One of the most obvious opportunities the US is currently squandering is the export of LNG--liquefied natural gas. LNG can provide low-cost, reliable, clean natural gas around the world. But LNG's enormous potential is being strangled by irrational permitting policies.

THREAD
Natural gas is an incredibly versatile fuel--providing low-cost, clean residential heating; low-cost, clean "industrial process heat"; and low-cost, highly controllable and reliable clean electricity.
While natural gas used to be so hard to get that the US imported it, thanks to fracking and other shale energy technologies, the US now has a virtually limitless supply of low-cost, reliable, versatile, clean natural gas.
Between 2008 and 2018 fracking natural gas added 17 times more energy to the US than all solar panels and wind turbines combined. And that’s 100% reliable energy, unlike the unreliable energy from solar and wind that needs constant backup from...fracked natural gas.
One of the best things American energy producers can do with our endless natural gas supplies is to *export natural gas* to places that need it. There are 800 million people who have no electricity and the 2.6 billion people still using wood or dung for heating and cooking.
The key to exporting natural gas is LNG--liquefied natural gas. By cooling natural gas to very low temperatures, we can turn it into a liquid that can be easily and cost-effectively transported nearly anywhere in the world.
The world wants US natural gas and American companies want to build the LNG facilities to get it to them. But our government is strangling progress with an onerous and irrational permitting process.
LNG export facilities are burdened not only by standard, onerous state and federal permitting requirements in need of reform, but also requiring additional approval by the Department of Energy--which can take years.
Fortunately, there is proposed legislation that would expedite permitting for LNG exports: the “Natural Gas Export Expansion Act,” introduced by @AugustPfluger, which would allow expedited LNG approval for any country except those determined to be national security threats.
There is no good reason for opposing expedited permitting of LNG. Those who complain about LNG's emissions ignore the fact that if we don't export LNG, it will be substituted for by higher-emissions Russian LNG or by coal.
It's time to liberate LNG, first with the "Natural Gas Export Expansion Act," and then with broader permitting reform that will enable American companies to compete--instead of being strangled by endless costs and delays.

pfluger.house.gov/media/press-re…

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More from @AlexEpstein

6 May
One of the most dangerous lies in the world today is the idea that unreliable solar energy, if combined with batteries, can power the world. And the most dangerous advocate of this lie is the brilliant Elon Musk--because he is so admired for his brilliance.

THREAD
For years, Elon Musk has been claiming that solar panels plus batteries can power the world. Because Musk is a brilliant engineer, this claim seems credible. But as I will show by examining a recent version of this claim (pictured), it is deeply dishonest.
Musk says that "to power the whole Earth" we need just solar panels and "some batteries."

What is "some batteries"?

To store a mere three days worth of energy, to be prepared for weeks (let alone seasons) with lower-than-usual sunlight, takes 1330 terawatt-hours in batteries.
Read 9 tweets
30 Apr
The US is headed toward energy suicide, in large part because smart people are completely misrepresenting the capabilities of solar and wind energy. To counter this, I held a contest to answer some recent distortions by @elonmusk. Here are the winners. 🧵

Read 10 tweets
29 Apr
Anti-development policies on America's federal lands have created crisis after crisis: from forests with deadly "fuel loads" to dependence on China for vital materials. The Biden Administration's anti-development "30 by 30" plan would make our public lands crisis far worse.

🧵
Imagine that as a large landowner you hire a property manager whose policies lead to: a failure to do proper maintenance, huge opportunities squandered, and catastrophic fires.

You'd fire that person and immediately change policies. That needs to happen with our federal lands.
For decades America's federal lands, which were supposed to be managed to allow commercial development of resources, recreation, and enjoyment of nature, have been mismanaged by *anti-development policies*--policies based on the idea that all human impact on nature is bad.
Read 9 tweets
29 Apr
If we didn't live in a society so saturated by anti-humanism--specifically the dogma that human impact on the planet is immoral and inevitably self-destructive--we would be open to the possibility that rising CO2 levels, by bringing about more warmth and greening, are desirable.
In a pro-human society, without the pseudoscientific, primitive religious Earth worship that dominates ours, we'd see more headlines like this: "Earth is not the best place to live, scientists say."

independent.co.uk/life-style/gad…
"Being slightly warmer would also make a planet more habitable, with an ideal of about 5 degrees Celsius hotter than Earth thought to be the biggest improvement."

So why are we outlawing most of our energy supply to stop us from getting 2 degrees warmer?

independent.co.uk/life-style/gad…
Read 6 tweets
29 Apr
All pro-freedom US Representatives should join Rep @chiproytx in his effort to bring to a vote Rep @laurenboebert's bill that would reverse President Biden's unconstitutional and immoral moratoria on oil and gas development.

clerk.house.gov/DischargePetit…

THREAD
It is rare and commendable when elected officials propose a truly pro-freedom policy. I rarely see any legislation that I can support. @laurenboebert's HR 859 is an exception, because it directly stops @JoeBiden's unconstitutional and immoral moratoria on oil and gas development.
Here's an overview of why Biden's moratoria--aka bans--were so bad.

Read 8 tweets
29 Apr
What @benshapiro is saying in general is particularly true in energy. Bumbling, "boring" @JoeBiden is unconstitutionally pledging the US to an interpretation of the Paris Climate Accords that gives the Federal government fascist control over all energy.
As if energy fascism isn't an immoral and economically destructive enough framework for energy policy, Biden's particular variant of it involves dictating that we use almost exclusively unreliable solar and wind--which, let us not forget, proved perfectly useless in TX recently.
Read 6 tweets

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