The reason Bell Labs succeeded was that it was a unique unit within a huge bureaucratic organization where failure was not punished. The only way you get brilliant new ideas is by allowing failure with zero negative consequences. In any kind of government created “Energy Bell”, it will clearly be political. In any political system, people lobby for higher positions and kiss ass to get them. Failure is seen as just that - failure. Thus, this ain’t gonna work.
Even if it was a more private than public entity--like power utilities--it would have to have very clear financial "turf" definitions to determine how much money it could charge for energy transmission. Without a very clear revenue picture, it would be unable to attract any private financing.
As a veteran of energy deregulation in California--a disaster that produced an extended period of brown-outs and massive rate spikes--I'm now of the opinion that energy co-ops are the only sane way to run municipal power and water services. The sole area of the economy where free enterprise is a guaranteed loser. This concept could scale to a national energy grid.
The Defense establishment may be the catalytic route for this. Defense authorization funding is faster, bigger and more bi-partisan than any other. And as you point out China is targeting cleantech and everything energy-associated for global dominance, in part because they know they're too far behind in AI and in part because its a much bigger domestic employment driver (biotech,too). AI-enabled energy infrastructure in the U.S. systems is a prospectively direct security threat, too. If Defense ecosystem decides this is a priority and Energy Bell is the fastest answer , could happen...
Have you heard of SBIR? The Small Business Innovation Research grants already exist, and they are subject to the same BS as all government grants. The winners are not the best ideas, but the ones who wine and dine the grantors the best.
I would add that the US is on the cutting edge of research on natural gas (horizontal drilling, computer imaging and hydro fracturing).
It is far cheaper to leverage the existing natural gas pipeline network than to build an entirely new grid of electrical power lines. Replacing existing coal plants with Combined Cycle Gas Turbines could happen in 4-5 years and would be far cheaper than what you are proposing.
Hasn’t that already happened? The issue is that we want to grow electricity production even faster, and we ideally want to be cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Well, yes, natural gas has slowly replacing coal in the US and elsewhere. That is the main reason why carbon emissions are dropping in the USA. But the trend has stalled as government policies favor wind and solar. We need to complete the transition.
Only natural gas can actually replace all the uses of coal in an economically-viable way.
Combined Cycle Gas Turbines generate 2/3 less carbon than existing coal plants, so you would be cutting greenhouse emissions. And you would be doing so much faster than if you try with wind and solar.
If you want to grow electricity production even faster then natural gas is by far the most cost-effective way to do it.
Just as important natural gas can run 24/7 so it is an excellent foundation for recharging electrical vehicles. You cannot do that with solar, and it is very risky with wind because wind is unpredictable.
Did you read all the way to the bottom of this article?
It states:
"(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP — the parent company of Bloomberg News — committed $500 million to Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-fired power plants in the US by 2030 and halting the development of new natural gas-fired plants.)"
Don't you think that ideological agenda may play some role in their reporting the story?
Methane leaks are very low as a percentage. And remember my proposal is about replacing coal, which is by far the worst carbon emitter. You simply cannot replace coal at scale with solar and wind.
My guess is that this study is actually documenting natural gas "flaring", not natural gas leaks. There is a big difference.
The photo at the top of the article for instance shows flaring. Flaring is the deliberate burning of natural gas at the drill site. Leaks are the accidental emission of methane in distribution and storage.
Flaring is deliberate, and it is done because natural gas pipelines currently do not reach to the shale drilling sites. The drillers are drilling for oil, but they get gas in addition to the oil. They flare the gas off because they cannot do anything else. It is very important that we construct the pipelines to get to those sites, but Greens oppose it. Constructing natural gas pipelines to the drilling sites would eliminate virtually all of this.
“ Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide.”
Cheaper in the short term. It seems we need to take a long term view. We must STOP BURNING STUFF. Burning different stuff is not the solution. Delaying transition away from fossil fuels is going to cost us human lives and health and make us all poorer.
If we STOP BURNING STUFF, it would have a catastrophic effect on the world economy, hurting the working class, racial minorities and trap developing nations in poverty forever.
The long-term view is clearly that fossil fuels are essential for material progress and human flourishing. There is a very strong correlation between longevity, health and wealth with fossil fuel usage.
I have no doubt that some day we will invent superior energy sources, but it is very naive to believe that we have it now.
A state enterprise of the kind you propose sounds like it would be subject to the vicissitudes of political interference, all the while not facing the discipline of the markets. This sounds like a recipe for an unproductive endeavor.
