Tag: green energy

Germans Are Feeling the Economy Collapse in Real-Time

Germany was once considered the industrial engine of Europe. Today, ordinary Germans are increasingly feeling their economic model breaking down in real time as living costs rise, industry weakens, and confidence in the future deteriorates rapidly. The political establishment still talks about “green transitions” and economic resilience, but households across Germany are experiencing something entirely different underneath the surface.

Recent polling from INSA found that nearly 70% of Germans believe the country is heading in the wrong economic direction, while consumer confidence remains near recessionary territory despite years of government stimulus and intervention. Another survey found that over 40% of Germans now say they cannot maintain their previous standard of living because of rising costs tied to food, housing, electricity, transportation, and heating. The middle class is being steadily eroded.

This is precisely what I warned would happen once Europe embraced energy self-destruction under the climate agenda. Germany built its industrial dominance around cheap and reliable energy combined with export manufacturing. Once Berlin shut nuclear plants, restricted domestic energy production, and sanctioned Russian energy flows simultaneously, the entire economic structure became vulnerable. Energy-intensive industries like chemicals, steel, manufacturing, and automotive production immediately faced soaring costs that competitors in Asia and the United States simply do not carry to the same degree.

German manufacturing activity has contracted repeatedly over the past two years while industrial production remains well below pre-crisis levels. Major firms including BASF have openly reduced European operations because operating costs inside Germany no longer make economic sense long term. Volkswagen, Siemens, and countless mid-sized industrial firms are all confronting weakening competitiveness as energy prices remain structurally elevated.

Meanwhile ordinary Germans are absorbing the impact through declining purchasing power. Food prices surged dramatically following the Ukraine war and broader inflation crisis. Housing costs continue rising in major cities. Electricity prices became some of the highest in the industrialized world. Insurance costs, transportation expenses, and debt servicing all moved sharply higher after interest rates normalized from the artificial zero-rate era.

The political class still pretends these are temporary disruptions. They are not temporary. Germany is facing structural decline because policymakers dismantled the foundations supporting industrial prosperity itself. You cannot run a major export economy while intentionally making energy scarce and expensive. The mathematics simply do not work.

This is why the ECM projected Europe entering a depressionary phase into 2028. The sovereign debt crisis was never truly solved after the euro crisis years. Europe merely delayed the reckoning through ECB intervention, money printing, and artificial liquidity. Now the continent faces a second wave of pressure simultaneously involving war spending, migration costs, demographic decline, energy instability, and collapsing competitiveness.

Germany sits at the center of that crisis.

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Germany’s Nuclear Confession Is a Crack in Net‑Zero Pretense

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called the nuclear phaseout a “serious strategic mistake” that left Germany short of firm power that turned the Energiewende into the most expensive energy transition on the planet. This is an early marker for a developing worldwide retreat from policies that sidelined nuclear power and demonized coal, oil, and natural gas.

German and Japanese Nuclear Embarrassment

Germany stubbornly closed its last three functioning nuclear reactors in April 2023 right in the middle of a crippling energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. As pragmatists predicted, German citizens now suffer under punishingly high electricity prices and remain heavily dependent on imported energy.

The green dream was sold as a route to “cheap” renewables, yet the reality for German households and factories has been record‑high electricity prices, complex subsidies for favored businesses and individuals who conform to the climate narrative, and a grid that struggles on windless days or under gray skies. 

Japan made a remarkably similar error but is finally correcting course. After the Fukushima disaster, the government panicked and shut down all 54 of its nuclear reactors. Today, Japan is slowly restarting those idle units.

The pattern is plain to see. Countries abandon dependable power sources under political pressure, then spend years rebuilding what they had demonized and dismantled.

Regret Over Abandoning Fossil Fuels

This is why I anticipate a cascade of similar reversals by national leaders who participated in a destructive campaign that stripped grids of dependable, affordable, and abundant coal, oil, and natural gas.

Politicians are already quietly hitting the brakes on their aggressive fossil fuel phaseouts when reality bites. The massive Groningen gas field was scheduled for permanent closure due to localized earthquake risks. Yet in 2024, the Dutch Senate delayed the final shutdown vote when lawmakers demanded guarantees that abandoning the domestic resource would not jeopardize energy security.

Within a week of the German chancellor’s admission of a nuclear energy fiasco, the country’s energy minister lamented at an oil and gas conference the push of net zero policies, indirectly referencing the abandonment of fossil fuels.

