Reps. Sean Casten and Mike Levin have put together what amounts to the Democratic coalition's consensus position on clean energy permitting. It would boost transmission but also (critics say) empower community energy opponents. I dig into it with them.
Clean energy is fine and dandy, but what about affordability? Prices have become unaffordable to many folks because the legislators in most states have succumbed to the "alternative supplier" lobbyists and allowed these scammers to exist. "Alternative suppliers" don't "supply" any energy at all. They are simply trading firms that aggregate end users, use them as no-lose trading vehicles, jack up prices, and are a blight upon the land. Once I see them banned, I'll take ideas about clean energy more seriously.
You're talking about a market problem, not a technological problem. Solar or wind + storage is already the cheapest energy available, with costs continuing to come down.
The unsolved problem is _long term_ storage. If somebody figures out a really good way to store energy with relatively-low losses over _months_, rather than days-to-weeks, such that you can over-produce in summer and then export the energy in winter, they're going to make a mint. But even if we never really nail that down, if we sped up deployment, just ridiculously overbuilding the renewables so we have to curtail sometimes would probably be cheaper in the long run than fossil fuels.
Love the pod. Listen every week. Nothing delights me more than donning my running shoes and heading out the door with a new Volts in my ears. Just one thing I can't not raise, though. Not to nit-pick, but NEPA is the National Environmental POLICY (not protection) Act. Calling it the National Environmental Protection Act is a common mistake that belies a common misunderstanding of what NEPA "does." It is a heavily procedural law. It's not about "protection," it is about disclosure of facts. Whether decisionmakers use that information for purposes of protection is up to them. NEPA itself just gives us the procedural requirements around development of the record that informs decision-making.
The more I think about this episode, the more frustrated I become. I appreciate that at least we're acknowledging that the lengthy delays in permitting are imposing a cost. But it seems like people are under the mistaken impression that if we just fund better studies and more outreach, we'll be able to reach consensus.
There are a ton of participants in these processes for whom the _goal_ is that the project not happen. Possibly they don't even admit _to themselves_ that's the goal, but it's the practical outcome of their behavior. They like the status quo, or at least they are scared of the uncertainty of allowing a change. Maybe they think more clean energy is good in abstract, but they'd like it to happen somewhere farther away from them -- there's a reason we have the term "Not In My Back Yard".
No matter how much you study the issue and no matter how hard you try to reach consensus, these people will _always_ find new things to nitpick, because ultimately, drawing out the process until the project dies is the point. If your goal is consensus, then you are in-advance granting a Heckler's Veto, and ther will _always_ be a heckler.
Really appreciate both Reps pushing back on the NIMBYism talking point that too often comes from people who do a lot of posting and not a lot of energy deployment.
I work for Tesla Energy (though I'm speaking in my personal capacity here, not for the company). I've been working on this stuff since we were just starting out with deploying utility scale systems -- we spent a couple months with an enormous countdown clock over our area of the Deer Creek office, counting down to when the Hornsdale system in South Australia would go live. Before that I worked on commercial solar, when SolarCity was still a separate company. I'm one of the people who's had a hand in drafting the commissioning processes for this stuff -- what has to happen when so that we can be confident when we ultimately go into service everything will actually work right; how to adapt if there are delays (and let me tell you, there are delays!); etc. I probably have more hands-on experience with deploying clean energy systems than 99% of commenters here. Everything from the abstract project management design, to having personally been on-site with new products, swapping boards to troubleshoot problems. (Most recently at a 20 MW solar farm west of Tucson.)
And with respect to the Representatives -- I do appreciate what they're trying to do, and there's a lot to commend in their bill -- I think the gentlemen are _wildly_ underestimating how much impact NIMBYs have in slowing down critical transmission projects.
Clean energy is fine and dandy, but what about affordability? Prices have become unaffordable to many folks because the legislators in most states have succumbed to the "alternative supplier" lobbyists and allowed these scammers to exist. "Alternative suppliers" don't "supply" any energy at all. They are simply trading firms that aggregate end users, use them as no-lose trading vehicles, jack up prices, and are a blight upon the land. Once I see them banned, I'll take ideas about clean energy more seriously.
You're talking about a market problem, not a technological problem. Solar or wind + storage is already the cheapest energy available, with costs continuing to come down.
The unsolved problem is _long term_ storage. If somebody figures out a really good way to store energy with relatively-low losses over _months_, rather than days-to-weeks, such that you can over-produce in summer and then export the energy in winter, they're going to make a mint. But even if we never really nail that down, if we sped up deployment, just ridiculously overbuilding the renewables so we have to curtail sometimes would probably be cheaper in the long run than fossil fuels.
Love the pod. Listen every week. Nothing delights me more than donning my running shoes and heading out the door with a new Volts in my ears. Just one thing I can't not raise, though. Not to nit-pick, but NEPA is the National Environmental POLICY (not protection) Act. Calling it the National Environmental Protection Act is a common mistake that belies a common misunderstanding of what NEPA "does." It is a heavily procedural law. It's not about "protection," it is about disclosure of facts. Whether decisionmakers use that information for purposes of protection is up to them. NEPA itself just gives us the procedural requirements around development of the record that informs decision-making.
Argh, Louise, I know this! I can't seem to stop my mouth from getting it wrong tho.
I learned a lot from that and really appreciate the vision of the two Congress reps.
"Transmission, transmission," as Tevye said
Time to celebrate our aspirations.
The more I think about this episode, the more frustrated I become. I appreciate that at least we're acknowledging that the lengthy delays in permitting are imposing a cost. But it seems like people are under the mistaken impression that if we just fund better studies and more outreach, we'll be able to reach consensus.
There are a ton of participants in these processes for whom the _goal_ is that the project not happen. Possibly they don't even admit _to themselves_ that's the goal, but it's the practical outcome of their behavior. They like the status quo, or at least they are scared of the uncertainty of allowing a change. Maybe they think more clean energy is good in abstract, but they'd like it to happen somewhere farther away from them -- there's a reason we have the term "Not In My Back Yard".
No matter how much you study the issue and no matter how hard you try to reach consensus, these people will _always_ find new things to nitpick, because ultimately, drawing out the process until the project dies is the point. If your goal is consensus, then you are in-advance granting a Heckler's Veto, and ther will _always_ be a heckler.
Really appreciate both Reps pushing back on the NIMBYism talking point that too often comes from people who do a lot of posting and not a lot of energy deployment.
I work for Tesla Energy (though I'm speaking in my personal capacity here, not for the company). I've been working on this stuff since we were just starting out with deploying utility scale systems -- we spent a couple months with an enormous countdown clock over our area of the Deer Creek office, counting down to when the Hornsdale system in South Australia would go live. Before that I worked on commercial solar, when SolarCity was still a separate company. I'm one of the people who's had a hand in drafting the commissioning processes for this stuff -- what has to happen when so that we can be confident when we ultimately go into service everything will actually work right; how to adapt if there are delays (and let me tell you, there are delays!); etc. I probably have more hands-on experience with deploying clean energy systems than 99% of commenters here. Everything from the abstract project management design, to having personally been on-site with new products, swapping boards to troubleshoot problems. (Most recently at a 20 MW solar farm west of Tucson.)
And with respect to the Representatives -- I do appreciate what they're trying to do, and there's a lot to commend in their bill -- I think the gentlemen are _wildly_ underestimating how much impact NIMBYs have in slowing down critical transmission projects.
Such an important topic and progress made. Thank you for sharing it with us!