Comment: John Shanahan
There are a good number of Americans who argue they want the option to use paper bags rather than plastic, the option to use wind and solar instead of fossil fuels and nuclear. Then they vote for politicians who mandate: paper bags and place a tax on them, and work for decades to implement Net Zero energy schemes. These policies will destroy countries.
The article below by Todd Royal about energy wars is written so that most people can understand the tremendous energy problems we are facing.
This is not a matter of whether we should care about this topic. We must make the right decisions, if we want a peaceful and prosperous modern world,
Everything in this scene is natural. At the same time, the owners have access to plentiful, reliable energy and the best of modern conveniences. Everything is created by sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. CO2 is the molecule of life, not a pollutant that Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the United Nations should control.
A world with energy shortages creates hardships, regional wars, destruction of wildlife habitat, and loss of biodiversity. This has been the case in Europe and elsewhere for thousands of years.
Article by Todd Royal
Energy War: Iran, China, AI and the fight to control the future
From Iran and Ukraine to artificial intelligence, batteries and the nuclear renaissance, the great political argument of our time is colliding with an unforgiving reality: civilizations run on energy, not aspirations.
There is a habit in modern politics of treating energy as another issue.
Healthcare is an issue. Immigration is an issue. Defense is an issue. Artificial intelligence is an issue. Climate is an issue. Economic growth is an issue.
Energy supposedly sits alongside them.
It doesn’t.
Energy is underneath all of them.
That is the premise I keep returning to on Geopower, Energy & Real Politics: energy is everything. And the framework I use to understand what follows is equally important—regime type, ideology, history and human nature.
Ignore any one of those long enough and eventually reality collects its debt.
That is true in Tehran. It is true on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is true in Brussels. It is true in Texas, where electricity demand from data centers is forcing politicians to confront a grid they spent years assuming could simply absorb whatever new load arrived. And it is true across the developed world, where trillions of dollars have been committed to an energy transition that increasingly has to answer a very impolite question:
Where is the energy?
Not the nameplate capacity. Not the press release. Not the subsidy. Not the modeled megawatt-hour produced at noon on a perfect April day.
The electricity—when civilization actually needs it.
Listen to the podcast: Energy is national security—the West can ignore physics until physics sends the bill
Iran and the Difference Between Capability and Political Will
The episode begins with Iran because Iran illustrates a distinction Americans increasingly struggle to make: the difference between possessing the capability to do something and possessing the political will to do it.
In the transcript, I reject the simplistic cable-news language of whether America “won” or “lost” in Iran. My argument is that military outcomes are bounded not merely by capability but by political, economic, and humanitarian calculations.
The nuclear issue makes the stakes unusually clear.
Before the latest conflict, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to as much as 60%. That is not the same thing as possessing a nuclear weapon, and Iran has maintained that its program is peaceful. But 60% enrichment is a short technical step from roughly 90% weapons-grade material. As of June 2026, the whereabouts and condition of a significant portion of that material remained a central issue for international inspectors.
That is the serious question—not whether a politician should “take the L.”
What degree of nuclear latency is acceptable in the world’s most combustible region? What is the cost of stopping it? What is the cost of tolerating it? What happens to oil markets, shipping lanes, Israel, Gulf states and the world economy if deterrence fails?
Those are geopolitical questions. They are also energy questions.
A war around the Persian Gulf can turn barrels of oil, LNG cargoes, petrochemical feedstocks and shipping insurance into instruments of national power overnight. The Energy Institute’s 2026 Statistical Review notes that energy security has again moved to the foreground amid Middle East conflict and record global energy demand.
Energy never stopped being geopolitical.
Western elites simply became wealthy enough to forget it.
Then Artificial Intelligence Arrived
Now the same mistake is colliding with the AI revolution.
Data centers don’t consume “annual average electricity.” They need electricity at 2:17 on a windless August afternoon and at 4:30 on a freezing January morning. Servers don’t care whether a state’s renewable portfolio met a target on paper. A hyperscale facility wants power quality, reliability, transmission, transformers, substations and generation.
This is where the debate over batteries gets interesting.
Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr’s “The Battery Bubble” attacks the idea that battery storage can economically transform weather-dependent generation into a complete substitute for dispatchable power. Their cited PJM modeling produces intentionally dramatic numbers: a renewables-heavy system would require massive overbuilding and storage, with the scenario they analyze reaching roughly 2.06 million megawatts of installed capacity and more than $4 trillion in modeled costs through 2045, versus roughly $668 billion in their gas-and-nuclear alternative.
Those numbers should not be treated as holy writ. The assumptions are contestable, and the authors themselves discuss criticism of their modeling.
But that isn’t a reason to dismiss the question.
It is the reason to ask it.
How many hours of storage are required? At what temperature? At what degradation rate? For what weather event? Backed by how much transmission? Recharged by what generation source? And at what total system cost?
My transcript makes precisely this distinction. Four-hour lithium-ion batteries can perform valuable grid services, but short-duration storage is not automatically equivalent to a dispatchable power plant capable of supplying electricity continuously through a multi-day generation shortfall.
The 2026 Energy Institute data add an important counterweight: batteries are scaling extraordinarily fast. Global battery capacity rose 66% in 2025, and solar generation expanded 30%. Those are consequential achievements.
But rapid growth does not make two different products identical.
A battery is storage.
A power plant is generation.
A megawatt of intermittent nameplate capacity is not a megawatt of firm capacity.
That sounds elementary. Our energy policy often behaves as though it is revolutionary.
The Energy-Density Problem Nobody Can Subsidize Away
Scott Grout’s “The Energy Density Ladder” gets at something deeper.
Human civilization has largely advanced by moving toward denser, more controllable forms of energy. Wood gave way to coal. Coal was joined by petroleum and natural gas. Nuclear fission then changed the scale altogether.
Grout attempts to compare technologies through power density at the point where energy is converted. His specific methodology can be debated—and he explicitly acknowledges that the choice of conversion interface involves judgment—but his central physical observation is difficult to escape: diffuse sources require enormously more collection area, infrastructure, and material than concentrated sources.
The transcript keeps returning to this because it matters enormously for the next economic era.
AI factories are concentrated loads.
Steel mills are concentrated loads.
Semiconductor fabs are concentrated loads.
Military-industrial production is concentrated loads.
Cities are concentrated loads.
Trying to serve increasingly concentrated demand exclusively with increasingly diffuse supply creates an engineering problem before it becomes a political one.
That doesn’t mean wind and solar have no useful role. It means their physical characteristics don’t disappear because politicians prefer different adjectives.
Net Zero Meets the Statistical Review
Grout’s “Net Zero: A 25-Year Exercise in Insincerity and Unseriousness” is deliberately provocative. But one feature of the essay deserves particular attention because it complicates the caricature of the debate: Grout explicitly accepts that atmospheric CO2 is rising, that the planet is warming and that human activity contributes to that warming. His argument is instead that the institutional response has frequently been technically unserious and has oversold what existing technologies and policies could accomplish.
That distinction matters.
I disagree with Grout on parts of the climate question, as I state directly in the podcast. But his broader indictment deserves engagement because the numbers remain uncomfortable.
The Energy Institute reported that total energy supply rose another 1.7% in 2025 and that every major energy source reached an all-time high for the second consecutive year. Renewables provided the largest portion of incremental total-energy growth for the first time outside a recession—an important milestone—but global emissions also continued rising.
Read that again.
Renewables are booming.
Fossil fuels remain enormous.
Energy demand keeps growing.
Emissions keep growing.
All four can be true at once.
That is why the word transition can mislead. Much of what humanity is experiencing remains an energy addition.
We are adding wind.
Adding solar.
Adding batteries.
Adding natural gas.
Adding oil.
Adding coal.
And, slowly, rediscovering nuclear.
The world wants more energy because billions of people want the material life Americans and Europeans already possess.
No speech at a climate conference repeals that aspiration.
The Primary-Energy Argument—and the Denominator Trick
Grout’s “The Fallacy of the Primary Energy Fallacy” goes after another increasingly technical dispute: whether conventional primary-energy accounting exaggerates the challenge of replacing fossil fuels because combustion discards large amounts of heat.
There is a legitimate methodological issue here. In fact, the Energy Institute changed its methodology beginning with its 2025 review, moving from fossil-fuel-equivalent primary energy accounting toward a Physical Energy Content approach for Total Energy Supply.
