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High electricity prices in the West are a direct result of unachievable energy-transition targets · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:15
  Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you're listening to this.
• 0:19
  I want to say thank you for being part of your host, Todd Royal, Geo Power, Energy, Real Politics.
• 0:26
  Today we have a very what I'm gonna call is a very special episode.
• 0:31
  Um, I'm calling this episode the reality episode.
• 0:34
  And let me break this down here.
• 0:35
  We're gonna go in two parts today.
• 0:38
  We're gonna be about 28 minutes, our first part, we're gonna be 25 minutes of our second part.
• 0:42
  But this is gonna include, I want you to stick with me because I'm gonna put a lot of things together today.
• 0:48
  Number one, I'm a huge sports guy.
• 0:52
  Love sports, love watching it, love what sports represents.
• 0:56
  And I think what we're starting to see these days is a lot of people aren't living in reality.
• 1:02
  And what do I mean by that?
• 1:05
  Big basketball friend.
• 1:06
  The Dallas Mavericks, they decided to trade a player, a guy named Luka Donchick about a year ago.
• 1:12
  Now, in the sports world, a guy like Luka Donchics comes around about once a generation.
• 1:18
  Uh, he does everything.
• 1:21
  He can score, he can pass, um, he rebounds, didn't play the greatest defense in the world, but he got the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA finals two seasons ago.
• 1:30
  And what did the Mavericks do?
• 1:32
  Well, the Mavericks said, you know what?
• 1:34
  We got to pay this guy 350 million dollars.
• 1:38
  Now, here's the problem.
• 1:39
  He wasn't in very good shape, and he was constantly getting hurt.
• 1:44
  Okay, I get that.
• 1:46
  If you're the ownership and you go, okay, put it, put it back on me.
• 1:50
  Like, let's talk about the reality of politics.
• 1:53
  Are you willing to pay somebody 350 million dollars because he was due for what's called a super max contract?
• 2:00
  350 million dollars for five years.
• 2:03
  The answer should have been yes.
• 2:04
  Well, he's not a good teammate sometimes, and he's hurt.
• 2:08
  And they saw him drinking beer before, and I guess he smokes cigarettes before.
• 2:12
  He's a European.
• 2:13
  You've ever been to Europe, they have different sensibilities than Americans do.
• 2:17
  They do drink, they will smoke cigarettes.
• 2:21
  But at the end of the day, your goal is to win basketball games.
• 2:25
  That's your goal.
• 2:26
  You're a professional athlete.
• 2:27
  You are a professional sports team, and people want to see this gentleman play basketball.
• 2:33
  He got traded to the Los Angeles Lakers by the former general manager of the Dallas Mavericks, Nico Harrison.
• 2:40
  Mr.
• 2:40
  Harrison had a long career with Nike, um, well-respected uh basketball executive, had made some wonderful moves to get the Mavericks to that point, and then something went off the rails.
• 2:52
  Was it the ownership?
• 2:53
  Did they tell Mr.
• 2:54
  Harrison we don't want to pay that kind of money, get us other assets?
• 2:58
  Supposedly he didn't get along with Luka Donchik.
• 3:01
  Supposedly Mr.
• 3:02
  Harrison, the former general manager of the Mavericks had fired people that were longtime Dallas Mavericks employees.
• 3:08
  So there was a lot that was going on in the background, but at the end of the day, there are very few people in the world who are 6'7, 225 pounds, can shoot a basketball from 30 feet at about a 40 to almost 50% percentage rate.
• 3:26
  And there's very few people in the world that can dribble like him, pass like him, and again, he's six-seven.
• 3:34
  Well, first off, there's not many six, seven people in the world, and secondly, very few can do what he does.
• 3:40
  There's maybe three people in the world that can do this.
• 3:44
  How about let's just say five?
• 3:47
  And one of the best to ever do it, LeBron James is in his 40s.
• 3:50
  He's with the Los Angeles Lakers, but of course he's no longer the same player.
• 3:55
  This gentleman is in his mid-20s, Mr.
• 3:57
  Doncick.
• 3:59
  And the Dallas Mavericks decided they were going to trade him.
• 4:02
  What's happened?
• 4:03
  The Mavericks have got the Mavericks have gotten worse.
• 4:07
  They're one of the worst teams in the NBA.
• 4:09
  They had traded for people like Clay Thompson, who had been hurt with the Golden State Warriors, but was set up perfectly to be at the Mavericks, catches the ball and shoots.
• 4:18
  A guy named Derek Lively, they had, who was also worked really well, played well with Luka Donchik.
• 4:26
  The Mavericks trade him.
• 4:27
  They get Anthony Davis.
• 4:28
  Anthony Davis is a Hall of Fame level player who has played less games for the Dallas Mavericks than their current overall first-round draft pick, Cooper Flag.
• 4:40
  What's the point of all this?
• 4:42
  Okay, let's build this.
• 4:44
  Reality.
• 4:45
  Sports shows life.
• 4:47
  The Dallas Mavericks made a dumb deal.
• 4:51
  They thought we can do this without him.
• 4:53
  Kind of like people go, hey, we don't need energy.
• 4:56
  Hey, we don't need to think about geopolitics or geopower or real politics.
• 5:02
  That's an isolated case.
• 5:04
  Okay, let me give you a few others to think about.
• 5:07
  For years, black men were kept out of being quarterbacks.
• 5:12
  They thought supposedly they weren't smart enough.
• 5:15
  It was overt racism.
• 5:17
  And then finally, people figured out, well, that's stupid.
• 5:20
  And then Lamar Jackson, who plays for the Baltimore Ravens, has taken out that equation.
• 5:26
  Um he's fast.
• 5:28
  He's an incredible athlete, throws the football well.
• 5:30
  He can cognitively do everything you need an NFL quarterback to do.
• 5:35
  Michael Vick had been this way.
• 5:36
  Warren Moon had been this way.
• 5:38
  Um Randall Cunningham had been this way.
• 5:41
  Just it was really dumb.