When have energy utilities ever faced the discipline of the market? By definition they're limited monopolies, and thus the most poorly managed businesses imaginable.
*If* there was ever some sort of National Grid--that was also a national market, with derivative (sub-) markets, then companies producing power would theoretically be subject to robust market discipline. But if that were the case, coal/nuclear/oil-fired plants would be increasingly unable to compete with LNG and wind/solar. Which would infuriate key GOP constituencies.
I worked at Intel’s Research Labs for a while. Internally we talked about having two reasons we existed:
1.) To make Intel look good so that there wouldn’t be popular support for breaking our monopoly.
2.) To make Intel aware of the new technologies that might emerge so that we could avoid such innovations disrupting our monopoly. The theory was that technological progress was inevitable but it was better if we knew about it early.
Both these reasons were about both having a profitable monopoly and being afraid of losing it.
Indeed when Intel mostly lost its monopoly its spending on R&D went down - including closing the lab I was at.
The wrong solution for the problem. The domination of China in batteries, solar, EVs (don't know anything about nuclear) is all about cost...not fundamental technology. Chinese companies are willing to operate at very low margins (perhaps aided by Chinese government). This is not to say innovation is not happening, but the problem is margin/structure...not core technology. If China was seen as a friendly country, there is no problem. To the degree that China is seen as unfriendly, the issue is .... how do you manage risk from a pricing point of view ...perhaps in other regions.. and maintain a core internal capability which can be scaled if needed. It is my view that the number one priority for the US should be developing Mexico/central America. Yes.. other places such as Vietnam/India should be in the picture. There is nothing which stops cost sensitive industries such as batteries from moving to these locations.
On the energy research investment, I think your chart paints an inaccurate picture. Research is about patient investment over time. Flooding it with money typically does not work (ask the Chinese). Both in scale and certainly over time, the US is investing way more than other countries/regions. The fact we are investing even more on healthcare (for reasons beyond this note) does not detract away from the investments which are happening already in energy. There is a lot of very exciting stuff happening in the energy sector in the US.. in the labs, startups, and yes..even in the utilities.
On the national utility, it is a bad idea... if you show the rollout of internet capability, it did not require a national utility...nor the build out of data centers... etc..
I agree that investing in the Americas, building up these countries economically and forging strong friendships, should be a top US security and industrial policy objective.
This proposal is interesting. It is also completely politically unfeasible. Like the carbon tax, it could not be implemented in the current political climate.
I agree that the loss of Bell Labs during the breakup of AT&T was national tragedy. However, it is worth noting that the Bell system did not always wear the white hats. Bell actively fought the development of microwave transmission of telephone signals. They correctly viewed the technology as a threat to their monopoly. Long distance provided by coaxial cable was a natural monopoly. AT&T used their monopoly profits to subsidize local phone service in order to blunt regulatory scrutiny.
"This proposal is interesting. It is also completely politically unfeasible. Like the carbon tax, it could not be implemented in the current political climate."
I agree, but unlike the carbon tax, it is undesirable in a political climate that WOULD make a tax on net emissions of CO2 feasible.
Could this really just be Strausian advocacy for greater R&D investments and NEPA reforms?
Which is not the same thing as who should own the regional grids. If the problem is finance (maybe it is more a matter of regulation, but if it is) there a gazillion dollar capital market for that. More of that capital coud be going to private investment if US fiscal deficits were lower, but an "Energy Bell" wouldn't hep wit that regard.
If the French are any indication, it is possible to create an efficient, government-run national grid (EDF). Which would also be the only way to also operate nuclear power, as the French model--as opposed to our own inept "cowboy" model--is the only near-perfect model to've ever been implemented on planet Earth.
EDF was completely nationalized in 2023, the year it returned to profitability. But it's also worth noting French kW/hr costs are nearly twice the US national average.
I was just saying that "finance" is not a reason to nationalize the grid. The US was doing pretty well with private public ownership mix until NRC got in the way.
The reason the French have succeeded with nuclear power and we have failed, is the French "NRC" long ago created a strict highly centralized regulatory system whereby only two (yes, 2) classes of reactor exist in the system (unlike our 92 reactors, of which there are *dozens* of models). With only two reactor models, the French achieve vast superiority by every metric, especially training, operational safety and part replacement.
Our pathetic public-private system by contrast got us Three Mile Island and the self-destruction of an entire industry.
Wind and solar look like mission impossible compared to fossil fuels and nuclear, the US might be happy to let China burn its capital on wind and solar.
