New Forbes and RCE articles, Pielke on the podcast, Egrets in East Texas
Big Wind pulls out of Madison County, a telling ERCOT chart, Pielke talks Iron Laws, & Egrets
I was in Nacogdoches yesterday speaking to members and directors of the East Texas Electric Cooperative. Their service territory includes 340,000 members in 46 counties. ETEC has a broad portfolio of generation assets that includes coal, wind, biomass, hydro, and natural gas. It’s an unusual electricity producer: its service territory includes three different RTOs: ERCOT, SPP, and MISO. Being interconnected with so many systems, A.J. Goff, ETEC’s CEO, told me, is “extraordinarily complicated.” He went on, saying that “ERCOT alone is a full-time job.” It was great to be back in the Piney Woods of East Texas. The last time I visited Nacogdoches was 37 years ago when Lorin and I went on a road trip and decided to visit my cousin Bev, who at that time was attending Stephen F. Austin University. I remember the visit because Lorin and I moved to Austin that same year: 1985. Nacogdoches is a charming and historic town with lots of old beautifully designed buildings and plenty of brick streets. I’m a sucker for brick streets. East Texas is beautiful. It’s a region more like Mississippi or the Carolinas than the parts of Texas I’m more familiar with.
Yesterday morning, while out on a short walk, I talked to a friend of mine who lives in New York. “Joe Manchin was my hero for two weeks,” he said. “Not anymore.” This friend has been a longtime critic of the wind industry and its tactics. A few days earlier, he had been thrilled that the federal tax credits for wind energy were finally, it appeared, going to be retired. (I wrote about Machin’s veto in The Hill on July 20.) That meant that the companies seeking to build wind projects wouldn’t have as much incentive to force their turbines on rural communities. And then, on Wednesday, Manchin reversed course. I haven’t time to dig into all the details of the 700-page bill, but it includes as much as $260 billion! in tax credits for the solar sector and billions more for wind. I’m going to write about that bill, but not today. In the meantime, you may want to read Michael Shellenberger’s take on the measure on Substack.
On the media front, I was on the Ex.haust podcast with my pal, Emmet Penney this week talking about California’s energy mess. I like Emmet a lot and really respect his work. Click here to listen. Also, for those of you who live in Denver, I’ll be speaking at CU-Denver's 5th Annual New Directions in Commodities Research Symposium which is being held August 15-16. I will be doing a keynote (on the energy transition) on the second day. For more info, click here.
It's already late Friday afternoon, so I’ll cut to business. Four items today:
Real Clear Energy: This one ERCOT chart explains why Texas is having electricity shortages
Roger Pielke Jr. returns to the podcast for the fourth time
Egrets on the road to Nacogdoches
The photo of the Great Egret above was taken in Edina, Minnesota in 2018.
On Sunday, I published a piece in Forbes about the ongoing rural backlash against big renewable-energy projects. I began:
In Madison County, Iowa, the power of the people has prevailed over the money and political influence of Big Wind.
On Saturday, landowners in the county who had leased their property for a wind project being pushed by MidAmerican Energy Company, received letters informing them that the company was abandoning plans to add 30 wind turbines to the controversial Arbor Hill wind project. The cancellation appears to end a multi-year battle between the company, a subsidiary of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway (market capitalization: $633 billion), and angry county residents who united to oppose the landscape-blighting project.
The battle included a court fight in which the company sued the county as part of an effort to force it to accept more wind turbines. Had MidAmerican chosen to build those 30 turbines, it may have been entitled to tax credits worth about $81 million.
I concluded:
While MidAmerican can blame the cancellation on “changing parameters,” the hard reality is that the company’s scorched-earth legal campaign against Madison County was a public-relations disaster, both for the company and the wind industry as a whole. The suit proved, yet again, that land-use conflicts are the binding constraint on the expansion of the wind industry. In addition, by suing the county, MidAmerican proved just how unpopular wind energy has become in rural America. After all, if wind energy is “green” why would the company need to sue?
For now, the last word on this story goes to Jobst, who told me she is “thrilled” that MidAmerican is leaving Madison County. “Every one of the turbines they wanted to build was right next to a landowner who hadn’t consented. That’s not right. You can’t just build a 500-foot-high turbine without permission.” She then repeated what she had told me a few minutes earlier: “We weren’t going to stand for it...Our property rights are not going to be violated here.”
