So odd that this got slated first for Idaho.
I assume it's because INL near Arco is one of the very few places in the US where a critical mass of people are likely to believe that SMRs are a good thing.
This is a great start, but still a drop in the bucket, as I understand it, compared to what we will need if we intend to largely rely on solar and wind in the future.
Yes, but also, that graph is in GW, not GWh. It's saying that, at peak discharge, batteries can already provide about 5% of record peak demand. That's ~4.3 doublings from what we need in that record. But, those are on average only 2 hr batteries - 83GWh. We'll need at least 7 doubles of capacity to be able to deal with the intermittency of a mostly-renewables grid - exact amount TBD based on how many other things we can get right. Luckily that also means when we move beyond ~4 hrs or so we can largely switch to (what should become) cheaper but lower-peak-power options than Li-ion (that are also less critical mineral intensive).
The US Forest Service wanted to implement a wildfire prevention plan, so it had to fill out an environmental impact statement. Before they could complete the environmental impact statement, though, half the forest burned down.
I take it as given that in a saner world, we would be rushing to gather up excess fuel that feeds wildfires, and turning it into biochar, or putting it into bioenergy plants. Instead, we can't even give ourselves permission to controlled-burn it, when it's going to uncontrolled-burn anyway.
"There exists a physical world that keeps going whether or not you want to deal with it" seems to not be a part of our societal consensus.
It’s been about a year since the last one of these. Given the long cycle, I have done my best to check for changes but things may have changed on any given topic by the time you read this.
The NEPA Problem
NEPA is a constant thorn in the side of anyone attempting to do anything.
A certain kind of person responds with: “Good.”
That kind of person does not want humans to do physical things in the world.
This is in sharp contrast with the type of person who:
That person notices that NEPA long ago started doing more harm than good.
The central problem lies is the core structure.
NEPA is based on following endlessly expanding procedural requirements. NEPA does not ask whether costs exceed benefits, or whether something is a good idea.
It only asks about whether procedure was followed sufficiently, or whether blame can be identified somewhere.
The Full NEPA Solution
Is to never go full NEPA.
Instead, one of Balsa’s central policy goals is an entire reimagining of NEPA.
The proposal is to replace NEPA’s procedural requirement with (when necessary) an analysis of costs and benefits, followed by a vote of stakeholders on whether to proceed. Ask the right question, whether the project is worthwhile, not the wrong question of what paperwork is in order.
This post is not about laying out that procedure. This post is mostly about telling various Tales From the NEPA. It is also telling tales of energy generation from around the world, including places that do not share our full madness.
Versions and components of this post have been in my drafts for a long time, so not all of them will be as recent as is common here.
The Other Full NEPA Solution
That was the plan, but the vibes have changed, and NEPA is pretty clearly a large net negative for climate change, which has to win in a fight at this point over the local concerns it protects. There’s a new plan.
Kill it. Repeal NEPA. Full stop.
The problem is DOGE is working via cutting off payments, which doesn’t let you hit NEPA. But if you want to strike a blow that matters? This is it.
Meanwhile
You love to see it. This day one move gave me a lot of hope things would go well, alas other things happened that were less good for my hopes.
As with everything Trump Administration, we will see what actually happens once the lawyers get involved. This is not an area where ‘ignore the law and simply do things’ seems likely to work out. Some of it will stick, but how much?
Yay Nuclear Power
Yay nuclear deregulation, yes obviously, Alex Tabarrok opens with ‘yes, I know how that sounds’ but actually it sounds great if you’re familiar with the current regulations. I do see why one would pause before going to the level of ‘treat small modular reactors like x-ray machines,’ I’d want to see the safety case and all that, but probably.
Nuclear is making an attempted comeback, now that AI and trying the alternative of doing nothing has awoken everyone to the idea that this will be a good idea.
There is a lot of big talk about how much this will change the rules on nuclear power regulation. As usual I remain skeptical of big impacts, but it would not take much to reach a tipping point. As the same post notes when discussing the reactors in Georgia, once you relearn what you are doing things get a lot better and cheaper.
After seeing the results, the secretary of energy called for ‘hundreds’ more large nuclear reactions, two hundred by 2050.
NextEra looking to restart a nuclear plant in Iowa that closed in 2020.
Ontario eyeing a new nuclear plant near Port Hope, 8-10 GWs.
It seems the world is a mix of people who shut down nuclear power out of spite and mood affiliation and intuitions that nuclear is dangerous or harmful when it is orders of magnitudes safer and fully green, versus those who realize we should be desperate to build more.