Grout argues that even after crediting electrification for avoided combustion losses, a deeply electrified system must account for other losses—from storage, transmission, synthetic fuels, overbuilding and conversion. His conclusion is that the denominator may shrink, but the physical scale of the transformation remains enormous.
That is the useful insight.
Arguments about primary energy can become statistical shell games if the purpose is to make a difficult engineering transition appear effortless.
The correct response isn’t to choose the number that helps your political team.
It is to show the entire energy chain.
How Many Times Do You Have to Build the Same Power Plant?
Then comes the question that stopped me cold while preparing this episode:
How many times do you have to build it?
Grout’s essay of that name looks beyond the upfront construction cost of a generating asset and asks how many replacement cycles are required to produce electricity over an 80-year period.
Using assumed asset lives and actual capacity factors, his heuristic calculates roughly 10.5 solar “build equivalents,” 8.6 for onshore wind, and 7.2 for offshore wind to match the lifetime output represented by a nuclear plant in his framework. The transcript walks through those figures because they force a different way of thinking about capital intensity.
This is not a substitute for a discounted-cash-flow model. It is not a complete LCOE calculation. It doesn’t settle financing cost, construction risk, fuel expense, or regional economics.
But it exposes something LCOE discussions often hide: durability matters.
Duty cycle matters.
Replacement matters.
Capacity factor matters.
The U.S. data explain why. Nuclear plants operate at exceptionally high capacity factors; EIA notes that they generally run near capacity throughout the year except for refueling and maintenance, while wind and solar output necessarily varies with weather and daylight.
A civilization isn’t buying technologies.
It is buying delivered electricity over time.
That difference should change the conversation.
Lazard’s Report Is More Interesting Than Either Side Wants to Admit
Sarah Montalbano’s discussion of Lazard’s 2026 report is particularly useful because it confronts the favorite statistic in modern electricity policy: LCOE.
Here is where intellectual discipline matters.
Lazard did not conclude that wind and solar suddenly became universally uneconomic. Its July 2026 release explicitly says renewables remain the lowest-cost new-build generation in many circumstances.
But Lazard says something else, too: unprecedented demand growth and rising new-build costs are increasing the competitiveness of existing generation and strengthening the case for a diverse generation fleet.
Montalbano’s piece emphasizes that second reality, while my transcript argues that LCOE by itself misses firming, transmission, storage, replacement and other system costs.
This is where both political camps should stop cheating.
Renewable advocates shouldn’t compare a new nuclear plant with an intermittent generator while pretending the latter needs no grid around it.
Nuclear advocates shouldn’t pretend enormous first-of-a-kind construction cost, financing risk and schedule risk are imaginary.
Natural-gas advocates shouldn’t pretend fuel-price exposure doesn’t exist.
There is no serious energy analysis without total system cost.
The cheapest electron in an Excel model can become an extraordinarily expensive electron if it isn’t available when the customer needs it.
China Doesn’t Believe in an Energy Transition. China Believes in Energy.
Scott Grout’s “Coal Changes Jobs” brings the argument back to geopolitics.
The caricature of China as a clean-energy model misses what Beijing actually does: it builds virtually everything.
China dominates solar manufacturing. It builds enormous quantities of renewables. It is building nuclear power. And it remains overwhelmingly dependent on coal.
Energy Institute data show coal still generated 58% of China’s electricity in 2024, while China accounted for roughly two-thirds of Asia-Pacific coal demand. The transcript cites Grout’s coal-production comparison to make the same larger point: China’s industrial strategy is not based on betting the nation on one favored technology.
China understands something the West once understood instinctively.
Industrial power requires power.
A factory doesn’t run on an ESG score.
A shipyard doesn’t run on a climate disclosure.
An aluminum smelter doesn’t run on a conference communiqué.
And a military doesn’t manufacture artillery shells with virtue.
That is why the Russia-Ukraine war belongs in an energy discussion. The conflict is not merely about borders and diplomatic abstractions. Modern attritional warfare consumes diesel, explosives, metals, chemicals, electricity, machine tools and industrial capacity.
