Among the many promises and commitments that he has made during his ongoing transition period, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pull U.S. support for the World Health Organization and cancel its commitments related to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. If a new report issued this week by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and incoming chairman Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, is any guide, Trump perhaps should add U.S. support for the International Energy Agency to his growing list of cancellation opportunities.
“French President Macron’s observation that IEA has become the ‘armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement’ is regrettably true,” said the report. “With the many serious energy security challenges facing the world, however, IEA should not be a partisan cheerleader. What the world needs from IEA—and what it is not receiving now—is sober and unbiased analyses and projections that educate and inform policymakers and investors. IEA needs to remember why it was established and return to its energy security mission.”
The IEA was established in 1974 in response to the first Arab Oil Embargo which resulted in dramatically higher prices for crude oil and gasoline at the pump. Originally supported by 31 member countries including the United States, the agency’s mission was to provide accurate information related to global oil supply and demand which subscribing countries could use to help form effective energy policies. That original mission held firm for decades, during which the IEA was widely considered a leading source of real, unbiased energy information.
But politics tends to corrupt everything it touches, and the IEA has unfortunately proved to be no exception to that rule. As the politics surrounding climate alarmism rose to new highs following the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, the agency came under increasing pressure to radically alter its mission from that of a provider of real information worthy of trust to more of an activist posture.
In 2020, the report notes, this led to a shift in the IEA’s mission statement and to a new design to its modeling processes that form the basis for its annual World Energy Outlook. As its modeling base case, the agency abandoned its longstanding Current Policies Scenario, which Barrasso’s report describes as “essentially a ‘business as usual’ reference case,” in favor of a more aggressive Stated Policies Scenario.
Barrasso’s report describes this new scenario as “a hypothetical outlook based on unimplemented policies and grounded in unrealistically optimistic assumptions about the pace and scale of the transformation, especially concerning the adoption of electric vehicles by consumers.” It is an approach intentionally designed to introduce bias into the modeling process, and thus into the IEA policy recommendations for which the modeling process serves as the foundation.
This inevitable bias had an immediate and very noticeable effect. In a report published by the IEA in May 2021 Executive Director Fatih Birol laughably stated that “there will not be a need for new investments in oil and gas fields” and urged oil and gas producers to halt investments in exploration and development of new oil reserves. But that was before oil prices exploded as global demand exceeded supply during the recovery from the COVID pandemic, and by August Birol had completely reversed himself, joining President Joe Biden in a desperate call for more oil drilling to help resolve the situation.
Obviously, this sort of flip-floppery does severe damage to the agency’s already crumbling credibility as well as to the justification for governments to continue pouring millions of dollars into its operations each year. Barrasso’s report correctly notes that the IEA’s “reputation has lost its luster.”
Barrasso’s report is blunt about the kinds of reforms he would like to see at the IEA, urging Birol to abandon its advocacy posturing against investments in oil, natural gas, and coal, and to “once again produce for its World Energy Outlooka real unbiased, policy-neutral ‘business as usual’ reference case of the kind the Energy Information Administration produces.”
The Wyoming senator stops short of calling for the U.S. defunding of the IEA, but the agency’s currency is information. If that currency has lost its value, then perhaps Trump should consider a more aggressive approach.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Recognizing that voters are increasingly skeptical of extreme climate regulations, dark money groups have stepped in with millions of dollars to alter the conversation.
The goal of these groups, as reported in recent news, is to help climate activists “talk like humans” and present their ideas in a way that doesn’t alienate voters.
Essentially, these groups advise activists on how to sound less radical by softening the rhetoric and framing their climate agenda as more palatable and less divisive. But there’s an obvious catch: this is a messaging campaign, not a policy shift.
If you must teach someone to talk like a human, the message is probably not the problem — it’s the policy, isn’t it?
Beginning with the mythical “new ice age” predicted in the 1970s, the climate alarmists have tried for half a century now to convince us that humans are negatively impacting the climate and that the only solution is for us to diminish the very things — food, energy, and transportation, to name a few — that have brought progress not just to the United States but everywhere around the globe.
