OPINION:
“A clean energy revolution is helping to save this planet.” Thus spoke President Obama in 2015.
“The age of fossil fuel is coming to an end. The rise of renewable energy is irreversible.” Thus spoke Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, in July.
I could give you dozens of similar quotes from editorial boards, opinion writers and academics all prophesying an “inevitable transition” from oil and gas to energy sources that are renewable, “green” and “clean.”
It turns out that these anti-hydrocarbon Pollyannas are all bananas (as Ira Gershwin might say).
To understand why the much-ballyhooed energy revolution ran out of steam, I suggest you read a recently published monograph by Brenda Shaffer, who served as senior adviser for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, my think tank, and is a research faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate School.
In “Blackout: International Energy Policies Threaten U.S. National Security,” she argues that the energy policies being aggressively promoted by the United Nations, many American and European politicians and a media chorus are serving to “increase the power of the new alliance among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea at the expense of the West.”
Let’s start with the basic data revealing “no signs of an imminent energy transition.” In 1973, fossil fuels provided 84.5% of global energy. In 2023, it was 81.5%.
That modest decline is explained in part by the “growth of wind and solar,” Ms. Shaffer writes. “However, part is explained by counting as renewable the burning of dung, wood, and other biomass.”
Although I don’t dispute the evidence that dung is renewable, I would suggest that animal waste doesn’t qualify as either “green” or “clean.”
Nor, it seems to me, is it humanistic to tell African mothers “to save the planet” by sticking to smoky dung when cooking for their children — a major cause of respiratory infections and worse — forgoing dreams of using electricity generated from natural gas.
Wind and solar can augment existing energy systems, not inexpensively, but they can’t replace them because (no news bulletin here) the sun doesn’t always shine and the winds don’t always blow.
Ms. Shaffer points out something else that should concern fossil fuel opponents: There is “no non-fossil fuel option to replace commercial fertilizer, which is produced mainly from natural gas.” Without fertilizer, many farmers will remain poor and those who depend on it will go hungry.
Even hydropower, the leading source of renewable energy globally, is problematic because it destroys aquatic ecosystems.
Important as such issues are, Ms. Shaffer’s main concern is that prioritizing renewables weakens America’s energy security, which is intrinsic to America’s national security.
She notes that “under the Biden administration, energy policy became a subset of climate policy.”
America’s 2022 National Security Strategy, published eight months after Russia invaded Ukraine, “focuses on transitioning away from fossil fuels” and ignores the beneficial strategic implications of the fact that “the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas.”
What is to be done (as Vladimir Lenin might say)?
Ms. Shaffer contends that to “reverse the setback of the past four years, the new administration needs to integrate energy security for the fuels in use today into U.S. national security policies and U.S. foreign policy.”
That requires cutting U.S. funding to the climate programs of the United Nations and the International Energy Agency.
The Biden administration prohibited technical support for natural gas projects abroad, barring U.S. agencies and embassies from even “engaging in policy discussions with foreign interlocutors on energy security policies that include fossil fuels.” Such orders should, obviously, be canceled.
You won’t be surprised to learn that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — what we at FDD call the Axis of Aggressors — have been pursuing “energy and climate policies that enhance their national security while exploiting the self-defeating policies of the West.”
As a result, carbon emissions in the West “are flat or declining” while those of the anti-American axis are increasing.
In fact, China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases largely because it relies on coal, even as it “controls most of the necessary minerals along with critical elements for producing wind and solar energy hardware, not to mention the electric vehicle supply chain.”
Ms. Shaffer also argues for a change of policy at the Pentagon. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Defense “invested efforts and extensive funds to replace fossil fuels in military missions — with no success.”
Her monograph offers a list of additional recommendations that I am confident will be given due consideration by President Trump’s new National Energy Dominance Council. Chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and vice-chaired by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the council’s mandate is to use energy security to bolster America’s national security and economic strength.
A final point: There have been energy transitions in the past, but they came about through market forces, not government subsidies, mandates and prohibitions.
As Ms. Shaffer observes, it “did not require killing horses and camels to convince consumers to acquire cars and trucks.”
Less than a year ago, President Biden said: “It’s true some may seek to … deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America, but nobody — nobody can reverse it.”
He was “misinformed” (as Rick Blaine might say), and the policies intended to create the illusion of an energy revolution are now being reversed.
I suspect you know by whom.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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