• 5:42
  It was just horrible racism.
• 5:45
  Uh also many times these guys are faster, they're better athletes.
• 5:49
  They're perfectly fine to play quarterback.
• 5:52
  Um their equivalent would maybe be somebody like a Steve Young, who was fast and athletic the way Lamar Jackson is, and some of the others I described.
• 6:02
  So the formerly Washington Redskins, now Washington Commanders, drafted a young man named Jaden Daniels, won the Heisman Trophy, came from LSU.
• 6:11
  But Mr.
• 6:12
  Daniels is pretty frail.
• 6:14
  6'4, about 205, 210.
• 6:17
  He likes to run a lot.
• 6:19
  And the NFL, there's a funny note that says the NFL actually stands for not for long.
• 6:26
  Meaning you have some of the best athletes in the world crashing into each other.
• 6:31
  People say it's the equivalent of every time they hit each other, it's like a car wreck.
• 6:36
  Well, if you play 17 games a season, and there's roughly, let's say 60 plays a game, do the math.
• 6:44
  Let's say you're in on 30 of those plays.
• 6:47
  Um, 30 car wrecks times 17 games.
• 6:51
  That's a not-for-long league.
• 6:53
  Well, Mr.
• 6:55
  Daniels is a phenomenal NFL quarterback.
• 6:59
  He's a phenomenal athlete.
• 7:01
  And I remember sitting next to a friend, dear friend of mine, who's a big Washington fan.
• 7:06
  I said, they better stop running that guy.
• 7:07
  He's going to get hurt.
• 7:09
  And you could just see it.
• 7:11
  In other words, the reality of looking at a situation.
• 7:15
  Mr.
• 7:16
  Daniels is hurt now.
• 7:17
  He's been hurt all season.
• 7:18
  Washington went from one game away from making the Super Bowl.
• 7:23
  They won't make the playoffs this year, and then they're one of the bottom five or six teams in the FL.
• 7:29
  And you go, okay, why didn't you look at the reality of the situation?
• 7:34
  Maybe this guy runs three, four, five times a game.
• 7:37
  Maybe, but he's frail.
• 7:40
  You better teach him how to scramble to throw the ball, throw the ball away, slide, run out of bounds.
• 7:47
  This guy's taking on middle linebackers who could tackle an oak tree.
• 7:52
  Of course he got hurt.
• 7:54
  The other one, there's another quarterback, a gentleman, he comes from uh, I believe Washington, University of Washington, Michael Penix Jr.
• 8:01
  Again, fabulous athlete, fabulous thrower of the football, incredible Atlanta Falcons.
• 8:09
  Uh the Falcons look great under Mr.
• 8:11
  Penix.
• 8:11
  But here again, this is a person who had two major injuries.
• 8:17
  So the Atlanta Falcons draft him.
• 8:21
  He's hurt again.
• 8:23
  He just had, he's having an ACL surgery, something in his knee.
• 8:27
  So this is the third major surgery for this young man within the last six to seven years.
• 8:32
  Yet you use a draft pick on him and you wonder, why can't he stay healthy?
• 8:38
  Why did we do this?
• 8:40
  When you think about these things, reality.
• 8:46
  Again, I love sports.
• 8:47
  I want you to think about this.
• 8:48
  What is the reality if you trade probably the best MBA basketball player in the world?
• 8:56
  And you draft two young men that are incredible athletes, but they're frail, and they both have a history of either running or of getting hurt.
• 9:05
  And yet you're gonna draft them and make them the cornerstone of your entire franchise.
• 9:11
  Look into the reality.
• 9:13
  If it were me, I would probably go find myself a Tom Brady type.
• 9:19
  Somebody's gonna sit in the pocket, throw the ball away very quickly, and not get killed by these gentlemen that some of them are 6'4, 300 and run a 4'7 or 4'8 40.
• 9:30
  The force of them hitting you says there's no way that you're going to last.
• 9:34
  Um best quarterback in the NFL right now is Matthew Stafford.
• 9:38
  35, 36, 37 years old.
• 9:42
  Um, a lot of injuries, but what does Mr.
• 9:44
  Stafford do very well?
• 9:46
  Gets the ball, throws the ball away, gets the ball, throws the ball away quickly, is not taking a lot of hits.
• 9:53
  That's not what you want.
• 9:55
  You you are pardon me, that's due, that's exactly what you want.
• 9:58
  You do not want somebody.
• 10:00
  Running around getting their head bashed in.
• 10:04
  So there's a there's a reality.
• 10:06
  Now let's move into the energy space.
• 10:09
  So the United States just reached a deal with Saudi Arabia on nuclear energy cooperation.
• 10:18
  On Friday, President Trump hosted the Saudi crown pins, Muhammad bid Solomon at the White House.
• 10:41
  What it's really saying is it's an important step written apart to strengthen U.S.
• 10:46
  influence in the Gulf region to counter the influence of Iran, Russia, and China.
• 10:51
  So what does the United States get?
• 10:53
  Well, first off, the agreement deepens this U.S.
• 10:56
  Saudi strategic partnership.
• 10:59
  The hope is it leads to Saudi Arabia becoming a critical supplier of enriched uranium to the U.S.
• 11:05
  nuclear industry.
• 11:07
  This came from an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• 11:11
  So this would help the United States reduce U.S.
• 11:14
  dependence on Russian uranium supplies.
• 11:17
  What it should also include is that the United States will also begin mining for uranium in the United States to counter the horrible impact that environmental organizations and the and this environmental wing of the U.S.
• 11:34
  Democratic Party and even parts of the Republican Party that believe that you shouldn't mine for things, that you shouldn't that leave things in the ground, leave the earth as it is, um, let the earth return to its normal patterns.
• 11:48
  These are the same people that want to get rid of dams.
• 11:51
  They want to leave all fossil fuels in the ground.
• 11:55
  But I digress.
• 11:57
  At least it says Saudi Arabia, we'd like for you to go dirty up your land, but send the uranium to us.
• 12:05
  Next, it's a long-term partnership.
