37 Comments

Discussions of externalities of co2 emissions are nonsense unless positive and negative are accounted for.

Positives, without fossil fuels at least 7 of the 8 billion on earth wouldn’t exist.

Maybe let’s ask what they think.

A 24hour blackout in Alberta during -40c, which almost happened January 13th as ALL our ruinables went to zero for a long period would be existential, the only thing worse would be a meteor strike in the center of the province for level of destruction and loss of life.

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At least food spoilage could be minimized by using utilizing the worlds largest chest freezer (the outdoors)

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I agree on trying to get environmentalists to try to discuss the positive externalities of the things they oppose (e.g., fossil fuels, nuclear) in addition to the negative ones (which, honestly, I feel get downplayed by supporters). However, I think it’s unrealistic. Their beliefs are akin to religious fervor in which sinners (i.e., those who disagree) deserve to be punished and those who haven’t “received the word” are primitives that need to be converted or conquered.

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That’s where we get to ridicule them! Thats the fun part!

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I don’t believe I have ever seen the externalities of lithium and rare earth taken into account for wind and solar

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Ruinables… nice one

It’s baffling how little our society appreciates the externalities of reliable energy, but hey, more for the Energy Bad Boys to write about!

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That’s how we see it

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The costs of blackouts are real, but they are not linear or consistent across time. I live in Minnesota. If I were to lose power for one minute during a mild June night, I would not even notice it until the following morning when some of the clocks in my house would indicate that power was lost sometime during the night. If I were to lose power for three days in late December or early January, I would sit in the dark freezing. My pipes might burst, my home might experience severe damage, and the possibility of death would be real. I have seen cost estimates for winter storm Uri as high as 300 billion and the number of deaths directly attributed to that storm in the hundreds. It’s very likely the actual loss of life was much higher. The longer a blackout, the more costs grow.

As with many things, the costs of a blackout are not uniform. The cost to an insurance agent in a multitenant building may be minimal while the cost to a grocery store may be much higher. The costs to a poor person who has no ability to provide backup power could be substantial while the cost to a wealthier person who can afford an electric generator might be less.

One of the stated goals of more liberal people is helping the poor. Higher electricity, prices and the uneven impact of blackouts work directly against that vision.

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Absolutely. Everyone has different needs for electricity and costs associated with losing it.

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And generac sales are meaningless if we lose the gas network at the same time, something we are trying to help along as did Texas.

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Thank you for this specific example of why we need reliable power.

Thank you for the shout-out to my Substack, too!

In defending Vermont Yankee, I often said that "Everything happens in a village." This was a quote from Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Miss Marple was able to solve all sorts of crimes because she made analogies to less spectacular crimes in her little village.

Food rotting at a specific grocery store is a warning to all of us. Not spectacular, but very real.

We need a reliable grid.

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This is big part of why any business serious about needing emergency power does not erect a solar or wind farm for their critical systems. In the industrial gulf coast area (where I work) you will have uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) that are battery-backed systems for low voltage controls. They can typically run the critical control systems for a few hours. Other more critical systems that need lots of power 24/7 utilize natural gas or diesel generators. There is no replacement when power is needed right then and there. Making that system weather dependent could be catastrophic for business and for human life. There’s a reason hospitals utilize hydrocarbon-based generation for backup - reliable, long-lasting, and able to be refueled easily.

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This sort of specific content is putting you boys at the top of the list of energy blogs I follow.

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That’s awesome! We’re glad to hear it!

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That was a quick turn around boys, good one. I remember when California started these PSPS shut offs and how devastating they were. They are probably the largest contributor to why I own a whole house generator My last 6 months were in a rural rental in PG&E PSPS service territory. PG&E made sure I knew it too. I quickly purchased a portable from Costco and joined the bi- weekly roar of running generators as the power went off for two to three days. The whole forest hummed with the noise. I had to have it, there was no cell service, and without internet there was no way to know if a wildfire was aporoching. I burned about $20 of California special blend gasoline a day to keep the lights on.

