PR needs nuclear, two podcasts: Smith and Tverberg, American Goldfinches

Puerto Rico should go nuclear, two new podcasts, and American Goldfinches on Barton Creek

I’ve been home this week and was pleased to speak on Tuesday morning to the National Parking Association, which was holding its annual meeting at the Austin Convention Center. The caption for my talk: “A Sober Look at EVs.” I have been skeptical about EVs for more than a decade and while it’s true that sales are booming, it’s also true that EVs are still being bought mainly by the rich. I also pointed out that the distribution of EVs is highly concentrated in just a few states, with California alone having nearly 40% of all the EVs on the road. I wrote a longish chapter about EVs in my fourth book, Power Hungry, which was published in 2010. And while I could be wrong, my take on EVs hasn’t changed. As I wrote in Power Hungry: “EVs are The Next Big Thing. And they always will be.”
 
I also did a fair amount of media this week. I was quoted in a piece published today in the San Diego Union-Tribune about the parlous state of California’s electric grid. I told Rob Nikolewski that the recent flex alerts and orders not to charge EVs are “clear proof that California has moved too far, too fast...The electric grid in the state can’t handle the demands that are being put on it.” I also appeared on “Energy Switch,” Scott Tinker’s new talk show focused on energy. (The episode was recorded a few months ago.) I appeared opposite Leia Guccione, from the Rocky Mountain Institute. I focused much of my remarks on the federal subsidies for wind and solar that are distorting the electricity market in Texas and other states. As expected, Guccione, who is an acolyte of Amory Lovins, pushed for more renewables. It was an interesting conversation. I was in episode three of the series. I’m also in episode four, which will air this week. (Or at least I think it will air in Austin this week.) Check out all the episodes here. I was also on the “Financial Sense Now” podcast with Jim Puplava. We talked about what is happening in Europe and why it is a warning for the U.S. You can listen to that episode here.

Finally, I am still having fun making “about a minute” videos, which have been getting good traction on Tik Tok and LinkedIn. Now to business. Four items: 

• Forbes: Puerto Rico Should Go Nuclear

• Art Smith talks about oil markets and investing

• Gail Tverberg: renewables’ ”true value is close to zero"

• American Goldfinches (Spinus tristis)

The photo above was taken by Ken Thomas in North Carolina in 2007.

This morning, I published a piece in Forbes about what Puerto Rico should do after being hit by Hurricane Fiona. I’ve been interested in the island since 2018 when I went there with my colleague, Tyson Culver, John Moody, and Matthew Wallis, to shoot footage for our documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World. (Tyson shot the image above). Puerto Rico is a beautiful, but poverty-stricken, island. In the wake of Hurricane Fiona, it’s clear that the island’s electric grid has never recovered from the damage we saw after Puerto Rico was hit by two hurricanes in a row: Irma, and then Maria. I wrote: 

• Hurricane Fiona delivered another punishing blow to Puerto Rico this week. By Friday morning, more than 900,000 Puertoriqueños did not have electricity and hundreds of thousands didn’t have water. 

• While the immediate task is to fix the island’s roads, get the lights back on, and the water flowing, this hurricane provides an opportunity for politicians in Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., to begin thinking long-term about the territory’s tattered electric grid. It’s time for Puerto Rico to go nuclear. 

• Nuclear energy makes sense for Puerto Rico because the island’s infrastructure is old and its power plants rely too heavily on oil for electricity production. This heavy reliance on oil means that Puertoriqueños are paying some of the highest electricity prices in the United State. A recent analysis found that electricity rates on the island have nearly doubled since 2020 and customers are now paying some 33.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. For comparison, the average price of residential electricity in the U.S. last year was 13.7 cents per kilowatt-hour.

I concluded:

• To be sure, Puerto Rico’s grid faces challenges that go beyond its power plants. The electricity system on the island has been hobbled by years of mismanagement, patronage, and allegations of corruption. The island will need more resilient transmission and distribution systems. During a phone interview on Wednesday, Nuñez told me that the grid on the island “is so weak that any bad weather can result in power shortages.” Nuñez acknowledged that getting next-generation nuclear reactors operating in Puerto Rico is “a long-term project. It’s not a one-year deal.” But he said that polls done by his group have found that more than 90 percent of Puertoriqueños are open to the idea of nuclear energy. 

• It will take time to get the financial and political backing of politicians in Puerto Rico and Washington to make nuclear happen on the island. Doing so won’t be easy. Building new nuclear reactors won’t be cheap. But residents of Puerto Rico are American citizens. They aren’t living in a foreign country. They deserve better. They are Americans living on American soil. They deserve to have an electricity system that is resilient, reliable, and affordable. They deserve to have an electric grid that can withstand hurricanes. 

• The way forward for Puerto Rico is to embrace nuclear energy.

Again, here’s a link. Please share it. 
 

