A boom in artificial intelligence (AI) investments now drives the United States electricity market. New data centers and upgrades to existing data centers are creating a vast demand for power. But big AI firms are choosing natural gas plants to provide electrical power, not renewable energy.
Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish climate scientist, author, and the President of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is the former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen.
His views on the issue of heat vs cold in relation to deaths caused by slightly warmer global temperatures are encapsulated in the image above.
From New York to California, state renewable electrical power dreams are collapsing. Power demands soar, while the federal government cuts funding and support for wind, solar, and grid batteries. Renewables cannot provide enough power to support the artificial intelligence revolution. The Net Zero electricity transition is failing in the United States.
This week the U.S. experienced the first major heat wave of 2025. Over 160 million people in the Midwest, the South, and the East Coast experienced temperatures approaching 100oF. Many in the media claim that the soaring temperatures are due to human-caused global warming. But a look at history shows that such high temperatures have been experienced many times in the past.
Extreme heat warnings were issued in Baltimore, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The Washington Monument was closed due to the heat. Dozens of daily high temperature records were broken. Heat indexes, which combine temperatures and the effects of humidity, exceeded 100 in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and other locations.
Many media outlets reported that humans are responsible for the current hot weather. CNNreported that “heat waves are getting more dangerous with climate change” and that the current heat wave “bears the hallmarks of human-caused global warming.” NPRconcluded that “human-caused climate change has made this heat wave three times more likely” due to emissions from “burning of coal, oil and gas.” Timestated that heat waves now occur “three times as often” in the U.S. as they did in the 1960s. But historical records do not support the media alarm about heat waves.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracks state record high temperatures and the date when they occur. The data shows that 36 of the 50 state record highs were set more than five decades ago. Twenty-three state record high temperatures occurred in the decade of the 1930s, when annual human CO2 emissions were less than one-eighth of today’s emissions. Despite endless headlines about heat waves, only 6 state high temperature records have occurred since the year 2000.
In a bid to stabilise electricity supply, the NSW Labor Government is taking batteries to the next level. Incentives (aka subsidies) have increased from $800 to $1500 for homes with (subsidised) solar, to install new batteries connected to the grid. Now impressively re-labelled Virtual Power Plants (VPP), this will allow energy companies to access domestic supply to “future proof” the grid.
The problem of intermittent domestic electricity generation at night has been addressed by home battery storage, currently a significant cost of around $10,000 per house, with, in addition, another $1500 for an inverter, to convert AC to DC current. In the event of power failure, a typical battery would power the home for 36 hours. There is a limited life expectancy to these batteries, typically 5 to 15 years and, whilst this may be sufficient for those who can afford it, it adds cost to those homes or businesses who currently depend on power stations for increasingly expensive electricity supply.
Climate alarmists have controlled the narrative as they methodically and successfully injected their relentless fearmongering and bogus science throughout academia, the mainstream media, and just about every major cultural institution.
While this has paid giant dividends in recent years, it has also fuelled a backlash that we are finally starting to see bubble to the surface.
Let’s begin by briefly recapping how the climate alarmists were able to hypnotize so many people into believing that climate change was an existential crisis – which it is not – in the first place.
Australia is threatened by dangerous trees. They have infested our cities, menaced our power lines, invaded our grasslands and fuelled our worst bushfires.
The meander by Cyclone Alfred through south east Queensland illustrated how bad this danger has become.
Big tall trees smashed power lines and over 450,000 people lost their power, some for days; big tall trees crushed cars and closed roads; and in every cyclone big tall trees fall on houses, shops and fences.
Way back in 1858 Nongqause, a prophetess of the Xosa Tribe in South Africa, had a vision telling her that all cattle of the tribe would have to be slaughtered, having been reared by contaminated hands. She said that she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors who had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return, the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea. Then their granaries would fill again and their kraals would have more and better cattle.
In the cattle-killing frenzy that followed they killed between 300,000 and 400,000 head of cattle. In the resulting famine, the population of the province dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000. This is a photo of Nongqause’s gravestone:
Neither the cattle nor the Xosa tribe recovered from this deadly cure.
Trump Administration actions to scale back renewable energy capture headlines, but citizens are also pushing back. Efforts to deploy wind and solar systems face a rising tide of opposition in towns, counties, and states. Mandates for electric vehicles and electric home appliances are being challenged. The combination of rising local opposition and Trump funding cuts threatens to end the transition to green energy.
The green energy revolution in the United States has run almost unopposed for the last two decades. Driven by the fear of human-caused global warming, federal regulators enacted an expanding array of incentives for renewables in the form of mandates, tax credits, loans, and subsidies. States added incentives to push for the adoption of wind, solar, electric vehicles, heat pumps, green hydrogen, and carbon dioxide (CO2) capture systems.
Why are we always putting green energy assets in all the wrong places?
The main electricity demand comes from big cities and their industries, so the electricity generators should be nearby, thus reducing capital costs and transmission losses, and supporting local jobs
Why put wind turbines, access roads and power lines in rural and remote areas where there is little demand for electricity, where neighbours hate them, and where they destroy forests, wipe out resident eagles and start bush fires? And of course it is foolish to locate wind turbines anywhere along the cyclone coasts of Queensland, Northern Territory or the Kimberly coast in Western Australia.