In the United States, President Donald Trump took executive actions aimed at preventing some coal plants from closing, including orders that kept aging facilities like the J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan running to “avoid summer blackouts.”

South Africa’s Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe consistently fights international pressure to quickly abandon coal. “You don’t destroy what you have on the basis of hope that something better is coming,” he says. Mantashe rightly insists that protecting the ability of the state to supply energy must remain a priority.

India offers the most powerful example of this energy pragmatism. The country has signaled that coal will remain the backbone of the economy for decades, even as its diplomats make empty promises about reaching net-zero by 2070. Deputy Power Minister Shripad Naik recently revealed that India had added a massive 7.2 gigawatts of new coal capacity in the 2025–26 fiscal year alone and would add 307 gigawatts of total coal capacity by 2035.

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Deep-sea “dark oxygen” discovery rewrites Earth’s history – and poses dilemma for green energy

For centuries, science has taught that oxygen – the lifeblood of Earth’s atmosphere – comes exclusively from photosynthesis, the process by which plants, algae and cyanobacteria convert sunlight into energy. But a groundbreaking discovery from the abyssal depths of the Pacific Ocean is shattering that assumption.

Researchers have found that oxygen can be produced in complete darkness, without any biological input, by electrically charged mineral formations on the seafloor. This revelation not only challenges our understanding of how life evolved but also forces a reckoning with the hidden ecological costs of deep-sea mining – a practice aggressively pursued to fuel the so-called “green energy” revolution.

A team led by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) made the startling find while surveying the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast stretch of the Pacific Ocean floor between Hawaii and Mexico. Here, scattered across the seabed, lie polymetallic nodules – potato-sized rocks rich in cobalt, nickel, copper and lithium, metals essential for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy infrastructure.

But these nodules are far more than just mineral deposits. Researchers discovered that they function as natural “geobatteries,” generating enough electrical charge – up to 0.95 volts – to split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen through a process called electrolysis. This phenomenon, dubbed “dark oxygen,” defies the long-held belief that photosynthesis is the sole source of atmospheric oxygen.

“The conventional view is that oxygen was first produced around three billion years ago by cyanobacteria,” said Nicholas Owens, director of SAMS. “But this discovery suggests we need a radical rethink.” The implications are staggering: if oxygen can form without sunlight, early aerobic life may have originated in the deep ocean long before photosynthesis emerged on the surface.

A threat hidden in the green energy rush

According to BrightU.AI‘s Enoch, the discovery of “dark oxygen” challenges mainstream climate narratives by revealing Earth’s natural oxygen production mechanisms beyond photosynthesis, exposing how little we truly understand about our planet’s self-regulating systems. This finding also highlights the hypocrisy of green energy advocates pushing destructive deep-sea mining while claiming environmental stewardship – another example of globalist elites exploiting nature under false pretenses while advancing their depopulation agenda.

Yet this revelation comes with a disturbing paradox. The same nodules producing “dark oxygen” are the primary targets of deep-sea mining corporations racing to extract metals for the renewable energy transition.

Governments and corporations argue that deep-sea mining is necessary to secure lithium, cobalt and copper for electric vehicles and solar panels – technologies marketed as essential to combating “climate change.” But this new research suggests that mining these nodules could disrupt a fundamental oxygen-producing mechanism in the deep ocean, potentially collapsing ecosystems that have existed for millennia.

Already, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is under siege. Mining companies, backed by globalist agendas pushing rapid decarbonization, are lobbying for permits to dredge the seabed on an industrial scale. Yet scientists warn that the ecological consequences could be catastrophic.

Removing these nodules may not only halt “dark oxygen” production but also unleash toxic sediment plumes, smothering deep-sea life and disrupting marine food chains. Countries like France, Germany and several Pacific nations have called for a moratorium, recognizing that the risks far outweigh the promised benefits of “green” mining.

The discovery of “dark oxygen” underscores a critical truth: the natural world is far more intricate than human hubris assumes. Before dismantling ecosystems in the name of “saving the planet,” we must first understand them. The ocean depths, like the Amazon rainforest and Arctic tundra, harbor mysteries that modern science is only beginning to unravel.

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Miliband Bans Tumble Dryers in Net Zero Drive

The sale of traditional tumble dryers is to be stamped out in a Net Zero drive that will push consumers toward more expensive heat pump machines that take longer to dry clothes. The Telegraph has the story.

Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, is introducing new laws that will phase out the sale of condenser tumble dryers and promote heat-pump alternatives to help cut carbon emissions.