How so? Wind and solar are the source of most new electricity worldwide, and they already dominate all non-gas fossil fuel, and are challenging nuclear.
Increased solar and wind does not decrease fossil fuels usage. Yes, solar and wind are growing fast (from a smaller base), but fossil fuels are also growing (from a much larger base).
Increased solar and wind is at best slowing the increase of fossil fuels, and they cannot replace coal, which is the prime carbon emitter.
Most importantly, solar and wind are heavily constrained by geography, particularly in Asia. Technological innovation is unlikely to overcome that in the foreseeable future.
Solar is only during daylight, but batteries have been ramping up over the past couple years such that they are now providing a substantial fraction of demand in the hours after sunset too. Wind of course doesn’t depend in that same way on time of day.
Since the late 70s, there's been a steady series of developments that were good to make cellulostic ethanol competitive with gasoline. Hasn't happened yet, unfortunately.
I worry we'll be seeing the same thing with battery tech.
“Perhaps the U.S. could create a national private electrical company.”
Before making such an awful suggestion, you should look at something similar to gain an historical perspective. Nebraska has had a state-controlled electrical system for almost 100 years, and it is not something to saddle the whole country with. I have dealt with their division that is supposed to generate new ideas and processes, and it is a bureaucratic nightmare that accomplishes nothing.
When you talked about AT&T, I could not help but think of a spy-fi movie from the 1960s. I don’t remember the name, just the plot. In keeping with the zeitgeist of the time, the villain was not SPECTRE, or HYDRA, but the phone company! Phone calls were very expensive prior to eliminating AT&T’s monopoly, and service was not great either, which, since you did not live through it, you may have a hard time appreciating.
If AT&T had their way, the internet would also be a centrally controlled switchedcommunication network instead of a packet switched open network, but the reason the defense department funded ARPAnet, the internets predecessor, was to avoid bottlenecks at interconnection switching centers, which small in number were vulnerable to sabotage or nuclear attack which would kill all of our national command and control capability, so despite Bell lobbying, they wisely decided on a robust, distributed packet switched network which routes around damage.
Monopolies don’t always have public good as a goal.
Profit is the only goal of any publicly owned monopoly. If it's officers cannot generate adequate returns, they get the sack.
It's sad that in this Oligopolic era the breakup of Ma Bell is seen as some sort of historical footnote. Instead of a national imperative, needed to stimulate healthy competition and reinforce market discipline in the face of "too big to fail".
Great idea. Two quick thoughts. 1) wonder if a quasi government entity similar to the Tennessee VallyAuthority would fit the bill—or be too bureaucratic to provide the R&D heft we need? 2) all sorts or red tape, environmental and otherwise, need to be overcome to do so. As you noted this may prove to be a Gordian knot
Shareholders like efficiency, lean operations and don’t reward large investments or moonshots. Companies can invest out of profits, after paying shareholders (buybacks, dividends). Most companies I have worked for return 50-70 pct of profits to shareholders . Shareholders don’t trust companies to invest well. Look how much Google has squandered- they only get away with it because profits are so large. I grew up with kids whose Dads worked at Bell Labs (and my dad worked for Western Electric in the 60’s in computing)- what did all of that R&D do for ATT? Or Xerox? Of course, monopolies and conglomerates weren’t optimized to capitalize on opportunity.
Even so, Public/private partnerships and government funds for corporate R&D might be a good idea….also to help build a better grid. But our pols would rather pay rich people to buy cars with Chinese batteries and pay to build factories in the US to assemble Chinese parts, and the tycoons who fund the pols also fund activist groups that block pipelines, transmission lines and them up in lawsuits.
The objection to buy-backs is that the income does not show up as taxable income as a straight dividend does. That would be fixed by not taxing business income at the business level by straight out imputing everything to owners and taxing it (or rather the part of it that was consumed) there.
Maybe they are not so much opposed as there are no votes for it, and it would be too transparent in terms of accountability, whereas shutting things down through bureaucracy and regulation and lawsuits and protests doesn’t require a vote on that policy action, nor would there be transparency nor accountability. Our democracy thrives on darkness.
For instance, Biden’s EPA has decided to mandate carbon capture for power plants (a tech that doesn’t really exist at scale). As a result, new gas turbine generators aren’t being built and remaining coal plants will be shut down (well, a court will likely block the EPA’s gesture to activists and donors). I guess the US will lead in AI (and data centers) as long as it is only used in the Spring when the wind is blowing and on sunny afternoons.
