Energy
Biden Talks Tough About NATO, but His Energy Policies Tell Different Story
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/tvrd-hdn-joe-biden-image-2024-07-16.jpg)
From Heartland Daily News
By Steven Bucci of the Daily Signal
That faction must decide which is the priority: stopping Putin and helping our friends in Europe permanently leave the sway of Russia’s energy extortion, or crippling American energy companies to virtue-signal how “green” America can become. You can’t really have both.
President Joe Biden, host of the 75th anniversary NATO Summit in Washington that ends Thursday, last week claimed to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos that he “put NATO together.”
Trying to find a charitable spin on this claim, let’s assume Biden means that he helped NATO stand stronger against Russian President Vladimir Putin in the crisis over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Biden certainly didn’t put together NATO, founded in 1949, regardless of his recollection. In that context, it makes one wonder about the purpose and intent behind Biden’s energy policies and their implications for our NATO allies.
The president’s words imply one thing, but his actions are exactly the opposite. At this week’s NATO Summit, America’s allies should have denounced Biden’s energy policies for benefiting Russia.
For example, if we investigate the Biden administration’s policies on liquefied natural gas, we find that rather than supporting NATO against Russia, they clearly enable Russia and disadvantage our allies. Biden’s imposition this year of an export moratorium on liquefied natural gas, or LNG, has hampered U.S. companies that are trying to aid our allies by weaning them off dependence on Russian natural gas.
You can debate Biden’s words (and his faulty memory), but his policies are simply dead wrong.
First, let’s look at Biden’s disastrous pause in exports of liquefied natural gas. The Energy Department has stopped new permits for such exports to Europe and Asia, which has led to price volatility and no assurance of reliable sources for our allies to meet their energy demands.
A federal judge in Louisiana recently reversed Biden’s moratorium. That action could eventually help allow private sector companies in the U.S. to support our allies in Europe and Ukraine.
One example of note includes Ukraine and Venture Global, an American company that wants to come to the rescue by supplying Ukraine and Europe with liquefied natural gas to help them reduce their dependence on Russian gas. Biden’s continued pause had stood in the way.
The judge in Louisiana noted that the Biden administration’s suspension of LNG exports conflicts with settled law such as the Natural Gas Act, which directs the Energy Department to “ensure expeditious completion” of permit reviews.
Biden’s LNG export moratorium also violates the Administrative Procedure Act, since there never was a congressional direction that the Energy Department impose it.
All of this is a clear conflict (again) between responsible policy and the extremist green faction of Biden’s Democratic Party and his administration. That faction must decide which is the priority: stopping Putin and helping our friends in Europe permanently leave the sway of Russia’s energy extortion, or crippling American energy companies to virtue-signal how “green” America can become.
You can’t really have both. And yet, ironically, new evidence demonstrates that U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas represent a climate-conscious solution. A recent Berkeley Research Group report found that these exports result in lower greenhouse gas emissions than does natural gas supplied by competing countries, and much lower emissions compared with coal.
The second example of this dangerous conflict is Biden’s support for a Middle East pipeline owned by the Russians. Here at least the president’s position seems to be nuanced, since a greater supply of oil could help lower energy prices.
Biden’s State Department has strongly supported restarting an oil pipeline that has been offline because of a political dispute among Kurdistan, Iran, and Turkey. Unfortunately, the pipeline is 60% owned by Rosneft, an oil company that itself is owned by the Russian state.
Oh, and a point I skipped above: We shouldn’t be helping Iran or a hostile Turkey to control or influence significant energy in any way. All this defies logic.
It’s obvious that Biden wants cheaper energy. Every president does in an election year. That said, why is the State Department supporting reopening a Middle East pipeline that’s majority-owned by the Kremlin after the Biden administration canceled infrastructure projects here at home?
The administration’s priorities are entirely misplaced.
There is a path forward. It involves reinforcing American leadership in domestic energy production. Instead of playing into the hands of our adversaries (Russia, Iran, and Venezuela), the Biden administration needs to change course and open more access to American oil and gas production.
That starts by permanently ending the suspension on LNG exports, ending the moratorium of oil and gas exploration on federal lands, ending unprecedented restrictions on offshore oil and gas leasing, ceasing resistance to the Canadian Enbridge Pipeline 5, and restarting canceled pipeline projects such as Keystone XL.
America’s energy resources are the envy of the world and should be leveraged to protect our citizens and our allies.
U.S. energy exports strengthen our competitive edge against China, Russia, and other hostile regimes. They also produce high-paying jobs at home and lessen dependence on any foreign source.
If America really wants to help Ukraine and be a leader in NATO, this is a path that will be consistent, effective, and inexpensive compared with direct financial or material support.
The green energy activists will hate it, but simply put: They’re wrong.
Steven Bucci is a visiting fellow in the Phillip N. Truluck Center for Leadership Development.
Originally published by The Daily Signal. Republished with permission.
Energy
BC should revisit nuclear energy to address BC Hydro shortages
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/tvrd-rw-nuclear-power-station-image-2024-09-03.jpg)
From Resource Works
The short-term costs of nuclear SMRs are preferable to paying hundreds of millions to import foreign energy in the long-term.
British Columbia takes great pride in its tremendous hydroelectric resources, which result from the province’s many long, powerful rivers. For decades, BC has found it easy to rely on hydroelectricity as a clean, renewable source of power for homes, industry, and businesses.
However, the ongoing viability of hydropower in BC should be called into question due to worsening summer droughts and declining snowfalls, which have negatively impacted the annual supply of hydropower. BC has not seriously entertained the possibility of alternatives, even though other provinces have begun to embrace one particular source of energy that has been illegal here for over a decade: nuclear power.
