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on July 29, 2019
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American Frackers, Not Wind and Solar, Increase Our National Security

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

America has the strongest military might in the world. We have 3,476 tactical aircraft, 760 attack helicopters, 637 unmanned drones, 157 bombers, 2,831 tanks, 93 cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, 10 aircraft carriers, 68 submarines, 31 amphibious ships, and probably more supply trucks than you can shake a stick at. The one thing these military vehicles have in common? They ain't running on wind and solar. They're running on oil. In fact, the United States military is the single-largest consumer of oil in the world, using more than 100 million barrels every single year. Fortunately, the oil used to keep America safe is...

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on July 28, 2019
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Cloudy With a Chance of Blackouts: Island-Wide Outage on Kaua’i, Clouds Block Solar Recovery After Generator’s Cable Failure

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

Looks like adding solar to the grid isn't helping in Hawaii, after a blackout caused by a severed electric cable caused the natural gas generator to go offline. According to the Honolulu Star Advertiser, 10,000 Kauai residents from Kekaha to Princeville dealt with rolling electric outages between 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and utility officials asked everyone to reduce energy use after Sunday’s islandwide power outage. "Rolling blackouts were needed Sunday and today because other electricity-generating units were out of service for either repair or scheduled maintenance, officials said. Electricity customers experienced 30-minute outages every three to four hours during the rolling...

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on July 26, 2019
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Iron Range Legislators Clap Back At Anti-PolyMet Letter Written by 18 Metro-Area DLF’ers

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

It didn't take long for a bipartisan group of Iron Range legislators to clap back against the letter written by 18 metro-area DFL lawmakers urging Governor Walz to cancel all permits for the proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine, releasing this statement yesterday afternoon. I can't say it any better than the Iron Range lawmakers, so I'll leave it up to them to make the points. Iron Range Legislators Respond to Calls to Stop the PolyMet Permit The claims by metro legislators and anti-mining groups about PolyMet Mining are downright fabrications. It is very disappointing that people don’t know or don’t care what our...

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on July 25, 2019
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DFL Legislators Want to Halt PolyMet, Urge Governor To Cancel Permits

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

According to the Star Tribune, eighteen liberal Democratic lawmakers from the Metro area are calling for Governor Tim Walz to suspend all state permits for PolyMet's proposed copper-nickel mine in northern Minnesota. The legislators claim the suspension is needed to make sure that "the permits were not rigged." It's interesting to note that not a single DFL lawmaker from the Iron Range, where the mine would actually be located, signed on to the letter. This makes sense, because no project in Minnesota history has been studied more extensively than the PolyMet project, which has been under regulatory review for more than...

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on July 25, 2019
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Xcel Energy CEO Made $26.2 Million in 2018 As Your Electric Bill Reached a New All-Time High

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

The Star Tribune recently ran a piece announcing that Xcel Energy CEO Ben Fowke was the third-highest paid CEO in Minnesota in 2018 with a total pay of $26.2 million for the year. This wouldn't necessarily be outrageous compensation if Xcel Energy were a private company competing for your businesses in a free market, but the fact that Xcel customers are literally forced by the government to buy their electricity from the  government-approved monopoly makes this level of compensation unconscionable. Why does the Xcel CEO get paid so much? According to the Star Tribune: "Fowke’s annual bonus is based on five factors: employee...

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on July 24, 2019
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11 Ways Minnesota Families Are Subsidizing Solar

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

There is a pervasive fiction that solar is somehow lower cost than other sources of electricity and that this form of energy is competing on a level playing field with sources like coal, nuclear, and natural gas. This notion is a complete fairy tale. Unfortunately, there are a host of renewable energy advocacy groups, some of them who pretend to be conservative, who further this notion and even contend that wind and solar are somehow at a disadvantage relative to more reliable forms of energy due to government intervention. Nothing could be further than the truth. Solar and wind have all...

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on July 23, 2019
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Capitalism is Saving the Planet Part 4: Ridley: Rejoice, the Earth Is Becoming Greener

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

There's something you need to know about the doom and gloom surrounding the environment: most of it has no basis in reality. In fact, it seems like people who pretend to be environmentalists are the people who are least likely to appreciate how much the empirical data shows that the environment has actually improved in the last four decades. One way the environment has improved is the amount of trees on the planet. Despite the popular notion that deforestation is ruining the planet, a new study has found that there are more trees and vegetation today than there was 30 years...

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on July 21, 2019
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What is the ‘Conservative Energy Network’ and Why is it Backed by Leftist Funders?

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

There is big money behind promoting wind and solar power. After all, the only reasons people build wind turbines and solar panels are because of government subsidies, state-level renewable energy mandates, and government-approved monopoly utility companies, like Xcel Energy, who build them because it allows them to increase their corporate profits. In essence, there would be zero market for wind and solar if the government were not involved, and this fact means that renewable energy companies are willing to spend massive amounts of money to influence public policy. It makes perfect sense, their very existence depends on government policies. Unfortunately,  some so-called...

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on July 19, 2019
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Twin Metals Dry Stack Announcement Is Great News, No Matter What The Anti-Mining Groups Say

Written by Isaac Orr
in Energy

Yesterday, Twin Metals Minnesota announced that they were going to be storing their mine waste using a dry stack storage method, which is often hailed by environmentalists as the best way to store mine tailings. Furthermore, extensive testing of the rock shows that there will be no acid mine drainage because of the low-sulfur rock that will be mined in the Duluth Complex. One would think this would lead to celebration among environmental groups, who pretend that they would be in favor of mining if there were adequate environmental protections, but they predictably condemned the announcement because they're not pro-environment, they...

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