"Massive industrialization" of the oceans, Amazon's energy use, Tom Gryta re "Lights On"
Happy first Friday in February. Three energy items, and one bird item, today:
Tom Gryta talks about GE and his new book on the Power Hungry Podcast
Another Forbes piece: Amazon won't reveal its energy use. Why not?
A myriad of waxwings
I have been reporting about the offshore wind sector for more than four years. The recent spate of announcements from the UK, EU, South Korea, and the US about offshore wind prompted me to revisit the issue, and once I started, it was hard to stop. It's a big and complex issue and the numbers being thrown around are enormous. Hundreds of gigawatts of offshore capacity have been announced, but:
Take all of these offshore plans with a large grain of sea salt...The history of offshore wind in domestic waters is replete with canceled plans – yes, Cape Wind, I’m talking about you – cost overruns, cabling problems, and permit delays. Furthermore, offshore wind continues to be one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation. That high-priced juice will cost ratepayers untold billions of dollars over the coming years. That means higher-cost electricity for low- and middle-income consumers. The impact will be particularly hard in northeastern states like New York and in New England, where consumers already endure some of the highest electricity prices in the country,
I continued:
...building gigawatt-scale offshore wind will be lousy for the oceans, navigation, and marine life. The forecast buildout of offshore wind in the U.S. will require industrializing vast swaths of some of the most heavily fished and navigated waters in North America. It will require anchoring thousands of offshore platforms along the Eastern Seaboard, which could interfere with marine mammal migration and wreak navigational havoc during a hurricane, major storm, or oil spill. It will also add yet more noise pollution to the already-noisy ocean.
The line about the "massive industrialization of the oceans" came from my friend Jesse Ausubel, the director for the program on the Human Environment at Rockefeller University. He's a champion of the oceans and one of America's foremost scientists. He's also one of the stars of Juice. You can see a clip of him here.
I conclude the piece this way: "If the advisors on Biden’s climate team are serious about protecting the environment, now would be a good time for them to reconsider the massive industrialization of the oceans that is now underway. It might even make them think about preventing America’s existing fleet of nuclear reactors from being prematurely shuttered.
Please give the piece a read and share it.
WSJ reporter Thomas Gryta talks about his new book, Lights Out
This week on the Power Hungry Podcast, I talked with Thomas Gryta, the co-author, with Ted Mann, of Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric. I talked with Gryta about how GE soared in value under its charismatic leader, Jack Welch, and how hubris, excessive financial leverage, and the company’s dependence on profits from GE Capital, nearly forced America’s most famous industrial company into bankruptcy.
Lights Out reminded me of many of the factors that resulted in the bankruptcy of Enron. It's been nearly 20 years since my book, Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron was published. At Enron, the management team was obsessed with not only making expected earnings numbers but beating them. The same thing happened at GE under Welch and Jeff Immelt. The other similarity involves the use of corporate jets. At Enron, the top management team used the company jets to fly from Houston to New York for weekend shopping trips. Ken Lay, Enron's CEO, used the company planes to move his family around the world, including a trip in which Enron pilots flew to France to pick up Lay's daughter. In early 2001, just nine months before the company went bust, Enron bought a brand new Gulfstream V, a plane that cost some $41 million and could fly more than 6,000 miles without refueling.
At GE, Immelt would sometimes use not one, but two corporate jets. That is, Immelt would fly in one plane. The second plane, inhabited only by the pilots, would follow the first one just in case it had a mechanical problem. There are many other details like the in Lights Out. It's a quick and interesting read and Tom was a good guest.
Here's a link to the episode.
A Question of Power has a chapter on the soaring electricity use of the Giant Five tech companies. (Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft.) While researching that issue, I began paying close attention to Amazon.com, which has never revealed its energy use. On Wednesday, the day after Amazon.com released its fourth-quarter results, I published a piece on Forbes which points out that amid the company's torrid growth, it continues to hide one of the most basic metrics in ESG (environmental social, and governance) performance: Its energy use. I wrote:
All of the other big technology companies that dominate our digital lives — Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft -- publish annual reports which detail their carbon footprints, electricity use, and overall energy consumption. But Amazon, the Goliath of Big Tech, the company controlled by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, won’t reveal how much energy it uses.
In an era in which transparency and accountability are driving corporate decision-making and reporting, Amazon's lack of accountability is remarkable. But don't expect America's biggest environmental groups to speak up about it. As I explain in the piece:
Jeff Bezos has become the single largest donor to climate-related causes. Last year, he announced that the Bezos Earth Fund would spend $10 billion supporting scientists, activists, and others because, he said, “climate change is the biggest threat to our planet.” In November, his fund announced $791 million in grants, including $100 million each to some of America’s biggest environmental groups, including Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and World Resources Institute. Those groups routinely scrutinize the emissions and environmental practices of America’s biggest energy producers. If big environmental groups are going to accept huge sums from Bezos, they should demand that their benefactor reveal his company’s energy use. If they don’t, they are indulging a double standard on corporate reporting.
I will continue to follow the energy use of the Giant Five and the lack of reporting from Amazon. Here's a link to the Forbes piece. Please read it and share it.
A Riot of Cedar Waxwings
Bird groups have specific names. A group of quail is a covey. Geese come in gaggles and crows travel in murders. I don't know if there's a name for the clouds of cedar waxwings that invaded Barton Creek over the past week or so, but the sheer numbers of them have been amazing. Thousands of waxwings,(Bombycilla cedrorum) or maybe tens of thousands, descended on 78704 to feast on the berries put out by the many ashe juniper trees. Most of the waxwings have gone now, after a change in the weather. Of course, none of this has anything to do with energy, power, innovation, and politics. But I'm a birdwatcher. And this week has been a spectacular time for waxwings. About 30 years ago, while I was writing for the Austin Chronicle, I interviewed the great American naturalist and birding pioneer, Roger Tory Peterson. In that interview, he called birds "a vivid expression of life." That line still resonates with me. And this week, the forests near our home have been filthy with those vivid expressions.
Have a great weekend.
(Bird photo credit: Clyde Dexter/Audubon Photography Awards.)
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