• 12:08
  So this nuclear agreement, what it's going to do, it lays the groundwork for a long-term multi-billion dollar nuclear partnership.
• 12:17
  And what it says is the United States and US firms will be Saudi Arabia's preferred partners for its civilian nuclear program.
• 12:25
  And it guarantees that all collaboration will follow rigorous non-proliferation standards.
• 12:31
  So you take Saudi Arabia, which has these vast uranium reserves, and it's uniquely positions them to develop the nuclear fuel cycle.
• 12:39
  It can support domestic energy strategies, and it can open the door to potential exports to the United States, and of course the United States exporting to Saudi Arabia.
• 12:49
  It also says that we're going to do rare earth minerals.
• 12:54
  The metals it's talking about is dysprozoem, dysprosium, terbium, neodymium, and prosodymium.
• 13:03
  These supplies, they'll serve to reduce U.S.
• 13:06
  dependence on China for such minerals.
• 13:08
  And what they're crucial for is certain defense-related technologies, numerous civilian technologies such as semiconductors and medical diagnostic and treatment systems.
• 13:18
  Okay, what else does it say?
• 13:21
  Well, now you're getting to the big thing.
• 13:23
  They're also talking about a development of what's called a section one, two, three agreement, which requires the president to certify that the deal enhances U.S.
• 13:33
  defense and security interests and to submit the agreement to Congress for a 90-day review.
• 13:38
  The new nuclear deal then is expected to be submitted to Congress as a section one, two, three agreement, which means it completely binds together the United States and Saudi Arabia on nuclear power.
• 13:50
  It offers incredible opportunities for the United States.
• 13:56
  Particularly let's say a company like Westinghouse to export their what's called their gigawatt reactor, a gigawatt means enough electricity for roughly a million people called the AP 1000.
• 14:09
  It gives Westinghouse, it gives American supply chain, it gives companies just all sorts of unbelievable opportunities.
• 14:28
  Okay, why do you do that?
• 14:31
  Saudi Arabia, we know is horrific with human rights.
• 14:37
  Um they have zero respect for any other outside religions, any other kind of gender fluidity, um, different kinds of sexuality that don't follow heterosexuality and leading to marriage.
• 14:53
  This is a very conservative country.
• 14:57
  So why would we do this?
• 14:59
  Why do we continue to um take what you could really argue is one of the the bigger human rights abusers in the world and make agreements with them?
• 15:10
  Well, there's a real reason why you do this, and it's to counter the influence of Iran, Russia, and China in the Middle East.
• 15:18
  It also opens the door, the tighter the partnership you have with Saudi Arabia, you influence the other Sunni countries that are that are in their sphere of influence, and then hopefully eventually you get Saudi Arabia to sign a peace agreement with Israel, which furthers strengthens um the Sunnis within the Middle East and further weakens Iran and its Shia counterparts.
• 15:42
  That's why you do this.
• 15:43
  That's the reality of this.
• 15:47
  You can make an argument that Joe Biden was correct in what he said about Saudi Arabia.
• 15:52
  Um, I can make it in a in a perfect world, what the former president said was you know, almost like thuggish type of language he used.
• 16:02
  I don't think you should use that kind of language, but as far as these are not quote unquote people that are going to be following the UN declaration on human rights.
• 16:12
  Um, if you are a Christian, if you would be a Hindu, um, atheist, agnostic, um, any kind of religion.
• 16:19
  If you say, hey, I think I want to change my gender, um, I want to, if I'm a man, I want to marry a man, a woman, I want to marry a woman.
• 16:26
  None of that is going to take place, and quite honestly, you could get yourself in some real trouble, meaning you could possibly be jailed andor killed.
• 16:34
  But why do you do it?
• 16:35
  Well, the U.S.
• 16:35
  needs rare earth minerals, the U.S.
• 16:38
  desperately needs uranium, and it gives the United States the ability to continue to perfect its nuclear uh technology with companies like Westinghouse or smaller, you know, your small module reactor companies, your advanced reactor companies like Terra Power, Kairos Power, X Energy, Valor Atomics, New Scale, and on and on and on.
• 17:02
  You have you're able to then go take your technology out of kind of a very restrictive environment in the United States and somebody like Saudi Arabia, which is absolutely desperate for power.
• 17:15
  Typically, the Saudis use they get a lot of their electricity from burning oil, and they would like to get away from that.
• 17:22
  Okay, let's talk about the next thing of reality.
• 17:25
  The reality of energy is electricity prices in the United States are rising and they're rising dramatically.
• 17:33
  Why is that?
• 17:34
  Well, people go, it's the one big beautiful bill, you got rid of you got rid of all things for renewables.
• 17:43
  That's what did it.
• 17:45
  That's the reason why that this happened.
• 17:47
  Okay.
• 17:48
  Well, I have to push back on people that, and you go, because a lot of these people, when you're looking to pinpoint pinpoint the blame, Democrats are coming against Republicans.
• 17:59
  Then there's finger pointing.
• 18:00
  Well, what about demand growth for data centers and AI?
• 18:04
  Um, the truth is that today's electricity prices, they've increased because of massive spending for a so-called energy transition or net zero or decar decarbonization, and the spending keeps going up and up and up because in a regulated market, a rate increase in request, it's filled by electric utility companies.
• 18:27
  And when they raise their prices, when you when you go and look into all this, and I would tell anyone, uh, gentlemen named Isaac Orr does great work on this.
• 18:36
  Uh, go look at what what they're saying about their clean energy initiatives.
• 18:40
  They'll say things like, we're going to replace a thermal generator with um wind and solar facilities, and we need transmission and distribution networks to accommodate them.
• 18:50
  Um we're also going to add some storage in there as well.
• 18:55
  What does that actually mean?
• 18:57
  What you're meaning is is you're radically and frankly dangerously altering the United States grid electricity system when you have runaway demand growth.
• 19:09
  So, in other words, I'm gonna I'm gonna spend all this capital on assets that are unreliable.