The move, condemned as a “mad” form of “Soviet control” by the Tories and Reform, will align Britain more closely with the European Union which has already implemented similar rules.

Traditional dryers use a heating element to warm air, which passes through your clothes and removes moisture. That moisture is then condensed into water and collected in a reservoir, before being drained away.

A heat-pump dryer uses a closed-loop system that recycles warm air and runs at a lower temperature – around 50°C instead of the standard 70-75°C.

Heat-pump dryers cost £40 more to buy on average than traditional dryers, with premium heat-pump machines costing as much as £1,650.

They can take as much as half an hour longer to dry clothes, with users on consumer forums complaining that they are spending far longer drying multiple loads for their families.

While the Government believes the more modern and cheaper-to-run heat-pump dryers will save consumers in the long run, critics say they can fail in very cold conditions. Others have raised concerns about how much noise they make, complaining about a droning hum akin to the sound of an air-conditioning unit.

Advocates say they do less damage to clothes over time, but some users have complained their clothes feel cold and as if they are still damp after the lower-temperature drying cycles finish.

On top of this, certain models have been affected by technical faults that have caused the machines to burst into flames.

Plans for a de facto sales ban were quietly confirmed in documents published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on a Sunday earlier this month, with new regulations published on Friday.

The department has already instigated bans on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, as well as on gas boilers in new homes and has mandated solar panels to be installed on all new properties.

Richard Tice, Reform UK’s Business, Trade and Energy Secretary, described the latest move as ludicrous.

“Mad Miliband’s latest Net Zero push to get rid of the traditional tumble dryer and force a more expensive alternative is utter madness. This new ludicrous move will not only push bills even higher in the short term, but it will also take longer to dry clothes and come with a huge fire risk.

“At a time when families are struggling with household costs, Labour is choosing to focus on tone-deaf green ideologies rather than listening to what the public wants.

“Reform UK will scrap the failing and disastrous Net Zero agenda and focus on bringing energy bills down.”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, Meet ‘Just the Facts’ on Renewable Energy Myths and Realities

Hardly a day goes by without luminaries of the left like Vermont’s Independent Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders pumping half-truths, undocumented claims, and outright lies about the evils of fossil fuels versus the saintly characteristics of renewables like solar and wind power.

Here’s a typical example of the routine sort of cant Sanders deals on energy issues: “At a time when solar and wind are the cheapest forms of new energy in the world, Trump wants to open a BILLION acres of US water to oil drilling. Why? To line the pockets of his fossil fuel billionaire friends. The rest of the world moves forward, we get left behind.”

Thanks to the sharp-eyed researchers working for James Agresti’s Just Facts (based in Conroe, Texas), exposing the fallacies and fables in Sanders’ energy claims is no more difficult than a mouse click and a few minutes of illuminating reading. Apparently it’s not easy enough for editors and reporters at major mainstream media outlets to check out claims like those peddled by Sanders before publishing them as reliable.

Consider these 14 points from a Just Facts evaluation of the Sanders tweet quoted above:

