|
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023 For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas. He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned it down. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8, deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future. Now hosting seven turbines, the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy. He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions. The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still viewed as big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.” This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas. It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California, which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas. That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear being undercut by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England. Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil and gas producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse liberals of “cult-like decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives. The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira), which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the ira, but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law. Don’t waste your breathThe upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber, a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have oil under their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.” <<<>>>
Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan
Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of
Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in
front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable
herd of Wagyu beef cattle
to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large
payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and
former state congressman—turned it down.
His opposition was
knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People
literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel,
referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with
almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though,
economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per
acre, cattle generate $8, deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It
assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a
representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind
and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station,
ripped out the petrol pumps, and are converting it into an electric-vehicle
charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down
with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam,
before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy. He learned lessons
about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do
not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the
opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and
carbon taxes are still viewed as big-government malarkey. Even greenery is
despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing
green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch,
head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another pro-renewables
group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan
recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican
governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they
prefer is a more free-market one: that wind and solar are increasingly
competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster
entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly
effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the
forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a
study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022
his home state had three times more wind, solar and battery storage under
construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal
agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power
generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the
next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks
that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel
producers who fear being undercut by renewables. Organisations like the Texas
Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas, and the Texas
Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom,
are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as
New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince the Texas government
to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged
renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support
distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil
and gas producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused
by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of
generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans
accuse liberals of “cult-like decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some
fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is
pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira), which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb
America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The
Davis family do not support the ira, but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice
more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big
hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are welcoming billions of
dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses that lobby strongly for fossil
fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries,
an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm,
in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t
waste your breath
The upshot is that there
are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate
sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost
advantages of renewables rather than the climate benefits, emphasise their
contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and
acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role
to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber, a professor
of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to
do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a
better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have
oil under their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.” <<<<>>> Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Sounds encouraging. Thank you, Skip.
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan
Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of
Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in
front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable
herd of Wagyu beef cattle
to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large
payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and
former state congressman—turned it down.
His opposition was
knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People
literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel,
referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with
almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though,
economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per
acre, cattle generate $8, deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It
assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a
representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind
and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station,
ripped out the petrol pumps, and are converting it into an electric-vehicle
charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down
with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam,
before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy. He learned lessons
about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do
not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the
opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and
carbon taxes are still viewed as big-government malarkey. Even greenery is
despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing
green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch,
head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another pro-renewables
group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan
recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican
governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they
prefer is a more free-market one: that wind and solar are increasingly
competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster
entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly
effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the
forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a
study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022
his home state had three times more wind, solar and battery storage under
construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal
agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power
generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the
next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks
that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel
producers who fear being undercut by renewables. Organisations like the Texas
Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas, and the Texas
Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom,
are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as
New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince the Texas government
to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged
renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support
distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil
and gas producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused
by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of
generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans
accuse liberals of “cult-like decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some
fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is
pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira), which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb
America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The
Davis family do not support the ira, but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice
more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big
hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are welcoming billions of
dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses that lobby strongly for fossil
fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries,
an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm,
in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t
waste your breath
The upshot is that there
are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate
sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost
advantages of renewables rather than the climate benefits, emphasise their
contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and
acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role
to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber, a professor
of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to
do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a
better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have
oil under their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.” <<<<>>> Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Fixed cost forever. Clean.
Pretty confident everyone likes these two things :-)
On Jan 17, 2023, at 09:53, David Franklin via groups.io <dhfranklin1@...> wrote:
Sounds encouraging. Thank you, Skip.
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie
lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu
beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned
it down.
His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8,
deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and
are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy.
He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still viewed as
big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another
pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market
one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times
more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear being undercut
by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil
and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s
battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince
the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil and gas
producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse liberals of “cult-like
decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira),
which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the ira,
but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are
welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses
that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t waste your breath
The upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather
than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber,
a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have oil under
their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.”
<<<<>>>
Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Dharma Dharmarajan
Thanks, Skip for the share!