The problem is that folks just aren’t buying it, or at least aren’t buying the radical solutions proposed by far-left government officials, out-of-work politicians desperate to make a buck, and the NGOs and think tanks that provide financial backing to them all.
Now, since voters aren’t buying what they’re selling, they want dark money groups to help activists disguise their radical agenda by using softer language, subbing out phrases like “climate change” and “warming” to “extreme weather” and “overheating.”
It seems more than a little ironic that the same voices on the left who accuse energy companies of peddling “fake news” and “climate denialism” to protect their profits are now using a web of dark money to fund a communications strategy that relies on concealment and manipulation. Talk about hypocrisy.
Their problem, of course, lies in the reality that their policy “solutions” do not resonate with the public and do not deliver as advertised. Solutions that actually work and are truly affordable wouldn’t require these kinds of deceptive tactics to gain public support. But their approach is the furthest thing from in touch with what an endless numbers of pre-election surveys and exit polls showed is voters’ most pressing concern today — the economy.
Just look at the adverse economic consequences that came from President Joe Biden’s radical energy policies.
Within hours of assuming office, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline, killing thousands of union jobs. He conducted a regulatory assault on energy companies, limited drilling permits and access, supplied nearly $500 billion in tax dollars to green energy initiatives, and pushed policies that made fossil fuel production more difficult and expensive. Gas prices spiked, and utility bills soared for millions of Americans, hitting the middle class especially hard.
And that’s not all. Of course, nearly every good purchased or consumed is shipped by trucks and trains which run on fossil fuels. Driving up the cost of fuels drives up the price of shipping, which, in turn, drives up the prices of the goods being shipped. That is exactly what Biden’s radical energy policies did. Add to that the fact that, even as fuel prices moderated in recent months, prices for consumer goods have remained stubbornly high, and it’s no wonder the Biden policies became so unpopular.
While the administration justified these policies as steps toward a cleaner, greener future, the main effect felt by average American families was a squeeze on their household budgets and a heightened sense of financial instability.
No amount of dark money will bring the climate alarm movement’s views into line with the mainstream, and no amount of softer language will allow them to change the conversation in a manner that convinces the public to give up their gasoline-powered cars and gas stoves.
There is a fundamental disconnect between the radical Biden policies and the needs of average Americans living out here in “flyover country.” Until they can address the true economic consequences of their climate agenda, they will continue to lose elections and legislative policy battles. And that’s welcome news for us all.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
“It’s an absolutely sh*t situation.” That is the assessment of Norway’s energy minister, Terje Aasland, about his country’s electricity costs rising to record levels due to its exports of power to the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and other European countries.
It is an outcome that many warned the Norwegian government would come about as the decisions were made to build the interconnects to export power into the European Union and the UK. Those critics were of course ignored as those in charge of Norway’s fortunes at the time felt compelled to genuflect to the demands of the EU and other globalist organizations.
Norway derives the vast majority of its electricity from hydropower, which currently provides 90% of the country’s power generation. Most of the remainder comes from wind power, and the nation enjoys a large excess of generating capacity on most days. Thus, all other factors being equal, it made some financial sense to establish those interconnects to sell the surplus into other countries.
But it only made sense when those other countries were taking care to ensure the continuing health and adequacy of their own electric grids. That certainly has not been the case in either the UK or Germany, whose governments have in recent years chosen to discard a former wealth of reliable baseload capacity provided by coal and nuclear plants in favor of relying too heavily on intermittent, weather-dependent wind and solar.
Now, when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn’t shining, those customers of Norwegian power exports drain the host country’s surplus, causing the extremely high energy costs to flow back upstream, hitting Norwegians with abnormally high utility bills. It all came to a head this week when low wind speeds, combined with abnormally cold temperatures on the European mainland, caused power rates in Norway to spike to as high as €1.12 ($1.18) per kilowatt hour (kwh).