• 19:18
  Instead of spending on coal, natural gas, nuclear power plants, I'm going to spend it on things that are weather dependent.
• 19:26
  Solar and wind.
• 19:28
  And on top of that, I'm still going to keep um taxpayer subsidies, reduction tax credit for wind, investment tax credit for solar, and there's many others.
• 19:38
  I'm going to keep all of that depending on the state and the region, and I'm going to put all of that on the grid when we have unbelievable growth in all of this electricity.
• 19:51
  There's a stunning quality to that.
• 19:53
  When you really need to ask yourself, is it greed?
• 19:59
  I'd say
• 20:00
  Or do you want to hurt people?
• 20:02
  Do you want people to die?
• 20:04
  Do you want people to truly face starvation?
• 20:07
  Because if our electricity grid goes down, and uh grid operative rators like ERCOT, PJM, Mizo, Kazo, PGM in particular, is saying around 26 and 27, we will be short of power because what we're doing is we are retiring coal-fired power plants to meet some notion of emissions or decarbonization or net zero, you know.
• 20:36
  We have a renewables portfolio, we have a carbon market standard that we have to meet.
• 20:42
  Typically, these are in blue states, but unfortunately, Texas is the worst at this.
• 20:47
  Uh Texas has been putting hundreds of gigawatts of completely unreliable, interminted, weather-dependent solar wind, and battery storage units on the grid.
• 21:01
  And if you go look at ERCOT scenarios, they'll be the first to tell you if they were to have another winter storm urine.
• 21:08
  They could not meet demand.
• 21:11
  So if you think about why is this explosion in rate increase request?
• 21:16
  Well, I mean exactly why.
• 21:18
  Um, and by the way, they've exploded since 2020, jumping from 3.6 billion to 11.3 billion in one year.
• 21:27
  Okay, you can explain the COVID, there were delays.
• 21:30
  But look at 22, 23, and 25.
• 21:33
  All the rate increases have reached record highs.
• 21:37
  And again, it turns from this energy transition stuff.
• 21:41
  That you're not going to transition away from fossil fuels or the reliability of nuclear or the flexibility and dispatchability of natural gas.
• 21:52
  A wind panel or pardon me, a wind turbine and a solar panel cannot do that.
• 21:58
  But these mandates for wind and solar build-outs and the transmission and distribution networks, you have to accommodate them, the battery storage facilities and EV charging infrastructure.
• 22:09
  And then we have home heating and electrification.
• 22:12
  We clo we have all these thermal closures.
• 22:14
  Again, that's just a fancy word for reliable power plants like oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear.
• 22:22
  Then you have to prevent wildfires and all of this stuff is why you have got all of these rate increases.
• 22:30
  Has nothing to do with Donald Trump, has nothing to do with the Republicans.
• 22:34
  Frankly, it doesn't even have anything to do with current democratic um lawmakers.
• 22:41
  These are things that have been years in the making.
• 22:44
  Now, current democratic lawmakers, they'll all say climate change is going to kill us, and the only thing to stop it is wind solar storage and EVs.
• 22:55
  Um also, as a plug for my own self, wrote a book with a gentleman named Ron Stein called Clean Energy Exploitations, where we debunk all of that.
• 23:04
  Highly recommend you get the book.
• 23:06
  I would tell everyone it's excruciatingly boring, but it's very factual, highly sourced, and we show you that even for a wind turbine and a solar panel, that every single component would not come about if it wasn't for fossil fuels.
• 23:21
  Whether the rare metals and minerals or uh the the silicon, you know, the the PV panels that comes from silica that's made from high process heat that comes from a coal plant to the resins and the polymers and the uh and the all of the steel and the concrete that it takes to make a wind turbine and on and on and on.
• 23:46
  Our book goes through that very well.
• 23:49
  So when somebody says electricity prices are increasing, this is why there's mandates to do something that doesn't work.
• 23:58
  And just so everyone knows, I sincerely hope that one day uh wind turbines and solar panels can reach an energy density the way of nuclear power.
• 24:07
  But they have a long way to go.
• 24:10
  Typically, a nuclear power plant can run about between 90 to 97% of the time.
• 24:16
  Solar plant solar panels about 25% of the time, 30% maybe.
• 24:21
  Uh wind at most is about 35%.
• 24:24
  Uh, if you go offshore, it's even worse.
• 24:28
  So there's the that there's that reality.
• 24:31
  Now it's let's talk about we've got a few minutes before we're gonna go into break.
• 24:37
  And this is this is realities, and I'm gonna lead to something when we come back from the break.
• 24:43
  We go, okay.
• 24:44
  Why do sports teams do this?
• 24:46
  Saudi deal.
• 24:47
  Why do we do this?
• 24:48
  Electricity prices, why are they rising?
• 24:50
  I'm giving you the realities, the facts of these things.
• 24:53
  Okay, new report came out.
• 24:56
  There's a wonderful company called Grid Strategies.
• 24:58
  They do a lot of um forward-looking, forward-facing uh projections on the electrical grid.
• 25:08
  And if you keep up with this, these these projections can be all over the place.
• 25:12
  Uh, the Department of Energy has had projections that I've read that say all, you know, 577 gigawatts is needed by 2035.
• 25:22
  Um, meaning you have to go build 577 one gigawatt reactors.
• 25:28
  Uh EPRIC Power Research Institute has said, no, it's 50 gigawatts by 2030.
• 25:37
  That's the most conservative estimate.
• 25:39
  But still, let's put that in context.
• 25:41
  That means that I need to build 50 brand new cities.
• 25:45
  Because remember, a gigawatt, that's enough electricity for approximately a million people.
• 25:51
  Sometimes it'll be about 800,000.
• 25:54
  Well, if you think about that, 800,000 people is a big city.
• 25:59
  That's a big, that's a big city.
• 26:02
  Um, so I've got to have at least 50 of these things to meet demand.
• 26:08
  Well, Grid Strategies just came out with a report that said actually, based on our estimates, we're now seeing that we need 166 gigawatts by 2030.
