12 Comments
May 2Liked by Emmet Penney

It also may not matter who wins the next or next two presidential elections unless legislators can gain direct influence over the administrative state. You can sue them but the response time and uncertainty is an investment killer

We need an oversight agency tasked with overturning rules and regulations of other agencies based on a reasonable cost benefit consideration. Give Congress the reins back

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It does not matter in regards to energy, money will carry the day unless we figure out how to stop it.

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Merideth's fatal trifecta should have a virtuous twin. Anyone involved in this process should be held criminally accountable if they make decisions based on anything but these three criteria: reliability, physical safety of individuals, reasonable prices for consumers.

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May 2Liked by Emmet Penney

I've been saying for a while that the new battle on the horizon will be between the tech industry and the climate lobby. Where is all the power for data centers and artificial intelligence going to come from? They are big, if not bigger, power hogs than industrial plants.

It's like no one wants to address the elephant in the room that they will likely need on-site combined-cycle gas generation before SMRs are able to get through red tape and take off. When it comes to actually making money, wind and solar will never be able to actually do this effectively since that amount of computing power needs 24/7 electricity.

I'm taking the more pessimistic view that areas of the country need to experience real pain before tides start to turn. That means exponentially-rising costs of energy and rolling outages on a regular basis. God forbid a bad storm comes and damages critical electrical infrastructure that has a lead time stretching across multiple years. That would be the ultimate wakeup call but unfortunately way too late.

Thanks for reporting on this. I hope more people start to pay attention but I have my doubts.

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May 3Liked by Emmet Penney

This kind of thing is infuriating. I am 100% on board with transitioning to cleaner energy, but you cannot get there by cutting off every alternative at the same time.

Want to build a wind/solar farm, get sued under NEPA.

Want to build nuclear? Good luck getting a permit.

How about cleanish natural gas? Nope, some bureaucrats have decided x percentage needs this, by y date…

A greener future is within our grasp and all we do is shoot at our own feet. Just place a gradually escalating carbon tax on coal, ease permitting requirements, and relax.

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May 3Liked by Emmet Penney

Basically EPA is saying: The middle of the country must be sacrificed so that the coasts may live…

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Not quite true. More like the regions around Chicago like Southern Illinois and Wisconsin get fucked while Chicago gets filthy rich with it's nuclear plants. The places that really win a zero carbon economy? Chicago and Philadelphia(because of nuclear) and parts of rural Washington, Oregon, and Idaho with government preferences for cheap legacy hydro power. You should be thankful for people like Emmet and Alan Medsker from the Chicago area that actually are attacking the EPA rule. There are other pro-nuclear advocates from Chicago that know exactly what is going to happen and would just assume the rest of country burn down all around them to as they see it Chicagoland's benefit.

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Are you somehow implying that I am not thankful for Emmet and Alan's work? Not sure why one would think that.

Oh, and there is a whole gigantic group out west trying their best to destroy 4GW worth of dams on the Snake River in WA and ID, so it isn't exactly going swimmingly there either.

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May 3Liked by Emmet Penney

Add in a GSM (grand solar minimum) to the mix to exacerbate things: Google translate the link.

https://report24.news/astrophysikerin-aenderung-der-sonnenaktivitaet-neue-kleine-eiszeit-hat-bereits-begonnen/

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May 3Liked by Emmet Penney

What was wrong with Rick Perry's 2017 plan to save reliable EGEN. answer == green grifters and anti nuclear Democrats seeing their $$$ disappear

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Try for less panicked and panic-inducing vocabulary. And really make an effort to think about readers who aren't in the know, in the field, in the fray. Do you want attention? Stop yelling yourself hoarse. You will HAVE to get beyond your circles of known readers to influence general awareness. You ALL are able to make the problem clear, but all that the rest of us can hear and see is your anxiety.

We have quite a lot of that being delivered from every point on the 360 degree horizon, and more just makes us want to tune out. It's a big job, I know--winding back all the climate change hysteria, or winding forward out of data-less climate change anxiety--so start where you can, but oh my word, good people, let go of feel-good performance art and get a real grip on things going forward.

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author

All I have done in this piece is synthesize what those who run and regulate our power grid have said and published about what's going on. I'm not panicked--these are all solvable problems. But policies have consequences; this is the "real grip on things."

Perhaps you're not familiar with the body of my work, and that's fine. I wouldn't expect you to be as I'm just an up-and-comer. I publish for a general readership on these issues in a variety of places--Compact Magazine, where I'm a contributing editor, the Spectator World, American Mind, etc. And I'm also writing a book on the grid for a general audience.

If you'd like some straightforwardly optimistic fare, you can check out this piece: https://nuclearbarbarians.substack.com/p/a-republic-of-industrial-cathedrals

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