Again, here’s a link. Please share it.
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Also on Sunday, Real Clear Energy published a piece I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I began:
It’s been stupidly hot here in Texas lately and as you’ve likely heard, the state’s power grid is straining to meet record-high electricity demand. Twice in mid-July, ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, was forced to ask the state’s consumers to reduce their power use. On the afternoon of July 13, the system had less than 3,000 megawatts of spare capacity as demand hit nearly 80,000 megawatts. That’s not nearly enough reserve capacity.
Since February 2021, when the Texas grid nearly collapsed during Winter Storm Uri, scads of reports and opinion pieces have been written to explain why the electric grid in America’s biggest energy-producing state is so shaky. But there’s no need for complex reports or in-depth analysis to understand why Texans don’t have enough juice. Instead, Texas’ power woes can be understood by looking at a single chart published last week by ERCOT.
I concluded:
These problems have been known for more than a decade. Eleven years ago, in National Review, I pointed out that during an August heat wave “when the state set new records for electricity demand, the state’s vast herd of turbines proved incapable of producing any serious amount of power.”
Making matters worse: electricity prices in Texas are soaring. As was recently reported by Ben Russell of NBCDFW, the average cost of electricity in deregulated markets in the state has jumped to about 18.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s roughly double the rate from a year ago. Those soaring rates are due, in part, to the state’s over-reliance on gas-fired electricity at the same time that natural gas prices are soaring.
The punchline here is obvious: at the very moment that the Lone Star State desperately needs a resilient electric grid -- one that can deliver reliable and affordable juice during the hottest and coldest days -- consumers and the grid operators at ERCOT have been left to hope that the wind starts blowing.
Again, here's a link. By all means share the article (and the chart.)
Roger Pielke Jr.: "climate policies have to appeal to everyone"
I have known Roger Pielke Jr. for about 15 years. Roger is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. He focuses on climate policy, sports governance, and the “messy and important place where science and politics collide.” In his fourth appearance on the podcast, (his last appearance was on February 18, 2022), Pielke talked with me about heat waves, the Iron Law of Climate, Europe’s energy mess, transgender athletes, why “we are treading water” on decarbonization, and why “climate policies have to appeal to everyone.”
It was a fun conversation. Here’s a link to the audio. And it’s also on YouTube.
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Egrets in the stock tanks
As you’ve probably heard, the heat and drought in Texas have been hard on the electric grid, people, and animals. The ranchers I talked to who were at the ETEC meeting in Nacogdoches said they are having to buy hay to keep their herds going. But the ranchers aren’t just running short of food, they are also running short of water. The stock tanks that I saw near Highway 21 on both sides of Bryan were at very low levels. The same was true closer to Nacogdoches. I saw only a handful of birds on the drive and it was so hot I wasn’t inclined to stop and do any birdwatching. But I did notice a number of Egrets cooling off in the stock tanks. From a distance, it wasn’t clear if they were Cattle Egrets or Great Egrets. They appeared to be too big for Cattle Egrets. So I will assume they were Great Egrets (Ardea alba). The photo above was taken by Don DeBold in California in 2010. Wikipedia says this about the Great Egret:
also known as the Common Egret, Large Egret, or (in the Old World) Great White Egret or Great White Heron is a large, widely distributed Egret, with four subspecies found in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and southern Europe... It has a slow flight, with its neck retracted. This is characteristic of herons and bitterns, and distinguishes them from storks, cranes, ibises, and spoonbills, which extend their necks in flight. The great egret walks with its neck extended and wings held close. The great egret is not normally a vocal bird; it gives a low, hoarse croak when disturbed, and at breeding colonies, it often gives a loud croaking cuk cuk cuk and higher-pitched squawks.
Owing to its wide distribution across so much of the Americas, as well as Africa, Europe and Asia, the great egret shares its habitat with many other similar species...Iarge numbers of Great Egrets were killed around the end of the 19th century so that their plumes, known as "aigrettes" could be used to decorate hats. Numbers have since recovered as a result of conservation measures. Its range has expanded as far north as southern Canada. However, in some parts of the southern United States, its numbers have declined due to habitat loss, particularly wetland degradation through drainage, grazing, clearing, burning, increased salinity, groundwater extraction and invasion by exotic plants. Nevertheless, the species adapts well to human habitation and can be readily seen near wetlands and bodies of water in urban and suburban areas.
I hope you have a good weekend.
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