Why does Noah keep blaming liberals for right wingers inability to see reality when it comes to green power generation instead of their willful ignorance?
"...but mostly it’s because the right thinks of renewable energy as being all about climate change, rather than about securing cheap reliable supplies of electric power. In one sense, you can’t blame the right for thinking like this. after all, climate change activists on the left pretty much only talk about solar and wind in terms of the carbon emissions they prevent..."
It's really incredibly insulting. People on the right are just as smart as anyone else. They have had access to the economic information on green energy if they want to look outside their info bubble. it's not hard. But they don't want to look. And right wing media won't tell them.
Blaming liberals, Noah says talk of greenhouse gas reductions.... "sets conservatives’ alarm bells ringing, because they think of climate change primarily as something that leftists play up in order to bring down capitalism and soak the rich."'
It's not the fault of the proponents of green energy that the right believes it's really all about the left wanting to end capitalism and soak the rich. That's the fault of right wing propaganda outfits like fox news that relentlessly blow a minority environmentalist view out of all proportion and turn it into the face of environmentalism.
The right wing media turns that molehill into a mountain, while ignoring or even lying about the economic superiority of green energy. And lying about the truth of climate change. But Noah ignores all that and continually blames liberals for making the right hate green energy.
He goes out of his way to make excuses for them...
Today, out of positive green energy outcomes that are literally everywhere in the world (lead by liberals), he cherry picks the example of the UK and their not as positive outcomes and says they are the boogeyman the right wing fears !
Like even one out of 10,000 Magas know anything about the UK's energy policies and prices. And as far as conservative leadership "looking across the pond", well , they should see 5 success stories for every UK. So if they really are pointing and saying "No" to green energy because this is where green energy gets us, they are cherry picking too.
It's a lot of willful ignorance that keeps right wing Americans hating solar and wind.
The right will, and does, turn against everything the left advocates regardless of how rational or not it is. That should be obvious by now. If the left had stressed the economic benefits more ( They did way more than Noah gives credit for) The right would still be against it. If not it would be an outlier.
Continually, cherry picking the "good" reasons for right's irrational knee jerk rejection of anything that smells of liberal, enables it. It justifies it. It turns them into the victims of liberals.
It's an effort to make them blameless for their own choices and actions.
"In one sense, you can’t blame the right for thinking like this"
No. You can blame them. And should blame them. They are intelligent enough adults that can't be excused for forming bad opinions about important matters based on their prejudices about liberals rather than easily obtainable facts and truth.
Providing some examples that support their prejudices doesn't get them off the hook.
I’d love if the environmental left would look for real solutions to problems rather than pushing for top down control of everything. That’s what people on the right (and in the middle like me) object to.
Instead, we keep getting top down one size fit all solutions imposed on us that don’t work.
For example, I live in California. They’re banning non-electric vehicles. They’ve also required bespoke fuel standards to cover every microclimate, so every part of the state has to have a different fuel composition. The result is refineries closing (because they won’t recoup capital expenses for repairs or upgrades), high fuel prices, and shortages of fuel whenever there is a problem with any remaining refinery.
As another example, in California the environmentalists won’t allow desalination plants to be built because some small sea life will be killed in the intakes. Instead, we have water shortages many years and the state is instead planning to restrict water usage more every year. One set of standards that were proposed would have effectively prohibited daily showers.
As another example, as California has built out its renewables, it has also closed its nuclear plants and power prices have gone up massively.
So, from where I sit, as a centrist living in one of the most left wing states in the nation, I can say that the environmental left has been an absolute failure. It has created shortages and price spikes in every basic utility required for modern life.
What would I have done?
1) Find a way to provide water. There are countries in the Middle East which are 100% desalination, and there’s no reason why California couldn’t be as well. That would allow natural flow in rivers and provide water to farms.
2) Implemented a slowly rising carbon tax on power, with the income distributed evenly among the population. This would have allowed the market to solve the problem over time, with predictable costs and timing.
Instead, it’s all mandates and top down control that is (predictably) failing.
Top down control and really much more concern about strangling off hydrocarbons than enabling RE scale up and connection.
Control and strnagling rather than enablement and scaling.
The technology advancement and industrial know-how building to crush costs in RE and energy storage - industrial real tech, not Univeristy Labs and maybe get to market, - over past 10 years has rushed again however both the goddamn ideologues on Right and Left are in our way stuck in their Boomer (I hate to be Generation slamming but here it seems merited) 1970s backwards looking crap.
Both the Left and the Right too often are opposed to things but don’t offer a solution.
I feel like the internet has really pushed that because of how being critical of others is so often rewarded on social media. Offering solutions isn’t.
We have the ability to solve so many problems, and so many people want to complain that they are not solved rather than trying to help solve them.
Internet Drama Llama-ism plus if it doesn't happen at internet comment speed it has failed etc... (which hard asset infra obviously doesn't happen at internet comment speed...)
In fact the Green Left has heavily sent a message that Green Energy is purely eco-conscious
My literal actual day job is industrial scale green energy investment - not small money.
And I have to fight against this image all the time. I regard the Green Left as one of my biggest handicaps since they block permitting reform, talk about crisis but then throw sand in the wheels of whats needed to scale up our RE power investment (grid, permits, reforms, speeding) and are communicate more on strangling hydrocarbons than on RE being goddamn cheap as well now, and obesses about government intervention.
We have moved several hundred million in non-subsidized investment - don't need it - but what we need is the Sale to be on the Cost Savings not on "feeling guilty about my carbon footprint" and nanny-stating.
So I totally am aligned with him as it is the market problem I face, although the reactionary idiots on the right who go on about Green Energy with information and understanding from the 1970s don't help
Essentially for me the ideologues of both Left and Right are goddamn stuck in 1970s fights and ideas that are fundamentally past their sell-by date.
I agree with what you said. What is interesting to me is there is no attempt to make excuses for the left being against nuclear energy (and there shouldn't be). Noah just explains that the left is against nuclear energy although it doesn't emit carbon, but doesn't make excuses for them.
We need a disclaimer at the top of every Noahpinion post: Criticism of the left or liberals does not imply that the right deserves less blame overall. Attempts to explain the right's thinking do not imply that their conclusions lead to good outcomes, in fact this audience is assumed to already know that their conclusions usually lead to bad outcomes.
In ONE sense, you can’t blame the right for thinking this.
Noah’s point is that stupid actions by the left is fuel for right wing craziness. You can decry the craziness but you can’t diminish it by adding fuel to the fire. Your justifiable outrage doesn’t accomplish much.
The real reason is that he does not want to confront the economic reasons for opposing the Green Energy Transition. This is very awkward for an economist. Repeatedly stating “renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels” and “renewables keep getting cheaper” only get you so far.
Eventually, you confront reality (like the UK is doing now).
The reality is that Solar PV at utility scale (utility scale is the phrase) is in fact cheaper than hydrocarbons across the board, and getting cheaper on per unit generated basis. (unsubisidised basis) As is now battery storage which is now unsubsidised basis. Economies of scale and good old industrial innovation. It is not 1975 anymore.
That is a fact, whatever ill-informed outdated spin you want to put on it.
Now of course if you are in UK or Germany which is not optimal for solar it is actively utterly stupid to do the Mandate Closure of both the coal, and go non-nuclelar and also be anti-growth /anti-permitting so that even in your sunny(ier) southern flatlands you can't build at scale, then you get a train wreck. Plus you can't build power lines to transmit wind power from offshore fields up north
There are no **economic** reasons for opposing Green Energy transition (where Green Energy Transition is done on the private capital driven market basis, not on de-growth strangling basis). There are innumerate and backwards reactionary ideological reasons to oppose certainly.
And one can certainly oppose the Lefty Environmentalist De-Growth & Anti-Capitalist / Anti-FreeMarket version.
But the reality is utility scale RE is cheaper than hydrocarbons now for solar and most onshore wind (at of course proper locations) and it is continuing to get cheaper yet, especially solar PV and equally battery storage cross the various battery chemistries.
I would not have non-subsidized investment mandate for RE from private capital without these realities.
But one of the greatest handicaps we have now is the toxic combination of outdated dinosaur reactionary ideologies of both Right and Left, a band of backwards looking innumerates on both sides trapped in the boomer 1970s fights.