Dean Ball is excited by the bill, including its prize for next-gen nuclear tech and the potential momentum for future action.
There is a long way to go. It seems we do things like this? And the lifetime for nuclear power plants has nothing to do with their physical capabilities or risks?
Or how many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb? $50k worth.
How much for a $200 panel meter in a control room? Trick question, it’s $20k.
And yet nuclear is still at least close to cost competitive.
The Senate also previously forced Biden to drop attempt to renominate Jeff Baran to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the the basis of Baran being starkly opposed to the concept of building nuclear power plants.
Why has Biden effectively opposed nuclear power? My model is that it is the same reason he is effectively opposing power transmission and green energy infrastructure. Biden thinks throwing money and rhetoric at problems makes solutions happen. He does not understand, even in his best moments, that throwing up or not removing barriers to doing things stops those things from happening even when that was not your intention.
Thus, he can also do things like offer $1.5 billion in conditional commitments to support recommissioning a Michigan nuclear power plant, because he understands that more nuclear power plants would be a good thing. And he can say things like ‘White House to support new nuclear power plants in the U.S.’ That does not have to cause him to, in general, do the things that cause there to be more nuclear power plants. Because he cannot understand that those are things like ‘appoint people to the NRC that might ever want to approve a new nuclear power plant in practice.’ Luckily, it sounds like the new bill does indeed help.
Small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) planned for Idaho, called most advanced in the nation, was cancelled in January after customers could not be found to buy the electricity. Only a few months later, everyone is scrambling for more electricity to run their data centers. It seems like if you build it, Microsoft or Google or Amazon will be happy to plop a data center next to that shiny new reactor, no? And certainly plenty of other places would welcome one. So odd that this got slated first for Idaho.
Alberta signs deal to jointly assess the development and deployment of SMRs. One SMR is to be built in Ontario by end of 2028, to be online in 2029.
Slovakia to build a new nuclear reactor. Also talk of increased capacity in France, Italy, Britain, Japan, Canada, Poland and The Netherlands in the thread, from May. From December 2023: Poland authorizes 24 new small nuclear plants.
Philippines are considering nuclear as well.
Support for Nuclear in Australia has increased dramatically to 61%-37%.
Claim that the shutdown of nuclear power in Germany was even more corrupt than we realized, with the Green Party altering expert conclusions to stop a reconsideration. The claims have been denied.
Unfortunately, we are allowing an agreement whereby Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) will not be allowed to bid on new nuclear projects in Western countries, due to an IP issue with Westinghouse, on top of them paying royalties for any Asian projects that move forward. The good news is that if Westinghouse wins the projects, KHNP and KEPCO are prime sub-contractors anyway, so it is unclear this is that much of a functional
Yay Solar and Wind Power
India’s energy mix is rapidly improving.
Stocks are different from flows are different from changes in flow.
India was still adding more coal capacity even as of December. But almost all of their new capacity was Solar and Wind, and they are clearly turning the corner on new additions. One still has to then make emissions go down, and then make net emissions drop below zero. One step at a time.
Also, 15% of the installed base is already not bad at all. Renewables are a big deal. A shame nuclear is only 2%.
Khavda in India, now the world’s largest renewable energy park using a combination of solar and wind energy.
Back in America, who is actually building the most solar?
Why, Texas, of course. California talks a good game, but what matters most (aside from sunlight where California has the edge) is not getting in the way.
The numbers mean that despite being the state with at least the third most sunlight after Arizona and New Mexico, California is bringing online solar per capita than the nation overall.
If you want to install home solar, it is going to get expensive in the sense that the cost of the panels themselves is now less than 10% of your all-in price.
Yay Grid Storage
This is a great start, but still a drop in the bucket, as I understand it, compared to what we will need if we intend to largely rely on solar and wind in the future.
Yay Transmission Lines
One enemy of transmission lines and other grid capabilities are NIMBYs who block projects. This includes the projects that never get proposed because of anticipation that they would then be blocked, or would require time and money to not be blocked.
Tyler Cowen reprints an anonymous email he got, that notes that there is also an incentive problem.
When you increase power transmission capacity, you make power fungible between areas. Which is good, unless you are in the power selling business, in which case this could mean more competition and less profit. By sticking to smaller local projects, you can both avoid scrutiny and mostly get the thing actually built, and also avoid competition.
That makes a lot of sense. It suggests we need to look at who is tasked with building new transmission lines, and who should be bearing the costs, including the need to struggle to make the plans and ensure they actually happen.
American Energy is Cheap
Why do we produce so little energy in America? Partly because it is so cheap.
