There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Electric and gas utilities asked state regulators to approve billions in rate increases.dowell/Getty Images
Electric and gas utilities sought to raise customer bills by 31% in 2025.
Rate hike requests last year more than doubled from 2024.
Utilities are on track to spend $1.1 trillion expanding the power grid by 2029.
The average American’s skyrocketing electric bill has caught the attention of everyone from President Donald Trump to Microsoft executives — just don’t expect lower rates in 2026.
Electric and gas utilities asked state regulators to approve $31 billion in rate increases last year, more than double the $15 billion they sought in 2024, a new study from PowerLines, a nonprofit that advocates for utility customers, found.
The surge in requests from utilities to tack on additional charges to customer bills comes as Big Tech companies continue their sweeping buildout of power-hungry AI data centers across the country. Many utilities have attributed rate increases to unprecedented demand from data centers.
While some of those requests are still pending approval, many — including the majority of a $9 billion increase for customers of one Florida power company — have been pushed through and will start showing up on customer bills this year.
“Gas and electricity are the two fastest drivers of inflation, and not by a little bit more. It’s significantly more than what we’re used to seeing,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines.
To track rate hikes, PowerLines used publicly available data from investor-owned utilities in the US.
Customers in southern states were hit hardest by rate-hike requests last year, PowerLines found. Utilities in the region sought approval for more than $14 billion in rate increases. Much of that came from Florida Power and Light’s $9 billion rate hike request — nearly all of which regulators approved.
FPL cited population growth and extreme weather events as key factors in its decision to raise rates by such a significant amount.
In Virginia, residential customers of Dominion Energy, which also delivers power to the world’s largest data center hub, will see their bills increase by an average of $13.60 by 2027.
Investor-owned utilities in the US are on track to spend $1.1 trillion on a massive expansion of the power grid between 2025 and 2029, according to the Edison Electric Institute, a powerful industry lobbying group. It has cited data centers and AI as key drivers of utility spending.
The majority of residential ratepayers in the US are customers of investor-owned utilities like NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, and Southern Company. These large, publicly traded companies turn a profit for shareholders by recovering the costs of constructing new power plants and lines, plus interest, from their customer bases.
Big Tech’s power usage faces growing backlash
Big Tech and its enormous appetite for power are facing growing public backlash.
Earlier this month, Microsoft said it would be a “good neighbor” and “pay its own way” for the electricity it uses as it scales its AI data center fleet.
In a Truth Social post preceding Microsoft’s announcement, Trump said his administration will work with tech companies to ensure their data center electricity consumption won’t drive up bills for everyone else.
“I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers,”Trump said in the post.
Power demand forecasts
Some power grid researchers are skeptical of the forecast demand. They have warned that utilities risk overbuilding new power plants and transmission lines that will have to be paid for but ultimately won’t be needed.
Hua is pushing regulators to take a closer look at forecast power demand from utilities, which stand to profit from building new infrastructure that could lead to rate hikes. Steering utilities to first consider the latest electric grid-enhancing technologies before building new power plants to serve data centers could also help lower customer electric bills, Hua said.
“Utilities don’t profit on making the grid more efficient. They are constantly trying to build new infrastructure. That’s their job,” said Hua. “This moment is the perfect justification.”
If someone told you they were desperate for work, but refused to apply for any jobs, you’d understand they shouldn’t be taken seriously. As Jesus tells us, we can judge a tree by its fruit (Matt. 7:15-20).
So, when climate catastrophists steer us away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy too, that’s some fruit. Solar and wind might be their ideal, but these are more expensive than fossil fuels, and higher energy costs would hurt billions. Nuclear does have considerable downsides, but it is the only CO2-free energy source that could produce the energy we need at the prices we’d need to fill the gap that banning fossil fuels would create. So, to not have it as an option is to mark these “environmentalists” – their fruit shows them to be either uncaring or naive.
Now Alberta is offering the country another option – natural gas. It’s still a CO2 emitter but an improvement on coal and other CO2 sources. This option could effectively scrub all of Canada’s CO2 emissions. Great news, right? Well, we’ll see if the federal government thinks so. Their response will provide us with some more fruit we can assess.
