Recently I learned about a man who has trained 1,000+ people to block wind and solar projects.
I read through all his training materials, presentations, and seminars.
Here's what I learned about him and how his students plan to "win the war on clean energy."
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The odds are pretty good you haven't heard of this man, John Droz, Jr.
He's only been interviewed by a few journalists. And when asked about his influence he always responds the same way:
"This story isn't about me."
But the story of climate action and delay in America is very much about Droz.
For most of his life, Droz was a semi-retired real estate developer. In 2011, he reinvented himself and became a "physicist."
That year, his home state of N.C. debated a bill about climate change.
Droz put together a series of presentations, some as long as 168 slides, and headed to the capital.
He had crunched the numbers and looked at the science.
According to Droz, climate change was a sham pushed by clean energy lobbyists.
Remarkably, many legislators listened to him.
Even the Washington Post listened to him. In an article about sea-level rise, they quoted the real estate developer as a "local physicist."
Droz's efforts worked. In 2012, N.C. passed a bill that prevented the state from taking action on sea-level rise.
This work got the attention of the biggest climate deniers in the country.
That year, ATI, a dark money think tank brought him on as a fellow.
At ATI, Droz developed a playbook that would eventually be used by thousands of people to stop clean energy projects.
In 2012, he organized a secret meeting and training session to share his strategy with some of the country's most influential climate deniers and activists.
For Droz, winning the war on clean energy is all about communication.
The man is obsessed with what he calls “Press relations (PR) strategy.”
Those two letters—PR—are in hundreds of documents he's produced over the last decade.
What’s the goal of this PR?
As he wrote, “Public opinion [on clean energy] must begin to change among citizens at large.”
But changing minds wasn’t all Droz was interested in.
The next line in his memo reads: “Ultimate Goal: Change policy direction based on the message.”
Droz, like many climate deniers, understood the power of offering the public and lawmakers a set of “alternative facts.”
All credible experts agree wind energy is better for the environment than fossil fuels.
Droz knew it was possible to convince people otherwise.
Clean energy projects create jobs and tax revenue. They're great for local economies.
Droz offered an alternative assessment.
At the secret meeting in 2012, he proposed an idea:
Established think tanks like Heartland, CFACT, and Cato could publish these "alternative facts."
And volunteers in communities across the U.S. could present them to local lawmakers.
Of course, these volunteers couldn't just be against clean energy.
Droz wrote about this in a later training document titled "What Not To Say."
He writes that if you're against something, "You will be painted as a denier and as a person against progress (going green)."
One of Droz' most effective students, Susan Ralston, mastered this principle.
She named her organization "Citizens for Responsible Solar."
The group has blocked huge projects across Virginia. Their main argument: Solar should be on rooftops, not rural land.
By far the most unique tactic, I saw in Droz' training materials was his suggestion that clean energy opponents never compromise.
According to Droz, the way to win "the war on clean energy" is to come out with aggressive demands and stick to them.
This approach has led his students to pass laws that literally or effectively ban clean energy in communities across the United States.
When they don't succeed at that, they file lawsuits that can drag out for years.
All around the country, clean energy opponents are using this playbook to block solar and wind farms.
Projects that could have offered substantial carbon emissions reductions in almost every state have been blocked as a result.
As for John Droz? He's reinvented himself once more.
In searching public records for his name, I came across dozens of emails to officials everywhere from Arizona to Pennsylvania about his "independent analysis of the 2020 election."
Droz is now an election security expert.
Later this week I plan to publish a story about who is funding and spreading clean energy misinformation.
Stay tuned.
And if you missed it, you can check out last week's story below:
This is one of the many policies that has helped Paris go from one of the most polluted, traffic-clogged cities in the world to a sustainability leader.
Here's the story of how Paris took back its streets from cars.
One of the first efforts to reduce car dependency in Paris was the launch of a bike-share service called Velib.
These bike-share services are in cities around the world today.
But when Paris launched the program in 2007 it was revolutionary.
When the city launched Velib it had a problem though: there was very little bike infrastructure.
That made it dangerous to ride, which in turn made biking unattractive to most people.
In the 1960s a group of nuclear weapons scientists at Los Alamos went rogue.
Instead of building bombs, they began exploring a new form of clean energy.
50 years later, that technology is finally coming to market. It could solve one of renewable energy's biggest problems.
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The initial idea came when one of the scientists, Bob Potter, was reading At The Earth's Core, a 1914 fantasy novel.
He began to wonder, what if it was possible to harass the vast amount of heat under the Earth’s surface to create electricity?
By this time, traditional geothermal power plants were already doing this.
But in order to work they needed three things: heat, permeable rock, and water. It was—and still is—rare to find all three together near the Earth's surface.
American cars are uniquely big, expensive, and inefficient.
Here's the best-selling car in America last year (right) vs. the best-seller in Europe (left).
So why are American cars so big?
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The screenshot above comes from a video I just published on the weird loophole that made American cars so big.
If you want the 10 min version of the story, check out that video.
For those that want the 2 min version, below is a quick summary..
In 1975, the United States passed a law that forced automakers to double the average fuel efficiency of their vehicles to 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985.