By refusing to strike down the law passed in 2010 that prohibits the mining of uranium or the building of nuclear reactors, BC has made itself an outlier among its peers. Since last year, Ontario has announced plans to expand its existing nuclear capacity, which already provides the majority of the province’s electricity.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia have also begun to explore the possibility of expanding nuclear power to help power their growing provinces. BC has prohibited nuclear energy since passing the Clean Energy Act of 2010, which bans the building of reactors or mining uranium.
This prohibition is a barrier to diversifying BC’s energy supply, which has become more reliant on foreign energy. Due to energy shortages, BC Hydro had to import 15 to 20 percent of the energy required to meet the province’s needs.
Do not expect the situation to improve. Snowpacks are shrinking in the winter months, and summer droughts have become more frequent, which means BC’s dams will see a reduction in their power capacity. Power shortages may be on the horizon, leading to vastly more expensive purchases of foreign energy to meet BC’s growing electricity demand, driven by the construction of new homes and projects like LNG facilities on the coast.
Energy diversification is the solution, and nuclear power should be included, especially Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Low-carbon and reliable, SMRs can provide steady nuclear power in any season. They are flexible and much more cost-effective than traditional, large-scale nuclear reactors.
For a vast province like BC, filled with small communities separated by mountainous terrain, SMRs can be deployed with great ease to ensure energy stability in remote and Indigenous communities that still struggle with energy access. The Haida Nation, for example, is still reliant on diesel to supply its energy, which goes against the BC government’s clean energy goals and relies on fuel being shipped to the Haida Gwaii archipelago.
While SMRs are cheaper than massive nuclear reactors, they are still expensive and require strict safety regulations due to the ever-present risks associated with nuclear energy. However, is the cost of building nuclear facilities in the short term more expensive than importing energy for years to come?
In 2023, BC Hydro spent upwards of $300 million USD on imported energy, while the cost of the smallest SMR is $50 million, with the more expensive units costing up to $3 billion. Building SMRs now is the right decision from a cost-benefit perspective and in terms of BC’s clean energy goals because SMRs guarantee low-emitting energy, unlike imported energy.
The Clean Energy Act stands in the way of nuclear power’s emergence in BC. Amending it will be necessary for that to change.
BC is not going to need any less energy going forward.
It is high time to get over old fears and stereotypes of nuclear energy. Hydroelectricity need not be displaced as the cornerstone of BC’s energy supply, but it alone cannot face the challenges of the future.
Alberta
AI-driven data centre energy boom ‘open for business’ in Alberta
![](https://www.todayville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/tvrd-cec-alberta-data-centres-image-2024-08-29.jpg)
From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Deborah Jaremko and Will Gibson“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas”
Data centres – the industrial-scale technology complexes powering the world’s growing boom in artificial intelligence – require reliable, continuous energy. And a lot of it.
“Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing in energy, dominating discussions at all levels in companies, banks, investment funds and governments,” says Simon Flowers, chief analyst with energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that the power required globally by data centres could double in the next 18 months. It’s not surprising given a search query using AI consumes up to 10 times the energy as a regular search engine.
The IEA estimates more than 8,000 data centres now operate around the world, with about one-third located in the United States. About 300 centres operate in Canada.
It’s a growing opportunity in Alberta, where unlike anywhere else in the country, data centre operators can move more swiftly by “bringing their own power.”
In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market, large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers instead of relying solely on the power of the existing grid.
Between 2018 and 2023, data centres in Alberta generated approximately $1.3 billion in revenue, growing on average by about eight percent per year, lawyers with Calgary-based McMillan LLP wrote in July.
“Alberta has a long history of building complex, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects with success and AI data centres could be the next area of focus for this core competency,” McMillan’s Business Law Bulletin reported.
In recent years, companies such as Amazon and RBC have negotiated power purchase agreements for renewable energy to power local operations and data centres, while supporting the construction of some of the country’s largest renewable energy projects, McMillan noted.
While the majority of established data centres generally have clustered near telecommunications infrastructure, the next wave of projects is increasingly seeking sites with electricity infrastructure and availability of reliable power to keep their servers running.
The intermittent nature of wind and solar is challenging for growth in these projects, Rusty Braziel, executive chairman of Houston, Texas-based consultancy RBN Energy wrote in July
“These facilities need 24/7, super-reliable power, and there’s only one power generation fuel that has any hope of keeping up with the demand surge: natural gas,” Braziel said.
TC Energy chief operating officer Stan Chapman sees an opportunity for his company’s natural gas delivery in Canada and the United States.
“In Canada, there’s around 300 data centre operations today. We could see that load increasing by one to two gigawatts before the end of the decade,” Chapman said in a conference call with analysts on August 1.
“Never have I seen such strong prospects for North American natural gas demand growth,” CEO François Poirier added.
Alberta is Canada’s largest natural gas producer, and natural gas is the base of the province’s power grid, supplying about 60 percent of energy needs, followed by wind and solar at 27 percent.
“Given the heavy power requirements for AI data centres, developers will likely need to bring their own power to the table and some creative solutions will need to be considered in securing sufficient and reliable energy to fuel these projects,” McMillan’s law bulletin reported.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which operates the province’s power grid, is working with at least six proposed data centre proposals, according to the latest public data.
“The companies that build and operate these centres have a long list of requirements, including reliable and affordable power, access to skilled labour and internet connectivity,” said Ryan Scholefield, the AESO’s manager of load forecasting and market analytics.
“The AESO is open for business and will work with any project that expresses an interest in coming to Alberta.”
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