A scientist makes observations, forms hypotheses and tests them.
To say CO2 is increasing, humans are a primary cause, and hypothesize there will be benefits if it is reduced and consequences if it is not, is science.
How “best” to reduce CO2 is politics and economics (which I don’t consider a real science).
A scientist can estimate how much CO2 could be reduced under various proposals, of course, but CO2 reduction benefits are only a part of the calculus.
These days environmentalists are more politicians than scientists, though, so advocacy makes sense.
Sure. Politics can't be surgically removed from other endeavors. But it's still useful, I think, for some people to advocate for what they really think is best w/o worrying too much about what is immediately popular. And when they do worry about that, they do so in the context of how little do they have to modify their advocacy in the interest of political feasibility.
If even half of the Greenland & W Antarctic ice sheets melt, then we will all of us be made poor. Such an event will destroy trillions of accumulated wealth, and financially devastate even the industrialized nations.
Ideally I'd want a big tax on buying used luxuries like paintings and antiques. Big money should go into producing new stuff, not just moving around old stuff only the rich care about, which doesn't help society or even produce many jobs like say building new yachts does
To void practical problems like that we should probably count as "non-consumption" thinks like stock and bond purchase, increase in asset accounts, etc. To be really nerdy about it however, the guy that purchases a Monet to hang on his on wall for enjoyment did not "consume" anything and whether the act caused an increase in someone else's consumption is not clear. Maybe the seller used the proceeds to build a SMR. :)
Bell Labs came into being as a tool to ACHIEVE domination in the long distance telephone market, not as a result of it. I think those origins are critical to why it was as successful as it was. There was nothing “granted” to it from the onset, rather it was meant to keep Ma Bell one step ahead of their competition (which there was plenty of even if they were largely a monopoly). The positive impact it has on society was a happy side effect of skilled political maneuvering on the part of their leadership.
Instead of create a national monopoly in the hopes that they will do R&D seems too roundabout. I understand that you don't want politicians to have discretion on R&D spending since they're very short termist. Instead why not just impose a 1% tax on all energy use in the USA that is explicitly set aside for energy R&D. If there is a specific tax for an R&D budget politicians will have less discretion in defunding whenever they need to cut spending.
The biggest problem are fragmented utilities who are also in the business of producing electricity, thus standing to loose money from interconnection. At a minimum there should be a national consolidation of electricity distribution and the three grids (West, East, Texas).
The french model of nationalization and merger is superior because it is faster and can provide state guarantees for the massive upfront capital investment.
EDF was founded on 8 April 1946, as a result of the nationalisation of around 1,700 smaller energy producers, transporters and distributors by the Minister of Industrial Production Marcel Paul. Mostly a state-owned EPIC, it became the main electricity generation and distribution company in France, enjoying a monopoly in electricity generation, although some small local distributors were retained by the nationalisation.[22]
While I still doubt a national electric company is politically realistic, I'm surprised to admit this post convinces me it could be useful.
The reason Bell Labs succeeded was that it was a unique unit within a huge bureaucratic organization where failure was not punished. The only way you get brilliant new ideas is by allowing failure with zero negative consequences. In any kind of government created “Energy Bell”, it will clearly be political. In any political system, people lobby for higher positions and kiss ass to get them. Failure is seen as just that - failure. Thus, this ain’t gonna work.
Hmm. Perhaps!
Even if it was a more private than public entity--like power utilities--it would have to have very clear financial "turf" definitions to determine how much money it could charge for energy transmission. Without a very clear revenue picture, it would be unable to attract any private financing.
As a veteran of energy deregulation in California--a disaster that produced an extended period of brown-outs and massive rate spikes--I'm now of the opinion that energy co-ops are the only sane way to run municipal power and water services. The sole area of the economy where free enterprise is a guaranteed loser. This concept could scale to a national energy grid.
Dude what, the breaking up of Bell has been cited as pushing innovation forward. Bell was supposedly an innovation problem not success.
Not really. Existing innovations were made faster (Moore’s law) but no true innovations have happened.
After the breakup, the scale and diversity of telecommunications innovation increased.
Total patenting by US inventors related to telecommunications increased by 19%,
driven by companies unrelated to the Bell System. Patenting by Bell’s successor
companies decreased, but not the number of top inventions
The Defense establishment may be the catalytic route for this. Defense authorization funding is faster, bigger and more bi-partisan than any other. And as you point out China is targeting cleantech and everything energy-associated for global dominance, in part because they know they're too far behind in AI and in part because its a much bigger domestic employment driver (biotech,too). AI-enabled energy infrastructure in the U.S. systems is a prospectively direct security threat, too. If Defense ecosystem decides this is a priority and Energy Bell is the fastest answer , could happen...