By comparison, the average electricity rate per kwh in New York is around 22 cents, while Texans typically pay around 15 cents per kwh. What that price spike meant for Norwegians on December 12 is that taking a 5-minute warm shower would have cost them $5. Doing the same in Texas would have cost around 16 cents.
Naturally, public outrage in Norway over these needlessly high electricity rates is now causing policymakers there to run for political cover. The Financial Times reports that both the ruling leftwing Labour Party and conservative Progress Party are now making plans to campaign next year on platforms to limit or end the export of electricity via these international interconnections.
That is a prospect that no doubt sparks fear in the hearts of the central planners in both Germany and the UK, where electricity imports from Norway play a central role in their own emissions reduction plans. Those plans involve the willful destruction of reliable baseload power stations and forcing power costs to dramatically increase, which in turn results in heavy industries like steelmaking and other manufacturing to leave the country. In that way, these governments are essentially exporting their emissions to China, whose own government is only too happy to serve as home to these heavy industries and power them with the hundreds of coal-fired power plants they build each year.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats have pursued essentially the same strategies in California in this century, with predictable results: Californians pay among the highest power rates in the United States as their power grid has become overloaded with intermittent generation and increasingly reliant on imports from other states. Rather than exporting its emissions to China, California exports them to Nevada and Utah and other U.S. states.
The Biden administration has attempted to take the entire country down this same economically ruinous path for the past four years. Fortunately, voters awakened just in time this year to head off the most damaging impacts now being seen in Germany and the UK.
For Norway, is this an example of the law of unintended consequences setting in? Sure, to some extent. But it is also a clear example of entirely foreseeable consequences stemming from poor policymaking by multiple national governments flowing across borders. This “sh*t situation” was all avoidable, and frankly should have been.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Seldom have a few days of energy-related news provided a clearer illustration of the stark contrasts between the crony-capitalism-based energy policies of the Biden administration and the American energy dominance policies to come during a second Trump administration as the news from the past week.
On Nov. 26, the Biden Department of Energy led by Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced an award of $6.6 billion to struggling electric vehicle maker Rivian in the form of a low-interest loan. The infusion of capital is designed to help the company finance a new Georgia-based plant with a production capacity of 400,000 cars per year. Rivian already operates a plant in Illinois capable of turning out 150,000 units annually.
So, what is the problem, you might ask? Well, first, Rivian — like every other U.S. EV maker other than Tesla — has consistently struggled financially. The company so badly missed its sales targets in 2023 that it was forced to discount prices and layoff workers to maintain its ability to service its existing debt load.
Second is the fact that Rivian has only managed to sell a little more than 37,000 units this year as U.S. consumer demand for EVs has stalled, at a financial loss of over $107,000 per car. This begs the question why a car company struggling to sell 50,000 units per year somehow needs the taxpayers to pony up $6.6 billion to raise its production capacity to 550,000 per year, or roughly 13 times its current annual sales.
Third is the fact that Amazon, owned in large part by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is one of Rivian’s biggest investors. Bezos is currently listed as the world’s second-richest individual by Forbes, with a net worth of more than $226 billion. If pouring another $6.6 billion into Rivian is a terrific financial idea — as DOE claims — then why haven’t Amazon and/or Bezos been eager to do that?
The answer seems fairly obvious: This really isn’t a good financial idea at all. What is really happening here is the desperation last gasp of Biden era crony capitalism, shoving those billions of IRA dollars out the door before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in and starts reining in the madness.
The day before DOE announced its award to Rivian, Trump announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on all imported goods from both Canada and Mexico if the governments in those countries do not immediately move to stop the flows of illegal immigrants and drugs across their borders with the United States. It is key to note that, when you talk about all goods coming in from Canada and Mexico, you are talking about America’s two biggest trading partners for crude oil. Canada is far and away the biggest exporter of oil into the United States, with Mexico ranking second on the list, well ahead of any OPEC nation.
