Blue States – High Rates Tom Pyle, President, Institute for Energy Research

Connect with Tom on his LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasjpyle/

Check out the IER Institute for Energy Research https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/blue-states-high-rates/

From the IER Report:

Expensive Electricity Is A Choice: How States Shape Electricity

The data is clear: bluer states tend to have much higher electricity prices than red states.

More than almost any other product, electricity prices are a direct result of state energy policies because states have the exclusive power to decide which resources supply their grids.

Under the Federal Power Act (FPA), Congress preserved expansive state powers to regulate the electricity generated and sold within their borders. These powers allow states to determine their generation portfolios, site and permit power generation facilities outside nuclear and hydroelectric plants, regulate retail prices, and exercise authority over resource adequacy and reliability, meaning states are charged with ensuring that utilities, and electric cooperatives, often referred to as load serving entities (LSEs), maintain adequate power plant capacity to keep the lights on.

States can also enact energy policies requiring a certain percentage of retail electricity sales in the state to come from renewable generation under a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), or can set energy efficiency resource standards (EERS) or clean energy standards (CES).

The broad authority of states to determine their generation portfolios, set retail electricity prices, and establish mandates for wind and solar generators under the FPA has led to a diversity of policies that ultimately determine the price of electricity for families and businesses in the United States.

For example, Figure 1 shows the average all-sectors electricity price for each state from January 2025 through August 2025. In total, 86% of states with electricity prices above the national average of 13.54 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) in the continental U.S. are reliably blue, having voted for President Biden in 2020 and Vice President Harris in 2024 (see Table 1 in the Appendix).

According to Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, each of the top five most expensive states for electricity have mandates requiring 100% of their power to come from renewable or carbon-free sources, making their electricity unnecessarily more expensive. These, and other mandates, such as net metering requirements, are driving up prices across America (see Figure 2).

In contrast, eight out of 10 states with the lowest electricity prices are reliably red, and seven of these states have no 100% carbon-free mandates. Additionally, 20 of 25 states with the lowest electricity prices are Red states; only four are blue, and one is purple (see Table 1, Appendix).

State Spotlights

Each state’s energy mix and regulatory structure is unique. The state spotlights below highlight how policies enacted in state legislatures impact the cost of electricity for their constituents.

New York

Federal data show New York’s electricity prices were 58% higher than the national average and 62% higher than Florida’s, based on the average all-sectors rate from January 2025 to August 2025.

Furthermore, a study from the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) found New York has experienced some of the fastest increases in electricity prices in the country. Retail electricity prices for residential customers increased by 36% between 2019 and 2024, nearly three times faster than the national average and the second-fastest increase in the country during this period, after California. PPI determined that electricity is expensive in New York due to a wide range of factors, but the report clearly explains: “The convergence of shrinking supply and rising demand inevitably leads to upward price pressures for consumers. These costs are compounded by the immense capital investment required to transform the grid and specific policy choices that increase the cost of energy production [emphasis added].”

For example, New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) constitutes a massive renewable energy mandate, requiring the state to produce 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040, which will require substantial capital investments financed by ratepayers.

At the same time, the state’s firm capacity is being diminished by the premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, the state’s decision to deny the expansion of needed natural gas pipelines, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s decision to block a number of necessary upgrades for natural gas power plants, which the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) warns could cause an increased risk of power shortages over the next five years.

Prices are also rising in response to state policies mandating the electrification of buildings and transportation, which are straining New York’s already overburdened grid and necessitating additional infrastructure buildouts. The state also suffers from natural gas supply issues due to its decision to ban hydraulic fracturing. In addition, ratepayers effectively pay a tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The expenses associated with these policies are projected to be so large that New York Governor Kathy Hochul delayed implementing the state’s capand-tax mandates under the 2019 climate law. The state claimed the regulations would be “infeasible” because they would impose “extraordinary and damaging costs upon New Yorkers.” The Governor has approved two natural gas pipelines as part of a rumored deal with the Trump administration to approve offshore wind facilities.

These policy reversals beg the question: If Democratic policies make energy so affordable, why are they backtracking from them?

California

California’s electricity rates are the second-highest in the nation. Rates are double the national average. Governor Newsom and California’s state legislature have embraced numerous policies that intentionally increase electricity rates, including a carbon dioxide reduction mandate, renewable mandates, solar cost-shifting (net metering), nuclear reactor closures, and EV charging subsidies, to name a few. Instead of trying to expand electricity generation to meet the energy needs of Californians, California is second in the country in electricity imports, as it embeds policy goals in electric rates to drive social policy. This is a toxic mix for California’s ratepayers.

California is second in the nation in total electricity generation from renewable resources and leads the country in utility-scale solar generating capacity. California’s generation mix is 42% natural gas, 39% non-hydroelectric renewables, 12% hydroelectric, and 7% nuclear.

