GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has released its  summer assessment , highlighting a significant surge in power demand driven by data centers. U.S. electric demand is projected to increase by 2.7% this summer, reaching 1,487 TWh, with data center load growing from 19 GW in 2023 to nearly 21 GW this year. By the end of the decade, this figure could skyrocket to 35 GW. Northern Virginia, Dallas, Chicago, Phoenix, and Northern California remain the primary data center markets, but development is expanding into over 20 metro areas. This surge is pushing utilities to rethink their strategies and invest heavily in grid upgrades to prevent potential blackouts. The financial implications are significant. Companies like Siemens ( SIEGY ) and Schneider Electric ( SBGSF ) stand to gain from these infrastructure investments as they provide advanced grid management solutions. Meanwhile,  the policy landscape is evolving rapidly. Regulators are balancing the need for ...

  “ How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress .” – Niels Bohr A notable gathering of international political leaders occurred over the weekend at the Europa Viva 24 conference in Madrid, Spain. Coming just weeks before the European parliamentary elections—an event that has Brussels pre-emptively  blaming  Russian interference for the anticipated results—the gathering had the character of a typical high-stakes political rally. Fiery political speeches were made, rowdy ovations were given, and talk of a better future created excitement among the crowd. In other words, the standard trappings of the democratic process, working as it is meant to. Publications like  The Guardian  were  not amused  (emphasis added throughout): “ International  far-right  leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei, came together in Madrid to rail ...

  Weekly New York & New Jersey Energy Delivered every Monday by 10 a.m., New York & New Jersey Energy is your guide to the week’s top energy news and policy in Albany and Trenton.   Renewable siting leader out By  MARIE J. FRENCH     05/28/2024   10:00 AM EDT Good morning and welcome to a special weekly Tuesday edition of the New York & New Jersey Energy newsletter. We'll take a look at the week ahead and look back on what you may have missed last week.   QUICK FIX   SITING OFFICE HEAD OUT:  The head of the state’s permitting agency for renewable energy projects, who built the Office of Renewable Energy Siting from the ground up, has left as the Department of Public Service absorbs the office’s functions.   Houtan Moaveni left ORES and will be replaced by Jessica Waldorf as interim executive director, the department announced on Friday. Waldorf is a top official at DPS as chief of staff and director of policy implementation. ...

  The technologies this administration has decided to pick as winners are, quite simply, losers. A mericans   haven’t gotten much out of Biden’s immense spending on solar power besides a shattered power grid and a greatly increased risk of blackouts. Biden has massively invested in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which pumped  $369 billion  in purportedly “green” energy sources such as wind and solar power, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which added another  $550 billion  in new spending for “equitable, climate-smart infrastructure.” Together, these bills are a windfall for the industries that produce types of energy favored by environmentalists, but there’s surprisingly little in it for anyone else. The IRA massively expanded previous subsidies for solar power, providing, for example, a massive  30 percent  tax credit for rooftop solar panels, with various options allowing for even steeper discounts. Today,...

Environmentalism in America is dead. It has been replaced by climatism and renewable energy fetishism.      The movement  birthed by Rachel Carson’s  Silent Spring   in the early 1960s and Earth Day in the 1970s — a movement that once aimed to protect landscapes, wildlands, whales, and wildlife — has morphed into the  NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex .  Rather than preserve wildlands and wildlife, today’s “green” NGOs have devolved into a sprawling network of nonprofit and for-profit groups aligned with big corporations, big banks, and big law firms. In the name of climate change, these NGOs want to pave vast swaths of America’s countryside with oceans of solar panels and forests of 600-foot-high wind turbines. They are also promoting the industrialization of our oceans, a move that could put hundreds of massive offshore wind turbines in the middle of some of our best fisheries and right atop known habitat of the critically endangered...