• 26:19
  Okay, what if we took what if we took it in the middle?
• 26:24
  50, 166.
• 26:26
  Let's make it easy.
• 26:28
  Let's say 100 gigawatts is needed.
• 26:31
  100 gigawatts.
• 26:35
  Typically, you maybe can get a coal-fired plant, natural gas plant to be close to a gigawatt.
• 26:41
  Oh, by the way, most natural gas plants are gonna have a hard time being built because there's three companies that service about 75% of the turbine market in the West, if not globally.
• 26:54
  Uh, we typically don't want to buy turbines right now from China or Russia, and that is Siemens, G Renova, and Mitsubishi power.
• 27:04
  The conservative estimate is they're about three to four years behind.
• 27:08
  Recent estimates say they're eight years behind.
• 27:12
  Eight years behind.
• 27:14
  Okay.
• 27:16
  Eight years behind before they can.
• 27:18
  If if you and I decide to order uh a gas turbine right now, they need eight years.
• 27:23
  So let's just say it's 2026.
• 27:26
  So by what is that, 2034, almost 2035, I get my turbine.
• 27:32
  But yet data center growth is exploding.
• 27:36
  Pardon me, and if we take grid strategies, that is 166 gigawatts or 50 gigawatts or 100 gigawatts.
• 27:46
  What if it's close to DOE?
• 27:48
  And it's 577 gigawatts, which I tell you, I would lean more towards the 577.
• 27:55
  Okay.
• 27:57
  Coming out, okay, coming out here at the break.
• 27:59
  Here's what I want to do.
• 28:03
  We're going to come back and I'm going to talk to you then about China.
• 28:06
  And I'm going to say to you, here's the reality of where we are with energy right now based on China.
• 28:12
  So my name is Todd Royal.
• 28:14
  I'm your host.
• 28:15
  This is um geopower, energy, real politics.
• 28:21
  Thank you for being part of this, and we're going to take a quick break.
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• 29:46
  Well, it's high time Americans refuse to be pawned in the human chest.
• 29:51
  Under the name of diversity, politicians divide the people in their quest for pump.
• 29:57
  No diversity of opinion and expression.
• 30:00
  Is as American as Apple Bond.
• 30:06
  Now is our time, my fellow Americans.
• 30:09
  America outlaw.
• 30:11
  News, liberty, and justice for all.
• 30:22
  Okay, we're back.
• 30:23
  I'm Todd Royal.
• 30:24
  I'm your host.
• 30:25
  Geopower, energy, real politics, real politics.
• 30:30
  I was telling everyone, we're talking about power that's needed or electricity that's going to be needed by the United States.
• 30:36
  Now remember, when you do all of that, that means I do have to build distribution networks, substations, transmission networks, have to build power plants, I have to hire workers.
• 30:46
  And all of this is based on this demand for electrification, which I always say to anybody do you really understand what electric electrification means?
• 30:54
  Electricity is nothing unless it's been produced by something.
• 30:58
  Is it a solar panel?
• 31:00
  Is it an oil-fired power plant?
• 31:02
  What is it?
• 31:03
  Is it natural gas?
• 31:05
  Is it uranium and uh a fuel rod for a nuclear power plant?
• 31:10
  So when you think what the United States needs, I would probably tell you here's the reason I'd go for the 577.
• 31:17
  The Financial Times did a report a few months ago that talked to said Nvidia is going to have a new chip.
• 31:23
  Probably Nvidia is the maker of these superconducting chips that are running data centers.
• 31:27
  They have to do these complex uh you know, trillions of seconds of processing.
• 31:34
  Arguably right now, I think it's one of the most valuable companies in the world, if not the world.
• 31:39
  Um they're worth trillions right now, they're beating all forecasts.
• 31:43
  Well, they're saying they're coming out with a chip, 26, early 27.
• 31:48
  That one chip, one rack of a data center will take up 0.6 megawatts.
• 31:54
  Okay, a megawatt to give context, one megawatt equals a thousand people get electricity.
• 32:01
  So we're talking about one chip needs enough power for 600 people.
• 32:06
  If you go into Chat GPT or your favorite, you know, mathematics calculate, you know, AI calculator.
• 32:15
  Plug in your average data center, like in a large data center, and then use Nvidia's brand new chip, you may get calculations as high as 60 gigawatts for one data center.
• 32:28
  I'm sorry, but I'm laughing.
• 32:31
  Imagine that.
• 32:32
  So I tend to go with DOEs, this 500x more than uh Epris scenario.
• 32:41
  Because you're looking, we are in the beginning stages of where we are with AI, where we are with data center growth.
• 32:51
  Uh, I think Mark P.
• 32:53
  Mills, who brilliant man, really says it best.
• 32:57
  He goes, we're really at this stage AI is is where aviation was in about the 60s.
• 33:03
  Um I took a trip to India a couple of couple of years ago, was on Emirates, uh, was fortunate enough to have business class.
• 33:11
  I had all the amenities that one would have if I were in a very nice hotel room.
• 33:16
  So imagine if we are moving in that direction, how much power is gonna be we're gonna need in five years, 10 years.
• 33:25
  Do you apply Moore's law to AI and so it keeps getting better and better and better every 18 to 24 months?
• 33:32
  Then how much more power is it going to need?
• 33:35
  Um when you visit supercomputers, these supercomputers need uh they can't they need more power to make greater calculations.
• 33:44
  Hey, how did um how did the universe begin?
• 33:47
  Was it uh a big bang?
• 33:49
  Was it the creation theory?
• 33:51
  Was it some combination thereof?
• 33:53
  Was it a big bang from uh the God, you know, God is known by the you know Judeo-Western Christian standards?
• 34:00
  Whatever that may be, can we do calculations on the human genomes to be able to figure out cancer?
• 34:06
  That takes power.
• 34:09
  That's the reality.
• 34:11
  And I want to spend the rest of our time together to go over something with you, which is just I think there's it's stunning to me.
