Global electricity boom in The Hill, Wind Bans in RCE, Davis on The Bald Eagle, Indigo Buntings
New pieces in The Hill & Real Clear Energy, Jack E. Davis on the podcast, Indigo Buntings at Commons Ford
Lately, the news has been overwhelming. Boris resigned yesterday. A few hours later, Shinzo Abe was assassinated. On Monday, there was another mass shooting in the US, this one at a Fourth of July parade in Illinois. Russia continues its war in Ukraine. And of course, there’s the tumult in the energy markets. This morning, the front-month price of natural gas at TTF (Europe’s equivalent of Henry Hub) was $54.78. In oil-equivalent terms, that means that natural gas on the European continent is selling for more than $300 per barrel. While that price is shocking, Europe’s energy crisis is only beginning. If you want a glimpse of what may be in the offing, read this piece in the Wall Street Journal about BASF and the potential shutdown of “the world’s largest integrated chemical complex.” The punchline: “With gas now becoming rarer and more expensive, BASF is racing to find alternatives—and finding that few exist in the short term.” The prospects are damn scary. Germany’s economy is in free fall. Dutch farmers are in revolt over rules on fertilizer and emissions. Britain’s energy bills are skyrocketing.
Further, it’s obvious that Europe sleepwalked into this disaster. Last November, I testified before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, in which I said Europe was making four mistakes: spending too much on renewables, spending too little on hydrocarbons, closing its baseload power plants, and relying too heavily on imports (particularly from Russia.) Despite what is happening in Europe, top US policymakers and climate activists seem hellbent on following Europe’s disastrous lead. There’s more to write about Europe. But I will cut to business. Four items today:
The Hill: Soaring demand for electricity shows need for nuclear
Real Clear Energy: Butler County, Ohio bans wind/solar in 12 townships
Jack E. Davis on The Bald Eagle
Indigo Buntings at Commons Ford
The photo above was taken by Dan Pancamo in 2011.
It sounds a bit odd to say it, but I look forward every June to the release of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The BP report is powerful because it is comprehensive and it publishes global data in spreadsheet form, which makes it relatively easy to tease out trends and make comparisons. Yesterday, The Hill ran my piece on the surge in global electricity and coal demand. I began:
Last week, BP released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy and the report shows, yet again, that electricity is the world’s most important and fastest-growing form of energy.
In 2021, global electricity generation grew by a record 1,577 terawatt-hours, an increase of 6.2 percent over 2020. For perspective, last year’s increase in electricity production was greater than the electricity output of France, Germany and Britain combined. The surge in electricity generation — nearly half of which happened in China — reflects the jump in demand for power as the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The numbers also show that, despite all the hype about renewable energy and the “energy transition,” when it comes to producing power, countries are still heavily dependent on King Coal. Indeed, coal-fired generation continued its dominance of the electricity sector in 2021, accounting for 51 percent of the increase in global electricity generation.
I concluded:
For decades, the U.S. led the world in the development of nuclear energy. But we have ceded that leadership to Russia and China. Furthermore, the U.S. has foolishly allowed too many of our existing nuclear plants to be prematurely shuttered, including two in the past 15 months: Indian Point in New York and Palisades in Michigan. The energy crisis in Europe and the latest BP numbers show that if we are to have any hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we have to embrace the atom. The U.S. doesn’t lack investment dollars or good reactor designs. Last year alone, some $3.4 billion in venture capital was invested in nuclear-focused startups. What’s needed is committed and sustained leadership from President Biden and Congress.
Today’s crises are a prime opportunity for President Biden to use the bully pulpit to promote nuclear energy. And the time for him to do so is right now.
Again, here’s a link. Please share it.
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On Wednesday, Real Clear Energy published my latest piece on the ongoing rural backlash against big renewables. I began:
The backlash against the encroachment of wind and solar projects continues. On June 23, the Butler County (Ohio) Board of Commissioners adopted a measure that designates a “restricted area” that prohibits “the construction of an economically significant wind farm, a large wind farm, and/or a large solar facility.” The measure, which passed unanimously, covers all unincorporated areas within a dozen townships in the county. The vote is the latest example of local communities rejecting or restricting the growth of large renewable projects...Adding the 12 townships (but not the Butler County commissioners’ vote) to the Renewable Rejection Database brings the total of wind energy rejections so far this year to 20. Since 2013, there have been 344 rejections or restrictions of wind projects across the U.S. in states from Maine to Hawaii.