California’s sky-high electricity rates are not the result of scarcity, or being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean like Hawaii, but rather are the direct consequence of policies that deliberately sidelined reliable, conventional fuels (including large hydropower) in favor of mandating and subsidizing preferred renewables. In 2002, Senate Bill (SB) 1078 created the Renewable Portfolio Standard, starting with a 20% renewables requirement by 2017. In 2006, Assembly Bill (AB) 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, capped greenhouse gas emissions, forcing the state to adopt more wind and solar generation. Billions in rooftop-solar subsidies followed through the California Solar Initiative and other rooftop solar incentives, which have caused massive costshifting. In 2015, SB 350 raised the RPS target to 50% by 2030; in 2018, SB 100 pushed it to 60% by 2030 and 100% “carbon-free” electricity by 2045. In 2020, Governor Newsom issued an executive order creating a goal for all new cars sold in 2035 to be zero-emission vehicles, and the California Air Resources Board implemented that executive order by adopting the Advanced Clean Cars II regulation. The Advanced Clean Cars II regulation required a waiver under the Clean Air Act from the federal government. The waiver was granted by the Biden administration, but Congress later rescinded the waiver. The waiver would have allowed California to set strict emissions standards, forcing more demand on the grid by effectively banning the internal combustion engine in the state. California’s experience demonstrates that aggressive renewable energy mandates and climate policies entail steep costs borne directly by ratepayers. The state’s electricity rates, now double the national average, are not an unfortunate side effect but the predictable outcome of deliberate policy choices that prioritize emissions reduction over affordability.

Florida

Among the nation’s most populous states, Florida is a clear outlier for electricity affordability. Florida ranks as the second-largest electricity producer in the United States, trailing only Texas. Florida’s subtropical climate, characterized by hot, humid summers, mild winters, and a hurricane season, presents unique challenges for providing affordable electricity. Its residential sector stands out nationally: virtually every household relies on electricity for air conditioning, and about 90% use it for home heating. As a result, Florida homes account for 54% of the state’s total electricity consumption, the highest residential share of any state.

Despite these intense demands, Florida delivers electricity at prices 2% below the U.S. average at 13.27 cents per kWh for all sectors. It achieves this mainly by generating 75% of its power from natural gas, even though the state has no significant natural gas production of its own and must import virtually all of it. This traces directly to policy choices made under uninterrupted Republican control of the governorship and both legislative chambers since 1999. During the shale revolution that began around 2008, Florida pursued natural gas generation, raising its share from about 40% in 2005 to 75% today. Florida has been successful by avoiding the aggressive climate mandates adopted by most high-cost blue states. At the same time, the state manages to maintain these relatively low prices despite frequent hurricanes that regularly damage transmission lines, substations, and power plants, forcing ongoing investments in storm hardening and rapid restoration that add to overall grid expenses.

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:00:09] Hey, welcome to the Energy Impacts podcast. I am David Blackman. I’m here today with my co-host, Stuart Thurley, of the Sandstone Group up there, and you’re in, no, you’re Abilene today. I can recognize the bookcase behind you. He alternates between Abilane and Oklahoma, so I never know where he is. He’s the man of international, interstate man of mystery here. We are here to talk today with our friend, Tom Pyle, who is the… Is it CEO of the Institute for Energy Research?

