Power Hungry Podcast in Top 150! New paper on nat gas bans
Happy Friday afternoon!
Today’s email blast includes:
The Power Hungry Podcast is booming!
My new Freopp paper on nat gas bans in California
My latest in Forbes on Biden’s energy plan
The Power Hungry Podcast
Thanks to excellent work by the podcast’s producer, Tyson Culver – and perhaps some tolerable effort by yours truly – the Power Hungry Podcast has already been downloaded more than 1,000 times, which puts it in the top tier of new podcasts. The Power Hungry Podcast now ranks in the top 150 in the News & Commentary segment in the United States and in the top 100 in that category in Canada and Australia. Plus, it’s in the top 100 in the US and globally in the Science category.
As I said in my last email blast, if I knew how much fun the podcast would be, I would have started it sooner. I dig the immediacy and intimacy of the podcast. I have always liked talking to people and sharing their stories. With the podcast, I can do that without having to go through someone else’s filter or channel. So here’s my ask on the podcast front:
Please subscribe to the podcast. And if you know someone who would like the Power Hungry Podcast, please encourage them to give it a listen.
If you like the podcast, please go to Ratethispodcast.com/powerhungry and give it a 5-star rating.
The last two episodes were great. In the third edition, I talked to author Matt Ridley about his new book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom. Matt is a prolific author, a member of the House of Lords, and a great conversationalist. We talked about why innovation is needed to find a vaccine for the coronavirus, why China faces a difficult future, birdwatching, and Brexit.
In the fourth episode, I talked to Joyashree Roy, an economist from Kolkata, India, who is now teaching in Bangkok at the Asia Institute of Technology. She was among the members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who, in 2007, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Joyashree facilitated our trip to India back in 2016. That trip to India – and the video that we shot while we were there – became the heart of both my new documentary, Juice, and my new book, A Question of Power. Joyashree and I talked about her work with the IPCC, her upbringing in eastern India, why developing countries like India will continue burning coal to produce electricity, and how the pandemic has underscored the need to provide more electricity to people in the developing world.
Finally, we are also posting the video of the Power Hungry Podcasts on YouTube. Have a look!
California's Natural Gas Bans Are A Regressive Energy Tax
Last week, the Austin-based Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, published my latest research paper which spotlights the natural gas bans being implemented in California. Those bans are a new type of regressive energy tax.
A bit of background: I joined Freopp as a visiting fellow earlier this year. Freopp was founded by Avik Roy, who I met a few years ago. Avik is hardworking and damn smart. Freopp focuses on how policy affects low and middle-income Americans. It’s doing great work on poverty, Covid, policing, and education.
Freopp’s mission speaks to me for a simple reason: the energy/climate policies now being enacted in California and other states will have the biggest impacts on the people who can least afford higher energy prices. As I explain in the paper, California already has some of America’s highest electricity prices. California also has the highest poverty rate in the country. Banning natural gas will make the poverty problem even worse. Why? Prohibiting the direct use of natural gas in furnaces, stoves, clothes dryers, and water heaters will force consumers to buy electricity, which in California is four times as expensive as natural gas on an energy-equivalent basis. Banning nat gas will also add more electric load onto one of the most expensive and least-reliable electric grids in America.
I am proud of this new paper and am thrilled to be working with Freopp on energy affordability.
Finally, my latest piece in Forbes looks at the $2 trillion energy plan that Joe Biden unveiled this week. Parts of Biden's plan are sensible. It includes support for nuclear energy and development of next-generation nuclear technology. There's no mention of a ban on hydraulic fracturing.
My critique focuses on two factors that Biden and his team ignored: It will drive up electricity rates, which will be bad for low- and middle-income consumers; and it ignores the raging conflicts over energy infrastructure and land use. To illustrate those points, I looked at California, where electricity prices are skyrocketing and it’s nearly impossible to build new energy infrastructure of any kind because of land-use conflicts.
California has some of the country’s most-aggressive renewable-energy goals. By 2030, California’s electric utilities must be getting at least 60% of their electricity from renewables and they must be producing 100% “zero-carbon” electricity by 2045. The imposition of these mandates has coincided with a dramatic increase in electricity prices. California now has some of the highest electricity prices in the country and those rates are going in one direction: up.
California also demonstrates how land-use conflicts are slowing, or stopping, the deployment of new renewable capacity. Between 2013 and 2019, California added less than 200 megawatts of new wind energy capacity.
Biden’s plan ignores these issues. I will continue focusing on them because low-cost energy (and in particular, low-cost electricity) is essential for human well-being and economic growth. I will also keep writing about land use because it ties together issues I care about: property rights, the challenges facing rural America, and the protection of people, landscapes, and wildlife.
Okay, that’s enough for now.
Thanks much.
rb
What can you do?
1. Subscribe to the Power Hungry Podcast.
2. Rent or buy Juice on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
3. Buy my new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations.
4. Follow me and Juice on Twitter.
5. Forward this note to your friends/family/colleagues so I can add them to the email list.
Thanks!