In ASEAN Nations, Coal Is a Physical Manifestation of Progress
By Vijay Jayaraj | Real Clear Markets | September 9, 2025
When most people think of ASEAN – a diverse association of Southeast Asian nations that include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – they picture Thailand’s beaches, Singapore’s gleaming skyline or Indonesia’s temples.
What they don’t see is an economic juggernaut that will drive some of the planet’s largest growth in energy demand. Vietnam has emerged as a global manufacturing hub. Indonesia processes the world’s nickel for electric vehicle batteries. Thailand manufactures automobiles for export across Asia. Each of these economic engines demands reliable, affordable electricity that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In fact, 2023 witnessed a demand increase of nearly 45 terawatt-hours (TWh), an amount of energy that must be generated, transmitted regionally, and delivered locally on a continual basis. Where did this new power come from? Coal. An astonishing 96% of that new demand was met by coal-fired power plants.
Let that sink in. Coal, the energy source routinely demonized in Western capitals and at global climate summits, met nearly all the region’s new electricity needs. This reality stands in direct contradiction to rosy predictions of a transition to “renewables” manufactured by highly compensated executives at elite consulting firms who have spent the better part of a decade selling energy fairy tales to governments and investors.
Indonesia alone added 11 TWh of coal-generated electricity in 2023, while its electricity demand rose by 17 TWh, with coal meeting two-thirds of this increase. The Philippines generates more than 60% of its electricity from coal, and Malaysia and Vietnam each around 50%.
Ultra-supercritical coal technology – using extraordinarily high temperatures and pressures and pioneered at Malaysia’s Manjung plant and Indonesia’s Batang facility, delivers higher efficiency than older coal plants. These advanced facilities demonstrate that coal technology continues to improve while wind and solar remain dependent on weather conditions and the time of day.
The wind and solar share across ASEAN remained a pitiful 4.5% in 2023. This minuscule contribution exposes the bankruptcy of consultants’ promises of “renewables” dominating the regional power mix by mid-2020s.
Coal’s dominance in recent years is not an accident; it is a necessity. Indonesia, the region’s economic giant, leans on coal to power its export-driven industries, including nickel for EV batteries. Vietnam’s manufacturing boom, lifting millions into the middle class, runs on coal’s steady output. Malaysia and the Philippines, too, rely on coal to sustain their growing economies. Even Singapore, a global hub of innovation, depends on coal to maintain its energy security.
Yet, to focus solely on the power grid is to miss the forest for the trees, as electricity is just one component of total energy consumption. Electricity represents only a fraction of total consumption across ASEAN. The larger picture is primary energy consumption, which includes fuel for transport, industry and heating.
Oil, natural gas and coal collectively hold the major share of ASEAN’s primary energy mix, with oil leading consumption patterns across transportation and industrial sectors. Factories, petrochemicals, shipping, aviation, and agriculture all consume fossil fuels in large quantities.
ASEAN countries are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to fossil fuel infrastructure that will operate for decades. Coal plants have an average lifespan of 40 years. These capital investments create long-term commitments to hydrocarbon use that extend far beyond current political cycles.
Nineteen projects across Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, and Myanmar hold more than 540 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas. Countries don’t spend billions developing gas fields if they plan to abandon fossil fuels within the next decade.
ASEAN’s embrace of coal is about more than just keeping the lights on. These nations aren’t chasing arbitrary climate targets; they’re building the infrastructure of their future and prosperity for people.
Every new airport, every new highway and every new factory is a testament to the power of coal. To argue against coal is to oppose the physical manifestations of progress. The “green” agenda, by seeking to eliminate coal, demands that the developing world stop building – an ultimatum that ASEAN is rightly and wisely ignoring.
Lion Electric School Buses Still Catching Fire
StacheD Training | September 9, 2025
On September 9, 2025, another Lion Electric school bus burst into flames in Montreal — this time with five children and their driver on board. Thankfully, everyone escaped safely, but this marks the third Lion Electric bus fire in less than a year (Ascot Corner, Huntsville, and now Montreal).
In this video, I break down what happened, why the fire department’s explanation doesn’t quite line up with the bus’s construction, and why these repeated incidents raise serious questions about safety, accountability, and taxpayer funding. Lion has already taken nearly $160 million in U.S. funding for 435 buses, yet many districts never received vehicles — and the ones that did are stuck with broken, unsafe buses and voided warranties.
