Weekly Digest #1
An assortment of scrolls.
Barbarians, this is a weekly digest you can expect to find in your inbox every Saturday morning. Enjoy.
1) France bets on more nuclear in face of Europe’s energy crisis. Macron announces a billion Euros for some SMRs. I can’t say if this is a campaign trail promise or a real promise, but what I can say is that it brightens my mood. I have deep admiration for the French nuclear buildout of the seventies and any kind of return to form would be good for nuclear generally and France specifically.
2) Grid operators: “safety valve” needed for Dems clean energy plan. There’s a lot of tension about what’s happening with the US grid. It’s complicated and I’m doing my best to try and understand it. What I have noticed is this new talking point: Renewable Natural Gas. Madison Czerwinski and I noticed language like that in the Biden admin’s Solar Future plan.
Here’s the skinny as I near as I can reckon it: everyone knows wind and solar have a reliability problem, which is bad for the grid. Natural gas solves that problem, more or less. Renewables advocates don’t like natural gas but recognize its usefulness. They’re going to forge ahead, grid operators be damned, with their plans for more renewables and we’ll start to see some spreadsheet sophistry around a “renewable natural gas” future that’ll resolve their natural gas dilemma AFTER they’ve repatterned our grid to be weather-dependent. In Fact, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was just on the Weather Channel selling this whole “green hydrogen” routine. Don’t make me laugh.
3) In global energy crisis, anti-nuclear chickens come home to roost. Ted Nordhaus had a great piece in Foreign Policy. I don’t share Ted’s friendliness with renewables—I think we’ve built enough and shouldn’t build anymore for the foreseeable future, but I like the pugnacious, no-bullshit energy emanating from his prose here. Plus, he uses the verb “sprout” in a surprising way.
4) The gas and electricity crisis—causes, consequences. Dieter Helm’s got a helpful breakdown of the energy crisis in Europe. You should also check out Mark Nelson’s recent appearances on Power Hungry and Decouple where he gives some deep background on how we got here.
5) Study on CEPP in AZ. My buddy Isaac Orr over at the Center of the American Experiment just released a report that Biden’s Clean Energy Performance Program could cost Arizona around $120 billion. The numbers get worse if the Paolo Verde nuclear plant closes. Isaac writes, “This enormous price tag would have devastating consequences for Arizona’s economy. If the cost of the CEPP is borne by residential, commercial, and industrial electricity customers in Arizona, rather than federal taxpayers, the additional costs imposed by the CEPP would be more than $1,200 per customer per year through 2052.” Lucky for me (and for you) Isaac’s gonna be coming on the show soon to talk about CEPP, his new report, and a whole mess of other energy stuff. Get ready for Midwestern excellence.
6) Hurt Hawks. Robinson Jeffers was wild and wildly prolific. He’s largely forgotten by the American literary establishment, which is a shame. I’ve been thinking a lot about his poem Hurt Hawks lately—a poem I didn’t appreciate fully until I lived in the American southwest. The poem relays Jeffers’ experience nursing a wounded hawk. It pains him to see such a powerful creature incapacitated and puts it out of its misery—“I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.” I seem to go through cycles where for years I’ll never think about him or his work, but then a line or two smuggles itself into my brain and flowers into a kind of mantra. Hawks is a repeat offender. It haunts me.