• 34:19
  Because we hear this relentless propaganda campaign about China's solar, wind, and EV sectors, and um that they are making a clean energy transition and all of that.
• 34:36
  Now, yes, China's numbers are stunning.
• 34:40
  Um, but I would tell you also uh their electrical grid is getting more and more fragile.
• 34:47
  Um China has installed, oh, I think it's roughly about 212 gigawatts of solar.
• 34:53
  Um I believe it's since like the first half of 2015, it's added approximately 51 gigawatts of wind.
• 35:00
  Uh you're kind of looking at about, I think it's roughly about a terawatt of installed solar capacity, about 573 gigawatts of wind capacity.
• 35:09
  Go look at what their grid is doing.
• 35:11
  Yes, those are stunning numbers.
• 35:13
  Um, they're flooding the world with EVs right now.
• 35:17
  That's also stunning.
• 35:20
  But by itself, China now consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined.
• 35:26
  Um, China's now building 227 gigawatts of coal fired capacity that was reported by uh Robert Bryce, excellent, excellent energy writer and commentator.
• 35:38
  Um China's total coal-fired generation capacity will be about one 1.4 terawatts, meaning China's entire coal fleet will be seven times larger than the U.S.
• 35:49
  coal coal fleet.
• 35:51
  Um, China's coal fleet alone will be larger than the entire US electrical grid, which has 1.3 terawatts of generation capacity.
• 36:00
  In other words, it's this is stunning.
• 36:06
  But yet what we hear, this reality.
• 36:08
  Oh, my gosh, that they're they're they're just growing.
• 36:12
  And look at what they're doing with their with their uh clean energy sector, which by the way, moving forward, can we no longer say that solar and wind are clean?
• 36:22
  How about we call it alternative?
• 36:25
  Um, but there is a narrative here, and I want you to think about some of these numbers.
• 36:31
  Okay, the statistical review of world energy.
• 36:38
  Um I'd call it kind of the Bible, the Bible of energy.
• 36:43
  Um, if you don't like that kind of reference, think of a religious book or a book that you find to be a paramount bedrock for you when it comes to helping you make decisions or wisdom.
• 36:56
  For myself, I'm gonna call the statistical review of world energy the Bible.
• 37:01
  Well, when you look at it, hydrocarbons are what we'll define as oil, natural gas, um, coal, uh, natural gas, you know, liquids, things like propane, kerosene, uh, jet fuels.
• 37:17
  88% of China's total energy needs.
• 37:19
  And when I mean total energy needs, what I mean by that is everything.
• 37:24
  That's uh transportation, that's manufacturing, that's electricity, uh, that's heating and cooling.
• 37:31
  It's everything.
• 37:32
  We think of energy only as electricity when really it's only about 20, 25% of what a total energy typically is used by um developed nations by develop United States, European Union, um, China, India can go and go into that category.
• 37:53
  Countries that are that are developed or moving towards development.
• 37:58
  Um China's carbon carb hydrocarbon use was over 20 times, 21 times larger than its use of solar and wind by itself, coal was 14 times larger.
• 38:14
  Go look it up.
• 38:16
  It's all in the statistical world uh statistical review of world energy.
• 38:21
  Um, the the president of China, uh Z has said he wants uh China to be the energy rice bowl that is held in our own hands.
• 38:35
  Um they've increased their gas production, they want to be self-sufficient, energy, food, strategic elements.
• 38:42
  That's why they dominate the rare earth metals and minerals uh market.
• 38:47
  Um they spend heavily on gas and oil production.
• 38:52
  Um, they've increased their production of shale gas, which is it's always the reality.
• 38:59
  It's so damning that the Europeans leave their hydrocarbons in the ground.
• 39:03
  It's damning that Canada and the United States listen to these people, these environmentalists and urban centers, who, if you cut off their use of fossil fuels, I don't know if most of them would last one week.
• 39:19
  Um we're typically nine mils from chaos.
• 39:22
  Imagine if I said you can no longer use fossil fuels, that your city is now gonna be powered on renewables and battery storage systems at grid scale alone.
• 39:33
  How long would that last?
• 39:35
  China does none of that.
• 39:38
  Um China, let's keep this reality.
• 39:44
  China's only one of about four countries in the world that can even produce gas from shale.
• 39:49
  Um, the other is US, Canada, Argentina.
• 39:52
  Um, China's uh gas production was three times larger than its solar and two and a half times larger than its wind.
• 40:02
  Again, I'm gonna keep going back to the statistical review of energy, the statistical review of world energy.
• 40:12
  It just came out recently.
• 40:15
  Please Google it yourself.
• 40:17
  I'll put it in the show notes.
• 40:19
  And it's something that's important, but it's um it's also something that you need to read about.
• 40:27
  Now, also, I'd tell you Robert Bryce has written a fantastic article about this as well.
• 40:32
  Um, here's another thing.
• 40:36
  When you think about China, why did China agree to further interlock itself with Russia in the um they're gonna build the power of Siberia 2 pipeline?
• 40:48
  That pipeline and the amount of uh natural gas that's gonna go to China, it's roughly about 80%, 70, 80 percent.
• 40:58
  Uh, some think it'll reach 100% of what used to go to Europe.
• 41:02
  So when you think about the Ukraine war and the ridiculous nature of American neocons and European hawks and globalists and places like Poland who say we're going to uh you know be a bulwark against Russia.
• 41:21
  No, you're not you don't produce any energy.
• 41:25
  Russia has so much natural gas that they can sell the same volumes to the Chinese that they formerly sold to you.
• 41:34
  What do you think is gonna happen to Russia and China?
• 41:37
  You as Europe, you are decarbonizing, which means you're deindustrializing.
• 41:44
  A recent report just said, my gosh, every German city is bankrupt right now.
• 41:54
  Leading German officials have said our cities are bankrupt.
• 41:58
  You're bankrupt because at one point you had an industry that relied on cheap Russian natural gas because you thought you were going to meet some decarbonization, net zero goals, energy transitions, so your electricity prices have skyrocketed, which means you're no longer competitive, and all the natural gas that you thought you were going to lower emissions and somehow keep the earth from warming from CO2, which is a trace gas in the universe, all of that is now gone to um has gone to China.
