300 rejections of Big Wind, Kirsty Gogan and Eric Ingersoll on PHP, new Forbes, Golden-cheeked Warblers in town!
Wind rejections report is out at American Experiment, talking hydrogen on the podcast, my Forbes piece on ERCOT, and...Golden-cheeked Warblers!
Earth Day was yesterday, which is good timing for my just-released report on the ongoing backlash in rural America against the encroachment of big renewable projects. In this email blast:
Not in Our Backyard, my report on the rural backlash against Big Wind
Kirsty Gogan & Eric Ingersoll on the podcast
Golden-cheeked Warblers "nesting nowhere else in the world..."
You won't read about the backlash against Big Wind in the New York Times. You'll have to read about it in my new report: Not in Our Backyard
In January 2010, a few weeks before I published my fourth book, Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, I was contacted by Charlie Porter, a horse trainer from King City, Missouri, who told me about the health issues he was having after several wind turbines were built near his home. I still have my notes from that interview. "It’s such a huge noise that it’s hard to describe," he told me. "The noise, it’s like you have a hat on that’s way too small. It just makes your world tiny."
Since that interview, I have been reporting on how rural Americans are fighting back against the encroachment of large-scale renewable projects. I have been keeping track of the studies on the noise pollution from wind turbines and how that pollution can affect the health of people and animals. I have communicated with dozens of people all over the world who had their lives impacted by that noise pollution. In 2015, I began tracking media stories on local communities that were rejecting or restricting wind projects. Since then, I have been building a database on those rejections and restrictions. On Wednesday, the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank, published my report on the backlash against the wind industry. The main findings:
Since 2015, nearly 300 government entities from Vermont to Hawaii have moved to reject or restrict wind projects.
Local governments are implementing a panoply of regulations to restrict the growth of wind projects including strict limits on noise, minimum setback distances, and even seeking licenses for heliports.
A thorough review of the studies that have documented the deleterious health impacts of noise from wind turbines. That review includes a 2009 study done by the Minnesota Department of Health which found that the “most common complaint in various studies of wind turbine effects on people is annoyance or an impact on quality of life. Sleeplessness and headache are the most common health complaints and are highly correlated (but not perfectly correlated) with annoyance complaints.”
You won't read about this backlash in the New York Times, CNN, or the Washington Post. The backlash doesn't fit the narrative that is endlessly promoted by the Sierra Club, academics at elite universities, or left-leaning politicians. That narrative, of course, claims that we can run our economy solely on renewables like wind and solar if only we had enough money and enough political will.
In reality, the binding constraint on the expansion of renewables is that there simply isn't enough land to accommodate the staggering amounts of wind and solar that would be needed to make that pipe dream into a reality. Along with the report, we are publishing the Renewable Energy Rejection Database, which provides details on the 300 or so rejections or restrictions of the wind industry that have occurred over the past seven years. That database will live on the American Experiment's website and will be updated regularly. (My thanks to the CAE's John Hinderaker, Isaac Orr, and Ryan Hiraki for helping get the report published.)
I'm proud of my work. But I'm particularly proud of this report and the database. I hope that they will be a reality check, a wake-up call, to the policymakers who are ignoring the land-use conflicts that are happening all across this country.
Please read this report and share it. And if you have additional news stories about rejections or restrictions on wind or solar projects, please email me a link so I can update the database.
Thank you.
Kirsty Gogan and Eric Ingersoll of TerraPraxis discuss their report on hydrogen on the podcast
There has been plenty of hype about hydrogen lately. So I decided to have Kirsty Gogan and Eric Ingersoll on the podcast to talk about how they envision greater use of hydrogen in the global economy. Kirsty and Eric are the founders of TerraPraxis, a non-profit organization that is “focused on action for climate and prosperity.” I talked to them about their recent report, “Missing Link to a Livable Climate: How Hydrogen-Enabled Synthetic Fuels Can Help Deliver the Paris Goals,”
While I am not convinced that hydrogen will make a meaningful contribution in the near term, I understand why so many people are talking about it. One of the things I like about their report is that it includes maps that show how much territory would be required by renewables to produce the enormous volumes of hydrogen needed to make a dent in the global energy mix. They contrast that with nuclear energy, which they point out, has a "relatively small physical and environmental footprint, allowing large areas of land to be spared for rewilding and the regeneration of natural ecosystems (potentially delivering additional carbon sequestration)––unlike the ‘energy sprawl’ associated with country-sized renewables industrial developments or extensive use of biomass energy.”