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan
Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of
Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in
front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable
herd of Wagyu beef cattle
to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large
payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and
former state congressman—turned it down.
His opposition was
knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People
literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel,
referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with
almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though,
economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per
acre, cattle generate $8, deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It
assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a
representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind
and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station,
ripped out the petrol pumps, and are converting it into an electric-vehicle
charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down
with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam,
before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy. He learned lessons
about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do
not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the
opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and
carbon taxes are still viewed as big-government malarkey. Even greenery is
despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing
green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch,
head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another pro-renewables
group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan
recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican
governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they
prefer is a more free-market one: that wind and solar are increasingly
competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster
entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly
effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the
forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a
study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022
his home state had three times more wind, solar and battery storage under
construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal
agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power
generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the
next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks
that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel
producers who fear being undercut by renewables. Organisations like the Texas
Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas, and the Texas
Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom,
are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as
New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince the Texas government
to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged
renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support
distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil
and gas producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused
by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of
generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans
accuse liberals of “cult-like decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some
fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is
pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira), which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb
America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The
Davis family do not support the ira, but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice
more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big
hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are welcoming billions of
dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses that lobby strongly for fossil
fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries,
an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm,
in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t
waste your breath
The upshot is that there
are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate
sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost
advantages of renewables rather than the climate benefits, emphasise their
contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and
acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role
to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber, a professor
of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to
do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a
better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have
oil under their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.” <<<<>>> Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Fixed cost yes, clean yes, but not always on demand even accounting for storage. Wind and solar should be expanded up to their practical limits but I think ultimately there has to always be a significant portion of generation by some clean but on demand source whether geothermal, fission, fusion or something entirely new.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, R. Michael Martin < mm@...> wrote:
Fixed cost forever. Clean.
Pretty confident everyone likes these two things :-)
On Jan 17, 2023, at 09:53, David Franklin via groups.io <dhfranklin1= gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:
Sounds encouraging. Thank you, Skip.
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie
lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu
beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned
it down.
His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8,
deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and
are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy.
He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still viewed as
big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another
pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market
one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times
more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear being undercut
by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil
and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s
battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince
the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil and gas
producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse liberals of “cult-like
decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira),
which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the ira,
but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are
welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses
that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t waste your breath
The upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather
than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber,
a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have oil under
their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.”
<<<<>>>
Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Dharma Dharmarajan
Ultimately it is economics that will determine the “energy generation portfolio”. Fission and fusion (probably never) are not choices any sane utility CEO will commit to. Non economic choices!! Can’t be financed readily!!
Fixed cost yes, clean yes, but not always on demand even accounting for storage. Wind and solar should be expanded up to their practical limits but I think ultimately there has to always be a significant portion of generation by some clean but on demand source whether geothermal, fission, fusion or something entirely new.
On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, R. Michael Martin <mm@...> wrote:
Fixed cost forever. Clean.
Pretty confident everyone likes these two things :-)
On Jan 17, 2023, at 09:53, David Franklin via groups.io <dhfranklin1= gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:
Sounds encouraging. Thank you, Skip.
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie
lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu
beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned
it down.
His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8,
deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and
are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy.
He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still viewed as
big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another
pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market
one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times
more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear being undercut
by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil
and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s
battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince
the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil and gas
producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse liberals of “cult-like
decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira),
which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the ira,
but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are
welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses
that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t waste your breath
The upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather
than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber,
a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have oil under
their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.”
<<<<>>>
Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Seems critical that our economics going forward include health impacts/costs - not just business P&L items - to accelerate the transition as a complete model. These are massive measurable meaningful costs.
Ultimately it is economics that will determine the “energy generation portfolio”. Fission and fusion (probably never) are not choices any sane utility CEO will commit to. Non economic choices!!
Can’t be financed readily!!
Fixed cost yes, clean yes, but not always on demand even accounting for storage. Wind and solar should be expanded up to their practical limits but I think ultimately there has to always be a significant portion of generation by some clean but on demand source
whether geothermal, fission, fusion or something entirely new.
