The Failure of America’s Electrification | Sunday Extra

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John Bickley: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm John Bickley, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Wire, and I'm joined today by my co-host Georgia Howe.

Georgia Howe: Thanks for having me, John.

John Bickley: Today, we're talking about the U.S. electric grid, which is facing unprecedented strains, resulting in rolling blackouts, energy crunches, and growing concerns about systemic failures. Joining us now is Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future. Daniel, thanks for coming on.

Daniel Turner: Thanks for having me.

John Bickley: So we're currently seeing the shift toward renewable energy, all in the name of climate change. We're seeing the shutdown of power plants in our already strained grid, followed by an increased demand for power. What's going to happen if we continue down this path?

Daniel Turner: Well, the best indication of what will happen going forward is to look at what has already happened in the past. And for that, you have to look at countries that have done this electrification harder and faster and longer than America has. And that's particularly Europe. Germany is leading the charge worldwide. Look at German energy prices. Look at its contracting economy. Look at what its rate payers are paying per kilowatt hour. And if Germany's been doing this for 20 some odd years, 25 years, at the cost of over half a trillion euro, why do we think it would work any differently here in America?

Georgia Howe: What kinds of strains on the grid are we seeing now?

Daniel Turner: Well, the grid is mostly regional. And so you have to look at regions that have removed reliable fossil fuel production, coal, natural gas, and push towards electrification. And that would be most of California, a lot of New Mexico. Look at New York state as well, and look at their constant grid crunches, right? It is not normal in America to get a text from your governor saying, hey, everybody, please don't plug in your car. Hey, everybody, please don't do laundry this afternoon. The governor of Texas, Texas had to send that out in the last heat wave, right? Our parents didn't get this nonsense. Our grandparents didn't. So we are using more electricity than ever before, but we're producing less and we're producing it less reliably.

John Bickley: To your latter point, why are we producing less energy and less reliable forms of it?

Daniel Turner: Because what produces a reliable electricity just from the pure physics are steady methods of fossil fuels and nuclear. New York shut down nuclear. Many states are trying to close down their nuclear plant. I believe California as well. Most states have closed down coal and there's a push to get rid of natural gas nationwide. That's what reliably produces electricity. And that's just physics. Right? Wind and solar don't reliably produce electricity. And that's because of this problematic thing called weather. There was a famous eclipse, right? No solar panels would work for the two hours of the eclipse. So you have to go to what default does work in darkness, what default does work in still wind or sub-freezing temperature. And that's fossil fuels. They work all the time, regardless of what the wind is doing, the sun is doing, what temperature it is outside.

Georgia Howe: As to our increased use of energy, why are we using more now?

Daniel Turner: One, our population continues to grow. And as the population grows and we like our current lifestyle, we like electrified products. And that's even aside from the Biden administration's push towards electric everything, electric cars, electric leaf blowers, electric stoves. Right. They don't like fossil fuels. But even outside of that really top-down, heavy-handed push of the Biden administration, we like gaming. Right. Gaming uses more electricity than almost any other appliance in your home. Right. The Internet uses more electricity than most industry. Google uses more electricity than two times the city of San Francisco. And Google's been around for a while. But in the history of America, let alone the history of mankind, it's a relatively newcomer to existence. And yet it's this huge energy suck, right? Uber, apps, all of these things are huge electricity sucks. And that's because we like the convenience of it. So that's why we're using more electricity. It's our lifestyle and our population growth.

John Bickley: How is the rise of artificial intelligence playing into all of this?

Daniel Turner: We've seen some reports that some of these systems are really draining a lot of energy as well. Absolutely. AI, data mining, these are all very electricity-intensive processes, right? Bitcoin mining is huge. There are Bitcoin mines that are trying to build small nuclear reactors. I believe Bill Gates is one of the ones partnering with that for the sole purpose of AI and Bitcoin mining because they realize how much electricity these enormous processors require. So that's the direction our lifestyle is going, our economy is going, it's the tech revolution, right? That's the direction we're headed. And these require a lot of electricity. We haven't even talked about electric cars, right? Not long ago, Elon Musk announced electric cars on demand. He said, there's really no reason to have a second car. If you could just have a driverless e-car that picks you up and takes grandma to the dentist or takes your kid to school? Wouldn't that be a better if that's the direction we're headed?

Georgia Howe: How much more electricity do we need to produce? And yet the very utilities that produce electricity are getting forced by these policies, mostly from Washington D and the Biden administration, that don't allow them to produce electricity enough to satisfy these demands.

Daniel Turner: Do you see a potential for a return to the use of more fossil fuel-powered plants?

