Writing at Axios, energy writer Amy Harder says “The climate agenda’s fall from grace over the past year has been stunning — in speed, scale and scope.” Harder quotes oil historian and S&P Global vice-chairman Dan Yergin as saying, “There’s no handwaving about how ‘We want to cooperate on climate.’ It’s, ‘We’re slamming the door on that issue.’ We’ve gone from over-indexing it to zero-indexing it.”
Polling has never shown climate change as being an issue of primary concern to American voters. Americans have consistently been more worried about issues that impact their daily lives today than about warnings from modern-day P.T. Barnums like U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres about some nebulous “highway to hell” and “the age of global boiling. The issue had been slowly losing its effectiveness during the Biden years even as that administration tried to memorialize the movement’s objectives in policy.
Even Democrat politicians have quit talking about the so-called “climate emergency” which used to be a central plank in their talking points list. When was the last time you heard New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, co-author with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of the “Green New Deal” introduced in 2019, talk about the supposed need to force ordinary citizens to give up their cars, flying, and vacations and spend trillions on a nationwide network of high-speed rails to save the planet? When was the last time you heard any Democrat utter the phrase “Green New Deal,” for that matter? It simply doesn’t happen anymore.
One of the motivators for the political abandonment of the climate scam by Democrats came from a pre-election analysis from the center-left Searchlight Institute last November. That memo advised Democrat candidates to avoid using the term “climate change” entirely, and to focus on the supposed cost savings to be obtained by switching to green energy solutions. Never mind that such cost savings are a myth: The truth doesn’t matter. What matters is the ability to influence voters with the message.
Therein lies the central existential threat to the movement’s survival in the coming years.
For decades, liberal politicians and climate advocates were able to advance the climate alarm agenda by creating, well, alarm among the public that the world is going to end if we don’t stop putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Always the messaging had a deadline claiming, “We only have X number of years to stop burning fossil fuels before it’s too late!” Over the past 40 years, that deadline to act has given the term “moving the goalposts” a new green meaning.
AOC claimed the drop-dead date was only 12 years in the future as she rolled out her ambition to control everyone’s daily lives in the name of climate alarm in 2019. But the very next year, in 2020, child activist Greta Thunberg moved the goalposts to a mere five years. But wait: Just a year later, Joe Biden read a script from his teleprompter that set the deadline at 10 years. It’s all so darn confusing.
No doubt, these politicians and activists wish they could erase their past claims from everyone’s memory. Their trouble is, the Internet is forever.
Advocates were even successful in convincing Barack Obama’s EPA to dummy up an Endangerment Finding declaring that carbon dioxide is in fact a “pollutant” that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act in order to save the planet. Never mind that CO2, otherwise known as plant food, the foundational basis for all life on Planet Earth: The truth doesn’t matter.
Now, it appears that the movement is inheriting the wages of decades of deception with a sudden and stunning fall from grace. It could not happen to a more deserving bunch of people.
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.
As the end of 2025 nears, the question arises: What can Americans expect in the world of energy policy in 2026?
Predicting future events where energy is concerned is always a risky enterprise. After all, if anyone could accurately foresee where, say, the Brent price for crude oil would sit a week from today, that person would soon become fabulously wealthy and never have to work another day in his or her life. But no one can actually do that because too many widely disparate factors impact where prices will head on a daily basis. This overarching theme holds true in most areas of the widely diverse energy space.
Still, just as energy details like exact future oil prices or rig count levels are impossible to know with certainty, some overarching trends are entirely foreseeable. As an example, it was entirely predictable a year ago that 2025 would become a year in which an energy policy revolution would take place. Donald Trump had been elected to a second term and was in the process of naming cabinet nominees who would lead an effort to reverse the onerous regulations and economically ruinous subsidy spending of the Biden years.
A policy revolution was entirely predictable, even though, as I wrote at the time, it would take a somewhat different form than many were expecting. There would be no replay of the “Drill, Baby, Drill” agenda of Trump’s first term mainly due to a series of intractable economic factors. Instead, we’d have a “Build, Baby, Build” revolution in which policy changes have focused on setting the conditions for a boom in energy infrastructure like pipelines, LNG export facilities, baseload power generation, major transmission projects, new and expanded mining operations, and more into place.