Have you heard of SBIR? The Small Business Innovation Research grants already exist, and they are subject to the same BS as all government grants. The winners are not the best ideas, but the ones who wine and dine the grantors the best.
And let's fold immigration reform into the next defense authorization bill. :)
I would add that the US is on the cutting edge of research on natural gas (horizontal drilling, computer imaging and hydro fracturing).
It is far cheaper to leverage the existing natural gas pipeline network than to build an entirely new grid of electrical power lines. Replacing existing coal plants with Combined Cycle Gas Turbines could happen in 4-5 years and would be far cheaper than what you are proposing.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-wonders-of-ccgt
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/16-reasons-why-greens-should-love
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-greens-should-love-fracking
Reconductoring will do a lot very affordably with the existing electrical grid. https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2024/04/09/reconductoring-could-help-solve-americas-looming-grid-problems/
Yes, reconductoring is promising, but I do not think that it will get to where Noah wants to go (ie dramatically increasing solar and wind)
Hasn’t that already happened? The issue is that we want to grow electricity production even faster, and we ideally want to be cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Well, yes, natural gas has slowly replacing coal in the US and elsewhere. That is the main reason why carbon emissions are dropping in the USA. But the trend has stalled as government policies favor wind and solar. We need to complete the transition.
Only natural gas can actually replace all the uses of coal in an economically-viable way.
Wind and solar cannot do that:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/can-increased-windsolar-retire-us
Combined Cycle Gas Turbines generate 2/3 less carbon than existing coal plants, so you would be cutting greenhouse emissions. And you would be doing so much faster than if you try with wind and solar.
If you want to grow electricity production even faster then natural gas is by far the most cost-effective way to do it.
Just as important natural gas can run 24/7 so it is an excellent foundation for recharging electrical vehicles. You cannot do that with solar, and it is very risky with wind because wind is unpredictable.
Here’s the workaround for the paywall:
https://archive.ph/2023.07.03-135435/https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-natural-gas-biggest-us-power-source-also-most-vulnerable/
Did you read all the way to the bottom of this article?
It states:
"(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP — the parent company of Bloomberg News — committed $500 million to Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-fired power plants in the US by 2030 and halting the development of new natural gas-fired plants.)"
Don't you think that ideological agenda may play some role in their reporting the story?
When has ideology ever influenced reporting?
This article seems to rely heavily on the phrase: "Facilities aren’t uniformly winterized"
Natural gas runs fine in the Canadian winter. There is nothing about the technology that is inherently vulnerable to winter.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/super-potent-methane-in-atmosphere-oil-gas-drilling-ice-cores
Methane leaks are very low as a percentage. And remember my proposal is about replacing coal, which is by far the worst carbon emitter. You simply cannot replace coal at scale with solar and wind.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/can-increased-windsolar-retire-us
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/13/1089725/methane-leaks-oil-gas/
My guess is that this study is actually documenting natural gas "flaring", not natural gas leaks. There is a big difference.
The photo at the top of the article for instance shows flaring. Flaring is the deliberate burning of natural gas at the drill site. Leaks are the accidental emission of methane in distribution and storage.
Flaring is deliberate, and it is done because natural gas pipelines currently do not reach to the shale drilling sites. The drillers are drilling for oil, but they get gas in addition to the oil. They flare the gas off because they cannot do anything else. It is very important that we construct the pipelines to get to those sites, but Greens oppose it. Constructing natural gas pipelines to the drilling sites would eliminate virtually all of this.
Would you favor that? I do.
So you favor keeping coal burning power plants?
That is what the government policies subsidizing solar and wind are doing...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/
Batteries are far more expensive than natural gas.
“ Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide.”
That is certainly not true in the USA. Natural gas is far cheaper than batteries.
And keep in mind that huge subsidies and mandates favoring wind and solar are a key party of their decision making.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-natural-gas-biggest-us-power-source-also-most-vulnerable/
Simply posting a pay-walled article with a scary headline is not convincing evidence.
Sorry, but natural gas has been working perfectly fine in very cold and very hot conditions.
Cheaper in the short term. It seems we need to take a long term view. We must STOP BURNING STUFF. Burning different stuff is not the solution. Delaying transition away from fossil fuels is going to cost us human lives and health and make us all poorer.
