Britain’s £150 billion grid rebuild is being sold as the price of cheap, clean power. The more useful question is whether the country is paying to lock in an expensive, weather-dependent system after already shutting the firm plants that used to keep prices and industry competitive.

The National Energy System Operator’s figures put transmission investment at about £64 billion through 2030 and another £89 billion after that—more than £150 billion in all. The Guardian’s mapping of official recommendations points to well over 4,000 miles of new power lines by 2041, plus subsea cables and converter stations to move Scottish and offshore […]

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Net Zero Has Done More Harm to the West—and the Atmosphere—While Benefiting China

How a policy sold as climate leadership transferred industrial power, energy security, and emissions to Beijing. David Blackmon put it as bluntly as anyone in energy journalism has: every facet of the West’s net-zero obsession and taxpayer-subsidized “energy transition” is designed, in practice, to benefit one country. That country is China. On September 20, 2026, […]

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EPA poised to scrap power plant carbon standards: a reliability and energy-security reset as demand surges

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Lee Zeldin is expected to formally rescind the Biden-era carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, completing a multi-year rollback of greenhouse-gas rules that the administration argues threatened grid reliability and raised costs. Reports indicate the announcement is timed for a G20 energy ministers meeting in Houston […]

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Net Zero wanted to shut coal down. Net Zero now extends coal.

Australia’s official grid planner has rewritten the script. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2026 Integrated System Plan still describes renewables, storage, transmission and gas backup as the “least-cost” path to 2050. The same documents show coal staying until 2049, wind delivery falling well short of earlier ambition, transmission scaled back after cost blowouts of up […]

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Beyond Coal? India, Indonesia, and Vietnam Didn’t Get the Memo. Should Someone Tell Michael Bloomberg That Coal Is Not Quite Dead Yet?

Michael Bloomberg has poured more than $1 billion into campaigns to retire coal plants in the United States and globally. In 2019, his philanthropies committed $500 million to the Beyond Carbon effort. In 2021, he launched a drive to close a quarter of the world’s remaining coal plants and cancel all proposed ones by 2025. […]

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Texas ERCOT looks to complete Texas data center audit by December

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) aims to finish Governor Greg Abbott’s comprehensive verification and audit of data center and large-load projects by December 2026. The review, ordered on August 3, pauses advancement of new data center interconnections until projects demonstrate compliance with state law, Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) rules, and ERCOT […]

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Coal as China’s Weapon of Sovereign Power – Special Guest Josheph Fournier, PH.D.

A wild day on the Energy Realities Podcast with Dr. Tammy Nemeth, David Blackmon and Stu Turley. In this episode of the Energy Realities Podcast, host David Blackmon and panelists Dr. Joseph Fournier, Dr. Tammy Nemeth, and Stu Turley challenge the prevailing Western narrative around energy transition and expose a stark geopolitical reality: while North […]

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India’s Coal Demand Set to Hit 1.6 Billion Tons by 2030. Is the Rest of the World following?

India’s coal demand is projected to climb to approximately 1.6 billion tonnes by 2030, up from around 1.2–1.3 billion tonnes in recent years. This growth is driven by rising electricity needs, industrial expansion (especially steel, cement, and power), and the need to maintain reliable baseload power amid extreme weather events and rapid economic development. Coal […]

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