The Heritage Foundation’s 922-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project) prominently includes political prescription for various energy and environmental reforms in the U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Interior, and Environmental Protection Agency.
While Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the document, it is virtually certain that if elected, he would move swiftly to try to implement the blueprint. Many of its authors were his appointees in his administration and likely would lead his government beginning in 2025.
The Heritage project for the Interior Department programs and policies is back to the future. Essentially, the chapter wants to erase the Biden administration’s policies and actions, many of which replaced Trump administration policies.
After describing the roles of the far-reaching agency, the chapter lays out its goal:
…Given the dire adverse national impact of Biden’s war on fossil fuels, no other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons, much of which is yet to be discovered.
This post updates the financial troubles of Denmark’s Ørsted, recent BOEM auctions, and pushback against Maryland governor Wes Moore. Today, operational offshore wind capacity is less than 50 megawatts versus the Biden-Harris Administration goal of 30,000 MW by 2030.
Ørsted
Denmark’s Ørsted, the worldwide leading offshore wind developer, recorded a $575 million loss in the second quarter. In part, the loss is the result of disappointing developments in the U.S.
The company has delayed commercial operation of its 704-MW Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut from 2025 to 2026. Ørsted’s ambitious U.S. offshore wind program has been lagging, despite solid support (subsidies, permits) from the Biden administration.
A year after an Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) auction for Gulf of Mexico leases failed to attract significant interest, BOEM continues to delay another attempt to find adequate bidders off the east coast.…
“The fusion propaganda machine has produced a wave of mostly offbeat projects, more than 40 since 2018 by one estimate. The likelihood that any of these fusion pipedreams will produce anything other than red ink is less than slim.”
Harsh reality is again clashing with the fanciful hype of the past several years regarding fusion energy. The only credible attempt to harness the physics of the sun, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, has again pushed back the date when it will attempt a sustained fusion reaction toward practical energy production.
For the second time in two years, the 35-nation project has announced a snag in the project, although it has reported some better news. At a July 3 press conference at ITER headquarters in France, Director-General Pietro Barabaschi said the new goal is to be able to run the toroidal magnets in the donut-shaped tokomak briefly at full power in 2036.…