"The reality is that Solar PV at utility scale (utility scale is the phrase) is in fact cheaper than hydrocarbons across the board, and getting cheaper on per unit generated basis. (unsubisidised basis) "
On a grid wise not just incremental basis?
I don't think a lot of people believe that. They look at CA vs Texas and won't believe whatever report that people put out.
That being said, I don't think the government should be actively working against Green.
Not quite sure what your question is - incremental basis you mean new instalation? If yes, yes absolutely (of course this is in appropriate location).
It's why my specific business in RE+EE in industry is racing ahead. Cost basis beats hydrocarbon heavy grid head-to-head on KwH basis, debt payback periods depending on details 3 to 7 years (size scope, site), positive NPV with nice factor of industrial have megawatts at disposal that are price fixed, 10-15 yr horizon.
This is not of course household size, it's essentially utility scale - ergo economies of scale - and kicker on add on investment nice to have equally in industrial modernization to process electrification thanks to the beauty of thermodyanmic conversion higher efficiency, 20-40% final energy usage reducations typical (process dependent of course). Very nice to have combined. Battery if there is space has become feasible depending on the rate regime, but battery prices, market, are falling
Utility to grid - swap out and acclerated retirement quite feasible on market economics basis in many places for first 60-80%. Last 20% is harder and probably not economic to do. Not yet at least, maybe 5-10 years as now there are things that are market economic feasible (e.g. batteries) that 5 years ago I was telling people forget it on non-subsidized basis (which we don't do, our investments have to stand alone on IRR and NPV ex-subsidy, if there are post-facto, it's a cherry on the cake but never trust gov subsidies sticking around)
What I have been saying for 3-4 years now is that the Green Left is just as bad as the Anti-Green Righties in not believing deep down on RE pricing and so focusing on subsidies to PV (of course they also focus on not-really-economical segments, consumers install because they hate big stuff reflexively) - what we need is ability to build faster - both directly and for the energy transmission infrastructure to be accelerated - where i. So I have been deligthed to see the Abundane movement emerge from the Democrats to address the sclerotic regulatory frameworks and paralysis that made Biden headline goals into failures from own paralysis
Very comfortable hydrocarbons are by market forces on most fixed applictions and many short-distance transport simply on way out as elecrtic industrial technology is leaping ahead, the investment economics are positive, and solar PV and on-shore wind RE economics contra cranks are also market beating.
enable access, expand energy infrastructure to meet now growing again energy needs, modernise energy infrastructure to increase capacity and efficiency and let market forces move forward. It's not 1975, nor 95 or even 2005, the industrialised technologies are moving forward fast. work with, not on strangling.
that of course is a totally different thing than Top Down strangling mandates and banning. I never think about net zero, i think about efficiency and competitiveness and that's what we sell.
I am not interested in "spin." I am interested in affordable, abundant, and secure energy 24/7/365, which is a foundation of material progress.
I said nothing about 1975, and you are ignoring geography and intermittency.
No, renewables are only cheaper in SOME geographies during SOME times of day and during SOME seasons. But the electrical grid still has to work everywhere and 24/7/365. Greens conveniently ignore this fact.
The reality is that NEW electrical plants are almost always more expensive than EXISTING electrical plants. Greens conveniently ignore this fact.
The data you are referring to conveniently forgets system costs, which are much higher than the LCOE numbers that are typically cited.
The Green Energy Transition cannot possibly work without massive government subsidies and mandates. It is those subsidies and mandates which encourage private investment, but it does not overcome geography and physics.
If you do not believe me, would you support the complete elimination of all government subsidies and mandates in the energy sector?
There is no spin on my part. On your part yes, but mine none- but then of course I invest real money, and this is not politics for me.
But since you're citing a fellow who is about politics (and wrong on the batteries e.g.)...
In any case, as power demand is escalating new build is something happening no matter what.
I am perfectly content to let you and the others stuck backwards looking pretend on cost, just get me permitting reform and and get red-tape cut and I will continue to move the private non-subsidy taking investment and let the political shrieking and distortion go on. Our RoIs for our industrial investments are very happy for all parties. And no subsidies amigo... none.
I never accused you of "spin." You accused me of spin, and I denied it.
Those links went to articles that I wrote. They are not about politics. They are about energy (and I am very skeptical that you actually read them). You give no evidence that I am wrong.
You are correct about "power demand escalating," particularly for AI. AI demands 24/7/365 electricity. That cannot be achieved with solar and wind. And utility-scale batteries dramatically increase the costs. In North America, natural gas is the most cost-effective electricity generator.
Why am I "stuck backwards" when my entire Substack is about promoting material progress for the present and the future? Abundant, affordable, and secure energy is essential for that goal. If solar and wind could do it, I would be happy to support it.
As for your personal investments, what are they in? If they are in Green energy, I have a hard time believing that there are no subsidies or mandates coming from the federal or state government.
My investment, it's 100% Green energy, industrial - we are primary financing for industrial investors for Self-Gen. Of course from your blogging I am sure you will believe whatever ideological Frame you want. Not my problem so long as you don't get in our way.
I’m not convinced that the total system cost for renewables and batteries is lower than hydrocarbons, particularly because of the need to also maintain inertia and backup hydrocarbon power on the grid.
This is actually a hard systems engineering problem, and talking about prices of isolated pieces (batteries and renewables) without doing a full system cost analysis is irresponsible at best.
The sad truth is that renewables and batteries destabilize the grid because they don’t provide inertia. That causes negative externalities that are not commonly factored into the cost/benefit analysis of those power sources.
I fully believe that these problems can (and should be) solved. My personal solution would be to go heavily into nuclear power because it is both zero carbon and high inertia (even relative to other inertial sources). With nuclear, renewables, batteries, and a few natural gas plants as backup, we could eventually get to a low carbon high stability power grid.
Of course it is a real engineering problem - this is what I do (financial side with our engineers). And it is indeed the case the starry eyed Lefties totally ignore it.
HOWEVER - no it is not true renewables and batteries destabilisze the grid, that is outdated. Grid stabilisation, interia and resonance maintenance are entirely 100% within synthetic scope at now reasonable costs. This wasn't true 10 or even 5 years ago but the cost and confirmed stable tech has lept ahead (of course if you are doing RE integration in a starry eyed Lefty way without attention than you have a bad problem and equally if you are doing dreamy confusion of utility scale pricing and efficiency or industiral scale and using that for household... then you are in fairy-tale economics).
The scale up of energy demand notably driven by AI are driving without any RE impact need to vastly improve and modernize grid, this is an infra cost that is coming regardless
And I am 100% on board that purism is a false path - nuclear yes and very useful on providing inertia services BUT need to have the modular solution to get on a path like wind and solar for cost killing. (real modular, I hope Copehagen atomics is on right path) and Absolutely dump the purity pony shit of no natural gas and prefreential to strangling hydrocarbons over enablement of scale up
Getting to low carbon is not eventually, it is now in reach for long-term efficiency as industrial electrification is the path of future economics - the relentless laws of thermodynamic efficiency - and competitiveness.
ETA: meant to say equally that purity pony stop natgas is dumb dumb dumb - natgas is useful.
And sans NatGas and with anti-nuclear you get utterly idiotic results like Germany seeing its CO2 go up because they closed w/o any good reason their existing nuclear, the Greens opposed other builds .... so existing Coal picked up.
I want to add as a guy moving hundreds of millions in real investment money with real private capital objectives, I am entirely confident that Energy Transition on a market basis is now something market achievable - IF IF IF the whole "focus on strangling hydrocarbons" is dropped and rather the focus pivots to enabling scale up.
Grid reinformcement and modernisation is needed no matter what now with AI, it's not RE that is making this a need, but grid reinforcement and efficiency modernisaiton like laying fiber optic back in the 90s when we all w/o doubt were pissed off about the roads getting dug up (as a young man I was I admit...) is long-term infra smart. Grid modernisation for more efficient transmission is really generation source agnositic. BUT RE and storage tech - that laboratory bench-unproven but industrial scaling - are leaping ahead. 5 years ago my tune was different, I was quite battery sceptical. Now I am not. The various chemistries are getting innovated and scaled.
Noah is 100% spot on right - the whole Comms about this has been far too autistic, far too much Selling to the Pre-Sold to make the Green ecolo Lefties feel better - with if there is thought about others, more focus on Guilt-Guilt-Guilt (the whole ridiculous oversell of anectdotes by journalists about carbon guilt becoming a widespread motivator - in fact very limited in real action)
The economic efficiency is there - and Left and Right fighting idiotic reruns of 1970s-1980s Boomer Battles (I normally hate generational labeling, poor little GenXer I am but here it's merited) is sterile stupidity.
