Month: July 2025

Nuclear power is experiencing a massive revival across Europe, with the regulatory environment shifting decisively in its favor thanks to surging electricity demand from the AI and data center boom, climate goals, volatile global energy markets and the urgent need for structural energy independence. It’s a big wishlist, and nuclear may be the fastest way to realize it. Massive power demand by the tech giants and hyperscalers is exceeding traditional grid capacities in Europe and the United States. AI data centers require huge amounts of baseload…

The first new oil sands project in Alberta since 2014 has started commercial production, aiming for a daily average of 80,000 barrels once it ramps up. The Blackrod project, led by International Petroleum Corp., moved to the first phase of production despite the peak oil demand narrative that has dominated the past decade, especially in Canada. Canadian oil sands have been in the focus of transition attention as especially energy-intensive, meaning emission-intensive, and as a high-cost way of extracting crude oil from the ground. Under activist…

Donald Trump has been battling wind turbines in the court of public opinion and in actual court for over a decade now. Trump has railed about “windmills” repeatedly over the course of his presidential term and campaign trails, calling the technology “so pathetic and so bad” before proudly declaring that no wind power will be approved on his watch. “I can proudly say […] that we have not approved one windmill since I’ve been in office. And we’re going to keep it that way. My goal is to not let any windmill…

Germany may be getting cold feet about ending its oil reserve waiver. Berlin said this week it is considering extending a temporary reduction in national oil stockpiling requirements beyond the current August 31 deadline, even as markets celebrate the U.S.-Iran agreement and the expected reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Officially, Germany insists there are no physical shortages. That’s true. But governments generally don’t keep discussing emergency measures when they’re completely comfortable with the situation. Germany joined the International…

Every AI boom forecast being published right now — every bull case, Big Tech earnings call, and valuation model — seems to be making the same assumption. The electricity will be there to power it when they need it. It won’t. Bitzero (NASDAQ: AIBZ) spent the last four years betting against that assumption. The company locked in more than a gigawatt of low-cost power across Norway, Finland, and North Dakota, well before the rest of the industry started fighting over every available megawatt. The company is already cash flow positive,…

As oil benchmarks crash and Brent slips below $80 per barrel, a growing number of analysts are sounding an alarm: Hormuz may reopen, but oil production in the region would not rebound immediately—and the world’s oil inventories are depleting. Back in May, Carlyle Group’s Jeff Currie warned that by July, parts of the world would face what he dubbed “minimum operational levels” of crude oil supply due to depletion resulting from storage withdrawals to avoid shortages amid the Hormuz crisis. Energy Aspects analysts also…

The Truck Exception Isn’t as Big as You Think When I recently argued that the internal combustion engine may already have passed its peak, many readers responded with a familiar objection. Cars are one thing, they argued, but trucks are different. Passenger vehicles can be electrified because they drive predictable distances, return home every evening, and increasingly benefit from lower operating costs. Long-haul trucking, by contrast, depends on heavy payloads, long distances, and energy densities that batteries supposedly cannot provide. While…

Despite historic political headwinds against the global decarbonization effort, clean energy spending continues to see a meteoric rise around the world. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Investment 2026, published in May of this year, projects that of the $3.4 trillion dollars that the world will spend on energy investments this year, $2.2 trillion will go to clean energy, and just $1.2 trillion will go to fossil fuels. This marks a historic shift in energy spending and in energy security priorities on a global level. Worldwide,…

As readers of Adam Smith know, the market functions to provide consumers with goods and services at the lowest price (within limits set by law). Yet, several years ago, we submitted a piece claiming that restructuring the electricity industry had not produced noticeable consumer benefits, and the irate peer reviewer (we suspect a big shot restructuring maven ) retorted that you can’t prove a negative but added, “Who said that restructuring was supposed to benefit consumers?” On the first point, we simply opined that consumer benefits…

If you’ve been investing in the AI boom, you probably own most of the same names everyone else does. NVIDIA for the chips. Microsoft, Google and Amazon for the cloud. Maybe Meta for the consumer side. Maybe Palantir or one of the AI software names. Possibly TSMC for exposure to the manufacturing layer. And that playbook has worked well for investors. NVIDIA alone has minted more wealth in two years than most companies create in a century. The hyperscalers have all hit fresh highs. AI software stocks that were speculative bets in 2022 now trade…