Big win for Diablo Canyon, two podcasts -- Harpole & Tinker-- and a Sage Thrasher at Ouray NWR
Forbes piece on Diablo Canyon, Harpole talks fertilizer on the podcast, Tinker talks "Energy Switch," & Sage Thrasher in Utah
More travel this week. On Tuesday, I spoke at the Uinta Basin Energy Summit in Vernal, Utah. It was an interesting trip for several reasons. Among them: I didn’t realize how much oil is being produced in northeastern Utah. Nor did I know that much of the revenue from the production is going to the members of the Ute tribe. Furthermore, I didn’t realize how beautiful the area around Vernal is. The Flaming Gorge is amazing as is the drive between Vernal and the town of Dutch John. The people in Vernal were enthusiastic and I made a number of new friends including some who work at Ovintiv, which is producing a lot of oil in the Uinta Basin. But enough about that. It’s a holiday weekend and I want to get this epistle out, so I’ll cut to the chase. Four items:
John Harpole talks about Europe’s fertilizer crisis
Scott Tinker on the podcast talking about his new PBS talk show series: Energy Switch
Sage Thrasher in Utah
(I took the photo above on Monday afternoon while standing on the banks of the Green River at theOuray National Wildlife Refuge.)
Yesterday morning, I published a piece in Forbes about the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California. The vote by the California legislature to extend the life of the plant (to 2030) is one of the best pieces of news we’ve had in a long while when it comes to nuclear energy. I began:
Sometimes facts and rationality win. Early this morning, California legislators passed a bill that will keep California’s last operating nuclear power plant, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, open and operating until 2030. The 2,250-megawatt plant, which generated more than 16 terawatt-hours of electricity last year, or nearly 9% of the state’s electricity needs, had been slated to close in 2025.
The passage of the bill is a huge, and much-needed, win for consumers, nuclear advocates, and the climate. It’s also a long-overdue rebuke to the anti-nuclear groups who had pushed for the premature shuttering of the plant.
I concluded:
The passage of Senate Bill 846 also delivers a well-deserved spanking to the NGOs — including Union of Concerned Scientists, Friends of the Earth, and Natural Resources Defense Council — who pushed for the closure of Diablo Canyon. For years, those groups and others participated in what can only be called a disinformation campaign that relied on fear and bad data to justify the shuttering of Diablo Canyon. Regrettably, that fear-mongering continues. After the bill passed, National Public Radio cited Juliet Christian-Smith, a regional director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who claimed that an earthquake-induced accident at Diablo Canyon could “cause more than $100 billion in damages and 10,000 cancer deaths.” NPR then quoted her as saying the bill “ignores the plant's environmental impacts and vulnerability to earthquakes," and that “safety cannot take a back seat in our quest to keep the lights on and reduce global warming emissions."
Finally, the passage of the bill is a major victory for the many groups and pro-nuclear advocates who fought for years to keep Diablo Canyon open. A partial list of the people and groups who deserve congratulations includes author and former California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger and his colleagues at Environmental Progress, Carl Wurtz and his colleagues at Californians for Green Nuclear Power, and Heather Hoff and the other mothers at Mothers for Nuclear. In addition, congratulations to Ted Nordhaus, Jonah Messinger, Adam Stein, and the other folks at the Breakthrough Institute, who fought to prevent the closure and released a blistering critique of the report done by Friends of the Earth in 2016 that was used to justify the closure of Diablo Canyon.
Before finishing, a reminder: the bill only extends the life of Diablo Canyon until 2030. That’s not long enough. If California is serious about reducing its emissions and keeping the lights on, it needs to keep Diablo Canyon open for many more decades. It must also build new nuclear plants. And it needs to get started right now. But for today, it’s time to celebrate.
Again, here’s a link.