If we STOP BURNING STUFF, it would have a catastrophic effect on the world economy, hurting the working class, racial minorities and trap developing nations in poverty forever.
The long-term view is clearly that fossil fuels are essential for material progress and human flourishing. There is a very strong correlation between longevity, health and wealth with fossil fuel usage.
I have no doubt that some day we will invent superior energy sources, but it is very naive to believe that we have it now.
A state enterprise of the kind you propose sounds like it would be subject to the vicissitudes of political interference, all the while not facing the discipline of the markets. This sounds like a recipe for an unproductive endeavor.
When have energy utilities ever faced the discipline of the market? By definition they're limited monopolies, and thus the most poorly managed businesses imaginable.
*If* there was ever some sort of National Grid--that was also a national market, with derivative (sub-) markets, then companies producing power would theoretically be subject to robust market discipline. But if that were the case, coal/nuclear/oil-fired plants would be increasingly unable to compete with LNG and wind/solar. Which would infuriate key GOP constituencies.
I worked at Intel’s Research Labs for a while. Internally we talked about having two reasons we existed:
1.) To make Intel look good so that there wouldn’t be popular support for breaking our monopoly.
2.) To make Intel aware of the new technologies that might emerge so that we could avoid such innovations disrupting our monopoly. The theory was that technological progress was inevitable but it was better if we knew about it early.
Both these reasons were about both having a profitable monopoly and being afraid of losing it.
Indeed when Intel mostly lost its monopoly its spending on R&D went down - including closing the lab I was at.
The wrong solution for the problem. The domination of China in batteries, solar, EVs (don't know anything about nuclear) is all about cost...not fundamental technology. Chinese companies are willing to operate at very low margins (perhaps aided by Chinese government). This is not to say innovation is not happening, but the problem is margin/structure...not core technology. If China was seen as a friendly country, there is no problem. To the degree that China is seen as unfriendly, the issue is .... how do you manage risk from a pricing point of view ...perhaps in other regions.. and maintain a core internal capability which can be scaled if needed. It is my view that the number one priority for the US should be developing Mexico/central America. Yes.. other places such as Vietnam/India should be in the picture. There is nothing which stops cost sensitive industries such as batteries from moving to these locations.
On the energy research investment, I think your chart paints an inaccurate picture. Research is about patient investment over time. Flooding it with money typically does not work (ask the Chinese). Both in scale and certainly over time, the US is investing way more than other countries/regions. The fact we are investing even more on healthcare (for reasons beyond this note) does not detract away from the investments which are happening already in energy. There is a lot of very exciting stuff happening in the energy sector in the US.. in the labs, startups, and yes..even in the utilities.
On the national utility, it is a bad idea... if you show the rollout of internet capability, it did not require a national utility...nor the build out of data centers... etc..
I agree that investing in the Americas, building up these countries economically and forging strong friendships, should be a top US security and industrial policy objective.
This proposal is interesting. It is also completely politically unfeasible. Like the carbon tax, it could not be implemented in the current political climate.
I agree that the loss of Bell Labs during the breakup of AT&T was national tragedy. However, it is worth noting that the Bell system did not always wear the white hats. Bell actively fought the development of microwave transmission of telephone signals. They correctly viewed the technology as a threat to their monopoly. Long distance provided by coaxial cable was a natural monopoly. AT&T used their monopoly profits to subsidize local phone service in order to blunt regulatory scrutiny.
"This proposal is interesting. It is also completely politically unfeasible. Like the carbon tax, it could not be implemented in the current political climate."
I agree, but unlike the carbon tax, it is undesirable in a political climate that WOULD make a tax on net emissions of CO2 feasible.
Could this really just be Strausian advocacy for greater R&D investments and NEPA reforms?
But the problem remains of how to finance the modernization/expansion of the national grid.
Which is not the same thing as who should own the regional grids. If the problem is finance (maybe it is more a matter of regulation, but if it is) there a gazillion dollar capital market for that. More of that capital coud be going to private investment if US fiscal deficits were lower, but an "Energy Bell" wouldn't hep wit that regard.
If the French are any indication, it is possible to create an efficient, government-run national grid (EDF). Which would also be the only way to also operate nuclear power, as the French model--as opposed to our own inept "cowboy" model--is the only near-perfect model to've ever been implemented on planet Earth.
EDF was completely nationalized in 2023, the year it returned to profitability. But it's also worth noting French kW/hr costs are nearly twice the US national average.
I was just saying that "finance" is not a reason to nationalize the grid. The US was doing pretty well with private public ownership mix until NRC got in the way.
