In 2009, the United States surpassed Russia as the world’s largest natural gas producer, driven by surging production from the shale boom and a substantial increase in natural gas pipeline construction. However, since 2017, further increases in gas production in some parts of the country have been restrained by a lack of interstate pipelines to […]

In November 2023, we launched our first Substack article entitled Enjoy the Blackouts, Jack. The article detailed our analysis showing how the Biden administration’s proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations on existing coal and new natural gas plants would cause thousands of hours of rolling blackouts and cost hundreds of billions more than the agency projected. What made […]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Monday that it would repeal the Biden administration’s carbon emission rule on coal- and gas-fired power plants. Had the rule remained, it would have forced reliable coal plants off the grid and hobbled their natural-gas replacements, as American electricity demand soars after 15 years of little growth. The Biden Administration’s rule, […]

Affordability and rising electricity demand for data centers are top of mind for the energy industry. As prices have risen, prominent members of the wind and solar advocacy camp, like Jigar Shah, Tyler Norris, and others, claim that prices are rising not because of the massive national malinvestment in wind and solar resources, but because we […]

There is a massive pushback against data center growth in the United States. Our friend Robert Bryce’s data center rejection database now tracks over 300 bans worldwide as of this writing. Furthermore, these bans now transcend local and county bans to affect data center development across entire states, including New York and Texas. Personally, appreciate AI because it has enabled us […]

Democratic lawmakers are reportedly upset about utility companies earning record-breaking profits—but did their policies contribute to them? We believe the answer is yes. Big Profits for Big Power Companies There is no question that utility profits are indeed soaring across the country. Our analysis, which examined the top 50 U.S. utilities using S&P Global Market Intelligence data and […]

On July 20th, 2026, Southwest Power Pool West (SPPW), the newest regional transmission organization (RTO) area in America, declared an Energy Emergency Alert 3, narrowly avoiding rolling blackouts. According to GridStatus, SPPW’s close call was caused by high demand, exceedingly low wind generation, a forced outage at a 250 MW coal unit, and reduced solar output. In all likelihood, SPPW […]

Battery storage has long been touted as the solution to wind and solar intermittency—or the variable nature of wind and solar electricity production. A recent report co-authored by Mitch Rolling and Jonathan Lesser, Ph.D., for the National Center of Energy Analytics (NCEA), put this to the test. The report, Batteries and the Grid: Hype, Hope, and Economic […]

As if to welcome the nation’s utility regulators to Minneapolis for the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners (NARUC) summer meeting next week, MISO declared an Energy Emergency Alert Level 2 on Wednesday, July 15th, citing forced generation outages, above-normal temperatures, and higher-than-forecasted load. Interestingly, MISO did not mention that its wind resources, which constitute 33,687 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity and […]

The May 2026 edition of our monthly newsletter features our latest research, Introducing the Social Cost of Blackouts. Federal and state regulators already attach a dollar value to carbon emissions through the Social Cost of Carbon and rely on it to justify burdensome regulations and subsidies. Nothing equivalent prices the outages those same rules produce. […]