American Energy Dominance, Carbon Sinks, Eureka State, Concrete Answers & More
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The Focus Of The Next Four Years — American Energy Dominance
Under the previous Trump administration, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, had introduced the?idea of energy dominance.?Perry, coming from the heart of oil and gas country, was promoting increased energy production, with a vision of the US becoming the energy supplier to the world.
Eight years later, the U.S. has produced (over the past six years)?more oil than any country?in the history of the world. Further, the U.S. has?exported in 2023 more liquefied natural gas?(LNG) than any other country.
Now more than ever, the need for energy dominance remains paramount as?electricity demand is set to skyrocket.
President-elect Trump has campaigned on the idea of lowering the cost of energy and drill, baby, drill. But is the lift heavier than the slogan?
Let’s consider what it means to be energy dominant in 2025 versus 2017.
First of all, can what has been called the energy transition better be described as a wholesale energy diversification? A significant component of becoming more efficient in the use of energy, particularly as demand increases, is to electrify processes. Distributed power and energy storage are crucial components of that electrification. And neutral gas will sure be a necessary source of producing electricity for some time into the future along with renewables and further out, nuclear.
The IRA and IIJA went a long way toward preparing this nation for energy diversification – i.e. a pathway toward energy dominance – that may not be scrapped wholesale now that the benefits of investment are being realized.
Shouldn’t U.S. energy dominance today mean not just dominance in oil and gas, but also as the leader of the free world in development and technology for all forms of energy?
Our geopolitical rival, China, is?electrifying faster than any other country – for obvious reasons, as they do not produce oil and gas. As a result, global warming GHG emissions from China?may well have peaked in 2023.
What’s more, China has?developed EV technology faster than any other country?and could flood the world with low cost transportation. Along the way, they’ve dominated battery technology development, and have a significant advantage in access to the rare earth minerals critical to battery and computer chip development
We’ve got to ask the hard question: Are we truly energy dominant if we simply produce more oil and gas than anyone else?
We know we’ll run out of dead dinosaurs to mine for fuel & have to use sustainable energy eventually, so why not go renewable now & avoid increasing risk of climate catastrophe? Betting that science is wrong & oil companies are right is the dumbest experiment in history by far. Elon Musk on X.
Speaking of Elon …
We need to give a shout out to our strategic partners at Mobius Risk Group.
If you are not subscribed to their research and energy shots then you are missing out on serious energy sector news week to week!
As an example of how they think, Mobius calculated a response to Musk’s lofty goals that are potentially relevant in the years ahead as we navigate energy dominance for our country and our growing appetite for the commercialization of outer space.
For good fun, consider the?demand for methane in a world that includes a fleet of Starships and Super Heavy Boosters to power Musk’s space ambitions via SpaceX.
The team at Mobius calculated:
Starship’s fuel consumption requires closer inspection for energy markets, particularly considering SpaceX’s goal to have a fleet of 1,000 Starship spacecraft each operating 1,000 100-ton payload flights per year.?
In other words, the total methane combustion energy of a single Starship launch into low earth orbit (LEO) is approximately equal to the daily primary energy consumption of 345,161 people!
Meanwhile, the SpaceX plan to fly an average of three flights per day per Starship across a fleet of 1,000 Starships translates into mind-boggling sums of combustion energy that exceed the places on our calculator. Even that big old Texas Instruments one we had in the drawer from college.
Let’s face it: to match or even approximate Elon’s ambition or vision (and the needs of exponential energy demands for AI development and deployment), what we need here on Terra Firma and up there among the stars simply cannot be provided by oil and gas alone.
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Technology: If The Sinks Sink, We’re Sunk
Given that this week’s In The Lead article is a little heavier than usual, we thought we’d spend the rest of this issue focusing on recent articles and news.?
First up? The sinking values of nature’s own “carbon sinks” might cause dire recalibration of climate calculators in this article from The Guardian.
Are our naturally-occurring carbon capture technology beginning to fail as a result of annual climate extremes?? If nature’s own carbon sequestering capability can’t keep up, who knows how deep the problem will go?
And not to pile on — but we may be making the situation worse with now-record GHG emissions worldwide. See the WMO full article here.
The Eureka State Faces GHG & ESG Reporting Resistance
California has been a regulatory pioneer in wanting to quantify and establish regulations for GHG emissions. We're seeing their Buy Clean requirements being implemented now for steel purchases.
And as the world’s fifth largest economy, when they implant policy — its newsworthy beyond the borders of their state. And too, they can expect legal challenges. This was a major one brought by the Chamber of Commerce.
Check out this ESG Today article about a temporarily failed legal attempt to shut the state up about climate disclosure regulations.
Under our new administration, the future of the SEC's climate disclosure rule has certainly changed. But with CA and other states implementing disclosure requirements? We'll be following these and associated legal challenges.
A Concrete Solution for Carbon Sequestering and Storage
One of the coolest things about this gig every other week is discovering articles like this that allow us to write clever headlines.?
See how concrete itself may become a dependable source of carbon sequestration in this Future of Everything article.?
Concrete as a concrete solution. Get it?
Lack Of Global Reporting Standards Is A Real Pain In The A--
A clarified understanding of carbon markets we speak to each issue ultimately relies heavily on consistent and accurate reporting of relevant statistical values. Our valued partner clients have expressed much frustration with many multiple reporting requirements around Sustainability.
A lot of companies (particularly public companies) are on board with disclosing sustainability information (ESG), but the vexing question at hand is HOW to do so consistently and accurately both here and abroad when there’s no real consensus on a without universally accepted standards for reporting?
How ‘bout we let the Wall Street Journal explain the challenge better in this article!
Public companies in the U.S. are increasingly disclosing sustainability information, but many say they find it a challenge to report fundamental climate data that many regulators around the globe likely will require under incoming?mandatory reporting standards.?-- WSJ
If we've said it once, we've said it 40 times! (This is our 40th issue of The Green Way.)
Carbon footprint calculation and sustainability solutions are much, much more than a numbers game.
-- END Issue 8; Vol. 2, 11-9-24 --