It appears that we have a one-party system in Washington, and there is now talk that the subsidies may be reinstated solely to secure the Alaska Senator’s vote. Why would a Senator from Alaska want wind and solar? Follow the money.
We will be tracking the bill and have an update on what finally passes.
Daily Standup Top Stories
Clean Energy Gutted in Last-Minute Rewrite of Trump’s $1.2T Senate Tax Bill
In a stunning turn of events, Senate Republicans have delivered a seismic blow to the clean energy sector with sweeping last-minute revisions to President Donald Trump’s $1.2-trillion “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” The amendments, inserted just […]
Unprecedented Utility Investment Opportunity Driven by AI and Data Centers
The U.S. energy landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, propelled by the insatiable energy demands of artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers. As tech giants race to expand their AI capabilities, utilities are facing an […]
Is Big Oil Ready to Invest $1.2 Trillion? WoodMac Predicts CCUS Surge, but Investors and Boards May Disagree
The global energy landscape is at a crossroads, with carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) emerging as a pivotal technology in the quest for net-zero emissions. According to a recent report by Wood Mackenzie, the […]
Spain Grid Operator Commits to Record Investments to Stabilize Grid After Monumental Blackout
On April 28, 2025, Spain and Portugal experienced one of the most significant power outages in recent European history, plunging millions into darkness and sparking a fierce debate over grid reliability in an era of […]
Norway’s Equinor Makes a Massive Oil Discovery in the Arctic
Norwegian energy giant Equinor has struck oil in the Arctic Barents Sea, announcing a significant discovery near its Johan Castberg field, which could bolster reserves at one of Norway’s most promising oilfields. The find, located […]
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:08 – Clean Energy Gutted in Last-Minute Rewrite of Trump’s $1.2T Senate Tax Bill
04:19 – Unprecedented Utility Investment Opportunity Driven by AI and Data Centers
06:41 – Is Big Oil Ready to Invest $1.2 Trillion? WoodMac Predicts CCUS Surge, but Investors and Boards May Disagree
09:15 – Spain Grid Operator Commits to Record Investments to Stabilize Grid After Monumental Blackout
11:58 – Norway’s Equinor Makes a Massive Oil Discovery in the Arctic
14:14 – Outro
Follow Stuart On LinkedIn and Twitter
Follow Michael On LinkedIn and Twitter
Need Power For Your Data Center, Hospital, or Business?
– Get in Contact With The Show –
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Stuart Turley: [00:00:00] The big beautiful bill puts a stop to the green new deal. All that on the Energy Daily Standup. [00:00:05][5.1]
Stuart Turley: [00:00:13] Hello everybody, welcome to the Energy Newsbeat Daily Standup. My name’s Stu Turley, president of the Sandstone Group. Here is a very cool list of stories. Clean energy gutted in last minute rewrite of Trump’s 1.3 Senate tax bill. Unprecedented utility investment opportunity driven by AI and data centers is big oil to ready to invest $1.2 trillion dollars. Wood Mac predicts CCUS surge, but investors and boards may totally disagree. Spain’s grid operator commits to a record investment to stabilize the grid after monumental blackout. You can’t buy this kind of entertainment. Norway Equinor makes a massive oil discovery in the Arctic. Pretty cool. All this and all these stories. Let’s get started with the biggest story on the block. [00:01:07][54.3]
Stuart Turley: [00:01:08] Clean energy gutted in the last minute rewrite of Trump’s 1.2 Senate tax bill. In a stunning turn of events, Senate Republicans have delivered a seismic blow to the clean energy sector with sweeping last minute revisions to President Donald Trump’s $1.2 trillion big beautiful bill. The amendments inserted just hours before the floor debate on the 30th dismantled key incentives for wind and solar and impose the new tax on renewable energy components and fundamentally reshape the financial landscape for renewables in the United States. This is critical and it changes a whole new investing scheme going on. And that is it accelerates the phase out of tax credits. This bill slashes the timeline for production of tax credits and investments, ITCs and PTCs and wind and solar projects originally set to phase out gradually. These will now expire by December 31st, 2027, five years earlier than planned. Additionally, and all the whales. Went, yay, just getting raw shore wind projects. Additionally, eligibility and criteria have shifted the project to start in the in-service date, new excise tax on Chinese components. This is huge. The bill imposes a 10% excise tack on clean energy equipment. Containing Chinese origin critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth. I’m hoping that we take it one step further and make sure we have a whole new set of American-made chips in some of these things because now you’ve heard me talk