But we need to be able to build and scale
and government action on enablement (and yeah, continued earlier stage tech support or higher risk areas, e.g. Modular Nuclear has a lot of potential but it needs some real support as it's got a huge amount of reputational deadweight to overcome, regulations that are scoped for 1970s era nuclear [not per se then wrong maybe but time to update our mental maps - why I often talk not 'deregulation" (trigger word for LEfties) but Regulatory Rationalisation - as I don't mind smart regulation in my business, smart and market oriented regulation I find useful for stability but lots of stuff is decades out of date, and stuck in 50s-70s era. Rationalisation, end Veto Power To all and speed up.
Time is money and too often I ahve projects that are No Subsidy bankable dying on the vine from a thousand tiny cuts and clock ticking away.
(I should also say in re new tech and Grid Stability - there are to me legit concerns here as there are some Known Unknowns about multiple softwares and setting interating in unexpected ways causing unintended cascades... Texas saw that, the Iberians probably in root is in there - although they were able to bounce back - but when you are not being naive and are aware and building it in (plus not being idiotic to shut out NatGas peakers etc it is not problem worse than anyway increasingly problmeatic heat issues on the grid (like as in too fucking hot! -so upgrades are needed anyway).
Really appreciated your observations here. Great to hear from someone who is actually doing rather than just the peanut gallery. I've done some work with utilities and in the energy sector over the years but I don't call myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination. But boy did I see a lot of behavior that just made me shake my head. Never driven by the engineers on the front lines who knew what was going on but by folks making decisions many layers removed.
I am not on the Right. As I stated earlier, my goal is an affordable, abundant, and secure energy system 24/7/365.
You fail to realize that strangling hydrocarbons is the main purpose of the Green Energy Transition. Greens truly believe that we will experience catastrophic consequences for planet Earth if we do not achieve Global Netzero by 2050. You take out that justification, and the entire rationale for the Green Energy Transition goes away.
What is the point of investing tens of trillions of dollars in replacing our energy system if we do not actually need to achieve Global Netzero by 2050?
That is an entirely different goal from scaling up energy production in a cost-effective way.
Because the right looks at energy costs in CA vs say Texas and makes the very easy assumption that green tech is full of shit and results in higher energy prices.
I should add that the right doesn't trust these reports that they don't include the full actual cost of energy. Because people with an agenda can twist statistics to look however they want.
But actual electricity prices in CA vs Texas show the real story
I was surprised to hear that business majors had as much of an income premium as engineering majors, so I dug into the study you cited. The thing that surprised me is that science majors actually had just as much of an anti-premium as humanities majors! Social science majors were in the middle.
Interestingly, it looked like up until 1980, humanities, science, social science, and engineering were all pretty similar while business was way ahead. But then in the 1980s, engineering pulled ahead with business, while the others mostly stayed behind, until social sciences started rising.
Are you looking at bachelors degrees here or graduate? Science undergrad has basically no career path (just like social "science" and humanities) unless you go on to grad school. Engineering and business does.
My 25 year old physics degree got me a job writing code, but I’m not sure that career path works anymore.
I’m glad things worked out for me, but I wish that I had realized that I’d need a PhD to get a physics job and that I’d be tired of academia and not want to go to grad school when I graduated when I chose my major…
Hi Noah. I've really enjoyed reading your Substack because your analyses offer careful, technical, evidence-focused illumination of issues I'm interested in, so that even where we have different views I know that I have to take your arguments seriously and be ready to change my mind. But your takes on the UK the other day and now again today are making me doubt this a bit.
Here are some claims about the UK that I think are well-supported and which your analysis ignores. (1) The UK's clean-power push initially involved replacing coal primarily with gas, not with solar or wind. (2) The UK has never had an anti-nuclear government; our problem is that we are very poor at building nuclear power stations (we have been trying to build Hinkley Point C since 2010, but it is afflicted by delays and cost increases which have nothing to do with a degrowth-adjacent mindset). (3) The price of electricity in the UK began diverging from the price in European peer countries only after 2020; its clean-energy push began a decade or more before that. (4) The primary driver of the difference is that in the UK's marginal pricing system, gas is almost always the marginal fuel, whereas it's not in peer European countries (where nuclear and hydro play a bigger role). Hence UK electricity prices basically track wholesale gas prices, which have rocketed since 2020. (5) Increased UK production of gas wouldn't have made much difference to this, since it's traded on the international market. (6) Green levies and network charges account for a relatively small share of the rise in electricity bills: roughly 20% and 6% respectively of the rise since Covid, according to this analysis (https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-why-expensive-gas-not-net-zero-is-keeping-uk-electricity-prices-so-high/), compared with 54% due to higher wholesale prices driven by the increase in gas prices. And it's not true that the network charges arise wholly from the clean-energy push either—they include the costs of bailing out electricity companies that went bust and compensation for lack of investment in aging distribution networks as well.
Happy to be corrected on any of this, but on the face of it the figures I've seen (as in the piece linked to above) don't support the story you're telling, and I would have thought you'd be keener to make absolutely sure of your evidence before criticising another country for its "performative" policies and "degrowth-adjacent mindset". (I seem to recall your criticising other commentators for their simplistic, uninformed understandings of Japan.) The evidential bar for that kind of charge, it seems to me, is higher than the one you have to clear if you just want to raise some questions and doubts.
I would add that the UK was bound by the Kyoto agreement and then the Paris agreement; that it has only in the last couple of years reduced per capita carbon emissions to the world average (which is still too high for a good chance of a safe climate in future); and that as a country that continues to think of itself (perhaps delusionally, despite its Security Council seat) as a serious international diplomatic power it is going to have trouble trying to lead on the coordinated global action needed to address climate change if it adopts the "nothing the UK does makes any real difference" reasoning this post seems to scorn it for not adopting. So I really don't see the grounds for dismissing its effort to decarbonise its electricity system as performative, and moreover any more-than-passing understanding of UK politics will show you that no UK government in recent decades has operated with anything remotely adjacent to a degrowth mindset. On the contrary! Our current government doesn't appear to have any priorities *apart* from growth, though it's struggling to work out how to achieve it.
The contemptuous attitude to the UK expressed in this post, like the bizarre claims about free speech in the UK the other day, seems more ideologically inflected than the UK government policies it charges with ideological blindness. I hope and will continue to assume for now that your analyses of the places you more usually write about are better informed!
True on many of these, especially the marginal cost of gas, but you're missing the fact that the Hinckley C delays are very much the result of a degrowth mindset. Read M F Robbins substack for more detail. All of our governments profess to love growth but they do little to tackle NIMBYism... Until now (fingers crossed)
Blaming Hinkley on degrowth doesn't hold up, imo. The same design had similar delays and cost overruns in France at Flamanville and in Finland at Olkiluoto. Was it degrowth in those places too? How about the AP1000 builds in the US, were those problems also due to degrowth?
I don't get why nuclear folks always want to blame obvious industry failures on someone else. The western nuclear industry has lost its mojo and is having some trouble getting it back. The reasons are manyfold and complicated, but it seems to me that if EVERYTHING you've tried to build has failed (different designs, different regulatory structures, etc), at some point you'd look in the mirror and try to reflect on how you could do better, rather than trying to spread blame on everyone else.
I really hope the western nuclear construction industry gets its head out of its a** because it's a technology that we desperately need yesterday. For the record, despite the challenges and risks, I believe the US government should underwrite/spearhead the construction of 20 AP1000s (with an appropriate risk sharing model).
Just been reading MF Robbins—thanks for that tip. Super illuminating (lots of links to other super illuminating things too). Doesn't seem to me to vindicate claims of a degrowth mindset, though, as opposed to claims of a horrible mess of a planning and procurement system. From what I can see, no one in that system is especially degrowthy. It's that they all have things they legitimately care about and the system is set up to make sure *both* that every single concern registers in the system in as expensive and delaying a way as possible *and* that none of the concerns get addressed adequately anyway.
> I would add that the UK...as a country that continues to think of itself (perhaps delusionally, despite its Security Council seat) as a serious international diplomatic power it is going to have trouble trying to lead on the coordinated global action needed to address climate change.
