This is weird, but what if I told you that the likes of ExxonMobil and BP all got together at an energy conference in Houston–the epicenter of the global energy business–and cheered for more green jobs in the United States? Welcome to bizarro world. A conference you probably never heard of, with people you don’t think about, got all worked up about cutting emissions and investing in green energy. Why? Maybe their hearts grew three times in size they’ve all become environmentalists. Or, maybe they just like money. It could be both!
Houston, Texas. Home to the best baseball team in the world (sorry Savannah Bananas), amazing food, awesome museums. It’s the city that gave us domed stadiums, Beyonce, Lizzo, UGK! [Editor’s Note: It’s been a while since I’ve admitted my pop-culture ignorance, but I have no clue what an UCK is. -DT]. It’s my hometown and I love it dearly. It’s also a place built on fossil fuels. The air is often thick with the burnoff of the refineries that line the ship channel — a reminder that many of the Rothkos and Flavins and Cassatts were purchased by rich benefactors who made their money pulling stuff out of the ground.
Among the many annual conferences in Houston for energy nerds it’s CERAweek (it stands for Cambridge Energy Research Associates Week, but that doesn’t really matter) that’s the most important. The future of global energy is decided in conference rooms and steakhouses around downtown. And what did the Big Wigs decide this year?
Green Jobs For Some, Miniature American Flags For Others!
Hopefully, you aren’t sick about hearing about the Inflation Reduction Act, but you cannot begin to grasp the impact it’s going to have on our lives over the next 10-15 years. Normally, we link to news and provide our own analysis. Today, I’m going to start with some analysis, because the analyst is pretty great. Levi Tillemann, if you don’t know, wrote a book called “The Great Race” that’s almost a decade old and made the following prognostications:
- China was going to subsidize itself to a battery industry that’s way bigger than what anyone else would be willing to do.
- The Japanese, who should have been the leaders in EVs, got spooked by nuclear power and the association with EVs and will pursue a mixed hydrogen future.
- The U.S. is way behind, but has the power to catch up whenever it wants.
The first two have been essentially proven. Chinese companies own the battery industry, to the point that the United States is importing its technology. Japanese automakers are obsessed with hydrogen.
And the third? It’s happening now. Tillemann paid close attention to CERAweek and penned this Op-Ed for The Hill, which I shall quote from liberally:
The conference’s founder and patron saint, Pulitzer Prize Winner Daniel Yergin summed up this year’s vibe in a conversation with the CEOs of two major oil companies, Hess and ConocoPhillips. “The big discussion this week,” he said, “is the Inflation Reduction Act.” The reason is simple: The IRA has shifted the calculus of global energy markets.
The importance of this recalibration cannot be overestimated. America has traditionally been the developed world’s most free-market economy. For many decades, America’s light-touch approach has allowed energy players to shuffle capital, squeeze workers, buy back shares, offshore investments and environmental problems while onshoring profits. But to profit from the IRA companies will have to do just the opposite: onshore supply chains, pay prevailing wages, invest handsomely in U.S. manufacturing communities, as well as adhere to strict environmental and labor standards.
That’s a big, big, big, big, big, big deal. I’m slightly biased because I grew up around the energy industry (a friend from Houston was in town and we grabbed lunch yesterday and he’s currently a lawyer for an oilfield services company), but this experience also gives me a sense of what’s real and what isn’t and this feels real.
Equally important is that this is, mostly, a bipartisan issue. Some politicians on the right will complain about electric cars and others on the left will kvetch about the role of the fossil fuel industry in all of this, but the number of jobs (see the map above) this is going to create in so many political jurisdictions makes this a law that’s going to be hard to kill.
Tillemann agrees:
Surprisingly, judging from the conversations at CERAWeek, the traditionally right-wing energy industry and many of America’s economic rivals are all about it.
[…]
The fact that America’s industrial juggernaut is finally coming around toward climate progress is beyond dispute. And the IRA is stoking the engines. And in a deeply divided country, that’s what we call progress.
Absolutely. To quote the great energy analyst Nikki Sixx, keep your eye on the money.
The Middle East Is Also About Green Jobs
If you don’t know what CERAweek is you may also not know who Sultan al-Jaber is. He’s gonna be important in all of this. Currently, he’s the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, but his biggest international role will be as the head of the 28th meeting of the Council of Parties (COP28)–this is where all the world’s leaders get together to decide what to do about global climate change (i.e. Paris Agreements)–in Dubai.
It seems like a weird choice! The Middle East isn’t exactly home to the most anti-oil folks, and the CEO of a big oil company doesn’t have a ton of incentive to get people to stop buying oil. In spite of all this, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry supports the leader. Why? If anyone is going to make the fossil fuel industry to listen it’s the fossil fuel industry.
Here’s some of the stuff that an oil man from the UAE told a bunch of oil execs in a Houston ballroom:
- Houston, we have a problem.