I concluded:
A quick web search located the minutes of the June 23 meeting of the Butler County Board of Commissioners. The minutes show that the measure adopting the “Restricted Area in Butler County” includes “all unincorporated areas within Reily Township, Fairfield Township, Hanover Township, Liberty Township, Madison Township, Milford Township, Morgan Township, Oxford Township, Ross Township, St. Clair Township, Wayne Township, and West Chester Township. Butler County is the kind of place that doesn’t get much attention from elite academics, big media outlets, and climate activists. It’s a largely rural county located north of Cincinnati, along Ohio’s border with Indiana. The population of the county is less than 400,000. Butler County has 13 townships. Of those, 12 are included in the ban on new wind and solar.
I’ll conclude with another quote from Callahan’s coverage of the Butler County ban on large renewable projects. She quoted County Commissioner Cindy Carpenter, who said the county agreed to implement the ban because local township officials “speak to us as the voice of the citizens. So I have decided to support their request.”
Again, here’s a link.
Jack E. Davis on the Bald Eagle as a "spirit bird"
Jack E. Davis is a history professor at the University of Florida, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, and the author, most recently, of The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird. If you are a reader of this “news” letter, you know that I’m an avid birder. Davis’ book is a wonderful history of the Bald Eagle. It's very well written and recounts how the bird ended up on the Great Seal of the United States, its near-extinction due to hunting and DDT, its role as a “spirit bird” for Native Americans and Anglos alike, and why its recovery is a “great American conservation success story.” The audio and transcript, are available here. As usual, the episode is also on YouTube.
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Indigo (and Painted!) Buntings at Commons Ford
Austin is being hammered by drought and heat. Today, the temperature is supposed to hit 103F and more heat and dry weather is coming. On Monday morning, Lorin and I decided to brave the heat for a little while and went to one of our favorite birding spots: Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park. There wasn’t much activity when we arrived, but after walking around a bit, we ran into another birder who told us that other birders had alerted him to be on the lookout for Indigo Buntings in a thicket of trees and overgrown shrubs close to the banks of the Colorado River. Sure enough, maybe 30 meters away from where we got the notice, we spotted an Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea). As you can see from the watercolor above, (painted by Louis Agassiz Fuertes between 1910 and 1914) the male Bunting is a vibrantly colored bird. We had a great look at it as it was perched maybe 10 feet off the ground in a tree that was right next to the trail. We spent maybe three or four minutes gawking at it before it flitted away. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Indigo. I was glad to see it again, particularly after thinking that we weren’t going to have much luck due to the heat. A bit later, we also saw a male Painted Bunting and a family of Scissortail Flycatchers. It was great fun to watch the two adult flycatchers feeding their three youngsters.
But back to the Indigo. Wikipedia has this entry:
A small seed-eating bird in the cardinal family...It often migrates by night, using the stars to navigate. Its habitat is farmland, brush areas, and open woodland. The indigo bunting is closely related to the Lazuli Bunting and interbreeds with the species where their ranges overlap...a small bird, with a length of 11.5–13 cm (4.5–5.1 in). It displays sexual dimorphism in its coloration; the male is vibrant blue in the summer, with brightly colored plumage during the breeding season to attract a mate. It is brown during the winter months, while the female is brown year-round. Nest-building and incubation are done solely by the female. The diet of the indigo bunting consists primarily of insects during the summer months and seeds during the winter months.
Does well in brushy rural areas, but not in urbanized areas or regions of intense agriculture. Since about the 1940s, has extended breeding range to include much of southwest. Brushy pastures, bushy wood edges. For nesting favors roadsides, old fields growing up to bushes, edges of woodlands, and other edge habitats such as along rights-of-way for powerlines or railroads. Also in clearings within deciduous woods, edges of swamps. In the west, usually near streams. During winter in the tropics, most common around brushy edges of farm fields. In parts of the East, Indigo Bunting may be the most abundant songbird, with the deep-blue males singing along every roadside. The plain brown females are seen far less often, and they have good reason to be inconspicuous: they do almost all the work of caring for the eggs and young, hidden away in dense thickets. This species favors brushy edges rather than unbroken forest, and is probably far more common today than when the Pilgrims landed...[Young are] fed only by female in most cases. At some nests, male helps feed young when they are nearly old enough to fly. Young usually leave nest 9-12 days after hatching. Male sometimes takes over feeding of fledged young while female begins second nesting attempt. Two broods per year.
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