Weekend Digest #13
A Curated Assortment of Scrolls
Happy Saturday, Barbarians,
Let’s get after it.
Housekeeping
Advancing Nuclear ft. Rod Adams. Wanna know what Rickover was like? Or how cool navy nuclear submarines are? Or (perhaps) why the NRC rejected Oklo? Then check this episode out. Rod was a great interview and someone I have learned (and will continue to learn) loads from.
American Canon: Joan Didion’s “Insider Baseball” ft. Luke Thompson. On my other podcast, ex.haust, we have a running series on canoni
cal American works of literature. In honor of Joan Didion’s passing late last year, we looked at one of my favorite essays from her: her coverage of the 1988 presidential primary. Luke’s a political consultant who’s worked on presidential campaigns. We talked about the essay and campaign history. It was a great time.
News
ERCOT warns of staffing shortages, may not meet grid reliability deadlines. This week in “what the hell is going on at ERCOT”: they’ve got staffing shortages at the worst possible time. They have yet to meet their reliability goals and they’re scrambling for staff. Given the deep dip in gas supply two weeks ago, this does not inspire confidence as we move towards the anniversary of last year’s blackouts during Uri.
Disorderly Transitions: Eight Enduring Global Power Sector Trends. This is a helpful gloss of the IEA’s 2021 World Energy Outlook. Sonal Patel provides us with the eight general themes gleaned from the report. There’s a lot to think about in the whole piece, but what drew my attention is that the move to electrification and the doubling down on renewables is going to make for some painful situations. Natural gas is definitely not going anywhere—the IEA’s right on that. But it’s troubling that the developed world is stuffing the developing world with renewables while making it harder to finance coal plants.
Invenergy Announces Approximately $3 Billion Investment from Blackstone Infrastructure Partners to Accelerate Renewable Development Activities. Speaking of doubling down on renewables, get a load of this. Blackstone’s dumping billions into Invenergy, one of North America’s biggest VRE infrastructure firms, for more renewables. Some are likely sensing a culture shift towards nuclear as critiques of renewables and demystifications of nuclear have begun to proliferate. But don’t hold your breath for a changing of the guard. Some of the world’s biggest financial firms still back the Brinks truck up to the front lawns of companies like Invenergy. The fight’s just begun.
Is Climate Finance the Next Bubble? Relatedly, here’s this from Arvind Sambramanian in Project Syndicate: “Opportunities for green projects in developing countries are over-hyped. Questionable ESG standards and ratings result in fuzziness about how to measure the ESG impact of funding, as well as doubts about borrowers’ incentives, given the relatively light and back-loaded nature of penalties for noncompliance. Because finance is fungible, some firms may obtain ESG financing only to divert other sources of funding to non-ESG activities.” The rest of the piece is illuminating. Check it out.
Save the nukes? Here’s some coverage from the Grist on what’s going on with Diablo Canyon. I have some quibbles with the article, but of course would. But it’s a valuable piece that lays out both sides of the argument. Of course, issues about grid reliability don’t come up, which tells me that as Nuclear Barbarians, we need to get louder about that. Anyway, this one’s worth a read for those less familiar with the goings-on in California.
Commentary
I’ve been listening to this hearing on hydropower in sips. It’s long as hell and this week has been busy, so I haven’t gotten to all of it. But I’ve noticed a few things as I’ve listened.
I like Barrasso and Manchin. They’re knowledgeable about energy, they are about reliability, they ask good questions, and I learn a lot from their committee hearings. They stand as a good example of the kind of expertise these committees were designed to instill in lawmakers. Plus, Barrasso went out of his way to dunk on anti-natural gas legislation in his opening comments, which required a masterful level of shoe-horning and political ax-grinding.
Hydro seems to have some of the same problems nuclear has: big, expensive, baseload that has nightmarish permitting processes and gets taken for granted. That sucks! We’ve got something like 90% (I can’t remember the actual figure touted) of our dams not generating electricity for us. That should change. And it should also be easier to maintain our existing hydro.
Barrasso, at one point, asks everyone there to testify if they think hydro’s renewable. Pretty much everyone agrees. So we should be backing up the Brinks truck for more hydro electrification, right? And hydro should get a nicer slice of the pie for ESG, right? You’d think, but what I’m gathering for this is that that’s not so much the case.
All in all, this hearing made me way more interested hydro. We need to put some respect on its name! I’m going to continue to listen to the hearing. I’ve found paying attention to the Senate Energy Committee hearings to be very fruitful and I encourage people to do so when they have the time.