With business-oriented cabinet officials like Chris Wright at the Energy Department and Doug Burgum at Interior leading the way, it was easy to predict that the second Trumpian energy revolution would focus on measures that allow markets, not the dictates of central government planners, to lead the charge. The command-and-control schemes, crony capitalism, and green subsidies would be repealed or phased away. Banks and investment houses would be put on notice that their discriminatory, ESG-focused lending practices would be policed. Rather than focus their personal energy on finding ways to punish disfavored energy players, administration officials would spend their days finding ways to speed up permitting processes.
Those things and more all came about in Year One of this second Trump presidency. It has been a true policy-driven revolution.
Now, as the dawn of 2026 nears, the direction of the administration’s Year Two agenda becomes equally predictable: Consolidation of the gains made in 2025.
The ending/phasing out of the green subsidies must be maintained since they distort markets by encouraging irrational allocations of capital. The capital thrown at wind and solar will be more productively allocated to building new natural gas and nuclear baseload plants and ensuring existing coal plants stay up and running to keep America’s lights on. The capital misallocated by legacy carmakers – like Ford and GM – to their foundering EV dreams must be reallocated to making cars American consumers can afford and actually desire to own.
With global markets creating rapidly rising demand for U.S. LNG, it’s time to “Build, Baby, Build” those needed new export facilities and the pipelines needed to feed the gas into them. Those energy gains can’t be consolidated without driving into action the streamlined processes to issue the needed permits.
And then there are the mines. Regardless of how quickly their permits can be issued, America can’t have any of the pipelines, LNG facilities, power plants, AI datacenters, or transmission lines without the raw mineral materials that make them work. America can no longer afford to be held hostage to supply chains for these materials dominated by China. That means more mines, and lots of them.
The President and his people have worked overtime throughout 2025 to ensure the executive branch’s side of this policy revolution is in place. Now, Congress must act to enshrine it permanently in law. Getting that done, consolidating the gains made in 2025 into action and statutes, will dominate the energy policy agenda throughout 2026. It’s all very predictable.
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.
A new report from McKinsey & Company, the “Global Energy Perspective,” lays bare what many of us – dismissed as “climate deniers” – have been asserting all along: Coal, oil and natural gas will continue to be the dominant sources of global energy well past 2050.
The McKinsey outlook for 2025 sharply adjusts prior projections. Last year, the management consultant’s models had coal demand falling 40% by 2035. Today, McKinsey projects an uptick of 1% over the same period. The dramatic reversal is driven by record commissioning of coal-fired power plants in China, unexpected increases in global electricity use, and the lack of viable alternatives for industries like steel, chemicals and heavy manufacturing.
The report states that the three fossil fuels will still supply up to 55% of global energy in 2050, a forecast that looks low to me. Today’s share for hydrocarbons is more than 60% for electricity generation and more than 80% for primary energy consumption.
In any case, McKinsey’s report confirms what seasoned energy analysts and pragmatic policymakers have long maintained: The energy transition will not be swift, simple, or governed solely by climate targets. In fact, this energy transition will not happen at all without large scale deployment of nuclear, geothermal or other technological innovations that prove practical.
In places such as India, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the top energy priorities are access, affordability and reliability, which together add up to national security. Planners are acutely aware of a trap: Sole reliance on weather-dependent power risks blackouts, industrial disruption, economic decline and civil unrest.
That is why many developing nations are embracing a dual track: continued investment in conventional generation (coal, gas, nuclear) while developing alternative technologies. McKinsey says this in consultancy lingo: “Countries and regions will follow distinct trajectories based on local economic conditions, resource endowment, and the realities facing particular industries.”
In countries like India, Indonesia and Nigeria, the scale of electrification and industrial expansion is enormous. These countries cannot afford to wait decades for perfect solutions. They need “reliable and good enough for now.” That means conventional fuels will be retained.
