In this issue:
- Confident energy champions — political
- Confident energy champions — corporate
- Confident energy champions — individual
- Arming confident champions at EnergyTalkingPoints.com
- How Defunding Reliable Energy Caused the Texas Blackouts
Confident energy champions — political
As the current administration pursues truly disastrous energy policies–see my talking points on the proposed CLEAN Future Act–a growing group of confident energy champions is rising in opposition.
I am proud to be contributing to this phenomenon by 1) offering a pro-human moral approach to energy issues (moral conviction is the root of confidence), 2) offering succinct, clear explanations (talking points) on dozens of current policy issues at EnergyTalkingPoints.com, as well as with the dozens of elected officials I help with messaging.
One such official is Wayne Christian, Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, who recently had a Wall Street Journal article that included the following passages.
Regardless of your thoughts on climate change, last month’s storm made painfully clear that climate catastrophists have an oversize influence on public policy. An obsessive focus on reaching the unattainable goal of zero carbon emissions led to decades of poor decisions that prioritized and subsidized unreliable energy sources (wind and solar) at the expense of reliable ones (natural gas, coal and nuclear).
…
Texas can’t afford to come within minutes of total system failure ever again, and the only way to ensure it never happens is to reverse policy choices that have tilted the state’s energy mix in favor of inefficient and unreliable sources. The mix needs to be rebalanced, with an emphasis on cheap, plentiful and reliable sources such as natural gas, coal and nuclear.
Confident energy champions — corporate
Several months ago, I shared the story of Adam Anderson, CEO of oilfield services company Innovex, who wrote an eloquent open letter to The North Face regarding their refusal to sell Innovex jackets with the company’s logo.
Several weeks ago I shared a video by CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services Chris Wright about the issue. Since then the Colorado Oil and Gas Association awarded The North Face with a mock Extraordinary Customer Award, highlighting North Face products’ complete reliance on oil and natural gas. Last week Newsweek published an excellent article about the issue.
The North Face continues to have nothing to say about this issue. In the absence of confident champions of fossil fuels, it’s easy for companies to voice false platitudes. But what can they say in the face of champions like Adam Anderson and Chris Wright?
Confident energy champions — individual
With the right, pro-human moral framework and the right facts, anyone can become a confident energy champion.
One reader, who works with a large financial institution, recently sent me his response to their 100% renewable claims. I’m changing the company’s name to preserve the reader’s anonymity.
So as not to mislead people into believing something to be true that isn’t, [Company] should clearly disclose that not only aren’t we powered by 100% renewables (most people understand that term to mean solar and wind), but rather, we are actually 70%-100% powered by fossil fuels and only buying “carbon credit offsets” to claim we are powered by (renewables) something we aren’t. This can be incredibly misleading to the average reader/client who rightly assumes that when [Company] states they are “powered by 100% renewable sources”, that [Company] is…well…100% powered by renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydro and geothermal, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Buying carbon offsets to claim we are powered by something we aren’t is the equivalent of me putting sails on top of a fossil fuel powered cruise ship, buying some “gust of wind” credits equivalent to the fossil fuels I’ll burn on my trip, proudly proclaiming to all upon my return that I just took a cruise ship around the world 100% powered by renewable sources, then chastising my fellow passengers (who weren’t rich enough to buy gust of wind credits) for cruising around the world in the same dirty fossil fuel powered cruise ship that I was just on.
[Company] would never allow us (financial advisors) to send emails out to clients that omitted so much context (and filled with confusing equivocations), that it lead our clients to believe the exact opposite of what was really true. At a bare minimum, our climate and energy reports should be held to the same standards.
One colleague wrote:
I am disappointed that [Company] is willing to tout this information without the full context. When I read this article, I wondered how this could possibly be true since our office sources its energy from the local power company which uses fossil fuels. I would agree that [Company] would never allow its financial advisors to make sure bold claims with the disclosure associated with it. Again, very disappointing.
The official representative of the company could not answer the reader’s arguments.
Arming confident champions at EnergyTalkingPoints.com
EnergyTalkingPoints.com now has two dozen sets of talking points on a huge variety of energy, environmental, and climate issues.
They are easy to use, powerful, and true. Please share this resource far and wide, along with other resources such as Power Hour.
You never know whose mind you will change.
One Canadian reader recently wrote me:
I did not really appreciate the depth and effectiveness of all your work until a friend and colleague of mine, Heidi McKillop, aired her podcast with the famous Alex Epstein. I then found myself binging on your Power Hour podcast, I just can’t get enough! It has re-energized me and I found myself changing my way of thinking, I have stopped being scared and apologizing, so thank you! It’s strange, I don’t even understand it. I think it’s because we’ve been told for so long to not make waves, to lay low, and that facts and common sense would win in the end…so we thought! And here we are, in a world where Alex Epstein is teaching us how to stand up for ourselves, go figure; it’s interesting how the people who are standing up to the anti-fossil fuel bullies are not even in the oil and gas industry, it says a lot about us I guess. Regardless, your work is greatly appreciated over here in Canada, never mind Canada, heck in the entire world!!!
How Defunding Reliable Energy Caused the Texas Blackouts
Speaking of Power Hour, this week’s episode features a discussion I participated in several weeks ago hosted by the Salem Center of the University of Texas at Austin.
Here’s the description:
How Defunding Reliable Energy Caused the Texas Blackouts
On this week’s Power Hour Alex Epstein joins philosopher Gregory Salmieri and statistician Carlos Carvalho to discuss what caused Texas electricity to be so unreliable when it was desperately needed during a recent winter storm.
In this wide-ranging discussion Alex emphasizes the point that by giving undeserved money and preferences to unreliable wind and solar electricity, Texas defunded the reliable and resilient electricity it needed.
Some specific topics include:
- How the grid needs to match supply and demand.
- What we know about what actually happened before the mass blackouts.
- How Texas policy gives preference to wind and solar.
- Why a “Red State” like Texas is so pro-wind.
- How Texas’s “Energy Only” market works.
- How Texas’s fundamental problems exist nationwide.
You can watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter.
Quick book update: I’m in full editing mode with the publisher and expect to have an official release date soon. Of all the things I do to create confident energy champions, this book is the most important. Thanks to Accelerators for supporting this and other key growth projects.
To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Energy,
Alex