Are these buses ready for prime time, or is this a dangerous rush to electrify at any cost?
Training & Consulting: https://www.stachedtraining.com
Gates-Funded Self-Assembling Microcrystal Implants Mark a New Phase in Population Control
By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH | FOCAL POINTS | April 25, 2025
A new study published in Nature Chemical Engineering titled “Self-aggregating long-acting injectable microcrystals” reveals Bill Gates’s latest investment. As expected, this “innovation” does not improve the health of humanity by any means, but instead seeks to further reduce already-collapsing birth rates.
The technology, dubbed SLIM (Self-aggregating Long-acting Injectable Microcrystals), enables the self injection of microcrystals that self-assemble into a semi-permanent drug implant. The implant slowly releases synthetic hormones like levonorgestrel—a potent contraceptive—over months to years.
While the study frames SLIM as a step forward in medical innovation, closer inspection reveals grave concerns:
- Irreversible implants: Once injected, the microcrystals self-assemble into a dense, solid mass deep in subcutaneous tissue. The study provides no method for removal, raising the possibility that these implants are effectively permanent, particularly in low-resource settings without surgical infrastructure.
- Unknown long-term effects: In rats, the solid implant remained intact for at least 97 days—the full length of the study. In humans, where metabolism is slower and tissue clearance is more complex, these structures could persist for years with unknown consequences.
Widely available, extremely long-lasting anti-fertility implants are a dream come true for depopulationists. Bill Gates, the funder of this study, publicly revealed his preference for reducing the population by 10-15% in order to “get CO₂ to zero.”
“First we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people, that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10-15%” – Bill Gates at TED2010
The Gates Foundation also funded a study that was published last year titled “Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021.” They estimated irreversible population collapse within the next few decades:
By 2050, over three-quarters (155 of 204) of countries will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain population size over time; this will increase to 97% of countries (198 of 204) by 2100.
Let’s get this straight: The same foundation that acknowledges an inevitable population collapse—without any intervention—is simultaneously funding invasive technologies that would only accelerate it:
We need to reverse the major decline in birth rates to preserve civilization. A few months ago, I identified some key targets:
A study by Aitken found that fertility rate declines are driven by both short- and long-term factors. In the short term, socioeconomic drivers like urbanization and delayed childbearing, as well as issues such as obesity, falling sperm counts, and environmental toxicants (e.g., pollutants, nanoplastics, and electromagnetic radiation), compromise reproductive health. Long-term factors include reduced selection pressure on high-fertility genes due to smaller family sizes and the widespread use of assisted reproductive technologies, which may perpetuate poor fertility genotypes in the population. Addressing these issues is essential to mitigating the ongoing fertility crisis.
Green Energy Wall Coming Into Focus In New York?
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | August 17, 2025
It was back in 2021 that I started to ask which country or U.S. state would be the first to hit the “Green Energy Wall.” It has long been obvious to anyone who looks at the situation that the fantasy of a fully de-carbonized energy system, with everything run on electricity generated by intermittent wind and sun, could never happen.
But what would be the limiting condition that would put a stop to the madness? Would it be confronting the absurd costs of grid-scale battery storage? Or perhaps a string of blackouts caused by insufficient backup of the wind and solar generation?
Here in New York, we are starting to see some push back from politicians on the fantasy green energy transition, but the source may be the last thing you would have predicted. The immediate issue is the cost of upgrading local delivery infrastructure to transmit sufficient electricity for the imagined future of electrified buildings and vehicles.
Supposedly, under a statute known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, we are faced with a 2030 deadline to get some 70% of our electricity from “renewables.” Currently the percent of our electricity that we get from these “renewables” is around 44%, and almost half of that comes from the gigantic waterfall known as Niagara Falls. Without another Niagara Falls on the horizon, theoretically we should be building vast fields of wind turbines and solar panels to meet the statutory mandates; but that effort has stalled out, and the costs of wind and solar generation, and of backup to make the grid run all the time, have barely started to show up in consumer bills. Nor have various big new long-distance transmission projects yet come into consumer bills.
