OPINION:
Among the great mythologies of recent years, one stands out above the rest: that the world is in a “great energy transition.” Actually, the world is in a dramatic energy transition. But it isn’t the one progressives want it to be.
Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent on wind and solar power, less than 10% of our energy comes from green sources. The needle hasn’t moved in the past two decades. The more the government spends, the less we get per taxpayer dollar. 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 mmBtu, which is the lowest price for energy after adjusting for inflation than at any time in 20 years and probably ever. Just 20 a few years ago, the price in real dollars was four times as high.
As an experiment, I went to the supermarket to find out what a 16-ounce bottle of Evian water costs. The price I saw was $2.69, but it 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 will continue to keep the price low for decades to come. The pace of drilling technology improvement far outpaces the pace of depletion. In other words, America’s natural gas supplies are basically 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 — 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 technology, says, “We keep finding more natural gas as the drilling technologies get better.”
Environmentalists should celebrate the natural gas revolution: It is by far the largest reason that carbon dioxide emissions have fallen dramatically in the United States and that our air is cleaner today than ever in 100 years. At the same time, we’ve found that windmills and solar panels are far from the clean energy that we had hoped it would be. We have graveyards of retired toxic plastic and steel wind turbines that must be buried in landfills or dumped in the ocean. Windmills use 4,000 times as much plastic as all of 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 land. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have stopped the leasing permits needed to find the next massive oil and gas basins. Given that we have some $50 trillion in oil, gas and minerals in 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 the world’s energy needs? Instead, they’ve waged a war against natural gas.
Apparently, natural gas is being penalized because it is too cheap and too abundant. Why use natural gas when you can use expensive and unreliable wind power? Progressives are morbidly afraid of gas because they’ve bet on the wrong horse and have foolishly invested hundreds of billions of dollars of their own and taxpayer money in these unproductive technologies.
The only thing holding back our boundless natural gas future is the government. We need permits for more liquefied natural gas terminals, drilling leases and pipelines so we can transport our natural gas resources across the country and export them around the world.
Donald Trump is for all of this. Ms. 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 co-founder of Unleash Prosperity.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.