• 42:32
  So tell me what you're gonna do.
• 42:35
  You're not gonna do anything.
• 42:37
  That's the reality.
• 42:39
  If you really want to talk about geopower or geopolitical power, Vladimir Putin getting the Chinese to agree, and Xi, Z, whatever his name is, agreeing to allow that much Russian natural gas.
• 42:55
  What that tells you is that the Chinese will continue to be the manufacturing arsenal in the world.
• 43:05
  I will make a prediction.
• 43:08
  When the Chinese figure out how to do semiconductors, when they can figure out the machines it takes and the companies it takes to do the same thing that's going on in Taiwan, they will invade that country.
• 43:22
  My personal opinion is the only reason they are not invading and taking over Taiwan is because they still need their semiconductor industry.
• 43:31
  The moment they decide they don't need it, they will blockade that country who has gone all in on renewables because they believe in global warming and climate change.
• 43:41
  They just shut down their last nuclear power plant, and they've also um foolishly elected a left-wing uh environmental zealot who doesn't believe in hydrocarbons or nuclear power and thinks that oh, if we lower our emissions that somehow it's going to keep the Chinese from invading us, and the U.S.
• 44:06
  Seventh Fleet will protect us.
• 44:08
  That's never going to happen.
• 44:11
  It's never going to happen.
• 44:13
  You don't have the energy for it.
• 44:16
  You will get invaded and take taken over at the very least, blockaded and starved to death.
• 44:21
  The Europeans, you do not have the energy, and the United States should be pumping even more hydrocarbons out of the ground if it wasn't for places like California, New York, Illinois, and other um ruinous blue states and their ruinous policies.
• 44:41
  Does anybody think that China is going to burn less coal or less natural gas?
• 44:46
  Um, China's also building the most amount of nuclear power plants in the world.
• 44:50
  Um, more gas is going to be coming.
• 44:54
  Um they're going to do more and more and more.
• 44:58
  They're dealing, they're drilling actually ultra deep boreholes.
• 45:02
  Um that recently reached 30 over almost 36,000 feet by the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation.
• 45:11
  Does anybody think that they're going to stop?
• 45:13
  Does anybody think that you know COP30, the UN environmental gab fab is going to keep them from using hydrocarbons?
• 45:23
  Does anybody really think you're going to beat Vladimir Putin?
• 45:27
  You will only beat him, Europe, when you decide to no longer be an energy vassal.
• 45:34
  You use about 40 exajoules of total primary energy, you produce about six.
• 45:40
  You're never going to win.
• 45:42
  Britain, which sits there and boasts and makes all sorts of threats from their leftist weak cowardly prime minister and is even worse, quote unquote, net zero environmental minister.
• 45:57
  You have 75,000 troops in your military.
• 46:00
  That's it.
• 46:02
  You I think you don't, I don't even know how many functional warships you have.
• 46:08
  What kind of force projection do you think you have when you tax your oil and gas companies almost 80%?
• 46:15
  You won't allow any drilling in the North Sea in the North Sea.
• 46:19
  You're broke.
• 46:21
  You have elected a leftist Islamist radical mayor who doesn't know how to run anything and is running even that city into the ground.
• 46:31
  Your country is broke.
• 46:33
  It's decarbonized, it has no energy.
• 46:36
  But meanwhile, China is going to drill more and more and more.
• 46:43
  Let's talk about nuclear power.
• 46:50
  Um projects that global nuclear power capacity will increase about 75% between now and 2050.
• 47:00
  Since 2022, China's approved about 10 new reactors a year, and uh they announced that they're gonna build 11 new reactors at a cost of 31 billion dollars.
• 47:11
  Uh that is dramatically less than what the West is doing right now.
• 47:16
  Um China leads the way.
• 47:18
  They built up their nuclear supply chain, they can deliver new reactor projects at about less than 25% of the cost in America.
• 47:30
  And when you think about this and four decade over schedule, tens of billions of dollars over cost.
• 47:47
  China's saying they can build 11 new reactors at a cost of 31 billion.
• 47:55
  Let's say they could eat, let's take it up to 40 billion dollars.
• 47:58
  Do the math.
• 48:01
  Do the math.
• 48:04
  Um Georgia Power spent 36 billion dollars to build those two reactors at Vogel in Georgia.
• 48:12
  It's called Vogel 3 and 4.
• 48:16
  Um Chinese nuclear power company says it will build six reactors for half of what Georgia Power paid to build two reactors.
• 48:25
  Um, and they're saying they can build each of them in five years.
• 48:29
  It's called the it's it's uh Hulong one.
• 48:32
  It's a it's a pressurized water reactor, it's got about 1.1 uh gigawatts of power.
• 48:40
  It's unbelievable.
• 48:42
  They're gonna lower the deployment costs, but they're gonna standardize the design.
• 48:46
  They're gonna repeat the builds at multiple sites, and they've got a domestic manufacturing for large components.
• 48:53
  And you go, well, how do they have all those components?
• 48:55
  You have to have things called like reactor pressure vessels and nuclear steam supply systems, balance of plants, these big big turbines and pieces.
• 49:07
  Um, well, how do you think they're building?
• 49:11
  Coal-fired power plants.
• 49:13
  China has plenty of coal, they do not mind dirtying their environment, and if they can get a geopower edge, they will do it.
• 49:20
  By 2030 on China's current nuclear power build versus the United States, which we argue with the NRC, who you know, oh gosh, we have to be this safe and that safe.
• 49:33
  How many nuns of safety do you need?
• 49:36
  China will have, they will overtake the United States and the amount of reactors and how much power they're receiving from them.
• 49:45
  If you are a developing country, Pakistan, Vietnam, Syria, Chile, um, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan.
• 50:00
  Myanmar.
• 50:02
  Heck, let's even say somebody like New Zealand.