I used this new slide during my talk on EVs in Austin on Tuesday

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Art Smith on the oil business: "when it's good, it's really, really good. And when it's bad, it's so bad that everybody goes bust"    

Art Smith and I have been friends for more than two decades. We met while I was researching my first book, Pipe Dreams: Greed Ego, and the Death Of Enron. Back then, Art was working as an investment analyst and he had been covering Enron for several years. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch. Art is the author of Something From Nothing: Joe B. Foster and the People Who Built Newfield Exploration and the president of Triple Double Advisors, a Houston-based energy consulting and investment firm. In this, the 137th  episode of the Power Hungry Podcast, Art, who has been researching and writing about the oil and gas sector for four decades, talks about the industry’s soaring profits, the long-term price of oil, dividends, and the companies he believes will perform the best in the years ahead. We recorded the episode on August 2, 2022. Here’s the audio and transcript of our conversation. As always, the podcast is also on YouTube. 
 

Gail Tverberg, editor of Our Finite World: the world is "running out of affordable energy"    

I have been reading Gail Tverberg’s work on Oil Price and other websites for several years. She is not a typical energy analyst. Instead, she’s an actuary who spent most of her career working in the financial sector. She’s now retired and living in the Atlanta area. She’s the editor of Our Finite World, a website that focuses on “how energy limits and the economy are really interconnected.” I wanted to talk to her for several reasons, including her 2020 essay called “Why a Great Reset Based on Green Energy Isn’t Possible.” In that piece, she wrote: “On a stand-alone basis, intermittent renewables have very limited usefulness. Their true value is close to zero. The true cost of wind and solar has been hidden from everyone, using subsidies whose total cost is hard to determine.” In this episode, (#138) she discusses that essay, as well as the continuing dominance of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix, why the world is “running out of affordable energy,” and why, in her view, raising interest rates to tame inflation won’t work. 
 
I enjoyed talking to Gail. She doesn't have an ax to grind. Instead, she does what she does because she is interested in energy and economics. She has a fresh take on energy, power, and society. This episode was recorded on August 11, 2022. The audio and transcript are here. It’s also on YouTube.
 

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American Goldfinches: "sexual dichromatism" and "generally monogamous"   

We don’t see American Goldfinches (Spinus tristis) very often in Austin. But last week, while hiking on Barton Creek with my friend, John Constable, we saw a couple of them. They are more furtive than the Lesser Goldfinches that are common in our yard and at our feeders. They tend to stay lower in the brush and are, to my eye, a slight bit bigger than their Lesser cousins. The distinguishing characteristic is the black cap on top of the forehead. That, and the generally more yellow color of the body is the key differentiator. I haven’t seen any since last week. But the Lesser Goldfinches seem to be more numerous at our feeders and birdbaths this week. (The photo of the male American Goldfinch above was taken in California in 2014.) Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

• displays sexual dichromatism: the male is a vibrant yellow in the summer and an olive color during the winter, while the female is a dull yellow-brown shade which brightens only slightly during the summer. The male displays brightly colored plumage during the breeding season to attract a mate.

• The American Goldfinch is a granivore and adapted for the consumption of seedheads, with a conical beak to remove the seeds and agile feet to grip the stems of seedheads while feeding. It is a social bird and will gather in large flocks while feeding and migrating. It may behave territorially during nest construction, but this aggression is short-lived. Its breeding season is tied to the peak of food supply, beginning in late July, which is relatively late in the year for a finch. This species is generally monogamous and produces one brood each year. Human activity has generally benefited the American Goldfinch. It is often found in residential areas, attracted to bird feeders which increase its survival rate in these areas. Deforestation also creates open meadow areas, which are its preferred habitat...flies in a distinctive undulating pattern, creating a wave-shaped path. This normally consists of a series of wing beats to lift the bird, then folding in the wings and gliding in an arc before repeating the pattern. Birds often vocalize during the flapping phase of the pattern and then go silent during the coasting phase. The call made during flight is "per-twee-twee-twee", or "ti-di-di-di", punctuated by the silent periods. They communicate with several distinct vocalizations, including one that sounds like "po-ta-to-chip" to the listener. Birds do not act aggressively toward predators within their territory; their only reaction is alarm calling. Predators include snakes, weasels, squirrels, and blue jays, which may destroy eggs or kill young, and hawks and cats, which pose a threat to both young and adults. The oldest known American goldfinch was 10 years and 5 months old... 

• gregarious during the non-breeding season when it is often found in large flocks, usually with other finches. The social hierarchy, measured by how many aggressive encounters are won by each individual, tends towards the male being dominant in the non-breeding season. During the breeding season, this finch lives in loose colonies. While the nest is being constructed, the male will act aggressively toward other males who intrude into his territory, driving them away, and the female reacts in the same way toward other females. This aggressiveness subsides once the eggs have been laid. The social hierarchy in the breeding season generally has the female dominant over the male. Dominance may change based on the value of a resource; a study published in 1987 found that starved subordinate birds were sometimes dominant in competitions over feeder access...state bird of Iowa and New Jersey...and Washington...It was chosen by schoolchildren in Washington in 1951. 

Have a good weekend. 
  

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