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John Harpole on the collapse of fertilizer production in Europe and the looming food-security crisis
John Harpole is the president of Denver-based natural gas broker Mercator Energy. In his third appearance on the podcast (previous episodes were on March 10, 2022, and May 25, 2021), Harpole talks about one of the most important, and least-covered issues of the moment: the shuttering of roughly half of Europe's fertilizer plants. Harpole talks about the likely impact that the shuttering of Europe’s fertilizer plants will have on food prices and food security, soaring natural gas prices (on August 29, gas at the Dutch TTF hub was selling for $100 per mmBtu), "the deindustrialization of Europe," and how the shale revolution helped save the U.S. from the catastrophe now facing Europe. He also underscore the point that very few European industrial firms have hedged their future gas needs. Since I talked to John on August 29, nat gas prices in Europe have fallen quite a bit. But they are going to rise again. On Friday, Gazprom announced the indefinite shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
The audio is here and on all the major podcast outlets. It’s also on YouTube.
Scott Tinker on his new series on PBS and why "molecules matter"
Also this week, we released a podcast I recorded a while ago with my friend, Scott Tinker. Scott is the director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at UT Austin and the chairman of the Switch Energy Alliance an Austin-based non-profit “dedicated to inspiring an energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible.” In his second appearance on the podcast (his first was in September 2020) episode, Tinker talks about “Energy Switch,” the new multi-part TV talk show that will begin airing on PBS stations on September 4, why “molecules matter,” his TED talk on the dual challenge of energy and environment, and how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is accelerating talks about energy security. (This segment was recorded on March 17, 2022.)
I'm in two "Energy Switch" episodes, opposite Leia Guccione from the Rocky Mountain Institute. The caption for our episodes: Solar and wind power the world? Here's the spoiler alert: no way, no how. The entire list of episodes is available here. Other guests on the series include Steve Koonin, Daniel Yergin, Michael Shellenberger -- all three have been on the Power Hungry Podcast -- as well as Ernie Moniz, Deborah Byers, Ken Medlock, David Victor, Matthew Gallagher, and many others.
The audio from the podcast with Tinker is here and on all the major podcast outlets. And of course, it’s on YouTube.
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Sage Thrasher at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge near Vernal, Utah
I love our national wildlife refuges. They aren’t designed to handle large crowds. They don’t have campgrounds, stores, or lodges. Sometimes there’s a bathroom, sometimes not. For those reasons, they are almost always deserted. That’s what I love about them. The past few times I’ve visited refuges, I have had almost the whole place to myself. That was the case on Monday afternoon at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge outside Vernal, Utah. The refuge straddles the Green River. It’s a big place. And like most of the rest of Utah, it has been hit hard by the drought. There was some water in the river but the fields were bone dry. There wasn’t much moving about when I visited. I did see a Western Meadowlark and a Cooper’s Hawk. Around 6:30, I decided to head toward Vernal for some dinner. But before heading to the highway, I decided to drive around the modest visitor center. That’s when I saw a new bird for me: the Sage Thrasher (Oreoscoptes montanus). Upon seeing it, I knew immediately it was a new bird. (The photo above was taken in California in 2017.)
It was about the size of a Northern Mockingbird, but it spent most of its time on the ground. It also had very distinctive brown stripes on its breast. I got to watch it for maybe five minutes as it patrolled the area around the parking lot. It was fun to see such an interesting bird that has an all-time great name. Here’s what Wikipedia says:
a medium-sized passerine bird from the family Mimidae, which also includes Mockingbirds, Tremblers, and New World Catbirds. It is the only member of the genus Oreoscoptes... pale grey-brown on the upperparts and white with dark streaks on the underparts. They have a slim straight relatively short bill, yellow eyes, and a long tail, although not as long as that of other Thrashers...They mainly eat insects in summer; they also eat berries, especially in winter. They usually search for insects on the ground in brushy locations... In winter, these birds migrate to the southernmost U.S. and Mexico, including the Baja Peninsula north and south...breeds in western North America, from southern Canada to northern Arizona and New Mexico. Its breeding habitat is in areas with dense stands of sagebrush and rarely in other shrubby areas. The female lays 4 or 5 eggs in a twiggy cup nest built in a low bush. Both parents incubate and feed the young birds.
Have a great Labor Day weekend.
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