- We need to cut global emissions at 7% a year.
- Let’s get carbon capture and storage going.
- The science is clear on climate change.
- We need to get to net-zero emissions before 2050.
- 80% of the world lives in the global south and almost no investment goes there.
That’s also a big deal. Of course, as NPR notes in their coverage of the speech, there wasn’t a ton of talk about getting people out of cars:
But al-Jabar did not directly address emissions from transportation, where most crude oil ends up. Emissions from transport are the largest contributor to climate change in many countries, including the United States.
Al-Jaber singled out electricity, cement, steel and aluminum as targets for cleanup, but not trucks, cars, trains and aircraft. He called for far greater investment to speed the transition to cleaner industries.
Pobody’s nerfect.
Ok, There Was Some Hydrogen Talk, Too
Hydrogen is one of those ideas that makes sense in certain situations (trucking, shipping), and it’s a concept that is familiar enough to big energy companies and car companies that it feels safe. It’s just super expensive and not always efficient. People talked about hydrogen at CERAweek, and the big question was: is it blue or green hydrogen we care about?
I’m going to lean on Reuters and their report to explain this:
Hydrogen can be made in many ways, some cleaner than others. Among methods that produce what is known as green hydrogen are electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using power from renewables. Hydrogen can also be made from natural gas. When carbon emissions from the process are captured and stored, it is known as blue hydrogen.
The difference is environmentally important, but the biggest impact hydrogen is going to have is when it’s cheap and affordable:
Discussions and rules around classifying hydrogen made from renewable fuels or natural gas should be secondary to making the fuel affordable for consumers, said Colin Parfitt, vice president of Midstream for Chevron Corp.
“There is way too much conversation about if it is blue or green,” Parfitt said. “The challenge is how do you create hydrogen as a business.”
Transporting hydrogen is currently not commercially viable nor affordable for consumers, Parfitt said.
Being able to move hydrogen and use it for industry is a huge deal, especially when it comes to reducing the world’s dependence on Russian natural gas.
China, Russia, And CERAweek
Did you see that video of a Russian fighter jet almost crashing into a drone? I can’t tell if it’s a great shot from the Russian jet (which appears to be dumping fuel) or a sign that the Russian pilots who weren’t killed or captured in Ukraine are, uh, bad.
Either way, all of the above news about CERAweek points to a large portion of the world that’s united against the idea of Russia (via fossil fuels) and China (via batteries and renewable tech) controlling the future of energy.
John Podesta, the guy in charge of spending all of this green energy money for the Biden Administration, did a chat at CERAweek as well and had this to say (full transcript here):
We’ve got to build more reliable supply chains, here in the United States and working with our allies and partners, so we’re not dependent on China to secure our clean energy future.
Welcome to 2023, where the U.S. and China (with a sideline in Russian and Europe) are fighting to see who controls green energy! It’s like the game Risk, but with solar panels instead of armies.
That being said, Senator Joe Manchin (who almost single-handedly got the Inflation Reduction Act through the Senate), has been critical of Podesta and the administration for letting Chinese materials get into the country. He put out this statement last week:
“It is beyond irresponsible for someone speaking on behalf of the White House to not only condone but also advocate for sending American tax dollars to Chinese companies. That is not consistent with either the IRA or the CHIPS + Science Act, which had widespread bipartisan support due to concerns about Chinese supply chains. These words are especially concerning as rumors circulate about the Administration thoughtlessly considering opening up the EV credit’s eligibility beyond our free trade agreement partners and allow the laundering of Chinese minerals and materials through Trojan horse agreements. We have a dire dependence problem and comments like this make it clear that this Administration doesn’t care about the energy security of this nation. I will do everything in my power to prevent this Administration from welcoming China to take federal dollars with open arms.”
At some level, given the lead China has in green tech and mineral sourcing, and the urgency to build fast, it’s likely that Chinese companies will be the beneficiary of some federal dollars.
It’s a concern but, in my opinion, not a huge one. After years of watching Chinese companies clone and copy technology from western countries it’s not a bad idea to, ahem, get a better glimpse of what they’re doing.
Besides, while free trade doesn’t actually prevent wars, some level of cooperation between China and the rest of the world on decarbonization can hopefully help lower both the world’s metaphorical and literal temperature.
Your Turn
Do you buy it? Is this real? Is green energy the future, or are we going to look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking?
Also if you liked this post, why not become an Autopian Member?
Photos: CERAweek
I like the implication that the oil industry needs to be told that climate change is real. Exxon knew what was coming all the way back in the 70s but they suppressed the truth because it was inconvenient to their profits. It is this that will never let me trust anything they say regarding climate change or decarbonization.
Well, the extremely unrealistic EU green politics have more or less killed many of manufacturing bases in Germany or led to many manufacturers to move their operations out of Germany. They cannot simply afford to stay green while remaining competitive in the international market.