Eric and Kristy also talked about the importance of running electrolyzers (the machines that produce hydrogen) at high capacity factors so that the cost of running them is reduced. In their report, they write that capacity factor "is the single biggest driver of hydrogen production cost" and that using solar (at a capacity factor of 20%) instead of nuclear (90% capacity factor) to power electrolyzers triples the cost of hydrogen. Using wind results in a doubling of the cost.
I encourage you to look at their report and listen to the podcast. Click here to tune in.
Michael Nasi's "manageable roadmap" for fixing the ERCOT SNAFU
Last week in this "news" letter, I mentioned the graphic above, which I got from Michael Nasi, a partner at Jackson Walker. Since the diagram is so good, I decided to write a piece in Forbes about it. I began:
In the two months since the end of the blackouts that crippled Texas, a few things have become clear: the storm was far deadlier than originally thought, the energy-related costs of the disaster will be measured in the billions of dollars and take years to pay off, and the legislative fixes needed to protect consumers and make the state’s electric grid more reliable are mind-boggling. Proof of that last point can be seen by looking at the graphic above, which maps the dozens of bills the Texas Legislature is now considering.
I continued, pointing out that Winter Storm Uri and the blackouts left nearly 200 Texans dead and that the costs of the blackouts are still be calculated. I then focused on Nasi's graphic, saying it:
illustrates the complexity of the system the Texas Legislature set up when it adopted an energy-only market two decades ago. In an email, Nasi told me he developed the graphic “to give everyone inside and outside the capitol a manageable roadmap through a sea of reforms in reaction to the storm. None passed yet, but many well on their way.” Nasi is surely correct that some of the bills will become law. But they will take time to implement. For instance, weatherization of infrastructure is included under “market reform.” But weatherizing the hundreds of power plants in Texas cannot be done immediately. Instead, it will likely take years to make sure that the state’s generation plants, wind turbines, pipelines, and processing plants are better able to handle extreme weather events. The slide also shows, in the section titled “accountability and coordination,” that making the grid more reliable will require cooperation among several agencies, including ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission, Railroad Commission, and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Given the history of grid governance in Texas, including warnings that were made after the 2011 blackouts but not heeded, that inter-agency cooperation is not a sure thing.
I concluded the piece, saying "Some of the measures listed by Nasi are controversial, including SB 3, which will require renewable energy generators to provide ancillary services to the grid. That measure is opposed by the wind and solar lobbies and will be the focus of a future column."
Again, here's a link to the Forbes piece.
Golden-cheeked Warbler at Commons Ford Ranch Park
Lorin seems to attract Golden-cheeked Warblers (Setophaga chrysoparia). In the last few years, we have seen GCWs at Emma Long Metropolitan Park and Lost Maples State Natural Area. Some birders struggle to find them. But that hasn't been a challenge for us. Over the past five years or so, each time we've gone looking for GCWs, we haven't had to look too hard. At Lost Maples, we saw several of them flitting around right next to a comfortable picnic table. So we simply sat down and let them come to us.
Last Sunday, we decided to try our birdwatching luck at a new park. We have lived in Austin for nearly 36 years. But we had never visited Commons Ford Ranch Park, an undeveloped 215-acre tract that sits west of downtown on the Colorado River. We weren't sure what we would find. But sure enough, on our first visit to the park, we spotted a GCW less than 20 minutes after we arrived. It was a single male warbler high in a sycamore tree. But both of us got a good look at it and both of us are certain it was a GCW.
The Golden-cheeked is a striking bird. The bright yellow head makes it stand out from the greenery of the ashe junipers and other trees in this area. To my eye, it resembles the Black-throated Green Warbler. In fact, when we saw a Black-throated Green at High Island a few weeks ago, my first thought was that it was a Golden-cheeked Warbler. Here's what the Fish and Wildlife Service says about the GCW:
Found nesting nowhere else in the world except the oak-juniper woodlands of Central Texas is the golden-cheeked warbler. This bird requires older growth forest with a denser tree canopy where they forage for a variety of insects, including caterpillars. In early March, golden-cheeked warblers begin arriving in central Texas from their wintering ground in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. Their stay in Texas lasts until about the end of July, when they begin departing to take advantage of more abundant winter food supplies south of our border.
In 1990, the GCW was added to the Endangered Species List, a move that was controversial at the time. Those political battles are largely forgotten now and birders come from all over the world to get a glimpse of them.
Lorin and I are hoping to see more GCWs over the next couple of weeks. We will try again at Emma Long Park this weekend. (Photo credit.)
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