McKinsey’s analysis also underscores what physics and engineering dictate: Intermittent and weather-dependent sources, such as wind and solar, require vast land areas, backup batteries and generation and power-grid investments, none of which come cheaply nor quickly.
The technologies of wind and solar branded as renewable should instead be called economy killers. They make for expensive and unstable electrical systems that have brought energy-rich nations like Germany to their knees. After spending billions of dollars on unreliable wind turbines and solar panels and demolishing nuclear plants and coal plants, the country is struggling with high prices and economic stagnation.
The Germans now have a word for their self-inflicted crisis: Dunkelflaute. It means “dark doldrums”—a period of cold, sunless, windless days when their “green” grid fails. During a Dunkelflaute in November 2024, fossil fuels were called on to provide 70% of Germany’s electricity.
If “renewables” were truly capable, planners would shut down fossil fuel generation. But that is not the case. While wind and solar are pursued in some places, coal and natural gas remain much sought-after fuels. In the first half of 2025 alone, China commissioned about 21 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired capacity, which is more than any other country and the largest increase since 2016.
Further, China has approved construction of 25 GW of new coal plants in the first half of 2025. As of July, China’s mainland has nearly 1,200 coal plants, far outstripping the rest of the world.
McKinsey points to a dramatic surge in electricity demand driven by data centers, which is estimated to be about 17 % annually from 2022 to 2030 in the 38 OECD countries. This kind of growth in electricity use simply cannot be met by wind and solar.
When analysts, journalists and engineers point out these realities, they’re branded as “shills” for the fossil fuel industry. However, it is not public relations to point out the physics and economics that make up the math for meeting the world’s energy needs. Dismissing such facts is to deny that reliable energy remains the bedrock of modern civilization.
The cost of foolish “green” policies is being paid in lost jobs, ruined businesses, disrupted lives and impoverishment that could have been avoided by wiser choices.
For those who have repeated energy realities for years, the vindication is bittersweet. The satisfaction of being right is tempered by the knowledge that many have suffered because reality has been ignored.
Vijay Jayaraj is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation andScience and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Va. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
Arizona Public Service (APS) is seeking to raise electricity rates by 14% starting in 2026 — a move the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC) argues would unfairly burden Arizona families while subsidizing costly “green energy” initiatives and the early closure of a key coal plant.
According to filings with the Arizona Corporation Commission, APS attributes the proposed rate increase largely to battery storage projects and the early retirement of the Cholla Power Plant. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed an official response criticizing APS for attempting to block the organization’s intervention in the case, while allowing environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to participate. “APS has no issue letting radical groups like the Sierra Club into their hearings, but they’re trying to block the one organization fighting for Arizona families,” said AZFEC President Scot Mussi.
BREAKING: Arizona Public Service (APS) wants to raise your electricity rates by 14% starting in 2026.
Why? To pay for expensive battery projects and the early closure of the Cholla Power Plant: a plant President Trump directed Energy Secretary Chris Wright to keep online.
Mussi contends APS’s “carbon free” and “carbon neutral” commitments over the past five years have shaped their energy plans — including their Integrated Resource Plans and large-scale renewable energy projects — resulting in higher costs for consumers. “For years, their voluntary commitments have very likely increased costs for Arizona ratepayers,” the organization said in its filing.
Two days after filing its response, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club announced it had been officially granted intervention in the APS case. This designation allows AZFEC to participate directly in proceedings, making it the only organization representing ratepayers who oppose the rate hike.
BREAKING: The Arizona Free Enterprise Club has been granted intervention in APS’s proposed rate hike case!
That means we’re officially in the room, as the only organization standing up for Arizona ratepayers and fighting back against the radical “Green New Scam.”
In the ruling, the Administrative Law Judge overseeing the case described the Club as “the lone proponent” of an energy approach emphasizing reliability, affordability, and independence — priorities the group says align with President Trump’s “American Energy Dominance” agenda.
“While others are lobbying to shut down Arizona’s coal plants and pour billions into unreliable Green New Scam projects, we’re standing up for the ratepayers who will be left to foot the bill,” Mussi said. “We’re proud to be the only organization in this case fighting to keep Arizona’s energy secure, affordable, and free from political interference.”