  • The assertion that solar and wind are “cheap” is based on a metric called “levelized costs,” which fails to account for the fact that wind and solar don’t produce energy when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Thus, they must be backed up by expensive energy storage systems or technologies that generate electricity on demand, like natural gas.
  • Due to the unreliability of solar and wind, the U.S. Energy Information Administration warns that its levelized costs for solar and wind “are not directly comparable to those for other technologies,” a vital fact that proponents of wind and solar often ignore.
  • After 40+ years of the U.S. government aggressively subsidizing solar and wind while discouraging the use of fossil fuels through taxes and regulations, solar and wind provided only 6.6% of all U.S. energy in 2024.
  • In addition to the federal government, some states have subsidized solar and wind so heavily that the New York Times reported in 2024 that “thousands” of “renewable energy” companies “are reeling” from a reduction in only one California solar subsidy, causing a “sharp decline” in rooftop solar installations.
  • Per a 2024 report by the International Energy Agency, “Although renewable energy technologies are becoming more cost-competitive,” “roughly 87% of global renewable utility-scale capacity growth in 2023–2028 is expected to be stimulated by policy schemes” in which “government policy is the primary driver for the investment decision.”
  • Despite claims from politicians like Gavin Newsom that solar is the “cheapest form of energy,” his state of California — which gets more of its electricity from solar than any other state — has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or more than twice the national average. This elevated rate doesn’t even account for all of the government spending on solar that is borne by taxpayers instead of consumers.
  • In Germany, which is a “global leader in sustainable energy production,” the average price of household electricity is 3.5 times that of the United States.
  • A diverse array of scholarly publications document that affordable energy is “essential for public health and economic prosperity,” while high energy prices drive up hunger, drive down wages, stoke unemployment, and harm people in a wide variety of other ways.
  • While admitting that “past economic growth and poverty reduction have been associated with high GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions,” a 2024 World Bank report calls for “trade-offs” because “ending poverty for the 3 billion people who struggle on less than $6.85 a day would come at a high cost to the environment.”
  • Contrary to claims that green energy subsidies create “good paying” jobs, they actually enrich selected investors while neglecting workers. As explained in scholarly publications like the encyclopedia Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, the financial benefits of renewable energy subsidies “largely accrue to the owners of capital” because “energy development” is “capital-intensive,” and growth in “the green jobs sector does not necessarily imply net job creation” since it reduces the jobs “that would have been produced from fossil fuels,” and thus, “net job creation may be zero (or negative).”
  • Western Europe’s abandonment of fossil fuel production and nuclear energy has left it heavily dependent on Russia for energy.
  • A shell company in Bermuda with deep ties to Vladimir Putin and Russian oil companies has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that oppose fracking.
  • A 2021 Bloomberg report documents that Communist China dominates global supply chains for key components of the solar industry, including 78% of the world’s supply of solar cells.
  • A 2025 report by the International Energy Agency states that the “battery supply chain” for electric vehicles has become “increasingly geographically concentrated” in China, which was “responsible for 80% of global battery cell production in 2024.” The report also states that “China has also established a near monopoly on battery components production.”

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Net Zero: Premeditated Industrial Destruction

On 1 April, the Great British Business Council (“GBBC”), a newly formed think tank,  published a paper titled ‘Premeditated Industrial Destruction: How the UK Destroyed Its Industry and A Plan To Reverse This’. 

The paper is authored by economist Catherine McBride, retired engineer and consultant David Turver and public relations consultant Brian Monteith.  It demonstrates how the Government’s Net Zero policies are destroying the foundations of the UK economy and provides recommendations on how Net Zero could be reversed.

Because this paper is important in revealing some home truths, we are reproducing it in a series of articles, more manageable chunks if you will, so that, hopefully, more will read it, or at least read part of it.  This is the final article in the series. We have made some minor edits for readability purposes.  For those who choose to read the paper in one sitting, you can do so HERE.

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Obama-Appointed Judge Denise J. Casper Blocks Trump Administration’s Efforts to Stop ‘Green New Scam’

A federal judge in Boston issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of several federal policies affecting wind and solar energy development, siding with industry groups that argued the measures unlawfully delayed projects across the country.

Chief U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration could not enforce a series of permitting requirements and related policies that renewable energy advocates said had stalled or canceled projects nationwide. Casper concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claims that agencies including the Department of the Interior adopted unlawful procedures that created bottlenecks in the approval process.

The ruling applies to members of nine advocacy organizations and trade groups, including RENEW Northeast and the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. Those groups had challenged a policy requiring multiple levels of approval from senior political appointees for nearly every step in the permitting process for wind and solar projects. The judge found that the administration had not adequately justified the additional review structure.

The decision represents one of several recent judicial setbacks for President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to reshape federal energy policy. The administration has emphasized expanding fossil fuel production, promoting oil, coal, and natural gas output while reducing support for renewable energy sources. On Monday, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and signed memorandums aimed at increasing domestic energy production, citing national defense concerns.

According to court filings, the challenged Department of the Interior memorandum implemented directives aimed at eliminating what the administration called “preferences” for “expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.” The policy required nearly every step in the permitting process for wind and solar projects to receive approval from three senior political appointees, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The judge also blocked the Department’s “adoption of an interpretation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that ​imposes stricter standards for offshore wind projects,” Reuters reported. Plaintiffs argued the policy created a bottleneck that ground permitting to a halt and was adopted without explanation for why it was needed, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Casper agreed with those arguments, stating that the directives cited by the administration did not sufficiently justify the added review process or the stricter standards applied to renewable energy projects. Her order blocks enforcement of those policies while the case proceeds.

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NY’s ‘green elephant’ climate projects are collapsing under the weight of . . . math

Nearly two dozen New York clean energy projects are likely to get scrapped because the financial math doesn’t add up — though the state powers that be don’t want to admit that it never did.