At least all main political parties in the UK (after Boriswave) agreed that climate change is real, and the nation needs to have a workable solution to help tackling it. (I am not sure about cranks in Reform UK though).
In Australia one of the main political parties here (the Coalition, or more specifically the National Party) has been vigorously against any attempt for a climate policy, so much so that Scott Morrison (ex-PM) famously brought a lump of coal to Parliament though! And the Labor (centre-left) party here also receives lobbies from coal and gas industry, for example Mark McGowan (the famous Premier of Western Australia) advised mining companies right after he retired from politics.
(Considering that Australia is one of the largest fossil fuel exporters (coal, natural gas), it's one of the main things that trashed Aussie global reputation worldwide).
I'm surprised Noah completely ignored North Sea offshore wind power when talking about renewables in the UK. Ever since David Cameron banned onshore wind development it was one of the few places the UK could take advantage of its very windy geography. The UK doesn't have much land but it has lots of sea beds.
The only issue is building the transmission infrastructure and this is thwarted by planning permission and NIMBYs.
Yeah from my UK knowledge I think the other comment about him getting the transition details wrong is quite right, while equally the "Conservationist" mindset of both Left and Right in UK has completed bogged down transmission lines needed to get Scottish power south along with a screwed up power pricing scheme (or maybe wrong for current market) plus of course the onshore wind blocking...
News Flash: "Environmental movement types" are not a monolith. Many, such as myself, have been hoping for years for new reactor designs and regulations to make nuclear a practical option for climate-safe power generation. The one bright spot in the Trump administration's energy policy fiasco is their support for the development of Small Modular Reactors.
"But the UK, unlike most poor countries, is not very sunny. And it doesn’t have a lot of land for wind farms."
Not land maybe, but it does have a lot of shallow water all around that is perfect for wind farms - including within sight of Trump's golf club in Scotland. Dogger Bank is basically a flooded island and is being developed.
Re paying poor people not improving their core metrics:
Now these trial are all limited in scope. If I am poor and participate in this experiment, knowing that the cash will end in 3 months is not going to improve my personal morale. (I am one of those who gets depressed on Sunday because that means ithe weekend is going to end soon…)
Good point. One of the big benefits of having more money is that you feel more secure about the long-term future - 5, 10, 20 years down the line. It's something which in our society we're always being told to think about. Always nice to hear from a fellow sufferer of GSS - Gloomy Sunday Syndrome.
It seems to me that if you’re selecting a bunch of people for a cash benefits study who are poor in a rich country you are also selecting for people that have some perhaps unrecognized limitation on their ability to work and otherwise function well. Maybe they have some undiagnosed mental disorder or “mild” brain injury. Or they have kids they need to try to look after. Or a parent or spouse is unwell and needs help.
Why would we expect a small percentage of this kind of group not to work less if they don’t need to? Why would we expect their quality of life to improve based on these small amounts of money? (The positive studies in poor countries give the participants *much* more money relative to average income).
I think Noah is right when he suggests these people deserve lives of dignity without material deprivation regardless.
And yes, maybe more thinking needs to be done to set up social infrastructure for poor people where they can find the benefits of community and support and the tools needed to improve their lives.
It is not surprising that cash. benefits did not decrease homelessness in Denver. The additional cash does not automatically create new housing, at least in the short term. If someone can use their newfound cash to get an apartment, someone else is denied that shelter. It is a game of musical chairs.
'poor people having more cash is simply a good thing in and of itself' This is a really good point. Not everything can be justified in terms of improved outcomes. It may be even more true of Higher Education. Giving more people a higher education may not improve their earning potential or even make them happier but it is a collection of intrinsic benefits which we as a society value. Non-instrumental reasoning is usually more associated with conservative than progressive thought. But maybe that needs to change.
Productive people in a market system are the ones making wages or profits. The less or non-productive are those that don’t. So, assuming the cash doesn’t grow on trees, if you give poor people cash, it will tend to come from the productive. Thus (unless we are careful) we are disincentivizing productivity and encouraging free riding on the efforts of others.
True, but that's a political question - will people go along with this? Whereas what's being discussed here is a question of values: do we value higher education and the idea that individuals from all socio-economic backgrounds should have access to it? The extent to which we are able to fund it from public money, in the context of the other sources of value which make demands on public funding - that's a political question, or a matter of political-economy, I guess.
What we should want from our people is for them to want to make their lives better. How do people do that? For one, they can start a business, two, they can get an education or three, become skilled at something.
This is the problem with cash payments: it does none of the above. The generational poor need counseling, need some basic information on how to live better lives. If they need training to gain a skill we should provide that. If they want to go to school, fine. Start a business? Provide a mentor. Cash, to buy stuff? It is not enriching.
Number Two
It was once said that having a well-rounded education made one a better employee. A liberal arts education made an educated man or woman who could them go on to achieve the things they wanted.
That is not how it works today. We must decide whether college or higher education is intended to produce future workers or an educated class of individuals who can sustain our liberal democratic capitalist society.
We may no longer have the luxury of an Arts Major or an English Major. That is what Grammarly and Chat GPT can provide. We do need STEM majors.
Number Three
The problem with government planning is that government planning may be crap
Re cash assistance - just yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the success of a pilot program to provide unrestricted cash to 300 households that were on the wait list for public housing. The payments ranged, with the median at $1K/month. In terms of housing stability and quality of life, the payments helped quite a bit.
Hi Noah! Regarding central bank independence why look to Turkey when you have Nixon and Arthur Burns? Realistically it's more likely that the Fed's lack of independence (and thus its lack of credibility) and its real world consequences mirror what happened in the US in the 70s rather than what happened in Turkey. It still was a disaster.
2. I wonder about the metrics used to measure the success of these ubi trials. I don’t think the goal of giving mothers money is to make them “happier” or “less stressed,” for instance, it’s to make sure the child is well cared for (be well fed, have a crib to sleep in, be able to get childcare/medical attention, etc.). Parenting is hard, and I don’t think giving parents more money makes it less hard. But that doesn’t mean the money isn’t still important for the child’s welfare and the parents ability to provide it.
Making people “happier” or “less stressed” doesn’t seem like the right goal of UBI.
It would be interesting to incorporate what we’ve learned from poor families that have won the lottery or received a large inheritance into this whole area of study. How do they fare on the same metrics and in other ways we’d consider important.
Even that is far removed though from the effects that a society-wide permanent program could achieve because that person is still embedded in the same social milieu whereas a program could possibly catalyze network effects.
Even then, I'm not sure we're looking at the right metrics. Does a poor family become happier if they win the lottery? That doesn't matter as much as "do they become more able to care for their families?"
If the goal was to make people happier, we should give UBI to everyone because everyone could stand to be happier. But we give them to the poor first because they have needs that aren't being met. The question we should be asking is: "Are their needs met with that money?"
Unlike China's previous real estate boom-bust cycle, this manufacturing boom seems to involve lots of value creating innovation.
IMO, it's not just a government funded manufacturing boom. It's also a government funded venture capital boom. They're not just building factories. They're also funding lots of innovation. It's like they launched 100-200 early stage Tesla & battery startups, hoping a few of them out-innovate all the others.
The test will be whether this model produces enough innovation to be self-funding (as the Silicon Valley funding model is.
Why does Noah keep blaming liberals for right wingers inability to see reality when it comes to green power generation instead of their willful ignorance?
"...but mostly it’s because the right thinks of renewable energy as being all about climate change, rather than about securing cheap reliable supplies of electric power. In one sense, you can’t blame the right for thinking like this. after all, climate change activists on the left pretty much only talk about solar and wind in terms of the carbon emissions they prevent..."
It's really incredibly insulting. People on the right are just as smart as anyone else. They have had access to the economic information on green energy if they want to look outside their info bubble. it's not hard. But they don't want to look. And right wing media won't tell them.
Blaming liberals, Noah says talk of greenhouse gas reductions.... "sets conservatives’ alarm bells ringing, because they think of climate change primarily as something that leftists play up in order to bring down capitalism and soak the rich."'
It's not the fault of the proponents of green energy that the right believes it's really all about the left wanting to end capitalism and soak the rich. That's the fault of right wing propaganda outfits like fox news that relentlessly blow a minority environmentalist view out of all proportion and turn it into the face of environmentalism.
The right wing media turns that molehill into a mountain, while ignoring or even lying about the economic superiority of green energy. And lying about the truth of climate change. But Noah ignores all that and continually blames liberals for making the right hate green energy.
