Ausubel on decarbonization & Leonardo, Forbes piece, Tufted Titmice

Ausubel on renewables, Leonardo, and decarbonization, Juice goes to Istanbul, another piece on the CEPP, and Titmice

Autumn has arrived in Austin. The leaves are starting to change colors  and the weather has, finally, thankfully, begun to cool off. A short note today as I was on a panel at a conference this morning sponsored by the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center at the  University of Texas. It was a fun event with a lot of good speakers. Five items today:

• Jesse Ausubel on the podcast talking Leonardo and decarbonization

• Juice is available in Turkey

• New Forbes piece on the CEPP

• Media hit

• A “banditry” of Titmice 

The photo of the Tufted Titmouse above was taken in 2018 by Rodrigo Argenton.

Jesse Ausubel on Leonardo da Vinci, and why "solar and wind may be renewable, but they are not 'green'"  

In 2007, I read a paper by Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, that changed the course of my career. Titled “Renewable and Nuclear Heresies,” that 15-page paper made me rethink nearly everything I knew (or thought I knew) about energy and power. The first few lines of the abstract set the table: “Renewables are not green. To reach the scale at which they would contribute importantly to meeting global energy demand, renewable sources of energy, such as wind, water, and biomass, cause serious environmental harm. Measuring renewables in watts per square metre that each source could produce smashes these environmental idols. Nuclear energy is green.”

That paper, which as I recall was given to me by my friend, Phil Lewis, forced me to understand the importance of power density, a physics metric that I have used in every book, and numerous articles that I have written since then. Indeed,  my fourth book, Power Hungry, was built on the concepts that Ausubel laid out in that 2007 paper. In Power Hungry, I lay out the Four Imperatives that have determined the configuration of our energy and power systems: power density, energy density, cost, and scale. Of the four, power density is the most important. Put short, power density is a measure of the energy flow that can be harnessed from a given area, volume, or mass. A few months after reading Renewable and Nuclear Heresies, I happened to be in New York and finagled an invitation to meet Ausubel at his office at Rockefeller University. I arrived, late and dripping wet, from a rainstorm, but Jesse was gracious and welcoming. We have been friends ever since. 

That’s a roundabout introduction to this week’s podcast with Jesse. He and I talk about his work on decarbonization, dematerialization, land-sparing, Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA, e-DNA, the Census of Marine Life, and the industrialization of the oceans. We also discussed his “Renewables and Nuclear Heresies” paper and why, as he said, “wind and solar energy may be renewable, but they are not ‘green.’” I am proud to count Jesse as one of my friends and I am thrilled that he agreed to come on the podcast. The interview clocks in at one hour and 23 minutes.

Here’s a link to the audio. The video of the interview is also available on YouTube.

Juice is available in Turkey!  
It has taken a while, but Juice is finally getting distributed in international markets. This week, we learned that the film is now available through TRT, a Turkish public broadcasting service. TRT trimmed the film (the segment on cannabis was edited out) but it’s still great to see the film getting into new markets. Here’s a link to the Turkish version on YouTube.

On Wednesday evening, I published a piece in Forbes about the pending Clean Electricity Performance Program, which is part of the Build Back Better Act. You may recall, I wrote about the CEPP last month in Forbes. I revisited the issue after getting more information about its potential impacts, including a new study from the Center of the American Experiment about its likely cost in the state of Arizona. Here’s the introduction:

• If Washington policymakers want to see what happens when you push renewable-energy mandates too far, too fast, they only need to read the news stories coming out of Europe. Last month, the Associated Press reported that “The European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 45 million members, said that 15% of the EU’s working poor - the equivalent of 2,713,578 people - lacks enough money to turn on the heating.” On Sunday, the news outlet Mucia Today reported that in Spain, “The cost of electricity is still a staggering six times more expensive than it was a year ago.” A day later, the Spanish steel producer, Sidenor Group, announced it was halting production at one of its plants in Spain “amid exorbitant electricity prices.” The company said it was paying about 227 Euros per megawatt-hour for electricity, which is nearly four times what it was paying at this time last year. 

Here's the nut graf:

• Indeed, energy poverty, soaring energy prices, industrial shutdowns, and a surge in coal use are the obvious results of Europe’s rush to embrace renewables without considering how that rush would affect the affordability, resilience, and reliability of the region’s energy and power systems. As several news outlets have noted, the U.K. and other European countries have been pushed into an energy crisis that is due, in part, to a wind drought which has reduced the output of the region’s wind sector by as much as 20% over the past few months. Despite these facts, the Biden administration and top Congressional Democrats have included the Clean Electricity Performance Program in the latest version of the multi-trillion infrastructure package now pending before Congress. The CEPP, which could provide tens of billions of dollars per year in new subsidies to the solar and wind sectors, is buried in the Build Back Better Act, also known as H.R. 5376, a mammoth piece of legislation that totals about 380,000 words and by my count if printed out, would cover about 1,900 pages. 

I concluded thusly:

• The CEPP deserves a lot more scrutiny than it is getting. Europe’s worsening energy crisis should be a five-alarm wake-up call to policymakers in the U.S. about the dangers of pushing renewable energy too hard. Let’s hope that saner heads in Congress prevail and that they prevent this bad piece of legislation from becoming law.

Again, here's a link. Please share it. 
 

A media hit with Ann and Phelim 
On Wednesday, Ann McElihenny and Phelim McAleer published their latest podcast, the Ann & Phelim Scoop, and I was pleased to be on it. Ann and I talked about the energy crisis in Europe, nuclear energy, and lots of other topics. Here’s a link.
 

Tufted Titmice in the yard 

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you likely know that I’m something of a nut for collective nouns: a chime of Wrens, a gaggle of Geese, a committee of Vultures, etc. Earlier this week, Lorin and I saw a “banditry” of Tufted Titmice (Baeolophus bicolor). While sitting on the porch behind our house, we watched as about a half dozen Titmice swirling in the trees around us. Also known as a “dissimulation” this group of Tufted Titmice seemed to have a collective idea about what they were doing and where they were going. They generally stayed within a few meters of each other, perching for a few seconds, flying a bit further, stopping, conferring, and then moving ahead. 

Titmice are common visitors to our feeders and birdbaths. But this visit was memorable because it was a quiet afternoon and we could hear the Titmice calling back and forth as they passed through.

The Audubon Field Guide says this: “This rather tame, active, crested little bird is common all year in eastern forests, where its whistled peter-peter-peter song may be heard even during mid-winter thaws. It is related to the chickadees, and like them it readily comes to bird feeders, often carrying away sunflower seeds one at a time. Feeders may be helping it to expand its range: in recent decades, Tufted Titmice have been steadily pushing north.” It says this about the bird’s diet: “Mostly insects and seeds. Insects make up close to two-thirds of annual diet, with caterpillars the most important prey in summer; also eats wasps, bees, sawfly larvae, beetles, true bugs, scale insects, and many others, including many insect eggs and pupae. Also eats some spiders, snails. Seeds, nuts, berries, and small fruits are important in diet especially in winter.”

Titmice may be common, but like many other birds, I never get tired of watching them. (The photo of the Tufted Titmouse above was taken by Dawn Huczek in 2009.)
 
Have a good weekend.

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