A few quick housekeeping notes first. It has been a busy couple of weeks, with a bit of a head cold or something thrown in. Hence, I haven’t done a Tuesday post in a couple of weeks. I’ll be back at it soon, if not this coming Tuesday, with the semester ending soon. Now to today’s post.
Another knock on wind
The title of this EIA article, Wind generation declined in 2023 for the first time since the 1990s (4/30/2024), nor the graph below does justice to the first sentence (bold mine)
U.S. electricity generation from wind turbines decreased for the first time since the mid-1990s in 2023 despite the addition of 6.2 gigawatts (GW) of new wind capacity last year.
It is worth pausing here for a moment to talk about units. An addition of 6.2 GW of capacity means that, at full capacity, the new wind turbines can generate 6.2 GW of energy per hour. 6.2 GW is the rate at which it can generate electricity. Wind turbine don’t run at full capacity over the course of a year. In fact,
Last year, the average utilization rate, or capacity factor, of the wind turbine fleet fell to an eight-year low of 33.5% (compared with 35.9% in 2022, the all-time high).
In other words, wind turbines are good for about a third of installed power. Here is a comparison from energy.gov. Notice that wind and solar are at the bottom and nuclear plants are above 90%.
For some more context, again from energy.gov, 1 GW of capacity would require 2.469 million photovoltaic (PV) panels or 310 utility-scale wind turbines. In other words, we added almost 2000 wind turbines and still got less electricity last year. Google tells me that 1 GW of wind capacity will take up about 200 square miles of land (consider this a rough estimate), and our 6.2 GW of power required about 1,240 square miles of land, or about all of Rhode Island. Tell me again about how wind and solar will satisfy our electricity demands. I must not be following the science correctly.
A wind for nuclear
On the plus side, we started another nuclear plan, EIA 5/1/204.
With a total installed capacity of about 97 GW, the largest commercial nuclear generating fleet of any country is located in the United States. The fleet of operating nuclear power reactors accounted for nearly 19% of domestic electricity production in 2023, making nuclear the second-largest source of U.S. electricity generation after natural gas, which accounted for 43% of electricity generation in the United States last year.
The key here is that we get almost all (93%) of the 97 GW of electricity every hour all year from these reactors. Google tells me it is about 1 square mile of space per GW, and so this 97 GW of capacity is about 100 square miles.
Another follow-the-science problem
Consider this headline: Greenpeace Crusade Will Blind and Kill Children. One hundred Nobel laureates agree: The campaign against biotech-enhanced golden rice is a “crime against humanity.” (4/25/2024)
The story here is basically about a Swiss company that genetically modified rice so that it provided vitamin A. The process also adds color to the rice and gives it the name golden rice. This matters because
The World Health Organization estimates that 250,000–500,000 children who are vitamin A–deficient become blind every year, and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight. In addition, children with immune systems weakened by vitamin A deficiency have an increased risk of illness and death from infectious diseases.
Greenpeace was able to get the Court of Appeals of the Philippines to ban the growing of golden rice. To me, the issue here isn’t so much that golden rice is safe, as it seems to be, but that even if it isn’t perfect, I just need it to be better than the current situation. I generally consider myself an environmentalist, but I’m increasingly frustrated by environmental organizations. Was banning golden rice really a win? I don’t see it. The same goes for the efforts to kill nuclear power.
The youth may surprise you
Here are a couple of graphs from the Harvard Youth Poll (4/18/204). The first one asks 18- to 29-year-olds to select their top 2 issues. You might think student debt, Israel-Palestine, or climate change would be at the top based on what we see and hear from the media. Here is their graph (also the chart of the week):
Inflation and health care are at the top, with little difference across subgroups, with all subgroups above 50%. Israel-Palestine and student debt were at the bottom again, with general agreement across groups. Climate change is fifth from the bottom.
You might also think that young voters are overwhelmingly going to vote for Biden over Trump. Think again.
For context, at this stage in the 2020 election, the Harvard Youth Poll showed Biden leading Trump by 23 points among all young adults (51%-28%) and by 30 points (60%-30%) among likely voters under 30.
One area where former President Trump has an advantage over Biden is enthusiasm. Three-quarters (76%) of Trump voters say they enthusiastically support their candidate, while 44% of Biden voters say the same.
Yes, the young vote favors Biden, but less than last time around, less than you might expect, and with less enthusiasm.
From the gardens
The cherry tree is in bloom, the trillium have started, a variety black currents that have neat flowers, and anemones.
A BLS chart
This chart from the BLS (4/25/2024) had one interesting result that caught my attention.
Individuals born in the early 1980s were employed for 76 percent of all the weeks from ages 18 to 36. They were unemployed for 5 percent of those weeks and not in the labor force (neither working nor seeking work) for 19 percent. As a group, individuals with higher educational attainment were employed for a larger percentage of weeks and unemployed for a smaller percentage of weeks than individuals with less education. The percentage of weeks spent not in the labor force decreased with increases in educational attainment.
Under men, some college or associate degree men were employed more often than those with a degree and less likely to be “not in the labor force.” This isn’t what we’d expect and doesn’t hold for women. Not only that, but that group has the highest employment rate of any category of men or women. I have no explanation.
Data center update
AWS announces $11bn data center campus in Indiana (4/25/204) The money being spent on data centers is staggering, but why this?
A company acquired more than 600 acres of agricultural land around New Carlisle in St. Joseph County last year using the shell company Razor5. At the time, AWS was cited as the likely company by local press.
Why does AWS need a shell company to buy the property? Any business folks out there that can explain this to me?
Also, why give AWS tax breaks?
Amazon has secured a number of tax breaks for the campus. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) is offering AWS data center sales tax exemptions for eligible capital investments over a 50-year term.
The IEDC also committed an investment of up to $18.3 million in the form of headcount-based tax credits, up to $5 million in training grants, up to $55 million in Hoosier Business Investment tax credits, and up to $20 million in redevelopment tax credits.
This game of tax breaks seems like a race to the bottom to attract businesses. Again, it's probably something I don’t understand.
The spinning CD
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