Sierra Club’s wind blackout, offshore wind, Downy Woodpecker
Sierra Club's news blackout on wind rejections, offshore wind on the podcast, a new Power Brief, & a Downy Woodpecker
North Dakota is beautiful this time of year. On Tuesday, when I got to Bismarck, the temperature was 91 degrees and it felt like I was still in Austin except that it was windy as hell. By Wednesday night, the temperature was 30 degrees cooler and rainy. I was in North Dakota for a speech to the Lignite Energy Council. Given all the havoc in Europe, and the surge in natural gas prices here in the U.S. and around the world, coal has re-emerged as an attractive fuel for producing affordable power. Indeed, affordability is becoming the issue for consumers and policymakers in Europe.
I got back to Austin yesterday morning and went back to work. There’s plenty to write and talk about. Europe’s energy crisis shows the age of hydrocarbons isn’t over and won’t be for decades to come. Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats and the Biden Administration continue to push for yet more subsidies for wind and solar that will wreak havoc on the electric grid and cause domestic electricity prices to skyrocket. Four items this week:
My Forbes piece on 317 rejections of Big Wind
A new Power Brief
Annie Hawkins explains why offshore wind is “directly in conflict” with commercial fishing
A close look at a Downy Woodpecker
The image above is from my 1960 copy of Peterson’s Field Guide To the Birds of Texas. The pointers are there to help differentiate the Downy Woodpecker from the Hairy Woodpecker. The two are similar, but the Hairy is slightly larger and has a longer bill.
On Sunday, I published a long piece in Forbes about the land-use conflicts that are restricting the growth of wind energy. I began this way:
A few weeks ago, I ran into a prominent employee of the Sierra Club who declared something to the effect of “we have to quit using coal, oil, and natural gas.” That, of course, is the official dogma of America’s “largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.” The group says it is “committed to eliminating the use of fossil fuels, including coal, natural gas, and oil, as soon as possible. We must replace all fossil fuels with clean renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation.” This same Sierra Clubber also expressed dismay about the difficulty of siting big renewable-energy projects and how they are being hindered by “NIMBYism.”
Upon hearing this, I quickly interjected that I loathe that term, which, of course, is short for “not in my backyard.” I explained that everyone, everywhere, cares about what happens in their neighborhood, even out there in “flyover country” – that is, the places that are far away from the comfy confines of places like San Francisco, Princeton, Stanford, and other locales where fantasies about an all-renewable economy seem to proliferate.
I went on to introduce myself and explained that I have been tracking the issue of land use and renewables for many years. I explained that rural residents are objecting to wind projects because they don’t want to see the red-blinking lights atop those 50- or 60-story-high wind turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. They are also concerned — and rightly so — about the deleterious health effects of noise from the turbines, sleep disturbance, and potential decrease in their property values. I followed up by emailing this person — at their Sierra Club email address — a link to my April report for the Center of the American Experiment, “Not In Our Backyard,” which documents the widespread opposition to Big Wind and Big Solar in rural America. I included a link to the Renewable Energy Rejection Database. That database, which I have been maintaining myself, now lists 317 local communities or government entities from Maine to Hawaii, that have rejected or restricted wind projects in the US since 2015.
I didn’t get a reply. So I resent the email. Again, no reply. The Sierra Clubber’s silence speaks volumes.
I ended the piece with these paragraphs:
In March, the California Energy Commission issued a report on “how the state’s electricity system can become carbon free by 2045.” Achieving that goal, according to the report, will require adding new renewable capacity “at a record-breaking rate for the next 25 years. On average, the state may need to build up to 6 gigawatts of new renewable and storage resources annually. By comparison over the last decade, the state has built on average 1 GW of utility solar and 300 megawatts of wind per year.”
Given the rejection of the wind project in Shasta County in June and the fact that California has about the same amount of wind-energy capacity today (about 6,000 megawatts) as it did in 2013, the commission’s scenarios about six-fold increases in annual deployment of renewable capacity are nothing more than wishful thinking.
But then, the Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about that, either.
Again, here’s a link. Please share it.
Power Brief on the Sierra Club's refusal to acknowledge the backlash against Big Wind
Shortly after publishing my Forbes piece on the Sierra Club, I posted this Power Brief. It’s a four-minute video about why the club’s refusal to acknowledge the surging backlash against Big Wind and Big Solar -- as my late brother, John Bryce, used to say -- “grills my cheese.”
Annie Hawkins of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance
Annie Hawkins is the executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing industry associations and companies that are “committed to improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses.” In this episode, Annie explains why commercial fishermen are opposing offshore wind projects, how the permitting process is tilted in favor of the developers, and why more people need to be concerned about the rush to install thousands of offshore platforms in America’s coastal waters.
Shortly after I recorded the episode with Annie, RODA sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management over the permit granted to the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project. The suit alleges that the "Departments of Interior, Commerce, and Army violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Administrative Procedure Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and Merchant Marine Act of 1920” by approving the permit for the Vineyard Wind project, which aims to 62 massive turbines in the waters near Martha’s Vineyard.
The suit is just the latest example of the ongoing tussle over offshore wind, the energy source that has been touted for years but never seems to actually come ashore. I enjoyed the episode with Annie. Again, here’s a link. Also, we post all of the podcast episodes on YouTube. Here’s a link for the episode with Annie.
While you’re on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe to my channel. It’s free!
North America's Smallest Woodpecker
Several factors figure into what makes seeing a particular bird memorable. Common birds, like Northern Cardinals, can be exhilarating to watch because of their acrobatic flight, or their splashing around in the birdbath, or maybe there’s a young bird following its parents, begging for a snack. Other birds can be exciting because they are “life birds.” I will always remember a trip to Australia a few years ago when Lorin, Jacob, and I hired a guide who made a point of showing us the Papuan Frogmouth (Podargus papuensis). I remember that moment vividly because the bird was perching in tall trees right next to the front entrance of a nursing home. Plus, I had never seen a Frogmouth. Hell, I didn’t even know such a bird existed. Add in the facts that the Frogmout has such an odd shape, that we were in Australia, and that we all got a good look at it, made it memorable.
On Tuesday while in Bismarck, at about dusk, I had a fine birding moment, not because I saw an unusual bird, but because it was so close. While looking for birds along the Missouri River near downtown Bismarck, I spotted a Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens). I have seen Downys before, but this one was memorable because it landed in the middle of a tree that was less than six feet away from where I was standing. It wasn’t alarmed at how close I was because of the thick foliage. I was easily able to focus my travel binoculars (Vortex Diamondback 10x32) on the bird as it pecked around the truck of the tree. I watched it with and without the binoculars. Because it was so close, I was able to study the feather pattern, the bright red patch on the back of its head, and how industrious it was. I've seen Downys before, but only at a distance. Having it so close by and to not be alarmed at my presence, was great fun. (The photo of the Downy Woodpecker above was taken by Ken Thomas in Johnston County, NC in 2007.)
Ebird has this description of the Downy: “Tiny woodpecker, common and widespread across much of North America. Black-and-white plumage is nearly identical to the larger Hairy Woodpecker. Focus on the bill: Downy has a very short bill, much shorter than the length of the head.”
Wikipedia says this: “Downy woodpeckers nest in a tree cavity excavated by the nesting pair in a dead tree or limb. In the winter, they roost in tree cavities. Downy woodpeckers forage on trees, picking the bark surface in summer and digging deeper in winter. They mainly eat insects, but they also feed on seeds and berries. They are a natural predator of the European corn borer, a moth that costs the US agriculture industry more than $1 billion annually in crop losses and population control.”
Have a great weekend.
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