The Club’s participation ensures that Arizona ratepayers have a voice during the proceedings, according to Mussi and AZFEC Deputy Policy Director Greg Blackie. “This isn’t about politics — it’s about protecting Arizona families and ensuring that our state doesn’t fall victim to the same radical energy policies destroying affordability across the country,” said Blackie. “We intend to shine a light on the real costs, the real numbers, and the real consequences of this so-called green transition.”
The case before the Arizona Corporation Commission will determine whether APS can move forward with its proposed rate hike. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club says it plans to continue pressing for “transparency, accountability, and energy freedom,” ensuring that “ratepayers are not forced to fund reckless green energy policies.”
Jonathan Eberle is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
A rising array of threats to the public and environment stemming from the boom in “green” energy technologies and the batteries they use means the time for virtue signaling by regulators and policymakers must come to an end.
In every boom time involving any type of energy source, governments at all levels inevitably find themselves behind the curve when it comes to developing an effective set of regulations designed to minimize impacts on the public and environment.
In the early years of the 21st century, Americans witnessed this phenomenon play out when it came to the oil and gas Shale Revolution, which saw its first success in the Barnett Shale region, which happened to lie in the midst of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in north Texas. For the first time in decades, oil and gas companies found themselves struggling to drill wells and install pipelines in and adjacent to highly populated areas, leading to an array of conflicts and tensions with the public that the pre-existing regulatory structure had not been designed to resolve.
More recent years have given rise to the same societal dynamics related to boom times for the wind and solar industries. In state after state, governments have found their legacy regulations lacking when dealing with public concerns over major projects condemning large swaths of arable lands and wildlife habitats, the dumping of aged-out solar panels and wind blades in public landfills, traffic, and other impacts. Even today, 25 years into this heavily subsidized renewable energy expansion, few if any states have implemented proper regulations governing the dismantling and disposal of these often-gigantic industrial projects.
Similar concerns are now rising related to the dangers posed by lithium-ion batteries, whose use is rapidly expanding across the U.S. to power electric vehicles and provide backup for intermittent power generation provided by wind and solar. The major threat from these rechargeable batteries is their tendency to overheat and spontaneously combust under certain conditions. The problem has resulted in a proliferation of photos and videos of burning passenger and school buses, major conflagrations in large battery storage facilities, and of burned-up commercial freight ships foundering and sinking into oceans around the world.
The AP reported on Oct. 4 on rising opposition from local communities to a proposed installation of large stationary backup battery projects in or adjacent to their cities and towns. The report focused on Long Island, which could become home to an array of such installations to provide back up to multiple offshore wind projects in the coming years.
Industry proponents say the installations are perfectly safe, just as the makers of electric buses have assured city councils and school boards in recent years, only to see some of those buses erupt in flames while on their routes or in crowded bus barns with predictable results. But Michael McGinty, mayor of Island Park, is reluctant to assume the risk. “We’re not guinea pigs for anybody … we are not going to experiment, we’re not going to take risk,” he said.
An Oct. 11 report by The Epoch Times details rising concerns over the risks to airlines and travelers posed by lithium-ion batteries brought on board. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported 89 incidents during 2024 in which “lithium batteries emitted smoke, fire, or extreme heat on board planes, and up until the end of August 2025, there have been a further 61.” This troubling fact led the FAA to update its guidance on proper care and storage of such batteries on airlines in September.
In January, an Air Busan passenger jet carrying 170 passengers and six crew members was completely destroyed by a battery-caused fire on a runway in Busan, South Korea. Luckily, everyone on board was evacuated and survived, though three suffered serious injuries.
These and other significant, rising concerns surrounding wind, solar, and the batteries they use show that what proponents like to call “green” energy is neither as friendly to the environment nor as safe and benign as advertised. They also point to the very real need for public officials prone to signaling their green virtues to gullible voters to take these issues seriously and develop regulations needed to protect the public and the environment. Doing anything else is simple malpractice.
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.