On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, R. Michael Martin <mm@...> wrote:
Fixed cost forever. Clean.
Pretty confident everyone likes these two things :-)
On Jan 17, 2023, at 09:53, David Franklin via
groups.io <dhfranklin1= gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:
Sounds encouraging. Thank you, Skip.
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the
Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu
beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned
it down.
His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8,
deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and
are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy.
He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still
viewed as big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation,
another pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market
one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times
more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear
being undercut by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (tppf),
which lobbies on behalf of oil and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s
battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his
organisation helped convince the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other
incentives for oil and gas producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse
liberals of “cult-like decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira),
which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the ira,
but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are
welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative
businesses that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from
the law.
Don’t waste your breath
The upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables
rather than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael
Webber, a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have oil
under their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.”
<<<<>>>
Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Of course but it is impossible to say fusion will never be economical. There is massive amounts of money going into the effort of making fusion practical and if/when it does there would be no rational reason to oppose it in my mind. It would be the perfect green energy source which is motivation enough to make sure it is economical.
On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, Dharma Dharmarajan < Dharma.tx@...> wrote: Ultimately it is economics that will determine the “energy generation portfolio”. Fission and fusion (probably never) are not choices any sane utility CEO will commit to. Non economic choices!! Can’t be financed readily!! Fixed cost yes, clean yes, but not always on demand even accounting for storage. Wind and solar should be expanded up to their practical limits but I think ultimately there has to always be a significant portion of generation by some clean but on demand source whether geothermal, fission, fusion or something entirely new.
On Tuesday, January 17, 2023, R. Michael Martin <mm@...> wrote:
Fixed cost forever. Clean.
Pretty confident everyone likes these two things :-)
On Jan 17, 2023, at 09:53, David Franklin via groups.io <dhfranklin1= gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:
Sounds encouraging. Thank you, Skip.
Lessons for liberals from climate-sceptic wind ranchers
The Economist - Jan 12th 2023
For more than 140 years John Davis’s family has owned the Pecan Spring Ranch on the prairie
lands of West Texas.
He has a photo of his great-great-grandmother, known as “the sheep queen of Texas”, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage beneath a tree that still stands in front of the hay barn. It’s a tough business to maintain, even with a valuable herd of Wagyu
beef cattle to raise. Yet when a renewable-energy developer offered Mr Davis a large payment to put wind turbines on his land, at first the staunch Republican—and former state congressman—turned
it down.
His opposition was knee-jerk. “Clean energy has been branded a liberal technology. People literally say, ‘this is AOC coming into town,’” explains his son, Samuel, referring to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman whose name pops up with almost flattering frequency among conservative Texans. Eventually, though, economic sense prevailed. As the family points out, at an average return per acre, cattle generate $8,
deer hunters $15—and wind hundreds of dollars. It assures the ranch’s future.
Now hosting seven turbines,
the family embraces renewables as religious converts would. Samuel is a representative for the Texas Land and Liberty Coalition, which promotes wind and solar energy among ranchers. His parents have bought a filling station, ripped out the petrol pumps, and
are converting it into an electric-vehicle charging station (with a farmers’ market on the side). Your columnist sat down with the clan last month over a breakfast of quiche and tomato-jalapeño jam, before bouncing across their ranch in an electric buggy.
He learned lessons about clean energy that challenged his own philosophical assumptions.
The first is that you do not have to believe in climate change to support renewables. Quite the opposite. For a portion of conservative America, things like climate change and carbon taxes are still viewed as
big-government malarkey. Even greenery is despised as a term co-opted by the left. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears,” says Matt Welch, head of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, another
pro-renewables group. “We just say clean energy.”
This is not just Texan recalcitrance. Wind power is abundantly harvested in states run by Republican governments and over land owned by climate-sceptic ranchers. The message they prefer is a more free-market
one: that wind and solar are increasingly competitive sources of energy, help reduce electricity costs, foster entrepreneurship, and are no less American than oil and gas.