The strategic objective behind announcing these tariff plans two months before being sworn into office was to give the governments of these two countries time to act quickly to slow the flows across their borders and commit to major reforms so the tariffs never have to be actually invoked. It is Trump exercising leverage in a negotiation, a skill that has made him a billionaire in his business life. It is a strategy Biden has never attempted to use related to the open borders the flow of deadly fentanyl that now kills more than 100,000 Americans annually.
Within 48 hours, Trump had held initial talks with socialist Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, reporting significant progress. Trump reported far more progress than Sheinbaum was willing to admit, another clear negotiating tactic.
By Friday, Nov. 29, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was jetting down to Mar-a-Lago to hold talks with Trump on border reforms his government is willing to make to avoid the tariffs. Again, Trump is still seven weeks away from being sworn into office.
Joe Biden remains president, at least nominally, but the days of his crony capitalist approach to energy policy are running out fast, and will soon be displaced by a Trumpian return to American energy dominance. It is a change that cannot come soon enough.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Starmer’s remarks came as he disembarked from a carbon-spewing jet upon arrival in Azerbaijan to attend the UN-sponsored COP29 climate conference.
The annual COP conferences, remember, are where the world’s elites gather each year to discuss ways to leverage climate-alarm dogma as a means of destroying western democracy and trapping the world’s masses in energy poverty while they consume $1,000 Wagyu steaks and $2,000 bottles of wine over dinner.
“I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of global leadership when it comes to the climate challenge,” said Starmer, “and therefore it is very important for me to come to COP… I see the climate challenge as a huge opportunity for the UK if we get it right, and that is why we have made it one of our missions to have clean power by 2030.”
Among the means Starmer’s government is using to show “global leadership” on the climate alarm front is to provide heavy subsidies for costly, low-efficiency offshore wind farms and cover up vast swaths of the UK’s farmlands and countryside with enormous solar arrays. Starmer’s government has simultaneously presided over the closing of the UK’s last remaining coal power plant and one of its last steelmaking factories as part of what appears to be a focused effort to deindustrialize its once-powerful economy.
Trump has made it crystal clear that his approach to energy policy will be diametrically opposite that of Starmer’s Labor government. Trump has already said he plans to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate agreement again, an action he took during his first term, but which was reversed by President Joe Biden.
Trump has also laid out plans to re-industrialize America’s economy with a carrot-and-stick approach that will include incentives for companies building new factories and assembly plants in the United States and imposing tariffs on those who choose to invest in capacity overseas. In a recent pre-election interview, Trump detailed plans to address instability and capacity shortages on the U.S. electric grid by implementing policies to speed up permitting and building of new natural gas and nuclear power generation.
“We have to produce massive electricity that we don’t have. But the environmental impact statements won’t allow us to do that. The rules and regulations that we currently have won’t allow us to do any of it,” Trump said. “But if I’m president, we’ll be able to do it and we’ll do it through natural gas, which is clean. And we’ll do it through primarily natural gas and nuclear.”
While on the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to bring back his first-term policies designed to stimulate the domestic oil-and-gas industry and return the United States to the position of “energy dominance” it enjoyed under his previous administration.
In kicking off the COP29 festivities, Azerbaijan leader Ilham Aliyev created a stir among the climate zealots who make up the preponderance of attendees by appearing to endorse the Trump approach.
Referring to oil and natural gas as a “gift of God,” the Azerbaijani President said, “Countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them. The people need them.”
At another point, Aliyev appeared to lecture western elitists like Starmer, saying: “Unfortunately double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some Western countries.”
In an interview at the summit, Starmer displayed a shocking lack of self-awareness by claiming his government has no plans to “start telling people how to live their lives. We are not going to start dictating to people what they do.”
That is of course exactly what Starmer is doing, and exactly the sort of thing Trump plans to avoid doing regardless of any demands from the globalist climate-alarm industry. Americans stand to be the main beneficiaries from the contrast in policy approach.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
