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The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.3 percent in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, after rising 0.4 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.4 percent before seasonal adjustment. Advertisement The index for shelter rose in April, as did the index for gasoline. Combined, these two indexes contributed over seventy percent of the monthly increase in the index for all items. The energy index rose 1.1 percent over the month. The food index was unchanged in April. The food at home...

It's rarely great news when an area gets blanketed in volcanic ash – but University of Barcelona researchers have discovered it has a rare combination of useful properties, which make it remarkably useful as an energy storage medium. We've written a number of times about super-cheap thermal energy storage, and a number of other times about highly efficient heat batteries operating at super-high temperatures. The cheapest of these 'brick toasters' use the most abundant of materials, and the most efficient can handle extraordinarily high temperatures using materials like liquid tin and carbon materials – but volcanic ash, as it turns...

When are we going to run out of energy? You don’t hear that as much as you used to, since Those Who Know Best are working to plug up all our energy sources anyway. Most energy sources put out carbon dioxide, and that’s going to make all the plants grow and devour us all, or it will heat the planet up and make Minneapolis a desert — and we’ll all fry. Or something. But we don’t hear much any more about running out of energy. What do the experts say about it? “According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)...

I have had several posts on a collection of related cases that I have called “The Stupidest Litigations In The Country.” These are cases where climate hysterics have sued oil and gas producing companies, or the federal government, or both, seeking various extreme punishments ranging from massive damages up to and including an order to end all production of fossil fuels. The asserted grounds vary somewhat from case to case, but a central theme is a claimed constitutional right to a “clean and healthy environment.” My last update on these cases was a post on April 9. A main subject...

States like California, New York, and Massachusetts have passed climate policies specifically intended to jump-start this battery industry. But this year, for the first time ever, the fastest-growing energy storage market appears to be Texas, a free-market-affirming red state that officially cares little about solving climate change. Nonetheless, the state’s low-regulation, business-friendly landscape has created ideal conditions to build batteries quickly and at scale, just like it previously incubated thriving wind and solar markets.

While it’s true that some things get better with age, the United States’ aging transmission infrastructure is not one of them. Updated transmission infrastructure is crucial to reducing emissions and ensuring dependable electricity service. Congress has passed green energy laws to help make this update happen, but now it’s up to a little-known government commission to fully realize the benefits of our transformational climate laws. And they need to act before it’s too late. It would be an understatement to say our country’s existing transmission infrastructure—the energy cables, towers and transformers that move energy between a generation system and the...

Predictions that the U.S. and the world would run out of fossil fuels go back decades, and these predictions have so far turned out to be wrong. A new report shows the U.S. has 227 of oil, 130 years of gas, and 485 years of coal. or years, activists argued for an energy transition away from fossil fuels because, they said, we were hitting “peak oil,” the point at which we can no longer produce oil because there’s little left in the ground or it’s too expensive to recover. In 2023, the U.S. produced nearly 13 million barrels per day,...

Tensions between neighbors Venezuela and Guyana have ratcheted up in recent weeks over a long-running territorial dispute. At issue is a 160,000-square-km (62,000-square-mile) border territory around the Esequibo river, which is mostly jungle, and an offshore area where massive discoveries of oil and gas have been made.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is an exuberant dictator, a lover of military salutes who is being investigated for crimes against humanity, but he’s not reckless enough to invade neighboring Guyana, is he? Would the leader of a country in an ever-deepening economic crisis risk starting Latin America’s first interstate war this century? Well, maybe. For a century and a half, Guyana and Venezuela have quarreled over Essequibo, a stretch of the Amazon that both countries claim. Guyana has long governed the territory, but Venezuela also claims sovereignty over it, citing maps drawn in colonial times. Last year, Maduro expressed...

he Venezuelan government called the military drills of two U.S. planes in Guyana a "provocation" and said the country has "become a new colony" of the North American country. "The Bolivarian Navy strongly rejects the reiterated provocations by the U.S. Southern Command and approved by the government of Guyana, which has become a new American Colony," said Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. He added that the country's defense systems are "activated against any attempt to breach the Venezuelan geographical space."

Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali obliterated a BBC reporter who accused him of contributing to climate change by allowing oil drilling off its coast. BBC journalist Stephen Sackur slammed Ali for allowing the drilling, asking id he had the "right" to do so. "Let's take a big picture look at what's going on here. Over the next decade, two decades, it is expected that there will be $150 billion worth of oil and gas extracted off your coast," Sackur said.

on the 3rd of December 2023 Venezuela 0:02 hosted a nationwide referendum on 0:04 whether or not their country should 0:05 Annex 2third of guyana's territory their 0:08 Geographic neighbor immediately to the 0:09 east this region of Guyana is known as 0:11 the esao and it's a huge piece of land 0:14 only slightly smaller than the US state 0:16 of Florida is but guyan themselves were 0:18 not welcome to vote in the Venezuelan 0:20 referendum calling for the partition of 0:21 their own country a couple days later on 0:23 the fifth of December the Venezuelan 0:25...

Attorneys general in 25 states have banded together to file a legal challenge to another "unlawful" Environmental Protection Agency policy that is part of President Joe Biden's crusade to "end" fossil fuels and force an energy "transition." At issue this time: the EPA's final rule establishing "New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units" as well as "Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units" and the "Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule." Stemming from a 2009 Obama-era EPA "conclusion" that greenhouse gas (GHG)...

The Biden administration is being ridiculed for hypocrisy as it touts 'energy savings' at federal buildings that are nearly empty of workers - and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm recently celebrated the Biden administration's efforts to reach net-zero emissions from federal buildings by establishing a rule outlawing the use of fossil fuels on-site. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is practicing what we preach,' Granholm said in a statement about the rule. 'Just as we are helping households and businesses across the nation save money by saving energy, we are doing the same in our own federal buildings.' But...

When postal manager José Belloso put his Paris apartment up for sale this year he was required to have an inspector grade the home for energy efficiency under strict rules designed to fight climate change. Belloso’s building was built in the early 1900s from millstone, a porous sedimentary rock that was popular among architects of France’s Belle Époque. His apartment flunked the inspection—and under a regulation that came into force this year, the property was barred from the rental market until costly renovations are made. Belloso was ultimately forced to knock 50,000 euros, equivalent to $54,000, off his asking price...

The Biden administration is being ridiculed for hypocrisy as it touts 'energy savings' at federal buildings that are nearly empty of workers - and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm recently celebrated the Biden administration's efforts to reach net-zero emissions from federal buildings by establishing a rule outlawing the use of fossil fuels on-site. 'The Biden-Harris Administration is practicing what we preach,' Granholm said in a statement about the rule. 'Just as we are helping households and businesses across the nation save money by saving energy, we are doing the same in our own federal buildings.' But...

A recent subcommittee hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony regarding alleged influence by unelected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on important federal government policy decisions. The Biden administration was called out for permitting activist environmental groups, many funded by billionaires and the Chinese Communist Party, to inappropriately influence US energy policy at the Department of the Interior. Committee members are investigating the degree to which Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and others are working with green activist groups to shape policies that undermine the decision-making of state and federal officials, divert oil production to less eco-friendly sources...

Back in 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), mandating environmental reviews for all major projects to determine their environment impact and allowing for periods of public comment. This has generally been beneficial, but it opens the door to lengthy lawsuits from environmental activists that can tie projects up in the courts for years. There may be some significant changes coming to the process, however, but only for certain types of projects. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has just finished what's being described as a "rule change" that will remove many delays and "streamline" the...

Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife were indicted Friday on charges of conspiracy and accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from foreign entities, the Justice Department announced. Prosecutors allege Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, began accepting the roughly $600,000 in bribes beginning as early as December of 2014 from an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan's government as well as a bank headquartered in Mexico City. While Cuellar's wife allegedly propped up sham front companies on the promise of providing consulting services to the two companies in order to launder the payments, she "performed little to no...

Three and a half years into the Biden Administration, and to an ordinary citizen on the ground it might seem like not that much has changed as to energy. Despite hundreds of government actions and initiative in an all-of-government regulatory onslaught to transform the energy economy, the important things have been remarkable stable. Production of oil and gas are actually up, and prices increases have been relatively modest — far less than one might have anticipated from the extreme regulatory hostility to production. The percentage of what is called “primary energy” (that is, energy for everything, not just electricity) coming...