Coal piece in The Hill, Power of Power Density, Irina Slav & bird feeders
Coal piece in The Hill, 10 minutes on The Power of Power Density, Irina Slav on "ideological drivel," my Kansas Senate presentation, & best bird feeders
Back in 2009, I visited the Cardinal Mine, an underground coal mine in western Kentucky that is owned by Tulsa-based Alliance Resources Partners. I’ve also been to the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Wyoming, operated by Peabody, which is the world’s biggest coal mine. Those experiences shaped my views of both the coal business and the fuel’s continuing importance for electricity production. Indeed, the visit to the Cardinal Mine provided the opening scene in my fourth book, Power Hungry. I wrote about my visit to NARM in Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper, which was published in 2014. That’s a longish introduction for this week’s “news” letter, but it’s germane to the first item today, which is my latest piece in The Hill, which attracted a fair amount of attention, including more than 2,000 comments and about 500 shares. As I have said many times, people love to hate the coal industry. But the Iron Law of Electricity has not been repealed. Coal is going to stick around for a long time to come because the global economy runs on electricity and coal continues to be one of the cheapest ways to produce the juice we need. Five items today:
My TED-style talk at TPPF: The Power of Power Density
Kansas Senate presentation on the fragilization of the grid
Irina Slav on the “ideological drivel” around renewables
A bit about bird feeders
I took the photo above of the Lesser Goldfinches (Spinus psaltria) at one of our feeders on January 2 at about noon. I put the lens of my camera phone on the eyepiece of my binoculars. No telephoto? No problem.
Last Sunday, The Hill published my piece on the surge in coal use here in the U.S. and around the world. I wrote:
So much for the myriad claims about going “beyond coal.” According to a new report from the Rhodium Group, U.S. coal consumption jumped by 17 percent last year compared to 2020 levels. That’s a huge increase, which Rhodium says was “largely driven by a run-up in natural gas prices.” Rather than burn gas, which averaged about $4.93 per million Btu last year — more than two times the price in 2020 — many electricity producers chose to burn coal instead. The surge in domestic coal use is significant for two reasons. First, it proves again that coal remains an essential fuel for electricity producers both here in the U.S. and around the world. Second, it shows that the Biden administration’s pledge to decarbonize the electric grid by 2035 is little more than wishful thinking.
I concluded:
In short, it’s easy for politicians and climate activists to vilify hydrocarbons, hype renewables, and talk about quitting coal. But as the Rhodium Group’s report makes clear, economics matter. The U.S. and other countries aren’t going to suddenly quit using coal (or natural gas) to produce electricity because doing so would be too expensive. I’ll end by making the same point I have been making for more than a decade: If policymakers are serious about decarbonizing the electric grid, they need to get serious about nuclear energy. And they need to do so now.
Again, here’s a link. Please share it.
The Power of Power Density
Power density is perhaps the most important and yet least-understood metric in physics. That’s why I was pleased to have the opportunity to boil down that subject to its essence -- and convey its importance -- and do so in front of a live audience. Yesterday, I delivered a 10-minute TED-style talk on power density at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s annual Policy Orientation meeting here in Austin. TPPF kindly provided me with the video of my presentation which I just posted on my YouTube channel.
If you watch “The Power of Power Density,” you will see that I’ve come up with a complement to the Iron Law of Electricity. (Full credit for the original ferrous rule goes to Roger Pielke Jr., who coined the Iron Law of Climate.) I have long said that energy networks that rely on low power density sources (corn ethanol, wind energy, and solar energy) require massive resource inputs to counter that low power density. Those inputs include land, fertilizer, copper, steel, and other things. That fact led me to coin the Iron Law of Power Density, which says “the lower the power density, the higher the resource intensity.” Offshore wind provides a good example of the Iron Law of Power Density because each megawatt of offshore wind requires, according to the International Energy Agency, about 10 times more critical minerals than does natural gas.
I will be writing more about the Iron Law of Power Density in the future. Again, here’s a link to my talk.
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Irina Slav slays the ideological drivel
I follow just a handful of energy writers. Among them is Irina Slav, a freelance writer who lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. Irina writes for Oilprice.com and on Substack at Irina Slav on energy. After reading a piece of hers on Substack, I knew I wanted to have her on the podcast. On December 27, she wrote:
Like some of you who hail from Eastern Europe, I grew up during totalitarian times. I only witnessed the late years of the regime but I recently found a notebook from elementary school where I’d written under the teacher’s instruction that “The friendship between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union is like the air for every living creature. A net-zero activist would laugh, perhaps, at this, but the truth is we are being fed the same degree of ideological drivel right now, only it’s about wind and solar (and hydrogen) being our only hope in the war on emissions. What’s worse is that after the West won the Cold War thanks, in part, to its superior propaganda, it is now setting itself and everyone else for a spectacular failure and we’re footing the bill for it.
In this week’s episode, she explains why the ideological drivel about renewables is driving Europe’s energy policies, how the need for more minerals and metals will stymie the transition away from hydrocarbons, why the attacks on Vladimir Putin are misguided, Bulgaria’s membership in NATO, and lots more. Here’s a link. Please share it.
My presentation to the Kansas Senate Utilities Committee
On Wednesday, I presented to the Kansas Senate Utilities Committee. The caption for my talk was “Renewables, Natural Gas, and the Fragilization of the US Electric Grid.” I was pleased to be invited to speak (virtually) in front of the committee by Senator Mike Thompson. I included the slide above in my presentation. It's an honor to be asked to share what I know about the degradation of our electric grid with policymakers. I hope I am making a difference. The slide about wind droughts in Europe was included in my presentation. Again, here’s a link.
A bit about bird feeders
The night before last, a cold front came through Austin. We've had two hard freezes in a row and are expecting the cold weather to last through the weekend. The cold brings more birds to our feeders. Over the years, I have used about half a dozen different types of feeders, all of which have had design flaws of one type or another. Rather than go through all those problems, I’ll cut to the chase: The feeder in the photo above, available from Wild Birds Unlimited, is the best. They are durable, attractive, easy to clean, and the birds really like them. We have three of them. We attach them beneath metal squirrel baffles that we got from Duncraft. Despite many amusing-to-watch attempts, the squirrels in our yard have never gotten past the baffles. I took the photo above on January 19. It shows the feeder, the baffle, and a House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus).
If you want to attract birds to your yard, feeders are a must. Yes, they require some upkeep. And yes, they can attract rodents, and in our case here in Austin, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes, But if you position them close to a window, they can spark a lot of joy. We’ve found that watching birds at the feeder also gives us good practice at using our binoculars. Another tip: experiment with different types of feed. We buy some of our feed (sunflower seeds really attract the Lesser Goldfinches) from the Wild Birds Unlimited store in West Lake Hills. That mix is pretty expensive, so we only use it in one feeder. For the other two, we purchase the wild bird mix from Costco.
Of course, this isn’t a definitive guide to bird feeders. There are many different styles from which to choose. Our birding mentors, Frank and Peggy, also have suet feeders. I’ve tried putting out suet but the squirrels always seem to eat more of it than the birds.
I hope you have a lovely weekend.
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