$66B spent on renewables in TX (and $22B in subsidies) Daily News, Rupert Darwall on the podcast

Jun 18, 2021

My RCE piece on the $22B in subsidies for TX renewables, my NY Daily News piece on KXL, Darwall on the podcast, & some thoughts on binoculars

I’m sending this note out early today as Lorin and I are driving to Tulsa to celebrate my nephew’s wedding, which happened during the Covid lockdown. Our three children are also going. I have a big extended family. We haven't been together for more than 18 months, so it’s sure to be a blowout party. Lots of things happening here in Texas, including power shortages. Thus, several items:

My RCE piece: $66B spent on renewables in TX...and $22B in subsidies
My NY Daily News article on the cancellation of Keystone XL
Rupert Darwall on the podcast talking about ESG and renewables
A new “power brief”
A bit about binoculars (Photo note: I snapped the pic above in 2013 when Lorin and I took our three children to Panama. We were on top of Canopy Tower, an amazing place to see birds and other wildlife.)

On Thursday, Real Clear Energy published my piece on the power shortages in Texas. It’s a follow-up article to a piece I published in April regarding the $66 billion that was spent on renewables in Texas in the years before the blackouts. I wrote:

The oldest maxim in politics is “follow the money.” That maxim also applies to electric grids. Following the billions of dollars that have been spent on the Texas grid explains why the state continues to have electricity shortages. On Monday, ERCOT, the state’s troubled grid operator, asked Texans to reduce their electricity use. That request came exactly four months after Texas residents were asked to conserve electricity due to a massive winter storm. Before going further, I’ll give you the punchline: As I explained in these pages in April, about $66 billion was spent on wind and solar in Texas in the years before the deadly February storm that left millions of Texans without electricity. In return for that $66 billion, the wind and solar sectors collected about $21.7 billion in local, state, and federal subsidies and incentives. That first figure comes from the wind energy and solar energy lobbies. The latter number comes from a report published last week by veteran Texas energy analyst Bill Peacock of The Energy Alliance. Thus for every dollar spent by the wind and solar sectors in Texas, they got roughly 33 cents from taxpayers. By any measure, this is an outrageous level of subsidization. And Texans are learning that the tens of billions of dollars spent on wind and solar are not translating into reliable electricity. As you can see in the graphic below, when power demand in Texas spikes, as it has this week, large segments of the state’s vast fleet of wind turbines – some 32,000 megawatts – like to head to Cancun with Sen. Ted Cruz for some vacation time.

I concluded:

The bottom line here is obvious: If Texas is serious about increasing electricity reliability and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, it should be building nuclear plants, which proved to be the most reliable generation during the February freeze. For $66 billion, the state could have added another 6,000 megawatts or more, of new nuclear capacity. Alas, that’s not happening. Instead, about 35,000 megawatts of new wind and solar capacity is slated to be added to the ERCOT grid by 2023. Of that new capacity, about 11,000 megawatts will be new wind projects and 24,000 megawatts will be solar. Thus, over the next three years, the amount of renewable capacity in Texas will nearly double. But if what’s past is prologue, adding more wind capacity to the Texas grid won’t do much to help meet demand during hot summer days. (See the graphic above). And adding more solar won’t help during extreme cold spells like the one that crippled the state back in February because during the blizzard, solar panels were covered with snow. Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger famously said “Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.” The ERCOT grid shows that tens of billions of dollars in tax incentives have resulted in the addition of tens of thousands of megawatts of generation capacity to the Texas grid that does precious little to provide power during periods of peak electricity demand. That’s a bad outcome.

Please read the entire piece and share it.

On Saturday, I published a piece in the New York Daily News about the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. I began:

The climate activists who are dancing on the grave of the canceled Keystone XL pipeline shouldn’t celebrate too much. Sure, they killed the pipeline. But rural Americans from Maine to Hawaii are mad, too. And just like the climate activists who kiboshed Keystone XL, rural landowners and elected officials are stopping the renewable-energy projects and high-voltage transmission lines that will be needed if we are going to attempt to replace hydrocarbons with intermittent sources like wind and solar.

I continued "contempt for hydrocarbons is common among climate activists." But that contempt

ignores the fact that oil, coal, and natural gas are critical fuels for our economy and that they are affordable and readily available, which are critical issues for low- and middle-income consumers. It also ignores the staggering number of new transmission lines — which are, in effect, electricity pipelines — that will be needed to convert our economy to renewable electricity. Indeed, if you think putting an oil pipeline five or six feet under the ground is difficult, imagine how hard it will be to build hundreds of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines, supported by thousands of 20-story-tall steel lattice towers.

I concluded:

The punchline is obvious: It’s far easier to stop infrastructure projects than it is to build them. Activists who believe we can simply swap out the energy from Keystone XL with power from “clean” renewables are in for a rude awakening. That wake-up call may not happen tomorrow or next week. But eventually, physics, math, and sanity will prevail.

Here’s a link to the article. Please share it.

Rupert Darwall on the podcast talking about ESG, the "weaponization of finance" and net-zero

On this week’s Power Hungry Podcast, I had a very interesting (and fairly long: 1:20) conversation with Rupert Darwall, a fellow at the Real Clear Foundation and the author of two books: Green Tyranny, and The Age of Global Warming. We talked about Rupert’s recent report on the pressure for companies to adopt ESG (environmental, social, and governance) principles, the “weaponization of finance by billionaire climate activists,” why courts have become the favored venue for climate activism, and the “upside-down aesthetic” that is resulting in the deployment of large renewable-energy projects in rural areas of Europe and the U.S.

