone’s common atmosphere the poison fossil fuel extraction and use produces?

The fact is that the days of fossil fuel being the primary source of energy for the world are over. The fact is that Big Oil is playing dirty to keep their source of revenue and profit in the mix.

Better a Big Oil Dissident than a Victim of Cognitive Dissonance

When I talk about the malfeasance of Big Oil, I’m not talking about the guy pumping gas, the oil field or pipeline worker, fuel tank driver, or refinery engineer. I’m talking about those within the fossil fuel corporations who have known that fossil fuel’s days are numbered, and known it for decades, but who have nevertheless kept pushing for exploration and market expansion instead of looking out for their stockholders by shifting their corporations’ resources toward clean energy, or for that matter, anything other than the polluting and costly business of heating up the globe. If no other charges are to be leveled at such individuals, the failure to act with due fiduciary responsibility is clear. Bribing, corrupting governments, and exercising violence against people and the environment is not exercising fiduciary responsibility, unless, of course, you justify any such action as the means to maximize your shareholders’ value.

But, of course, even five-year-olds understand that “maximizing shareholder value” is neither a sensible nor moral primary action. Even five-year-olds understand that not causing harm to others is a central moral consideration. The day is coming when oil executives will face the gallows and utter, for one last time, “I was only maximizing shareholder value.”

Whoa! Gallows? Really?

Well, as far as I’m concerned, as an anti-death penalty guy, I’d only bring them to the gallows as show and tell, in what would be a moment of somewhat mean-spirited hijinks before carting them off to their new prison home. But I do think that the comparison of the sins of the oil industry with the sins of the Third Reich, as meted out at Nuremberg, is apt. Big Oil seems all too happy to keep turning up the world’s thermostat for a few extra bucks. Their attack on humankind and the very world itself, when such consequences are cumulatively considered, can be counted against the hundreds of millions of people directly suffering and killed and the trillions of dollars in monetary loss that coulda, shoulda been used to better each and all.

Frankly, the climate/clean energy world has been playing far too nice for far too long. We’ve allowed ourselves to be gaslit by those who stand for short-term gain. We’ve offered reason and the benefit of the doubt to those whose only reason to act is to benefit themselves. Big Oil is connected, of course, to other malignant players, and some part of the financial world should be put up in the dock as well, as should some politicians and other enabling operatives. But Big Oil—like Big Tech these days and monopolists—seems happy enough also to undermine the foundations of American Democracy for the sake of a few extra baubles, so the best actions we can take is to understand as clearly as we can that there are bad players in this world of ours. We need to consider not only how best to counter them, but how to bring them to justice.

The post How Do I (Big Oil) Love Thee (Big Oil)? Let Me Count the Money, Despite the Costs first appeared on David Guenette.

“The clean energy transition is projected to be a strategic necessity for long-term economic stability, characterized by high initial investment and systemic risks in the near term (to 2035), followed by structural benefits and industry contraction by mid-century (2050), culminating in significant net economic gains by the end of the century (2100).”

This is a quote from a Gemini Deep Research analysis I’d run recently. The prompt:

Analyze both negative and positive economic consequences of a transition to clean energy by 2035, 2050, and 2100, respectively, breaking out consequences for the general economy and the economic effects on the fossil fuel industry and shareholders and investors. How fast may this clean energy transition happen without creating economic hardship on the general economy?

Notice that I didn’t insist that Gemini look at the good aspects of the clean energy transition as much as on what happens to the traditional and dirty energy system that’s been in place for a couple of hundred years. Nonetheless, facts are that the best plan is the clean energy transition.

That’s not the plan of Big Oil, though.

No, the plan by Big Oil is to push and scrape and pull the levers of corrupted governance as fiercely as possible for as long as possible, claiming that a flotilla of hundreds of new gas turbines is needed and Big Oil points to AI as the reason why.

And when the clean energy transition eats fossil fuel’s lunch? You can be your bottom dollar that Big Oil—alongside the too-often allies the power utilities—will argue, of course, we all need to keep using fossil fuel power generation because—Whaaa!—nobody wants stranded assets, do they? What about all those institutional investors that kept pension funds in fossil fuels, or—horror!—those poor stockholders and C-Suites full of good and decent people? You’ll have to bail them out, right?

Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of argument we can expect if there’s not clear legislation outlining the course and timeline for the clean energy buildout. Unfortunately, bailing out the poor little rich men seems a near-inviolate tradition in America. Remember TARP in 2009, when the big financial institutions that caused the worldwide economic collapse because of their obviously crap securitizations got bailed and not jailed?

