My US House testimony on affordability; new podcasts; new articles
It's Friday!
Good morning, all. Three items in this update:
My U.S. House testimony
Chris Wright and David French on the Power Hungry Podcast
Articles on the South China Sea and EVs
"Clean" Energy Push Results in Regressive Taxation
My July paper for FREOPP on natural gas bans in California led to an invitation to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives. Yesterday, I was part of a hearing called "Generating Equity: Improving Clean Energy Access and Affordability."
The hearing (which was done on WebEx) was held by the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is chaired by Bobby Rush. I was the only witness for the minority. My remarks focused on how policies designed to address climate change can result in higher costs for ratepayers and consumers. I talked about three issues: renewable mandates, natural-gas restrictions, and subsidies for electric vehicles, and how each of those are resulting in a form of energy taxation. As you might expect, a lot of my testimony, and a lot of the questioning from the minority members of the committee, focused on what is happening in California. I pointed out that California has some of America's most aggressive renewable-energy mandates. As I explained, "In 2018, California lawmakers imposed yet another mandate that requires the state’s electric utilities to procure at least 60% of their electricity from renewables by 2030, and to be producing 100% “zero-carbon” electricity by 2045." I continued:
The imposition of these mandates coincided with a dramatic increase in electricity prices. Between 2011 and 2019, the average price of electricity in California for all users -- industrial, commercial, and residential -- jumped by nearly 30 percent, or more than seven times the rate of increase seen in the rest of the U.S.
I also talked about why renewable mandates are leading to increases in electricity prices, why natural gas bans are regressive (they force consumers to buy electricity which costs four times as much per joule as gas) and why EV mandates (more on that below) are forcing low-income taxpayers to subsidize the automotive predilections of wealthy drivers. My full testimony is here.
If you want to watch the hearing, it's available on YouTube. But be forewarned, it's over three hours long.
Two great guests on the podcast
Last week, I talked with Chris Wright, the CEO and chairman of Liberty Oilfield Services, a Denver-based company that provides hydraulic fracturing services to drillers. Chris is a dynamic speaker and a great advocate for energy as the great enabler.
My discussion with Chris provided a vivid contrast to the testimony I heard yesterday from one of the other witnesses in front of the House Energy Subcommittee. At several points, the witness talked about how great it would be if low- and middle-income consumers used less energy. I understood her point – using less energy might help save money – but that stance ignores the reality of widespread energy poverty. Chris and I covered a lot of ground, including his pioneering work on micro-seismic technology during the earliest days of the shale revolution. We also discussed Liberty’s recent acquisition of some of Schlumberger’s assets and how that acquisition will make Liberty into one of the biggest oilfield service companies in the country. But my favorite part of the discussion came when we talked about how freedom and increased use of hydrocarbons changed the course of history. He said, “human liberty and abundant energy…changed the world, created the modern world, enabled the modern world."
By all means, give the episode a listen.
This week, we – and here, I'm talking about me and the podcast producer, Tyson Culver, who handles all the editing and posting of the episodes – released my talk with David French, who is a senior editor at The Dispatch. I have been a fan of David's journalism for a long time. He's among my favorites because he writes with precision and passion. He's a Constitutional lawyer and a conservative. But he's not an easy person to pigeonhole. We talked about his remarkable new book – Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation – as well as the many cultural, political, and geographic divides in America. We spent some time talking about why, in his view, the GOP has “become a party of rage,” as well as his role as one of America’s most prominent evangelical Christian journalists. Like me, David is also an avid basketball fan, so we talked about his favorite team (Memphis Grizzlies), the NBA, LeBron James, and why in these fractious times, “we need to view people with grace.” Listen to that episode here.
My latest articles
I have had a ton of presentations – webinars and testimony – over the past fortnight, so I have not had as much time to publish as I might have liked. But I did publish two articles in Forbes, both of which were keyed off of interviews I did for the Power Hungry Podcast. On September 20, I published this piece, which is a short review of Daniel Yergin's latest book. I wrote:
Book reviews are the literary equivalent of visiting a buffet line that features 30 different dishes, but only being allowed to fill one small soup bowl, with no second helpings. There’s no good way to reduce a 200-, 300-, or 400-page book down to 800 or 1,000 words and do it justice. For that reason, rather than try to condense all of Daniel Yergin’s new (430-page!) book The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations into a single soup bowl, I will heartily recommend the book for its focus on a single topic: the South China Sea.
Yergin does a better job of explaining the history and importance of the South China Sea than anything I’ve read and he does so by tracing it to a map drawn 84 years ago by a “cartographic combatant."
As you may recall, I interviewed Dan on the podcast last month. If you haven't listened to it, here's a link to that episode.
I also wrote about California's EV subsidies which I discussed with Assemblyman Jim Cooper on the podcast last month. In this September 24 piece on Forbes, I explained why those subsidies are a form of environmental racism. Here are the first two paragraphs of that piece:
The sharpest criticism of California’s policies on electric vehicles and climate change isn’t coming from Republicans or groups funded by the oil and gas business. Instead, it’s coming from a Black Democrat, Assemblyman Jim Cooper, who represents a district that’s about a five-minute drive south of the capitol building in Sacramento.
Shortly after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the state by 2035, Cooper was on Twitter pointing out that the low- and middle-income drivers can’t afford electric vehicles like the ones Newsom stood in front of when he announced the order. Cooper said those EVs “cost more than $50K each. How will my constituents afford an EV? They can’t.” He continued, saying that Newsom’s move doesn’t “take into account the strain an all-electric vehicle fleet will have on our state electric grid.”
If you want to hear to my podcast with Cooper, by all means, give it a listen.
By the way, this afternoon, Lorin and I are headed for a swim – finally! – at Barton Springs. The city of Austin came to its senses and reopened the pool. It's been six long months of Covid and no swimming at the world's most-beautiful spring-fed pool.
Have a great weekend.
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!