A guest post by Third Act Washington’s Power Up Committee of Chris Goelz, Tom Kraemer, Steven Smiley, Donna Albert, and Gregg Brown.
Brandi Carlile, at a Gorge Amphitheater concert a couple years ago, remarked that her father, a hunter, told her the most dangerous animal was one that was wounded and cornered. This is a good characterization of the present fossil fuel industry.
They are cornered and dangerous because the simple truth is that the fossil fuel industry is no longer economically competitive.
The last of the aging coal fired power plants are in line to be decommissioned, and only wasteful customer and political subsidies keep these plants alive. Every hour they run is a loss economically and environmentally—and every year the cost advantage of renewables over coal grows.
Electricity now powers vehicles at a comparative price of under one dollar per gallon when charged at one’s home or business. With electric off-peak prices, a time when there’s lots of capacity, electric fuel can be as low as 50 cents per gallon. And EVs have great performance and low maintenance costs (no brake jobs, oil changes or grease). Auto companies and investors be warned, once a person drives an EV they will never go back.
Onshore wind turbines make energy cheaper than drilling oil and gas wells—generating electricity that is replacing gasoline and diesel for under a dollar a gallon. An oil and gas roughneck on an offshore rig, would jump ship with joy to work on a clean floating wind turbine.
Fossil gas cannot compete with solar energy. Heat pumps for heating and cooling (HVAC), energy efficiency, and solar photovoltaics (PV), costing roughly 3-5 cents per kilowatt-hour, out-compete natural (fossil) gas. In our region, the distribution of fossil gas is falling at rate that will lead to a fifty percent drop by the year 2030.
Fossil fuels cannot compete against cheap wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewables. It’s as simple as that. As more and more people choose renewables, retail prices for fossil fuel sourced energy must go up-– as fixed costs are spread over fewer and fewer customers. This is the beginning of its “death spiral”, higher prices, lower demand, lower demand, higher prices, and on down. As such, there is no economic reason to build, replace or repair a fossil gas pipeline, big or small. And shipping LNG, liquified natural gas, to boost distribution is no solution. It only doubles the price of an already uncompetitive fuel.
The fossil fuel industry is cornered and dangerous because it is simply uncompetitive economically, environmentally and politically. It has diabolically concealed what it’s known for decades about its impact on the planet: killer heat waves, sea level rise, record temperatures, melting glaciers, hurricanes, fires, drought, and floods. But even the $445 million that the industry spent in 2024 to put an advocate in the White House can’t stop its demise.
And what about atomic power? According to the Energy Information Administration the US installed 44 gigawatts (44,000 MW) of solar and wind energy just in 2024. Adjusting for capacity factors this is equivalent to building 14 large atomic power plants in the US every year, over one per month! (assuming +/- 1,000 MW each). Does building an atomic power plant that takes a decade to build with a thousand years of waste storage at four times the price make sense? All the government subsidies in the world can’t justify fission or fusion atomic power.
Decades ago, the Edison Electric Institute warned the electric utility industry that energyefficiency was going to be a death spiral–lower demand, higher costs, lower demand, higher costs, and on down. They have been resisting energy efficiency and renewable energy ever since. With renewable energy costs declining 80 to 90 percent in the last decade solar, wind, storage and other renewables will accelerate the death spiral of the entire atomic and fossil fuel industry. Citizens and investors be warned, they are cornered and dangerous.
