IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:
Energy
ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:
The end of oil? As fuel shocks cascade, 53 nations gather to plan a fossil fuel phaseout (The Conversation, April 21, 2026)
US President Donald Trump is a longtime climate denier and oil industry ally, who sums up his own energy policy as “drill, baby, drill”. Yet he is doing more than almost anyone to speed up the global shift from fossil fuels to clean energy and electric vehicles (EVs).
After the US and Israel struck Iran in late February, Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz and triggered the largest disruption of oil supply in history.
Ironically for Trump and his oil industry donors, this crisis may be an irreversible tipping point for clean energy.
Darwinists believe an awful lot of Malthusian nonsense, but their Peak Oil obsession was particulary amusing.
…AND CHEAPER…:
Homemade solar drone smashes endurance record with 5+ hours aloft (Omar Kardoudi, April 05, 2026, New Atlas)
Luke Bell and his father Mike have done it again. Their new solar-powered drone – running on sunlight and almost nothing else – just claimed an unofficial endurance record for electric multirotors, flying for 5 hours, 2 minutes, and 21 seconds before Luke simply got tired and landed it.
ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:
Faster, and a lot cheaper: First all-electric long haul delivery flags new era in Australia trucking (Giles Parkinson, 30 March 2026, Driven)
The electric trucking company New Energy Transport is claiming the Australian first after organising the delivery of a bulk load of Who Gives A Crap toilet paper from Sydney to Canberra, using an electric prime mover and then a fleet of electric last mile delivery trucks to get the merchandise to the final destination.
According to NET’s Daniel Bleakley the energy costs from the 460 kilometres covered by the Chinese-made Windrose prime mover and the last mile delivery vehicles supplied by logistics group ANC last week were 85 per cent below the cost of a diesel truck.
And it was faster, too. The Windrose electric prime mover (which has a 700 kWh battery) covered the trip from Sydney to Canberra in a single charge. And because it can maintain speed up steep hills – unlike diesel trucks – it completed the trip 25 minutes faster than a diesel truck.
IT’S IMPOSSDIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:
Next-generation geothermal power: A commercial readiness assessment (Kenneth Sercy, Jia-Shen Tsai, 3/26/26, Niskanen Center)
With a very large potential market, attractive round-the-clock power generation profile, increased cost competitiveness, and favorable supply chain conditions, NGG is positioned for accelerated growth. However, it faces serious headwinds, including limited large-scale project experience; a lack of capital for project development; broad power-system infrastructure limitations; and challenging regulatory, permitting, and policy environments. Nevertheless, policy reforms could mitigate many of these key risks, creating positive momentum for building more projects and delivering the benefits that come from learning effects.
YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:
Hydrogen-powered business jet edges closer to certification (David Szondy, March 26, 2026, New Atlas)
Because of its redundant fuel cell configuration, the six 400-kW cells powering the turbofan motors are claimed to have a system resilience that rivals that of conventional engines. In addition, the zero-emissions powertrain makes the BYA-I immune to carbon taxes and “flight shaming” regulations.
PITY THE POOR MALTHUSIANS:
How M&S fruit picked by a Dyson could save us all money (Ben Spencer, March 21 2026, Times uk)
It is not just the robotic pickers that make the farm so advanced. The glasshouse is also divided into different climatic zones to “trick” the plants into fruiting throughout the year; strawberries are grown on 13ft tall rotating ferris wheels to increase the productivity of the space; UV lights on rails are used at night to tackle mould; and ladybirds are released to eat aphids. “We only use pesticides as a last resort,” said Cross.
The real key, though, is that the entire project is energy self-sufficient. A £16 million anaerobic digester next to the greenhouses takes maize, barley and rye grown in adjacent fields and ferments it in huge vats. The gas produced by the digester is then burnt to heat the greenhouses and generate electricity to meet all the farm’s power needs, with any excess sold back to the grid.
Carbon dioxide is also fed from the digester into the greenhouses via long, leaky tubes woven through the plants, to boost yields and sweetness. And when the feedstock has been digested, the resulting waste is put back onto the fields as a fertiliser.All this means that when gas prices increase — and they have nearly tripled in the three weeks since the Iran conflict began — the Dyson strawberry operation is cushioned from the increase in costs that are hitting other producers.
ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:
The ‘Big Beautiful Cook Inlet’ lease sale gets no bids for drilling (Rebecca Palsha, Mar. 4, 2026, KTUU)
The “Big Beautiful Cook Inlet” oil and gas lease sale received no bids for drilling, according to the federal government.
Up for grabs was more than one million acres off Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
In an online statement, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management wrote about the “Big Beautiful Cook Inlet” that “No bids were received.”
Environmental groups responded to the news with applause.