In the United States, nuclear power plant construction costs escalated dramatically over decades. In today’s post I argue that those costs did not have to escalate but were the result of policy choices. We know that because some countries avoided a similar cost escalation as they built their nuclear fleets.

In 1776, the United States declared its independence from an oppressive colonialist power and began pursuit of its unique destiny. In 2026, 250 years later, the United States continues to pursue its independent path. However, its independence is being challenged by an international organization which functions in a self-generated delusion in which it believes it is capable of functioning and is entitled to function as a global government.

US electricity demand and consumption vary seasonally, typically peaking in the Summer and to a lesser extent in the winter. Demand and consumption are typically lower in the Spring and Fall when the weather is milder. Fossil and nuclear generating units are frequently taken offline during the Spring and Fall for maintenance and necessary repairs.

In 2019, California formalized a partnership between the University of California and China’s Tsinghua University to collaborate on research devoted to climate change policy. Called the California-China Climate Institute (CCCI), this partnership brokered closer ties between China and California and enriched Chinese companies as a result of Sacramento’s climate change policy.

There is ample evidence that the earth has numerous climates and that these climates have changed numerous times over the historical period we have been able to document. These climates are changing now, as documented by the progressive increase in atmospheric and near-surface temperatures.

This is the second part of my two-part post on mitigating electricity price increases caused by data centers. My first post, dated May 12, explained the various ways that high data center demand for electricity does, and does not, increase the price of electricity. Today, I will provide my take on various options that have been proposed. Spoiler alert. Some of these are better than others.

The governor of California is very vocal regarding the state’s leadership on numerous fronts, including the state’s progress toward a “clean energy” future. The image below was the first of a series of three images posted recently on Facebook, which has become a very popular and inexpensive platform for political advertising. The governor’s personal appearance in this and other ads is likely related to the fact that he is term limited in his position, currently approaching the end of his term and reportedly contemplating a run for the Presidency of the United States in 2028.

The true cost of displacing nuclear with wind and solar, counted completely and honestly for the first time The Undeclared Bet

In January 2008, President Barack Obama stated that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” in the process of a transition to a “clean” energy future, referring specifically to the effects of a “cap-and-trade” regime intended to internalize the costs of “carbon pollution”. The expected effects of other variants, such as “cap-and-tax” and “cap-and-invest” would be similar.

The climate is changing, and it always has, and the current warming is not unprecedented, and it’s now disputed that it’s any kind of emergency. And there is much dispute about the part CO2 plays, and also in dispute is the level of contribution to climate change by humans.

The climate “crisis” narrative was a creation of the United Nations, nominally loosely based on the work of the IPCC, but actually based on the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, which is a political rather than a scientific document. The narrative had been broadly accepted by the political leadership of the UN member nations and required various actions on the part of the developed nations, which were accused of causing the “crisis”.

I know that, notwithstanding my hypothetical monthly publication schedule, it’s been seven weeks since my last post. Sorry about being so late. My life has been very hectic, with lots of travel and other activities, including work on my book. And this has been a hard post to write; a lot of words were left on the cutting floor of my editing room. I will post my next article in a month or less, I (hypothetically) guarantee.

The electric generation transition occurring in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) states, including New York, has been progressing relatively slowly, but the electricity consumers (“frogs”) have noticed that electricity prices are increasing (“the water is getting warmer”) and have become uncomfortable.

From 2019 to 2025, the looming implementation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) chilled investment in Pennsylvania’s electric grid. For six years, Pennsylvania teetered on fully implementing RGGI’s multistate cap-and-trade program, which imposes a carbon tax on power producers. New generation proposals plummeted by 38 percent, and generation projects fueled by natural gas collapsed by 65 percent—even as neighboring Ohio’s project pipeline grew.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) states are continuing their planned transition to a renewable plus storage electric grid. Load growth and the shuttering of conventional generation capacity are moving them toward “Tipping Points”, beyond which renewable generation additions would be required to be dispatchable, so that they could replace conventional generation capacity rather than just displace a growing portion of its output.

Environmentalists would have us believe that coal a dying energy source. But, thankfully for American coal states such as West Virginia and Canadian provinces Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, all of which use millions of tonnes of coal every year to generate electricity, that is not even remotely true.

RGGI Transition Powerplants discussed the physical requirements of the renewable plus storage powerplants which would be required to replace existing conventional powerplants and add new generating capacity as the RGGI states continued their planned transition.

We are currently working on an exciting new project called the Social Cost of Blackouts. In this upcoming report, we argue that regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and utility regulators should be required to determine whether proposed power plant regulations or integrated resource plans (IRPs) will result in blackouts based on hourly reliability assessments using historical weather patterns, and to calculate the economic damages from those outages.

The member states of the regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative are continuing their efforts to transition their electric systems toward renewable generation systems. Electricity demand growth and the shuttering of existing fossil fueled generation are moving them toward “tipping points” beyond which renewable generation would have to be dispatchable to maintain grid stability and reliability.

The international committee responsible for the official scenarios that feed into climate modeling that are the basis for most projective climate research and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios.