New Forbes & Newsweek, Nelson on nuclear in Europe, and GC Warblers
Forbes and Newsweek, Mark Nelson on the PHP, Golden-cheeked Warblers in Austin
Factories are my jam. I visit them whenever I get an opportunity. I love seeing how things are made and talking to the people who make them. On Monday, while in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, I was delighted to tour the factory where Ariel Corporation makes its natural gas compressors. Ariel’s reciprocating compressors are used to move methane in pipelines all over the world. It was a remarkable operation. Lots of automation, huge lathes and sophisticated robots. If you think that all of America’s precision manufacturing and industrial capacity has gone overseas, think again. Ariel has an amazing business and I was pleased to be invited to talk to some of their employees. From Mt. Vernon, I drove to Wheeling, West Virginia for a speaking engagement with the West Virginia Manufacturers Association. In Ohio and West Virginia, the employers and manufacturers I talked to were telling different versions of the same story. They are desperate for people who want to work, but can’t find enough of them. They are also having difficulty getting enough materials to expand their businesses. In Wheeling, I talked for a long time to Gat Caperton, who runs a successful company in Berkeley Springs, WV called Gat Creek Furniture. Gat's business is booming and he wants to expand his operation to meet demand. He has the money and the land, but he can’t get the steel he needs to build the new structure.
Since getting back to Austin late on Tuesday, I’ve been writing and catching up on all the news. Despite the many worrying things in the world, there are also some positive signs, including a surge in energy realism, particularly when it comes to nuclear energy. I’ll be writing more about that over the coming weeks. Now to business. Four items this week:
Newsweek: California is impoverishing its low-income residents with high electricity prices
Mark Nelson on the “revolution in sentiment” in the Democratic Party about nuclear energy
Golden-cheeked Warblers in Austin
The print of the Golden-cheeked Warblers above was done by John Gerrard Keulemans in about 1875.
Last Saturday, on the one-year anniversary of the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant, I dashed off a quick piece for Forbes. I began:
Maybe there’s hope for California after all. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to intervene to save the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant from premature closure, which is slated to begin in 2024. While it can’t be known whether Newsom’s administration will be able to save California’s last nuclear plant, the announcement is a massive win for rational climate policy and the pro-nuclear movement in the United States.
But the timing is also bittersweet. It was one year ago today that the last reactor at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York was prematurely shuttered. Indeed, the possible rescue of Diablo Canyon underscores the criminality of the closure of Indian Point, a power plant that was both a marvel of technology (Emmet Penney calls nuclear plants our “industrial cathedrals”) and the single most important source of electricity for New York City.
The news from Newsom about Diablo Canyon also brings two other points to mind: Will federal and state officials be able to prevent the closure of Michigan’s 811-megawatt Palisades Nuclear Plant, which is slated to be prematurely shuttered at the end of May? And finally, it shows how little federal money – a mere $6 billion in funds from the Department of Energy – has been committed to keep some of America’s most important power plants online and pumping out zero-carbon juice.
I concluded:
It might be cynical to point out that Newsom may simply be following the polling data. As Sammy Roth points out in his article in Friday’s Los Angeles Times, a recent poll found “that 39% of voters oppose shutting down Diablo Canyon, with 33% supporting closure and 28% unsure.” The same poll found that “44% of California voters support building more nuclear reactors in the Golden State, with 37% opposed and 19% undecided — a significant change from the 1980s and 1990s.”
But one of the most important lines in Roth’s article was a quote from Newsom, who “told the editorial board that reliable electricity is ‘profoundly important.’” Amen to that. Now begins the hard work of saving Diablo Canyon and Palisades from premature closure.
Again, here’s a link.
Yesterday, I published a piece in Newsweek on California’s soaring electricity prices and the regressive tax that those increases are imposing on the poor and middle class. I began:
Last week, Californians got a rare bit of good news on the energy front: Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would work to prevent the closure of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the state's last nuclear power plant. Yet regardless of what happens with Diablo Canyon, electricity prices in California are going even higher, despite being already among the highest in the country.
I concluded:
The Sierra Club, which is getting tens of millions of dollars from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, has pushed hard for bans on natural gas. Some 54 local governments in California have implemented restrictions on the use of the fuel and climate activists are pushing for a statewide ban. But those bans will also increase electricity demand and result in even-higher energy costs for consumers. Why? On an energy-equivalent basis, electricity costs more than three times as much as natural gas.
The punchline here is obvious: California policymakers need a big dose of energy realism. It's time for them to admit the obvious: Expensive energy is the enemy of the poor. Last week, Newsom said that reliable electricity is "profoundly important." That's certainly true. But when it comes to electricity, reliability and affordability go hand in hand.
California should not be attempting to solve the climate change challenge on the backs of the poor.
Mark Nelson: "Almost nobody anywhere understands electricity"
This week, I had Mark Nelson of the Radiant Energy Fund on the podcast for the fourth time to give an update on what’s happening in Europe’s nuclear sector. As usual, Mark was brimming with energy and thoughts about his favorite industry. He said that Belgium will keep its reactors open but there will be a lot of friction before the owners of the reactors and the government agree on how to make it happen. As he explained, it’s “going to be a complete clown rodeo to get there.” He also said that Eastern Europe will likely be the place where new nuclear plants are built first: “A number of the countries in Eastern Europe have almost, you know, half of their electricity supply coming from nuclear already. Ukraine is one of these. Hungary is another, and several countries are not that far behind...so they know damn well that this is, this is the cheapest and most stable and secure way to make energy.”
We also discussed the looming closure of the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, and why there has been a “revolution in sentiment” in the Democratic Party about nuclear energy in America. While he said that the $6 billion in the infrastructure bill that is aimed at saving plants like Palisades is a very positive thing, he also said, “Almost nobody in Washington actually understands electricity, which is fine. It puts them in good company. Almost nobody anywhere understands electricity.”
I certainly agree with that. It was a fun chat. Again, here’s a link. As always, the interview is also on YouTube.
Golden-cheeked Warblers our spring ritual in Austin
One of the rites of spring for Lorin and me is to go to Emma Long Metropolitan Park to look for Golden-cheeked Warblers (Setophaga chrysoparia.) And for the last few years in a row, we’ve had the same experience: we park our car near the turnoff at Turkey Creek, walk a short distance down an unmarked trail and scan the tree tops in the same spot where we saw the bird in our previous visits. And each year, Lorin spots a Golden-cheeked Warbler and each time she gets that first glimpse, I am surprised. By now, I shouldn’t be. Lorin seems to attract them. (The photo above was taken by Steve Maslowski of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011.)
Allaboutbirds.com says this:
At close range, an adult male Golden-cheeked Warbler’s rich black plumage and golden cheeks seem to be made of velveteen. This stunning but endangered warbler is found only in the Texas Hill Country where it nests in juniper-oak woodlands. Along with the Hermit, Townsend’s, and Black-throated Green Warblers, it is part of a fascinating evolutionary puzzle of similar species with black-and-gold plumage and buzzy songs, spread across evergreen forests from Alaska to Appalachia....The Golden-cheeked Warbler is the only bird species whose population nests entirely in the state of Texas.
Golden-cheeked Warbler first became known to science in 1860, from specimens collected on its winter range, in Guatemala. The nesting grounds were not discovered in central Texas for another four years. By the late 1800s, English naturalist Henry Philemon Attwater was already raising an alarm about the rate at which this species’ habitat was being destroyed. It was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1990.
The Golden-cheeked Warbler is one of very few bird species to have a guest role in a TV sitcom. In 2005, NBC’s “Will & Grace” featured a vagrant Golden-cheeked Warbler that visited Manhattan’s Central Park, in the “Ramble”—a real spot famous for attracting rare bird species.
I hope y’all have a great weekend.
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