INA Schaeffler is the latest industrial conglomerate to consider moving its operation out of Germany. Bayer has planned to shut down its German operations for good and move the entire production to China where the green politics are “foreign concept”. China and India are only countries that don’t have to abide to the Paris Accord.
In a very rare convergence, the hard left party, Die Linke (The Left), and conservative/centre-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, which is viewed as the equivalent of MAGA), have joined the forces to criticise the German green politics as unachievable and based on fraudulent studies and analysis.
I don’t like the idea that the heads of the energy industry, who have been knowingly destroying this planet for decades, are getting to decide the path that green energy adoption will take and by proxy the future of this planet and everyone on it. Shouldn’t this really be up to the people that live on this planet to decide the direction taken?
I’m all for green energy, but the way humanity is collectively using it is abuse. Nothing has been done to address planned obsolescence, or the fact that a small percentage of the population accounts for most of the resource consumption, or the wasteful resource consumption that is the direct result of government(especially in the military).
If anything, Ted Kaczynski is being proven increasingly correct. What we’re seeing unfold is yet more complexity traps, so that a small group of people can retain their ill-gotten gains and undeserved political power, at the expense of everyone and everything else.
Are you sure that’s fuel? You’d think fuel dumped right into the jet’s exhaust would ignite.
“Hydrogen is one of those ideas that makes sense in certain situations (trucking, shipping)”
Hydrogen doesn’t really make sense in any scenario for replacing ICE vehicles. It’s too problematic/expensive to produce, transfer, and store. It’s too difficult to prevent from leaking when storing, transferring, or holding in a vehicle’s fuel tank. It’s too corruptible given the likelihood that the creation and transfer of the hydrogen won’t be green.
“There is way too much conversation about if it is blue or green… the challenge is how do you create hydrogen as a business.”
Seriously –NO. If it’s blue, you’re likely doing better to keep using ICE vehicles. Hydrogen is worse than useless if it isn’t created from renewable sources. (The fossil fuel industry gave dirty hydrogen the “blue” moniker, knowing it didn’t sound so awful. It should be called black hydrogen — as in the color of the hearts of fossil fuel industry propagandists.
That is why ammonia is being looked into as the “carrier” for hydrogen fuel. The methods used to ship and store it have been around for decades.
“The fact that America’s industrial juggernaut is finally coming around toward climate progress is beyond dispute. And the IRA is stoking the engines. And in a deeply divided country, that’s what we call progress.”
Which only happened because one party (mostly) controlled both the executive and legislative branches. And could easily be destroyed in one fell swoop if the 2024 election goes poorly.
“who almost single-handedly got the Inflation Reduction Act through the Senate”
That’s an interesting way to describe the man who almost single-handedly killed the IRA. The fact that the makeup of the Senate happened to leave him with the linchpin vote does not mean he was helpful to the bill.
What about… Not fighting Russia and China? Is that not an option anymore?
Nah, not really.
Russia has been actively targeting shelters that house women and kids. Direct violation of a couple international laws and a treaty or two. They won’t stop until they are stopped, or until they get what they want.
Is it just me, or is dumping fuel on a drone an incredibly poor strategy? What were they hoping, to burn out the engine?
Yeah, probably hoping it would be too rich and would stall (in which case it just… glides? Dumb) or it would actually ignite the fuel and cause some sort of fire damage
Yeah, and the idiot Russian pilots were probably oblivious to the fact that jet fuel is just slightly more refined than diesel… The most it might do is clog the drone’s intake and starve it of adequate air for combustion. It’s not going to go “kaboom” like they probably thought. Pi**ing into the wind is all they achieved.
No. Given the speed that they and the drone were traveling, they probably figured that mass of fuel hitting the drone would fuck it up not that it would start it on fire. They were right.
I’ve been saying green energy should be a boon for former fossil fuel towns. They leveled the mountains in WV, now build green energy manufacturing facilities there.
This comments section is why this site rocks. Not only are we internalizing the right points from this piece, but we’re also quoting Erasure. Well done, folks.
Uh, David, It’s “UGK” not “UCK”
UGK is an awesome hip hop duo. Uck is a noise of disgust and distress. Here’s an example:
” :uck: Did you see that DT mis-spelled UGK? How gross.”
Anyways.
The Russian pilots, from all the people I know that are in-the-know are… bad. Part of it is the disparity in stall and cruise speed of the two aircraft (the SU-27 is shown in a heavily nose up position while it attempts a near-glide in the video because it is going as slow as it can while still retaining control) but more of it is everything we’ve seen with Russian military in the past year. Incompetence.
“CERAweek (it stands for Cambridge Energy Research Associates Week, but that doesn’t really matter)”
Of COURSE it matters, because if you don’t tell us, we won’t be able to concentrate on the rest of the words in the article!
