Energy & Environment

Reversing Trump Methane Regulations Won’t Help the Environment

Amid the seemingly endless debate over infrastructure proposals, Congress passed a resolution that’ll have significant negative consequences for U.S. oil and gas production. Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), Congress reversed the Trump administration’s changes to regulations of methane—also called natural gas—from production wells and pipelines. The use of the CRA means that the Obama-era methane rule...

August 10, 2021

Energy & Environment

Electricity isn’t on the special session agenda — and that’s a good thing

Amid the hubbub of the Texas House Democrats’ flight to Washington, D.C. to avoid voting on election protection reforms during the special session, many Texans are wondering why electric reliability didn’t make the special session agenda. After all, isn’t this a critical issue, especially as summer continues to heat up? But Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent...

July 15, 2021

Energy & Environment

Pro-Human Investing Means Supporting Fossil Fuels

Corporate virtue-signaling is the new black. In this era of hyper-connectedness and social media shaming campaigns, global mega-companies no longer battle over who can offer the best products for the best price. Instead, they fight to see who can sound the greenest. The trend is fueled by environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, which pressures...

June 24, 2021

Energy & Environment

Rose-Colored Blackouts: ERCOT’s Faulty Math Portends More Outages This Summer

You’d think ERCOT would have learned its lesson. I warned last year that summer blackouts were coming to Texas; it is likely we would have had outages in August 2020 if not for lower electricity demand caused by the COVID-19 economic shutdowns. The winter outages that killed 111 Texans — and the close call on...

May 12, 2021

Energy & Environment

On This Earth Day, Celebrate U.S. Environmental Leadership

Between the pandemic, divisive politics, and a media culture obsessed with rare but headline-grabbing shootings, it’s been a heavy year and a half for many Americans. This Earth Day, environmentalists will only perpetuate the doom-and-gloom zeitgeist by fixating on minuscule, insignificant changes in air pollution and overblown fears of apocalyptic climate change. But we can...

April 21, 2021

Energy & Environment

Prioritizing Reliability is the Only Way to Stop the Blackouts

If the February blackouts weren’t a wakeup call to the Texas Legislature, this week’s electricity conservation alerts — unheard of in mild April weather with demand nowhere close to peak levels — should make them bolt upright. It’s clear we desperately need market reform that prioritizes reliability, not just capacity. Unfortunately, “Texas-style blackouts” is already...

April 15, 2021

Taxes & Spending

More Stimulus? No Thanks

Let’s start with a simple fact: It’s not economic “stimulus” when someone comes along, takes money from your right pocket and puts some of it back in your left pocket (keeping much of it for “other uses”). That’s sleight-of-hand, not stimulus, which is a reason the government can’t stimulate anything other than more government. That’s...

March 30, 2021

Energy & Environment

Texas legislators must protect the lifeblood of Texas

With President Biden wasting little time in office, he has clearly set his sights on Texas’ prosperity — first by canceling the Keystone Pipeline and thousands of jobs along with it, then by rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, and lastly by banning fracking on federal land. Who could expect him to remember his promise on...

March 1, 2021

Energy & Environment

Powering the future: Texas must expand energy career & technical education

Astronauts. Ballerinas. Doctors. Firefighters. Oilfield workers? One of these things is not like the others. When children daydream about what they want to be when they grow up, oil and gas jobs rarely make the list — even in Texas, the country’s top energy-producing state. That needs to change for sake of the future of...

February 23, 2021

Energy & Environment

Texas’s Blackouts Are The Result Of Unreliable ‘Green’ Energy

As Texans reel from ongoing blackouts at the worst possible time, during a nationwide cold snap that has sent temperatures plummeting to single digits, the news has left people in other states wondering: How could this happen in Texas, the nation’s energy powerhouse? But policy experts have seen this moment coming for years. The only...

February 19, 2021

Energy & Environment

The Texas Power Outage Started With Bad Policy

The story of how Texas was brought to its knees by crippling cold weather leaving millions without power is a complex one, yet entirely predictable and avoidable. The details matter, so it is important to know the long story, but let’s start with the short version: For years, Texas’ grid operator (ERCOT) has overestimated the...

February 17, 2021

Energy & Environment

Why President-elect Biden’s energy plans could derail the American Dream

The coming inauguration of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States sets the stage for a policy agenda that openly and proudly demonizes the affordable, reliable energy resources we all rely upon. Biden’s energy plans are bad for our national security, economy, public health, and overall quality of life. But the American people’s ingenuity and creativity...

January 17, 2021