Daniel Turner: Absolutely, there has to be, because something's got to give in the current equation. And you can say a lot about the American people and their resiliency, but they're not the most sacrificial when it comes to their lifestyle and their livelihood. I don't think the American people are going to comfortably give up Amazon delivery. They're not going to comfortably give up, especially urbanites. I'm talking to you in my sheep farm in the middle of rural Virginia. I'm a country boy. But the population centers that use electricity like the convenience of e-scooters and delivery mechanisms. Unless they are willing to sacrifice that, there has to be a return to reliable fossil fuels. Again, not because of any other reason that wind and solar don't work. And we know they don't work by what other countries have gone ahead of us. Doesn't matter how much we subsidize them. Doesn't matter how much mandates we put on utilities to use wind and solar. The physics of them does not work.

John Bickley: You mentioned New York shutting down its nuclear power plants. What about the return of nuclear, the use of nuclear in more states?

Daniel Turner: I'd love to see it. I wrote an article for the New York Post not long ago, an op-ed, how environmental groups have decried that New York's emissions have gone up in the last couple of years. Well, look at what New York has done. You got rid of nuclear, which if you're going to play the emissions game, ranks number one. It's got an A-plus score on the emissions rating. But for the sake of climate, we shut down nuclear. The state shut down nuclear. And now their emissions are going up as a result. So there should be small nuclear reactors built in every county across the nation. Electricity is not a new concept, right? I mean, you go back to the early days of the wars between Tesla and Edison. We're going back quite some time. And it's provided this amazing resource for mankind. We know how to produce electricity reliably. Why are we not doing it anymore? We're doing it for some crazy agenda.

Georgia Howe: How have the last three years been?

Daniel Turner: They've been expensive. They've been intermittent. We're buying more of these terrible wind and solar from communist China that are made with slave labor, that enslave children in sub-Saharan Africa to mine the rare earths. We're destroying our landscape. We're killing whales. We're killing eagles. This has been a hellscape. And yet we're supposed to pretend somehow it's quote unquote working because of the climate crisis.

John Bickley: It seems like a lot of states have been caught off guard by the lack of energy and strain on the grid at times. Is there a way that the states could plan better? We saw this in Georgia. You mentioned Texas. Is there something the states could be doing to better foresee these issues?

Daniel Turner: Yes. What states could be doing is electing people who know what their role is as governor. I'm not an anarchist, right? I believe in limited government. But government does have a role. And government has taken over the role of utilities. It's taken over the role of waste management of infrastructure, and it does a D-minus job at all of them. The best thing your states could do is that hey, it may not be the sexiest thing to run on the power grid, but that the person you should vote for is the one who knows their job as governor and doesn't have secret ambitions to be a president of the United States or some globalist cool Bilderberg icon.

Georgia Howe: What are some of the states that are actually doing this well?

Daniel Turner: I would put both of the Dakotas in that category. I would put Utah in that category, produces a ton of electricity and actually exports it out to other states. Wyoming is doing a better job, though their governor has given a lot of hinting recently that he wants to get rid of coal, which is quite troubling. Alaska is making a big push to open up more coal plants, which would be wonderful because Alaska has more coal reserves than most of the world combined. Alaska is one enormous lump of coal.

John Bickley: Final question, another energy-related issue recently in the news. After the Biden administration depleted over 40% of our strategic petroleum reserve, they canceled plans to refill the reserve. What's your reaction to this?

Daniel Turner: It's amazing. It's the first time the Biden administration said they don't have the money for something. They seem to have an endless amount of money for student loans and for other issues, but they suddenly don't have the money to replenish the petroleum reserve. And they're playing a huge game now. We have around 20 days of reserves. And for some perspective, when Hurricane Katrina hit, it seems like a long time ago, but it actually wasn't. I believe we used 25 days of reserves. It's there for that purpose. It's there for national security, natural disaster, etc. The Biden administration depleted it because they didn't want to lose the Senate in 2022. They understand basic laws of supply and demand. They realize if they pump more supply into the oil markets, the prices will eventually steady and go down. It did. And it was a brilliant political move, but a very nefarious move for the president of the United States. Well, now we're in a pickle and now we're playing fingers crossed. We don't have a natural disaster. Fingers crossed, you know, hurricane season is going to kick off in a couple of months. Fingers crossed, nothing bad happens. Fingers crossed, there's no terrorist attack, right? And that's really scary considering how much oil we consume and how little we have in our strategic reserve. So Biden is literally just hoping the magic eight ball has read correctly and he's not going to have a problem. If he's wrong, it's not Biden who will just suffer. It's the American people. And that is absolutely tragic.

John Bickley: Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. It's nice to be on with you and thanks for having me.

Daniel Turner: It's been great, thanks.

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John Bickley: That was Daniel Turner, Executive Director of Power the Future, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.