Offshore wind's lousy for consumers, Keefer on podcast, ERCOT-fix roadmap, quoted in NY Times, more warblers.

Apr 16, 2021

My NY Post piece on Biden's offshore plans, Chris Keefer on the podcast, Michael Nasi's ERCOT-fix roadmap, I'm quoted in NY Times on Indian Point, and...Yellow-throated Warblers

The Biden administration is rolling out its climate change plans and as was feared, there's far too much focus on renewables and far too little on preserving existing nuclear reactors. In this email blast:

My New York Post piece on offshore wind
Dr. Chris Keefer on the podcast
Michael Nasi's legislative diagram on fixing Texas' electricity woes
Indian Point closure is a "strategic blunder"
Yellow-throated Warbler at Anahuac NWR

Above is the Yellow-throated Warbler (Setophaga dominica). Photo credit.

I have been writing about offshore wind energy for several years. Last Saturday, the New York Post ran my latest piece on that topic. I began:

Last week, the Biden administration announced “a bold set of actions” that it said will “catalyze” the installation of 30,000 megawatts of new offshore wind capacity by 2030. A White House fact sheet claimed the offshore push will create “good-paying union jobs” and “strengthen the domestic supply chain.” One problem: It didn’t contain a single mention of electricity prices or ratepayers. The reason for the omission is obvious: President Biden’s offshore-wind scheme will be terrible for consumers. If those 30,000 megawatts of capacity get built — which, given the history of scuttled projects like Cape Wind, is far from a sure thing — that offshore juice will cost ratepayers billions of dollars more per year than if that same power were produced from onshore natural-gas plants or advanced nuclear reactors.

I continued:

Of course, offshore wind will create an armada of problems that go well beyond the price of power. As Rockefeller University environmental expert Jesse Ausubel told me recently, it will require “massive industrialization” of the oceans. Indeed, building 30,000 megawatts of capacity will require anchoring thousands of offshore platforms along our coasts that could pose significant threats to navigation, marine mammals and fisheries. But the cost issue is the one that deserves immediate attention because any spike in electricity prices will have an outsized impact on low- and middle-income consumers. Those price hikes will be particularly painful in New York and New England, where consumers already pay some of America’s highest electricity prices.

I concluded:

Offshore wind is a bad deal for the marine environment, ratepayers and taxpayers. Biden’s plan should be torpedoed before it leaves the harbor.

Please read the piece and pass it along.

Chris Keefer, founder of Doctors for Nuclear Energy, on the podcast

Chris Keefer is one of Canada's best-known advocates for nuclear energy. He's also a medical doctor, the founder of Doctors for Nuclear Energy, and host of the Decouple podcast. In this week's episode, I talked to Keefer, who is an emergency-room doctor, about the use of radiation in medicine. He told me "radiation in the form of medical diagnostics is a vital tool for me. So absolutely every shift, I'm ordering X-rays or CT scans." He estimated that about one out of every four patients he sees is getting some type of radiation-related diagnostic procedure like X- ray or a CT scan. He continued, saying that the general public doesn't give a second thought to the radiation exposure from those medical procedures but they have an outsized, or rather, irrational, fear of radiation from nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. He also came with a remarkable statistic: About 40% "of the world's supply of single-use surgical instruments are sterilized with Canadian cobalt 60..." that is produced by his country's nuclear reactors.

We went on to discuss decarbonization, why Ontario is “the France of North America,” and why in his view, Canada’s 60,000 nuclear workers are “climate, clean air, and medical heroes.”

It was a fun episode. Click here to tune in.

Michael Nasi's legislative visualization for fixing the $50B ERCOT mess

This week, I had the good fortune to hear Michael Nasi, a lawyer at Jackson Walker, discuss the Texas Blackouts and how policymakers ignored the warning signs for years. He presented a lot of good slides. But the image above, which Nasi calls "Visualizing the Texas Legislative Response to the Power Outages," grabbed my attention. It shows the many issues the Texas Legislature is trying to address as well as the many bills that aim to fix those problems. Michael graciously allowed me to use his slide.

Nasi's slide illustrates the complexity of the system the Texas Legislature set up when it adopted an energy-only market two decades ago. My prediction: the ERCOT mess won't be resolved this legislative session. Unwinding the government failure that led to the blackouts, and some $50 billion in electricity costs, will take years.

New York Times piece on why the closure of Indian Point #3, means more fossil fuels, I'm quoted

On Monday, New York Times reporter Patrick McGeehan published a good piece on why the closure of the final reactor at the Indian Point Energy Center will hurt New York's climate change efforts. As you may recall, I have been writing about the impending closure of the nuclear plant for several years. The facility also has a starring role in Juice and in A Question of Power. I am pleased McGeehan quoted me in his piece:

“This is one of the greatest strategic blunders in the history of energy in New York,” said Robert Bryce, an author who has been a constant critic of the shutdown. “It’s a catastrophically wrong decision.”

I stand by that statement. The closure of Indian Point will come back to haunt New York.

One more warbler

My friend, Victor Emanuel, is a renowned birdwatcher and naturalist. In 2017, he released his autobiography, One More Warbler: A Life With Birds. I recommend the book, which includes many stories about travel, birdwatching, and his experience building Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, which has become of the world's best-known eco-tourism companies. I haven't seen nearly as many birds as Victor has. (He is roughly 5,900 species ahead of me.) But his love of warblers is evident.

, I wrote about seeing Hooded Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, and Northern Parula Warblers. I forgot to mention that on Easter Sunday, on our way back to Austin, Lorin and I made a brief stop at the Skillern Tract, which is part of the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. As on Saturday, the weather was mild and sunny and few birds were moving. But as we headed back to our 4Runner, a group of other birders pointed us to a handful of Yellow-throated Warblers that were moving around in the trees near the road. Lorin and I both got good looks at this brightly colored bird, which for a few seconds, perched perfectly in the sun for us. We had already had a successful trip. But our brief stop at the Skillern Tract allowed us to see one more warbler. (Photo credit.)

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