[I recognize that “us” might be a stretch, but if publication authors are “we,” I stand by it.]
Still just waiting on the re-name for this section..
shhhhhhh
That map makes me proud to be a Michigander.
Thank Virginia’s dumb governor
I am all for improving but the enviromentalists will protest a hydrogen pipeline as quick as an oil pipeline. A hydrogen plant or electrical generating plant as quick as a petroleum plant. They were pro-nuke prior to anti-nuke. They just want to protest and anything not perfect is another reason to protest. It is why noone outside their woke world considers anything they say about anything.
Schrödingers Environmentalist.
That’s a whole lot of strawmen you’re arguing against. There are certainly people on both sides hindering progress here, but your hypothetical environmentalists who are supposedly against everything are not remotely the problem.
His complete lack of functioning brain cells, however, is a huge problem.
Bad take Dave strikes again. I will personally write you a check for $100 if you leave this site forever.
I resent every drop of fossil fuel I burn, but I have to admit Sultan al-Jaber has a point. Energy-intensive industries and especially raw materials processing don’t NEED the portability and energy-intensity of fossil fuels the way transportation does, and are great places to avert carbon emissions and can often improve cost efficiency.
Of course it can’t hurt that new low-carbon processes will often require new plants in new locations, usually in the Global South. It’s also worth noting that the Middle East is on its way to being uninhabitable.
That said, EVs and grid-connected batteries are awesome and let’s build tons and tons of them.
“Equally important is that this is, mostly, a bipartisan issue. Some politicians on the right will complain…”
Oh boy howdy will the right complain about this. I work for a Houston company that reports on the energy sector, primarily oil and gas, and the number of customer service complaints we get every time we publish an article that even mentions ESG, Energy Transition, Carbon Capture, etc. The main story on our site right now is covering CERAWeek (and uses the same lede photo as this article) and I’ll bet my lunch again that we’re going to get more emails and phone calls about being “too woke”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyone who uses the term woke as an insult or in a negative way has an irrelevant and likely very worthless opinion about virtually anything. See tacotruckdave in this thread as an example of that ignorance.
I can judge someone’s level of seriousness about carbon pollution based on how they feel about things like nuclear power, carbon capture, and even geoengineering. Stuff that isn’t sexy, but is effective.
It’s easy to pontificate on Twitter about how we should have 100% electric cars, 100% renewable electricity, car-free cities, mass transit everywhere, communal ownership of everything, etc.
Oh and don’t forget 100% equality in all societal outcomes and impacts of green tech. Degrowth until we get there!
It’s a lot harder to recognize that society in general will never ever ever buy into anything that reduces their standards of living. Nor should they need to, IMO. And the unavoidable consequence of that stance over the short and medium term is that fossil fuels are going to remain a big part of life. So how can we make up for that in other ways? The unbroken story of humanity for the last ten thousand years is overcoming problems and becoming richer using technology. There’s no reason that needs to stop now.
Stop with the pie-in-the-sky utopian dreams, and the ridiculous doom-mongering about how the world will be unlivable before my kids graduate high school, and focus on making real improvements today. That’s why I like most of the provisions of the IRA.
The number of friends I have on the left that cry out for carbon neutral energy but won’t even consider nuclear is disappointing.
While I can believe that nuclear -can- be done properly and safely from an engineering perspective, I have huge doubts about whether it -would- be done so. The history of profits over safety, speed over proper procedures, and shady dealings in the name of profits tell me, that someone somewhere -has- to show that they exceed each and every regulation and safety concern when building a rather simple energy project. They need to prove that they -can- do it right. Engineering good, execution bad is what the US nuclear energy companies did, and they showed they are not capable of doing it right.
I’ve worked in enough refineries and shipyards and offshore enough to know that’s the truth. Corners will absolutely be cut but if the YT University is to be believed some of the newer pellet designs are more failsafe than the old school chernobyl and 3mile style reactors.
Firmly on the left, firmly in favor of nuclear as a transitional energy source.
The number of friends I have on the right that cry out for America-first economic policies but won’t even consider halting our reliance on foreign energy sources is disappointing.
https://youtu.be/EhAemz1v7dQ
Forgive the rant but… what’s stopping y’all from building some plants? Distill some heavy water, source some depleted uranium and have yourself a CANDU design. We just had a period of basically free money, if you can make baseload megawatts cheaper, make the business case.
I’ve been hearing folks gripe about them damn anti-nuke hippies and NIMBYs and regulation since before Three Mile Island was commissioned. I’ve heard a whole lot of speculation about slow/fast breeders, thorium, molten salts, pebble beds and other wackadoodle stuff I don’t even WANT to remember, and not a single megawatt has come out of all that noise.
It’s nice to dream about the Tom Swift Jr. Nuclear Powered Submacopter future, but I gotta say, receiving beamed power from the nearest continually-functioning fusion reactor works pretty good.
