According to more and more people, this is likely starting this summer. Texas, best known in electrical circles for a winter fiasco a couple of winters back, is now center of a “heat dome” in which weather usually reserved for August has cooked the region for weeks now.

But that is not the bad news. What is? Uncle Joe’s regime (the Biden administration) has quietly (and finally) admitted there’s not enough green energy to meet U.S. demand for electricity.

This week that CNN got around to reporting what a lot of people had warned about six weeks ago. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NAERC) has confirmed that two-thirds of the continent is at risk of planned blackouts if the power grid comes under stress this summer. And global warming or not, we can be certain that the Heat Dome, El Nino, and other weather conditions are going to stress the power grid.

But CNN admitted even more that many of us have pointed out. This week the Department of Energy (DOE – the FedGov) published a report confessing that all the wonderful new wind and solar power capacity coming online isn’t enough to replace all the coal and nuclear plants that are being mothballed. Not just the ones being forced to close down this year, but even those already shut down (and in many cases, dismantled).

We here at TPOL know this intimately. Every week or month, we drive past the coal-fired and natural gas-fired power stations in South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico that have been shut down. In some cases, despite the massive efforts by local businesses, officials, and even tribes to prevent them. Plants that have decades of economical life left. Plants essential to provide power to the States – especially the former paradise called the People’s Republic of California.

The DOE report goes on to say: “The intermittent nature of wind power (wind turbines only generate electricity if the wind is blowing, and how much electricity they generate depends on how windy it is) present operational challenges for grid operators. Low-wind and high-demand periods could result in energy emergencies.”

Wonderful! Some fedgov bureaucrats and their idiotic political masters have finally admitted to a problem that we here in the West (both the Rockies and the Great Plains) have warned about for decades. (Just as many of us warned about what would happen when we started using corn and soybeans to produce ethanol-laced gasoline and soydiesel instead of food for animals and humans.)

And as with the power stations (and the closed coal mines which furnished fuel for them and plants in states like Kansas and Missouri and Nebraska and Iowa), we here at TPOL constantly drive past the wind turbine plantations and solar power farms that increasingly dot the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and even Utah. Including the reservations.

We lose count of how many times we’ve driven past 30 or 50 wind turbines, their blades locked down and unmoving despite the wind blowing past them: because it is too fast or too slow, or because the generators or something else in the 300-foot towers are being “maintained” (repaired). And we have seen the dead birds, the impact on other wildlife, and the rows of wornout (or poorly built) blades laid out near landfills as they try to figure out how to reuse or recycle these things.

And we have seen more and more built in recent years, or at least the equipment (blades and towers and the like) clogging the highways with oversized loads hauled by Diesel-fueled 18-wheelers. And have calculated out the insane environmental impact.

And we have seen solar arrays unable to produce any electricity at all (and consuming it!) because there has been several days of rain, or worse, snowfall, blocking the sunlight.

That was a big problem in Texas: not only a lack of sunlight (and wind in some places) but sub-zero weather that did a number on the equipment.

We talk about “win-win-win” situations. This (depending on solar and wind to replace coal and natural gas and nukes) is a lose-lose-lose situation.

One source tells us that the States and Provinces (Canada) has no more grid capacity now than it did in 2011 – 12 stinking years ago. In that same period, the population has grown 8.3%. Even worse, both FedGov’s (DC and Ottawa) have been pushing electric vehicles – even for trucks. And intensifying demand for electrical power. Worse, the grid is getting older and there are dozens of choke points. Vulnerable to terrorists and just plain accidents and stupidity. It’s been known for years (here is a 2019 study). Despite such things as energy-efficient lighting and appliances, Americans’ and Canadians’ need for electrical power increases daily. We have such things as new computer systems and networks (AI and data centers), we have more goods and services being produced, transported, and consumed.

Then people (environists and politicians and bureaucrats) who want to shut down and tear down dams with power plants, who deny and delay new sources of oil and gas, and continue to treat nuclear power as the most evil of things.

We need power – real power and not governmental power. Especially not DC (fedgov) power. And not democratic voting power. Because we also need more truth. Truth and human ingenuity – practiced in freedom – is the solution.

Or to put it another way, liberation from the tyranny of government as practiced in DC, Ottawa, and every provincial and state capital.