Aug 18, 2022·edited Aug 18, 2022Liked by Jeff Maurer
Oh man, ethanol. I remember that lunacy. I had this one buddy of mine, we’d been friends since 3rd grade, and as a kid his family lived in a totally normal house like most houses in my town. Then his dad got obscenely rich off ethanol subsidies and by the middle of high school he and his family moved into this mansion that was arguably the largest house in the whole city. I’m not sure there’s a lesson here, but I got to swim a lot in their giant indoor pool in the dead of winter, so I guess it all worked out for the environment.
Correction: the graph is in *millions* of metric tons. A reduction of 600 metric tons isn't that much to write home about. But what's six orders of magnitude among friends, anyway?
Unfortunately we have lots more data now, and it is pretty damn clear that this is mostly not going to spur “renewable” innovation in this round. The 2009 bill worked on nascent solar/wind tech (both the US and Germany were investing big), but these are now massive industries which are subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway, NextEra energy, etc. They have sales guys running around flyover country with contracts in hand desperately trying to get farmers and landowners to sign up, but the resistance is growing fast because it is a pretty raw deal in the end and it pits neighbors against each other (see Robert Bryce’s renewable rejection database). There is also no decommissioning plan for all of the 2010s era projects nearing their end of life, so these technologies will become less and less popular with the public over time when the reality sets in.
All of the quoted costs for renewables (LCOE) never include transmission or capacity factor and 100% backup plant cost, so all of the rosy studies that show renewables are cheap are underestimating the system costs by 60-80%, and the electricity cost inflation in places with high wind and solar penetration bear this out. The facts on wind and solar are that we have already done the innovation and they just aren’t competitive unless slave labor is used (aka Uyghurs) and fossil energy is cheap (to make the massive amounts of steel, copper and other mined inputs required). Even then they require 100% nat gas backup, and natural gas is doing most of the decarbonization from coal switching anyway.
The good parts of the bill are the nuclear, geothermal, carbon capture and other real innovation areas (which the greens hate), but those amounts are completely drowned out by the massive wind and solar subsidies. Those technologies are where wind and solar were in 2009, so we might actually get something good here. It is just unfortunate that we will have had to pay off Big Wind and Big Solar and their Sierra Club cronies in the process.
Like always, engineers will drag the public kicking and screaming into an abundant nuclear powered future (though it will take 1-200 years). It is just the physics of energy density. Reality will overcome all of the blatant fear mongering eventually.
I don't disagree with the article's main point. Politics is the art of the possible, and throwing money at things is the only thing presently possible.
Unfortunately, as the article points out, throwing money at things might mean, in effect, throwing money away. Also bad: you annoy a lot of people otherwise interested in helping.
There's a lot of subsidy money now available for electric vehicles, and as a result my organization's leadership wants to spend a lot on switching our fleet to EVs. That's fine, but less useful when you look at our carbon data and find out that vehicle emissions are <1% of our total (and that's not atypical for our industry). Now that leadership's attention has been drawn to the prospect of FREE MONEY (and even better, free money that lets them get a nice photo op with the politicians who are providing it), our chances of getting other, much more impactful projects (some of which we've been developing for years) approved and funded has gone down.
It's a pretty serious drain on morale to see something you evaluated, prioritized, and developed for a substantial portion of your professional life get kicked aside because politicians didn't think to include a subsidy for it in the latest money shower. I'm considering a career switch, and shit like this is a major reason why.
In his No Mercy/No Malice newsletter, NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway argues that the U.S. government is the oldest and most successful venture capitalist.
Public funding provided 43% of $108 billion in R&D funding in 2019, the remaining 57% was apportioned among business, nonprofits and universities. This 100% is interdependent, so that means that each category invests in R&D with the knowledge that other categories spend, too.
This shows the fallacy that "each dollar in government spending is just a dollar taken away from business/private sector". If government were to get out of the R&D funding game, the remaining 57% won't just backfill the 43% contribution and get results. The other three will just walk away from R&D altogether because the risk/reward calculus is disfavorable.
I enjoyed that reading, very excellent. I would add to your penultimate paragraph that you are also ignoring methane release penalties, righteous corporate taxes, and ACA subsidies. The first issue probably deserved at least a mention.