Now hang on, if we’re talking Tom Swift you have to be specific. He delves into sea excursions more than Kirk takes his shirt off.
The Jetmarine?
The Aquatomic Tracker?
Diving Seacopter? Spectromarine Selector? Deep Sea Hydrodome? Subocean Geotron?
Yeah, I’ve got them on the shelf and I’m reading off titles. If we’d just followed this plan we would have everything green by now.
I have a copy of Tom Swift and his Motorcycle. This is 1910’s version of the future of transportation. It’s good to hear that Jr. made good on his Dad’s futuristic dreams.
“Ya’ll”
Unfortunately conventional reactors take a long time to bring online and when their lifespan is up, take a lot of time to refurbish. That’s not even taking costs into account.
I’ve talked to people on different parts of the enviro-spectrum and there is a surprising consensus about micro and small reactors. The biggest safety concern seems to be tracking their locations for security purposes. Not an insurmountable problem.
One thing that is simply not discussed enough is the grid. It is the week link and also not often enough in the right place. Look at plains states or the prairie provinces. Lot’s of wind and solar available, but very limited ways to market. If the governments would direct the conversations wasted on pipelines to building out reliable transmission from these areas, all of that energy can be brought to markets where it is needed.
Conventional nuclear has a similar problem in that it is very centralized. It also can’t just be turned on and off to meet demand. Micro and small reactors can at least be better tailored to locations and grid easier. Especially as different regions grow.
The beauty of SMR nuclear technology is that it can be distributed geographically far more easily once they’ve proven out a few plants. There is/was a plan to introduce a new set of transmission lines to move renewables around — and as far as I know, it’s never going to get off of the drawing board. People a bananas stupid about transmission lines, and certainly don’t want them in *their* back yard. We have a much better chance of distributing reactors than building a new transmission network.
There are a few large (MW scale) nuke projects right now in Georgia and South Carolina.
Both are years behind and billions over budget.
While the technology is sound, and safe, leave it to humans to screw it up. One of the projects mentioned above was severely delayed when they outsourced all of the plumbing to a company with zero experience in nuclear power plant construction. Guess what had to be completely replaced??
“Forgive the rant but… what’s stopping y’all from building some plants? Distill some heavy water, source some depleted uranium and have yourself a CANDU design. We just had a period of basically free money, if you can make baseload megawatts cheaper, make the business case.”
We did:
https://www.tva.com/newsroom/watts-bar-2-project/watts-bar-unit-2-timeline
https://www.georgiapower.com/company/news-center/2023-articles/vogtle-unit-3-reaches-initial-criticality.html
“I’ve been hearing folks gripe about them damn anti-nuke hippies and NIMBYs and regulation since before Three Mile Island was commissioned. I’ve heard a whole lot of speculation about slow/fast breeders, thorium, molten salts, pebble beds and other wackadoodle stuff I don’t even WANT to remember, and not a single megawatt has come out of all that noise.”
Not true:
The third and final core used at Shippingport was an experimental, light water moderated, thermal breeder reactor. It kept the same seed-and-blanket design, but the seed was now uranium-233 and the blanket was made of thorium. Being a breeder reactor, it had the ability to transmute relatively inexpensive thorium to uranium-233 as part of its fuel cycle. The breeding ratio attained by Shippingport’s third core was 1.01. Over its 25-year life, the Shippingport power plant operated for about 80,324 hours, producing about 7.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Atomic_Power_Station
Cost. Or rather, the dropping probability of long-term profitability. For decades, a nuclear plant was a long but sure bet. Spend an absolutely massive amount of money building it, then after a relatively short period of operation start making large profits. But the price per kWh on renewables is now much lower than nuclear. So investing in a nuclear plant today is basically betting that recent trends in renewables week and grid storage won’t continue.
I often come across as too… enthusiastic about this topic. I want to run with every improvement/advancement and see where it takes us. I’m all for the transition to BEVs for consumer commuter use. I’m all for solar and wind farms being installed where it makes sense. In my lifetime, we’ve been lied to about the climate, learned about the lies, and are starting to come around with showing everyone that this is a real thing.
I know the transition isn’t going to be overnight. Just because I advocate for BEVs doesn’t mean I expect that’s everyone’s purchase for their next vehicle. (I could make a case for it, but in the end I know it’s not realistic yet.) I advocate for green energy, however until we get a workable, large-scale energy storage solution, nuclear absolutely needs to be part of the equation.
In the end, I keep coming back to: we have to start now. We’ve been arguing about this for too long, and we can’t wait any more. We have technology that can help the environment with little to no impact on our lives, and it keeps getting better!
There’s a political cartoon by Joel Pett that shows a climate summit. There’s a person standing up in the back of the room asking “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?” That’s been my ideal on this subject since I saw the cartoon.
