Dems Big Green agenda overshadowed by growth in natural gas usage

 Stephen Moore:

Among the great mythologies of recent years, one stands out above the rest, is that the world is in a "great energy transition." Actually, the world IS in a dramatic energy transition. But it isn't the one the Left wants it to be.

Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at wind and solar power, we still get less than 10% of our energy from green sources. The needle really hasn't moved at all over the past two decades. The more the government spends, the less we get per taxpayer dollar thrown at it. 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 per MMBTU, the lowest price level for energy, after adjusting for inflation, in 20 years and probably ever in the history of mankind. Just a few years ago, the price in real dollars was four times higher.

As an experiment, I went to the grocery store to find out what a 16-ounce bottle of Evian water now sells at. The price I saw was $2.69 and 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 better and will continue to keep the price low for many decades to come. The pace of drilling technology improvement far outpaces the pace of depletion. In other words, for all intents and purposes, America's natural gas supplies are 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 supply -- 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 technologies, says "we keep finding more natural gas as the drilling technologies get better."

Environmentalists should be celebrating the natural gas revolution: It is by far the largest reason that CO2 emissions have fallen dramatically in the U.S. and that our air is cleaner today than at any time in 100 years. At the same time, we are finding that windmills and solar panels are far from the "clean energy" that we had hoped they would be. We now have graveyards full of retired toxic plastic and steel wind turbines that have to be buried in massive landfills or dumped in the ocean. Windmills use 4,000 times more plastic than all the plastic straws in the world.
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So-called green energy is a waste of money.  Pushing the US to use more of it is both costly and counter productive.  The US should welcome the increased use of natural gas.

See also:

Energy Companies May Be On Cusp Of Uncorking Next Massive Oil, Gas Boon