Drill, Baby, Drill and the Energy Emergency

Have I ever mentioned that I spent the first six years of my life living on oil company land? Or that my dad was in the oil business for over three decades? I have drill, baby, drill in my blood. And yet even my dad told me as a child “We’re going to need to think of some other ways of doing things.” He imagined power coming from the tides, something engineers are working on.

And he wasn’t alone. Big Oil, while still continuing to produce oil and gas at a faster rate than ever, is dropping billions each year into non-fossil fuel production – everything from solar and wind to using algae farms that feed on CO2 and produce energy. Consulting firm McKinsey recommends that they continue these investments. Today, wind and solar comprise 14% of US energy production.

Everyone seems to have gotten the message but Donald Trump, whose reasons for opposing renewables are a wild basket of speculation and weirdness. They include the belief that wind energy is the most expensive form of production (it’s not – it’s the cheapest new source of energy in the US), the idea that windmills cause cancer (wrong), that they kill birds (they do, but so do cats), and that they’re just ugly (I think they look kind of cool, myself).

Trump’s administration might gut solar tax credits promoted by the Biden administration, and the 10% tariff on goods coming from China likely won’t help either – much of our solar equipment is imported from there. But others speculate solar power has become too ubiquitous, cheap and popular for targeting it to be a good policy decision.

Fun fact: the five biggest wind-producing states are red states, and many of the country’s 170+ solar facilities are located in red states as well.

Massive new server farms for artificial intelligence and blockchain operations are creating incredible demand for electricity (estimated to be as much as 16% increase this year). One way to avoid this rise might be to stop using AI for every stupid thing under the sun, like Yahoo generating summaries of my emails automatically (why is this necessary?)

We’re also going to need a lot more electricity for air conditioning as we set new temperature records every year due to fossil-fuel-induced climate change (yeah, that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek).

For all our investment in renewable energy, we have made barely a dent in our greenhouse gas emissions in the US.

We may well be in an energy emergency. It’s just not the kind Donald Trump is talking about.