Leaded gasoline unquestionably lowered America’s standard of living. Society bought into it hand over fist.
Unleaded was mandated by the government. Plenty of examples of that kind of regulatory thing out there.
Perhaps my point was clumsily worded, but I meant people aren’t going to stand for things like giving up their cars for mass transit. Or living in smaller homes. Or buying smaller cars. You can get mad at that all you want, but it’s human nature and unlikely to be changed by scolds. The environmental movement the last 50 years has been about shaming, about reduced consumption, and about equity. And while it’s gotten us some successes, I’d argue we would have been better off embracing an attitude of “through technology, better things are possible for both us and the planet”. I’m cautiously optimistic that we are getting closer to that attitude.
Just realized I may have misread your comment.
Leaded gas was a wonder at the time it was invented, and the health effects weren’t publicly known. It would be like getting upset that we built a bunch of buildings with asbestos (another miracle substance until we knew better).
‘Leaded gas was a wonder at the time it was invented, and the health effects weren’t publicly known.’
The detrimental health effects of lead had been known for thousands of years. Even the Romans knew it was bad for health (mostly from watching lead mine slaves die) yet lead was cheap and easy to use (tasty too!) so they looked the other way.
https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-historical-perspective.html
As to the health effects of leaded gasoline the evidence was quite clear even then:
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a39356456/the-man-who-poisoned-the-world-with-leaded-gasoline/
This seems to be a perfect time for my favorite Upton Sinclar quote:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
That means you Thomas Midgley Jr.
Again, did Joe Blow fueling his car know that he was poisoning himself? I highly doubt it. He just knew it made his car faster. Just like he knew the asbestos in his house kept it from burning down, the processed food he was eating was cheap and easy, and the cigarettes he was smoking tasted good.
The very idea of corporate conspiracies to sell dangerous products requires keeping the public ignorant of their real harms. You can’t in the same breath argue that people buying those same unhealthy products are willingly or knowingly sacrificing quality of life.
Maybe don’t go with the Romans as health examples. They literally lined copper pipes and cups with lead because they believed copper was poisinous.
These are also the braniacs that perpetuated the idea that ice in your drink (a rich fad brought down from the mountains in proto-coolers) caused all sorts of joint and gastric maladies, to the point that modern Italians I have worked with will (rather infuriatingly) turn fans and A/C off when their back hurts.
“I meant people aren’t going to stand for things like giving up their cars for mass transit. Or living in smaller homes. Or buying smaller cars. You can get mad at that all you want, but it’s human nature and unlikely to be changed by scolds.”
Says the guy with a V10…
Not sure what that is supposed to imply, but I don’t exempt myself from human nature by any means.
If anyone really thinks a low volume sports car that I drive 1-2000 miles per year and that gets better mileage than millions of trucks, SUVs, and luxury cars makes any kind of difference to the climate, well you’re wrong.
“Not sure what that is supposed to imply, but I don’t exempt myself from human nature by any means.”
Which was the point. Asking someone to switch from a car to public transit to go about the necessities of life is a much bigger ask than simply not playing with their V10 toy. A V10 sports car takes the 1st world privilege to a whole ‘nother level.
“If anyone really thinks a low volume sports car that I drive 1-2000 miles per year and that gets better mileage than millions of trucks, SUVs, and luxury cars makes any kind of difference to the climate, well you’re wrong.”
NO one car individually makes makes any kind of difference to the climate. It’s a group effort. Those trucks SUVs and luxury cars are also guilty but that does not absolve you, me, or anyone who benefits from burning carbon. It’s just a matter of degree.
The issues caused by lead are not immediate. In the first few years, the issue isn’t noticeable.
I’m an engineer working in energy distribution. This subject is my home turf, and it is rant time.
Nuclear power, carbon capture, and geoengineering are VERY sexy, but ineffective. When a person suggests them, I know they do not appreciate the limitations and obstacles of the energy industry.
Nuclear is great. I love nuclear power. I’ve toured nuclear plants and geeked out over the control rooms and turbines. I have no prejudice against nuclear. I also can tell you that (most) utilities are fully behind the green revolution because I actually talk to the engineers making the decisions. The reason why nuclear has zero traction in the movement is… money. It’s expensive. That’s it. No conspiracy. No “woke” mob. Just capitalism.
Based on publically available Lazard LCOE and LCOS metrics comparing nuclear and conventional utility-grade solar PV+storage, nuclear costs 9-13x as much to build, 8x as long to construct, and 1.3-1.5x as much per kWh over its expected lifetime. And that’s being generous! Lazard’s estimate of 5.75yr construction time is optimistic — it’s usually 8yr due to inherent vulnerability to delays. And using solar+storage as a benchmark is optimistic — as we all know, hybrid solar/wind+storage delivers better on baseload and capacity factor and requires less storage to account for weather variation.
