Over the past two years, I and others have been pointing out the reality that there is no real “energy transition” happening around the world. This week, two new pieces of information came to light that conclusively prove that point.
Just as governments across the Western world are bankrupting their countries by funneling trillions of dollars of debt, euros and pounds sterling into centrally planned initiatives to subsidize the spread of renewable energy and electric vehicles. What you see is a fact. That reality cannot be denied. The problem is that no matter how much debt you borrow, you can’t get the market going, and the market isn’t cooperating.
Despite the government’s big push to significantly increase wind and solar power generation, these weather-dependent energy sources cannot even keep up with the pace of increase in electricity demand. As a result, the market predicted that the world would consume record levels of coal, natural gas, oil, and even wood in 2023. Yes, even though there is a purported “transition” from wood to coal, we still burn huge amounts of wood for electricity. It started 500 years ago.
That is the reality and it is determined by the market.
Two new pieces of data emerged this week that put the final nail in the coffin of the energy transition story.a As reported by the Financial Times, Citing data compiled by grid strategy, it was revealed that construction of new high-voltage transmission lines in the United States has slowed to just 55.5 additional miles installed in 2023. This collapse occurred despite the Biden administration’s recognition that this type of massive expansion of transmission lines must occur to meet the demands of a true “transition” to renewable energy.
financial times newspaper Citing 2023 evaluation According to the Department of Energy, “to meet decarbonization goals, intraregional electricity transmission will need to more than double and interregional electricity transmission will need to increase more than five times by 2035.” did. The DOE admits that at this pace, he will add more than 50,000 new transmission miles in just 11 years. This is almost 1,000 times the pace of additions in 2023.
An important aspect to understand about the DOE study is that it was conducted before we began to understand the true scale of additional power demand as a result of the explosive growth in AI technology that was just beginning to blossom.It was just this year that he spoke at the WEF Forum in Davos in January, when the CEO of OpenAI said: Sam Altman said He believes the power grid’s generation capacity will need to double over the next decade to meet the demands of AI alone. That’s in addition to the growing demand for EV charging, industrial growth, population growth, and economic growth.
The second piece of compelling data that came to light this week was: Bloomberg article The headline: “Data centers now need the power of a nuclear reactor, says Dominion.” The important thing to understand about this story is that this article only refers to the need for a new data center that will be built in Northern Virginia to support his AI development in that small region of the United States. about it.
Key excerpts from this article say it all. “Over the past five years, Dominion has connected 94 data centers that collectively consume about 4 gigawatts of power, Blue said, meaning two of the currently planned data center campuses ~3 locations could require as much power as all the centers Dominion has connected since about 2019.”
This is not just rapid growth, but an exponential increase in electricity demand due to a single developing technology.
This need for increased demand cannot be met by unpredictable, unreliable, weather-dependent power generation like wind turbines or solar arrays. And let’s face reality. The United States cannot continue expanding renewable energy unless we find ways to significantly expand electricity transmission. Why build power plants if you can’t transmit electricity?
What this means is that any grand Biden Green New Deal plan to close many of America’s remaining coal-fired and natural gas power plants will have to wait because the market won’t allow it. That means it must be done. That’s the reality, and reality doesn’t care about anyone’s green transition dreams.
David Blackmon is a Texas-based energy writer and consultant. He spent his 40 years in the oil and gas business, specializing in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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