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:00:43] Whatever, titles are titles.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:00:45] The big guy, the big dude, the Big Cheese, the C-Sweet man. How you doing? It’s good to see you. I’m good.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:00:52] I’m good. I had a great Christmas with the family. We spent some quality time together and then woke up one morning and there’s no more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was going to do that a year since the president’s been sworn in.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:01:08] I know it’s crazy. I mean, Terry and I were going to do boxing everything over the past weekend. And I wake up at five o’clock Saturday morning and, you know, so it’s been drinking through fire hose.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:01:20] All oriented in the right direction though. That’s the important thing.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:01:25] Exactly. Exactly. I wish more people understood that like you do, because it is, I think, all oriented in the right direction. But we are here to talk about not Venezuela, amazingly enough, but a fantastic new piece of work that IER put out this week called Blue States High Rates. And excuse my gravelly voice, I’m having some sinus issues. And this is a fantastic study. Everybody needs to go read it at instituteforenergyresearch.com or .org. I think both get you there. And it’s a fantastic piece, which I believe should, if the Democrats are paying any attention, serve as a warning signal that they probably don’t want to focus on this affordability issue all that much in the months to come. Tom, tell us what the basic. Foundation for this study is.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:02:23] Yeah, you know, electricity rates have been going up and that’s certainly felt in people’s pocketbooks and people are wondering what the heck, what’s happening here, right? From January of 2021 to last January, electricity prices raised up about 27%. And, you know, the thing here though is 86% of the states with electricity costs above the national average are, you can see the map, they’re blue. Yeah. They’re reliably blue. And there are reasons for that. Policy decisions matter. We’ve been warning about this for well over a decade. I know that you guys have as well. When you live in a world where electricity demand is generally flat, you have the luxury of making a lot of bad decisions and not having big impacts on people’s lives. But when you live a world were electricity demand is rising, and it’s for a whole host of reasons, and they’re all good reasons, then those policy, the impacts of those policy choices affect you much more significantly, and that’s exactly what we see. The map that you see right there are states that have 100% renewable electricity mandates, right? Or necessarily, or like you can’t, you know, you can build a new gas plant even, and you shut your coal plants, right? I mean, these states that you’re seeing that are dotted in blue have had policies that have deliberately done two things at the same time, subsidized and mandated. Renewables, which in and of themselves aren’t a bad thing. I think there’s a market for renewables and I think renewables should be part of a healthy electricity mix. But when you combine mandating those and giving them generous subsidies, whether at the federal or state level, but mostly at the state level. And you have this sort of Tanya Harding approach to the other resources in your electricity mix And by that, I mean deliberately forcing. Utilities to shut down their coal plants or shut down there nuclear plants. And you add the third spoke to that wheel, which is I call the sort of electrification of everything. Yeah. Right? Where you try to force a 100% electric vehicles where you try and get rid of gas stoves where you force commercial build, commercial build new build not to use gas. You do all that thing, all of those things. These are the results. New York, for example, pays 58% more than the national average, 62% higher than my beloved state of Florida, which is an energy-intensive state. But they’re below the national-average. Why? Because over the last 15 years, unlike California, they made good, smart decisions about the types of electricity that they’re going to need and use to power the state of the Florida. And so. You’re absolutely right. The Democrats do not want to go down this road because the more they talk about it, the more people are going to understand what actually is the reason for these higher prices.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:05:49] So one thing I think people need to understand too, and I want you to help explain it is, you know, we’ve got California and Hawaii and California are the two most expensive states. They’ve gone whole hog into these climate alarm policies with renewable portfolio standards, all these different things, high taxes. And yet Texas is where I live. We have more solar, more wind than any other state in the country. Texas ranks as among the 11 lowest electricity cost states in the country. How has Texas, despite that huge fleet of both wind and solar, how has Texas avoided becoming one of those more expensive states? Well, they didn’t.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:06:40] They didn’t choose one over the other. Yeah. First of all, that’s an important consideration. We have huge gas powered electricity. The electricity mix in Florida is, yeah, high penetration. Yeah, Florida too. But what they have decided not to trade one for the other, right? And I’ll just be honest about Texas. Texas’ electricity rates are indeed lower and the state’s done a good job there, but. We had our challenges with reliability. Oh, for sure. Big time. Because we haven’t been building enough.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:07:15] Yeah

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:07:16] Right and you know and some of that as a result of that surge of wind and solar but you know the part of the reason there was such a surge of winter and solar in Texas is because they have the wind which makes sense but also they were also chasing a lot of federal and state incentives as well you know. The state of Texas subsidized a lot of the transmission that brought that energy to where the people are. Are. But in terms of affordability. They did what the Southeast in particular is really good at. And you look at that map in most of the rest of the country, they didn’t sacrifice certain forms of electricity generation on the altar of climate or net zero or renewables. Renewables are neither free nor cheap. That’s the bottom line.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:08:06] Yeah. Stu, can you put up that graphic, you know, the moving graphic that really illustrates which states are more costly and which are cheaper in the red and blue? There we go. There we Go. Look at this. This is since 2004. Blue states, red states, what are the most expensive? And just look at the pile of blue states on the left, the most expensive, the pile red states at the end, the least expensive. This isn’t an accident. It’s I mean, it’s just a direct result of political and public policy activity.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:08:43] I mean, the data is absolutely clear, but you know, Alaska is an outlier. Why? Because it’s, it’s rugged, you know? I mean they’re, they’re isolated. Their, their distribution system is scattered all over the place. The little towns in Alaska burn, you have diesel generation, you can’t, you know can’t do a whole heck of a lot about.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:09:05] And their, their leaders are not our rhinos, uh, are not necessarily Democrats. So they really, that really needs to be a, uh a purple as opposed to a thing. Sorry. I love Alaska. I love all my trips up there and, uh all of the oil and everything else up there, uh very close ties up there. It’s an incredible place.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:09:29] Through that but you know this business of blaming President Trump for the one big beautiful bill where they eliminated thankfully the subsidies for wind and solar by the way those don’t even go away yet right so not here you know it’s just not true you know they’re still harvesting those subsidies for a while so you can’t blame President Trump you can blame data centers there’s plenty empirical evidence out there to show that the data centers aren’t sucking up all the electricity and raising the prices. And we’re living in a world where everything’s going up. Why? It’s a good thing. The economy’s growing. We’re increasing manufacturing. We are doing more as a country. We’re wealthier, right? More electricity is a sign of wealth and health, right. But the policies. That they’ve been putting in place at the state level in particular, but also at the federal level. The Federal Power Act is pretty clear. The states have a lot of control over the choices that are made with respect to how the electrons flow in their states. So for these governors or these politicians to blame data centers or to blame Donald Trump or the Republicans in Congress, they’re just not telling the truth.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:10:56] So one thing I think could actually, and it’ll take a few years, but that I believe that it’s something the administration is about to do, I believe, that could have a significant impact as far as giving us some relief on electricity costs in America, is the rescission of the 2010 endangerment finding by the EPA on greenhouse gas regulation, which has allowed the EPA to regulate. Plant food in the atmosphere as if it’s a pollutant for the last 15 years. And it’s just created this enormous overlay of additional federal regulation. I wonder if you think that could actually have a, you know, produced years down the road, a softening empowered power prices.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:11:45] The biggest impact the endangerment finding has had, in particular with respect to electricity and has been on electricity. Because you’re right, they used the endangerman finding to justify regulations that forced the closure of coal plants. In 2000, I wanna say five, I think 60% of our electricity generation in this country was from coal. We’re down to like 19, I think.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:12:17] 19 yeah