But meanwhile, the big utilities have come forward with large demands for rate increases. So why the need for big rate increases if not from new generators or long-distance transmission? The answer is that the rate increases mainly relate to the portion of the consumer bills referred to as the “delivery” charge, as opposed to the charge for generation. The utilities seek funds to add delivery infrastructure like substations, transformers, and cables to deliver vastly increased amounts of electricity for things like vehicle charging stations (for both cars and trucks) and for the electrification of building heat.
In upstate New York, a utility called National Grid has been petitioning the regulator for a large electricity rate increase, mostly to support these kinds of upgrades to the delivery infrastructure. The service territory of National Grid in upstate New York covers the region between about Syracuse and Albany, and from there North to the Canadian border. After prolonged negotiations, the regulator (Public Service Commission) and National Grid entered into a “settlement” a few days ago on August 14. Here is the PSC release describing the settlement. Basically, the PSC congratulates itself on beating back a much larger rate increase originally sought by National Grid. (The headline is “PSC Dramatically Reduces National Grid’s Rate Request.”). But if you read on you find that they still agreed to a very large increase. The release makes clear that most of the increase relates to the delivery infrastructure:
National Grid had sought a base delivery increase of $509.6 million (25.5 percent delivery or 10.4 percent total revenue) and $156.5 million (29.7 percent delivery or 15.7 percent total revenue) for electric and gas, respectively for one year. Instead, the Commission adopted a joint proposal establishing levelized increases, on a percentage basis, to the company’s electric revenues of $167.3 million in the first year, $297.4 million in the second year, and $243.4 million in the third year.
Basically, they spread NG’s requested increase out over three years; but it still comes to almost a 30% jump on the delivery side by the time it all kicks in.
Governor Hochul then issued a release expressing extreme displeasure:
While I appreciate that the New York Public Service Commission worked to significantly lower the outrageously high initial rate proposals, it’s still not enough. I have been crystal clear that utilities must make ratepayer affordability the priority.
Well, Governor Hochul, good luck trying to blame the utility, but you are the one with all the electric vehicle mandates and incentives and subsidies, thus calling on the utility to provide all this new infrastructure. In all likelihood few will ever buy the electric vehicles, and nobody will ever generate the extra electricity from wind and sun, and thus this infrastructure will mostly be wasted. But can the utility just refuse to make itself ready to meet your ridiculous mandate?
And meanwhile down here in New York City, our utility Con Edison is requesting almost as large a rate increase, again focused on the delivery portion of the bill, and on local infrastructure upgrades necessary to support increased electricity demand. In the City, the increased demand is anticipated to come both from electric vehicles (per the state mandates) and from building electrification (based on a City building electrification mandate known as Local Law 97). It is likely that the result of the Con Edison rate proceeding will be a settlement agreement comparable to what occurred in the National Grid case a few days ago.
I am an intervenor in this Con Edison rate case, and in recent days I have actually been personally participating — in a minor way — in the settlement negotiations. My co-intervenors and I are objecting to any rate increases based on adding infrastructure to support building and vehicle electrification unless and until the additional electricity generation capacity has been built to support these mandates. (There is no chance that this additional capacity, supposedly wind and solar generators, will actually be built.)
The New York Post has a lead editorial today summarizing how the green energy madness is coming around to bite New Yorkers in their pocketbooks. Excerpt:
New York’s state Public Service Commission just OK’d big National Grid rate increases that’ll hike many upstate utility bills by $600 a year — fueling outrage Democrats will soon feel. Downstate, Con Edison is seeking an 11.4% hike to electric bills and 13.3% gas hike — largely thanks to green-energy mandates that Gov. Kathy Hochul embraced along with the rest of the party. The “climate agenda” is delivering pain we’ve long warned of, in New York and New Jersey.
If we ever get to the point of building dozens of gigawatts of wind and solar generation capacity, and enough backup and storage to make them work to support a grid, that would cause electricity rates to multiply by a factor of five or ten or more. We are a long way from that. But here we are just trying to add enough substations and transformers to support 30-50% vehicle electrification, and a comparable amount of building electrification, and it is causing politicians to start to scream. How much more of this will it take before we quit?
Jurij Kofner: Europe Enters Century of Humiliation?
