“Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”, Niels Bohr

“Fools rush in where others fear to tread.”, Alexander Pope

The United States will continue on the path to energy independence and energy dominance, relying largely on natural gas while supporting life extension projects for nuclear and coal generators to maintain grid reliability. The US will also support efforts to expand nuclear generation both at GW scale and from SMRs. Uranium mining and fuel processing will be expanded. Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel will be pursued. Expansion of renewable generation will be de-emphasized and federal subsidies and incentives for renewable generation will be reduced and ultimately terminated.

Federal subsidies and incentives for electric vehicles and EV charging stations will be terminated, as will subsidies and incentives for building electrification. Electricity demand growth will be driven by data center and AI, rather than by a federal push for “all-electric everything”. Meeting electric demand growth will be complicated by Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and Clean Energy Standards (CES).in numerous states which will continue to favor expansion of renewable generation, though at higher cost due to the removal of federal incentives and subsidies.

This issue might become acute in those states as data center and AI developers are skeptical of intermittent renewable generation. Those states would likely resist proposals by developers to install new grid-isolated generation capacity or to take existing coal generators off-grid and perform life extension projects to power their developments.

The US federal government will continue its efforts to rescind the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding based on both technical and legal issues, though these efforts will be the subject of numerous lawsuits intended to maintain the status quo. The federal government will also continue its efforts to redirect climate change funding to “Gold Standard” science and minimize or eliminate funding for politicized science intended to scare the population into acceptance of the catastrophic climate narrative. The US will not actively participate in the preparation of the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report or in the UNFCCC COP 31 negotiations.

The pursuit of Net Zero by 2050 will be increasingly questioned in the other developed nations as the costs of energy in those economies expand energy poverty and result in industrial decline because of the loss of cost competitiveness. This issue is becoming critical in Germany and the UK, while awareness grows in the balance of the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. This issue is also surfacing in the US states with RPS and CES, particularly in California, New York and Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, China, India, Indonesia and numerous other developing nations will continue to focus on economic development rather than on mitigating climate change. They will continue to demand funding from the developed nations for climate change mitigation and adaptation and for “loss and damage” resulting from extreme weather events which they argue are worsened by the effects of climate change caused by the developed nations.

The UN will continue to promote the existence of a climate crisis, the risk of future climate tipping points and its essential future role in global governance. It will expand its efforts to stifle skeptical criticism of the climate change narrative. The UN’s hyperbole will be increasingly ignored.

CO2 emissions will continue to increase, as will modest global warming and sea level rise. Global greening will also continue, as will increases in global agricultural production.