It was an eye-opening chat. I knew ESG was sweeping corporate governance, but Rupert put it into a context that I hadn’t thought about before. We also talked about the push for “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions and what that would entail. I also posed a question, asking him “what’s the one thing you want people to take away from your work on ESG and climate change?” He replied: “I think it's ultimately about freedom...because the net-zero project cannot be accomplished within the structure of a constitutional republic, where powers are separated and delineated between three branches of the federal government and between the states and where individuals have very strongly prescribed rights, that simply cannot happen.”

He continued: "So essentially, this net-zero is about societal transformation, is about political transformation. And for the US to preserve what I think makes it such an incredible and unique and powerful country...is fundamentally based on an idea of freedom. For net-zero, to succeed, it means that the conception of the United States really has to be extinguished. So I really do see I do you see it in terms of fundamentally about freedom.”

After talking with Rupert, I'm convinced that ESG has become one of the central battlegrounds over the future of corporate governance, but also over energy policy. In my view, ESG is really about one thing: C. That is, carbon.

Here’s a link to the podcast.

A "Power Brief": Why Texans Can't Rely On Wind Energy

This week, I decided to try an experiment. In addition to writing about the Texas power shortages, I recorded a three-minute video in which I explain how -- using the graphic above, which I got from ERCOT, and discussed in my piece for Real Clear Energy -- wind disappears during times of peak demand. It’s my first "power brief" and I’m sure I can improve the production values and my delivery. But I plan to produce more of them because I can talk faster than I can write. And as y’all know, I have way too many opinions to keep them all to myself. Please have a look by clicking here. Feedback/critique is welcome.

Binoculars and birding

One of the joys (and real surprises) of this “news” letter is the positive reactions I’ve been getting from readers about my reporting on birds and birdwatching. Last week, a friend emailed me about the newsletter saying, “I love your bird stuff – I’ve recently gotten into birding a little bit (I still know nothing) and am enjoying it a lot.” I responded with some unsolicited advice the first of which was: “Don’t be cheap on the binoculars.” And since my pal is married, I advised him “Get two identical pair – one for your wife.” I also told him to have a spare binocular for his children.

Over the past three decades of birding, I’ve tried various binoculars, bought many pairs, and seen beginning birders struggle while trying to find birds through binoculars that they aren’t familiar with, are too cheap, or simply aren’t fit for purpose. That’s why my advice is to spend a bit more to get quality binoculars that you want to use. My attitude about binoculars was shaped by some advice I got from a pianist a few years ago. He told me that when buying an instrument, “get the best one you can afford” so that you will like it and will want to play it. I believe the same applies to binoculars. The difference between cheap ones and good ones is significant.

A few more thoughts about binoculars:

Lorin and I both use the Nikon Monarch 7 8x42. They cost about $500 and have extra-low dispersion glass. They are bright, fairly light, and are good for close focusing, so you can use them for butterfly and insect watching, too. Of course, there are loads of other binoculars out there. So don’t be cheap. But you don’t have to spend $1,000 or $2,000 to get good binoculars

The more you use binoculars, the better you will be at using them. Basketball great Allen Iverson wasn’t crazy about practice. But finding birds – and doing so quickly – with binoculars takes effort and time. “What are we talkin' about? Practice? We talkin' about practice...” When you see a bird and want to view it through your binoculars, keep your eyes on the bird and – as quickly and smoothly as you can – bring the binoculars to your eyes. Then adjust the focus wheel. The more you practice while looking at common birds at home or the park, the better you’ll be when you are trying to spot a rare bird.

Don’t worry too much about wear and tear. If you are using your binoculars, they are going to get scuffed and after a decade or two, you might need to replace them. But nearly all of the new models are well made. Many of them are waterproof.

Make sure the strap fits your body so you can hike with them comfortably. Lorin and I don’t generally hike long distances while birding. But I like to have the strap adjusted so that it is long enough that I can slip my arm through it and carry the binoculars bandolier style. I find that to be more comfortable than carrying the binoculars around my neck the whole time. To be sure, there are myriad setups including chest harnesses. But those are cumbersome. I like a simple, flexible strap so that I can easily grab my binoculars (my dad called them “field glasses”) while birding in the car or on foot.

Okay. Enough on that. Have a great weekend.

Want to help?

1. Share this email to your friends and colleagues. Or have them email me so I can add them to my distribution list.
2. Subscribe to the Power Hungry Podcast.
3. Rent or buy Juice on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
4. Buy A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations and give it a positive review.
5. Follow me and Juice on Twitter.
6. Need a speaker for your conference, class, or webinar? Ping me!
Thanks!

Share this report

I have been pleased with the response to my recent report about land-use conflicts and renewables. "Not In Our Backyard," was published on April 21 by the Center of the American Experiment. The center is also the home of the Renewable Energy Rejection Database, which includes details on the roughly 300 times that local or regional governments have rejected or restricted wind-energy projects. Please share both of them. The only way to bring sanity to the decisions being made by policymakers is to relentlessly pound the facts. Here's a link to the full report. Please share it.

Watch Juice for free on Roku!

If you haven't seen our documentary yet, here's a reminder: you can watch Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, on Roku, for free. Just click this link. If your friends haven't seen it, send them a link. Or if you have a prime membership, you can watch it on Amazon Prime.