So how does this hit the energy industry’s limitations? First, the staggering initial cost of construction combined with the 8yr construction time means the utility must procure massive loans, pay interest, and shoulder the risk that the project may go overbudget or fail, all for 8 years before seeing a red cent of payout. That’s a big financial risk and even investor-owned utilities are FAR more risk-averse than corporations. Second, nuclear plants take engineering labor, and as you’ve probably heard, there’s a shortage of engineers right now (excepting programmers), and it’s hitting the energy industry hard. It’s a tragedy, but knowledge is vanishing with retirements, and the 30-somethings replacing them have to be equal parts engineer and archaeologist, so the sheer FAMILIARITY of renewables is an advantage that cannot be overstated. Third is scalability and maintenance training; utilities prefer deploying small-scale projects as pilots before fully committing to anything, because they need to teach their maintenance crews the stuff they won’t learn in school, and hands-on is the best way to do it. Fourth, safety regulations are harder to meet for nuclear; the nuclear industry voluntarily holds itself to higher “best practice” standards than the NRC requires, and that’s why they have a good safety track record. But take it from a high-voltage safety guy: safety is time-consuming and expensive and Omron doesn’t accept your firstborn as payment.
Carbon capture and geoengineering are admittedly outside my wheelhouse, so I’ll make it brief. Every carbon capture or geoengineering study I’ve read (so far) either handwaves the energy cost (where’s that ammonia coming from?) or straight-up bankrupts the global economy when deployed on adequate scale (sulphur dioxide ain’t free). Calling geoengineering “practical” seems like a wild mischaracterization when it’s never actually been practiced.
End rant. Nuclear energy is gorgeous, and you should all appreciate it. But the energy industry doesn’t have the money or the manpower to make it happen right now, and even if they did, it might be smarter to just make twice as much renewable generation. If we want to address climate change without massive alterations to our standard of living, we have to pursue more practical solutions.
I also want to add some less-ranty but more-boring nuance in the footnotes here.
I’ve been seeing some exciting developments in Euro nuclear tech which could be a game changer, but you (sadly) can’t pick up a European power plant and plonk it down in North America and expect it to run. The system has to be re-qualified and even the smallest component has to be proven compliant with IEEE/ANSI rather than IEC. So that process would take about as long as redeveloping the entire power plant.
Another random piece of nuance is power diversity. Power generation and distribution, much like your retirement portfolio or Tinder strategy, works best when diversified and hedged against risk. Nuclear, much like every alternative energy tech, has a role to play in its ecosystem, even if that role isn’t the lead actor.
And another little piece of nuance is the climate change timetable. Every utility’s a little different here, but the US grid from 2005 to 2021 reduced emissions by 40%, doubling wind and tripling solar from 2015 to 2021. They’re racing the clock, usually targetting full decarbonization around 2045. They’re not waiting around. So while I’m very excited for some emergent power generation and distribution tech (Wendelstein 7-X hype let’s goooooo), I’m also wary of the fact that if it takes 10 years to develop and 10 years to deploy, it’ll be deploying into an ecosystem where almost all our energy demand is met by carbon neutral energy already. So a lot of these techs are cool for their own sake, but won’t be displacing fossil fuels.
I also work in the power industry, and quite a bit of this was informative for me; thanks for writing it all out.
I guess my thought process is more about where our research and development should be leading us, not necessarily what is practical or cost effective right now. I don’t think carbon capture or geoengineering is deployable at scale in 2023, just as I don’t believe nuclear reactors are cost effective compared to alternatives in 2023.
But at some point, unless you believe 100% of power needs (in an economy where most or all fossil fuel use is replaced by electricity) can be met by wind and solar plus batteries, we will need something else. Ideally baseload like nuclear.
And I truly believe carbon capture and/or geoengineering has a role to play too. At a minimum, we’d be foolish not to research it much more than we are now. The advice/scolding we get now is “drive less, eat less meat, live in a smaller house, etc”. This I believe is not practical. We should be finding ways to have our cake and eat it too.
When you put it that way, I can definitely agree. Nuclear has a TON of potential.
Private R&D funding is mostly going to renewables and efficiency because private research favors incremental improvement with immediate financial results. Nuclear research (like carbon capture and geoengineering) is blue-sky transformative tech, so it heavily relies on public sector R&D, which is criminally underfunded (DOE R&D budget in 2022 was half what it was in 1980). I hate to see options left on the table like that.
I think this might also be a good explanation for why the EV pivot has so much more momentum than mass transit — EVs are an incremental improvement which draws private investment, while mass transit is a transformational change which would require public funding from a starved infrastructure budget.
Somewhat ironically most of that grid emissions reduction came from the conversion of coal power generation to natural gas fueled generation (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48296). Perhaps the best single investment we could make for the future would be funding developing countries (India in particular) to change their plans for new coal power plants to any other source.