Does buying Canadian really have an impact on American producers? Not if those “Canadian goods” are actually American. It seems some stores are mislabeling goods to funnel patriotic outrage towards padding their bottom dollar.
“Ontario’s euthanasia regulators have tracked 428 cases of possible criminal violations — and not referred a single case to law enforcement, say leaked documents.”
Murder is the unlawful and euthanasia the lawful taking of a human life. So what would it be then, if someone committed euthanasia unlawfully? Well, isn’t an unlawful taking of a life murder?
But how many doctors do you think would be willing to do a procedure that, if they ever didn’t do it quite right, would send them to jail for murder? Not many, right? That kind of chill might put an end to euthanasia altogether. And that’s what pursuing these 428 cases could do for any doctors considering killing as their living – put a chill on that So, for euthanasia to be both legal and available, the government is motivated to overlook any irregularities.
God’s people too often seem intent on logic-ing our culture into the Kingdom. We address sins like abortion and transgenderism with arguments that are common sense but not specifically Christian – we channel Ben Shapiro and Pierre Poilievre but we don’t talk about God.
And how’s that working out?
We’ve misunderstood the fight we’re in. This isn’t a debate that we’ll win on points. What we’re contending with is a rebellious world that needs to be called to repentance by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We profess that God’s Word is “like fire…and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces” (Jer. 23:26), it is “alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12), and “it will not return to Me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Is. 55:10-11). What might God work through us, if we were willing to stand with Him instead of just with logic?
As the Italian poet Dante pointed out many centuries ago, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And when it comes to renewable energy and the push to net zero, the intention of many Australian politicians is good. Federal Labor Energy Minister Chris Bowen had this to say in a recent National Press Club address:
‘Renewable energy is incredibly cheap because its fuel is free, whether that is sunshine or wind. When the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, we have ample power flowing into the grid at zero marginal cost, which brings down the wholesale cost of power to zero and even delivers negative prices in parts of the day.’
But is that the case? Are we facing a clean, cheap, reliable energy future? Or is there more to renewable energy than free sunshine and wind?
According to journalist Chris Uhlmann in his new one-hour-long documentary “The Real Cost of Net Zero: The shocking truth of the renewable energy push“, renewable energy sounds good in theory, but the reality is vastly different. Think ‘grand-canyon-level’ difference between Labor’s promises of cheap energy and what we’ll experience when our nation switches to 80% renewable energy by 2030 (yes, that’s only six years away).
It was one of the most disturbing yet enlightening documentaries I’ve watched in a long, long time. And if you’re not left asking serious questions after watching this documentary, check your pulse.
Because he’s the thing we need to keep front and centre:
Cheap, reliable energy lifts people out of poverty. But expensive, unreliable energy will send them back.
Energy is life.
It’s like food, water, and shelter. Life can’t happen without it. And we in the modern world have taken this reality for granted. While our ancestors toiled, froze, boiled and went hungry (as do billions who don’t have access to cheap, reliable energy), we now cool and heat a house at the push of a button. We cook food by turning a dial. And we buy goods and services at massively reduced prices compared to what our ancestors paid.
All because of cheap, reliable energy.
But not having access to cheap, reliable energy is like not having access to affordable food, water and shelter. It holds societies back from developing, with the poor paying the biggest price.
And if, as Christians, we are concerned for the welfare of the poor, we’ll be concerned about policies that affect their wellbeing. Such as energy policies.
And this is Uhlmann’s point: large-scale renewable energy can’t deliver the energy we need to thrive. While I urge you to watch the documentary for yourself (it’s only an hour long), here are three lies Uhlmann exposes about our renewable energy transition:
That’s right: in one of the richest countries in the world, a country with abundant energy resources, during peacetime, the government asked people to ration their electricity use. That’s a failure of energy policy if ever there was one.
But according to Uhlmann, that is but a minor taste of what is coming our way with renewable energy. For the biggest lie behind the push for renewables is that renewable energy is reliable.