He goes out of his way to make excuses for them...
Today, out of positive green energy outcomes that are literally everywhere in the world (lead by liberals), he cherry picks the example of the UK and their not as positive outcomes and says they are the boogeyman the right wing fears !
Like even one out of 10,000 Magas know anything about the UK's energy policies and prices. And as far as conservative leadership "looking across the pond", well , they should see 5 success stories for every UK. So if they really are pointing and saying "No" to green energy because this is where green energy gets us, they are cherry picking too.
It's a lot of willful ignorance that keeps right wing Americans hating solar and wind.
The right will, and does, turn against everything the left advocates regardless of how rational or not it is. That should be obvious by now. If the left had stressed the economic benefits more ( They did way more than Noah gives credit for) The right would still be against it. If not it would be an outlier.
Continually, cherry picking the "good" reasons for right's irrational knee jerk rejection of anything that smells of liberal, enables it. It justifies it. It turns them into the victims of liberals.
It's an effort to make them blameless for their own choices and actions.
"In one sense, you can’t blame the right for thinking like this"
No. You can blame them. And should blame them. They are intelligent enough adults that can't be excused for forming bad opinions about important matters based on their prejudices about liberals rather than easily obtainable facts and truth.
Providing some examples that support their prejudices doesn't get them off the hook.
I’d love if the environmental left would look for real solutions to problems rather than pushing for top down control of everything. That’s what people on the right (and in the middle like me) object to.
Instead, we keep getting top down one size fit all solutions imposed on us that don’t work.
For example, I live in California. They’re banning non-electric vehicles. They’ve also required bespoke fuel standards to cover every microclimate, so every part of the state has to have a different fuel composition. The result is refineries closing (because they won’t recoup capital expenses for repairs or upgrades), high fuel prices, and shortages of fuel whenever there is a problem with any remaining refinery.
As another example, in California the environmentalists won’t allow desalination plants to be built because some small sea life will be killed in the intakes. Instead, we have water shortages many years and the state is instead planning to restrict water usage more every year. One set of standards that were proposed would have effectively prohibited daily showers.
As another example, as California has built out its renewables, it has also closed its nuclear plants and power prices have gone up massively.
So, from where I sit, as a centrist living in one of the most left wing states in the nation, I can say that the environmental left has been an absolute failure. It has created shortages and price spikes in every basic utility required for modern life.
What would I have done?
1) Find a way to provide water. There are countries in the Middle East which are 100% desalination, and there’s no reason why California couldn’t be as well. That would allow natural flow in rivers and provide water to farms.
2) Implemented a slowly rising carbon tax on power, with the income distributed evenly among the population. This would have allowed the market to solve the problem over time, with predictable costs and timing.
Instead, it’s all mandates and top down control that is (predictably) failing.
Bingo
Top down control and really much more concern about strangling off hydrocarbons than enabling RE scale up and connection.
Control and strnagling rather than enablement and scaling.
The technology advancement and industrial know-how building to crush costs in RE and energy storage - industrial real tech, not Univeristy Labs and maybe get to market, - over past 10 years has rushed again however both the goddamn ideologues on Right and Left are in our way stuck in their Boomer (I hate to be Generation slamming but here it seems merited) 1970s backwards looking crap.
That really is my frustration.
Both the Left and the Right too often are opposed to things but don’t offer a solution.
I feel like the internet has really pushed that because of how being critical of others is so often rewarded on social media. Offering solutions isn’t.
We have the ability to solve so many problems, and so many people want to complain that they are not solved rather than trying to help solve them.
Internet Drama Llama-ism plus if it doesn't happen at internet comment speed it has failed etc... (which hard asset infra obviously doesn't happen at internet comment speed...)
In fact the Green Left has heavily sent a message that Green Energy is purely eco-conscious
My literal actual day job is industrial scale green energy investment - not small money.
And I have to fight against this image all the time. I regard the Green Left as one of my biggest handicaps since they block permitting reform, talk about crisis but then throw sand in the wheels of whats needed to scale up our RE power investment (grid, permits, reforms, speeding) and are communicate more on strangling hydrocarbons than on RE being goddamn cheap as well now, and obesses about government intervention.
We have moved several hundred million in non-subsidized investment - don't need it - but what we need is the Sale to be on the Cost Savings not on "feeling guilty about my carbon footprint" and nanny-stating.
So I totally am aligned with him as it is the market problem I face, although the reactionary idiots on the right who go on about Green Energy with information and understanding from the 1970s don't help
Essentially for me the ideologues of both Left and Right are goddamn stuck in 1970s fights and ideas that are fundamentally past their sell-by date.
My aging Texan father knows all about the UK due to constant media scare stories - it may sound surprising but it really is true.
If you're playing chess and you leave your queen open, and then black takes your queen, whose fault is that?
We’re not playing chess, we’re trying to run a country and improve our lives.
I agree with what you said. What is interesting to me is there is no attempt to make excuses for the left being against nuclear energy (and there shouldn't be). Noah just explains that the left is against nuclear energy although it doesn't emit carbon, but doesn't make excuses for them.
We need a disclaimer at the top of every Noahpinion post: Criticism of the left or liberals does not imply that the right deserves less blame overall. Attempts to explain the right's thinking do not imply that their conclusions lead to good outcomes, in fact this audience is assumed to already know that their conclusions usually lead to bad outcomes.
In ONE sense, you can’t blame the right for thinking this.
Noah’s point is that stupid actions by the left is fuel for right wing craziness. You can decry the craziness but you can’t diminish it by adding fuel to the fire. Your justifiable outrage doesn’t accomplish much.
The real reason is that he does not want to confront the economic reasons for opposing the Green Energy Transition. This is very awkward for an economist. Repeatedly stating “renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels” and “renewables keep getting cheaper” only get you so far.
Eventually, you confront reality (like the UK is doing now).
The reality is that Solar PV at utility scale (utility scale is the phrase) is in fact cheaper than hydrocarbons across the board, and getting cheaper on per unit generated basis. (unsubisidised basis) As is now battery storage which is now unsubsidised basis. Economies of scale and good old industrial innovation. It is not 1975 anymore.
That is a fact, whatever ill-informed outdated spin you want to put on it.
Now of course if you are in UK or Germany which is not optimal for solar it is actively utterly stupid to do the Mandate Closure of both the coal, and go non-nuclelar and also be anti-growth /anti-permitting so that even in your sunny(ier) southern flatlands you can't build at scale, then you get a train wreck. Plus you can't build power lines to transmit wind power from offshore fields up north
There are no **economic** reasons for opposing Green Energy transition (where Green Energy Transition is done on the private capital driven market basis, not on de-growth strangling basis). There are innumerate and backwards reactionary ideological reasons to oppose certainly.
And one can certainly oppose the Lefty Environmentalist De-Growth & Anti-Capitalist / Anti-FreeMarket version.
But the reality is utility scale RE is cheaper than hydrocarbons now for solar and most onshore wind (at of course proper locations) and it is continuing to get cheaper yet, especially solar PV and equally battery storage cross the various battery chemistries.
I would not have non-subsidized investment mandate for RE from private capital without these realities.
But one of the greatest handicaps we have now is the toxic combination of outdated dinosaur reactionary ideologies of both Right and Left, a band of backwards looking innumerates on both sides trapped in the boomer 1970s fights.
"The reality is that Solar PV at utility scale (utility scale is the phrase) is in fact cheaper than hydrocarbons across the board, and getting cheaper on per unit generated basis. (unsubisidised basis) "
On a grid wise not just incremental basis?
I don't think a lot of people believe that. They look at CA vs Texas and won't believe whatever report that people put out.
That being said, I don't think the government should be actively working against Green.
Just let the market decide.
Not quite sure what your question is - incremental basis you mean new instalation? If yes, yes absolutely (of course this is in appropriate location).
It's why my specific business in RE+EE in industry is racing ahead. Cost basis beats hydrocarbon heavy grid head-to-head on KwH basis, debt payback periods depending on details 3 to 7 years (size scope, site), positive NPV with nice factor of industrial have megawatts at disposal that are price fixed, 10-15 yr horizon.