Amazing how much prices elsewhere have risen lately, and how timid has been everyone’s response.
Geoengineering
Harvard was going to do something useful and run a geoengineering experiment. They cancelled it, because of course they did. And their justifications were, well…
It is difficult to grasp how horrible this reasoning actually is. I can’t even. Imagine this principle extended to every other bad thing.
Yes, actually implementing such solutions comes with a lot of costs and dangers. That makes it seem like a good idea to learn now what those are via experiments? Better to find out now than to wait until the crisis gets sufficiently acute that people or nations get desperate?
The alternative hypothesis is that many people who claim to care about the climate crisis are remarkably uninterested in the average temperatures in the world not going up. We have a lot of evidence for this hypothesis.
NEPA Standard Procedure is a Doom Loop
It goes like this.
I mean it’s completely insane that we would let 20 acres stop this at all, the cost/benefit is so obviously off the charts even purely for the environmental impacts alone. But also they are adding 35 other acres. At some point, you have to wonder why you are negotiating with people who are never willing to take any deal at all.
The answer is, you are forced to ‘negotiate,’ they pretend to do so back, you give them concessions like the above, and then they turn around and keep suing, with each step adding years of delay. The result is known as a ‘doom loop.’
This kills projects, and not the ones you want to kill. I am actually surprised the graph here lists rates that are this low.
If we are not going to do any other modifications, a time limit on court challenges seems like the very least we can do. My preferred solution is to change the structure entirely.
Categorical Exemptions
The good news is that some actions are exempt. But the exemptions are illustrative.
Teachers Against Transportation
So in practice, what does NEPA look like?
Congestion Pricing in NYC was a case in point before Hochul betrayed us.
It looks like this, seriously, read how the UFT itself made its claims.
That’s right. Reducing the use of cars via congestion pricing has been insufficiently studied in case it causes air pollution in other areas, and would cause ‘injustice.’ And the review pictured above means they did not take review seriously, it’s not enough.
It is amazing to me we put up with such nonsense.
Alternatively, it looks similar to this, technically the National Historic Preservation Act:
Here we have a lithium mine and a geothermal project in California, and conservation groups once again are suing.
And by rule of three, the kicker:
Also CEQA
CEQA is like NEPA, only it is by California, and it is even worse.
Here is one CEQA issue. This also points out that you can write in all the exemptions you want, and none of that will matter unless those in charge actually use them.
My presumption is it is basically autopiloting, that the people who realize it is dumb do not have the reach to the places where people don’t care. It is all, of course, madness.
The good news is that the recent CEQA ruling says that it should no longer give the ‘fullest possible protection’ to everything, so things should get somewhat better.
I wish this number were slightly higher for effect, but still, seriously:
It Can Always Be Worse
Somehow, rather than struggling to improve the situation, many Democrats seem to strive to make the inability to do things even worse.
For example, we have this thread from January detailing the proposed Clean Electricity Transmission Acceleration Act. Here are some highlights of an alternative even worse future, where anyone attempting to do anything is subject to arbitrary hold up for ransom, and also has to compensate any losers of any kind, including social and economic costs, and destroying any limitations on scope of issues. The bill even spends billions to fund these extractive oppositional efforts directly.
Or we could have black-clad anarchists storming electric vehicle factories, as happened in Tesla’s plant in Berlin. Although we do have ‘Georgia greens’ suing over approval of an EV plant there.
How We Got Into This Mess
It turns out everyone basically let this mess happen because Congress wanted to get home for Christmas? No one understood what they were doing?
This seems like it should be publicized more, as part of the justification for killing this requirement outright, and finding a better way to accomplish the same thing. It is amazing how often the worst laws have origin stories like this.
I know everyone says that once you pass a regulation it is almost impossible to remove. But what if… we… did it anyway?
Categorical Exclusions
It is good that these exclusions are available. It is rather troublesome that they are so necessary?
I mean, modest proposal time, perhaps?
If your physical activity:
Or, actually, how about if your physical activity:
Then why are we not done? What is there we need to know, that this does not imply?
Shouldn’t we be able to declare this in a common sense way, and then get sued in court if it turns out we were lying or wrong, with penalties and costs imposed if someone sues in profoundly silly fashion, such as over a picnic?
The good news: We are getting some new ones.
There is a lot more to do on the exclusion front. It seems like obvious low-hanging fruit to exclude as many green projects as possible. Yes, this suggests the laws are bad and should be replaced entirely, but until then we work with the system we have.