Oh man, ethanol. I remember that lunacy. I had this one buddy of mine, we’d been friends since 3rd grade, and as a kid his family lived in a totally normal house like most houses in my town. Then his dad got obscenely rich off ethanol subsidies and by the middle of high school he and his family moved into this mansion that was arguably the largest house in the whole city. I’m not sure there’s a lesson here, but I got to swim a lot in their giant indoor pool in the dead of winter, so I guess it all worked out for the environment.
Are public lice more or less popular than pubic lice?
Correction: the graph is in *millions* of metric tons. A reduction of 600 metric tons isn't that much to write home about. But what's six orders of magnitude among friends, anyway?
Unfortunately we have lots more data now, and it is pretty damn clear that this is mostly not going to spur “renewable” innovation in this round. The 2009 bill worked on nascent solar/wind tech (both the US and Germany were investing big), but these are now massive industries which are subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway, NextEra energy, etc. They have sales guys running around flyover country with contracts in hand desperately trying to get farmers and landowners to sign up, but the resistance is growing fast because it is a pretty raw deal in the end and it pits neighbors against each other (see Robert Bryce’s renewable rejection database). There is also no decommissioning plan for all of the 2010s era projects nearing their end of life, so these technologies will become less and less popular with the public over time when the reality sets in.
All of the quoted costs for renewables (LCOE) never include transmission or capacity factor and 100% backup plant cost, so all of the rosy studies that show renewables are cheap are underestimating the system costs by 60-80%, and the electricity cost inflation in places with high wind and solar penetration bear this out. The facts on wind and solar are that we have already done the innovation and they just aren’t competitive unless slave labor is used (aka Uyghurs) and fossil energy is cheap (to make the massive amounts of steel, copper and other mined inputs required). Even then they require 100% nat gas backup, and natural gas is doing most of the decarbonization from coal switching anyway.
The good parts of the bill are the nuclear, geothermal, carbon capture and other real innovation areas (which the greens hate), but those amounts are completely drowned out by the massive wind and solar subsidies. Those technologies are where wind and solar were in 2009, so we might actually get something good here. It is just unfortunate that we will have had to pay off Big Wind and Big Solar and their Sierra Club cronies in the process.
Like always, engineers will drag the public kicking and screaming into an abundant nuclear powered future (though it will take 1-200 years). It is just the physics of energy density. Reality will overcome all of the blatant fear mongering eventually.
I don't disagree with the article's main point. Politics is the art of the possible, and throwing money at things is the only thing presently possible.
Unfortunately, as the article points out, throwing money at things might mean, in effect, throwing money away. Also bad: you annoy a lot of people otherwise interested in helping.
There's a lot of subsidy money now available for electric vehicles, and as a result my organization's leadership wants to spend a lot on switching our fleet to EVs. That's fine, but less useful when you look at our carbon data and find out that vehicle emissions are <1% of our total (and that's not atypical for our industry). Now that leadership's attention has been drawn to the prospect of FREE MONEY (and even better, free money that lets them get a nice photo op with the politicians who are providing it), our chances of getting other, much more impactful projects (some of which we've been developing for years) approved and funded has gone down.
It's a pretty serious drain on morale to see something you evaluated, prioritized, and developed for a substantial portion of your professional life get kicked aside because politicians didn't think to include a subsidy for it in the latest money shower. I'm considering a career switch, and shit like this is a major reason why.
In his No Mercy/No Malice newsletter, NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway argues that the U.S. government is the oldest and most successful venture capitalist.
https://www.profgalloway.com/welfare-queens/
Public funding provided 43% of $108 billion in R&D funding in 2019, the remaining 57% was apportioned among business, nonprofits and universities. This 100% is interdependent, so that means that each category invests in R&D with the knowledge that other categories spend, too.
This shows the fallacy that "each dollar in government spending is just a dollar taken away from business/private sector". If government were to get out of the R&D funding game, the remaining 57% won't just backfill the 43% contribution and get results. The other three will just walk away from R&D altogether because the risk/reward calculus is disfavorable.
I enjoyed that reading, very excellent. I would add to your penultimate paragraph that you are also ignoring methane release penalties, righteous corporate taxes, and ACA subsidies. The first issue probably deserved at least a mention.
Nice Citizen Kane reference you slipped in there.
... Unless it was you who built an opera house for your no-talent girlfriend, in which case, my condolences to you both.