Hedge Energy Price Surge Despite "Drill Baby Drill"

Natural Gas Prices Surge 40% Despite Policy Shift

In the past six months since the election, natural gas futures for December 2025 have surged almost 40%. This sharp increase comes despite what should be overwhelmingly bearish fundamentals: an effectively infinite supply of natural gas within the United States, limited LNG export capacity, and a new administration in Washington fully committed to maximizing domestic natural gas production.

Instead of ushering in an era of cheap and stable energy prices, the business uncertainty generated by recent tariffs and retaliatory trade actions—most notably, Ontario’s recent decision to withhold electricity exports in response to U.S. tariffs—has created an environment of deep instability. This climate of unpredictability is freezing business investment in demand growth, while simultaneously driving capital into safe-haven assets such as short-term U.S. Treasury bills, helping maintain an almost inverted yield curve in the bond markets.

The End of Predictability in Energy Markets

The rapid rise in natural gas prices echoes the surge seen at the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Back then, market uncertainty surrounding the availability of Russian gas drove up prices across Europe and the rest of the world. However, that disruption, while severe, was fundamentally discrete—it was understood that once the war ended, Russian gas would likely return to global markets in some familiar form.

What we are seeing today is something different entirely. The current structural disruption is unlike anything seen in 80 years of U.S. global leadership.

For the first time since America took on the mantle of global economic and military stabilizer in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government is explicitly conducting foreign policy on a transactional basis. While prior administrations may have engaged in realpolitik, the overarching tone—regardless of party—was one of responsibility for global economic stability. This meant relatively predictable policies, especially when it came to critical markets like energy.

But the genie is now out of the bottle. The era of predictable energy policy and stable international trade agreements has ended. No matter who wins the 2026 midterms or 2028 presidential election, global businesses and investors will always have to price in the risk of U.S. trade policies disrupting supply chains.

The Unintended Consequence: Energy Investment Paralysis

Given the policy landscape, the current natural gas market dynamics seem paradoxical. We have:

• Massive demand for natural gas-fired electricity to power AI data centers.
• Unprecedented access to federal lands for natural gas extraction.
• A commitment to lowering corporate taxes, theoretically making energy investment more profitable.

Under normal conditions, this should spark an energy production boom, leading to lower and more stable prices. Instead, we are witnessing the opposite. Why?

The answer lies in the uncertainty surrounding long-term energy demand and global trade flows.

• The once stable NAFTA-based Canada-U.S.-Mexico energy market dynamics have been thrown into flux.
• European and Asian LNG demand is no longer guaranteed, as new tariffs might encourage buyers to shift towards Middle Eastern or post-war Russian gas.
• Trade barriers are clouding manufacturing demand, making it unclear whether electricity consumption in industrial sectors will surge or collapse.

This uncertainty doesn’t encourage investment in productivity—it encourages caution and capital preservation. Businesses are hesitant to commit to long-term growth strategies when they can no longer predict where their customers, supply chains, or energy markets will stand in the next few years.

The Macro Shift: A More Autarkic Economic Model

As a result, the U.S. economy is shifting towards a more autarkic (self-reliant) structure. Investors are increasingly focusing on domestic supply and demand, as foreign trade dynamics have become too unpredictable.

In this environment, renewable energy becomes an even more attractive investment. Unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy is inherently domestic—the sun shines and the wind blows regardless of tariffs, trade wars, or geopolitical tensions.

Standard Carbon: The Future of Reliable, Domestic Energy

We are positioned to thrive in this shifting landscape. Our unique Carbon Bridge system transforms intermittent renewable energy from wind and solar into reliable, baseload, dispatchable renewable natural gas. This creates stable, high-value energy assets that are insulated from geopolitical risk, trade policies, and inflationary pressures.

Securing Energy Independence

1. Solar & Wind Generation → Generates intermittent electricity, which is typically hard to monetize as baseload power.
2. Carbon Bridge System → Converts excess renewable electricity into renewable natural gas (RNG), creating a dispatchable energy source.
3. Baseload Energy Security → This RNG can be stored and used on demand, providing an energy hedge against fossil fuel volatility.

This process transforms renewable energy into a stable commodity that is immune to global market disruptions, ensuring a reliable energy supply for domestic businesses and consumers.

The Age of Energy Uncertainty Demands a New Approach

For decades, energy markets operated within a framework of relative predictability, with the U.S. playing a stabilizing role. Those days are over. Today’s energy landscape is defined by trade volatility, geopolitical tensions, and shifting market structures.

Despite an administration committed to maximizing fossil fuel production, natural gas prices are rising, not falling. The lesson is clear: energy security is no longer about extraction—it is about reliability and independence.

In this new era, renewable energy is not just a climate solution—it is an economic imperative. We are leading the way in turning renewables into reliable, investable energy assets, shielding businesses and investors from the chaos of today’s global energy markets.

The future is renewable, decentralized, and resilient.