Energy Politics

Climate activists recently completed their annual get-together, this time in the iconic oil city of Baku, Azerbaijan. The annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP 29) provides a forum for energy executives, climate activists, NGO leaders and policymakers from nearly every country on Earth to mingle while assessing the progress on climate change goals. 

While a great gabfest, the meeting enables pressure to be applied to countries not living up to their 2015 Paris Agreement commitments to cut carbon emissions and for failing to shovel sufficient money to less-developed countries. 

COP 29 began with a bang not anticipated by attendees. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s President and COP host, defended his country’s oil and gas resources as “a gift of the Gods.” The conference was already grappling with the prospect of Donald Trump’s re-election, given his pro-hydrocarbons and anti-green views. People speculated Trump would remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement as he did in 2017. Dismantling climate change policies was part of Trump’s campaign stump speech. 

In recent years, renewable energy’s deficiencies in meeting the globe’s power needs have crippled economies and burdened residents with soaring utility bills. Electricity cost inflation is tied to the growing investment in renewable energy. The public has awakened to the challenges of a warming planet, the increasing world population desiring improved living standards and economies eroded by high energy costs. How to balance these conflicts is the challenge. 

Despite years of promises that the transition from hydrocarbons to renewable energy would be seamless and yield lower electricity and energy bills, the public finds the claims false. Electricity prices are rising faster than overall inflation. Moreover, the public is learning that policymakers caved to climate activists and renewable energy developers by implementing mandates to force the transition and lathering it with subsidies from tax revenues. 

EV Failures

Electric vehicles, once heralded as a game-change…