‘Electrify Everything’ Slammed Again By Ninth Circuit, Reaffirms Its Natural Gas Ruling

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has cranked up the heat on the “electrify-everything” foolishness.

Last month, the Ninth Circuit denied the city of Berkeley’s petition to re-hear its case after the city’s ban was ruled illegal last April. The January 2 ruling has national implications and is an enormous loss for the electrify-everything movement. [emphasis, links added]

This lavishly funded campaign seeks to ban natural gas stoves, water heaters, and other gas-fired appliances in the name of climate change.

Before I delve into the court ruling, it’s essential to understand the danger to our energy security posed by the electrify-everything effort and the dark money groups pushing it.

As I have reported here, the electrify-everything movement could result in enormous reductions in the affordability, reliability, and resilience of our electric grid.

The campaigners want to add massive amounts of new load onto an energy network that is already cracking under existing demand.

Indeed, the electrify-everything jihadis are pushing for the electrification of heating, transportation, and industry at the very same time that numerous policymakers and regulators are warning about the declining reliability of the power grid. …

Last August, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation named “changing resource mix” as a top reliability risk facing the electric grid. And for the first time, it named climate policy as one of the most significant risk factors.

It said, “Policy decisions can significantly affect the reliability and resilience of the [bulk power system]. Decarbonization, decentralization, and electrification have been active policy areas.

“Implementation of policies in these areas is accelerating, and, with changes in the resource mix, extreme weather events, and physical and cyber security challenges, reliability implications are emerging.” (italics added.)

Further, the same NGOs pushing to electrify everything are also aggressively promoting policies that will make our electric grid even more reliant on weather-dependent sources like wind and solar.

As the slide above shows, NERC is warning that our grid is increasingly vulnerable to “wind and solar droughts.” If climate change means we are facing more extreme weather of all types, the last thing we should do is make our grid more dependent on the weather.

The electrify-everything movement is fueled by massive contributions from some of the world’s richest people, including Michael Bloomberg, John Doerr, and Laurene Powell Jobs.

Numerous climate-focused NGOs, including the Sierra Club (2022 budget: $168 million) and Rocky Mountain Institute (2022 budget: $117 million), as well as dark-money entities like Climate Imperative and Rewiring America, are leading the attack against gas stoves and the direct use of gas.

In 2022, Climate Imperative — headed by veteran climate activist Hal Harvey and two former Sierra Club employees, Bruce Nilles and Maryann Hitt — had revenue of $289 million.

For comparison, the American Gas Association, which represents gas utilities, had revenue of about $37 million that year.

Jobs and Doerr were founding board members of Climate Imperative, which does not reveal the identities of its donors.

Last March, in “The Dark Money Behind The Gas Bans,” I wrote about Rewiring America, which had recently hired Georgia politician Stacey Abrams. I explained that Rewiring America has about 40 employees and:

is among the most prominent members of this dark money network. The group doesn’t publish its budget or file a Form 990. Instead, it is a sponsored project of the Windward Fund, a 501c3 non-profit that does not disclose its donors. Nor does it reveal how much it is giving to Rewiring America. Although it is impossible to know exactly how much dark money is being shuffled among groups like the Windward Fund, Rewiring America, and others, my tally shows that just four of the dark money NGOs behind the gas bans have combined budgets of about $820 million.

Now, back to the Ninth Circuit. The court’s January 2 decision not to entertain a rehearing of the Berkeley case confirms that the gas bans enacted in California over the past several years are invalid.

According to the Sierra Club, which has been gleefully tracking the bans, some 76 cities or counties in the state have enacted bans or restrictions on gas since Berkeley enacted its ban in 2019.

On a website that tracks the restrictions, the Sierra Club does not mention the Ninth Circuit’s rulings.

The group may want to ignore it, but the decision affects all of the states in the Ninth Circuit: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

That means the recent bans on gas in Seattle and the statewide ban in Washington, which was adopted last year, are invalid. So, too, is the ban imposed by Eugene, Oregon, in early 2023.

The San Francisco Chronicle summarized the appeal, noting that “Berkeley, joined by the Biden administration, other cities and states, and conservation groups, then asked the full appeals court, which has 16 Democratic appointees among its 29 judges, to order a rehearing.

But only 11 judges, all appointed by Democratic presidents, voted for a new hearing…the ruling will now become final unless the conservative-majority Supreme Court agrees to review it.”

The article quoted Sarah Jorgensen, a lawyer for the California Restaurant Association, who said the court recognized that “energy policy was a matter of national concern and that there should be uniform national regulation.”

Read rest at Substack