This is not of course household size, it's essentially utility scale - ergo economies of scale - and kicker on add on investment nice to have equally in industrial modernization to process electrification thanks to the beauty of thermodyanmic conversion higher efficiency, 20-40% final energy usage reducations typical (process dependent of course). Very nice to have combined. Battery if there is space has become feasible depending on the rate regime, but battery prices, market, are falling
Utility to grid - swap out and acclerated retirement quite feasible on market economics basis in many places for first 60-80%. Last 20% is harder and probably not economic to do. Not yet at least, maybe 5-10 years as now there are things that are market economic feasible (e.g. batteries) that 5 years ago I was telling people forget it on non-subsidized basis (which we don't do, our investments have to stand alone on IRR and NPV ex-subsidy, if there are post-facto, it's a cherry on the cake but never trust gov subsidies sticking around)
What I have been saying for 3-4 years now is that the Green Left is just as bad as the Anti-Green Righties in not believing deep down on RE pricing and so focusing on subsidies to PV (of course they also focus on not-really-economical segments, consumers install because they hate big stuff reflexively) - what we need is ability to build faster - both directly and for the energy transmission infrastructure to be accelerated - where i. So I have been deligthed to see the Abundane movement emerge from the Democrats to address the sclerotic regulatory frameworks and paralysis that made Biden headline goals into failures from own paralysis
Very comfortable hydrocarbons are by market forces on most fixed applictions and many short-distance transport simply on way out as elecrtic industrial technology is leaping ahead, the investment economics are positive, and solar PV and on-shore wind RE economics contra cranks are also market beating.
enable access, expand energy infrastructure to meet now growing again energy needs, modernise energy infrastructure to increase capacity and efficiency and let market forces move forward. It's not 1975, nor 95 or even 2005, the industrialised technologies are moving forward fast. work with, not on strangling.
that of course is a totally different thing than Top Down strangling mandates and banning. I never think about net zero, i think about efficiency and competitiveness and that's what we sell.
I am not interested in "spin." I am interested in affordable, abundant, and secure energy 24/7/365, which is a foundation of material progress.
I said nothing about 1975, and you are ignoring geography and intermittency.
No, renewables are only cheaper in SOME geographies during SOME times of day and during SOME seasons. But the electrical grid still has to work everywhere and 24/7/365. Greens conveniently ignore this fact.
The reality is that NEW electrical plants are almost always more expensive than EXISTING electrical plants. Greens conveniently ignore this fact.
The data you are referring to conveniently forgets system costs, which are much higher than the LCOE numbers that are typically cited.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-wind-cannot-displace-global-fossil
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-cannot-displace-fossil
Utility-scale batteries DRAMATICALLY increase the costs.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/utility-scale-batteries-are-as-expensive
Also an intermittent-based electricity grid undermines the transition to electrical vehicles:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-solar-wind-undermines-evs
The Green Energy Transition cannot possibly work without massive government subsidies and mandates. It is those subsidies and mandates which encourage private investment, but it does not overcome geography and physics.
If you do not believe me, would you support the complete elimination of all government subsidies and mandates in the energy sector?
There is no spin on my part. On your part yes, but mine none- but then of course I invest real money, and this is not politics for me.
But since you're citing a fellow who is about politics (and wrong on the batteries e.g.)...
In any case, as power demand is escalating new build is something happening no matter what.
I am perfectly content to let you and the others stuck backwards looking pretend on cost, just get me permitting reform and and get red-tape cut and I will continue to move the private non-subsidy taking investment and let the political shrieking and distortion go on. Our RoIs for our industrial investments are very happy for all parties. And no subsidies amigo... none.
I never accused you of "spin." You accused me of spin, and I denied it.
Those links went to articles that I wrote. They are not about politics. They are about energy (and I am very skeptical that you actually read them). You give no evidence that I am wrong.
You are correct about "power demand escalating," particularly for AI. AI demands 24/7/365 electricity. That cannot be achieved with solar and wind. And utility-scale batteries dramatically increase the costs. In North America, natural gas is the most cost-effective electricity generator.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/16-reasons-why-greens-should-love
Why am I "stuck backwards" when my entire Substack is about promoting material progress for the present and the future? Abundant, affordable, and secure energy is essential for that goal. If solar and wind could do it, I would be happy to support it.
As for your personal investments, what are they in? If they are in Green energy, I have a hard time believing that there are no subsidies or mandates coming from the federal or state government.
ohhhh. you're quoting yourself....
Oh my.
Well. That explains a lot.
My investment, it's 100% Green energy, industrial - we are primary financing for industrial investors for Self-Gen. Of course from your blogging I am sure you will believe whatever ideological Frame you want. Not my problem so long as you don't get in our way.
I’m not convinced that the total system cost for renewables and batteries is lower than hydrocarbons, particularly because of the need to also maintain inertia and backup hydrocarbon power on the grid.
This is actually a hard systems engineering problem, and talking about prices of isolated pieces (batteries and renewables) without doing a full system cost analysis is irresponsible at best.
The sad truth is that renewables and batteries destabilize the grid because they don’t provide inertia. That causes negative externalities that are not commonly factored into the cost/benefit analysis of those power sources.
I fully believe that these problems can (and should be) solved. My personal solution would be to go heavily into nuclear power because it is both zero carbon and high inertia (even relative to other inertial sources). With nuclear, renewables, batteries, and a few natural gas plants as backup, we could eventually get to a low carbon high stability power grid.
Of course it is a real engineering problem - this is what I do (financial side with our engineers). And it is indeed the case the starry eyed Lefties totally ignore it.
HOWEVER - no it is not true renewables and batteries destabilisze the grid, that is outdated. Grid stabilisation, interia and resonance maintenance are entirely 100% within synthetic scope at now reasonable costs. This wasn't true 10 or even 5 years ago but the cost and confirmed stable tech has lept ahead (of course if you are doing RE integration in a starry eyed Lefty way without attention than you have a bad problem and equally if you are doing dreamy confusion of utility scale pricing and efficiency or industiral scale and using that for household... then you are in fairy-tale economics).
The scale up of energy demand notably driven by AI are driving without any RE impact need to vastly improve and modernize grid, this is an infra cost that is coming regardless
And I am 100% on board that purism is a false path - nuclear yes and very useful on providing inertia services BUT need to have the modular solution to get on a path like wind and solar for cost killing. (real modular, I hope Copehagen atomics is on right path) and Absolutely dump the purity pony shit of no natural gas and prefreential to strangling hydrocarbons over enablement of scale up
Getting to low carbon is not eventually, it is now in reach for long-term efficiency as industrial electrification is the path of future economics - the relentless laws of thermodynamic efficiency - and competitiveness.
ETA: meant to say equally that purity pony stop natgas is dumb dumb dumb - natgas is useful.
And sans NatGas and with anti-nuclear you get utterly idiotic results like Germany seeing its CO2 go up because they closed w/o any good reason their existing nuclear, the Greens opposed other builds .... so existing Coal picked up.
Complete idiocy.
I want to add as a guy moving hundreds of millions in real investment money with real private capital objectives, I am entirely confident that Energy Transition on a market basis is now something market achievable - IF IF IF the whole "focus on strangling hydrocarbons" is dropped and rather the focus pivots to enabling scale up.
Grid reinformcement and modernisation is needed no matter what now with AI, it's not RE that is making this a need, but grid reinforcement and efficiency modernisaiton like laying fiber optic back in the 90s when we all w/o doubt were pissed off about the roads getting dug up (as a young man I was I admit...) is long-term infra smart. Grid modernisation for more efficient transmission is really generation source agnositic. BUT RE and storage tech - that laboratory bench-unproven but industrial scaling - are leaping ahead. 5 years ago my tune was different, I was quite battery sceptical. Now I am not. The various chemistries are getting innovated and scaled.
Noah is 100% spot on right - the whole Comms about this has been far too autistic, far too much Selling to the Pre-Sold to make the Green ecolo Lefties feel better - with if there is thought about others, more focus on Guilt-Guilt-Guilt (the whole ridiculous oversell of anectdotes by journalists about carbon guilt becoming a widespread motivator - in fact very limited in real action)
The economic efficiency is there - and Left and Right fighting idiotic reruns of 1970s-1980s Boomer Battles (I normally hate generational labeling, poor little GenXer I am but here it's merited) is sterile stupidity.
