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“Energy Returned On Energy Invested is the single most important concept to understanding energy, alternative energy, and peak oil.”
~ Charlie Stephens

By Catherine Austin Fitts

Thanks to a highly expensive effort to maintain secrecy and generate complexity and obfuscation, most of us generally have a limited understanding of the all-important topic of energy. This week, I am delighted to welcome independent energy consultant and systems engineer Charlie Stephens to the Solari Report for a two-part interview to enlighten us on energy in the 21st century.

After spending over two decades in the Coast Guard and Navy (retiring as a Navy commander) and another 17 years as a lead policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Energy, Charlie is just the person to lead us through the thicket of complexities that surrounds energy topics. His expertise extends to energy policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy, transportation systems and land use, economic and community development, macroeconomics, international trade, foreign policy and more.

In both Charlie’s and my estimation, a discussion of energy needs to start with the recognition that it is the central banking-warfare and industrial agriculture models and the energy-intensive control grid—and not weaponized environmental issues and “climate change” scams such as those related to carbon and nitrogen—that are the leading causes of environmental harm on the planet today. A second critical point is that for energy policy to be rational, it must take into account the concept of “energy return on investment” (EROI): a ratio that describes the amount of “energy produced in relation to the energy used to create it.”

Join us for Part I as we consider the availability of and EROI for sources of energy such as oil and gas, coal, ethanol, nuclear, hydro and geothermal, wind, and solar—as well as important unanswered questions about breakthrough energy.

Money & Markets:

This is the last week of the month, so there is no Money & Markets. The next Money & Markets will publish on September 7. Post questions at the Money & Markets commentary here.


58 Comments

  1. Thank you Mr. Stephens and Catherine,

    You have moved my needle on climate change a smidge.
    What struck a cord deep within me Mr. Stephens was when you spoke to the hierarchy of primary goals that our human system is based on. Change the goal and you change the system.
    I don’t know if you are a spiritual man but what you describe is a spiritual problem.
    And we have a solution.

    PAX

    1. As it happens, I’m pretty deeply spiritual, Kari. And solutions to our human predicament are as much a spiritual change as a change of habit or conduct. The Dark Side that is destroying most everything it touches is very old, and needs only the absence of light to prevail. I sense that we’re awash in religion but we have an acute shortage of spirituality in practice. In the same sense that society is awash in old people but we have an acute shortage of elders. Charlie

  2. I agree the goal is definitely control to harvest, or rather exploit, resources and populations, not to generate money, which is simply a tool and like Catherine said, can be printed out of thin air. I might use the general term of “acquisition” to state their goal, as it can encompass all of the above. Loving this interview and all the information from the presenter! It’s got to be one of my favourite Solari reports so far.

    1. Thank you very much, Natasha. It’s nice to have you in the conversation. I have no idea where it will go but I’d very glad for all of it. Charlie

  3. Dear Catherine and Mr Stephans,

    Thank you for this wealth of useful information. Charles, please share name of the engineer and or the particular asphalt i-beam road design which might turn up material about the project. Links would great. 

    We are responsible for a 2000ft rural road which needs repaving every 2 to 3 years at great expense for our business. W’d pay royalties to get a 60 year service life on the road.

    Best wishes, NB

    aka Think-R-thwim

    2. Well, Nicholas, I happen to have a nice little .pdf file about it, with a side-by-side design comparison as part of the document. I would just have to figure out how to get that to you as part of the Solari context. Perhaps Catherine or Carolyn can advise me on how to do that. Charlie

      1. Charlie:

        Just email to me and I will have posted on the server so you can post the link

        Catherine

  4. Yes I agree that nuclear should have to absorb the risk but that’s not stopping them from implementing regardless of we the people.
    It seems to me they’re pushing for a nuclear future.

    Press Release
    Oklo Inc.
    Oklo Tentatively Selected to Provide Clean and Resilient Power to Eielson Air Force Base

    08/31/2023
    The Defense Logistics Agency Energy, on behalf of the United States Air Force and the United States Department of Defense, has selected Oklo as the pending contractor awardee to site a micro-reactor at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska to provide clean, reliable power to the facility.”

    2. I’m afraid you’re right – the nuclear racket intends to continue. One just has to understand that every one of the energy rackets is tapping the public treasury, which is deep in the red. That’s how rackets function – the racketeers go to work each day, like many of the rest of us, and work in their own interest. They just have much more wealth and power than most of us, so they get to design the system. This is just one example of why none of Adam Smith’s characteristics of a free market economy are true, and never have been, except at the smallest scale of market transactions – local, at the neighborhood or community level. Most communities wouldn’t choose a nuclear power generator if they had to buy it, maintain it, take on all of the risk connected to its proper and safe functioning, and deal with whatever disposal issues may need to be dealt with in the future. There are less expensive, safer, and simpler systems.
      If we truly had a free market economy, and if all of the public subsidies went away, we would have very different economic and energy systems. Charlie

  5. Great interview. Chicago school economics being the chemical which the tapeworm releases to make the host hungry. I laughed out loud at that. So true. The chemical affects us on a mental level.