Glenn Diesen | August 20, 2025
Jurij Kofner is an economist and an economic policy advisor to AfD. Kofner discusses the de-industrialisation and economic decline in Germany, and the wider socio-economic and political challenges that continue to threaten the relevance of Europe.
India Cancels Offshore Wind Tender–Due To Lack Of Interest
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 13, 2025
Now India is losing interest in offshore wind.
Renewablesnow report:
The Indian government has cancelled the process to allocate sea-bed lease rights for a total of 4,500 MW of offshore wind projects, it was announced on Tuesday.
While SECI itself did not state a reason for the decision in its announcement, The Economic Times quoted two sources as saying that there was a lack of interest among project developers. …
This follows Trump’s US move away from offshore wind and the lack of bidders at Germany’s offshore auction last week.
Meanwhile Orsted have had to launch a massive $9.4 billion Share Rights Issue, largely because of huge losses on offshore wind projects.
It seems that it is only the UK where anybody wants to build wind farms at sea, but only because of the obscene subsidies on offer.
NO WOODS, NO MEAT, NO FREEDOM
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 14, 2025
Unusually dry summer conditions on Canada’s Atlantic coast have prompted two provinces to take the unprecedented step of banning hiking, camping, and even walking in the woods in a bid to prevent forest fires. Learn about other alarming measures being floated in the name of climate change—from ticks that can trigger a meat allergy to proposals for calculating the carbon footprint of every medical procedure to determine its “importance.”
The Future of Food
corbettreport – August 10, 2025
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BP Reopen “Uneconomic” North Sea Oil Field
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 10, 2025
From the Telegraph :
BP is to reopen a key North Sea field and pump new oil and gas for at least a decade, despite Ed Miliband’s attempts to cut back the offshore industry.
The energy giant is reviving the Murlach field, which was declared uneconomic and taken out of use in 2004, has now become viable partly due to new technologies.
BP won agreement to reopen Murlach, 120 miles east of Aberdeen, under the previous government and has since been installing equipment, with production potentially restarting next month.
The milestone comes despite efforts by the Energy Secretary to bring an end to new fossil fuel production in the North Sea. Mr Miliband and his predecessors have almost doubled the taxation rate on oil and gas profits and banned the issuing of licences for new exploration and production.
BP said the Murlach field contained 20 million barrels of recoverable oil and 600 million cubic metres of gas – enough to keep it in production for 11 years. “Murlach is expected to produce around 20,000 barrels of oil and 17 million cubic feet of gas per day,” it said.
It means BP can partially reverse the decline in North Sea output, which has seen oil production fall from 96,000 barrels per day in 2020 to 70,000 last year. Gas production has fallen from 221m square feet a day to 197m. … Full story here.
What is significant is here is the introduction of new technologies to make all this possible. How many other abandoned fields can be brought back into production in this way.
Naturally Greenpeace are not happy, with Doug Parr saying “The North Sea is on death’s door. Reserves are drying up and what’s left and untapped is barely enough to keep it on life support. The only sensible thing to do is to pivot [from] the North Sea to something we have an abundance of, and something that will never run out – wind.”
But Mike Tholen, of trade body Offshore Energies UK, commented:
“Redevelopment of decommissioned fields is now a feature of the North Sea as new and innovative technologies make such opportunities possible.
“Looking ahead, the independent Climate Change Committee says the UK will need 13 billion to 15 billion barrels by 2050 come what may. We could produce half of this at home. But at the moment only four billion barrels are on track to be realised, which means imports will have to rise and the UK economy will miss out as jobs and capital move overseas.”
In what world, other than crazy Ed’s, would it make sense to import that oil and gas when we could produce it ourselves at great benefit both to the economy and government revenues?
EPA Finally Proposes To Rescind The Endangerment Finding
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 29, 2025
It’s been a long time coming. But today the EPA, through its Administrator Lee Zeldin, finally began the formal process of rescinding the so-called “Endangerment Finding” (EF). The EF is the 2009 regulatory action by which the Obama-era EPA purported to determine that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger to human health and welfare.” That Finding then formed the basis for all subsequent federal greenhouse gas regulations, including efforts of Obama and Biden regulators to force the closure of all power plants running on coal and natural gas, and to mandate increased vehicle mileage to levels that no internal combustion engine could meet.