about it before, but they can take the grid down. Just thought I’d let you know. Elimination of electric vehicle incentives. The Senate bill eliminates the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle sales. And leases starting in September, 2025, the dealing a further blow to the clean energy ecosystem. And that is really a false way to phrase this is because electric vehicles are not clean energy. They use energy from what is it? Mostly coal, mostly natural gas. And they also require a lot of fossil fuels in order to make them. So this is really not a right way to say that, but the 940 page bill describes as hastily drafted also includes uncertainty by leaving key implementation details vague. Jason Gromit, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, told the New York Times, New Tax is so carelessly written and haphazardly drafted that the concern is that it will uncertainty and freeze the markets. You know what? There is a complete relationship between wind, solar, hydrogen, and really high energy prices. You have these three items on your network, you get really, really high, high energy bills. It’s pretty simple to figure this out. [00:04:18][190.4]
Stuart Turley: [00:04:19] Let’s go to the next story. Unprecedented utility investment opportunity driven by AI and data centers. This is huge. AI and data center landscape is undergoing a seismic shift propelled by the insatiable energy demands of AI and datacenters as tech giants race to expand their AI capacities. U.S. Power is projected to spend, listen to this, $212 billion in capital expenditures in 2025, a 23% increase year over year, and it’s poised for significant growth. This surge is likely largely driven by the need for power of data centers. What is really happening in this article is outstanding for pointing out that there’s top utility companies to invest in next era. We do not offer investment advice. However, just looking at their market cap, everything else, go do your own research and take a look next era, Southern company in ETR, Entergy, Dominion Energy, and Constellation Energy. And this is out of Morningstar, Goldman Sachs, and other ex-posts. This is really pretty cool but there’s also top a i driving this now i would not invest in microsoft amazon or google or metta and just as a side note i’ve been my company from advertising on metta for political reasons cuz they have failed to stop helping traffic children so that is my personal thing. But let’s go into the facing challenges facing utilities. Despite opportunities, the utilities face significant hurdles with supply bottleneck and chain bottleneck demand for equipment like three-phase pad mounted transformer expected to surge a hundred and 45% by 2034, but global shortages have extended wait times to three years. This is critical. This is also bringing up a huge point about microgrids and making sure that you can redesign your implementation for your company so that it can be done and be on its own microgrid so that can be redesigned to meet your needs. Those with money will survive. Those with microgrid will survive happily. [00:06:41][142.1]
Stuart Turley: [00:06:41] Let’s go to the next story here. Big Oil is ready to invest $1.2 trillion. Wood Mac predicts CCUS or Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage surge, but investors and boards may disagree. I’m going to be with the investors and the boards in disagreeing with this one. The global energy landscapes at a with carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Emerging as a pivotal technology in the quest for net zero emissions, according to a recent survey by Wood Mackenzie. I’m not going to buy any of that because I truly think that we are going to see the Trump administration overturn the Obama’s categorization of CO2 as a pollutant. It’s plant food. And so big oil is making moves ExxonMobil’s $4.9 billion acquisition of Denberry, a CCUS specialist with the largest CO2 pipeline in the US signals a strategic move forward. I think they were doing that just to save face or take a look at, take a look at what’s happened between the European oil and gas companies. They went totally to the renewables and now they’re coming back. We saw Occidental with Warren Buffett’s investments really go into the CCUS. And the, again, the only reason to invest in a wind farm says Warren Buffet is for the tax credits. Well, the tax credit are going away. You pig pile on the. Upcoming renaming or D demonizing of CO2 as just plant food now is what you should be called this is going to be a thorn in the side bookmark this article because wood Mac has got it wrong because they’re not reading the tea leaves according to the Trump administration but what this means is. Is that you have Canada, the UK and the EU all lined up with CCUS and then they’re going to try and shove all of the carbon taxes and all of the net zero policies onto US companies. And if the United States does not short, stop this and put in legislation, we have got a real problem. So hats off to secretary Chris Wright, because I know he’s on this. And we’ll be keeping that posted on there. And so I’ll tell you what, I am so pleased with the way that the Trump administration’s policymakers of Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, and Lee Zeldin class acts, all of them. [00:09:15][153.7]
