Among the great mythologies of recent years is that the world is in a “great energy transition.” The world IS in a dramatic energy transition. But it isn’t the one the Left wants it to be.
Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at wind and solar power, we still get less than 10% of our energy from green sources.
The REAL energy transition is toward natural gas. A few weeks ago, the price of natural gas fell below $2 per MMBTU, the lowest price level for energy, after adjusting for inflation, in 20 years. Just a few years ago, the price in real dollars was four times higher.
As an experiment, I went to the grocery store to find out what a 16-ounce bottle of Evian water now sells at. The price I saw was $2.69 and can go as high as $3. Natural gas is now less expensive than water.
This natural gas revolution has happened because of modern drilling technologies — including horizontal drilling and fracking. That technology keeps getting better and better and will continue to keep the price low for many decades to come.
Meanwhile, natural gas has all the attributes of a wonder fuel. It is abundant, made in America, clean-burning (using natural gas REDUCES carbon emissions), reliable and cheap. The United States has at least 200 years’ worth of natural gas supply — and probably far more than that.
Environmentalists should be celebrating the natural gas revolution: It is by far the largest reason that CO2 emissions have fallen dramatically in the U.S. and that our air is cleaner today than at any time in 100 years. At the same time, we are finding that windmills and solar panels are far from the “clean energy” that we had hoped they would be. We now have graveyards full of retired toxic plastic and steel wind turbines that have to be buried in massive landfills or dumped in the ocean.
As we transition to more electric vehicles and hybrids, natural gas is the obvious source of electricity to power those batteries.
Much of the natural gas resources in the U.S. are under federal lands. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have stopped the leasing permits that are needed to find the next massive basins of oil and gas. Given that we have some $50 trillion of oil, gas and minerals in the mountains of the western states, Unleash Prosperity estimates the U.S. government could rake in well over $1 trillion in revenue from leases and other taxes by drilling and mining for these resources.
So why is the climate change-industrial complex against natural gas, when it is the long-term solution — combined with nuclear power — to all the globe’s energy needs?
Apparently because natural gas is TOO cheap and TOO abundant. Why use natural gas when you can use expensive and completely unreliable wind power? The Left bet on the wrong horse and foolishly invested hundreds of billions of dollars of their own and taxpayer money into these unproductive technologies.
The only thing holding back our boundless natural gas future is government.
Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior economic advisor to Donald Trump.