EPA initiated the rescission process today by means of an announcement in a speech by Zeldin, who appeared at an event in Indianapolis, and also through this document, titled “Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards.” The document looks to be about a couple of hundred pages long, although it’s hard to know exactly, because the pages aren’t numbered.
Long time readers here will know that I have been an active participant in efforts, beginning when President Trump first took office in 2017, to get the EF rescinded. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, co-counsel Harry MacDougald and I filed a Petition to EPA, on behalf of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC), seeking the rescission. Here is a post I wrote in April 2017, describing the initiation of the petition process, and also linking to our Petition. But during Trump’s first term, despite the critical importance of the EF in supporting all of the burdensome “climate” regulations, EPA never undertook the rescission process. We continued to press the point, filing some seven supplements to our Petition during the four years of Trump’s first term. For example, here is a post from July 2017 announcing the first of the Supplements to our Petition, based on new research at the time.
Ultimately our Petition was denied in 2022 by the Biden EPA. We then appealed that denial to the DC Circuit, where our appeal was denied in 2023, and to the U.S. Supreme Court, where certiorari was denied in 2024.
Well, the proposal in today’s document will reverse the denial of our Petition. I can’t give you a page cite, but this quote is from the page of the EPA document that contains footnote 15:
If finalized, this action would also rescind denial[] of petitions for reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding in 2022 . . . entitled “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act; Final Action on Petitions,” 87 FR 25412 (Apr. 29, 2022). . . .
Vindication!
As to the grounds for the prospective rescission, EPA appears ready to take on both the legal and scientific bases of the EF. As to the legal analysis, the following quote comes from the page preceding footnote 42:
Section IV.A of this preamble describes our primary proposal to rescind the Endangerment Finding by concluding that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe standards for GHG emissions based on global climate change concerns or to issue standalone findings that do not apply the statutory standard for regulation as a cohesive whole. If finalized, this proposal would require rescinding the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations because we lacked statutory authority to issue them in the first instance. . . . Next, we propose that the Nation’s response to global climate change concerns generally, and specifically whether that response should include regulating GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines, is an economically and politically significant issue that triggers the major questions doctrine under UARG and West Virginia, and that Congress did not clearly authorize the EPA to decide it by empowering the Administrator to “prescribe … standards” under CAA section 202(a). Throughout this section, we propose that the Endangerment Finding relied on various forms of Chevron deference to depart from the best reading of the statute and exceeded the EPA’s authority in several fundamental respects, any one of which would independently require rescission to conform to the best reading of the law.
On the subject of “climate science,” the following quote comes from the document’s pre-amble:
[T]he Administrator has serious concerns that many of the scientific underpinnings of the Endangerment Finding are materially weaker than previously believed and contradicted by empirical data, peer-reviewed studies, and scientific developments since 2009.
Then, on the page with footnote 87 there begins a lengthy section titled “Climate Science Discussion.” The gist of this entire section is that the alarmists have not proved their claims. There are lengthy paragraphs reviewing data on all the major “extreme weather” claims, and citing work showing no increasing or accelerating trends in things like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, sea level and the like. Here is a paragraph that reiterates a theme of our Petition, namely that the amount of human caused global warming cannot be separated from what may be caused by natural factors:
The Administrator is also troubled by the Endangerment Finding’s seemingly inconsistent treatment of the nature and extent of the role human action with respect to climate change. The Endangerment Finding attributes the entirety of adverse impacts from climate change to increased GHG concentrations, and it attributes virtually the entirety of increased GHG concentrations to anthropogenic emissions from all sources. But the causal role of anthropogenic emissions is not the exclusive source of these phenomena, and any projections and conclusions bearing on the issue should be appropriately discounted to reflect additional factors. Moreover, recent data and analyses suggest that attributing adverse impacts from climate change to anthropogenic emissions in a reliable manner is more difficult than previously believed and demand additional analysis of the role of natural factors and other anthropogenic factors such as urbanization and localized population growth (2025 CWG Draft Report at 14-22, 82-92).