But we need to be able to build and scale
and government action on enablement (and yeah, continued earlier stage tech support or higher risk areas, e.g. Modular Nuclear has a lot of potential but it needs some real support as it's got a huge amount of reputational deadweight to overcome, regulations that are scoped for 1970s era nuclear [not per se then wrong maybe but time to update our mental maps - why I often talk not 'deregulation" (trigger word for LEfties) but Regulatory Rationalisation - as I don't mind smart regulation in my business, smart and market oriented regulation I find useful for stability but lots of stuff is decades out of date, and stuck in 50s-70s era. Rationalisation, end Veto Power To all and speed up.
Time is money and too often I ahve projects that are No Subsidy bankable dying on the vine from a thousand tiny cuts and clock ticking away.
(I should also say in re new tech and Grid Stability - there are to me legit concerns here as there are some Known Unknowns about multiple softwares and setting interating in unexpected ways causing unintended cascades... Texas saw that, the Iberians probably in root is in there - although they were able to bounce back - but when you are not being naive and are aware and building it in (plus not being idiotic to shut out NatGas peakers etc it is not problem worse than anyway increasingly problmeatic heat issues on the grid (like as in too fucking hot! -so upgrades are needed anyway).
Really appreciated your observations here. Great to hear from someone who is actually doing rather than just the peanut gallery. I've done some work with utilities and in the energy sector over the years but I don't call myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination. But boy did I see a lot of behavior that just made me shake my head. Never driven by the engineers on the front lines who knew what was going on but by folks making decisions many layers removed.
I am not on the Right. As I stated earlier, my goal is an affordable, abundant, and secure energy system 24/7/365.
You fail to realize that strangling hydrocarbons is the main purpose of the Green Energy Transition. Greens truly believe that we will experience catastrophic consequences for planet Earth if we do not achieve Global Netzero by 2050. You take out that justification, and the entire rationale for the Green Energy Transition goes away.
What is the point of investing tens of trillions of dollars in replacing our energy system if we do not actually need to achieve Global Netzero by 2050?
That is an entirely different goal from scaling up energy production in a cost-effective way.
Because the right looks at energy costs in CA vs say Texas and makes the very easy assumption that green tech is full of shit and results in higher energy prices.
I should add that the right doesn't trust these reports that they don't include the full actual cost of energy. Because people with an agenda can twist statistics to look however they want.
But actual electricity prices in CA vs Texas show the real story
I was surprised to hear that business majors had as much of an income premium as engineering majors, so I dug into the study you cited. The thing that surprised me is that science majors actually had just as much of an anti-premium as humanities majors! Social science majors were in the middle.
Interestingly, it looked like up until 1980, humanities, science, social science, and engineering were all pretty similar while business was way ahead. But then in the 1980s, engineering pulled ahead with business, while the others mostly stayed behind, until social sciences started rising.
Are you looking at bachelors degrees here or graduate? Science undergrad has basically no career path (just like social "science" and humanities) unless you go on to grad school. Engineering and business does.
I was going to say exactly this.
My 25 year old physics degree got me a job writing code, but I’m not sure that career path works anymore.
I’m glad things worked out for me, but I wish that I had realized that I’d need a PhD to get a physics job and that I’d be tired of academia and not want to go to grad school when I graduated when I chose my major…
My business major had an emphasis in accounting, which teaches a real skill that is in demand.
I'm sure there's a lot of that.
I have the impression (open to refutation) that biology majors are just about as disadvantaged in the job market as English Lit majors.
Hi Noah. I've really enjoyed reading your Substack because your analyses offer careful, technical, evidence-focused illumination of issues I'm interested in, so that even where we have different views I know that I have to take your arguments seriously and be ready to change my mind. But your takes on the UK the other day and now again today are making me doubt this a bit.
Here are some claims about the UK that I think are well-supported and which your analysis ignores. (1) The UK's clean-power push initially involved replacing coal primarily with gas, not with solar or wind. (2) The UK has never had an anti-nuclear government; our problem is that we are very poor at building nuclear power stations (we have been trying to build Hinkley Point C since 2010, but it is afflicted by delays and cost increases which have nothing to do with a degrowth-adjacent mindset). (3) The price of electricity in the UK began diverging from the price in European peer countries only after 2020; its clean-energy push began a decade or more before that. (4) The primary driver of the difference is that in the UK's marginal pricing system, gas is almost always the marginal fuel, whereas it's not in peer European countries (where nuclear and hydro play a bigger role). Hence UK electricity prices basically track wholesale gas prices, which have rocketed since 2020. (5) Increased UK production of gas wouldn't have made much difference to this, since it's traded on the international market. (6) Green levies and network charges account for a relatively small share of the rise in electricity bills: roughly 20% and 6% respectively of the rise since Covid, according to this analysis (https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-why-expensive-gas-not-net-zero-is-keeping-uk-electricity-prices-so-high/), compared with 54% due to higher wholesale prices driven by the increase in gas prices. And it's not true that the network charges arise wholly from the clean-energy push either—they include the costs of bailing out electricity companies that went bust and compensation for lack of investment in aging distribution networks as well.
Happy to be corrected on any of this, but on the face of it the figures I've seen (as in the piece linked to above) don't support the story you're telling, and I would have thought you'd be keener to make absolutely sure of your evidence before criticising another country for its "performative" policies and "degrowth-adjacent mindset". (I seem to recall your criticising other commentators for their simplistic, uninformed understandings of Japan.) The evidential bar for that kind of charge, it seems to me, is higher than the one you have to clear if you just want to raise some questions and doubts.
I would add that the UK was bound by the Kyoto agreement and then the Paris agreement; that it has only in the last couple of years reduced per capita carbon emissions to the world average (which is still too high for a good chance of a safe climate in future); and that as a country that continues to think of itself (perhaps delusionally, despite its Security Council seat) as a serious international diplomatic power it is going to have trouble trying to lead on the coordinated global action needed to address climate change if it adopts the "nothing the UK does makes any real difference" reasoning this post seems to scorn it for not adopting. So I really don't see the grounds for dismissing its effort to decarbonise its electricity system as performative, and moreover any more-than-passing understanding of UK politics will show you that no UK government in recent decades has operated with anything remotely adjacent to a degrowth mindset. On the contrary! Our current government doesn't appear to have any priorities *apart* from growth, though it's struggling to work out how to achieve it.
The contemptuous attitude to the UK expressed in this post, like the bizarre claims about free speech in the UK the other day, seems more ideologically inflected than the UK government policies it charges with ideological blindness. I hope and will continue to assume for now that your analyses of the places you more usually write about are better informed!
True on many of these, especially the marginal cost of gas, but you're missing the fact that the Hinckley C delays are very much the result of a degrowth mindset. Read M F Robbins substack for more detail. All of our governments profess to love growth but they do little to tackle NIMBYism... Until now (fingers crossed)
Blaming Hinkley on degrowth doesn't hold up, imo. The same design had similar delays and cost overruns in France at Flamanville and in Finland at Olkiluoto. Was it degrowth in those places too? How about the AP1000 builds in the US, were those problems also due to degrowth?
I don't get why nuclear folks always want to blame obvious industry failures on someone else. The western nuclear industry has lost its mojo and is having some trouble getting it back. The reasons are manyfold and complicated, but it seems to me that if EVERYTHING you've tried to build has failed (different designs, different regulatory structures, etc), at some point you'd look in the mirror and try to reflect on how you could do better, rather than trying to spread blame on everyone else.
I really hope the western nuclear construction industry gets its head out of its a** because it's a technology that we desperately need yesterday. For the record, despite the challenges and risks, I believe the US government should underwrite/spearhead the construction of 20 AP1000s (with an appropriate risk sharing model).
Just been reading MF Robbins—thanks for that tip. Super illuminating (lots of links to other super illuminating things too). Doesn't seem to me to vindicate claims of a degrowth mindset, though, as opposed to claims of a horrible mess of a planning and procurement system. From what I can see, no one in that system is especially degrowthy. It's that they all have things they legitimately care about and the system is set up to make sure *both* that every single concern registers in the system in as expensive and delaying a way as possible *and* that none of the concerns get addressed adequately anyway.
And we refuse to get AC ! And I can’t remember but he had another dig the other day. Maybe it’s because some brits love a rabbit stew !
He does seem to have his weirdest takes when it comes to the UK... How did they hurt you Noah?
> I would add that the UK...as a country that continues to think of itself (perhaps delusionally, despite its Security Council seat) as a serious international diplomatic power it is going to have trouble trying to lead on the coordinated global action needed to address climate change.