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:12:19] if you combine natural gas and coal, the percentage is the same from 2005. We just replaced a lot of that coal with natural gas. That’s not good enough. The Biden administration wanted to use the endangerment finding to prevent new gas plants from being built. And also if they were to be built, they would have to put carbon capture technology on them, which if you’re a utility, you’re like, I’m not doing that. It’s not economical and I’m doing it.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:12:50] Or mandate hydrogen options, which will never be used.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:12:55] Yes. You know, the President Trump, they say, oh, he’s the reason for higher electricity prices. His DOE is, is keeping coal plants open. There are 28 coal plants that are slated to be retired before the end of President Trump’s term. And as they’ve been sort of falling, you know, scheduled for termination, they’ve issued emergency orders to keep them open.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:13:22] One of them last week was Colorado’s and Colorado had 19% of their, uh, electricity, I believe 27% of their electricity was from that one coal plant. This is just not smart.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:13:38] That one in particular is near and dear to my heart because earlier in my career we had to develop the whole campaign to save that plan. It’s a beautiful town, lovely people, you know those kind of decisions made in you know Denver or Washington or Sacramento, they don’t realize the impacts they have on these communities as well.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:14:01] So Tom, you cannot take away 27% of a state’s grid in a signature move to try to be, um, uh, mightier than now, or, you know, have a holier than now attitude and realize you’re not going to keep the lights on with wind and solar, it is not going to happen.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:14:25] No it’s absolutely not going to happen and you know they they say oh it’s cheap and the president is uh you know cutting off these options it’s it may be cheap to install but it’s not cheap to manage it’s long you have to you have To build transmission from where these resources are to where people live that’s a huge cost you have. To manage the grid in such a way that you have to sort of. Accommodate for that intermittency, you know? When the wind blows, great, but when it doesn’t and it shuts off, then what do you do? And then there’s these crazy policies like net metering, which force the utilities to buy power back from consumers and all of that is, it adds cost to the management of the grid and impacts reliability. And then combine that with the fact that you have to back it all up. Right, exactly. You’re building two different grids. Two complete different grides when we had one that worked pretty darn well before they started to do it all.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:15:32] Yeah, I mean, we never had blackout issues in Texas before we implemented the renewable portfolio standard in 2001. We got our electricity from coal and natural gas, mainly a little bit of nuclear, very little wind and just a little here and there smidgen. We didn’t have blackout. Issues because we had plenty of power generation, plenty of base load generation, Plenty of reserve capacity. And when it, you know, when the big winter storms hit. You know, we were able to kick in more additional generation capacity onto the grid and keep the lights on and the heaters running. You know now, every time we have a winter storm, people have to, you know, fire up the gas generators, make sure everything’s functioning before they get here, you know, fill up the tanks with gasoline if they’re gasoline powered or diesel powered. It’s just crazy the way we’ve allowed things to deteriorate in the state when It was completely unnecessary and just, frankly. A money grab based on a model for a power grid by the way that was created and sold to the state of Texas by who? Ken Lay and Enron. Same as California. Okay. So I mean, you know, I know Texas Republican politicians don’t like to talk about that, but that’s the damn truth. Yeah. And I’m just tired. I’m not going to mince words about that crap anymore. I like it. Amen to that.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:16:57] Like, can I just focus on California for a couple minutes? Absolutely.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:17:02] About to do that for you. Let me bring this up. This is the American energy Alliance. And I absolutely love this. I was sitting there doing a little research before the podcast. This is on the, uh, AEA, the American Energy Alliance. I think, you know, these guys, don’t you?

