Energy Talking Points

Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to do something great: fix America’s broken permitting system. Bipartisan deals are often impossible, but on permitting it’s totally possible—because permitting delays kill projects that members of both parties deeply care about.

On Tuesday I participated in a House Oversight Committee roundtable on the topic “Winning the Economic Competition with China: Working Families, the AI Race, and Energy.” Below, I share my testimony on 5 key issues related to energy and China, followed by a Q&A with Representatives on ideas from the new book I’m working on, The Moral Case for AI.

1. NRC is right to challenge the “ALARA” rule, which has been catastrophic for nuclear power. 2. Challenging ALARA is not enough.To unleash nuclear power in this country, the NRC needs to reject “LNT,” the pseudoscientific radiation model on which ALARA is based.1 ALARA (”As Low as Reasonably Achievable”)requires nuclear operators to reduce radiation when “reasonably achievable”—even when radiation is below legal limits, which are already far below harmful levels.

Click here to use AlexAI to send a personalized letter to your Representative urging him or her to end California’s nationwide EV mandate. America’s EV mandate is not dead, thanks to 4 “waivers” that California holds from the Clean Air Act, which let it impose vehicle GHG standards on the whole country.

I recently sat down with Alan Armstrong, the former CEO of Williams (one of America’s foremost natural gas pipeline companies) and now the freshman Senator from Oklahoma, to talk about a key part of the ongoing permitting negotiations: the Clean Water Act. I knew the Clean Water Act had problems. But in our exchanges leading up to this interview, Senator Armstrong convinced me that its current state is even more insane than I had realized.

Both Republicans and Democrats should absolutely want strong NEPA reform, strong Clean Water Act reform, strong transmission reform, and permitting certainty. I was recently interviewed by Politico for this news story about the current push for a bipartisan permitting deal. My main point was that strong permitting reform is in both Republicans’ and Democrats’ interests more than many of them realize. As often happens, the vast, vast majority of what I said couldn’t make it into the story.

Click here to use AlexAI to send a personalized letter to your Representative opposing the ethanol mandate expansion. The corn lobby, joined by many oil lobbyists, is pushing a bill to expand the ethanol mandate by 1) loosening air quality rules and 2) imposing the mandate on small refineries. This will raise fuel costs.

Last week I went on the popular tech show TBPN to discuss the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the economics of OPEC+, and the possibility of powering data centers from space. John Coogan Up next, we have Alex Epstein, the author of Fossil Future, live in the TBPN Ultradome, taking us through what’s going on in the world, what’s going on in energy markets, what’s going on with OPEC. Great to see you again, Alex. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on down to the TBPN Ultradome.

I recently gave a speech to a group of State Attorneys General on how to reframe the energy and environmental conversation from anti-human to pro-human. A lightly edited transcript and slides are below. Read until the end for a demo of my newest AI product: AlexAI Gov, an extra-powerful version of AlexAI available for free to all government employees. Alex Epstein Show of hands, how many of you think of yourselves as pro-human? Anyone think of yourself as anti-human?

On Monday, the House Rules Committee decides whether to allow two E15 amendments onto the House floor as part of the forthcoming Farm Bill. The Sorensen amendmentexpands government-dictated ethanol by exempting E15 from air quality limits that currently restrain the ethanol mandate. The Fischbach amendment does the same thing AND it also punishes small refiners by making it much harder for small refineries to obtain exemptions from the mandate.