Andrew Korybko’s essay responding to Tim Kirby, cited in the episode, adds the historical layer: Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and broader Eastern European relationships cannot be understood without the grievances, borders and memories left behind by the 20th century. The transcript uses that essay to reconnect the war with my four-part framework of history, regime, ideology and human nature.
The West can debate strategy.
It cannot debate the material requirements of strategy.
The Nuclear Renaissance Has to Become an Industrial Program
Which leads to nuclear power.
Grout’s “A Vision and Blueprint for the Nuclear Renaissance” is valuable because nuclear’s comeback cannot consist merely of politicians announcing targets.
Reactors require forgings.
Fuel.
Enrichment.
Valves.
Pumps.
Steam generators.
Digital instrumentation and controls.
Qualified welders.
Nuclear-grade concrete.
Regulatory certainty.
Project-management competence.
Capital.
The transcript makes the point explicitly: the nuclear renaissance ultimately becomes a supply-chain problem, and serious work by industry, national laboratories, the Department of Energy, EPRI and specialist consulting groups increasingly focuses on how to rebuild that industrial base.
The attractiveness of nuclear is obvious in one respect. It provides concentrated, dispatchable electricity with no direct CO2 emissions during reactor operation and exceptionally high capacity factors.
Its problem in the West has been equally obvious: we have become extraordinarily good at making nuclear projects expensive.
Some of that is regulation. Some is financing. Some is construction execution. Some is the loss of repetition and manufacturing infrastructure.
Those are not arguments against nuclear.
They are instructions for the nuclear renaissance.
Environmentalism’s Most Interesting Critic May Be an Environmentalist
Alex Trembath’s “Decoupling Syndrome” offers the essay’s necessary counterpoint.
Trembath’s argument is more subtle than either “humanity is destroying nature” or “environmentalists are destroying civilization.” Modernity has made human beings dramatically wealthier, healthier, and less immediately dependent on natural ecosystems. Industrialization substitutes engineered systems for direct dependence on nature—electric heating for biomass, synthetic materials for biological ones, intensive agriculture for continual expansion of farmland.
That process can simultaneously improve human welfare and leave people psychologically and culturally alienated from the natural world.
The transcript engages directly with that tension.
That may be the most productive place for environmental politics to go next.
Not scarcity.
Not enforced decline.
Not pretending eight billion people will embrace preindustrial living.
Abundance plus stewardship.
Build dense cities.
Produce more food on less land.
Generate enormous quantities of reliable electricity.
Restore ecosystems where possible.
Use technology to reduce humanity’s footprint without reducing humanity itself.
That is a far more compelling environmentalism than telling ordinary people their refrigerator, automobile, air conditioner, flight, or child represents a planetary sin.
Central Banks, Green Finance and the Credibility Problem
Tilak Doshi’s “Central Banks Double Down on Climate Regulation Despite Collapse of Green Finance” broadens the critique from energy policy into financial governance.
There is a legitimate argument for financial regulators to understand climate-related risks. There is also a legitimate debate about where risk supervision ends and industrial policy begins. Academic literature reflects precisely that tension: central banks increasingly treat climate as a financial-risk issue, while many scholars and institutions still argue that the primary responsibility for climate policy belongs to elected governments.
That distinction matters enormously in a democracy.
The more institutions stretch beyond their core mandates, the more trust they risk consuming.
Doshi’s separate essay, “In Covid as in Climate Change, Truth…”, belongs in the discussion for the same reason—not because every analogy between a pandemic and climate policy is sound, but because both debates demonstrate what happens when scientific uncertainty, bureaucratic authority, political incentives and public trust collide.
My transcript is far more aggressive on Covid-era officials than I would carry into a newspaper-style essay. The useful point for this article is narrower:
Institutions cannot demand trust indefinitely. They have to earn it through transparency, falsifiable claims, open debate and accountability when predictions fail.
That standard should apply to public health.
It should apply to central banking.
And it should absolutely apply to energy policy.
Follow the Subsidy—and Follow the Narrative
David Blackmon’s pieces “Audrey Streb: What a Grift…” and “Billionaire-Funded Fake News Operation…” push into an even more politically combustible area: who finances energy policy, and who finances the narratives surrounding it.
These are polemical pieces and should be read as such, not confused with neutral audits.
