Best Energy Picks - May 3, 2025

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

May 03, 2025

This week’s best energy picks:

Combine Green Ideas with the Fatal Conceit: Get Giant Ivanpah Boondoggle

This was so, so predictable…

Fifteen years ago, operators of the Ivanpah thermal solar facility - NRG Energy, Google, and BrightSource Energy - got a $1.6 billion loan from the Department of Energy. Now, 11 years later, the facility is closing…
15 years ago, Google, NRG Energy, and Bright Source Energy got together for this idea. They would sell solar power to PG&E and California Edison until 2039. But they needed funding.
Bechtel, who's a big government contractor, helped them get a $1.6 billion loan from the Department of Energy. See all those mirrors? Yeah, there's 350,000 of them, and each one is the size of a garage door. They reflect sunlight onto boilers 450 feet high as part of the solar thermal process.

Ivanpah Solar Energy Facility - Tuck Mapping Solutions

The project promised to create 1,000 construction jobs and power 140,000 homes. And that— didn't happen. In theory, everyone would benefit, from workers and local communities to politicians pushing green energy…
The project was also terrible for desert tortoises and destroyed irreplaceable, pristine desert habitat.
But the real problem was about power. Ivanpah only operated at half capacity. Apparently, officials hadn't considered things like weather or equipment challenges impacting energy production. You know, like they should have.
NRG said it could take years for Ivanpuh to hit its annual energy goals. In the meantime, they'd use natural gas to operate the boilers. So much so that they even needed state approval to increase the gas limit. Turns out the sun didn't shine as much as everyone hoped, and the facility could no longer compete with newer, more efficient technology.
Today, Ivanpah employs 61 people, but soon it will be zero. PG&E ended their contract 15 years early, and Ivanpah will close two of its three units by 2026. For the American taxpayers, it's Solyndra 2.0.

And, today, green “experts” want to dim the sun!

Hat Tip: D.B.

Natural Gas Rescued Spain From Net Zero Death After Power Collapse

Well, of course it did!

The inconvenient truth for Western liberals is that fossil fuel power generation is what restarted Spain's power gridafter the worst power blackout in a generation.
"Spain's black start after the cascading power failure relied heavily on gas-fired and hydro generators to re-energise the grid and establish synchronism," commodities analyst John Kemp wrote on X.

Leftists are insane.
Back to Kemp's X post, showing how natural gas power generation saved Spain's grid and provided the needed power for a restart, signifies the urgent need for all power grids across the West to boost fossil fuel power generation to avert blackouts.
Net zero has put many Western countries on a collision course for disaster. Thank the climate activist liberals.

A “collision course for disaster,” indeed!

Hat Tip: D.S.

Australian LNG Company Invests $17.5 Billion Here. Says Everything Doesn’t It?

So much is revealed by this story, mostly about why the U.S. is working under Trump and Australia is not.

An Australian fossil fuel company committed Tuesday to build a $17.5 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, following up on plans first announced 10 years ago.
Woodside Energy Group said it has reached a final investment decision to proceed with the project in Calcasieu Parish formerly known as the Driftwood LNG Terminal. Woodside purchased Driftwood less than a year ago, betting on a project that has encountered several stops and starts since 2017, partly the result of volatility in the fossil fuels market.

An aerial view at dusk of an liquified natural gas plant in Western Australia — **Woodside Energy’s Pluto liquified natural gas facility in Western Australia. (Woodside Energy Ltd. photo)**

Plans include new production and processing facilities in Lake Charles that will create an estimated 16.5 million metric tons of LNG for the global fuels market.
Woodside announced later in the day it had reached a deal with BP to provide natural gas for its Louisiana facility, Reuters reported. Terms of the deal were not made public.
Gov. Jeff Landry touted the Woodside commitment as the largest single foreign investment and greenfield project in Louisiana history. ..
“We have four active LNG terminals in Louisiana — more than any other state. With more than 30,000 miles of natural gas pipelines, it is clear that when it comes to LNG, Louisiana is the place to be. We are not only promising President Trump’s agenda, we are delivering it!”
Construction began at the Driftwood site in 2022, and the company said its first batch of liquified natural gas is expected to be produced in 2029.

Seems Louisiana is on the right path, doesn’t it. Meanwhile, Australia just voted to stay green…

Hat Tip: J.S.

Great News! “Trump Throws the Electric School Bus Transition Into Chaos”

Simply outstanding!

From Rapides Parish, Louisiana to Oakland, California, tens of thousands of school children are participating in an electric bus revolution sparked by billions of dollars in federal funding.
Under the Trump administration, this EV transition is starting to stall.
In late January, President Donald Trump paused all awarded federal funds for clean school buses as part of a government-wide spending freeze, spurring a wave of delays and change of plans along the electric bus supply chain.
Though the Environmental Protection Agency, which is in charge of distributing the bus funds, has since started to release some of the money, the process has been slow-going and disruptive, according to interviews with more than a dozen bus advocates, makers and dealers, and officials from school districts and states. It’s also unclear whether the agency will offer an additional $2 billion dollars or so allocated by Congress for clean school buses that have not yet been awarded.

school bus connected to First Charge above ground charging station — **A First Student charging station in Westville, IL.Courtesy: First Student**

The EPA says it “is not blocking any recipients from receiving funding” already awarded, but declined to comment on its plans for unspent resources.
Every time a school chooses diesel over electric it locks in higher carbon dioxide emissions for 12 to 15 years, the common lifespan of traditional school buses. It also extends children’s exposure to toxic tail pipe emissions. For bus makers, meanwhile, a slowdown in orders could set back their budding electric business.
While advocates are pushing to get all of the federal funds spent, they’re also turning to states, utilities and others for the needed cash to electrify the school bus fleet, the country’s largest transit system.
“Our goals have had to change, given the new administration,” says Susan Mudd, an electric bus advocate at the Chicago-based nonprofit Environmental Law and Policy Center. “This will slow the transition.

Well, let’s certainly hope so!

Hat Tip S.H.