At least all main political parties in the UK (after Boriswave) agreed that climate change is real, and the nation needs to have a workable solution to help tackling it. (I am not sure about cranks in Reform UK though).
In Australia one of the main political parties here (the Coalition, or more specifically the National Party) has been vigorously against any attempt for a climate policy, so much so that Scott Morrison (ex-PM) famously brought a lump of coal to Parliament though! And the Labor (centre-left) party here also receives lobbies from coal and gas industry, for example Mark McGowan (the famous Premier of Western Australia) advised mining companies right after he retired from politics.
(Considering that Australia is one of the largest fossil fuel exporters (coal, natural gas), it's one of the main things that trashed Aussie global reputation worldwide).
I'm surprised Noah completely ignored North Sea offshore wind power when talking about renewables in the UK. Ever since David Cameron banned onshore wind development it was one of the few places the UK could take advantage of its very windy geography. The UK doesn't have much land but it has lots of sea beds.
The only issue is building the transmission infrastructure and this is thwarted by planning permission and NIMBYs.
Yeah from my UK knowledge I think the other comment about him getting the transition details wrong is quite right, while equally the "Conservationist" mindset of both Left and Right in UK has completed bogged down transmission lines needed to get Scottish power south along with a screwed up power pricing scheme (or maybe wrong for current market) plus of course the onshore wind blocking...
News Flash: "Environmental movement types" are not a monolith. Many, such as myself, have been hoping for years for new reactor designs and regulations to make nuclear a practical option for climate-safe power generation. The one bright spot in the Trump administration's energy policy fiasco is their support for the development of Small Modular Reactors.
Well said. I'd just add that even large reactors like the AP1000 should be up for consideration. I don't care which tech wins (SMRs vs large builds).
Either way, a successful nuclear industry could really help, both with energy abundance and with climate/pollution issues.
Amen!
"But the UK, unlike most poor countries, is not very sunny. And it doesn’t have a lot of land for wind farms."
Not land maybe, but it does have a lot of shallow water all around that is perfect for wind farms - including within sight of Trump's golf club in Scotland. Dogger Bank is basically a flooded island and is being developed.
Re paying poor people not improving their core metrics:
Now these trial are all limited in scope. If I am poor and participate in this experiment, knowing that the cash will end in 3 months is not going to improve my personal morale. (I am one of those who gets depressed on Sunday because that means ithe weekend is going to end soon…)
Good point. One of the big benefits of having more money is that you feel more secure about the long-term future - 5, 10, 20 years down the line. It's something which in our society we're always being told to think about. Always nice to hear from a fellow sufferer of GSS - Gloomy Sunday Syndrome.
It seems to me that if you’re selecting a bunch of people for a cash benefits study who are poor in a rich country you are also selecting for people that have some perhaps unrecognized limitation on their ability to work and otherwise function well. Maybe they have some undiagnosed mental disorder or “mild” brain injury. Or they have kids they need to try to look after. Or a parent or spouse is unwell and needs help.
Why would we expect a small percentage of this kind of group not to work less if they don’t need to? Why would we expect their quality of life to improve based on these small amounts of money? (The positive studies in poor countries give the participants *much* more money relative to average income).
I think Noah is right when he suggests these people deserve lives of dignity without material deprivation regardless.
And yes, maybe more thinking needs to be done to set up social infrastructure for poor people where they can find the benefits of community and support and the tools needed to improve their lives.
It is not surprising that cash. benefits did not decrease homelessness in Denver. The additional cash does not automatically create new housing, at least in the short term. If someone can use their newfound cash to get an apartment, someone else is denied that shelter. It is a game of musical chairs.
You'd think the Abundance guy might have keyed in on that and mentioned it!
Just a thought: maybe those cash benefits were too small to make an appreciable difference.
Exactly. National median rent is $1.4k!
$1k a month should definitely make a difference in a poor persons life, shoot even a middle class persons life.
And I very much doubt you would get much more than that in any realistic welfare program
'poor people having more cash is simply a good thing in and of itself' This is a really good point. Not everything can be justified in terms of improved outcomes. It may be even more true of Higher Education. Giving more people a higher education may not improve their earning potential or even make them happier but it is a collection of intrinsic benefits which we as a society value. Non-instrumental reasoning is usually more associated with conservative than progressive thought. But maybe that needs to change.
“Taking money from productive people and giving it to less or non-productive people is simply a bad thing in and of itself.”
Would you say that is a good point too? Just wondering….
Yes, I would.
And how would you define or distinguish between 'productive' people and 'less or non-productive' people?
Productive people in a market system are the ones making wages or profits. The less or non-productive are those that don’t. So, assuming the cash doesn’t grow on trees, if you give poor people cash, it will tend to come from the productive. Thus (unless we are careful) we are disincentivizing productivity and encouraging free riding on the efforts of others.
But giving people cash has a cost. Paying for people's education has a cost.
If there aren't those improved outcomes, then I doubt there's going to be much of an interest in paying those costs
True, but that's a political question - will people go along with this? Whereas what's being discussed here is a question of values: do we value higher education and the idea that individuals from all socio-economic backgrounds should have access to it? The extent to which we are able to fund it from public money, in the context of the other sources of value which make demands on public funding - that's a political question, or a matter of political-economy, I guess.
Number One
What we should want from our people is for them to want to make their lives better. How do people do that? For one, they can start a business, two, they can get an education or three, become skilled at something.
This is the problem with cash payments: it does none of the above. The generational poor need counseling, need some basic information on how to live better lives. If they need training to gain a skill we should provide that. If they want to go to school, fine. Start a business? Provide a mentor. Cash, to buy stuff? It is not enriching.
Number Two
It was once said that having a well-rounded education made one a better employee. A liberal arts education made an educated man or woman who could them go on to achieve the things they wanted.
That is not how it works today. We must decide whether college or higher education is intended to produce future workers or an educated class of individuals who can sustain our liberal democratic capitalist society.
We may no longer have the luxury of an Arts Major or an English Major. That is what Grammarly and Chat GPT can provide. We do need STEM majors.
Number Three
The problem with government planning is that government planning may be crap
Yes just providing cash isn't enough. That's just giving a man a fish
exactly
Re cash assistance - just yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the success of a pilot program to provide unrestricted cash to 300 households that were on the wait list for public housing. The payments ranged, with the median at $1K/month. In terms of housing stability and quality of life, the payments helped quite a bit.
https://www.inquirer.com/real-estate/housing/rental-assistance-philadelphia-pilot-program-penn-research-phlhousing-20250903.html
Hi Noah! Regarding central bank independence why look to Turkey when you have Nixon and Arthur Burns? Realistically it's more likely that the Fed's lack of independence (and thus its lack of credibility) and its real world consequences mirror what happened in the US in the 70s rather than what happened in Turkey. It still was a disaster.
2. I wonder about the metrics used to measure the success of these ubi trials. I don’t think the goal of giving mothers money is to make them “happier” or “less stressed,” for instance, it’s to make sure the child is well cared for (be well fed, have a crib to sleep in, be able to get childcare/medical attention, etc.). Parenting is hard, and I don’t think giving parents more money makes it less hard. But that doesn’t mean the money isn’t still important for the child’s welfare and the parents ability to provide it.
Making people “happier” or “less stressed” doesn’t seem like the right goal of UBI.
It would be interesting to incorporate what we’ve learned from poor families that have won the lottery or received a large inheritance into this whole area of study. How do they fare on the same metrics and in other ways we’d consider important.
Even that is far removed though from the effects that a society-wide permanent program could achieve because that person is still embedded in the same social milieu whereas a program could possibly catalyze network effects.
Even then, I'm not sure we're looking at the right metrics. Does a poor family become happier if they win the lottery? That doesn't matter as much as "do they become more able to care for their families?"
If the goal was to make people happier, we should give UBI to everyone because everyone could stand to be happier. But we give them to the poor first because they have needs that aren't being met. The question we should be asking is: "Are their needs met with that money?"
Unlike China's previous real estate boom-bust cycle, this manufacturing boom seems to involve lots of value creating innovation.
IMO, it's not just a government funded manufacturing boom. It's also a government funded venture capital boom. They're not just building factories. They're also funding lots of innovation. It's like they launched 100-200 early stage Tesla & battery startups, hoping a few of them out-innovate all the others.
The test will be whether this model produces enough innovation to be self-funding (as the Silicon Valley funding model is.