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:17:20] Yeah, that’s my advocacy organization.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:17:24] He’s the president of that people. Anyway, let’s let’s get on to California because California is a national security risk and Governor Newsom and his beloved hair gel, if he ever fell into the bay, he would actually cause a oil spill that would be greater than the Exxon Valdez. Here’s the problem with California. His war on oil and gas has been too good. You have caused 20% of the refineries to close. The main pipeline is now closing. Sable Offshore has now gotten permits to come back online, but it’s too little too late. There’s a new law in California that says that Gavin Newsom is gonna roll out 2,000 permits for Kern County. That’s not enough oil because physics matter to an oil pipeline and they are losing two million dollars a month in that pipeline. That is now affecting Washington and Oregon. The entire west coast is now facing eight and ten dollar gasoline and diesel and I tracked one in from last year that was Russian oil refined in India. And it was jet fuel brought in because of a refinery fire. Refinery fires happen. This is an issue. Now I loved your article. I want to hear, thank you for letting me rant by the way, David. I appreciate that. Our Dolly giant tribes. Oh yeah, sorry. I just, I had to have it get a moment there to clip, you know, it’s for a, a, uh, a viral moment, but on your viral moment The Newsom’s Democrat proposed new tax on Californians. This is horrific.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:19:25] Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, they had all these policies in place. They demonized the oil and gas industry. Every angle, every turn, they blamed them for this and that. And then Chevron’s like, yeah. I think I’m going to move to Texas. They’re like, wait, what?

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:19:47] After 120 years in California, yeah.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:19:50] Yeah. I mean, towns are named after refinery check on refineries in Texas. And then Valero, we can’t keep these refinerys open. Wait, no state will pay you. No, I promise we’ll pay you like that’s literally the panic level going on. And you talk about like, oh, we’re we’re this green state. We’re this model for for all this stuff. They import more than 50 percent of their oil, mostly from the Middle East. 70. 70, thank you. They import electricity from Nevada and Arizona, right? So on paper they papered out this utopia where they have fewer emissions, but they’re not counting all the visions from there.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:20:30] Yeah, they’re just, yeah, moving them around, yeah.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:20:33] And that plane trip that you mentioned with all the oil being processed and moved on, what’s the carbon footprint on that?

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:20:40] And by the way, uh, they’re, uh not only that, but they, uh import natural gas and they are burning more coal now than they were when they had coal plants. Why? Because people forget coal is still used for industry and cement.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:21:02] Hundred percent. Two times the national average their electricity rates. This is the result of policy. This a result of crazy mandates and cost shifting policies that these guys have been implementing over the last 10-15 years. You know, the good news is, I’ll give you an example. In New York, Governor Hokel, she has no choice now. Starting to talk about the urgency of new nuclear, she’s approving gas pipelines to bring gas into the state. Again, like Stu said, too little too late. New Yorkers are hurting or suffering because of these policies. And then just to shift gears a little back to oil, you got this political boundary line between Pennsylvania and New York. The gas is under both states. The people who live in Pennsylvania, who live the in the Marcellus, they have generational wealth gain.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:22:13] Oh, I know. Yeah, millionaires everywhere.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:22:16] The people who live in New York right on the other side of that political boundary, their median income is still half the size of those people in the counties in Pennsylvania. So destructive energy policies hurt people.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:22:32] And our, and our biggest city is, uh, has got a, uh American socialist communist divided by the square root of three, whatever he’s calling himself today, this is absolutely going to be horrific and I can’t believe that we have actually got a so a democratic socialist Republican Democrat in as a mayor of New York, whatever the hell his name is, I mean.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:22:58] I don’t get it. Yeah, no, I agree and I’m wondering if they’re gonna airlift him and send him to the Southern District of New York.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:23:06] Well, that’d be a good thing. Bad joke. So, but back to New York too. It’s not just New York that suffered from that political divide, right? It’s New England because New York has basically been this damn barricade against getting a 125 mile pipeline built from the Marcellus into Massachusetts so you can blink into the natural gas supply in New England and stop importing natural gas from Russia. And other places, you know? Yeah.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:23:38] It would be nice if the people in New England would advocate for that. Yeah, but they don’t. That’s the problem. They’re in that blue squadron, right? They tried to get a transmission line from the hydro up in Canada down into Massachusetts. They tried three different times, three different states. Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire all rejected the transmission line. Why? They weren’t going to benefit from it. That’s why and how much how many more billions of dollars does that add to the cost of electricity than running a pipeline from Pennsylvania through the state of New York into the north into the you out.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:24:22] You know, I put out an article and Secretary Bergham had made the comment, we could solve all of the energy problems of all the offshore wind with one pipeline and I put out a quote, oil saved the whales the first time and a pipeline could save them the second time.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:24:50] But it’s as if voters in these states cannot, they’ve lost the ability to connect cause and effect when it comes to their energy costs. They’ve just lost the ability to realize that they’re paying so much for their energy because of the people they keep voting for and putting into power. Right? I mean, it’s just bizarre. It’s a bizarre feature of our modern society.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:25:16] Yeah, well, I see a comment from Robert. He’s right. New England imports LNG. It’s insane!

