By Stephen Moore, August 13, 2024
Among the great mythologies of recent years, one stands out above the rest, is that the world is in a "great energy transition." Actually, the world IS in a dramatic energy transition. But it isn't the one the Left wants it to be.
Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at wind and solar power, we still get less than 10% of our energy from green sources. The needle really hasn't moved at all over the past two decades. The more the government spends, the less we get per taxpayer dollar thrown at it. That's the very definition of a falling stock.
The REAL energy transition is toward natural gas. A few weeks ago, the price of natural gas fell below $2 per MMBTU, the lowest price level for energy, after adjusting for inflation, in 20 years and probably ever in the history of mankind. Just a few years ago, the price in real dollars was four times higher.
As an experiment, I went to the grocery store to find out what a 16-ounce bottle of Evian water now sells at. The price I saw was $2.69 and can go as high as $3. This means natural gas is now less expensive than water.
This natural gas revolution has happened because of modern drilling technologies — including horizontal drilling and fracking. That technology keeps getting better and better and will continue to keep the price low for many decades to come. The pace of drilling technology improvement far outpaces the pace of depletion. In other words, for all intents and purposes, America's natural gas supplies are limitless — a bottomless well.
Meanwhile, natural gas has all the attributes of a wonder fuel. It is abundant, made in America, clean-burning (using natural gas REDUCES carbon emissions), reliable and cheap. The United States has at least 200 years' worth of natural gas supply — and probably far more than that. We aren't running out. Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy in Denver and one of the leading experts on drilling technologies, says "we keep finding more natural gas as the drilling technologies get better."
Environmentalists should be celebrating the natural gas revolution: It is by far the largest reason that CO2 emissions have fallen dramatically in the U.S. and that our air is cleaner today than at any time in 100 years. At the same time, we are finding that windmills and solar panels are far from the "clean energy" that we had hoped they would be. We now have graveyards full of retired toxic plastic and steel wind turbines that have to be buried in massive landfills or dumped in the ocean. Windmills use 4,000 times more plastic than all the plastic straws in the world.
As we transition to more electric vehicles and hybrids, natural gas is the obvious source of electricity to power those batteries. In other words, natural gas can be used for all of America's energy needs — including transportation.
Much of the natural gas resources in the U.S. are under federal lands. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have stopped the leasing permits that are needed to find the next massive basins of oil and gas. Given that we have some $50 trillion of oil, gas and minerals in the mountains of the western states, Unleash Prosperity estimates the U.S. government could rake in well over $1 trillion in revenue from leases and other taxes by drilling and mining for these resources.
So why is the climate change-industrial complex against natural gas, when it is the long-term solution — combined with nuclear power — to all the globe's energy needs? Instead they've waged a war AGAINST natural gas.
Apparently because natural gas is TOO cheap and TOO abundant. Why use natural gas when you can use expensive and completely unreliable wind power? The Left is morbidly afraid of gas because they've bet on the wrong horse and foolishly invested hundreds of billions of dollars of their own and taxpayer money into these unproductive technologies.
The only thing holding back our boundless natural gas future is government. We need permits for more liquified natural gas terminals, leases for drilling, and pipelines so we can transport our natural gas resources to every region of the country and export it across the world.
Former President Donald Trump is for all of this. Harris is on the record as being against fracking and wanting to ban it. Can you think of anything dumber?
Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior economic advisor to Donald Trump. His latest book is: "Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy."
