GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

March 26, 2026 President Trump’s sweeping tax law last year eliminated most federal support for wind and solar energy, electric vehicles and other clean technologies. Now, a group of wealthy investors is coming after its architects, trying to prove that green energy knows how to play hardball politics. Their first target is Chip Roy, a Republican representative from Texas who led the push to kill subsidies for clean tech in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The investors, who include Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of the cryptocurrency platform Ripple, are pouring money into defeating Mr. Roy’s campaign for attorney general in Texas. Clean energy backers have already bought $650,000 of TV ads bashing Roy, which helped force him into a primary runoff this month. They plan to announce this week that they’ll put another $500,000 into the runoff and develop a list of other races they’ll engage with this fall, too. Mr. Roy’s top Republican campaign rival, Mayes Middleton, is no frie...

Every major energy crisis invites finger-pointing. In 2022, the world blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for a spike in natural-gas prices. This time, it’s attributing the energy crisis to the war in Iran. But challenges in energy production and trade because of geopolitical tension are common.  The true culprit behind recent disruptions and price volatility is global energy policy.  Western countries’ abandonment of fossil fuels left the world’s energy supply vulnerable to disruptions and price increases. For years, the world’s top policymakers have heralded the move from fossil fuels to renewable energy as an inevitability. Despite trillions of dollars in renewable technology investments, fossil fuels accounted for 87% of global energy consumption in 2024, almost unchanged from the 1970s. Global oil, natural-gas and coal demand reached record levels in 2025. Under the illusion of an imminent energy transition, Western governments and institutions stopped investing in fossil...

27 March 2026 Share On 25 March 2026, the US Senate voted 47-53 to reject a procedural motion on a resolution ( S.J. Res. 107 ),  introduced  in February under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) by Senate taxwriter Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), after it failed to secure the simple majority required for passage. The resolution would undo IRS  Notice 2025-42 , which provides new guidance on the beginning of construction (BOC) rules for purposes of determining if solar and wind facilities are subject to the credit termination provisions applicable to Internal Revenue Code sections 45Y and 48E. Sections 70512 and 70513 of the law commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA,  P.L. 119-21 ) added a credit termination provision to both the section 45Y production tax credit (PTC) and the section 48E investment tax credit (ITC).  Under this provis...

If you don’t like fossil fuels — and who does? — our betters in academia and environmental NGOs have the perfect answer: we can just get our energy in the form of electricity from the wind and sun. The fuel is abundant and free for the taking.  The New York Times has reported  that the cost of electricity generated from wind and sun is now lower than the cost of generation from fossil fuel sources. And even as we save money on electricity, we’ll be saving the planet! All the sociology and gender studies majors agree that we have a moral duty to switch our energy system away from fossil fuels to “clean and green” wind and solar electricity. Who could possibly be such a monster as to stand in the way? At this website, I have devoted considerable attention to documenting major flaws in this narrative. In particular, I have written dozens of posts on the subject of the intermittency problem of wind and solar generation, which leads to a need for either full back-up at all times fr...

  March 23, 2026 Policymakers and green energy advocates insist wind and solar are the future—cheap, clean, and limitless. The reality is far different. These sources displace some fuel costs but deliver no on-demand power. They force utilities and ultimately ratepayers to maintain a full-time, reliable full-time system while subsidizing a part-time, weather-dependent one. The result is double the capital expense for half the reliability, a financial blunder on a national scale. Consider land use alone. A recent  analysis  of “reliable” solar measured by accredited capacity during peak demand, not optimistic annual averages reveals a footprint far larger than claimed. In the MISO grid, serving about 44 million people in the center part of the country, solar now requires 19.29 acres per megawatt of accredited capacity during peak demand, balloons to 257 acres by 2030 and 579 acres by 2043. Why? Because solar often doesn’t produce electricity when it is needed and when they...