The reason the French have succeeded with nuclear power and we have failed, is the French "NRC" long ago created a strict highly centralized regulatory system whereby only two (yes, 2) classes of reactor exist in the system (unlike our 92 reactors, of which there are *dozens* of models). With only two reactor models, the French achieve vast superiority by every metric, especially training, operational safety and part replacement.
Our pathetic public-private system by contrast got us Three Mile Island and the self-destruction of an entire industry.
Wind and solar look like mission impossible compared to fossil fuels and nuclear, the US might be happy to let China burn its capital on wind and solar.
How so? Wind and solar are the source of most new electricity worldwide, and they already dominate all non-gas fossil fuel, and are challenging nuclear.
You are ignoring a key point:
Increased solar and wind does not decrease fossil fuels usage. Yes, solar and wind are growing fast (from a smaller base), but fossil fuels are also growing (from a much larger base).
Increased solar and wind is at best slowing the increase of fossil fuels, and they cannot replace coal, which is the prime carbon emitter.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/can-increased-windsolar-retire-asian
Most importantly, solar and wind are heavily constrained by geography, particularly in Asia. Technological innovation is unlikely to overcome that in the foreseeable future.
Only during daylight hours.
Solar is only during daylight, but batteries have been ramping up over the past couple years such that they are now providing a substantial fraction of demand in the hours after sunset too. Wind of course doesn’t depend in that same way on time of day.
Since the late 70s, there's been a steady series of developments that were good to make cellulostic ethanol competitive with gasoline. Hasn't happened yet, unfortunately.
I worry we'll be seeing the same thing with battery tech.
Remember switch grass?
They're still working on it. What was worse is there were guys who planted hybrid miscanthus. That hurt big time.
“Perhaps the U.S. could create a national private electrical company.”
Before making such an awful suggestion, you should look at something similar to gain an historical perspective. Nebraska has had a state-controlled electrical system for almost 100 years, and it is not something to saddle the whole country with. I have dealt with their division that is supposed to generate new ideas and processes, and it is a bureaucratic nightmare that accomplishes nothing.
When you talked about AT&T, I could not help but think of a spy-fi movie from the 1960s. I don’t remember the name, just the plot. In keeping with the zeitgeist of the time, the villain was not SPECTRE, or HYDRA, but the phone company! Phone calls were very expensive prior to eliminating AT&T’s monopoly, and service was not great either, which, since you did not live through it, you may have a hard time appreciating.
If AT&T had their way, the internet would also be a centrally controlled switchedcommunication network instead of a packet switched open network, but the reason the defense department funded ARPAnet, the internets predecessor, was to avoid bottlenecks at interconnection switching centers, which small in number were vulnerable to sabotage or nuclear attack which would kill all of our national command and control capability, so despite Bell lobbying, they wisely decided on a robust, distributed packet switched network which routes around damage.
Monopolies don’t always have public good as a goal.
Profit is the only goal of any publicly owned monopoly. If it's officers cannot generate adequate returns, they get the sack.
It's sad that in this Oligopolic era the breakup of Ma Bell is seen as some sort of historical footnote. Instead of a national imperative, needed to stimulate healthy competition and reinforce market discipline in the face of "too big to fail".
Great idea. Two quick thoughts. 1) wonder if a quasi government entity similar to the Tennessee VallyAuthority would fit the bill—or be too bureaucratic to provide the R&D heft we need? 2) all sorts or red tape, environmental and otherwise, need to be overcome to do so. As you noted this may prove to be a Gordian knot
Started off as a good idea. As for the finish, I suggest Patronage Mill instead of Energy Bell for the name.
That would certainly be a good way of selling it to the politicians.
There should be fewer taxes on corporate capital investment, so businesses are incentivized to grow bigger
Investment is a tax deduction.
Shareholders like efficiency, lean operations and don’t reward large investments or moonshots. Companies can invest out of profits, after paying shareholders (buybacks, dividends). Most companies I have worked for return 50-70 pct of profits to shareholders . Shareholders don’t trust companies to invest well. Look how much Google has squandered- they only get away with it because profits are so large. I grew up with kids whose Dads worked at Bell Labs (and my dad worked for Western Electric in the 60’s in computing)- what did all of that R&D do for ATT? Or Xerox? Of course, monopolies and conglomerates weren’t optimized to capitalize on opportunity.
