With the Northern Hemisphere scorched by the climate catastrophe people used to welcome under the archaic moniker “summer”, we are getting something of an accidental “demonstration project” of the fabled green lack of energy transition. Reuters “Sustainable Switch”, aka “the newsletter that still can’t post itself online”, warns about “temperatures in the eastern half of the country soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), as regional electric grid operators try to avoid rotating blackouts.” Why might the grid be under duress? Well, Heatmap Daily, aka “the other newsletter that still can’t post itself online”, blusters: “the East Coast is straining. While it’s hardly news that there’s a lot of demand for electricity when it’s hot, today’s grid struggles may be less a preview of what’s to come… after a few more years of warming and gigawatts of new data centers on the grid.” So blame climate change and AI. But not years of energy-policy decision-making by people determined to avoid building adequate reliable generating capacity.

They have also struggled to maintain transmission infrastructure, let alone expand it dramatically as they claimed was necessary, due as much to ineptitude as misguided vision. But when people promise to transform your economy in a marvellous new way, and can’t build hydro poles, you probably want to beware.

A Weather Fox story via MSN, for instance, thunders:

“As climate change intensifies, U.S. infrastructure faces mounting threats from extreme weather events, including devastating floods, powerful hurricanes, blistering heatwaves, and unpredictable storms that push aging roads, bridges, power grids, and water systems to their breaking point.”

At the moment we won’t belabour the point that extreme weather events like powerful hurricanes are not increasing. Instead we’ll say that even if they were, why in blazes have they allowed aging systems including power grids to crumble instead of making them more resilient, efficient and generally keen and gleaming?

Bloomberg recently reported that:

“The Trump administration has declared a power emergency in the US Southeast as a blistering heat wave strains grids across the country.”

At least they found a new word for “scorching” to describe typical summer conditions. Typical meteorologically, we mean. That the United States increasingly struggles to provide working infrastructure despite all the soaring rhetoric, or possibly in part because of it, does conjure up images of the slow inexorable collapse of the Roman Empire. As Bloomberg said:

“On Monday, there were blackouts in parts of New York City as the local utility issued a warning to conserve electricity. Power use Tuesday on PJM Interconnection’s 13-state system is expected to test a 14-year high.”

To which you might well respond that New York City was not in the southeast last time you looked. But never mind. Because New York is definitely in Oz when it comes to energy policy and has been for years under progressive politicians. In fact the Manhattan Contrarian, who does know where Manhattan is, has cited New York as an unwitting demonstration project for the fatuity of believing alternative energy can get the job done.

Which New York City’s latest mayoral election suggests may be dreadfully true on a great many things besides climate. Though on the plus side, Democratic governor Kathy Hochul has suddenly discovered the merits of lower energy costs for voters and of nuclear power more or less simultaneously, and is now promising to build a nuclear plant. Prompting the ever-contrary Contrarian to respond with:

“Does something here seem like it doesn’t quite fit?  Yes, it was just four years ago, in April 2021, that New York completed the forced closure of the two perfectly functional Indian Point nuclear plants, with combined generating capacity of about 2 GW, for no other reason than relentless opposition from environmentalists and NIMBYs.”

He also mocked her “excited language” including about:

“a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant in Upstate New York to support a reliable and affordable electric grid, while providing the necessary zero-emission electricity to achieve a clean energy economy”

which we might instead call “repetitive cliché-ridden language possibly generated by a bot”. But he’s quite right that the Governor has no credible plan to get this thing built, nor does she acknowledge that its mere 1GW is “barely a drop in the bucket” especially with the state also planning to shut down over 20 GW of natural gas because boo methane, she won’t admit Net Zero is out of reach and she fantasizes about what batteries can do.

Even so it’s a start, because it recognizes that if you have neither power generation nor a transmission grid you don’t have reliable and affordable energy with or without the glittering woke add-ons. And it’s extraordinary how long it’s taken the zealots to concede this obvious point, or the related one that in fact the result of their fantasies has been the dangerous weakening of the actual grid and the non-appearance of the clean energy one.

But just because they’ve woken up to the need to have power it doesn’t mean they understand where it comes from or how to get it where it’s going. But it’s worth suggesting that in this debate of plausible generalizations, those whose plausible generalizations got us into this mess are not the ones to trust on how to get out.

For instance California Governor Gavin Newsom. As Robert Bryce observes:

“Gov. Gavin Newsom will run for the White House in 2028. But under his leadership, California’s energy prices have skyrocketed.”

At some point to keep arguing that they cannot have done so because he went heavily for renewables and they are now cheaper than conventional power and getting more so every day is not principled, it’s pigheaded.

P.S. On the subject of whom to trust, we want to bring up a Parker Gallant post from back in February about how the American grid was becoming increasingly unreliable and Canada could experience similar problems soon. Remember, he told you so. Whereas politicians like Hochul and Newsom told you fairy tales.