Paul interviews Mike Nasi of the Life Powered Initiative. Nasi, a native New Mexican, recently wrote a detailed critique of the recently-passed “Energy Transition Act,” legislation which will result in the shutdown of the San Juan Generating Station and a shift to 50% “renewable” electricity by 2030.
Nasi’s article generated a response from US Senator Martin Heinrich who lamely asserted that “renewable” electricity will not raise your utility bills. This, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary from Georgetown, TX to California and Germany.
It is time to flip the New Mexico Senate seat in 2020. Trump 2020 campaign stated they will fund the effort. Who do we have that will fill the bill?
As for SB 489, when you look out over the horizon and see all those massive wind towers with blades spinning in the breeze (or not) and you see endless rolling hills blanketed with blacken sheets of solar panels, you have to be impressed on the surface.
But when you look behind the physics of wind or solar collectors you will understand why these two sources are just not going to power a decarbonized New Mexico alone. We absolutely must have high density fossil and fission energy as our energy sources for generating base load electricity for the regional electric grid.
Mike Nasi’s thinking is just like Alex Epstein, Industrial Progress.
Point of Interest: There are no nuclear power plants in NM generating electricity. PNM does get nuclear electricity from PV in AZ. XCEL has NPP in MN.
Love the term “Green Bling”. Never heard that one before and I will use it in my writings about ‘Algae’ farming in New Mexico. Paul, you need to look into this algae farming where Sapphire biofuel use to be – Columbus, NM
I agree 100% that density as the most important characteristic of energy.
Four Corners has clean air because of technology AND WIND.
Safe scare is an interesting term. It is like “Fear of” My web site below has articles on just about everything discussed here in this podcast.
Most people don’t understand math numbers (statistics). You have to provide pictures/videos or a lot of adjective descriptors. For example:
To overcome our fear of nuclear:
We know that fear can be a powerful driver in our behaviors. What is not always clear is why we choose to fear things to the point of trauma when they are proven safe, yet don’t get too worried about things that should actually be of concern. As a result, it is not enough to fight fear with facts. Fear is a strong emotion. The facts may be clear but all you need is just a bit of doubt and the fear remains. And it is easy for those opposed to something to cause doubt.
The people in Germany today are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in decarbonizing the German economy through its Energiewende; yet they seem to be comfortable replacing low carbon nuclear plants with new coal plants greatly impacting their ability to achieve their climate goals. So, what does this say? Clearly Germans believe nuclear power is far more frightening than climate change. Again, this is not consistent with the facts, but the public remains supportive.
The reality is, if we are afraid of something, we need a strong reason to change our views. Just telling someone there is no need to be afraid by explaining the facts is going to fall on deaf ears. What is needed to revisit one’s fear is understanding that there is a greater issue at hand, a bigger problem to solve. Only then may we be willing to reconsider our long-held beliefs. Not because we suddenly believe the facts, but rather because we finally feel a need to actually listen to them to solve a greater concern.
For example, it is not enough to say nuclear can help in the fight against climate change because the public already believes a viable solution is available with renewables.
Closing perfectly good nuclear power plants decades ahead of schedule is a bad idea if you care about the environment, especially if you care about carbon emissions. That’s because nuclear is the best source of low-carbon energy and actually produces most of our low-carbon electricity already – twice as much as all renewables combined. And twice as much as hydro.
Nuclear power is already a mature technology and the latest fast spectrum generation are even better because they just cannot melt-down and will eliminate the waste.