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Hell yeah. But the EIA data didn’t capture that so it wasn’t emitted!

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Isaac if you want some data on the California PSPS impacts, reach out to North State Grocery in Cottonwood California. They serve many of the rural communities impacted by PSPS events.

North State Grocery Inc

(530) 347-4621

https://g.co/kgs/KfcjxTV

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This is great. Think they’d share their utility bills over the years?

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There is a good chance, Shasta County where they are based in a very conservative area. I know the PSPS outages hit them pretty hard that first year. They were NOT happy

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Also if you’re going to examine the costs of outages, you should probably put in the costs to buy and run back-up systems.. most of which currently use diesel. So.. those would have their own carbon footprint, which would then need to be included…

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Sharon you also have to add maintenance and of course, the fact you needed to buy one. They are like any other ICE, they need service every 100 hrs or annually. Start batteries usually need replacement every 3 years. A 2.5 MW standby burns about 100 gallons of diesel every hour at full load. When I was running a little 7500 watt portable in California, it used about 6 gallons of gasoline every 12 hours.

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I do want to point out that the public power entities in Colorado I believe did not participate in the PSPS. Fort Collins Utility stayed in power, the utilities associated with Platte River Power Authority stayed on. I believe there were a few served by Xcel transmission that were forced off.

This is largely true of most public utilities. Some like SMUD have given into the political pressure, but they are the exception.

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Can (personally) confirm this was the case in my area.

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CO2 is beneficial so the idea of an externality from emissions of plant food is preposterous. They should count the benefits!

BTW can you imagine the deadweight cost of counting the emissions?

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The benefit of co2 is thousands of $$ per ton

We have not seen any negatives as of today.

If co2 is responsible for the slight warming over the previous 250 years, (not) that has saved more lives than anything in human history, which is the real problem of course, all those lives enabled and made bearable, an awful outcome for the climate/insane.

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I was trying to go through your math, if you take 119 kW/hour and multiply it by 24 hours, you get Power lost = 2,856 kWh lost, not 2,866. That translates into a loss of $35,000 dollars lost/2,856 kWh which is 12.26 dollars/kWh lost, or 12,254.90/MWh. A little bit more than what you calculated. Let me know if I am missing something. Thanks for your substack and thought the interview with PowerGab was great.

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Hi Chriss and thanks for your comment! It’s just the rounding in the spreadsheet that’s causing the difference.

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“Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what you going to do?” You guys are going to write a timely, detailed, and pertinent piece, aren’t you? Your choice of Colorado to detail unreliability was perfect. The State of Colorado has been flirting with the possibility of several “climate change” regulations and laws lately. They should go back to using large amount of electricity for lighting and growing pot.

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Imagine This happening in New York City. Mayhem. Yet, the elected officials are trying everything can to get outages to happen, and limit the supply of gas.

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

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Mencken. One of our favorites!!

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That quote is just the best

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Ya. One of our all-time favorites. We’ve used his one-liners as the quote intro at the top of the piece.

Say, did they catch the EcoLeftist arsonists who hit your office?

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My apologies for the late notice but the Colorado Public Utilities Commission are having a public outreach meeting this afternoon about the recent PSPS.

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https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpcu-gqDIqHdXYbGLG7r7I63958vLGB3cG#/registration

“Over the weekend of April 6-7, Colorado experienced a weather event that brought wind gusts of nearly 100 mph in some areas of the state and sustained high winds throughout the weekend. The outages and weather impacts were concentrated in the northern front range. Approximately 168,000 people across 9 counties were without power statewide during the event. 55,000 of these were the result of an intentional, precautionary outage, known as a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), conducted by Xcel to reduce the possibility of wildfire. This was the first deployment of a PSPS in the state.

The Commission would like to hear your experience and input on this event.

The Public Comment Hearing will start at 4 PM and conclude at 7 PM“

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Edit: recording is here. The comments start around the 35 minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPZb1rRwog8

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Thanks for posting!

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Thanks Isaac!

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