The United States needs large scale plans and authority to shift the current energy infrastructure to one based on clean energy and a full-on buildout of a digitally intelligent and flexible grid capable of load balancing, distributed energy resource management, instantaneous demand response, and incorporation of virtual power plants.

Sure, here in the land of Trump, a.k.a., President Big Oil Stooge, this seems impossible. But Trump’s days are numbered and the opposition needs clear and new alternatives for America as it reemerges from the current nightmare.

We’ve done large-scale before and we can do it again. Only smart and ambitious Federal policy and agency can bring about the shift to clean energy and capable and smart grids in the timely fashion needed, while road mapping by law to make clear where the country is going. That way, we can avoid all the brand new but doomed stranded assets being pushed by the fossil fuel interests and apply laws of fiduciary responsibilities to tell these S.O.Bs., “Sorry, do not collect $200 and go directly to jail.”

Here are a few examples of Federal energy-related agencies we’ve benefited from in the past:

• Federal Power Commission (FPC) (1920-1977): Established to coordinate federal hydropower, later became independent, regulating interstate electricity and natural gas.
• Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) (1946-1974): Managed nuclear development; abolished to separate research/development from regulation, leading to DOE/NRC.
• Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) (1975-1977): Briefly housed energy R&D from the AEC before becoming part of the Department of Energy (DOE).
• Rural Electrification Administration (REA) (1935-1994): A New Deal agency that funded rural power lines, dramatically expanding access.
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (1933): Federally-owned U.S. corporation that provides electricity, manages flood control, and promotes economic development across the Tennessee Valley region (mostly Tennessee, parts of AL, MS, KY, GA, NC, VA).

This all reminds me of Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) of 1935, a landmark U.S. federal law passed during the Great Depression to regulate massive, often corrupt, interstate utility holding companies, forcing them to register with the SEC, simplify structures (often limiting them to a single state), and keep regulated utility business separate from other ventures, ultimately breaking up huge monopolies and protecting consumers from price gouging, though parts were later repealed by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

If you want more gray hair, follow the PUHCA link to Wikipedia and see how we’ve been where we are today fighting special interests, and that there are solutions to moderate greed and self-serving. I know, radical, right?

Summary of Economic Trajectories of the Clean Energy Transition: A Multi-Temporal Analysis of Consequences to 2100 AI Report

Here’s the summary of Economic Trajectories of the Clean Energy Transition: A Multi-Temporal Analysis of Consequences to 2100. If you what the detailed analysis, follow this link. I’ve kept all the references and sources used by Gemini in its report generation. One of the more interesting conclusions is that the U.S. needs to resolve supply chain problems with critical clean tech minerals. There’s already a lot of work underway, including this bit of news from today, “A huge cache of critical minerals found in Utah may be the largest in the US.”

Optimal Transition Pace: Fastest and Most Orderly

The analysis concludes that the optimal speed for the clean energy transition—the speed that minimizes overall economic hardship on the general economy—is the fastest possible orderly transition, aligning with the IEA’s rapid shift benchmark of 2035.

The greatest risk of economic hardship is a disorderly or delayed transition, where postponed climate action triggers a sudden, destabilizing repricing of assets, potentially causing a global financial crisis on the scale of 2008.² Minimizing hardship requires proactive policies like robust Just Transition programs and supply chain security to manage social and market friction.²

Economic Consequences by Timeline

1. The 2035 Horizon: Investment Surge and Financial Shock

2. The 2050 Horizon: Structural Costs and Systemic Stability

3. The 2100 Horizon: Net Benefits and Resilience

Mitigating Economic Hardship

The transition’s speed is constrained by policy and social stability, not just technology. To manage economic hardship (e.g., localized unemployment, cost inflation) and ensure the fastest orderly pace, two key interventions are required:

1. Fully Implementing Just Transition Policies: Proactive social support is necessary to manage labor displacement and regional friction. The cost of comprehensive worker and community support, such as guaranteeing pensions, income support, and retraining, is relatively small compared to total infrastructure spending; for example, a high-end estimate for a US program is around $600 million per year.
2. Securing Critical Mineral Supply Chains: Policies must focus on diversification, recycling, and market stabilization (e.g., strategic stockpiling) to prevent supply disruptions and cost escalation of clean technologies.⁵

The post Let’s Go Big on the Clean Energy Transition first appeared on David Guenette.