The battle between renewable energy and fossil fuel is already at a boiling point, but that’s nothing compared to the steaming hot mosh pit of internecine warfare going on between coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. In the latest development on that score, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry went on a bomb-throwing mission at the EarthX 2019 conference in Dallas, Texas last week.
Wait — What Is EarthX?
If you’ve never heard of EarthX before, join the club. Here’s the pitch:
We are an international, nonprofit environmental forum whose purpose is to educate and inspire people to action towards a more sustainable future. We assemble and connect citizens, educators, students, businesses, nonprofits, and global leaders to explore sustainable solutions for today’s most pressing challenges.
As for where they are coming from, the person behind EarthX is Trammell S. Crow, founder of Earth Day in Texas. EarthX lists Tetrapak, Oncor, and Santander as main sponsors.
Occidental Petroleum also weighs in along with Green Spring Technologies (think hemp, not electricity) and other local Dallas companies.
A Quick Digression Over To Occidental
Wait — Occidental?! Didn’t huge fan of wind power and mega mogul Warren Buffett just lay down a cool $10 billion to juice Occidental’s takeover of Andarko — even though Chevron already has dibs?
Oh yes he did! If anybody can guess what that is all about, drop us a note in the comment thread. Buffett is asking for a good slice of the shareholder pie, which could mean that Occidental-Andarko will finally join the ranks of legacy oil and gas companies diversifying into renewables.
On the other hand, nah. We’re thinking natural gas power plants and petrochemicals, which should give ExxonMobil the willies, but that’s just a wild guess.
Where Were We? Oh Right — Coal, Meet Bus
With all this in mind, let’s take a look at what Secretary Perry said at EarthX. In a speech on April 25, he basically made the case that the US energy strategy for decarbonization should be this:
Now the first step is to take energy that is free of emissions…and generate more of it.
Okay, so that excludes coal and includes renewables, except for that intermittent thing (don’t tell Perry about wind and solar complementarity because he doesn’t think that’s a thing yet).
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