Stuart Turley: [00:09:15] Let’s go to the Spain grid operator commits to record investment to stabilize grid after monumental blackout. I’ll tell you what, this is absolutely cracks me up on April 28th, Spain and Portugal experienced one of the most significant power outages in recent European history, plunging millions into dark darkness. And it was just an amazing event when you had like, believe it was over 50 million people were affected and it happened within a matter of seconds. But now Redias responsive record investments and reforms. I’m afraid they’re not going to get the memo that having an over abundance and not enough inertia as it’s called on the grid. I don’t know that they’ve got this under under wraps. So when you take a look at what the Spain debacle really shows that you need a balanced network. And some of the best explanations I can see is that, let’s take solar. Solar is DC, and then you have to have a, convert that into the grid type format, a transformer. And when you take a look at how this comes back in, it is not just that simple of putting in more renewables onto it. You’ve got to simple it out. And I think, again, the key buzzword you’re gonna see, Microgrid. Decentralized management of grids. And so everyone needs to take a heart. If you’re a CEO and you’re wanting to look at investment, I’m going to put in a backup natural gas generator that will run my business and have it ready to rumble. That is money well spent, even if it won’t power 100% of your equipment, but enough to keep you mission critical. That’s what you need to look. [00:11:10][114.6]
[00:11:11] So anyway, let’s go to the last story here. And before I read our last story, I want to give Steve Reese and the reset folks at Reese energy consulting a shout out, we were able to help communicate with Steve Reese in his group out of Europe and get them connected up with some discussions in the white house. And we really love everything that Steve Reese is doing, getting them connected from Poland and Germany. They understand taking molecules from the Hanesville. And all the way to Germany, it is important to understand that energy security starts at home and having contracts and great business partners to deliver it, reeseenergyconsulting.com, reeseenergyconsult.com. Great partners. [00:11:57][46.8]
Stuart Turley: [00:11:58] Let’s go to the last story here. Norway’s Equinor makes a massive oil discovery in the Arctic. Norwegian energy giant Equinore has struck an oil in the Arctic Bering Sea announcing a significant discovery as John Castfield, which could bolster reserve reserves at one of Norway’s most promising oil fields. The find, I don’t want to go into any details. It’s between nine and 15 million barrels of recoverable oil with potential to tie into the existing John Katzberg infrastructure that’s used whenever you’ve got infrastructure already there, this is really cool. Well done. But what I brought into this article is that that article, just that paragraph was on oil price.com. The Arctic has become such a hotspot. I expanded out all of the other things as I wrote this out. The Arctic has become the hotspot for oil and gas exploration with major players like Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, Russia’s Rosenfitt vying for dominance. Equinore’s recent discovery, this is huge. And when you take a look at this, I think this is something that President Trump should have in his quiver and is ready to go to negotiations and get President Putin to the table. Is doing deals in the arctic and doing deals president putin wants to do deals with the united states and i think that goes back to the the way that we are seeing the trading blocks are changing around the world and we’re seeing the uk and the u in canada fail and you’re gonna see new trading blocks. India, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and all of these countries in here and Russia and the United states are forming new trading blocks. This is really important for them. You take a look at the Russian six nuclear reactors. I believe they have another six to eight that they’ve got ready to start rolling on. They’ve got a whole new shipyard. That’s critical for keeping the LNG and things and trading going to the Asian market. And All of this is changing. Right before your eyes. [00:14:12][134.0]
Stuart Turley: [00:14:14] So buckle up, like, share, subscribe, read this to your kids. If they’re in high school, let them understand that they can have a great job by not going to college. And anyway, thank you for all of our great listeners and everything else. Have an absolutely fantastic day. If you are a energy expert or a CEO, please reach out to us. We want you on the podcast. Have a great day. Look forward to talking to you all soon. [00:14:14][0.0][841.0]
Share this post