In the US I think the most important gains in the shorter term will come from demand side management (for example my electric utility has a device that allows them to shut off my AC unit for a 15 minute block when demand is particularly high) and improvements in long distance transmission to move renewable energy around. I’m very hopeful about the potential for geothermal which can provide baseload power with basically no downsides where the geologic conditions are favorable. Nuclear energy has some very interesting test projects going on but you’re right that it’ll be 20-30+ years before any of them could be deployed on a significant scale, long term I think we might see it replacing baseload provided by any remaining natural gas, and replacing some hydropower which while carbon free has some other environmental problems and reliability issues with increasingly variable rainfall in the west.
I do think that we’ll eventually need some sort of mass scale geoengineering or carbon removal to unscrew humanity, we’re certainly making good progress towards carbon neutrality but much of those gains are likely to be negated by emissions associated with increases in the standard of living occurring in the developing and third world (a worthy trade off to be sure but it does have a cost that will have to be paid at some point).
“I’m very hopeful about the potential for geothermal which can provide baseload power with basically no downsides where the geologic conditions are favorable.”
Only commercial PV, wind and NG are cheaper.
https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/geothermal/pros-cons-geothermal-energy/
https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf
Interestingly, demand response like turning off the HVAC or incentivising people to charge their cars at night is (in my experience) usually caused by distribution bottlenecks rather than generation bottlenecks, and distribution is usually a much easier fix. There are exceptions, and off the top of my head I can think of a certain west coast utility who would absolutely try to control when you charge your car rather than make long-overdue investments in their infrastructure.
Unrelated, if you want to hear about the current state and challenges facing geothermal power, and you also happen to like dry German humor delivered through gritted teeth, I recommend Sabine Hossenfelder’s video: https://youtu.be/l6UGpaKnkS0
“It’s a lot harder to recognize that society in general will never ever ever buy into anything that reduces their standards of living”
But for a lot of things, there is no reduction… and sometimes you don’t even have to pay more. Just do some proper homework.
Cases in point:
1. When I redid my roof, I also upgraded the roof insulation. I did it mainly to make my house more pleasant to live in. The energy savings were a bonus
2. Appliances… particularly fridges, dishwashers and clothing washers. There’s a huge difference between the most and least efficient models. And in the case of fridges, some of the most efficient models (the conventional ones with the freezer on top) are also cheaper. I know this because I replaced my fridge last year. So many stores are overstocked with stupidly overpriced and less efficient “modern” fridges that need 2 or more compressors. I view them as inferior to the conventional fridge that has the freezer on top and only needs 1 compressor.
Now about the doom-mongering… in my view, it’s a necessary evil to get people and goverments to make the necessary changes over time to reduce emissions
Regarding roofs have you considered painting it white?
“So if you were to use our paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 sq ft (93 sq m), we estimate you could get a cooling power of 10 kilowatts. That’s more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most houses,”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56749105
It’s like to oil companies has discovered there’s money to be made in this green stuff.
It’s all about profits. Always has been. The IRA is a new profit driver for them. A net win, regardless.
Uhhhh UGK was from Port Arthur, Matt. The Gulf Coast does not appreciate your attempts at stolen valor.
Bun B is basically the mayor of Houston! I’m also counting Janis Joplin as a Houstonian. The Golden Triangle is Houston!
Lizzo was also neither born nor made her music in Houston, so she was an odd one to include. I won’t stand for this Minneapolis erasure.
No but she went to grade school and college here so she gets mentioned on the local news as “Houston’s own” every time she blinks her eyes.
Erasure? The synth-pop band? I wish Minneapolis had our version of Erasure…
I love me some classic Erasure. Don’t feel bad David, I have no idea who UGK or UCK are.
Go ahead with your dreaming
For what it’s worth
Or you’ll be stricken bound
Kicking up dirt
For when it’s dark
You never know what the night it may bring
Go ahead with your scheming
And shop at home
You’ll find treasure
While cooking up bones
But the knife is sharp
You’d better watch that you don’t cut your hands
And they covered up the sun
Until the birds had flown away
And the fishes in the sea
Had gone to sleep
Portion of Chorus by Erasure
This song is going to be stuck in my head all damned day. I’m not complaining, I just have to see if I can find a copy at the record store up the street later on today to exorcise the demon.
As someone who grew up in Port McArthur (well, mostly in Groves) and as such constantly hears about UGK (and Janis Joplin) you’ll notice that Bun B (much like me) may be from Port Arthur but he’s lived in Houston for how long now? I might get back to the Triangle a few times a year for friends/family but I ain’t moving back and consider myself a Houstonian now. I assume he feels the same.
Im just here to say that Int’l Players Anthem should warrant consideration for the title of greatest rap song of all time
Greatest Posse Cut, no doubt. 100%.
So, I typed a text to a girl I used to see
A strong case could be made