That seems like it should fall under ‘wait why do we even need an exclusion again?’
And that’s not all.
A Green Bargain
A new paper suggested a ‘a green bargain’ could be struck on permitting reform, that is a win for everyone. It misunderstands what people are trying to win.
Can we create a win-win-win for:
Yes, most certainly, in a big way. The current system is horribly inefficient in many ways that benefit neither democracy nor the environment, indeed frequently this problem is harmful to both. If these are the stakeholders, then there any number of reasonable ‘good governance’ plans one could use.
So what is the deal proposed? As far as I can tell it is this:
Do I support all of these proposals on the margin? Absolutely. Most would be good individually, the rest make sense as part of the package.
Do I think that this should be convincing to a sincere environmentalist, that they should trust that this will lead to good outcomes? Alas, my answer is essentially no, if this was applied universally.
I do think this should be convincing if it is applied exclusively to green energy projects and complementary infrastructure. If the end goal is solar panels or batteries, and one believes there is a climate crisis, then one should have a strong presumption that this should dominate local concerns and that delays and cost overruns kill projects.
Here is the other core problem: Many obstructionists do not want better outcomes.
Or in other words:
If someone’s goal is to accomplish good things that make life better, such as reducing how much carbon is in the atmosphere or ensuring the air and water are clean, and is willing to engage in trade to make the world improve and not boil, but has different priorities and weightings and values than you have?
Then you can and should engage in trade, talk price. We can make a deal.
If someone’s goal is to stop development and efficiency because they believe development and efficiency are bad, either locally or globally? If they think humanity and civilization (or at least your civilization) are bad and want them to suffer and repent? Or consider every downside a sacred value that should veto any action?
If they actively do not want the problem solved because they want to use the problem as leverage to demand other things, and you are not a fan of those other things?
Then you are very much out of luck. There is no deal.
My expectation is that even if your deal is a clear win for people and the environment, in way they can trust, you are going to get a lot of opposition from environmental groups anyway. Here, I worry that this proposal also does not give them sufficient reason to trust. Half the time the executive will be a Republican.
There is also this issue:
That, however infuriating, is something we can work with. There is no inherent conflict between jobs and energy. It trades off with affordable, but we can talk price.
Costs Versus Benefits
I have so had it with all the ‘yes this saves the Earth but think of the local butterfly species’ arguments, not quite literally this case but yeah, basically.
A Call for Proposals
Act fast, this closes July 15: Introducing the Modernizing NEPA Challenge.
More details at the link. The goal is to get collaborative tools and documents, and interactive documents, that make it easier to navigate the NEPA process.
The Men of Two Studies
Note that the majority of the pie is green, as in clearly net good for the planet, even if you take the position that fossil fuels are always bad – and I’d argue the opposite, that anything replacing coal on the margin is obviously net good too.
Barring a rebuttal I do not expect, that seems definitive to me.
What about the other study?
As in, NEPA is so obnoxious that where there would be NEPA issues, the projects never even get proposed. We only get renewable projects, mostly, where they have sufficient protections from this. Again, this seems definitive to me.
A Modest Proposal
My grand solution to NEPA would be to repeal the paperwork and impact statement requirements, and replace them with a requirement for cost-benefit analysis. That is a complex proposal that I am confident would work if done properly, but which I agree is tricky.
The grander, simpler solution is repeal NEPA first and ask questions later. At this point, I think that’s the play.
A solution in bewteen those two would perhaps be to change the remedy for failure, so that any little lapse does not stop an entire project.
This is another approach to the fundamental problem of sacred values versus cost-benefit.
Right now, we are essentially saying that a wide variety of potential harms are sacred values, that we would not compromise at any price, such that if there is any danger that they might be compromised then that is a full prohibition.
But of course that is crazy. With notably rare exceptions, that is not how most anything should ever work.
Thus, an alternative solution is to keep all the requirements in place, and allow all the lawsuits to proceed.
But we change the remedy from injunctions to damages.
As in, suppose a group sues you, and says that your project might violate some statute or do harm in some way. Okay, fine. They file that claim, it is now established. You can choose to wait until the claim is resolved, if the claim actually is big enough and plausible enough that you are worried they might win.
Or, you can convince an insurance company to post a bond for you, covering the potential damages (and let’s say you can get dinged for double or triple the actual harms, more if you ‘did it on purpose’ and knew you were breaking the rules, in some sense, or something). So you can choose to do the project anyway, without a delay, and if it turns out you messed up or broke the rules and the bill comes due, then you have to pay that bill. And since it is a multiplier, everyone is still ahead.