• 50:06
  He's going to go to for a nuclear reactor.
• 50:09
  In other words, let's look at the reality.
• 50:12
  That Saudi deal that was just signed, that had nothing to do with the United States and Saudi Arabia.
• 50:18
  That had to do with we are looking at China and going, if we do not get our reactor technology on global markets, we will be overtaken.
• 50:27
  Already being overtaken by the Russians with their state-owned corporation called Rose Adam.
• 50:32
  Now the Chinese will overtake the Russians or they'll work together and crush the United States.
• 50:38
  And the Saudis know that too.
• 50:41
  That deal was made to keep the United States in a preeminent position in nuclear technology.
• 50:48
  That's exactly why that deal was made.
• 50:53
  I would argue is now a national security company.
• 50:56
  Wouldn't shock me if Westinghouse is eventually taken over by the Defense Department or the Department of War, however you want to say it.
• 51:04
  You've got to get that technology out there.
• 51:06
  Because what people like Russia and China do, because they understand geopower, energy in real politics, the politics of reality is they use their energy resources as a weapon.
• 51:19
  It is a weapon to them.
• 51:27
  Wars are long, they are won before a shot is ever fired.
• 51:32
  Energy is life.
• 51:33
  The only thing that can dominate you more or kill you quicker would be if a nuclear weapon went off.
• 51:41
  But if I own your energy, I own you.
• 51:44
  That's why the Chinese, the moment they figure out semiconductors that are powered by coal-fired power plants.
• 51:51
  I don't have to invade Taiwan.
• 51:54
  I simply have to blockade it.
• 51:56
  I simply have to shoot down the U.S.
• 51:58
  Seventh Fleet.
• 51:59
  I simply have to.
• 52:01
  I've got more ships, I've got more airplanes, and I've got more weapons because I have more energy than you do, United States.
• 52:08
  United States is a gigapower, but we don't use it.
• 52:12
  We have more oil and natural gas than they do.
• 52:14
  There's no reason that nuclear power plants, uh, what a gentleman named Emmett Penny calls industrial cathedrals, should not be in every major city in the United States.
• 52:27
  The entire United States should be run off nuclear power, and then you take our hydrocarbons to make planes, ships, tanks, merchant marines, Coast Guard, and to have a manufacturing capacity that absolutely rivals anybody in the world.
• 52:46
  That you crush China, you crush Russia.
• 52:49
  Um you frankly turn the Europeans in into an even more of an energy vassal because we supply them with everything at two, three, five X the cost, even 10x the cost, because you then can take on the Chinese and the Russians without ever firing a shot.
• 53:05
  It's called soft power.
• 53:08
  Joseph Ny is who came up with the concept.
• 53:12
  I don't have to fire any shots at you.
• 53:14
  I don't have to go to war with you.
• 53:16
  I don't have to do Russia Ukraine.
• 53:19
  If you if I if the Europeans were listening to me, if I were King Todd, I'm your host, King Todd.
• 53:27
  I would tell the Europeans, begin to drill for every piece of hydrocarbon you can.
• 53:33
  Begin to build nuclear power plants for every single solitary one of your major cities.
• 53:41
  Build up a military that would rival Russia and China's and watch both of them slink away.
• 53:50
  You have got absolutely um hundreds of years of progress on all of them.
• 53:57
  Use it.
• 54:00
  But the Europeans don't.
• 54:02
  And the reason they don't is because they believe in climate change, global warming, and energy transitions.
• 54:08
  Why do they have high electricity prices?
• 54:10
  Why are they an energy vassal?
• 54:12
  Why does the president of China laugh at Ursa Vandalin, the leader of the European Union, which how she became the leader?
• 54:21
  Shame on the Europeans.
• 54:25
  Because he has energy.
• 54:28
  Because he's building coal-fired power plants that process his rare earth metals and minerals, which build his weapons of war, his airplanes, his ships, his guns.
• 54:41
  He has nuclear power that's going to power that country.
• 54:57
  All of this is predicated on having energy.
• 55:00
  All of this is predicated on having plenty of power.
• 55:03
  When I think about this show, and that's why we talk about geo power.
• 55:11
  Geo power.
• 55:14
  When you think about nuclear reactors, so roughly right now, there's 64 nuclear reactors under construction around the world.
• 55:22
  29 of them are in China.
• 55:25
  Twenty-none.
• 55:26
  Chinese government wants to have 200 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2035.
• 55:31
  It says it can maybe have 400 gigawatts by 2050.
• 55:35
  The Chinese typically do these five-year plans.
• 55:57
  Yet we're arguing about that.
• 56:01
  You go, okay, why does China embrace natural gas?
• 56:05
  The United States has embraced it.
• 56:06
  Qatar's embraced it, others have embraced it.
• 56:09
  But why are they embraced natural gas and nuclear?
• 56:13
  There's a reason why.
• 56:14
  They have incredible energy density.
• 56:16
  They're very, very, very high, which means I can put a lot of power on a smaller area of land.
• 56:23
  And I need a lot less materials, and those materials are like steel, concrete, copper, rebar, iron, rare earth metals, and minerals versus weather dependent forms of generation like solar and wind.
• 56:38
  That's a fancy way of going.
• 56:40
  If the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, it doesn't work.
• 56:43
  And when you think of a modern economy, um, I'd ask any of you, my listeners, please go look up manufacturing plants that have to have power 24-7, 365.
• 56:54
  That if they if they were to lose power for even one to two seconds, it could ruin their multi-million dollar machines.
• 57:02
  That's how sensitive their machines are.
• 57:12
  And if they are not met head on with what they're doing with energy, eventually, we will lose.
• 57:20
  We will be their vassal, or the West, led by the United States, will become a second rate rate nation because they simply don't have the power to take them on.
• 57:28
  My name is Todd Royal.
• 57:31
  This is our fifth episode, but I'm calling the reality episode of geopower, energy, and real politics.
• 57:37
  Thank you so much.
• 57:38
  Look forward to speaking with you next week.
• 57:40
  God bless.