Uhlmann interviews various experts in the energy sector both here and overseas, and it becomes clear that renewable energy is, unsurprisingly, beholden to the weather and the earth’s rotation. At best, renewable energy will produce energy around 30% of the time (compared to 90+% for coal and nuclear). This might be fine if you’re only powering a hobby farm, but it’s problematic if you’re powering cities, hospitals, schools, businesses and homes.
So how will the government get around this problem?
By building energy storage. Hydroelectric dams and batteries will be used to store surplus energy and then use it when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
But here’s the disturbing truth: the large-scale battery technology needed to store the required amounts of energy for the time required (days or possibly even a week) doesn’t yet exist.
And no other nation has yet gone to 80% renewable energy.
In other words, we’re embarking on a nationwide high-risk experiment with a commodity fundamental to life, namely energy.
And this is where we run into the second lie.
Lie #2 – Renewable energy is cheap
Chris Bowen’s assertion that renewable energy is cheap runs afoul of fundamental physics: to get renewable energy happening, you need to build massive amounts of wind and solar farms (causing vast amounts of environmental damage; see next point), along with the hundreds of thousands of kilometres of cables to take the energy from the remote wind and solar farms to the cities (again, with a substantial environmental footprint through pristine bush and farmland), and then mind-boggling amounts of battery and hydro storage.
Oh, and then there’s the running cost.
So, what are some ballpark figures?
The Centre of Independent Studies has summarised the costs based on CSIRO figures.
Taking just the cost of storage and transmission: hydro storage, transmission lines, and batteries together, they calculated an eye-watering total of $301.8 billion. That doesn’t include tens of thousands of hectares of solar panels and wind turbines (the part that generates the electricity).
Who’s going to pay for that? You, the consumer – through higher taxes and higher electricity bills.
With 1 in 4 households already struggling to pay their electricity bills, how will a bill increase – think of a 50% – 200% increase, along with the proportional increase in goods and services – impact people? Here are some possible consequences:
Your elderly parents will have to choose whether to turn their aircon on during the hot summer or their heating during the cold winter.
The single mom will have to decide which meal she (and even her children) skips.
The stay-at-home mum of the three-year-old and one-year-old will be forced to return to full-time work and put her two young children into full-time childcare, against everyone’s wishes.
And those at the bottom of the social-economic ladder will be forced onto the streets because they can no longer afford electricity or rent.
Lie #3 – Renewable energy is environmentally friendly
Another problem with renewables is the massive amounts of land needed for energy generation.
While coal and nuclear plants have a small, contained land footprint, solar and wind turbine projects will require tens of thousands of hectares of land to be cleared to generate the necessary amount of energy. This will threaten koala habitats, bushland and farmland, among other environmental concerns. How many native birds and bats will be slaughtered by the thousands of wind turbines that will blight our landscape?
And because turbines and solar panels have relatively short life spans (20-30 years), these must be disposed of. Currently, there is no way to recycle most of their parts, so tens of thousands of these will need to be buried… considering solar panels have highly toxic chemicals in them, this poses a risk to the water table below the land.
It’s also worth noting that most rare earth metals and solar panels needed for renewables come from China – not exactly a place with stellar environmental or workplace health and safety standards.
We need an adult conversation about energy and net zero
We live in a culture where renewable energy is unquestioned orthodoxy.
To merely raise questions about the rush toward renewables risks being branded a climate heretic/denier. But these reactions are informed more by emotion and fear (‘the planet will die if we don’t go to renewable energy’), rather than sober, calm, reasoned discussion.
And to put it bluntly, good policies arise from calm, rational discussion. We need a conversation about energy driven by facts and data, not fear and panic. If we as a nation are serious about net zero, then we should carefully explore all the options for our crucial energy future.
By way of example, we can have carbon-neutral, affordable, reliable energy. An energy source exists that doesn’t harm large swathes of the environment. It’s an energy source that doesn’t create economic distress or drive people into poverty. It’s an energy source we could have up and running by 2040 — a decade before our net zero deadline. It’s an energy source many nations already benefit from (no need to experiment on our nation!).
But it requires us to have an adult conversation, because it’s called nuclear energy. And Chris Uhlmann also explores this alternative in his documentary.
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