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:25:27] Yep. Tankers from Russia and Algeria flowing into Boston Harbor.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:25:31] Everyone right like what what what world was in what world does that make sense

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:25:36] I want to bring up this one right here. When, uh, I believe he had a comment on Hawaii. I’m trying to find it again. Here we go. Um, Robert also says Hawaii has to, and does import coal and oil for electric. Uh, Robert, they shut down their last coal plant and they’ve been burning. Are you ready? Oil, fuel, just like it is worse. In fact, we could not. This is kind of a fun little thing. We could not even sell our own LNG to Hawaii because of the Jones act. I just wrote an article yesterday. We could, uh, in fact, seize dark fleet LNG tankers and then reflag them as us, uh go around the Jones. It is legal and there is precedence for this. So I’m all in, let’s board some of these Russian tankers, hijack them, and then let’s get LNG to Alaska and I mean, Hawaii and really save the environment.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:26:42] Also, Puerto Rico would benefit from a Jones Act wave around this stuff. It sure would. You know, if they can’t repeal the Jones Act, at least repeal it for LNG.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:26:54] Don’t just make a car val right just just acquire some tankers illegally i mean not illegally just put the co-scorer on it get mark rubio sent as secretary rubio get him in the front of that because he’s now the coach i love all the secretary ruby oh uh memes going around now the uh coach of the dolphins he’s not the the czar for russia we might as well put him on a Coast Guard tanker and be the captain of one of these LNG tankers. That’s a classic.

 

Speaker 4 [00:27:25] That’s the best beams of the last month, the Marco Rubio beam.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:27:30] Um, so, you know, uh, I guess, you know, now the study’s out there. You got this fantastic piece and all the great data in it. Do you, are you optimistic the Republican candidates will use any of it and smartly get the truth out to the voters in their districts leading up to the midterms?

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:27:52] Hope so. We have been very aggressive in pushing this report out to obviously the administration, Capitol Hill. We sent it to all the Republican Legislatures in all 50 states. And we’ve gotten great feedback so far from folks and people who have come back and said, thanks, this is the information that I’ve needed or looked for. And it’s all been there. It’s out. It’s all EIA data.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:28:18] Sure. But you have to have someone like your group, you know, collate it and get it out there in a form that’s easily digestible for people who are, you know, familiar with industry jargon and that’s a hard thing that you guys do. Yeah. Well, thank you for that.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:28:36] You know, and it’s not like we’re happy about it. We don’t want anyone in any state to suffer. But you know, the takeaway here is focus policy on affordability and reliability. We are doing more with less all the time. That is what entrepreneurial capitalism free markets do. We do more with, we are cleaner, better. We do it cleaner, faster. Than anybody else in the world because we have wealth. And, you know, unfortunately they were able to get away with these policies for so long because we were a little bit stagnant here.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:29:18] Oh, for sure.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:29:19] You don’t see that right now, right? You see the numbers on projections on GDP, see the corrections on GDP. You see all the stuff that’s going on. The old BBB, the tax, affordable tax deal, that will kick in to people this year. I do think that we’re gonna be, I think we’re going to see the economy improve. I think, we’re to see some movement here and people are going to start feeling it in their pocketbooks. But the president is right. President Trump is absolutely right. The main driver of all costs for any economy is energy.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:29:57] So for sure.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:29:58] And if you get it right, if you get gas prices down, you get electricity prices down. You make good choices. These companies are amazing. They’ll do a lot. They’ll produce the power we need. They’ll build the data centers and our emissions will continue to go down. It’s just it’s just so silly. The left’s idea that like the only way to stop us from destroying the planet is to just live like we lived in the stone That’s not really what they want.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:30:28] I had a guy, a comment on LinkedIn, you know, I made a post yesterday about Trump pulling us out of the IPCC and all those other ridiculous hoax groups internationally. And one of the guys responding to me says, um, oh shoot, now I’m forgetting where I was going with that.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:30:47] I’m just having a brain for it.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:30:49] Um…

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:30:51] I do want to talk about that because that was a good decision that the administration made.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:30:57] It totally was, yeah.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:30:59] Because now the next president can’t just say, oh, we’re going back into Paris, right? They’re gonna have to, there’s gonna have to be a little bit more of a process for that. And it’s a larger pick point about the UN too. What interest is the UN serving the United States?