It is a surprisingly effective mantra. You might think that California,
which talks a good game about climate change and green energy, is on the forefront of renewables development. But Texas is far ahead. According to a study commissioned by Mr Welch’s organisation, in the second quarter of 2022 his home state had three times
more wind, solar and battery storage under construction than California. The Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, predicts that this year the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.
That helps explain the next lesson. For all the mockery of AOC, it is from their own Republican ranks that wind-energy ranchers face the most antagonism—especially from fossil-fuel producers who fear being undercut
by renewables. Organisations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (tppf), which lobbies on behalf of oil
and gas, and the Texas Landowners Coalition, backed by right-wing beneficiaries of the fracking boom, are fighting tooth and nail to curb wind development. The tppf’s
battle extends to proposed offshore wind farms as far away as New England.
Jason Isaac of the tppf says his organisation helped convince
the Texas government to let a school-district tax credit lapse on December 31st that encouraged renewables investment in rural Texas. He argues that such fiscal support distorts the power market, though that stance ignores other incentives for oil and gas
producers. He blames wind for the blackouts across Texas in 2021 caused by storm Uri, never mind that an official report concluded that “all types of generation technologies failed”, including natural gas and coal. Republicans accuse liberals of “cult-like
decarbonisation”, yet their policies hurt some fellow conservatives.
The third lesson is pragmatism. Even though Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (ira),
which provides hundreds of billions of dollars to curb America’s use of fossil fuels, red states like Texas plan to lap it up. The Davis family do not support the ira,
but they hope its expanded federal tax credits will entice more wind and solar to rural Texas. The state also expects to attract big hydrogen and carbon-sequestration projects. Other Republican states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee are
welcoming billions of dollars of clean-energy investments spurred by the ira. Even conservative businesses
that lobby strongly for fossil fuels hope to benefit from the energy transition. For example, Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, supported a big investment by Freyr, a Norwegian firm, in a battery factory in Georgia that will benefit from the law.
Don’t waste your breath
The upshot is that there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate sceptics that they are bonkers. A better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather
than the climate benefits, emphasise their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come. As Michael Webber,
a professor of energy at the University of Texas, puts it, “It’s not unusual for Texas to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.” In the end, everyone’s aim is a better future. As the elder Mr Davis says, many ranchers lucky enough to have oil under
their land have benefited for generations. “We struck wind.”
<<<<>>>
Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC
|
|
|
Jack Smith
I think we are swimming against the tide with nuclear and most fossil fueled Rankine cycle power plants. Centralized power plants should be limited to about 20% of the load and mostly for industrial demand. The technology and economics say we are going toward microgrids and away from centralized power plants. The directional vector of technology is manifest in the network effect. Telegraph to telephone, radio phone to internet connected smartphone to the IoT (Internet of Things). Each step is more distributed and discrete but also more interconnected. [Warning: It would seem the logical next step would be neural links but when you realize someone else could rewrite your own memories maybe we don’t want to go there.]
|
|
|
Some fusion concepts are not heat engines but can capture charged particle energy directly at very high efficiency.
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023, Jack Smith via groups.io <bluesguy53= yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:
I think we are swimming against the tide with nuclear and most fossil fueled Rankine cycle power plants. Centralized power plants should be limited to about 20% of the load and mostly for industrial demand. The technology and economics say we are going toward microgrids and away from centralized power plants. The directional vector of technology is manifest in the network effect. Telegraph to telephone, radio phone to internet connected smartphone to the IoT (Internet of Things). Each step is more distributed and discrete but also more interconnected. [Warning: It would seem the logical next step would be neural links but when you realize someone else could rewrite your own memories maybe we don’t want to go there.]
|
|
|
I think we are swimming against the tide with nuclear and most fossil fueled Rankine cycle power plants. Centralized power plants should be limited to about 20% of the load and mostly for industrial demand. The technology and economics say we are going toward microgrids and away from centralized power plants. The directional vector of technology is manifest in the network effect. Telegraph to telephone, radio phone to internet connected smartphone to the IoT (Internet of Things). Each step is more distributed and discrete but also more interconnected. [Warning: It would seem the logical next step would be neural links but when you realize someone else could rewrite your own memories maybe we don’t want to go there.]