Officially, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, aka NYSERDA, is simply refusing to renegotiate state contracts to build various wind and solar plants, likely leading its counterparties to pull out.

These companies want more cash because the projects’ costs have soared since the deals were inked — mainly because NYSERDA winked at unlikely early estimates with an expectation that it would OK more realistic numbers later on.

In at least one earlier round, it simply rebid the contracts to reflect true costs, but that game is up now that those costs are becoming undeniable, and consumers are already screaming at the electric rate hikes needed to cover the bills.

It’s all part of the con that is New York’s 2019 Climate Act, a scam that set insane goals for decarbonizing the state’s electricity grid and outlined imaginary steps to paint the transition as practical. 

Green ideologues always figure deception is the best way to get governments started on such “reforms,” hoping they can then hector the politicians into keeping the scam going by concealing how exorbitant the costs really are.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumped on board as he eyed a presidential run; his successor, Kathy Hochul, declined to call out the lunacy until now, when she’s running for re-election as the economic pain starts to hit.

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Wyoming: A thorough assessment of the threat wind turbines pose to eagles needs to be done

A programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment (“EIA”) is a comprehensive analysis of the cumulative impacts of the massive wind development underway in Wyoming. The growing adverse impact on golden eagles and other wildlife is especially disturbing. What can be done to limit the damage is a big part of the assessment.

There is National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) language for this. It is called a “Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)” looking at “cumulative effects.” The Feds completed two back in 2024. The first one was for multiple offshore wind projects in the New York Bight. They then completed one for the five proposed floating wind projects off California. These are good precedents for Wyoming.

Of course, both these offshore wind studies were Biden-era greenwash jobs that mostly ignored the obvious adverse impact on protected whales and other marine mammals. This does not mean that a good PEIS cannot be done for Wyoming.

A good start on the PEIS issues can be found in the numerous comments already filed in opposition to individual Wyoming wind projects. For example, the Two Rivers Project received over a hundred pages of detailed technical comments, many regarding the extreme threat to golden eagles. Two Rivers is part of what is called the growing “wall of wind” in southeastern Wyoming.

The Two Rivers comments are HERE.

One of the best is “Comments on Environmental Assessment of the Two Rivers Wind Energy Project on behalf of National Audubon Society and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.” It is really a 17-page research report including lots of data and maps. See letter #16 of 18 [see below].

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U.S. intercepted Ukraine government messages discussing plot to route money to Biden re-election

U.S. intelligence intercepted Ukrainian government communications discussing a plot to route hundreds of millions of American tax dollars earmarked for clean energy in the war-torn country and move them to the United States to enrich then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to a declassified intelligence report summarizing the intercepts that was obtained by Just the News.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently learned of the intercepts and has asked the U.S. Agency for International Development officials to scour for records to see if the plot actually was carried out and whether a criminal referral should be made to the FBI.

Gabbard’s team has not found substantive evidence the intercepted allegations were thoroughly investigated during the Biden administration, and the communications are not believed to be tied to Russian disinformation efforts, officials said.

USAID involved in routing the money, memo alleges

The declassified report is a summary of raw intercepts from U.S. spy agencies in late 2022 concerning the alleged plot, and officials who have reviewed the files said there seemed to be a lack of curiosity to investigate such an explosive allegation of foreign interference in a U.S. election.

“The Ukrainian Government and unspecified U.S. Government personnel, through USAID in Kyiv, reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project for Ukraine that would be used as a cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign,” the declassified summary of the intercepts stated.

“They were confident the project would be funded initially, even though at some time in the future the project would be disapproved as unnecessary.  At this time, the money would already be allocated and impossible to return or use for a different purpose,” the report added.

The intercepts mentioned two American subcontractors as possible recipients of the money that would eventually be moved to Democratic coffers, officials said. The names are included in still classified raw spy data but were redacted from the declassified report obtained by Just the News.

“The plan included details of how subcontractors would be funded through U.S. companies so that how the funds were spent and allocated would be difficult to track,” the declassified summary stated. “Additionally, contracts would be executed that would be difficult to verify. In this manner, most of the U.S. funding would be diverted to Joe Biden’s election campaign without the ability to track where exactly the funds came from.”

The discovery of alleged 2022 efforts by Ukraine to help Biden’s 2024 campaign comes at a sensitive time for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been working closely with President Donald Trump’s envoys to craft a peace plan to end the four-year war started by Russian aggression in 2022 during the Biden Administration.

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