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:31:21] No, I hope what they’re doing is trying to just pull us out of that organization entirely piece by piece.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:31:28] Ran by program. In fact, I did write about that this morning and had some fun with it. And I put in here, here’s the executive order, the key, key things about the executive order. And in the bottom of the article, Clark Savage put in here that we’ll be talking about this with Tom on a different Tom on the energy realities podcast on Monday. And so you sit back and take a look, uh, I vote right now, all those in favor, let’s get the UN out of the U S send them to Switzerland and cut their budgets because the amount of money that these hit are in the billions of dollars that we were wasting. It is, it is unbelievable how much money we were. By the UN climate change accord and all of those things.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:32:27] Well, and then more importantly, Secretary Besant pulled us out of the Glip Green Climate Fund. Yes. Immediately thereafter, which basically was a slush fund, right? I mean, you know. One of a million, yeah. Exactly. So, yeah, I’m really, you can say he’s breaking eggs and challenging the Constitution and the separation of powers. What I can say is that I think that the President of the United States. Has a clear vision. Where the United States needs to be both economically and from a security perspective. And undermining all of that is energy. It always has been, and it always will be. And I’m hopeful that we, you know, maybe take a break here and there, give me a week off, but I’m hoping that this trajectory continues. And I hope the economy improves to the point where people feel better about their about their position because the end of the day when we talk about all this stuff I always remind my staff we have to talk this is about people and what’s in the best interest and human flourishing you know and human flourishing and that’s that’s why we we’re so aggressive on the car stuff over all these years like don’t take away people’s freedom to choose the types of cars and trucks that best suit their needs and also those policies add added to the cost of cars too right? You know, the average cost of a new car is over $50,000.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:34:05] It’s gone up 45% since 2021.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:34:08] Who can afford that?

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:34:10] Nobody. I mean, you priced out 90% of American consumers from the new karma.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:34:16] And you priced out kids coming with their first car as their first son, taste of freedom. You price out the housekeeper who has to take public transportation when she gets her first car. Now she can load her stuff in the car and do more jobs. And then she can turn that housekeeping, individual housekeeping deal into a business. And then, she can put her kids through college. So, we always, you know, we always talk-

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:34:40] But that’s all intentional, too. You should make the point. That’s all intentional. That is the main goal, right, of the climate change movement. To make transportation, to make energy more expensive for everyone, right? So that people have to use less and less and more of it.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:34:57] You know, I think Gavin Newsom told all of us to hold the beer, hold his beer. He, uh, when Tim Walz was coming up with the daycare center scheme and the fraud and waste and abuse in his state. Um, Gavin Newsome said, hold my beer. Let me show you how to do a bullet train for, and I’m going to, I’m going to get billions of dollars from the federal government, and I’m not even going to build a bullet. So, you know, these guys are fighting for, you know, hold my beer, I’m going to be more corrupt than you.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:35:31] Yeah, that’s right. We could spend a whole episode.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:35:35] I know, kid. Hey guys, I actually remembered what my brain fart was about. So this guy comes back to me and he says, if you’re serious about the environment, you need to be in favor of massive reduction of human population. And I said, oh, I just love it when you, club of Rome Malfusians, just say it all out loud, right? I mean, come on, that’s, we got to kill eight billion people to save the earth. I mean that’s basically what that crap is. Who should go first? Yeah, who gets to go first exactly?

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:36:09] Who gets to go first? Who gets the stand in line? I’m guessing he doesn’t want to be on the short list.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:36:16] He probably won’t want a volunteer to be…

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:36:19] 20 of the 25 cheapest electricity rates in the country are red. Only four blue and one purple even come close to making the list. It’s just, there’s a direct correlation guys.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:36:35] It’s on the mark.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:36:36] The policies of the state and what they force the utilities to do and not do, and the price of electricity.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:36:43] And New York is, you’ve got articulated in the article wonderfully. New York has made up of, are you ready? Nuclear natural gas as most of their energy and they’re still more expensive. New Jersey is the same way. I I’m like, what? My head exploded when I looked at New Jersey. I mean, this is nuts.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:37:08] They’re pushing all the offshore. The two governors, the new governors of New Jersey and Virginia said, oh, we’re on an affordability camp. We want to make electricity rates affordable. So what’s the first thing the Virginia governor Spanberger wants to do? Get Pennsylvania back in Reggie. Right, exactly, yeah.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:37:33] Uh, Tom, if you don’t mind, I’d love to visit. I don’t know who this LinkedIn user is, but, uh, do you think net zero is dead? I don’t think so. Carbon control, valuation, profiteering is alive and well. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I’m going to go and David’s tired of me saying this, but I believe that the world is bifurcating in two different groups. Those that are going to be following net zero de-industrialization and those new trading blocks are going be based off of energy policies. Those following non net zero will be fiscally sound and trading with each other. And that new trading block is going to be India, Russia, the United States, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, uh, Venezuela now. And so when you sit back and take a look, that is a very, very good question, but it’s also loaded to the new trading blocks that I’ve been talking about for a very long time. And Germany, uh, was really the poster child of wind and solar. They failed. They’ve got the industrialization going on net zero. Then you have the UK Harris armor. It was great seeing the memes from the UK saying, president Trump, will you please come get our leader next? I’m sorry. I thought those were fantastic.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:39:08] I think Ned Zero will never be dead because Ned Zero was a foil for this philosophy, for this movement, for this sort of socialism, the Malthusianism, the redistribution of wealth. That is what Ned Zero is, just a narrative, right? And those folks are never going to go away. They’ll try to repackage it. It could be something else. But those fundamentals, it’s just a worldview, right? It’s a worldview of economics and rule of law and prosperity versus control, command and control. And like you said, deindustrialization and depopulationism, that’s what we’re doing here. That’s sort of what undergirds all of this, is how do people view the world and how they think it should be run?

