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Electricity is about to become the most valuable commodity on earth

By Ronald Stein, Olivia Vaughan and Steve Curtis - posted Wednesday, 11 March 2026


For candidates who hope to lead-whether as Mayor, Governor, or President-Energy Wisdom requires comprehensive awareness: that modern civilization is not powered by electricity alone; that materials matter; that oil underpins global logistics and manufacturing; that ethical mining must be part of any responsible strategy; that nuclear power is returning to the global stage; and that Earth's mineral and energy resources, while vast, are ultimately finite. America's prosperity has always been tied to its ability to understand industrial realities, not simply political aspirations.

With this in mind, the following open-ended questions are designed to invite deeper discussions between political figures, rather than to trap them in questions that they are not equipped to answer. If an aspiring leader can articulate thoughtful responses to the following questions, voters will have a clearer sense of whether that person possesses the level of Energy Wisdom needed for national leadership.

This chart should end the climate debate once and for all. It comes straight from the Energy Institute's 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy.

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For thirty years, the world has moved nearly $8 trillion of investment into wind, solar, and other so-called "renewable" sources for electricity". The result? Their share of global primary electricity consumption has barely budged. It sits there, stubbornly flat, while the thin green line for emission-free, continuous, and uninterruptable nuclear power has actually narrowed, while we have experienced real life disastrous experiments such as the Dunkelflaute or the recent Iberian blackout.

If these potential leaders really thought carbon dioxide emissions were going to cook the planet, then emissions-free nuclear generated electricity would have expanded in a geometric progression.

Why aren't our political leaders looking at the data of electricity generation?

  • Fossil fuels of coal and natural gas still supply more than 80 percent of the world's primary electricity, the same percentage as 30 years ago. Renewables (including hydro and burning wood) hover around 15 percent at best, and the modern wind-and-solar portion is a rounding error in the overall electricity mix.
  • Nuclear? A measly 9 percent and shrinking relatively as global demand grows for electricity. That's not a transition. That's a 30-trillion-dollar grift, the most massive wealth transfer in history dressed up as salvation.
  • Wind and solar are intermittent. They rely on the weather. They fail when their capacity is most needed, every time. They always require backup - usually natural gas or coal plants that must stay spinning even when the sun shines and wind blows because the grid is not reactive, the power needs to be available all of the time.
  • Electricity from wind and solar are not, cannot, and never will be the backbone of a modern industrial economy.
  • Who will pay the price when politicians guess wrong? Certainly not the politicians.

Why are political leaders unwilling to discuss the fact that wind and solar devour land?

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  • A single 1,000-megawatt nuclear plant sits on a few hundred acres and runs 93 percent of the time. Covering the same output with solar would require hundreds of square miles of panels, plus battery farms the size of counties, plus transmission lines slicing through every red state from Texas to the Dakotas.
  • A SMR power plant sits on a football field.

Why do political leaders avoid talking about the mining required for those solar panels and EV batteries?

  • Child labor in Congo for cobalt, environmental rape in China for rare earths, and mountains of toxic waste nobody wants to talk about, not to mention the slave labor used to make the wind turbines and solar panels (all overseas, of course).
  • Meanwhile, the spent fuel from a nuclear plant fits in a single dry-cask storage container the size of a garden shed. We know exactly where every ounce of it is, and it contains an almost infinite supply of renewable electricity potential (it is always being made)
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This article was first published by America Out Loud News.



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About the Authors

Ronald Stein is co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book Clean Energy Exploitations. He is a policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute, and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and a national TV commentator on energy & infrastructure with Rick Amato.

Olivia Vaughan holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Law and a MBA and operates across key sectors in the circular economywith focus on sustainable systems and the built environment. She lives in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Steven Curtis has 32 years of experience in all levels of project management and leadership. His breadth of experience includes DOE/NNSA, EPA, University of Nevada. Las Vegas, Desert Research Institute, Active Army, Nevada Army National Guard, and consulting for FEMA and DHS, Readiness Resource Group, Inc, and National Security Technologies, LLC. Steve is currently consulting or Readiness Resource Group, Inc. in the area of National Security.

Other articles by these Authors

All articles by Ronald Stein
All articles by Olivia Vaughan
All articles by Steve Curtis

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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