Sacramento’s Decarbonization Mandates Punish Working Families
Sacramento’s Decarbonization Mandates Punish Working Families
Over the last ten years, residential electricity rates in California have nearly doubled, and the average California household now pays nearly 15% more than the national average on their monthly electricity bills, according to the Energy Information Administration. A key driver behind this is state climate policy and decarbonization mandates. Specifically, in 2015, the legislature...
By Sahil Shah
How Much CO2 Do Oil Tankers Emit En-Route to California?
How Much CO2 Do Oil Tankers Emit En-Route to California?
With war in the Middle East disrupting shipments of crude oil, we have another reason to question policies that are driving our in-state oil industry into terminal decline. To briefly recap, Californians consumed 484 million barrels of oil in 2025, with in-state production only providing 111 million barrels. The rest was imported. It doesn’t have to...
By Edward Ring
Floating Offshore Wind – A Financial and Environmental Catastrophe
Floating Offshore Wind – A Financial and Environmental Catastrophe
Earlier this year, the California Coastal Commission released a report titled “Statewide Strategy for the Coexistence of California Fishing Communities and Offshore Wind Energy.” In addition to providing a “guiding framework” to protect California’s fishing communities, it “presents a roadmap for proposed offshore wind projects to become consistent with California’s relevant Coastal Act policies that recognize...
By Edward Ring
No, Sorry, the War Doesn’t Mean “Renewables” Will Replace Oil
No, Sorry, the War Doesn’t Mean “Renewables” Will Replace Oil
Right on schedule, the climate activists and their corporate backers are capitalizing on wartime fuel shortages to claim that now, finally, we can get serious about fighting climate change. On March 15, The New York Times weighed in with an article titled “How War in Iran Could Remake the Global Energy Landscape.” Claiming the oil crisis could...
By Edward Ring
The Denominators of our Prosperity – Energy and Water
The Denominators of our Prosperity – Energy and Water
The premise of this newsletter is that abundant and affordable energy and water are prerequisites to solving every other challenge standing in the way of lowering California’s overall cost-of-living. Not only because the cost for energy and water directly impacts the cost to build homes, or pay household utility bills, or engage in industrial production,...
By Edward Ring
The Public Purpose Program: California’s Hidden Tax Driving Up Utility Bills
The Public Purpose Program: California’s Hidden Tax Driving Up Utility Bills
After several rate hikes implemented in the last few years alone, Californians are asking why their energy bills keep climbing when they use the same amount of electricity or gas. According to a 2023 report from the Transparency Foundation, residents of California pay up to 67% more for electricity and 30% more for natural gas...
By Mitchell G. Bahnsen
EVs and California’s Future Demand for Electricity
EVs and California’s Future Demand for Electricity
When it comes to the achievement of “carbon neutrality” and the requisite energy policies to get there, few choices carry with them more consequences than the planned, nearly total electrification of our economy. And when it comes to electrification, few categories of consumption are likely to outweigh the demands of EVs. With a focus on...
By Edward Ring
Lines for Gas Coming to California
Lines for Gas Coming to California
Achieving California’s goal of net zero by 2045 requires rapidly transitioning away from combustible fuel. It’s a risky strategy. If the transition happens too fast, Californians confront energy shortages and high prices. When it comes to electricity, Newsom has so far managed to avoid an acute crisis by sensibly prolonging that transition. In 2023, he delayed the...
By Edward Ring
Silicon Valley’s Growing Anti-Woke, Pro-Abundance Rebellion
Silicon Valley’s Growing Anti-Woke, Pro-Abundance Rebellion
To paraphrase and utterly subvert one of Karl Marx’s best-known quotes, a “spectre” is haunting Silicon Valley—the spectre of authentic abundance. All the powers of woke California have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: public sector unions, the environmentalist lobby, the crony capitalists, Antifa radicals, and Reddit trolls. They’re going to lose....
By Edward Ring
Oil Extraction Reduces Methane Seepage
Oil Extraction Reduces Methane Seepage
An opinion piece in the Santa Barbara Independent, published last week, heralded the decision by the Santa Barbara County board of supervisors to phase out oil drilling, which as the authors put it, “will save lives, reduce air pollution, and help meet our climate goals.” Meanwhile, a study about to be publicly released by James Rector,...
By Edward Ring
Is Biodiesel Sustainable?
Is Biodiesel Sustainable?
For the most part, California’s farmers grow food, not fuel. But the fuel required to operate farm equipment is diesel fuel, increasingly refined from food grown on America’s great plains. Digging into this reveals a rabbit hole of such depth and complexity that I’ll skip to the conclusion before evaluating just a few critical details....
By Edward Ring
Newsom’s Concessions to Oil Industry Will Not Save It
Newsom’s Concessions to Oil Industry Will Not Save It
Access to adequate supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel for Californians is in dire peril, and the signing of SB 237 on September 19 will do very little to change that. To rescue the industry, far more sweeping legislation is required. First, to put this in perspective, note that fully 50 percent of California’s raw energy inputs still...
By Edward Ring