But they pose questions journalists themselves ought to ask.
Who receives the subsidy?
Who structured it?
Which intermediary receives a fee?
Who finances the advocacy organization?
Who funds the publication or campaign attacking a data center, pipeline, power plant or transmission project?
Which interests benefit if the project dies?
My podcast links Wall Street incentives, federal green subsidies, and campaigns against data centers because capital and narrative are both forms of political power.
The answer is not to assume corruption every time somebody disagrees with you.
The answer is disclosure.
Follow the money.
Follow the physics.
Then compare the two.
Twenty-Five Years Later, Physics Is Still Undefeated
Scott Grout’s body of work—including “About Me and My Blog”—is useful not because every calculation should be accepted uncritically, but because his essays keep asking questions our energy establishment has often avoided.
What is the denominator?
What is the capacity factor?
What does firming cost?
How long does the asset last?
How many times must it be replaced?
How much land does it occupy?
How much material does it require?
What happens when the wind stops?
What happens when gas prices spike?
What happens when electricity demand rises instead of falling?
What happens when a country suddenly has to make steel, ammunition, transformers and semiconductors at wartime scale?
Those are better questions than asking whether somebody “believes” in renewable energy or “believes” in climate change.
Electric grids are indifferent to belief.
Reactors are indifferent to belief.
Natural-gas turbines are indifferent to belief.
Lithium chemistry is indifferent to belief.
Uranium atoms are indifferent to belief.
And an AI data center containing tens of billions of dollars of computing equipment is spectacularly indifferent to belief when somebody flips the switch.
The great error of Western energy policy has been imagining that energy systems can be reordered primarily through aspiration, subsidy and regulation.
They cannot.
They can be reordered through engineering, capital, construction, materials, fuel, infrastructure and time.
That doesn’t mean abandoning wind and solar. It doesn’t mean burning coal forever. It doesn’t mean climate risks are fictional. And it certainly doesn’t mean nuclear power is magically free.
It means all megawatts are not equal.
It means reliability has value.
It means energy density has value.
It means longevity has value.
It means existing plants have value.
It means domestic industrial capacity has value.
It means energy security is national security.
And it means the United States should stop designing an energy system around what sounds virtuous and start building one around what a rich, technologically advanced, industrial civilization actually requires.
Because Iran understands energy.
Russia understands energy.
China certainly understands energy.
Artificial intelligence understands energy, in the only way a machine can: it demands staggering amounts of it.
The question is whether the West will remember in time.
Energy is everything.
And physics doesn’t negotiate.
Listen to the podcast: Energy is national security—the West can ignore physics until physics sends the bill
REFERENCE PAGE
Todd Royal, Geopower, Energy & Real Politics — Episode Transcript, August 2026. Primary source for the arguments and commentary developed in this essay.
Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr, “The Battery Bubble,” Energy Bad Boys. The Battery Bubble
Alex Trembath, “Decoupling Syndrome,” Breakthrough Journal. Decoupling Syndrome
Scott Grout, “The Energy Density Ladder,” Needs of the Many. The Energy Density Ladder
Scott Grout, “Net Zero: A 25-Year Exercise in Insincerity and Unseriousness,” Needs of the Many. Net Zero: A 25-Year Exercise in Insincerity and Unseriousness
Scott Grout, “The Fallacy of the Primary Energy Fallacy,” Needs of the Many. The Fallacy of the Primary Energy Fallacy
Scott Grout, “How Many Times Do You Have to Build It?” Needs of the Many. How Many Times Do You Have to Build It?
Scott Grout, “About Me and My Blog,” Needs of the Many. About Me and My Blog
Scott Grout, “Coal Changes Jobs,” Needs of the Many. Coal Changes Jobs
Sarah Montalbano, “Lazard 2026 Report Finds New Renewables Are Not Cheaper Than Existing Plants.” Lazard 2026 Report
Tilak Doshi, “Central Banks Double Down on Climate Regulation Despite Collapse of Green Finance.” Central Banks Double Down on Climate
Scott Grout, “A Vision and Blueprint for the Nuclear Renaissance,” Needs of the Many. A Vision and Blueprint for the Nuclear Renaissance
Andrew Korybko, “Korybko to Tim Kirby: Here’s My Critical Review…” Korybko to Tim Kirby
Tilak Doshi, “In Covid as in Climate Change, Truth…” In Covid as in Climate Change, Truth
David Blackmon, “Audrey Streb: What a Grift: How Biden…” Audrey Streb: What a Grift
David Blackmon, “Billionaire-Funded Fake News Operation…” Billionaire-Funded Fake News Operation
The argument about not letting Iran get a nuclear weapon is based on a few forced principles.