The process here will likely take until around the end of this year for EPA to formally enact the rescission. And then the legal battles begin — first to the DC Circuit, and then to the Supreme Court. The big question: Can the administration get this process to the Supreme Court in time to avoid a reversal of this whole regulatory effort by a Democratic administration that could be elected in 2028? I would think that if the Supremes have upheld this effort of Trump’s EPA before January 2029, it will be very difficult for a subsequent administration to reverse. On the other hand, if the status as of January 2029 is that the DC Circuit has struck down EPA’s rescission and the matter is pending in the Supreme Court, it would be much easier to attempt a reversal. But the ongoing failure of “net zero” energy transition plans in places like New York, California, Germany and the UK may make reversal a dead letter anyway.
I want to offer my thanks and gratitude to the small band of independent thinkers who have fought this lonely battle all these years, in the face of the billions of dollars at the hands of the climate industrial juggernaut. For particular mention: the members of CHECC (including its moving force, James Wallace); my co-counsel Harry MacDougald; the few think tanks that have taken on this issue, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (who filed a Petition for rescission of the EF along with ours) and the Heartland Institute; the CO2 Coalition, including its Chair Will Happer and Executive Director Greg Wrightstone; CFACT; the Global Warming Policy Foundation (I serve on its Board); and Anthony Watts and Charles Rotter at Watts Up With That. I’m sure that there are a few that I have forgotten. Congratulations to all!
EV Update: Will The Market Survive The Expiration Of The Federal Tax Credit?
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 26, 2025
How quickly things change.
It was barely more than a year ago that climate activists and federal bureaucrats thought they had maneuvered the internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile to the brink of extinction. ICE vehicles had become like dinosaurs, inferior to their new competitors the EVs, and therefore headed for the scrap heap of history. Customers were flocking to the trendy new EVs, which were seeing rapidly rising sales.
And the all-powerful federal bureaucracy was going to give the final push to put ICE vehicles out of their misery. On June 7, 2024 President Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had issued a final rule (“Corporate Average Fuel Economy [CAFE] Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027 and Beyond and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030 and Beyond”) jacking up mandatory average vehicle mileage to 50+ [mpg] as of 2031, with further increases to follow from there. Since no ICE vehicles bigger than a baby carriage could achieve that mileage, the only path forward for vehicle manufacturers would be rapid conversion to making only EVs. NHTSA’s mileage rule had also quickly followed an equally draconian mandate from EPA, finalized on April 18, 2024 (“Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles”) setting strict and declining limits for CO2 emissions that no ICE vehicles would be able to meet by the early 2030s. And meanwhile, 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act had extended a $7500 tax credit to buyers of new EVs through December 31, 2032.
So all the pieces were in place. By some time in the early 2030s, it would be effectively illegal to sell new ICE cars, and they would be rapidly disappearing from the roads.
Well, not so fast. Suddenly, the rapid advance of the EV may have stalled out completely. The federal regulators have reversed their direction. And customer preferences seemingly favorable to EVs may turn out to evaporate as soon as federal tax benefits end, an event now just a couple of months away.
NHTSA’s CAFE standards just got eviscerated by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. Although the standards themselves have not yet been rescinded, the OBBB re-set the enforcement mechanism to have a maximum penalty of zero. This is from a July 8, 2025 memo from the law firm Sidley & Austin:
In one of its many changes, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, eliminated civil penalties for noncompliance with federal fuel economy standards. Specifically, Section 40006 of the Act amends the language of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) statute to reset the maximum civil penalty to $0.00. Although the statute and its implementing regulations otherwise remain in place, this amendment removes any civil penalties for producing passenger cars and light trucks that do not meet fuel economy requirements.
As to the EPA-mandated CO2 emissions limits for vehicles, EPA announced on March 12, 2025 that it was beginning a process of reconsidering the vehicle greenhouse gas emissions rule that had just been adopted less than a year before. Excerpt:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will reconsider the Model Year 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles regulation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles. In addition to imposing over $700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs, these rules provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate that takes away Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver.
That one may be in the regulatory grinder for many months, but with little doubt as to what the final result will be, namely full rescission.
And the $7500 per new vehicle tax credit? After just having been extended to 2032 by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the credit has now been modified by the OBBBA to end as of September 30, 2025. From Kiplinger, July 12:
With the passage of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax reform, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) the federal EV tax credit will expire for vehicles purchased or leased after September 30, 2025. As a result, buyers have only a short window left to take advantage of these federal savings.