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:40:08] Well, and then they’ll never stop until they’re forced to stop. They’re no different than the Marxists of the 1914 Russian Revolution or 1917. Excuse me. I mean, it’s the same, it’ the same Marxism repackaged, you know, with a green facade. That’s all it’s been. And it’s like you say, they’ll just think of a, they’re regrouping now and they’ll come out with another narrative that their friends in the media will promote. Yeah, a hundred percent. Hey, I want to hear something out. Oh, go ahead. Yes, please. That’s what I was just about to go to.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:40:45] Thank you. So blue states, high rates. This was an appetizer, guys. So what we did was we did the national map and we did the averages so everyone could kind of get a baseline and see where they were. But we only focused on a handful of states and sort of dove deeper into those states. Our goal this year is to work with our friends at AOER to build an energy affordability index. Nice. And we’re going to. Going to do this on an annual basis and just update the numbers every year so that everyone can see where they’re going. Like you saw that, you know, that wonderful video of the changes so that that will continue and people will have the information on an updated basis every year and know where their state ranks on energy affordability and it probably might include gas gas prices too because I think gas prices and electricity prices are the sort of one, two punch in people’s pocketbooks big time.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:41:46] Yeah, gas prices are going down too. Man, I paid $2.99 the other day. It’s fantastic.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:41:51] I would add diesel to that for the standpoint that we use diesel, uh, brings in all your ag, all your food, all of your other stuff in there, and that is a direct proportionment to the food costs.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:42:06] Great idea.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:42:09] Thank you, Tom. Yeah. We’ll, let’s cycle back here soon. I let too much time go by from the last time we talked and I promise to be better about that going forward. Oh.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:42:21] My pleasure, it was great to spend time with you guys as always.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:42:23] Before we close out, let me address this one. We see heavy industries around the globe, spilling up for hydrogen. Why is that? There’s a couple of different things. I’m working with a coal group that is actually looking at using, um, coal for liquefaction to gasoline and diesel. And they use hydrogen as a, uh, in a, a event to get to net zero on it so that you can get by and get funding. So the bottom line to this answer is it’s about the crazy funding. So.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:42:59] Like so much of the rest that we’ve seen but you know hydrogen is never going to be a global solution to anything.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:43:08] Uh, there’s only white hydrogen, which is a natural occurring hydrogen. There’s three companies in the world that are actually trying to mine a legitimate natural, uh, hydrogen. I didn’t even know it existed until six months ago. Uh, but it is like the unicorn that’s out there. It’s expensive to get to.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:43:29] So then who’s going to provide the trillions of dollars to build the infrastructure?

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:43:35] It’s a tougher infrastructure to build than natural gas because it is a smaller molecule. It escapes, it is not the same.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:43:46] Yeah, I like to in these moments, I’d like to remind folks that 30 years ago, the world used of the of the big pie of energy, the world used 80% of it was coal, oil and natural gas.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:44:00] It’s just today, Tom.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:44:02] EIGHTY PERCENT!

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:44:05] And how many trillions have we spent on wind and solar?

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:44:08] The ratio has changed, but the time has changed.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:44:13] Texas has spent a hundred and fifty billion dollars on wind and solar. Do you know what we could have had for a hundred and fifty million dollars? We could have been nuclear to quote a favorite, a past president nuclear.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:44:31] Yeah, I’m a fan of nuclear. I think we need to revive that in this industry. A lot of challenges there. It’s easy to say nuclear. It’s hard to do nuclear.

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:44:42] Unless you’re a president with the name Bush, then you can’t say nuclear.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:44:46] Yeah, you can’t say it, right?

 

Stu Turley, Energy News Beat Podcast Host [00:44:49] Sorry. You keep trying to close this out.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:44:52] David, and I keep trying to make. Well, I’m going to close it out now by God, because I got on 11 o’clock. Anyway, I don’t, I sorry you guys, but Tom, thank you so much. It’s always a pleasure. You’re doing great work doing God’s work and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you, man.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:45:09] Oh, thank you so much. Same here. Happy New Year, guys.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:45:12] Happy New Year and let’s all take a week off while nothing’s going on while we’re having a really slow news day.

 

Tom Pyle, CEO, Institute for Energy Research [00:45:18] Good luck with that.

 

David Blackmon, Energy Impacts Podcast Host [00:45:19] Alright everybody