A: that 'we'(?) should not let Iran have nuclear weapons presumes that 'we' can intervene and force the issue. The question is: do we and at what price?
B: North Korea has nuclear weapons. Its leader has been portrayed as a mad man for years. Is it suddenly NOT a threat because the focus has shifted to Iran?
C: it assumes that nuclear weapons will be used as an aggressive force and threat to the area? But what does having nuclear weapons in reality mean? It is an ultimate deterrent against aggressors.
Not great when outside forces are trying to destroy your country and aiming for regime change simultaniously.
Otherwise a pretty good article. The nuclear weapons
issue does not really belong here..
Thanks John. Excellent detail. Couldn't agree more. However, from my perspective (not as a scientist but as a former business manager in the Land Down Under) this seems to me a bit like putting the cart before the horse, as it were.
The 'horse' being in this instance - sound, sensible, easy to understand Energy Policy. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. The cart (detail) comes next IMHO.
And what should such an energy policy look like?
As a precursor, let me suggest that we're going through all this 'pain' to solve a non-problem.
CO2 is not a pollutant. Nor is it the so called primary driver of global warming, aka climate change. On the contrary, CO2 is a minuscule, invisible, odourless, tasteless atmospheric trace gas necessary for life on planet Earth. Demonizing it is sheer madness of the nth degree, being promoted (sadly) by anti-competitive forces favoring the Unreliables (wind & solar-PVs).
Not only must we dump the "Net Zero" nonsense at the earliest opportunity, we need a clear path to follow relative to a RELIABLE & affordable energy future.
In the absence of empirical evidence proving the case against CO2 (there isn't any) we (our respective political elite) simply need to develop, then apply a sound, sensible Energy Policy that's fair to all, including the Unreliables (of Wind & Solar-PVs) upon which industry can then work with (ie the cart).
An effective Energy Policy must be affordable, reliable & consistently available 24/7. It must be straightforward & market driven. Designed with the consumer’s interests as the central focus, rather than being shaped by the priorities of political parties and/or the power generation industry.
The key elements of such a sound, sensible Energy Policy should IMHO be built upon the following basic six principles;
• Technology Agnostic: The policy should NOT favor any specific technology. All sources – fossil fuels, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, wave energy, batteries & nuclear – should be entertained by those who wish to compete in this industry.
• Elimination of Subsidies & Discriminatory Legislation: All subsidies and/or legislation that advantages or disadvantages any particular technology MUST be removed/repealed. The market, through the independent choices of power generators, should determine which technologies they elect to employ. Their choice entirely & a level playing field that’s fair to all, including the Unreliables.
• Guaranteed Service Standards: Power generation contracts awarded via respective industry Regulators (eg the AEMO in Australia) & auction (eg; xx GWs/at best $price contracted at least a month (more preferably) in advance) & must ensure a guaranteed 99.998% availability of supply in keeping with established Quality of Service (QOS) performance obligations.
• Accountability Through Penalties: Power generators who fail to meet contractual QOS performance obligations to face SIGNIFICANT financial penalties (in the $Ms), except in cases of force majeure due to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods or bush fires.
• Environmental Restoration Bonds: Generators must pay a substantial upfront bond to cover the costs of environmental restoration, including the decommissioning & removal of infrastructure & handling/disposal or recycling (e.g., solar PV panels & wind turbine blades), similar to well established practice within the coal mining industry by way of land restoration.
• Legislative Reform: Any anti-competitive legislation (that attempts to favor one technology over another) must be repealed to ensure a level playing field.
If the power generating industry finds the principles associated with such a sensible Energy Policy unpalatable, no problems, simply re-nationalize the industry & return it to whence it came i.e., the responsibility of respective State Govt’s & be done with it!
Easy.