  6. “Why is nuclear so successful in France?”

    Jimmy Dore covering the recent French bombing of Niger, alleges that they have deals where they get Uranium at far below market rate:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1ngiM-Y0g

    This article seems to downplay the role of Niger, but 20% of French Uranium imports does not seem insignificant to me.
    https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/how-dependent-is-france-on-niger-s-uranium_6080772_8.html

    1. Hi, Brandon. Nuclear is so successful in France for the same reasons it’s successful here (there are about 400 nuclear power units operating in the U.S.), and it’s because of massive subsidies. Energy prices are also a good bit higher in Europe (one reason why they tend to be more efficient in their use of energy), which helps justify the extremely high costs (per MW of capacity) to build and operate these plants. You’ll also find that the countries with the most nuclear generation are also the countries with nuclear weapons – they go hand in hand.
      France does, indeed, get a good deal on Niger’s uranium. Back in the early 1960s, Africa began to decolonize. By 1964 many countries had declared independence. But France’s colonies – in the Sahel – never really escaped colonization. They went from a physical colonization to an economic colonization, all dealing with each other and with France using the French franc, all producing commodities that are subject to world commodity markets and trading (run by the financial mafia), and importing finished (value-added) goods from France. Their commodity sales revenue tends to be less than they spend on the finished goods, which is great for France and not so great for the Sahel countries like Niger, Mali, Gabon, etc. They’re all in hock to the banksters, many of which are French banksters.
      No one has yet figured out what will be done with the spent fuel from these plants all over the world, and none of those unknown costs are accounted for in the economics equation for nuclear generation. It’s presumed that the public will pick up the tab, as just another giant subsidy for the industry, but one that’s pretty essential for the military-industrial-surveillance complex. It turns out that we really have enough power generation that we can forego the 20 percent or so that’s provided by nuclear. But we will still have to deal with the waste at some point, and a lot of it depends on the electric grid being reliably there to keep the stuff cool in the meantime. None of the energy associated with these unknown waste disposal solutions is included in the nuclear EROEI. Charlie

  7. dear Catherine,

    thank you for your work and for this amazing discussion about energy with Charlie Stephens. I’m just finishing the first part and I had to stop the video when Zero Point Energy was named… I should have written to you much earlier about this topic but my deep rooted aversion to take part in the digital galaxy had so far prevented me to do it.
    Zero Point Energy is real, and a devise that produce energy has been already invented and is ready for mass production.
    I’m an Italian living in the US North West, and the inventor of this devise is Italian as well, Andrea Rossi, that move some year ago into Miami. His story is a long one, is difficult to summarize for me know, but I’ following is work for about 14 years and even if is not known ans when named is almost always denigrated, I believe his invention is real. He has some unknown financial backer, he claims that the production plant is ready and what he needs it to reach a confirmed pre-order of 1 million of his 100Watt units, with no money upfront. The reason for that is that his device could be relatively easily revers engineered.
    His e-cat (this was the devise original name) doesn’t use any fuel, doesn’t generate any pollution, doesn’t emit any radiation, it’s portable and may last many years. We can guaranty 11 years of continuous use.
    He has a video on Youtube that show a lamp powered by his device with no other electrical connection going on for several months.
    Here the link:
    https://www.youtube.com/@ecatthenewfire

    Here the web site of the Leonardo corporation: https://ecatthenewfire.com/

    Here the his very interesting blog address, that is basically a a question and answer platform… He answer to anyone who ask questions… and the level of the discussion is very high.. with a lot of engineers and scientists discussing his invention:
    http://new.rossilivecat.com/

    He have also planned a presentation of his device for the second half of October where two electric cars, one regular the other with the ecat will run around a track in south of Italy for 12 hours. The bet is the car e with the e-cat will never stop (except for the change of the pilot) and at the end of the 12 hours the battery will be still fully charged.

    I hope you are going to have a look at it and spread the voice to your subscriber to help him to reach his 1 million unit order.

    thank you again Catherine, if you need more information just mail me:
    lenuvole@protonmail.com

    riccardo pompili

    1. Thank you Riccardo. I am aware of Rossi as a result of participating in a series of Breakthrough Energy conferences put on by one of my partners over the last decade. See the link in the Lost Century documentary which is movie of the week this coming week – I recommend it – a great overview. Another one of my partners is an investor in Brilliant Light – also breakthrough Energy. Off and on have worked briefly with investors who had been doing venture in breakthrough energy. Lot so potential. I am wondering if the push for total control is so that such technology can be introduced and adapted.

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