In the belly of the whale, part 1

Six months ago, I set out to start a business in the “solar energy” space. I had several ideas to explore. I won’t bury the lede: none of them have come to fruition.

This is part 1, roughly “all the reasons we are doomed”. Part 2, roughly “what we can change about the solar industry”, can be found here.

None of the Powers That Be will save us.

It certainly appears that the United States government isn’t going to save us. “Joe Manchin kills Build Back Better” is in the news again, but it isn’t actually news. We are in the dog days of summer, and after a flurry of news, we are back on repeat headlines.

It also isn’t accurate. Joe Manchin didn’t kill BBB. It was a collective effort, led by Biden and Pelosi. I wrote last year about the myriad process failings that were certain to lead to a dead bill. Yet, everyone seems to have agreed to blame Manchin for the whole thing.

Personally, I don’t the federal government to accomplish anything during the Biden presidency. A new bill (the “Inflation Reduction Act”) has been proposed, and (my hatred of the current “tax-credit” system aside), I hope it passes. But hope is not a strategy; and in any event I would prefer not to wait.

Neither climate change nor an ineffective response to it is a problem isolated to the United States.

As the saying goes, “If you don’t want something done, ask a committee to look into it. ”With some 25000 attendees, the COP26 conference could be considered one of the largest committees ever formed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is completely useless. It is Coachella for the NGO crowd. I wrote my extended thoughts at the Newslettr last November.

In Europe, the European Parliament has decided to meet its “green energy” goals by declaring natural gas to be “green”. In Germany, the Green Party has decided that coal power plants are preferred over nuclear.

And in Sri Lanka, an ostensibly “green” policy of banning artificial fertilizer has led to food shortages, bankruptcy, and the collapse of the government.

The pattern is clear. The most popular approach (and thus, the approach most likely to win public acclaim [and elections]) is to do something that pretends to combat climate change, but actually doesn’t do anything effective. And when things predictably go badly, the people now-in-charge will be dead, retired, or parroting the old “nobody could have predicted this” line.

As far as I can tell, not one country on Earth is responding to the situation by increasing petrol taxes and tariffs. Some of them would see revolts. Others would see the governing party lose the next election.

I have no faith in private industry being able to do anything either. Sam Altman is promising the moon and the stars with his investment in a fusion startup. I’ve never met him, but I doubt the physics of his bold claims. He has a salesman’s tack to his blog posts: the many, many, many practical problems with fusion simply will be ignored. It smells too much like Theranos 2.0 to justify any hope.

There is other snake oil in the market as well. “Carbon capture” technologies that have no roadmap to being more efficient than not burning fuel in the first place. Ethanol plants that generate so much CO2 it’s unclear whether they are even helping matters. Carbon credits that are 5% carbon-reduction and 95% accounting-gimmick.

“Climate change is real” is table stakes

If you are arguing with someone about whether climate change is real, you’re simply wasting your breath. All you really need is one graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration by year.

I have found that people who disagree at this point are either irrelevant, trolling, or stupid. And, well, I have a talent for a lack of patience with fools. I haven’t had to pull a knife out during a debate yet, but I am ready to do so.

On the other hand, many of the details of the exact impact of climate change are unknown or exaggerated. People feel that “2 degrees of warming by 2050” sounds fake, and it does sound fake. You can know it sounds fake, because none of the arguments people make actually care whether that is “2 degrees Fahrenheit” or “2 degrees Celsius”.

If you’re convinced Manhattan will be underwater in 20 years if we don’t act, you are certainly wrong. Contrary to what you have read on the internet, making ludicrous claims to advance the Overton Window doesn’t help here. It feeds into a cycle where nobody accomplishes anything other than wasting each others’ time.

The nonsense will drive you mad.

In Cedar Rapids, the city council voted for a 1250 foot setback for an industrial solar installation. That is four whole football fields. Why? I am inclined to believe it is incompetence (or a poison-pill) rather than malice in this situation.

At the Iowa State House, a bill to ban large solar installations on land “good for corn” got some traction, but ultimately did not pass. State Rep. Dan Zumbach stated his rationale as “we have to have respect for what the state does and that’s produce food”. Once again, this is an argument too stupid to justify a response.

And in California, a coalition of solar panel recyclers and professional antagonists are inventing a new problem for solar: the inability to recycle panels. Apparently, since modern solar panels don’t have hazardous materials, hazmat processing firms won’t take them. If only all our problems were that stupid.

People can’t think long-term.

Most of us will be dead in 75 years, but the solar panels we buy today might not be.

I see no reason why solar panels can’t last at least 100 years. Yet the prevailing paradigm appears to be that after 30 years, your solar panels will turn into a rotten pumpkin.

Part of this is because of the warranty and depreciation treatment: nobody wants a 75-year warranty — it is an expensive liability for the manufacturer, and the purchaser has no guarantee that the corporate entity issuing the warranty will last that long. And there is financial pressure to depreciate assets as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, we haven’t had solar panels for 75 years, so there is a natural hesitation to promise they will last that long.

It’s not my problem anymore

When, not less than a month into my efforts, LG announced it was shutting-down solar panel production, it certainly seemed to be an omen that I was in fact pursuing an Atlas Shrugged-esque failure to start a business.

After 8 weeks, the writing on the wall was clear. I fired myself as CEO of the company. But with nobody to replace myself, and the spectre of climate change still lurking, I persisted as chairman of the board, looking for business opportunities that would justify hiring a new CEO.

Now, at six months, I have fully yielded. Once this letter is done, I will have done all I can without resorting to violence or black magic.

But what have I learned? That’s not entirely clear. I have extended notes, in the form of a 100-page PDF, entitled “dreams of Big Solar”. It has a tone of “maybe slightly too deranged for public consumption” — email me if you’re interested.

And I have a collection of tactics — see part 2.