Send in the Clowns  by Tom Reynolds

An old song went: “Send in the clowns…don’t bother they’re here.”

You would think that even clowns would know that you don't throw business to your enemies.  Not so, whoever is running the Biden administration.

Distribution transformers are responsible for “stepping down” higher-voltage electricity generated from long distances away for use by end-use customers. They are commonly mounted overhead on utility poles or secured to the ground on a pad.

In January of 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a proposed: Energy Conservation Standards for Distribution Transformers (Proposed Rule). The Proposed Rule, if finalized, would marginally increase efficiency standards on distribution transformers and effectively require all distribution transformers to shift from the industry standard grain oriented electrical steel (GOES) cores to amorphous steel cores. GOES currently accounts for more than 95 percent of the domestic distribution transformer market and manufacturers’ production lines are tooled for designs that use GOES.

The United States only has one small domestic producer of amorphous steel transformers. Moving to amorphous steel cores, as proposed by DOE, would require this sole domestic supplier to rapidly increase operations from its current market share of less than five percent to accommodate the entire distribution transformer market. This will further delay manufacturing production timelines – currently estimated to be a minimum of 18 months to two years.

Sounds like a supply chain problem in the making.  And it gets even worse.

Amorphous steel, is produced in the USA only in a limited supply. We would have to rely on imports from China, Japan, and Vietnam to supply the steel for American energy needs. The supply chain for the already vulnerable U.S. electric grid, and thus national security, could be endangered by relying so heavily on imports from the other side of the planet, from a hostile power such as China.

The Proposed Rule would exacerbate existing challenges such as grid modernization, reliability efforts, as well as the ability to respond and recover from natural disasters.  All for extremely minimal efficiency gains for distribution transformers that are already meeting efficiency levels over 99 percent.

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The United States and Russia began shipping Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe in 2017-2018.  

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted European countries to halt most imports of Natural Gas from Russia via pipeline and switch to LNG.

American LNG now represents roughly half the total shipped to Europe and about four times that of Russia.

The Biden Administration would have us halt all the U.S. shipments to evaluate climate impacts and let Russia more than quadruple its role in keeping Europeans warm.

In summary: we cut off Natural Gas shipments from Russia to penalize it for invading Ukraine.  Russia offset this by increasing its LNG shipments.  Biden’s stopping the USA’s LNG shipments will allow Russia to be able to ship many times more LNG. 

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The Biden White House announced “new executive actions to help promote safe storage of firearms … to reduce gun violence and make our communities safer.”

The White House statement asserted, “Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in America.”  (That is, if you consider childhood lasting until your 24th birthday!)

This 1,254-word announcement offered details such as “76% of school shootings are committed with guns from the home.” (Which overlooks the fact that 100% of school shootings occur in “gun-free zones.”)

The White House notes that a rising trend has been firearms stolen from unattended motor vehicles. (Cause and effect.  It doesn’t mention that law-abiding citizens are often compelled to leave their guns in their vehicles because of “sensitive places” laws which prevent them from entering sensitive places with lawfully-concealed defensive firearms.)

The administration urges that state “laws should impose a clear standard to penalize those who do not safely store their weapons and whose weapons end up being used for violence.” (There isn’t any mention of prosecuting and locking up criminals who actually misuse those guns.  No reference to jailing and sentencing recidivist offenders.  The administration thinks it will be more effective to criminalize the victim of a residential burglary or car rather than jailing the miscreants who steal those firearms.)

The White House says this project will save lives.  (By putting more blame on honest gun owners than on criminals who ignore safe storage laws like they disregard any other gun control law?  Good luck with that!)

Another win for the clowns and criminals.