Even so, Public/private partnerships and government funds for corporate R&D might be a good idea….also to help build a better grid. But our pols would rather pay rich people to buy cars with Chinese batteries and pay to build factories in the US to assemble Chinese parts, and the tycoons who fund the pols also fund activist groups that block pipelines, transmission lines and them up in lawsuits.
If only there was less stock buy-back, and more R&D + capital investment. The current ratio of buy-backs to everything else seems...extreme.
The objection to buy-backs is that the income does not show up as taxable income as a straight dividend does. That would be fixed by not taxing business income at the business level by straight out imputing everything to owners and taxing it (or rather the part of it that was consumed) there.
And our "environmentalists" go along with that without a peep about taxing net emissions of CO2.
Maybe they are not so much opposed as there are no votes for it, and it would be too transparent in terms of accountability, whereas shutting things down through bureaucracy and regulation and lawsuits and protests doesn’t require a vote on that policy action, nor would there be transparency nor accountability. Our democracy thrives on darkness.
For instance, Biden’s EPA has decided to mandate carbon capture for power plants (a tech that doesn’t really exist at scale). As a result, new gas turbine generators aren’t being built and remaining coal plants will be shut down (well, a court will likely block the EPA’s gesture to activists and donors). I guess the US will lead in AI (and data centers) as long as it is only used in the Spring when the wind is blowing and on sunny afternoons.
Yes, a carbon tax would be better.
It's not my job or the job of environmentalists to do politics. It's our job to advocate for what we think it best.
Advocating is politics. Policies are politics.
A scientist makes observations, forms hypotheses and tests them.
To say CO2 is increasing, humans are a primary cause, and hypothesize there will be benefits if it is reduced and consequences if it is not, is science.
How “best” to reduce CO2 is politics and economics (which I don’t consider a real science).
A scientist can estimate how much CO2 could be reduced under various proposals, of course, but CO2 reduction benefits are only a part of the calculus.
These days environmentalists are more politicians than scientists, though, so advocacy makes sense.
Sure. Politics can't be surgically removed from other endeavors. But it's still useful, I think, for some people to advocate for what they really think is best w/o worrying too much about what is immediately popular. And when they do worry about that, they do so in the context of how little do they have to modify their advocacy in the interest of political feasibility.
If even half of the Greenland & W Antarctic ice sheets melt, then we will all of us be made poor. Such an event will destroy trillions of accumulated wealth, and financially devastate even the industrialized nations.
There should be no taxes on business income. It's all income to owners who should be taxed according to their consumption of their incomes.
Ideally I'd want a big tax on buying used luxuries like paintings and antiques. Big money should go into producing new stuff, not just moving around old stuff only the rich care about, which doesn't help society or even produce many jobs like say building new yachts does
To void practical problems like that we should probably count as "non-consumption" thinks like stock and bond purchase, increase in asset accounts, etc. To be really nerdy about it however, the guy that purchases a Monet to hang on his on wall for enjoyment did not "consume" anything and whether the act caused an increase in someone else's consumption is not clear. Maybe the seller used the proceeds to build a SMR. :)
Don’t let Lina “Fuck The Corporations” Khan know.
Yeah, we don't want the stock market to get any hotter.
Bell Labs came into being as a tool to ACHIEVE domination in the long distance telephone market, not as a result of it. I think those origins are critical to why it was as successful as it was. There was nothing “granted” to it from the onset, rather it was meant to keep Ma Bell one step ahead of their competition (which there was plenty of even if they were largely a monopoly). The positive impact it has on society was a happy side effect of skilled political maneuvering on the part of their leadership.
Instead of create a national monopoly in the hopes that they will do R&D seems too roundabout. I understand that you don't want politicians to have discretion on R&D spending since they're very short termist. Instead why not just impose a 1% tax on all energy use in the USA that is explicitly set aside for energy R&D. If there is a specific tax for an R&D budget politicians will have less discretion in defunding whenever they need to cut spending.
The biggest problem are fragmented utilities who are also in the business of producing electricity, thus standing to loose money from interconnection. At a minimum there should be a national consolidation of electricity distribution and the three grids (West, East, Texas).
The french model of nationalization and merger is superior because it is faster and can provide state guarantees for the massive upfront capital investment.
EDF was founded on 8 April 1946, as a result of the nationalisation of around 1,700 smaller energy producers, transporters and distributors by the Minister of Industrial Production Marcel Paul. Mostly a state-owned EPIC, it became the main electricity generation and distribution company in France, enjoying a monopoly in electricity generation, although some small local distributors were retained by the nationalisation.[22]