All of a sudden, EVs and ICE vehicles are set to compete on a completely level playing field, with no mandates or tax credits propping up the EV side of the competition. How will that turn out? It remains to be seen, but data from the first half of the year indicate that the previous rapid increase in EV sales may already be stalling out. In a reversal for a previously rapidly-growing market segment, sales of EVs in the second quarter of 2025 declined significantly from the same period the prior year. From Cox Automotive, July 14, 2025:
[S]ales of new electric vehicles (EVs) in the second quarter of 2025 were lower year over year by 6.3%, in line with the Cox Automotive forecast. A total of 310,839 new EVs were sold in the U.S, down from 331,853 in the same period a year earlier. Sales in Q2 were higher than in Q1 by 4.9%, and total EV sales through the first half of 2025 set a record at 607,089, representing a 1.5% year-over-year increase.
Cox continues to predict a spike in EV sales in the third quarter of 2025, in the run-up to the expiration of the tax credit on September 30. However, after that, it is entirely likely that there will be a significant decline. Without the government mandates and subsidies, it’s hard to see EVs expanding much beyond being a niche product used as a second (or third) vehicle by affluent buyers.
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How the occupied mentality syndrome works
Saudi Arabia on the American chessboard – Part 3
By B. J. Sabri | American Herald Tribune | June 27, 2016
Read part 2: “The occupied mentality Syndrome“
Previously I argued whether Saudi Arabia’s repeated involvements in U.S. interventions and wars stem from free national will or in response to a specific condition. For starters, in Saudi Arabia there is no national will. In Saudi Arabia, the national will is the will of the Al Saud clan. Still, when a major Arab state allies itself with a superpower that committed unspeakable crimes against humanity in almost every Arab country, then something is wrong. This fact alone should compel us to examine the U.S.-Saudi relation for one exceptional reason. As a result of the U.S.-Saudi wars, hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia have lost their lives. Millions became displaced in their own homelands. And millions more rendered refugees.
Attributing the Saudi policies to the bonds of “partnership” with the U.S. is frivolous. There are no bonds between these two thugs except those of business, military deals, secret plots, and wars. Proving this point, bonds such as these have no space for the American and Saudi peoples to share significant cultural or societal exchanges. If partnership is not the reason for the Saudi contribution to the U.S. strategy of empire and imperialism, then another reason must exist.
This leads to three possibilities. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- REWRITING THE RISK? INSIDE THE GOVERNMENT’S VACCINE SAFETY MESSAGING
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- NIAID/NIH and USDA Fund Bioengineered Chimeric Influenza Viruses Built Using Pandemic H1N1 Components: Journal ‘Science Advances’
- Hezbollah hits Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast, sets it aflame
- Iran slams US strikes on B1 bridge, Mahshahr petrochemical plants as ‘blatant acts of state terrorism’
- In letter to UN chief, Araghchi warns of dire consequences of US-Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities
- Why the CIA conspiracy to invade Iran with Kurdish militias failed
- Why Are Upbeat US Claims About Mission to Rescue Pilot ‘Highly Questionable’?
- Aircraft destroyed during US ‘rescue’ of downed F-15 pilot cost more than $100 million each
- Washington University removes professor who condemned US-Israeli war on Iran
- If Americans Knew
- In Iran, Israel-US take aim at “reason, research, and freedom of thought” – Daily Update
- US loses planes over Iran, Israel downgrades Lebanon war goals – Daily Update
- Israel Is Blocking Palestinians from Easter at Church Where Jesus Resurrected
- Plot to assassinate Palestinian activist follows harassment campaign promoted by Zionist groups and elected officials
- Prominent New York synagogue hosts presentation on why U.S. Jews should support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza
- Tapper vs. Piker: Is the CNN Anchor Auditioning for David Ellison?
- Shouldn’t Democrats Be Able to Condemn Genocide?
- Israel-US kill negotiators, destroy civilian structures, but Iran’s military capabilities still largely intact – Daily Update
- ‘War crime’: Global condemnation as Israeli ministers celebrate death penalty law targeting Palestinian prisoners
- 7 Ways Israel Is Turning Lebanon Into Gaza
- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
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