By Eddie Devere
This post is a critical analysis of the book Power Hungry by Robert Bryce.
I read the book because of the catchy title, Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future. I thought that it might do a good job attacking the problems of intermittent technologies — like wind power. However, I feel like I was taken on a roller coaster ride through the land of energy misinformation.
Bryce included just enough good points to keep me interested, as well as just enough junk to make me feel bad for even picking up the book from the library. I feel like I’ve just been abused by a lot of facts, as if the author put a bunch of heavy facts in a sack and then beat me over the head with it repeatedly. Then after the first beating, he stuffed a bunch of “figures of merit” into a bag, and then hit me with the bag again until I was bloody and unconscious.
Cherry-Picking Adds to Reader Confusion
There are more than 10 different figures of merits that Bryce discusses depending on whether he wants you to “like” or “hate” the particular technology he’s discussing at the moment. And he often changes his mind on a technology from chapter to chapter. In some chapters, he’s pro-solar and in other chapters, he’s anti-solar. He confuses the reader by cherry-picking his favorite figure of merit from chapter to chapter.
Is the correct figure of merit the “energy density”? Or is it the power density? Or perhaps it’s the price/kW-hr? But the price today, or the price tomorrow? Or is it the amount of steel and concrete used? The amount of birds killed? Better yet, perhaps it’s the ability to scale up the technology in the next decade? Or perhaps it’s the efficiency?
Will the Real Figure of Merit Please Stand Up!
“As I’ve stated multiple times before, there is only one real figure of merit: the risk-adjusted, internal rate of return on investment that includes the average price/kW-hr that the technology can generate on an open market and that includes the price of economics damage due to emitting pollution.”
This figure of merit, and this figure of merit alone, should be used to determine what types of electricity power plants should be built. Not the power density, energy density, the system efficiency, the amount of steel/concrete per MW, or the even number of birds killed — though we should pay if our technology kills birds. (For example, Exxon Mobil had to pay $600,000 in 2009 for killing 85 birds. This seems a little extreme. That’s almost $10,000 per bird! $100 per bird seems a bit more reasonable. Wind turbines should pay this fine, and it should be included when calculating the internal rate of return on investment of a wind farm.)
Which Technologies Win or Lose?
And it’s not the public’s job to pick the winners and losers. That’s the job of the Independent System Operator (ISO). The public’s job, as far as public-policy, is to demand open electricity-generating markets and to force our politicians to tax pollution. That’s it. It shouldn’t be our job to care about which technologies win and lose. We have other, more important things to think about (like work, exercise, math, science, making jewelry, raising kids, playing music ...).
Let’s demand a better electricity market, a tax on pollution, and then force the government to stop picking winners (like corn ethanol) or losers (like natural gas before the 1980s ... in which the government mandated natural gas prices, effectively preventing the industry from drilling new wells).
“Power Hungry” Has a Lack of Focus
The problem with Power Hungry is that Robert Bryce has a lack of focus. He appears to be good a stating facts and picking winners (natural gas and nuclear), but who cares what he thinks are the winners if he keeps on picking and choosing what figure of merit he will use to attack or support a particular technology. As somebody who actual works in the field of electricity generation, I feel like I’ve been beaten over the head with meaningless facts.
He’s writing the book for the average lay person who might currently believe that wind and solar will save the planet and not cause poor people to go hungry or birds to die. And for bursting the bubble for the average lay person, he should be applauded. (If electricity prices increase, then people will die from hunger, and if wind farms are built everywhere, then birds will die.
The question is: Will more people and birds die if we mandate renewables than if we continue doing what we’re doing? That’s a tough question to answer. We don’t really even have an agreed-upon framework for answering this question. The problem is that the figures of merit that Bryce puts forward (so that we can answer the question, “What is a ‘good’ power plant?” are not valid figures of merit. Power density is nice, but when it comes to investing in companies, I try to do my best to use the expected rate of return on investment as my criterion for judging whether to invest, not the power density.
Final Review of “Power Hungry”
So, here’s my summary about the book. Power Hungry is an interesting read, but don’t expect to find answers. Expect the book to pop some pre-existing bubbles, like “wind power is perfect,” but don’t expect to find answers to the question: Where should I be investing my money, time, or effort? To answer that question, you need to have a criterion for judging different power plant technologies. And Robert Bryce fails to put forth a meaningful criterion for judging different power plants. Power density just won’t do. What I’m hungry for is not power, per se. What I’m hungry for is large rates of return on investment. I want society and life to grow.
